The Radetzky March by Joseph Roth Page A

them and small porcelain figures and a yellow clay pig with a slot for coins on its back.
    “Please do me the honor of having a seat,” the sergeant murmurs. He stands behind a chair, his hands clutching its back; he holds it out like a shield.
    Carl Joseph last saw him over four years ago. The sergeant was on duty then. He wore a scintillating panache on his black helmet; straps crisscrossed his chest; he stood with ordered arms, waiting outside the district captain’s office. He was Sergeant Slama, his name was like his rank, both the panache and the blond moustache were part of his physiognomy. Now the sergeant stands there bareheaded, no saber, no strap or belt; one sees the greasy luster of the ribbed uniform cloth on the slight curve of the belly over the back of the chair, and he is no longer the Sergeant Slama of those days, he is Herr Slama, a constablesergeant on duty, once the husband of Frau Slama and now a widower and master of this house. His close-cropped blond hair lies, parted down the middle, like a small double brush over the uncreased chin with the horizontal reddish stripes left by the permanent pressure of the hard cap. Without cap or helmet, his head is orphaned. The face without the shade of the visor is a perfect oval, filled out with cheeks, nose, moustache, and small, blue, stubborn, guileless eyes. He waits for Carl Joseph to sit down, then shifts his own chair, likewise sits down, and pulls out his cigarette case. Its lid is made of particolored enamel. The sergeant puts the case in the center of the table, between him and the lieutenant, and says, “Would you care for a cigarette?”
    It is time to express my condolences, Carl Joseph thinks to himself. He stands up and says, “My sincere condolences, Herr Slama!”
    The sergeant sits with both hands in front of him on the edge of the table, appears not to grasp what is happening, tries to smile, rises too late just as Carl Joseph is about to sit down again; the sergeant takes his hands from the table and puts them on his trousers, lowers his head, raises it, looks at Carl Joseph as if asking what to do. They sit down again. It is over. They are silent.
    “She was a fine woman, Frau Slama; may she rest in peace!” says the lieutenant.
    The sergeant puts his hand on his moustache and says, with a wisp of it between his fingers, “She was beautiful. The Herr Baron knew her, didn’t you?”
    “I knew her, your wife. Was her death easy?”
    “It took two days. By the time we sent for the doctor it was too late. Otherwise she would’ve survived. I had night duty. When I got home, she was dead. The financier’s wife across the road was with her.” And hard upon it: “Would you care for a raspberry drink?”
    “Thank you, yes!” says Carl Joseph in a clearer voice, as if the raspberry drink could entirely alter the situation, and he sees the sergeant stand up and go to the sideboard, and he knows there is no raspberry drink there. It is in the kitchen, in the white cabinet, behind glass; that was where Frau Slama always got it. He closely watches all the sergeant’s movements, the shortstrong arms in the tight sleeves, stretching to find the bottle on the top shelf, then sinking helplessly as his tiptoeing feet drop back on their soles; and Slama, virtually coming home from a foreign territory to which he has gone on a superfluous and, alas, unsuccessful expedition, turns around and with touching despair in his shiny blue eyes makes a simple announcement: “Please forgive me, I’m afraid I can’t find it.”
    “It doesn’t matter, Herr Slama,” the lieutenant consoles him.
    But, as if not hearing this solace or as if obeying a command that, expressly issued by a higher authority, can brook no interference from subalterns, the sergeant leaves the room. He can be heard rummaging in the kitchen; he comes back, bottle in hand, removes glasses with matte rim decorations from the sideboard, places a carafe of water on the table, pours