The Great War

by Aleksandar Gatalica

  ‘I am Hans-Dieter Huis: I scream, but you can’t hear me. I am now dead. Once I was Don Giovanni, the greatest in all of Germany, but then my voice ceased to obey me. I wanted to get better. God is my witness that I desperately sought a cure. I paid Dr Straube in good Berlin goose, and he prescribed me a potion. It was a strange concoction. It made my voice squeaky and ever more higher-pitched until it went beyond the range of human hearing. Now not even the Berlin dogs can hear me. Is there an upper limit for tone? For me, the upper notes are like a crumb seen from an aeroplane. My voice is now so high that I can only hear it with my own inner ear. For everyone else I am mute. Even the Berlin dogs who once followed me in packs, barking and howling, have now left me, deaf to my troubles. With them, my last audience is gone. That’s why I left for the north. Beside a mill, near the free city of L., I sang to the water and its wheel turning, aware that my road is one without end. The world is boundless, and the tones of my throat can rise higher and infinitely higher. My voice can now hardly shake the thread of a spider’s web, although the tremor of that silken thread was once the consummation of all my roles. I am now dead for everyone and everything, except for the music of gossamer, heavenly spheres.’

  ‘I am Dr Baltazar Straube and I have just died. In case you don’t know, I am the laryngologist who prescribed the potion for the renowned baritone Hans-Dieter Huis, which subsequently ruined his voice. The maestro paid for his death as a singer with half a kilo of goose tallow, two drumsticks which didn’t smell the best, and some giblets. He’s lying when he says he brought me a whole goose as a gift, but one way or another it was a cheaply bought elixir for such a magnificent death on stage. If you ask me why I ruined his voice, first you should know that I truly loved Germany and her master- singers once. But when I began to hate my homeland for having drawn a whole young generation into the meat-grinder of the Great War, nothing remained of my love for the singers. I felt they were a vanguard who had led us into a swamp — errant knights whom I had to consign to hell, and that’s just what I did. After Huis, I ruined the voice of Theodora von Stade and many others. Now, at the door to hell, I just hope the devil will show more understanding for me than I had for Germany and her master-singers.’

  ‘I am now dead. I have finally become one. Ordinary. A vanquished general of the Austro-Hungarian army. How we have all gone to the dogs in the last few months, how everything rotten in us has come out and now reeks of neglect and infirmity! We fought bravely, like true soldiers. We thought we were winning the war on the Eastern Front in 1914; we thought we would liberate Przemysl in 1915; I was convinced I could repulse ten more offensives by those Italian yokels at the Isonzo Front — and then we foundered. One torpedo fired from the Rear, away from the Front, holed our proud ship. Hunger, despair and communist agitation made penniless commoners in mouldy coats take to the streets and squares. The crowd’s clamour and hubbub made our brave weapons fall silent; and then I myself, I’m ashamed to say, showed my worst face.

  ‘Once I was a soldier. Strict, equitable and orderly. For the last few months I’ve felt like a wandering Vlach salesman, forever holding the scales of his life in his hands. I’m brawling over a title with a failed country, in which I invested all my skill and made my career. The Military Order of Maria-Theresia from 1917 entitled me to be raised to the gentry with a barony. But I wanted more. The ship was sinking, so I didn’t see why I should be prudent. I was negotiating with Vienna to gain a higher title than baron, nothing less than count. But nothing came of it because the Great War ended and I was left without a country, court, countship or emperor.

  ‘Now I’m writing a sycophantic letter to the National Council of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. I warn them that reopening the railways in these poisonous post-war times would be disastrous. I pretend to be concerned, but I’m thinking only of how to save my skin when I write: “The consequences would be catastrophic for the whole South Slavic region because hordes of undisciplined troops and Italians, who at the moment cannot be halted, would rampage through Carniola and then Croatia. Therefore I beg you, not as a general or the last son of the Fatherland but as an ordinary patriot who loves his country, to prevent this misfortune.”

