The Bride of Texas, page 13
“Father!” That was Vitek’s voice.
“Silence!” The bark of a drill sergeant. Mika twisted Vitek’s arm up behind his back and drove him wordlessly down the path towards the village and their farm.
Lida pulled down her skirt and sat up. Cyril jumped out of the bushes and ran over to her. Her teeth were chattering and she was trembling violently but she wasn’t crying. Was it fright that made her shake? Terror? He knelt beside her, put his arm around her. She showed no surprise at his presence, and it was a while before she could even weep. “Oh God, Cyril, you won’t tell on me, will you? Say you won’t tell.…” He assured her he wouldn’t, and kept reassuring her all the way down the path and across the fields to the cottage. “Promise me, Cyril — as silent as the grave!” The incestuous desire had been no more than a momentary lunacy and a brief vision of white thighs in the moonlight. She was his sister, after all.
It wasn’t until years later, in Texas, that he figured out that it hadn’t been fright or terror that had made her quake. That night, she had been touched by a terrible Austrian form of death. The death of the pursuit of happiness.
He didn’t tell on her. How could he? But next day, though it was haying time, the farmer appeared in the Toupeliks’ field and called out to Cyril’s father. The father put down his scythe and walked over to the hedgerow. Cyril stopped work as well. Little Josef, in the middle of binding a sheaf, dropped to the stubble-covered ground and fell asleep. Lida turned white as death, and glanced at Cyril. Was it fright or hatred? Then she bent over a sheaf, picked up a piece of straw, and bound the sheaf. Her entire body was trembling, as it had the night before. The rich farmer was talking urgently to the poor farmer by the edge of the field. Of course, Cyril knew what he was saying. Then the father returned, his face a deep, dark red, but he said nothing. He picked up the scythe and set to work again. He didn’t say a word until that evening.
Cyril’s father was good-natured, but there was a tradition in such matters. He ordered everyone but Lida to leave the cottage. Outside they could hear her whimpering, and the whistle of Father’s strap. Mother crossed herself, and little Josef asked, “What has Lida done?” And Cyril replied, because that too was part of the tradition, “Quiet! You’re too young to understand.” So now little Josef knew too, for he was a country boy, and already twelve. Father called them back inside. They sat down to supper and ate their potatoes in silence, without sour milk, because the cow had died. Lida lay on the bench, facing the wall, her entire body heaving and shuddering.
The memory of running the gauntlet flashed through the sergeant’s mind, and the red gash on Ursula’s white back. It was a tradition. The faded side of the locket. He gave his head a shake, and looked over at the diligent Kakuska, his clockwork gearwheels gleaming brassily in the candlelight. The hullabaloo outside, in Savannah. “Shut up this minute, d’you hear, Cyril!” Blue eyes, no longer innocent — serpent’s eyes now, cruel, and the Negro voices outside the window, … and before I’d be a slave I’ll be buried in my grave.… Plunking banjos, cicadas, moonlight pouring down on the sycamores.
Something had happened. At mass on Sunday, his sister usually stifled yawns or flirted with the boys across the nave, and paid attention only when the singing began. This Sunday she remained on her knees for the whole mass except when the liturgy required her to stand. This went on Sunday after Sunday. On the opposite side of the church, in the corner, there was another kneeler, another rosary passing through the unaccustomed fingers of Vitek Mika. Then came spring.
Can piety be evil?
“I’d never been on a pilgrimage, there wasn’t time for it,” said Cyril. “It never entered my mind that Lida would try to put one over on God just to get her own way.”
“What else could she do?” asked the sergeant. “And what did they plan to do, anyway?”
“To run off to America. What they forgot was that money can buy anything. And it looked like real one hundred per cent repentance. Mother watched her like a hawk at mass but Lida never even glanced at Vitek. In autumn, Mother heaved a sigh of relief because Lida’s screwing about hadn’t had any consequences.”
In the spring, Lida began making her case.
“Lida, you’ve never ever been the slightest bit interested in pilgrimages, and now you want to go all the way to Amberice?”
