Gregor von Rezzori - An Ermine in Czernopol

What had happened was absolutely predictable: both of the seconds whom Tildy had sent to challenge Năstase to a duel — with army pistols at fifteen paces — came back and reported, with a serious expression, but not without a hint of malicious pleasure, that Năstase had politely but resolutely declined to accept Tildy’s challenge.

His words had been more or less as follows: “Gentlemen, please convey my thanks to Major Tildy. I am honored by his request — if that is the correct expression for such a case, though I can’t really say since I have no experience in this area. I am a writer, and hence I cannot — in fact, I am not allowed to — claim that I am a gentleman. Major Tildy will presumably have the kindness to realize that I have not the slightest practice with weaponry of any kind, whether lances, sabers, pistols, rifles, machine guns, clubs, or spiked maces, or whatever else military men and gentlemen prefer to use to settle their differences of opinion. You may further advise the major that in this matter it would be difficult — by any means at all — to dispose of our difference in opinion, unless he were to dispose of himself. He feels obliged to defend the honor of his beautiful sister-in-law, but his conviction is completely at odds with the otherwise unanimous opinion that she neither possesses such honor nor would ever aspire to possess it. To the great enjoyment of all of us, as you, dear sirs, will no doubt agree. Please have the kindness to further convey to the major that I must regrettably retract my previous regrets concerning his own wife’s seclusion. I have since had occasion to see her. She was in the process of using an umbrella to attack the rolling shades at the apothecary in the Wassergasse, where I had gone with a few friends to a familiar place for a morning drink. Instead of a hat she was wearing what I took to be a hot-water bottle in a crocheted cover. Her nose is very ugly. The major need have no worries concerning our curiosity to uncover a certain familial resemblance to her sister. If the major should now have the idea of taking his riding whip to me, as is the custom among gentlemen, please inform him that I would not hesitate to hire a few powerful men who would return the favor with a bullwhip. And last but not least, gentlemen, please convey my compliments to Major Tildy for his understanding and steadfastness of character. It’s well known that his compatriots, the Germans, have to call an assembly in order to understand a joke. He, however, abandoned the attempt from the start. That compels a certain respect from me. Apart from that, I have nothing to offer you except for a little plum brandy, which I presume you will have to politely decline, first because it would not fit the code and second because you probably realize that I want to drink it all myself.”

The two officers did indeed decline, thanked Năstase, and went back to Tildy to convey everything that had been said, as faithfully as possible, down to the intonation of every syllable.

But before Tildy had a chance to proceed to the next step, he was ordered to see his commanding officer.

Given the exertions of the previous night, it was perfectly understandable that the colonel had shown up late at the barracks the following morning — too late to prevent Tildy from sending his seconds to Năstase. In other words, it took much explaining, and much hard work to activate Turturiuk’s memory, before he had any idea what the whole incident was about. But then he began to rage like a rabid buffalo.

Nor was his rage directed solely at Tildy. He roared through all the guardrooms and sleeping quarters of the vast barracks grounds, raged through the stables, inspected the ostensibly freshly groomed horses with a thoroughness that made the long-serving sergeant green with envy, and yelled until his throat hurt when he scratched a fingernail’s worth of dust from just below a bad-tempered kicking horse’s tailbone. Then he stormed into the arena, where a pack of hapless recruits in a hard trot on the stiffest old training mounts were having what was left of their brains pounded out of their peasant skulls, picked up a longe whip, and took over the instruction himself, until the arena looked like a witch’s cauldron. When a bit of tanbark abundantly laden with horse manure landed on the colonel’s shoulder, an eager corporal attempted to brush it off, whereupon Turturiuk turned around and soundly slapped the man.

Having thus worked himself into the proper mood, the colonel reminded the first-years on the parade ground of their duties, blasting away at them — as the proper term goes — for a good half hour from a practiced throat, and especially upbraiding them for their rampant alcoholism. After that, he meted out a few hefty punishments among the higher ranks, which were bound to set off chain reactions lower down, and then, spurs clanging, his heavy cavalry saber trailing between his Cossack legs, his collar opened down to his chest, his shako boldly shoved into his neck, he marched back into his lion’s den.

There the two officers Tildy had sent to Năstase as seconds were already waiting, clearly anything but happy with that assignment. Turturiuk didn’t even take the trouble to close the door behind him, but blasted them the moment he stepped over the threshold, using expressions the noncommissioned officers would repeat much later in the mess hall, with great awe and admiration, as if the words of a poet. After he had promised to demote them and ship them off to the Okna salt mines for a few years’ forced labor, he had them present a fully detailed report on Năstase’s reply, though they had to explain to him its sheer malice sentence by sentence. Finally he was ready to face Tildy one-on-one.

Whether because the colonel’s anger failed him, like the excessive passion of a lover when he finally holds the object of his desires in his arms, or because Tildy’s calm and correct demeanor, his inviolable “English” composure made it impossible to be blasted —in any event, the private conversation did not transpire as dramatically as would have been expected. On the contrary: Turturiuk’s ire first changed into a sullen paternal grumbling, then into a whiny tone weakly cloaked in coarseness.

