Count Luna

by Alexander Lernet-Holenia

“Do you want to rent it to someone else, then?”

  “Of course. That, too. We have had several much better offers. But the main thing is that this particular person gets on our nerves.”

  “I can quite understand,” said Jessiersky, “if he is one of those persons who refuse to leave. . . . Who is he anyway?”

  “The tenant?”

  “Yes.”

  “A man by the name of Berdiczewer.”

  “A Pole?”

  “More or less. But he apparently did not like it in his own country, and so he came to Vienna. He can go wherever he wants, for all I care. But to our misfortune he came to us, and now we can’t get him out.”

  “And what if your cousin should come back?” Jessiersky inquired suddenly, carefully studying Millemoth’s face.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “If Count Luna were to come back — wouldn’t you be able to get Herr Berdiczewer out then?”

  “Then, perhaps,” said Millemoth. “But he, alas, will never come back, our poor . . . that is our . . .”

  Jessiersky watched him closely for a moment or two, then he said: “But how does it happen that a person with a name like your tenant’s managed to get through the entire war without . . . Things were bad enough here, but in Poland they must have been absolutely . . .”

  “He wasn’t in Poland then.”

  “He wasn’t?”

  “No.”

  “But in — ?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Where was he during the war?”

  “In Portugal.”

  “In Portugal? Why didn’t he stay there?”

  “How do I know? At any rate he went back to Poland at the end of the war. But apparently he couldn’t stick it out there either, and so he came to Vienna.”

  “Well, well,” said Jessiersky, “there are all kinds of Poles, some agreeable, some not so agreeable. . . . But let’s change the subject! Don’t you think that this conversation right outside the door of Herr Berdiczewer is . . .”

  “We couldn’t care less,” said Millemoth. “Let him hear it! I certainly don’t feel obliged to show him any consideration.”

  “Very well,” said Jessiersky, “but I think that . . .”

  Millemoth, however, interrupted him with unaccustomed vehemence. “But if times were what they were once,” he shouted in so loud a voice that Herr Berdiczewer could not help but hear it in his room, “he certainly wouldn’t be here any longer. He would be elsewhere, believe me!”

  “That’s possible,” said Jessiersky, “quite, quite possible. For when times were different, your own cousin did not go on living in that room. He, too, was elsewhere. Or have you forgotten that?”

  But Millemoth had no chance to reply. For at this moment Frau Millemoth appeared and invited the men to come into the other room.

  “I have come to see you,” said Jessiersky, when he had seated himself in the Millemoths’ bedroom, “to ask you — and I want you to tell me quite frankly — whether you happen to know where your cousin, Count Luna, is at present.”

  The Millemoths stared at him in astonishment, or at least they assumed an expression of astonishment.

  “What I mean to say,” went on Jessiersky, “is that I know that he is in Vienna. What I would like to learn from you, therefore, is simply where he is living. Where can I find him?” To give the impression of calm superiority, he took out his cigarettes, put one in his mouth, lighted it, and crossed his legs.

  There was another silence. Finally Millemoth said: “You want to find him? Speak to him? I scarcely believe, Herr Jessiersky, that your desire is strong enough to induce you to commit suicide on the chance of finding the poor fellow.”

  Jessiersky interrupted him with a wave of his cigarette. “I know that he is alive,” he said. “I have already told you that.”

  The Millemoths again looked at each other as though to confirm their opinion that this visitor, who had already delivered Luna to the executioner and had tried to do the same to them, was again threatening to bring disaster upon them, probably because of their denunciation.

  “Herr Jessiersky,” said Frau Millemoth, “if our poor cousin were still alive, he would certainly have come to see us.”

  “That, unfortunately, is not so certain,” said Jessiersky. “For if I were your cousin, for example, and had the intentions that he has, or appears to have, I probably would not have called on you, either. You two, to be quite frank, seem, to me, at least, not reliable enough — don’t misunderstand me — too easily influenced and not courageous enough for someone who would want you to keep your mouths shut, to let no one squeeze anything out of you — to repose any special confidence in you. Still, Luna may have been indiscreet enough to let you know that he’s still alive. And because he might have committed this indiscretion, I am here and I now ask you: where is he? To be frank again, I’ll tell you that I am determined to make use of every means at my disposal to get this information out of you. For it is extremely important to me.” And with these words, as though to emphasize his determination, he ground out his cigarette.