  ‘I stop and don’t send the letter. Suddenly it’s as clear as day to me: I am now dead. Throughout the war, I had everything in duplicate: two sets of staff officers, two horses, two pairs of boots, two metal helmets with black plumes, and two coats. That’s enough of lies: it’s time for me to decide. This separation has to end once and for all. I get out all my things: the coats of both field marshals. Finally, I choose the one I had long put aside. That is the uniform for the Svetozar who languished for so long in the dregs of my bitter soul: who couldn’t die, and therefore had to live. I look at myself: from my fingers to my hands and arms and slightly pigeon-chested torso, and I see myself becoming that old Svetozar again.

  ‘All through the years, this Orthodox heart has beat in time with that of the Austro-Hungarian soldier, which was devoted to the imperial crown, but that Austro-Hungarian heart now beats ever more faintly and finally stops. A heart attack and — death. I’m no longer Field Marshal Boina. Now I’m just an ordinary Serb, Svetozar Boroevich, son of First Lieutenant Adam Boroevich of the border regiment, and Stana Boroevich, née Kovarbashich. I was baptized in the Orthodox church in Umetich in 1857. I have a brother, Nikola, and a sister, Lyubica. There are four hundred and forty-two of us Boroevichs, and one of them has just died. Me.’

  ‘Today is 12 November 1918 and I have finally realized the significance of the dream in which Empress Elisabeth, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the Duchess of Hohenberg and Crown prince Rudolf all shouted the same date to me: “11 November 1918”. I am now a dead emperor, the last ruler of the Danube monarchy, and that bacchanalian dance of dead relatives was not telling me the day I would survive an assassination attempt, but the day our whole world would collapse.

  ‘Farewell, everyone. This is the end of me: quiet and absent-minded Charles I, the last Emperor of the Dual Monarchy. This is the end of you, too. What remains of you will become someone else.’

  WISHES FOR THE NEW WORLD

  ‘After this endlessly long war, I hope people will drink and carouse even more merrily than they did before. That’s what I would say — me, Old Libion, proprietor of the famous Café de la Rotonde. I’d also say this: I don’t approve of those devilish chibouks with opium, which I’m seeing ever more often in my café. They only harm young people. Alcohol? Well, alcohol is different, especially if it’s champagne. There was so much bad blood during the Great War. If I just think back to the two weeks in April 1915 when those two witches from Touraine really had us on the go. I’m ashamed now that Old Combes and I almost went to war because of those two snobbish tarts, but what could I do? It all began with bad wine, and luckily everything was drowned in bad wine in the end.’

  ‘I always thought Old Libion was a bit loopy, starting with the wine affair with those female pirates from Touraine. A new world built on champagne, my foot! The world will be based on lies, extortion and corruption. The young generation has become perverted, that’s just the way things are. How can someone who comes back from the war and remembers the dozens of men he’s bayonetted refrain from stealing from my café? I’m going to keep an eye on every glass and every bottle of bubbly in the Closerie des Lilas, even if they say behind my back: “Old Combes is heartless — he must have eaten his heart for dinner.” I’ll sack the lads behind the bar on the third of every month and find new ones on the fifth. Just think: there will be so many unemployed that I’ll be able to change them like underpants: on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Now let someone try and swipe something! And the guests? Huh. Once they used to piss down their legs, get up on tables and hold drunken speeches, and draw their Brownings and fire into the air. Now they’ll shoot to kill from point-blank range.’

  ‘Old Combes has always been a miser, I guess, but his stingy ways only go as far as the bar and no further. Let him prattle on about a crisis. Peop
le will become better after this war because they’ll learn to appreciate life, beauty, comfort and good company. Gentlemen will become more refined, ladies more elegant, and even our loose women will cast off their crudity and ply their trade for shares in the great factories to be built — not like today for dubious money and the crude pictures of untalented daubers.’

  ‘I’m telling you, Libion, there’s a big crisis looming, and money won’t be worth the paper it’s printed on. You’ll reach down to your duds and find there’s nothing in them. You’ll slam the door of your “artists’ haunt” and lock it so the debt collectors don’t whisk away the whole inventory with your guests still on the chairs. But I’m not going to be as mad as you and pour away my common sense with the champagne. No way! I’ll pay the waiters thousands and millions of francs, and I’ll laugh when I see them running to buy half a loaf of bread for what I’ve given them, but my “artists’ pub” will survive while yours fails!

