The Great War

by Aleksandar Gatalica

  ‘It’s difficult for me to describe Hungary for you, I must admit — defeated, humbled Hungary. Here is just one little excerpt from Pécs, the city of my happy, untroubled childhood. The main role in the story is played by a boy pianist. As you know, Béla Kun founded the Kommu­nisták Magyarországi Pártja, the Hungarian Communist Party. In our small town with its clay-rich soil, it was joined by serious men with large moustaches. The Jewish community in particular was torn between the different camps: one half was for Kun, the other for the Republic and its first president Mihály Károlyi. The young pianist from Pécs, Andor “Andi” Prager, always listened to his elders. To get to music school, he had to take the clay-red road past the workers’ shed of the Zsolnay Ceramics Factory. Things were tense at the enterprise, and the workers were rostered on to control production. One day, young Andi was on his way to his piano lesson and saw the revolutionary socialists on guard at the factory gate, and among them he recognized Old Isaak, Old Haim and Old David, whom he used to see at the synagogue. They shouted to him: “Andi, we’re all counting on you. On the way back we want to see what your teacher has written.” Andi went to his lesson and told his piano teacher about the very serious socialists, all of whom had massive moustaches like drooping whips, and after the lesson the teacher wrote in his journal: “Comrade Andor has progressed exceptionally well. He shows great technical and musical maturity.” On the way home, Andi came past Isaak, Haim and David again, but they had just read the “Comrade Andor” introduction and gave a deferential nod. The next day, the young pianist passed the ceramics factory again, but the tables had turned and the republicans had taken control. He saw new faces at the gate. Among them, Andi recognized Old Jákob, Old Miska and Old Noel, neighbours whom he also used to see at the synagogue. They shouted to him: “Andi, we all believe in you, and on the way back we want to see what your piano teacher has written.” This time Andi told his teacher about the strict republicans, whose hair fell down to their shoulders like snakes, and after the lesson the teacher automatically entered in the journal: “Master Andor has progressed extremely well since yesterday. His skilful, rhythmic keywork seems set to gain a dimension of earnest.” That’s my Hungary for you, a republic resembling a roast chicken: people are still tightly holding the bones, but they’ve been gnawed clean.’

  ‘We consider that this world has come off the rails and that, with the end of the Great War, reality has lost its shameful equilibrium. Parapsychology will replace psychology in the new world; occultism will take the place of physics; paranoia will eclipse common sense, and the family will be replaced by hordes and sects. But this does not worry us at all. There will be more than enough work for us. Some Munich theosophists will still quarrel with their Leipzig brothers, and we will be conceited like the deceased pre-war German opera singers, but all of us will work together on distorting the globe and driving out what little sense remains in people’s heads after this war. Cheers! Hell is our certainty, and we accept our future in it with complete indifference. Yours sincerely and satanically, Franz Hartmann (“Dirty Franz”, falsely declared to be dead), his graduate apprentice Hugo Vollrath from Munich, and Karl Brandler Pracht, c/o Faust’s diabolical tavern in Leipzig.’

  ‘I am Archibald Reiss and I still hope that the new world will be more equitable than the old, though I don’t know what keeps this conviction alive in me after seeing, as a criminologist, that nothing has changed in the human soul or in the body, whatever strain or distress you expose it to.’.

  EPILOGUE: DREAMS MADE OF DREAMS

  A new and very important patient arrived at a sanatorium near the German-Dutch border, which was a home for the deranged and mentally ill. Black automobiles with high windscreens had driven up the gravel path in strange silence several days earlier. They stopped right in front of the entrance, and that suggested something unusual was afoot. A handful of uniformed men got out in front of the large, dark, two-winged house overgrown with bougainvillea and ivy. It was a strange company, more like a troupe of buffoons than bodyguards; without exchanging a single word, they began to bend at the waist, stand on their tiptoes and cover their eyes with their hands so they could stare into the distance towards the low sun.