  “But we don’t know! We honestly don’t know!” cried Millemoth, his self-possession dwindling. “Why in the world are you, who should know better than anyone else that he is dead, suddenly telling us that he’s still alive?”

  Jessiersky looked out of the window without replying. The Millemoths’ apartment was high up. A late autumn storm had swept swirls of yellow smoke from a chimney down over the dirty tile roofs; and the wooded hills, which could usually be seen in the distance, were concealed behind a curtain of rain. “Say nothing for a moment,” thought Jessiersky, “just say nothing, so that these people will lose their nerve! For if they don’t lose it, they will never tell me where he is.”

  “Tell us!” Millemoth suddenly said. “If it’s so important to you as you say, you will admit that it is important for us also to find out whether or not he is really alive!”

  “How often,” said Jessiersky, “do I have to repeat this to you? He is alive.”

  “But how do you know?”

  Jessiersky shrugged his shoulders. “I just know,” he said.

  “The last news we had from him,” said Frau Millemoth, “was in March four years ago. He did write us then that things were going well with him. . . .”

  “Which, after all, means nothing,” said Jessiersky. “What else would he have written from there? That things were going badly?”

  “Precisely,” said Frau Millemoth.

  “I hope at least,” said Jessiersky, “that the parcels I sent him proved useful — I mean that they were actually delivered to him.”

  “We, too, sent parcels,” said Frau Millemoth. “But from April 1945 until today we have had not a single word from him.”

  “Because he was killed!” Millemoth exclaimed. “Because he is dead! As long as he was in the camp, he was well taken care of, not only thanks to our gifts and yours, but by the camp itself. But the moment our so-called liberators arrived, the organization broke down completely and the prisoners were left to starve!”

  “That’s going too far!” cried Jessiersky. “Or do you really mean to tell me that you think it was the so-called liberators and not the Germans who were responsible for the huge piles of starved corpses which were afterward pictured everywhere! Unfortunately, those photographs are no longer being published. But it might bring people like you to their senses, Herr Millemoth, if the newspapers would continue to drive those atrocities home to us at least once a week!”

  “I was only trying to say,” protested Millemoth, “that the Allied invasion made it impossible for the Germans to take proper care of the camp.”

  “Oh come!” Jessiersky said. “Surely you are only pretending to be a Fascist because you think I am one myself and because you think the Fascists are about to come back into power now! Let’
s have no more of these stupidities, Herr Millemoth! Though you are no hero, you are a decent person, and I, too, I hope, am a decent person. What is more, I am far too incompetent, or at any rate too apathetic, a businessman to want to advance my company by improper means. To be quite precise, I don’t care a fig for the company. I never cared about it. It was not I but my directors who sent your cousin to the prison camp. But they were able to do this because I paid so little attention to what was going on. This I freely admit and realize that I am, therefore, to blame, too, in a way. But I regret my indolence which proved so disastrous for your cousin. God knows I regret it! So tell me where the unfortunate man is, for it would be senseless to keep it from me. You can feel free to tell me!”

  The Millemoths looked at him for a moment doubtfully. Finally Herr Millemoth said: “I swear to you I don’t know. What is more, I really don’t believe you when you say that he is still alive.”

  “But he is,” said Jessiersky. “He definitely is alive.”

  “Then what proof have you?”

  “The following,” said Jessiersky who, meanwhile, had made up his mind to lay his cards on the table. And he told the Millemoths what had happened to the next youngest.

  When he had finished, there was a pause. “I simply can’t believe that of our cousin!” exclaimed Millemoth.

  “I could,” said Jessiersky. “For if what happened to him had happened to me, I would probably do just what he’s doing. Only first, I would have got more accurate information as to who was to blame for my misfortune and who was not. To make this quite clear — that’s why I am so anxious to talk to him.”

  “And the little girl?” asked Frau Millemoth. “What disease did she have? What do the doctors say?”

  Jessiersky shrugged his shoulders. “At first the doctors thought it might be diabetes,” he replied. “But she had none of the characteristic symptoms. So they began to look for sources of infection that might have been connected with the growth of her second teeth. But they found none. Now they think it is simply a sepsis.”