  ‘Your pipe dreams about the vagabonds all shifting to your place will come to nothing. We’ll see who comes out on top, Combes!’

  ‘The world is like a postcard: the sender’s address may get soiled or stained, but the addressee’s never does, I’m telling you. I know because I made a fortune during the Great War with the famous postcards from my manufactory, the Printer Pierre Albert Birot. They have a secret feature which prevents writing from smudging on the right-hand side where the address is, because they know they have to arrive at their destination. A heap of cards have come over the last few days, strangely enough, written by soldiers I’ve never heard of. At first, I got angry at the postmen and the Red Cross for not sorting the postcards from the Front properly, but when I tried to find out who the senders were I realized they’re all dead. Now I’m trying to work out how that many dead men were able to write so many postcards.

  ‘And if you’re asking me about the new world: it won’t be like Old Libion sees it, and not like grouchy Old Combes expects either. You just need to look at the two of them and everything becomes clear. Old Libion is well-fed but not so well-bred, while Old Combes is all skinny and bent, with his ugly nut hanging like a gas lantern over the Paris boulevard of his shoulders. Naturally the former thinks everything will go swimmingly, like champagne, and the latter fears that even a hitch will have a hitch.’

  ‘I am Hayyim-the-Merry. Yes, I remember Mehmed Yıldız, the trader in oriental and European spices. I don’t know why you’re asking about him. I only saw him a few times. Ah, I understand . . . You’ve heard from him that I said I could hardly wait for victory or defeat. True enough, I went out to see the British in the streets when they entered Istanbul on 13 November 1918 by your calendar, but still more to admire the pride and oriental pomp we received them with. Come and watch it with me, come on a stroll through my memory: the horses rearing, jubilation in all three parts of the city. Look, there are flags, columns of black horses, and silken sheets lowered from the minarets like giant pantaloons, and someone has strewn lotus flowers on the humiliated waters of the Golden Horn. But I don’t mind. Perhaps I even prefer defeat to victory because we showed so much to the infidels.

  ‘If you ask me what I think is going to happen, I hope the new world will steer well clear of Turkey. The Young Turks overdid it. That’s right, they went way too far with the Armenians, although I don’t like them either. That’s the truth, effendi, I don’t like them and I guess I’m even proud of it, but it would have been enough to just to drive them away to another city. Asia is big, as we Turks know better than anyone. The torrid belt of the Mediterranean is broad indeed. Maybe the Copts in Alexandria or the Syrians in Damascus would have accepted them, and if they wouldn’t have, we could have forced them on someone else, and they could have killed them rather than us having to. They shouldn’t have been driven into the desert like that, like wild animals. Somebody or other would have taken them in. They still would have been good for someone. But now we’ve got rid of them, in any case, and are left alone with ourselves. I’m telling you, we Turks should shut ourselves away again. We don’t need anyone else.

  ‘I’m going to begin with myself. This is what I’ve decided: I’ll leave a smile on my face for a long time to come, like washing swaying in the wind, to remind those around me that I am still Hayyim-the-Merry. I’ll go to the tearooms, tell funny stories and grin. I’ll entertain the coach drivers and ferrymen by the Galata Bridge, but before the laughter leaves my face I’ll steal out of myself and, like a sprit, begin to search for Turks similar to myself. Do you think I’ll be alone, effendi? Oh no, you’ll see a whole new Istanbul of people who have come out of themselves and walk the city like spirits. All of us will be as white as paper; we’ll have breadth and width, but not depth; two dimensions will be enough for us to get into boats and tell the two-dimensional boatmen: “To Emirgân, where the paint factory burned down and Yıldız Effendi heard of the death of his first apprentice.” And the boats will cast off. Everything will be like in the old miniatures: us, the water, diligent vessels plying it, the Emirgân neighbourhood, wooden houses, mosques with minarets, and the whole of Turkey. And everyone will finally be happy.’