  Those nervous soldiers were also seen by the deranged and mentally ill. The patients were unable to explain their presence at the comfortable sanatorium which had hardly felt the war, because it was a home for rich patients. If someone did stray in from the Great War, he was by no means an ordinary, rank-and-file soldier from the front who had copped a dose of bertholite or suffered unbearable headaches from recently having a piece of shrapnel removed from his crazy head. No, that sanatorium treated serious patients along with conceited ones, and the small staff of doctors, all of whom lived on site, took both categories seriously, because all the residents of that convalescent home on the green hill were important in some way, and every neurosis and psychosis they had was special in some way or another.

  Each patient had a medical card, a personal doctor, their own room and a nurse who seemed to look after them alone. Even so, that exclusive society of the deranged and mentally ill immediately realized that someone special was coming to their sanatorium, special even compared to them. That unusual guest became the topic of conversation for all: for those who rarely spoke, those who only muttered to themselves on occasion, and those who held fiery speeches every afternoon. And then the patient arrived. It had been three days since those secretive soldiers had come to view the building and its surroundings and to stretch as if doing their morning exercises, and now — everyone claimed — Kaiser Wilhelm in person was arriving at the sanatorium. Only one or two residents doubted it for a short time longer, although no one had actually seen the newcomer and his arrival could therefore be neither confirmed nor denied.

  There was only one patient who refused to believe in the kaiser’s arrival. Raising his right forefinger in the air theatrically, he claimed that the kaiser ruled Germany and half the world and was therefore on his throne in Berlin. ‘Come on,’ he repeated, ‘is there any good reason why Kaiser Wilhelm would come to our dark house on the green hill?’ Everyone calmed down in the end and agreed that the patient spoke rationally, but he was still mistaken. After embittered unrest on the Home Front, Germany capitulated in the Great War. Her army — undefeated militarily — was withdrawn to the borders of the Prussian Empire, and Kaiser Wilhelm was forced to relinquish his throne to the last German Emperor, Adolf II, Prince of Schaumburg-Lippe. Weak and inept at ruling in those bitter, bitter times, Wilhelm’s successor only held on to power for a week before handing the republican reins to the leaders of the German revolution on 15 November, 1918.

  Consequently it was not correct that the kaiser ‘was on his throne in Berlin’, nor that he ‘ruled’ or had half the world under his control. The only thing that was correct was that the important guest who arrived at the sanatorium right on the German-Dutch border was indeed the Kaiser, Friedrich Wilhelm Viktor Albert of Prussia. Crushed by his defeat, a nervous wreck, he was taken there exactly three days after his abdication, placed in a room with the rather ironic number 1, and left alone.

  Then for the kaiser, like for King Peter of Serbia in 1916, there began a strange, inclement period with awkward, clumpy minutes and hours which would simply not dissolve in the river of time. For two days the patient just looked through the window, and not a single muscle on his face moved, while the doctors whispered anxiously behind his back. For three nights he didn’t think of going to bed, let alone going to sleep, and therefore they decided to adopt a radical therapy. On the fourth day, he was overcome by weariness and fell asleep, which was considered a positive initial response.

  His sleep truly was a good sign at first. The kaiser slept deeply and dreamed. He dreamed it was 1914; he was on his throne in Berlin and ruled half the world, unchallenged from any side. Only the war broke out in 1914 in his dream, in that first night of sleep. A short officer took out the royal proclamation and read it with pathos. Still, his
voice trembled a little: ‘These are dark times for our country. We have been surrounded and are forced to use the sword. God give us strength to wield it as needed and wear it with dignity. To war!’

  The next night, Wilhelm of Prussia dreamed of 1914 again, but this time the fire of war had not been ignited. His proclamation did not figure, and no one had to swing a righteous sword; Prussian Germany prospered in 1915, saw unexpected industrial progress in 1916, and went from strength-to-strength in 1917 and 1918. Then the patient in room number 1 woke up in sweat-drenched satin sheets like a butterfly larva in its bedlet. He shuddered and saw the dark house of the sanatorium around him again, his iron hospital bed and the apartment all in white at the end of a long corridor. All around him it was 1918. Germany had lost the war, he had abdicated and handed power to the ineffectual Prince Adolf II. What was there for him to do in that reality other than look out through the window, without a single twitch of the optic nerve, and worry his doctors? Or was it perhaps better to sleep? Yes, the former kaiser would flee from that reality into his dreams.

