The Radetzky March by Joseph Roth

nothing to do with Frau Slama: dead, she was dead—beyond reach, even though he was standing at her grave. The flesh buried in his memory was closer to him than the corpse beneath this mound. Carl Joseph donned his cap and pulled out his watch. Another half hour. He left the cemetery.
    He reached the constabulary headquarters, rang the bell, no one came. The sergeant was not home yet. The rain gurgledover the dense wild grape leaves shrouding the veranda. Carl Joseph paced to and fro, to and fro, lit a cigarette, tossed it away, felt he must look like a sentry, turned his head whenever his eyes encountered that right-hand window from which Katharina had always looked; he pulled out his watch, pressed the white bell button once again, waited.
    Four muffled strokes came slowly from the town’s church tower. Now the sergeant appeared. He saluted mechanically before he even saw who was there. As if responding not to a greeting but to a threat from the sergeant, Carl Joseph exclaimed, louder than he intended, “Good day, Herr Slama!” He stretched out his hand, virtually plunging into the greeting as into an entrenchment, and with the impatience of a man bracing himself for an attack he awaited the sergeant’s clumsy preparations, his strenuous effort in stripping off his wet cotton glove and his sedulous devotion to this enterprise and his lowered gaze. At last, the bare hand settled, damp, broad, and slack, into the lieutenant’s hand.
    “Thank you for calling, Herr Baron!” said the sergeant, as if the lieutenant had not just arrived but were about to leave. The sergeant pulled out the key. He unlocked the door. A gust of wind lashed the pattering rain against the veranda. It seemed to be driving the lieutenant into the house. The hallway was gloomy. Didn’t a narrow streak light up, narrow, silvery, an earthly trace of the dead woman?
    The sergeant opened the kitchen door; the streak drowned in the flooding light. “Please take off your coat,” said Slama. He was still in his, the belt still buckled.
    My sincere condolences! thinks the lieutenant. I’ll say it fast and then leave. Slama’s arms are already widening to remove Carl Joseph’s coat. Carl Joseph yields to the courtesy, Slama’s hand momentarily grazes the back of the lieutenant’s neck, the hairline above the collar, the very place where Frau Slama’s hands used to interlock, a tender clasp of the beloved chain. When, at which exact point, can you finally unload the condolence formula? When entering the parlor or only after sitting down? Do you then have to stand up again? It’s as if you couldn’t utter the slightest sound until you say those stupid words—something you’ve brought along and carried in your mouth the whole time. It lies on the tongue, burdensome and useless, with a stale taste.
    The sergeant pushes down the door handle; the parlor is locked. He says, “Excuse me!” although it is not his fault. He reaches back into the pocket of the coat, which he has already taken off—it seems very long ago—and jingles the keys. This door was never locked when Frau Slama was alive.
    So she’s not here! the lieutenant suddenly thinks, as if he had not come here because she simply is not here anymore, and he notices that all this time he has secretly believed that she could be here, sitting in a room and waiting. Now she is undeniably no longer here. She is truly lying outside, in the grave he has just seen.
    A damp smells lingers in the parlor. Of the two windows one is curtained; the gray light of the dreary day floats through the other. “Please step in,” the sergeant says. He is right behind the lieutenant.
    “Thank you,” says Carl Joseph. And he steps in and walks to the round table; he is quite familiar with the pattern of the ribbed cloth covering it, and the small jagged stain in the middle, the brown finish, and the curlicues of the grooved feet. There stands the sideboard with its glass doors, nickel-silver beakers behind