The reader will understand that the unexpected arrival of my cousin was welcome to me. None of my frivolous friends could boast of a cousin like that, a waistcoat like that, a watch-chain like that, such a close tie to the semi-mythical soil of the Slovene village of Sipolje, the home of the then not yet forgotten, but already legendary Hero of Solferino.
In the evening, I collected my cousin. His shining satin jacket made a great impression on all my friends. He babbled away in an incomprehensible German, laughed a lot with his strong white teeth, allowed us all to buy him drinks, promised to kit out my friends with new waistcoats and watch-chains from Slovenia, and was happy to accept down-payments. Everyone envied me my waistcoat, watch and chain. If they could, they would have happily bought my whole cousin off me, my relations and my Sipolje.
My cousin promised to be back in the autumn. We all trooped off to the station. I bought him a second-class ticket. He took it to the ticket office, and managed to swap it for a third-class one. Then he proceeded to wave to us. We were all heartbroken when the train rumbled out of the station; because we were as prone to melancholy as we were avid for pleasure.
V
We went on talking about my cousin Joseph Branco for at least another day or two. Then we forgot about him again, or, if you like, we set him aside for the time being. Because we had other, more current follies that wanted to be aired and celebrated.
It wasn’t until late summer, on or about August 20, that I received a letter from Joseph Branco, written in Slovene, which that same evening I translated to my friends. It described the Veterans’ Association’s celebration of the Emperor’s birthday in Sipolje. Branco himself was a reservist; he was still too young to belong to the Association. Even so, he marched with them to the forest clearing where they held a big party every 18th August, simply because none of the oldsters was up to carrying the big side drum. There were five brass players and three clarinettists. But what good is a marching band without a big side drum?
“I don’t understand those peculiar Slovenes,” said young Festetics. “The Hungarians rob them of their most basic national rights, and they retaliate, they even rebel, or it looks like they might rebel, and then they go and celebrate the King’s birthday.”
“There’s nothing peculiar about the Monarchy,” replied Count Chojnicki, the oldest of our group. “But for our moronic government” (he was given to strong expressions), “nothing would look at all out of the way. By which I mean that so far as Austria-Hungary is concerned, the ostensibly peculiar is perfectly natural. It’s only in this crazy Europe of nation-states and nationalists that the natural looks peculiar. Of course it’s the Slovenes and Poles and the Ruthenian Galicians, and the kaftan Jews from Boryslaw, the horse-dealers from Bačka, the Moslems from Sarajevo and the chestnut roasters from Mostar who sing the ‘Gott erhalte.’ While the German students from Brünn and Eger, the dentists, apothecaries, hairdressers’ apprentices, photographers from Linz, Graz, Knittelfeld, the goitres from the Alpine valleys, they all sing the ‘Wacht am Rhein.’ Gentlemen, I predict that Austria will be destroyed by that Nibelung tendency! The heart of Austria is not the centre, but the periphery. You won’t find Austria in the Alps — chamois, yes, and edelweiss and gentians but barely a hint of the double-headed eagle. The substance of Austria is drawn and replenished from the Crown Lands.”
Baron Kovacs, recent military nobility of Hungarian descent, screwed in his monocle, as was his wont when he thought he had something especially important to say. He spoke in the harsh and melodious German of the Magyars, not so much out of necessity as from a dissenter’s pride. As he did, his crumpled face that looked like dough that has failed to rise flushed violently. “It is the Hungarians who have most to suffer in this Double Monarchy,” he said. It was his statement of faith; the words might have been graven in bronze. He bored all of us and he infuriated Chojnicki, the oldest and most highly strung of our little group. Chojnicki’s standard riposte inevitably followed. As ever, he recited: “The Hungarians, my dear Kovacs, are responsible for oppressing the following peoples: the Slovaks, Romanians, Croats, Serbs, Ruthenians, Bosnians, the Swabians of the Bačka, and the Saxons of Timisoara.” He counted them on the spread fingers of his fine, strong, slender hands.
Kovacs laid his monocle on the table. Chojnicki’s words seemed to have made no impression on him. I know what I know, he thought, as he always did. Sometimes he said it aloud too.
He was a harmless, on occasion even a good young man; I couldn’t bear him. Even so, I strove to generate a friendly feeling for him. I suffered because I didn’t like him, and for a reason: I was in love with his sister. Her name was Elisabeth, and she was all of nineteen.
I’d been fighting against the feeling for a long time in vain, not so much because I felt at risk, but because I dreaded the silent mockery of my cynical friends. Back then, before the Great War, the fashion was for arrogance and cynicism, a silly genuflection to the so-called “décadence,” a lassitude that was half-affected and half-genuine, and a groundless boredom. This was the atmosphere in which I spent my best years. It was an atmosphere that had little use for emotions, while passion was positively scorned. My friends had inconsequential little “liaisons,” women you set aside and occasionally loaned out like macs; women you accidentally forgot, like umbrellas, or on purpose, like boring parcels you didn’t go back for, for fear of being re-attached to them. In the circles in which I moved love was accounted an aberration, an engagement was like an apoplexy, and a marriage something like a long illness. We were young. We accepted that sometime in the course of our lives we would probably get married, but we felt similarly about the arterial sclerosis that would probably befall us in twenty or thirty years as well. I had numerous opportunities for being alone with the girl, though at that time it was by no means accepted that young ladies could consort with young gentlemen for longer than an hour without some fitting, positively legitimate pretext. I only took advantage of a handful of such opportunities. As I say, I would have been ashamed to use all of them, because of my friends. Yes, I was scrupulously careful that my feeling didn’t show, and I was often worried that someone or other in my circle might have got wind of it, because of some indiscretion of mine. When I ran into my friends unexpectedly from time to time, their sudden silence left me convinced that they had just been talking about my love of Elisabeth Kovacs, and I felt all glum about it, as though I’d been caught doing something bad, as though some nasty, despicable weakness had been discovered in me. But during the few hours I spent alone with Elisabeth, I thought I could feel how shallow and unworthy the mockery of my friends was, their cynicism and their affected “décadence.” At the same time, however, I felt a little guilty too, as though I had betrayed their high and holy principles. In a way I was leading a kind of double life, and I didn’t feel very good about it.