“I have to beg forgiveness from the Virgin Mary,” she said, without as much as a blush. Her eyes weren’t yet reptilian, but they were no longer innocent either.
“Father wouldn’t hear of it. So my terrible little sister —”
“Terrible?” said the sergeant. “Isn’t she just pitiful?”
Cyril gave a nasty laugh. “Wait till you hear. So she managed to bewitch the padre. He was young, and of course he was crazy about her, but he was a good priest and didn’t let on. She bewitched him, all right. He came to see us to plead her case. Said he’d keep an eye on her himself, since he was going to lead the procession to Amberice that year. Keep an eye on her! The very first night — it was three days’ walk to Amberice, the fourth day was for prayers, and then three days back, that meant six nights spent sleeping in barns, the women in one, the men in another, and of course Father Bunata couldn’t stay with the women. Keep an eye on her! Mother Fidelia of the Franciscans was chaperoning the women, but she had trouble with her feet and by evening all she could think of were her bunions.”
“Wasn’t it risky? Couldn’t they have waited till they were out of the country?”
“They were young. And besides, how could they know that Father Bunata wasn’t the only one keeping an eye on them? An old army veteran named Svestka went along on the pilgrimage, for money. Old man Mika’s money.”
“Odd that old man Mika let them go in the first place,” said the sergeant.
“Could you ever stop someone in Austria from going on a pilgrimage? Lida, maybe. She wasn’t of age yet. But Vitek was twenty-two. He didn’t ask his father, he just signed up. They were going after the crops were in, so what could old Mika do? Besides, when Father Bunata was at the Mikases’ for Sunday dinner he had nothing but good to say about Vitek, how he’d changed so much for the better, what a devout lad he was now, how he helped carry the banner in the Corpus Christi procession. Bunata certainly knew what had happened between Vitek and Lida. There was no chaplain in Lhota, so he was the only one to hear confessions —”
“What makes you so sure they confessed to him?” the sergeant interrupted him.
Cyril frowned and thought it over. “Well,” he replied, “I was an altar boy as a child. I’d never have thought of not confessing. But you see what she’s like? She may well have lied. And you don’t even know why I’m telling you all this. Isn’t it awful? Adding the sin of sacrilege to fornication.”
“But was it fornication?” asked the sergeant.
Cyril waved a hand dismissively. “Well, anyway,” he said, “old Mika was left with no choice but to hire a spy. But the spy wasn’t that good, and they almost got away with it.”
Amberice was only three kilometres from the district capital, where the train to Vienna stopped. That would be the escape route. But they couldn’t wait. Three nights in a row they snuck out of the barns. Mother Fidelia was asleep, a victim of her bunions, and old Svestka was asleep too, drowned in the gin he’d bought with Mika’s money. In the woods that lined the road to Amberice, Vitek and Lida at last became more than just one soul. Services were held from early in the morning of the fourth day, in the Church of the Holy Mother on the Hill, who, among her other titles, was the Patroness of Fortunate Conception. It was as though God, deceived as he was, was having his little joke. Lida sat conspicuously in the first row, clearly visible to Father Bunata. The priest warmed to her unearthly piety, sensing that God was bestowing a special mercy upon her. He sang the litany in his lovely, resonant tenor: “Hope of sinners … Sweet Virgin of virgins … Virgin of the Immaculate Conception.…”
“Intercede for us!” responded the women, and from the first row came Lida’s lovely soprano, though by “us” she only meant her and Vitek. If she was a believer at all, that is. But she probably was. The ways of the Lord are strange.
Meanwhile, all but unnoticed, Vitek slipped out of the church and ran towards the railroad station in the district capital. Unfortunately the old soldier had exhausted his supply of gin, so he was sober and alert. He slipped out behind Vitek and followed him under the cover of the hedgerows that lined the road.
God — or the Devil, depending on how you look at it — intervened once more, and almost saved the enamoured sinners. When Svestka discovered why Vitek had gone to town, he waited until the young man had left the little railroad station and started back to the church. Svestka himself was no longer in any hurry. He was no genius, but he could put two and two together, so he took a walk through the town. He had at least until dark.
