Read Online The Radetzky March by Joseph Roth - Free Book Online

higher officials and lesser nobles. It vaguely recalled distant guitars twanging in the night and also the last dainty vibrations of fading bells; it was a soft but also precise language, tender and spiteful at once. It suited the speaker’s thin, bony face, his curved, narrow nose, in which the sonorous, somewhat rueful consonants seemed to be lying. His nose and mouth, when the district captain spoke, were more like wind instruments than facial features. Aside from the lips, nothing moved in his face. The dark whiskers that Herr von Trotta wore as part of his uniform, as insignia demonstrating his fealty to Franz Joseph I, as proof of his dynastic conviction—these whiskers likewise remained immobile when Herr von Trotta und Sipolje spoke. He sat upright at the table, as if clutching reins in his hard hands. When sitting he appeared to be standing, and when rising he always surprised others with hisfull ramrod height. He always wore dark blue, summer and winter, Sundays and weekdays: a dark-blue jacket with gray striped trousers that lay snug on his long legs and were tautened by straps over the smooth boots. Between the second and third course, he would usually get up in order to “stretch my legs.” But it seemed more as if he wanted to show the rest of the household how to rise, stand, and walk without relinquishing immobility.
    Jacques cleared away the meat, catching a swift glance from Fräulein Hirschwitz to remind him to have it warmed up for her. Herr von Trotta walked over to the window with measured paces, lifted the shade slightly, and returned to the table.
    At that moment, the cherry dumplings appeared on a spacious platter. The district captain took only one, sliced it with his spoon, and said to Fräulein Hirschwitz, “This, dear lady, is a paragon of a cherry dumpling. It has the necessary consistency when it is cut open, yet it nevertheless yields instantly on the tongue.” And, turning to Carl Joseph, “I advise you to take two today!” Carl Joseph took two. He wolfed them down in a flash, was finished one second earlier than his father, and gulped down a glass of water (for wine was served only at dinner) to wash them from his gullet, where they might still be stuck, down into his stomach. He folded his napkin in the same rhythm as the old man.
    They all stood up. The band outside played the
Tannhäuser
overture. Amid its sonorous strains, they walked into the study with Fräulein Hirschwitz in the lead. There Jacques brought the coffee. They were expecting Herr Kapellmeister Nechwal. While down below his musicians fell in to march off, he came, in a dark-blue full-dress uniform, with a shining sword and two small, golden, sparkling harps on his collar. “I am delighted with your concert,” said Herr von Trotta today as on every Sunday. “It was quite extraordinary today.” Herr Nechwal bowed. He had already lunched in the officers’ mess an hour ago, unable to wait for the black coffee: the taste of the food was still in his mouth; he craved a Virginia cigar. Jacques brought him a packet of cigars. The bandmaster drew and drew on the light that Carl Joseph steadfastly held at the end of the long cigar, running the risk of burning his fingers.
    They sat in broad leather armchairs. Herr Nechwal talked about the latest Lehár operetta in Vienna. He was a man of the world, the kapellmeister. He went to Vienna twice a month, and Carl Joseph sensed that the musician hid many secrets of the great nocturnal demimonde in the depths of his soul. He had three children and a wife “from a simple background,” but he himself stood in the brightest splendor of the world, quite separate from his family. He relished and told Jewish jokes with impish gusto. The district captain did not understand them, nor did he laugh, but he said, “Very good, very good!”
    “How is Frau Nechwal?” Herr von Trotta would inquire regularly. He had been asking that question for years. He had never seen her, nor did he