Tildy had been an officer in the Austrian service. Almost nothing was known of his background. He was not from Czernopol, and the Hungarian name suggested other roots than Tescovina. The landed gentry did not recognize him. Apparently he came from one of those noble but thoroughly impoverished families whose only achievement consisted in sacrificing themselves in the service of a banner, and as a result had acquired a certain aloof self-contentedness and a smoldering pride. We could see his ancestors arrayed before us, in miniatures and lockets: haughty, smug women with pious airs, with occasional traces of a former youthful beauty tempered rock-hard by a strict and stringent life, and swarthy men with the puckered look of the brave, whose only passion is to demonstrate their courage, some surprisingly coarse, with round skulls, massive faces, and martial mustaches, others of more noble cut that comes from the knowledge that early in life they will carry out their assignment to die a model death. One of these may have been Tildy’s father.
And he himself: a childhood in unquestioning obedience; women of almost painfully solemn bearing as the object of the highest respect; perhaps a secret understanding with his mother that was never expressed, a shyly restrained tenderness; and an adolescence in iron discipline, total commitment to duty. But all within a world of splendid style that brooked no skimping: amid the grand waving of the pure flags, across the fresh expanses of the horsemen’s dawn, overrun by a festive swarm of brightly colored uniforms topped by a blaze of glistening helmets.
And then came the war.
He was said to have served in an excellent regiment, albeit one which had been subjected to the harshest censure. Evidently, during the war-of-position in Galicia, after the last great cavalry battles had been fought and the war had become a troglodyte affair, an attack couldn’t be carried out because one sector’s officers were conducting a race behind the lines with gentlemen from the opposing regiment of Russian guards. The men were sent to the Isonzo Front. Tildy must have been still young at the time.
Whether his homeland, like ours, was occupied after the collapse of the empire, and ceded to a new state, was not clear, because no one knew for certain where he came from. In any case, the fact that a former officer of the Dual Monarchy was so quick to accept service in a different army was not seen in the best light. Despite all the presumed reasons that spoke for him — and on close inspection none spoke against him — he could not shake the odium of the renegade.
In Czernopol that would have normally counted as a sign of quick-witted flexibility and competent life skills, and commanded a certain respect rated far more highly than honor: “You know, we don’t put much stock in such fiction,” was how Herr Tarangolian put it. Strangely, that didn’t apply to Tildy, however. There was something in his bearing that everyone — everyone without exception — found provocative.
“He has the very best, that is to say the most curt, manners,” said Herr Tarangolian. “He despises polite gestures the way a very rich man holds them in disdain. In doing so he sets a high price — too high, perhaps. But he’s one of those men who are more than willing to bleed to death.”
Whether he was aware of this general resistance or not, Tildy did not counter it with anything except himself: his impeccable performance of duty, his cool, elegant propriety that was the tersest possible, and his deadly earnest.
“God knows, it’s not that what he does is too little,” sighed Herr Tarangolian. “On the contrary: it’s too much — too much for Czernopol. But Czernopol is drawing the short end of the stick, if you know what I mean. Let me tell you a story: His people idolize him. Recently, however, one of his men had stayed a few days beyond his leave, and when he came back, he brought his esteemed major a chicken, not as a bribe — heaven forbid — but as a gesture, and in order to mollify him. Still, a chicken is quite a lot for a young farm boy. So what does Tildy do? He assembles the entire company and informs them of the incident. He punishes the man for staying over his leave — not too severely, but not too mildly, either. And he orders that the chicken, which a sergeant was holding next to him on a kind of tray — or was it a cushion for medals — in short, Tildy orders that the chicken be thrown into the regimental kettle. Can you believe it? One chicken in a soup for four thousand soldiers? Even a child knows that the quartermasters steal meat by the ton. But in the name of justice: a single chicken! Even his own recruits no longer take him seriously. No, no, nothing good will come of that.”
Herr Tarangolian spoke with stageworthy pathos.
“And I don’t mean his career as a soldier, although that, too, is doubtful. His superiors can’t abide him, without exception. They respect him, to be sure, but they don’t trust him. They find him odd, and, to put it frankly, disturbing. Recently someone asked me in all earnestness if he might not be an Englishman working for the secret service. Why does he trim his mustache the way he does? But all joking aside: the man will destroy himself in one way or the other. There’s something Spanish about him. He is a hidalgo. Not a conquistador, no Cortés or Pizarro or Alvarez — he lacks their greed, he doesn’t have enough plebeian blood for that. Nor is he Iñigo de Loyola, although I admit he shares the same rigor and passion for a Madonna embroidered on a flag. A shame to find such traits wasted on a cavalryman, isn’t it? But, then again, would Roland and El Cid be able to conquer anything better than a heavyweight championship? For all we know a stigmatized headwaiter might soon proclaim himself lord of the world! But the hidalgo I mean is the other one, the knight of the sad countenance, Don Quixote. That is Tildy’s character through and through. He is indeed the last knight. He is incapable of taking revenge on his own predicament, like everyone else in Czernopol, by laughing at it. Do you know that people deliberately play pranks on him and place bets on how he will react, and that every time the fellow who chooses the most humorless possibility is the one who wins! He himself supposedly said he knows only two types of response: the witty one and the just one. Yes, you heard right: the witty and the just! My God, what an alternative! … And then, on top of that,” Herr Tarangolian added with faux seriousness, “on top of that, this woman …”
One day this woman stood in front of us, spoke to us, stroked our hair, kneeling down to pat Tanya — and we failed even to recognize her.
I believe that happened during the same year, on one of those late-spring days so much like lilac, under the deep mussel-blue of a sky pregnant with rain. We hadn’t seen her coming, because the lance-leaf fence was overgrown, and our garden was hedged by thickets of foliage, like the upholstery of a jewel case, with spikes of blooms that had been blasted by the slow and heavy showers, which tore off the flowers and scattered the petals across the wet leaves and grass. As a result she suddenly materialized, exaggeratedly elegant and at the same time strangely untidy, with large eyes and a disconcertingly fixed gaze. Her razor-sharp aristocratic nose startled us, as if it had simply decided to appear there, and it was out of proportion to the rest of her face, which was smooth and round like a china doll’s. She gave us the kind of smile that comes melting out of someone waking from a happy dream — lost and entranced. And as if she were indeed under a spell, she reached out and ran her hand above our hair, as if she didn’t dare touch it. “Oh you beautiful children,” she said, “you dear, happy children.”
She hastily began rummaging through her pompadour, and since she evidently couldn’t find what she was looking for, she broke into tears. “I don’t have anything for you,” she said, despairing. “I have nothing to give you, please forgive me. Forgive me …”