There were several taverns on the town square. As luck would have it, under the sign reading “The Horn of Plenty” stood retired Oberleutnant von Meduna, examining the menu posted in the window. Svestka’s high spirits — his discovery at the railroad station had sparked his sense of adventure and improved the prospect of an additional reward for a job well done — rose to dizzying heights as he remembered old campaigns, for military memory is always beneficently selective. He completely forgot how once, during the advance against Garibaldi, this very same Oberleutnant had had him put in irons. The only thing he could recall was the Oberleutnant’s Lombard mistress, the wife of his superior officer, whom he, as the Oberleutnant’s orderly, had successfully blackmailed. So he ran over to him, stood at attention, and clicked his heels. “Herr Oberleutnant, reporting for duty, sir!” The same kind of selective memory was operating in the Oberleutnant. His rank upon retiring had been so low because, having failed to find himself a suitably wealthy bride, he had led a life of restless desperation that exceeded even the norms of promiscuity permissible to officers. He selectively forgot that he had caught his former orderly, who was now standing at attention before him, red-handed stealing cigars (the orderly was not a smoker, and had been selling the cigars to Feldwebels at half price), sneaking drinks of cognac and topping up the bottle with water, and in dozens of similar transgressions. All he could recall was how discreet the orderly had been in procuring women for him, and so he said, “At ease!” and took the old soldier into the tavern for goulash.
They had more than just goulash, of course, but Svestka had plenty of time till sunset. He learned, in fact, that he had till dawn, because the first and only train to Vienna wasn’t due to arrive at the little railway station until halfpast four in the morning. He learned this from his Oberleutnant, who was planning to take the same train back to the imperial capital. Over brandy and gin, recollections unfolded of cannonades without casualties, painless injuries, and the glorious fallen, while in the church of the fortunate conception Father Bunata grew more ardent as Vitek secretly showed Lida their two tickets to paradise.
They all had time till dawn.
Madam Sosniowski stopped and looked at the sergeant. “Helldorf! How did you know?”
“I serv — I lived there for some time too. In ’48. Your husband was a doctor, I believe.”
“Did you know him?”
“Not personally. I used to see you in the park. You had two little girls.”
Madam Sosniowski smiled. They were walking past the last building on the outskirts of Atlanta. The street curved around towards an isolated white building surrounded by trees.
“Those little girls have become young ladies,” she sighed. “What were you doing in Helldorf?”
“I was stationed at the garrison there. Until the spring of ’49.”
She looked at him curiously. “And then you came to America?”
“Yes.”
“You deserted.” It wasn’t a question.
“I came in search of freedom.”
She was silent. A unit of Kil’s cavalry galloped past, pulling a small cannon behind them.
“My husband did the same,” said Madam Sosniowski. “He wasn’t deserting, of course. He wasn’t even in the army. At least not in Austria. But he didn’t want to stay there any longer, not after the revolution in ’48. When Bach came to power in Vienna, with his secret police and all — after what my husband had gone through — he decided it was time to leave.”
“But why are you here? Why did he come to the South?”
She looked at his regimental insignia. “Are you surprised that I’ve become a dyed-in-the-wool Southerner?”
He shrugged.
“I haven’t,” she said. “It simply troubles me — it sickens me, in fact — that your army doesn’t behave as one would wish if one were concerned about —” She fell silent again, almost as if she couldn’t bring herself to say the word “freedom”. “Did you hear those Negroes singing?”
“I did, but war is war,” he said, parroting his general. “We’re not here to be loved.”
“Is a war like this one still war?”
He felt a sudden desire to stand up for his drunken companions, because he’d walked all the way across Georgia with them, and they’d been together at Chickamauga and Spotsylvania. He repeated his general’s words: “War must be waged effectively, or not at all.” He felt something like anger rising in him. “It can’t be waged to suit Southern ladies.”
Madam Sosniowski looked up at the sky, black with the smoke that swirled out of Columbia. Another of Kil’s squadrons galloped past them towards the city.