  After just two weeks, Wilhelm made a point of spending as little time as possible awake. He ate almost nothing and declined markedly, but it was his increasingly long hours of sleep which now concerned the doctors. He, whom people still addressed as ‘Kaiser’, slept and slept and occasionally woke up. His dreams were as lively as reality itself, but he spoke about them to no one. It was 1916 in his dreams, and he saw great industrial progress in the Empire, and in 1917 one success followed another. Then the important patient woke up, and around him it was harsh and inhospitable 1918 again. What was reality, and what a dream? As time passed, the deposed kaiser believed the dreams ever more. Everything nice was reality, he thought, and everything nasty a bad dream. He woke up, but when was he awake? He slept, but when was he asleep? It would be just one more week until he entered another world altogether.

  He laughed a carefree laugh as he ate black grapes. His left arm was no longer shrivelled, and he reached for the grapes with it. In the distance, through the window of his palace, he saw Berlin’s brown houses, which looked to have been made of chocolate bricks. He ruminated and thought he would be the happiest ruler in the world if only he could get over his bad dreams: dreams in which Germany lost the Great War and he was secretly moved to a sanatorium on the Dutch-German border, where he dreamed the same terrible dream every day.

  THE AUTHOR

  Aleksandar Gatalica, in short

  Born in 1964 in Belgrade, Aleksandar Gatalica graduated from the Department of General Literature with Classic Sciences in 1989. He has published five novels, with the most significant being ‘The Lines of Life’ (Linije života) in 1993 (winner of “Miloš Crnjanski” Award and “Giorgio la Pira”, Italy), ‘The Invisible’ (Nevidljivi) in 2008 (winner of ”Stevan Sremac” Award), and ‘The Great War’ (NIN award, ”Meša Selimović” Award, National Library of Serbia Award, Best selling book in 2013 in Serbia).

  He has also published five story cycles, with the best known being ‘Mimicries’ (Mimikrije) in 1996, and ‘Century, One Hundred and One Histories of a Century’ (Vek, sto jedna povest jednog veka) in 1999 (winner of “Ivo Andrić” Award).

  Gatalica also translates from Ancient Greek and has published translations of Aeschylus’ ‘Prometheus Bound’, Sophocle’s ‘King Oedipus’ and, for the first time into Serbian, the following Euripides’ plays: ‘Alcestis’, ‘Iphigenia at Aulis and Bacchae’, as well as the last play by Sophocles, ‘Oedipus at Colonus’.

  Aleksandar Gatalica has also been active as a music critic and writer. He has written music criticism for several radio programs, and daily newspapers. In his capacity as a music writer he has published six books; among them: ‘Rubinstein versus Horowitz’ (Rubinštajn protiv Horovica) in 1999, and ‘The Golden Age of Pianism’ (Zlatno doba pijanizma) in 2002.

  He is editor of numerous anthologies in Serbian and other languages and his own stories are represented in more than twenty anthologies of Serbian short stories, which have been translated into a number of languages. He is also a regular contributor to numerous foreign magazines and writes entries on contemporary Serbian literature in several foreign encyclopaedias.

  Aleksandar Gatalica is married and has one child. He lives in Belgrade, Serbia.

  More on www.gatalica.com

  THE TRANSLATOR

  Will Firth was born in 1965 in Newcastle, Australia. He studied German and Slavic languages in Canberra, Zagreb and Moscow. Since 1991 he has been living in Berlin, Germany, where he works as a freelance translator of literature and the humanities. He translates from Russian, Macedonian, and all variants of Serbo-Croat. His website is www.willfirth.de.