To be sure, he did try to begin things with a look that he considered so ferocious a tiger would have crawled away and hid, but which Tildy withstood with an unruffled calm that had not a hint of disdain or disregard — nothing but cool and earnest patience. So the colonel’s furious stare turned more and more inward, as if that somehow helped him collect his very scattered thoughts, and swelled into a blank, animal-like gawking that was completely devoid of ideas and imagination, like the remote look of a constipated man following an explosive exertion.

Thanks to his great gift for storytelling, Herr Tarangolian was able give us a vivid recreation of events, and Uncle Sergei didn’t spare his own humorous commentaries, so even though we found the incident extremely upsetting, because it concerned our secret idol, the retelling gained something daringly amusing, something fantastic — an inconsistency that placed great demands on our ability to bear the psychological tension, and certainly did nothing to strengthen our character.

I will never forget how masterfully the prefect was able to reproduce Turturiuk’s expression, his bloodshot, alcohol-ridden eyes, the befuddled rage rising and dissipating into silliness, the pitiful attempt to remobilize its momentum, and, finally, his complete bewilderment, and the vague realization dawning on him that he had been doomed to lose the match from the very beginning.

Because ultimately the colonel had been forced to break off his lion-taming stare, and since he had evidently lost the connection to the events, he simply stared ahead and sighed. Then he looked at Tildy once again, and, shaking his head, said in his deepest, smokiest, most soldierly bass voice: “Tildy — you! You, Tildy, an officer, a gentleman, a man of decency and reason, a man of form and breeding, an educated man — by all Christendom’s holy …” At this point Herr Tarangolian substituted the rest of Turturiuk’s expression with a wave of the hand, in consideration of the ladies present. “You, Tildy, a major in one of the most renowned regiments of this country, which you have the honor of serving with your arms — you are bringing disgrace on your flag, disgrace on your comrades, on me, your commander, your fatherly superior, your oldest and only friend — you are disgracing me because you are disgracing yourself! You, whom I have fostered like a relative, defended against resentment and suspicion, you who have grown close to my heart like a mother’s weakest child — by the seven church bells of …” Herr Tarangolian made another gesture that unleashed a torrent of laughter from Uncle Sergei. “You, Tildy, a serious man, go and make a fool and a buffoon of yourself in front of all the whoresons of the city, the layabouts and loafers, the procurers and drunks, the sodomites and flaneurs — you hit one of them in my home during a celebration in my honor, and you let another one entangle you in a quarrel and then you send two of your comrades-in-arms, two respectable young people who don’t know any better, who don’t dare contradict you — you send them to take part in your disgrace — in the disgrace of all of us! And what have we become because of you? Laughable. Or did you expect that this whoreson hack, this gigolo, this little piece of snot and filth would accept your challenge and duel with you? All you could have expected was that he would laugh in your face and mock you. Shame and disgrace, that’s what you could have expected. And not just your shame and your disgrace, but the shame and disgrace of all your comrades, the entire regiment, the shame and disgrace of your colonel and superior officer, who has been like a father to you, who has taught you by his own example, who has led you and protected you! … Or have you forgotten, Tildy, that you were once our enemy? That you once shot at men who are now your comrades? That you killed many of them? If you have forgotten that, then very good, I commend you. But others haven’t forgotten that you used to be with the Austrians. The ones who are just lurking in wait ready to pounce on me because I protected and promoted you, now they will have their opportunity. For forty-five years I have been carrying this uniform honorably just so that you can come along, you Austrian, and throw filth on it, and make a clown and a buffoon out of me! So that the idlers on the street can pull each other by the sleeve and say: Look there goes the colonel of the regiment whose officers break out into fisticuffs at his house and who want to have duels with us for no reason at all! Because what did he do to you, this gigolo? He told you that he knows your sister-in-law. That everyone knows her. He wasn’t telling you anything but the truth. So you want to challenge a man to a duel because he tells you the truth, is that right? You want to play the knight to defend her honor, Herr Major? For your sister-in-law, when every rascal off the street knows that she’s a harlot, and can prove it, too! Do you want to hear it from everyone, Herr Major Tildy, that your sister-in-law is a whore? All right, then hear it: your sister-in-law is a whore. There, now you’ve heard it, Herr Major! But that’s not the end of the world, do you understand, you German fool, on the contrary: the world will go on like clockwork, because it’s the pure truth that was said there, by all the … sacraments of the devil, the pure truth, and speaking the truth is doing a work that is pleasing to God. You want to shoot a man because he’s doing work that is pleasing to God? Fine, Herr Major, so you can duel with me. I am screaming the truth into your face. More than that: I’m going to open this window here and shout out the truth, so that every bastard of a recruit can hear it. And if you want to, Herr Major, then you can have a shooting match with me! Your sister-in-law, do you hear, is a whore !”