Sometimes it was high-spirited, sometimes pompous or solemn. Beyond that, nobody paid any attention.
But when Konrad heard music, he turned pale. Every kind of music, even the simplest, struck him like a physical blow. The color left his face, and his lips trembled. Music communicated something to him that the others could never achieve. It seemed that the melodies did not speak to the rational portion of his mind. The discipline he demanded of himself, which he accepted as both punishment and penance, and by means of which he had achieved a certain status in the world, relaxed at such moments, as if his body too were releasing itself from its rigid posture. It was like the moment on parade when “stand to attention” finally gave way to “at ease.” His lips moved, as if he wanted to say something. At such times he forgot where he was, his eyes sparkled, he stared into the distance, oblivious of his surroundings, his superiors, his companions, the beautiful ladies, the rest of the audience in the theater. When he listened to music, he listened with his whole body, as longingly as a condemned man in his cell aches for the sound of distant feet perhaps bringing news of his release. When spoken to, he didn’t hear. Music dissolved the world around him just as it dissolved the laws of artistic unity, and at such moments Konrad ceased to be a soldier.
One evening in summer, he was playing a four-handed piece with Henrik’s mother, when something happened. It was before dinner, they were in the main reception room, the Officer of the Guards and his son were sitting in a corner listening politely, the way patient and well-intentioned people do, with an attitude of “Life is made up of duties. Music is one of them. Ladies’ wishes are to be obeyed.” They were performing Chopin’s Polonaise-Fantaisie and Henrik’s mother was playing with such passion that the whole room seemed to shimmer and vibrate. As they waited patiently and politely in their corner for the piece finally to end, both father and son had the sensation that some metamorphosis was taking place in Henrik’s mother and in Konrad. It was as if the music were levitating the furniture, as if some mighty force were blowing against the heavy silk curtains, as if every ossified, decayed particle buried deep in the human heart were quickening into life, as if in everyone on earth a fatal rhythm lay dormant, waiting for the predestined moment to begin its fateful beat. The courteous listeners realized that music is dangerous. But the duo at the piano had lost all thought of danger. The Polonaise-Fantaisie was no more than a pretext to loose upon the world those forces that shake and explode the structures of order which man has devised to conceal what lies beneath. They sat straight-backed at the piano, leaning away from the keys a little and yet bound to them, as if music itself were driving an invisible team of fiery mythical horses riding the storm that circled the world, and they were bracing their bodies to maintain a firm grip on the reins in this explosive headlong gallop of unshackled energies. And then, with a single chord, they ended. The evening sun was slanting through the large windows, and motes of gold were spinning in its rays, as if the unearthly racing chariot had stirred up a whirlwind of dust on its way to ruin and the void.
“Chopin,” said the French wife and mother, breathing heavily. “His father was French.” “And his mother Polish,” said Konrad, turning his head sideways and looking out of the windows. “He was a relative of my mother’s,” he added parenthetically, as if ashamed of this connection.
They all paid attention to his words, because there was a great sadness in his voice; he sounded like an exile speaking of home and the longing to return. The Officer of the Guards bent forward as he stared at his son’s friend; he seemed to be seeing him for the first time. That evening, when he and his son were alone in the smoking room, he said, “Konrad will never make a true soldier.” “Why?” asked his son, shocked.
But he knew that his father was right.
The Officer of the Guards shrugged his shoulders, lit a cigar, stretched his legs toward the fireplace, and watched the curl of smoke. And then calmly, with the assurance of an expert, he said, “Because he is a different kind of man.”
His father was long dead and many years had passed before the General understood what he had meant.
Chapter 7
The truth, that other truth that lies buried beneath roles, the costumes, the scenarios of life, is nonetheless never forgotten. The two boys grew to manhood together, swore their oath of allegiance to their Emperor together, and shared quarters together during their years in Vienna, for the Officer of the Guards had arranged for his son and Konrad to serve their first tour of duty in the vicinity of the Imperial court. From the deaf widow of a regimental doctor who lived near the Schonbrunn park they rented three rooms on the second floor of a narrow house with a gray façade and windows that opened onto a long, narrow, overgrown garden thick with greengage trees. Konrad rented a piano but played only rarely; he seemed to fear music. They lived there like brothers, but Henrik sometimes had the uneasy sensation that his friend was concealing a secret.
Konrad was “another kind of man,” and his secret was not one that yielded to questioning. He was always calm, always peaceable. He performed his duties, spent time with his comrades, and went out in society all as if military service were a constant, as if all of life were a single uninterrupted tour of duty, both day and night. They were young officers, and Henrik was concerned that Konrad was living like a monk. Like someone who did not belong to this world. After his hours of duty, it seemed that another duty began that was more demanding and more complicated, just as a young monk dedicates himself not only to the prayers and rituals that are his form of duty, but also to solitude, contemplation, even mystical dreams. Konrad feared music and the secret bond between them that laid claim not only to his mind but to his body; he feared that it had the power to command his fate, throw him off course and crush him. In the mornings the ‘ friends went riding together in the Prater or in the riding school, then Konrad was on duty, after which he returned to the apartment in Hietzing; sometimes weeks went by without his making any evening engagement. The old house was still lit by oil lamps and candles; the son of the Officer of the Guards almost always returned home after midnight from a ball or an evening entertainment, and while he was still in his cab on the street he could see the despondent, reproachful glimmer of the dim flickering light. The glow in the window seemed a signal of rebuke. The son of the Officer of the Guards handed the coachman a coin, paused in the silent street in front of the old door, took off his gloves, reached for the key, and had a faint sense that once again this evening he had betrayed his friend.
He came from the world where soft music lilted through dining rooms and ballrooms and salons, but not the way his friend liked it. It was played to make life sweeter and more festive, to make women’s eyes flash and men’s vanity throw sparks; that was its raison d’ętre throug hout the city, wherever the son of the Officer of the Guards whiled away the nights of his youth. Konrad’s music, on the other hand, didn’t offer forgetfulness; it aroused people to feelings of passion and guilt, and demanded that people be truer to themselves in heart and mind. Such music is upsetting, the son of the Officer of the Guards thought to himself and began rebelliously to whistle a waltz. That year the fashionable composer being whistled by all Vienna was the younger Strauss. He took the key and opened the ancient gate which slowly creaked ajar, crossed the wide vestibule at the foot of the musty, vaulted stairwell lit by oil lamps in uneven glass shades, paused for a moment, and glanced out at the snow-covered garden in the moonlight, looking as if it had been filled in with a stick of white chalk between the dark outlines of things. Everything was peaceful. Vienna was sound asleep under the falling snow. The Emperor was asleep in the Hofburg and fifty million of his subjects were asleep in his lands. The son of the Officer of the Guards felt that this silence was also in part his responsibility, that he, too, was keeping watch over the sleep and safety of the Emperor and his fifty million subjects, even when he was doing no more than wearing his uniform with honor, going out in the evening, listening to waltzes, drinking French red wine, and saying to ladies and gentlemen exactly what they wished to hear from him. He felt that he obeyed a strict regime of laws, both written and unwritten, and that this obedience was also a duty which he fulfilled in the salons just as he fulfilled it in the barracks or on the drill ground. Fifty million people found their security in the feeling that their Emperor was in bed every night before midnight and up again before five, sitting by candlelight at his desk in an American rush-bottomed chair, while everyone else who had pledged their loyalty to him was obeying the customs and the laws. Naturally true obedience required a deeper commitment than t hat prescribed by laws. Obedience had to be rooted in the heart: that was what really counted. People had to be certain that everything was in its place. That was the year that the son of the Officer of the Guards turned twenty-two.