Tunda managed to steer clear of both White and Red troops. In a few months he traversed Siberia and a large part of European Russia, by train, on horseback and on foot. He reached the Ukraine. He did not concern himself with the victory or the overthrow of the Revolution. The sound of this word evoked faint images of barricades, mobs, and the history instructor at the Cadet School, Major Horvath. ‘Barricades’ conjured up overturned black school benches, piled on top of each other. ‘Mob’ could be equated with the crowd which used to mass behind the cordon of militia on Maundy Thursday. Of these people one saw only sweaty faces and crushed hats. They probably held stones in their hands. Such people engendered anarchy and were addicted to sloth.
Tunda sometimes remembered the guillotine, which Major Horvath always referred to as the guillotin, just as he used to say Pari, instead of Paris. The guillotine, of whose construction the Major had an expert knowledge and appreciation, was probably by now erected on the Stephansplatz, where the traffic of carriages and motor-cars was held up (as on New Year’s Eve), and the heads of the leading families of the Empire were rolling as far as the Peterskirche and into the Jasomirgott-strasse. Things were the same in St Petersburg and Berlin. A revolution without the guillotine was as improbable as one without red flags. One sang The Internationale, a song which cadet Mohr had declaimed on Sunday afternoons, the day of the so-called Schweinereien, when Mohr used to exhibit pornographic postcards and sing socialist songs. The yard outside was empty, there was stillness and emptiness when you looked out of the window, you could hear the grass growing between the great paving-stones. A ‘guillotin’, even as it were with ‘e’ amputated, cut off, was something heroic, steel-blue, dripping with blood. Considered purely as an instrument, it seemed to Tunda more heroic than a machine-gun.
But Tunda himself did not take sides. He felt no sympathy for the Revolution; it had ruined his career and his life. No longer a member of the army, he was happy not to be forced to espouse any particular cause when he encountered the historical process. He was an Austrian. He was on his way to Vienna.
In September he reached Shmerinka. In the evening he went into the town, bought bread dearly for some of his last silver coins, and avoided political discussions. He had no desire to reveal that he was unfamiliar with the situation and that he had come from a distance.
He decided to travel on through the night.
It was clear and chill, almost wintry; the ground was still unfrozen, but not so the sky. Towards midnight he suddenly heard rifle-shots. A bullet struck the stick from his hand. He threw himself to the ground, a hoof-blow struck him in the back, he was seized, yanked upright, thrown across a saddle, attached to a horse like washing to a line. His back hurt, he lost consciousness in the gallop, his head was filled with blood, it threatened to spurt from his eyes. He awoke from his swoon and slept just where he hung. The next morning, when he was untied, he was still asleep; they gave him vinegar to smell, he opened his eyes and found himself lying on a sack in a hut, where an officer sat behind a table. Horses neighed loudly and cheerfully in front of the house, a cat sat at the window. Tunda was suspected of being a Bolshevik spy. ‘Red dog!’ the officer called him. The first lieutenant very quickly realized that it was unwise to speak Russian. He told the truth, identified himself as Franz Tunda, admitted that he was trying to make his way home and that he held false papers. They did not believe him. He began to reach towards his breast to produce his proper papers. But then he felt the pressure of the photograph as a caution, a warning, so he did not legitimize himself; after all, it could not have helped him. He was fettered, shut up in a stable, saw the daylight through an aperture, saw a small group of stars scattered like white poppy-seed. Tunda thought of fresh pastry — he was an Austrian. After he had seen the stars a second time round he fainted again. He awoke in a flood of sunlight, was given water, bread and brandy, Red Guards stood round him; among them was a girl in trousers, two large tunic-pockets stuffed with papers hinted at a bosom.
‘Who are you?’ asked the girl.
She wrote down all that Tunda said.
She held out her hand to him. The Red Guards went outside, they left the door wide open, he could feel the glowing sun though it was pale and without power to burn. The girl was robust; she tried to drag Tunda to his feet and fell down herself.
He fell asleep in bright sunlight. Then he remained with the Reds.
III
Irene had really waited a long time. In the social stratum to which Fraulein Hartmann belonged, there is a conventional loyalty, love founded in convenience, chastity springing from lack of choice and a fastidious taste. Irene’s father, a manufacturer from the period when a man’s honesty was reckoned in terms of the percentage he obtained on his wares, lost his factory as a result of those same scruples to which Irene had almost sacrificed her life. He could not make up his mind to use bad lead, even though the customers were not fussy. There is a mysterious and touching attachment to the quality of one’s own merchandise, whose reliability reflects the character of their manufacturer, a loyalty to the product which resembles to some extent the patriotism of those people who make their own existence depend on the size, beauty and power of their fatherland. This patriotism manufacturers frequently share with the least of their office-workers, like the great patriotism of princes and corporals.
The old gentleman sprang from the period when quality was a matter of determination and money was still earned ethically. He had war contracts but no real notion of military life. Therefore he supplied our soldiers in the field with millions of the very best pencils, pencils which our soldiers used just as little as the wretched products of other war contractors. The manufacturer showed the door to a quartermaster who advised him to be less scrupulous with his products. Others kept their good material for better times.
When peace came the old man was left with only poor material, the value of which had in any case fallen. He disposed of it together with his factory, retired to a country district, made a few short excursions and finally the last long one to the central cemetery.
Irene, like most daughters of impoverished manufacturers, remained in a villa, with a dog and a lady of noble birth who received visits of condolence and sincerely mourned the old man, not because he had been close to her, but because he had died without ever having been so. Her path from housekeeper to mistress had been interrupted by death. Now she possessed the keys to cupboards which did not belong to her. She consoled herself with an exhaustive regard for the suffering Irene.
Moreover, the noble lady had been the go-between in her betrothal to Tunda. Irene had become engaged in order to demonstrate her independence; an engagement was almost the equivalent of coming of age. The fiancée of a serving officer in the war was de facto of age. In all probability the love which had developed on this basis would not have survived the attainment of legal majority, the end of the war, the Revolution, had Tunda returned. But missing persons have an irresistible charm. One may deceive someone who is not missing, a healthy man, a sick man, and under certain circumstances even a dead man. But one waits as long as is necessary for someone who has mysteriously disappeared.