Most of the year Dr. Skowronnek had nothing to do. He worked only four months out of the twelve as a spa physician in Frantiskovy Lazne, and his entire knowledge of the world was based on the confessions of his female patients. For these women told him everything that preyed on their minds, and there was nothing in the world that did not prey on their minds. Their health suffered from their husbands’ professions as well as from their lack of attention, from the “overall agony of the times,” from the rising cost of living, from the political crises, from the constant threat of war, from the newspapers their husbands subscribed to, from having nothing to do, from the unfaithfulness of lovers, the indifference of men, but also from their jealousy. In this way, Dr. Skowronnek got to know the various classes of people and their home life, their kitchens and bedrooms, their passions, propensities, and stupidities. And since he did not believe everything he heard from the women, accepting only three-fourths of what they told him, he eventually acquired an excellent knowledge of the world, a knowledge more valuable than his medical science. Even when he spoke with men, the skeptical yet obliging smile of a man who is ready to hear anything hovered on his lips. A sort of aloof kindness shone from his small puckered face. And, in fact, he liked people as much as he looked down on them.
Did Herr von Trotta’s simple soul have any inkling of Dr. Skowronnek’s warm slyness? In any case the physician was the first person for whom the district captain began to feel esteem and trust since his boyhood friend Moser.
“Have you been living in our town for a long time, Herr Doctor?” he asked.
“Since my birth,” said Skowronnek.
“Too bad, too bad,” said the district captain, “that we’ve met so belatedly.”
“I’ve known you for a long time, Herr District Captain,” said Skowronnek.
“I’ve occasionally seen you,” replied Herr von Trotta.
“Your son was here once,” said Skowronnek. “That was a few years ago.”
“Yes, yes, I remember!” said the district captain.
He thought about the afternoon when Carl Joseph had come with the letters of Frau Slama, who was dead. It was summer. It had rained. The boy had ordered a bad cognac at the counter.
“He got himself transferred,” said Herr von Trotta. “He’s now serving with the riflemen on the border, in B.”
“And he’s a great source of pride for you?” asked Skowronnek. But he wanted to say “problems.”
“Yes, he really is! Certainly! Yes!” the district captain replied. He stood up very swiftly and left Dr. Skowronnek.
He had long been toying with the idea of telling Dr. Skowronnek about all the problems. He was growing old; he needed a good listener. Every afternoon the district captain again resolved to talk to Dr. Skowronnek. But he did not come out with the right words for initiating an intimate conversation. Dr. Skowronnek looked forward to it daily. He sensed that the time had come for the district captain to open up.
For several weeks now the district captain had been carrying a letter from his son in his breast pocket. Herr von Trotta had to answer it, but he couldn’t. Meanwhile the letter grew heavier and heavier, almost a burden. Soon the district captain felt as if he were carrying the letter on his old heart. For Carl Joseph had written that he was thinking of leaving the army. Indeed, the very first sentence of his letter read, I am toying with the idea of quitting the military. Upon reading that sentence, the district captain broke off and glanced at the signature to make certain that no one but Carl Joseph had written the letter. Then Herr von Trotta put away the pince-nez he used for reading, and the letter as well. He leaned back in his chair. He sat in his office. The official correspondence had not yet been opened. It might have contained important matters, issues to be addressed without delay, but things concerning his work seemed to have been taken care of in the most unsatisfactory way by Carl Joseph’s words. For the first time in his life the district captain subordinated his official duties to his personal experiences. And however modest, nay, humble a state servant he may have been, his son’s thoughts of leaving the army affected Herr von Trotta as profoundly as if he had been notified that the entire Imperial and Royal Army had made up its mind to disband. Everything, everything in the world seemed meaningless. The end of the world was nigh! And when the district captain nevertheless decided to read the official mail, he felt he was performing a futile and anonymous act of heroism, like, say, the radio operator on a sinking ship.
It was only more than an hour later that he went on reading his son’s letter. Carl Joseph was requesting his approval. And the district captain replied as follows:
My Dear Son,
Your letter has shaken me to the core. I must wait a bit before informing you of my final decision.
Your Father
Carl Joseph did not respond to this letter. In fact, his regular series of standard reports broke off, so that the district captain did not hear from him for a long time. The old man waited every morning, knowing all the while that he was waiting in vain. And it was not that the expected letter failed to arrive every morning but that the expected and dreaded silence came every morning. The son kept silent. But the father heard his silence. It was as if the son were once again terminating his obedience to the old man every day. And the more time dragged by without Carl Joseph’s reports, the harder it was for the district captain to write the promised letter. While he had at first taken it for granted that he would simply prohibit the boy from leaving the army, Herr von Trotta now gradually started believing that he no longer had a right to prohibit anything.
He was quite despondent, the Herr District Captain. His whiskers grew more and more silvery. His temples were already completely white. His head sometimes drooped to his chest, and his chin and his whiskers lay on his starched shirt. Thus he suddenly fell asleep in his chair, jumped up after a few minutes, and imagined he had slept an eternity. He had lost his meticulous sense of the passing of time ever since he had given up several old habits. For after all, the hours and the days were meant precisely to maintain those habits, and now the hours and the days resembled empty vessels that could no longer be filled and that need not be bothered with anymore. The only thing the district captain showed up for punctually was the afternoon chess game with Dr. Skowronnek.