“I am not a Southern lady,” she replied softly, “and my husband was once a soldier too. An army doctor. But — you may be right. Once you see Sherman’s army, you lose your taste for war. Only, you know, there are some things you simply can’t accept. This is how the Cossacks behaved in Poland. My husband often spoke of it in Siberia. Of the brutality, but also of why different people wage different kinds of war.”
“In Siberia?” he asked, astonished.
Still the flakes of burning cotton drifted down on the Congaree River.
The old veteran twitched in his sleep and woke up with a start. He could see the spring stars overhead, and each one had a twin. He didn’t know what had woken him up, and didn’t know where he was, but he was lying in a hedgerow between two fields, shivering with cold. Then he remembered. He jumped up and ran towards the church, its four steeples towering against the double stars like a black reproach. That night, instead of sleeping in barns, the pilgrims had bedded down in the convent refectory.
He ran, his heart skipping beats. He arrived at the convent gate and rushed inside, then into the dining hall. One of the straw mattresses was empty. He surveyed the room in alarm. In the moonlight, the clock on the wall showed five to four. He panicked. He ran to the mat closest to the door, where Father Bunata lay moaning softly. He shook him.
“Reverend Father! Wake up!”
The priest opened his eyes wide. He too had forgotten where he was.
“They’re trying to run away to Vienna together!”
“What? Who?”
The priest sat up on his straw mat, still not quite awake.
“The Toupelik girl and young Mika!”
“What?” The priest was returning from a paradise of inappropriate dreams to the waking world, a world that was suddenly falling apart. “Little Lida Toupelik?”
“Yes, yes! Hurry! We may be too late already!”
They ran together towards the dark town. The priest’s boots were untied and his cassock was unbuttoned; the old soldier was as sober as he could remember ever being, though he was short of breath and kept falling behind the clergyman — for the priest was young and strong, and driven by an undeclared love. Looking like a big black rooster, he raced ahead with his skirts flying, so that by the time Svestka reached the town square, gasping for breath, the priest’s cassock was just flapping out of sight around the corner at the far end. The old soldier’s strength gave out and he stumbled and fell, and then, by sheer force of will, he scrambled back to his feet, with his heart in his throat, and dragged himself to the little railroad station. He staggered through the waiting room, but he didn’t fail to notice the sign on the wall. “DELAY:” and beside it, in chalk lettering on a black background, “30 minutes”. It was exactly four-thirty. He heaved a sigh of relief and opened the door onto the platform.
Father Bunata was sitting on the ground, blood streaming from his nose. Lida Toupelik was standing behind Vitek, whose fists were clenched, but it was Oberleutnant von Meduna who was wiping his right hand with a handkerchief. A gendarme in a plumed hat was pounding down the platform towards them. As Svestka ran out onto the platform, Lida said something to the Oberleutnant. Von Meduna bowed and replied, “Frauendienst ist Gottesdienst — to serve a lady is to serve God.”
“Das ist Gotteslästerung! That’s sacrilege!” wailed the downed priest, holding his hand to his nose. The gendarme ran up, helped the priest to his feet, and asked, in German, what was the matter.
The priest rummaged under his cassock for a handkerchief, forgetting that in his haste he had neglected to put on his trousers. The Oberleutnant gallantly offered a handkerchief of his own.
“What’s going on here?” the gendarme repeated, in Czech this time.
“He’s going to take her away!” exclaimed the old soldier.
“What business is it of yours, Svestka?” the Oberleutnant snapped.
“But she’s not even seventeen!” the old veteran said feebly.
“Since when are you so moral, you old fool?”
“It’s not that I — but I was supposed to keep an eye on him.”
“You were supposed to what?”
“Keep an eye on him,” replied Svestka miserably. “They almost got away. It’s your fault, sir, for pouring all that liquor into me.”
“Me? You poured it into yourself!” roared the Oberleutnant. “You were so drunk they had to throw you out of the tavern!”
The old soldier couldn’t remember. But beyond the black hole in his mind, he did remember being paid to keep an eye on Vitek Mika — and what he was paid to do, he did. Not for the credit that came from a job well done, but because, in his experience as an orderly, a job well done meant a bonus.