  ‘I swear to you, invalids will be better lovers than men with arms, as long as the tool in their grungy pants has come through it all unscathed. I know what I’m talking about, I’ve known many dead men. That’s right, and I’m not ashamed to admit it: I put on the boots of dead soldiers. I called them Jules, Jean, Jacques, Joseph, Jacob, Joël: Then I rolled on the floor and imagined them embracing me in their invisible, cobwebbed arms. Later I decided to replace the dead with the living: I bared myself and set off through life naked. First of all, I found the painter Kisling. I hadn’t made love with a man’s body for two years and it was wonderful. Afterwards I found Foujita, a Japanese artist. He sure gave me a workout. Bed was like gymnastics, but when I think about it now, both of them were cowards. Where were they in the trenches? Where were they when the gas was sent towards our positions? They were giving Kiki de Montparnasse a workout! I’ve had enough of painters who preferred ‘fat cowardice’ to ‘lean heroism’. I’ll also leave Man Ray like he left me and went back to New York. I’ll find myself a war invalid! The new age will be a time of the pre-eminent wounded because we’ll all devote ourselves to love, and whoever is best will be elected president of France, whether he has both legs and both arms or not. Now the president is . . . um . . . that Poincaré guy, who looks like a brewer from Alsace. I think he looks more like a German than a Frenchman. ‘l will give him another year — let’s see — two years at most as president, and then he’ll be replaced by the best lover in Paris: a man without arms, the real symbol of the Great War and everything that’s coming after.’

  ‘I think the same as others, to put it simply, and I’m not ashamed to say it. I went to war as the real Cocteau: in style, and also managed to come through it all alive. Quite an achievement, don’t you think? It’s true that the war also reduced my standard of living, so to speak. The year 1914 was better than 1915, but 1915 was gold compared to 1916. Every day of 1916 was like a rose petal compared to any day in 1917, and 1918 was one big cock-up. Just to think back to my first leave in Paris in 1914. I arrived home like a real wartime popinjay: in an ironed and scented uniform with a crimson helmet. Everyone at the Rotonde and the Dôme was to see how I had ‘gone to war in style’ in 1914. I didn’t find Picasso then. But may he go with God. We all loved him so much, although he trod all over us. Oh yes, and you asked me about the new world after the Great War. The new world will be toilet paper for the old: Anyone who was anything before the Great War will end up wiping the arse of the new world. Brother will trample brother into the mud in a mad rush to ‘make it’. Slutty little Kiki must be crazy if she thinks Poincaré would be replaced by an invalid-president with a huge phallus. Only a nymphomaniac like her could come up with nonsense like that. The new world will be . . . Oh, who cares about new world. I went to war in style, and it’s luxury for me in peacetime, too. I’ll charge everyone fo
r everything and won’t even tip-my-hat for free. I’m not so stupid as to daydream about a better world while others are just getting rich and living off the fat of the land. I may not be able to gain a simple gram, whatever I eat, but instead I’ll find a wallet which can get nice and fat.’

  ‘I don’t know why anyone expects me to say what the new world will be like. I am Oswald Rayner. I killed Rasputin a third time, in the name of the British crown, and you’ll probably see that I speak much better with a gun than with words. Therefore I’ll load my revolver and put a bullet in the chamber. That, gentlemen, is what the new world will look like after this Great War.’

  ‘Don’t expect me to say much about the new world, either. I’m just a gypsy woman, a fortune-teller from Russia. I changed trains during the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917 and lied to a few misguided revolu­tionaries that a great future was ahead of them. Why did I do that, I hear you ask? I’m not going to tell you. There have to be a few secrets left for the caravans to take with them.’

  ‘I am Dr Sándor Ferenczi, and I hope this worst and best time for a psychoanalyst ends as soon as possible. I don’t know what my colleague Aufschneider would say about it all. I still remember him: he set off on a round trip to see each of us, and at each station he developed a totemic disease. Now everyone around me is in the terminal phase of one or several such diseases, and probably I am myself. The world has become one big hospital — the whole world is a madhouse. Just as a bee doesn’t like every flower to have pollen, I don’t think I’d like it if all of my patients were walking the street together.