One day he received a surprise visit. While hunched over some papers in his office, he heard the familiar blustery voice of his boyhood friend Moser and his clerk’s useless efforts to repel the professor. The district captain rang his bell and had the visitor ushered in.
“Good day, Herr Governor!” said Moser. Given his slouch hat, his portfolio, and his lack of a coat, he did not look like someone who had taken a trip and had just gotten off the train; he seemed to be coming from the house across the way. And the district captain was terrified at the dreadful thought that Moser might be planning to settle permanently in W.
First the professor went back to the door, turned the key, and said, “Just so nobody walks in unexpectedly, my friend. It could hurt your career!”
Then he trudged back to the desk, embraced the district captain, and placed a resounding kiss on his bald head. Next he flopped down in the armchair by the desk, placed his hat and his portfolio on the floor in front of his feet, and fell silent.
Herr von Trotta likewise remained silent. He knew why Moser had come. He had sent the professor no money for three months. “I apologize!” said Herr von Trotta. “I’ll pay you everything immediately! Please forgive me. I’ve had a lot of problems lately.”
“I can imagine,” replied Moser. “That son of yours is expensive! I see him in Vienna every other week. He looks like he’s having a good time, the Herr Lieutenant.”
The district captain stood up. He reached for his breast pocket. He felt Carl Joseph’s letter there. He went over to the window. With his back toward Moser, his eyes fixed on the old chestnuts in the park, he asked, “Have you spoken to him?”
“We have a drink whenever we meet,” said Moser. “He’s
certainly generous, your son!”
“So! He’s generous!” Herr von Trotta repeated.
He hurried back to the desk, yanked out a drawer, counted through some banknotes, pulled out a few, and handed them to the painter. Moser inserted the money in his hat, between the felt and the threadbare lining, and stood up.
“One moment!” said the district captain. He went to the door, unlocked it, and told his assistant, “Take the Herr Professor to the station. He’s going to Vienna. The train’s leaving in one hour.”
“Your devoted servant!” said Moser and bowed. The district captain waited a few minutes. Then he took his hat and cane and headed to the café.
He was a bit late. Dr. Skowronnek was already sitting at the table, with the figures already standing on the chessboard. Herr von Trotta sat down.
“Black or white, Herr District Captain?” asked Skowronnek.
“I’m not playing today,” said the district captain. He ordered a cognac, drank it, and began. “I’d like to pick your brain, if you’d allow me.”
“Please do!” said Skowronnek.
“It’s about my son,” the district captain went on. And in his slow, slightly nasal officialese, he described his problems as if talking about administrative matters to a government councilor. He classified his problems into main problems and subproblems, as it were. And item by item, in small paragraphs, he related his father’s history, his own, and his son’s. By the time he finished, all the patrons had vanished, and the greenish gas flames in the room had been lit and were hissing monotonously over the empty tables.
“Well, that’s it!” the district captain concluded.
A long silence ensued between the two men. The district captain did not dare look at Dr. Skowronnek. And Dr. Skowronnek did not dare look at the district captain. They cast down their eyes as if they had caught each other in an embarrassing moment. At last Skowronnek said, “Could some woman be involved? What reason would your son have to be in Vienna so often?”
The district captain would certainly never have thought of a woman. But now he was at a loss as to why something that obvious had not instantly occurred to him. For everything – and it was certainly not much—that he had ever heard about the nefarious influence that women can exert on young men suddenly crashed into his brain, simultaneously liberating his heart. If it had been merely a woman who had triggered Carl Joseph’s decision to leave the army, then, while nothing might be repaired as yet, they could at least see the cause of the disaster, and the end of the world was no longer the fault of dark, secret, unidentifiable forces that could not be warded off. A woman! he thought. No, he knew nothing about a woman. And he said in his officialese, “I have heard nothing about any female!”
“Female!” Dr. Skowronnek repeated with a smile. “It might possibly be a lady.”
“So you believe,” said the district captain, “that my son is seriously weighing marriage.”
“Not even that,” said Skowronnek. “One doesn’t have to many a lady.”
He realized that the district captain was one of those simple souls who virtually have to be sent back to school, so he decided to treat him like a child that has to learn its native tongue. “Let’s forget about the ladies, Herr District Captain. That’s not the issue. For some reason or other, your son does not care to remain in the army. And I can understand that.”
“You can understand?”
“Certainly, Herr District Captain! A young officer in our army cannot be satisfied with his career if he gives it any thought. He has to yearn for war, but he knows that war will spell the end of the monarchy.”
“The end of the monarchy?”
“The end, Herr District Captain! I’m sorry. Let your son do as he wishes. Perhaps he’d be better suited for some other profession.”
“Some other profession!” Herr von Trotta repeated. “Some other profession!” he said once again. There was a long pause. Then the district captain said for the third time, “Some other profession!”
He strove to familiarize himself with these words, but they remained as alien as, say, the words “revolutionary” or “national minorities.” And the district captain felt he would not have to wait very long for the end of the world. He banged his gaunt fist on the table, his round cuff rattled, and the greenish lamp wobbled slightly above the small table. “What sort of profession, Herr Doctor?” He asked.
“He could,” said Dr. Skowronnek, “perhaps get a job with the railroad.”
An instant later the district captain saw his son in a conductor’s uniform, holding a clipper to punch tickets. The word “job” sent a shudder through his old heart. He froze.
“Oh! You really think so?”
“I can’t think of anything else,” said Dr. Skowronnek. And since the district captain now got to his feet, Dr. Skowronnek likewise stood up, saying, “I’ll walk you back.”
They marched through the park. It was raining. The district captain did not open his umbrella. Here and there, heavy drops from the dense crowns of trees fell on his shoulders and his stiff hat. It was dark and still. Whenever they passed one of the meager streetlights, which concealed their silver tops in the dark foliage, the two men lowered their heads. And when they stood at the exit of the park, they hesitated for an instant. And Dr. Skowronnek abruptly said, “Auf Wiedersehen, Herr District Captain!” And Herr von Trotta crossed the street alone, toward the broadly arched entrance of his official residence.
He ran into his housekeeper on the stairs, said, “I’m not dining tonight, madam!” and hurried on. He wanted to take two steps at a time but, embarrassed, walked straight to his office with his usual dignity. This was the first evening since assuming his rank of district captain that he sat in his office. He lit the green table lamp, which burned in the afternoon only during winter. The windows were open. The rain beat vehemently against the metal windowsills. Herr von Trotta drew a sheet of official stationery from the drawer and wrote:
“Dear Son,
Upon careful deliberation, I have decided to leave the responsibility for your future to you. All I ask is that you inform me of your decisions.
Your Father
Herr von Trotta sat in front of his letter for a long while. Several times he reread the two sentences he had penned. They sounded like his will. Earlier he would never have dreamt of taking his paternal role more seriously than his official role. But now that he was relinquishing his paternal authority with this letter, he felt that his life had lost all meaning and that he simultaneously had to stop being an official. What he was doing was not dishonorable, but he felt he was disgracing himself. He left his office, letter in hand, and went to the study. Here he lit all the lamps, the floor lamp in the corner and the lamp hanging from the ceiling, and stood in front of the portrait of the Hero of Solferino. He could not see his father’s face sharply. The painting splintered into a hundred tiny, oily dabs and highlights, the mouth was a pale-red stroke, and the eyes were two black splinters of coal.
The district captain, who hadn’t stood on a chair since boyhood, climbed up on one, stretched, stood on tiptoe, and, holding the pince-nez to his eyes, just barely made out Moser’s signature in the portrait’s lower right-hand corner. He clambered down somewhat arduously, stifled a sigh, backed up toward the wall, banged violently and painfully into a corner of the table, and began studying the picture from a distance. He extinguished the ceiling light, and in the deep dusk he thought that his father’s face shimmered lifelike. It kept approaching and withdrawing, appeared to slip behind the wall and gaze into the room through an open window as if from immensely far away. Herr von Trotta felt a huge fatigue. He sat down in the armchair, adjusted it so that he was directly facing the portrait, and opened his vest. He heard the less and less frequent drops of the slackening rain, pattering hard and irregular against the windows, and from time to time he heard the wind soughing in the old chestnut trees opposite. He closed his eyes. And he nodded off, the letter in an envelope in his hand, which hung m
otionless over the arm of the chair.
When he awoke, full morning was streaming through the three big arched windows. The district captain first looked at the portrait of the Hero of Solferino, then he felt the letter in his hand, saw the address, read his son’s name, and got up, sighing. His shirtfront was crumpled, his broad dark-red tie with white dots was twisted to the left, and for the first time since wearing long pants Herr von Trotta noticed dreadful horizontal creases in his striped trousers. He studied himself in the mirror for a while. He saw that his whiskers were tousled and that a few wretched gray hairs were curling on his bald head and that his prickly eyebrows were as straggly as if a small storm had swept across them. The district captain checked his watch. And since the barber was due any minute, Herr von Trotta tore off his clothes and slipped into bed, trying to feign a normal morning for the barber’s benefit. But he kept the letter in his hand. And he held it while his face was lathered and shaved, and after that, when he was washing, the letter lay on the edge of the small table where the basin lay. It was only when the district captain sat down to breakfast that he handed the letter to his assistant, ordering him to dispatch it with the next government mail.
He went to work as on any other day. And no one would have been able to notice that Herr von Trotta had lost his faith, for he took care of his obligations no less meticulously than on other days. Except that his meticulousness was very, very different. Herr von Trotta resembled a virtuoso in whom the fire has died, whose soul has become empty and hollow, and whose fingers strike the right notes only with cold, seasoned precision thanks to their own dead memory. But, as we have said, no one noticed. And in the afternoon, Sergeant Slama came as usual. And Herr von Trotta asked him, “Tell me, Slama, have you ever remarried?”