  “But for goodness’ sake,” Millemoth cried out, “you don’t get a sepsis from candy.”

  “Not as a rule,” Jessiersky said. “But it’s possible. Let us assume, for example, that those candies contained a poison which did not penetrate the entire body, but attacked the walls of the stomach and intestines. Then a sepsis might quite easily develop.”

  “We swear to you by all that is sacred to us,” said Millemoth, “that for years we have neither seen nor heard from our poor cousin. You told us before that you regarded us as decent people, and it would, in fact, be senseless to pretend that we mourn the Third Reich. We are, if you really wish to know, monarchists, just as our poor cousin was, and we believe in all that is held sacred under a monarchy — in God, for example. We swear to you by God, therefore, that we do not know where Count Luna is, or even that he still is. Since we more than doubt that he is alive, we, alas, can’t tell you anything about him.”

  “Show me his picture again,” said Jessiersky after a moment.

  Frau Millemoth took the picture out of the drawer in which she had hidden it.

  Jessiersky examined it closely for a long time. “Yes, that is he,” he said at last.

  “Of course it is he,” said Millemoth.

  “I mean he looks exactly like General Knobelsdorff. And the man who fed my daughter candies also looks like General Knobelsdorff. So it follows that he also resembles Count Luna and since this kind of face, nowadays at least, is more than unusual, the man might very well have been Count Luna.”

  “But did you really see him? Did you talk with him?”

  “No. Unfortunately, I am only getting to know him now.”

  “But you can’t tell anything from pictures. And merely because your Mademoiselle, who is probably just as silly as most governesses, said that . . .”

  “The children said so, too.”

  “Yes — but they are just children.”

  “But we have nothing to go on but the evidence of the children, the governess, and the pictures. Produce Luna for me. Then — perhaps — I will change my opinion. But since, as you say, you cannot . . .”

  “Not even God Almighty could do that!”

  Jessiersky again looked out of the window. Smoke was no longer pouring from the chimney, only a flickering film of hot air. Above the wooded hills pale sunbeams could be seen here and there darting through the cloud bank. But the storm was still raging about the house and there was a bad draft in the Millemoths’ bedroom. Jessiersky got to his feet. He said: “It gives one a strange feeling not to be able to find out anything about a certain person, and even less to speak to him — whether because he will not allow himself to be spoken to or because he is really dead. But we spend our lives behind a wall. We ask again and again, and no one and nothing gives us any answer — not even God. He least of all . . . Well, in any event, if ever you should really hear from Luna, let me know. . . .”

  “Of course.”

  “. . . for after all, even you would not be wholly indifferent if he were wandering about in this fashion.”

  “No, we would certainly not be indifferent. Only, as I said before, I do not believe . . .”

  But Jessiersky had already turned to Frau Millemoth and was kissing her hand. Then he left the room and Millemoth accompanied him to the foyer which smelled of kerosene.

  In the hallway, Jessiersky paused once more. “But if you should happen to see your cousin,” he said, “you can tell him this for me. If he continues to avoid me, if, as he has, he persists in hiding in the darkness, if he goes on doing what he is doing now, if he does not come and find me and say quite openly, ‘Here I am,’ I shall behave toward him as he is behaving toward me. Since he is taking every liberty, I shall do likewise, and I will regard him as a self-declared outlaw, as fair game which may be shot down wherever it is found. And tell him also that I know very well how this is done, because I own a hunting preserve where I can learn this sort of thing. And that I can get a great deal of practice because it is a vast place!” And with that he left Millemoth, who was struggling to find words with which to reply, and went out of the apartment.

  So ended this visit which, while not accomplishing its purpose, had an unexpected consequence. Herr Berdiczewer, who had overheard the conversation outside his door — talk about changes in the political situation and even about shooting people down — ceased to feel at ease with the Millemoths. That very day he rented a room elsewhere, and on the following day he moved out.

  Chapter 5

  As the winter went on, the condition of the next youngest continued to improve. But whereas, in the fall, Jessiersky had been on the verge of forgetting all about the adversary who had not reappeared, the man now was never out of his thoughts. That the little girl was feeling better and none of the other children had fallen ill, he attributed solely to the fact that he had stood guard over his family all the time, “like the devil,” to prevent Luna from doing any further harm.

  Truth to tell, most of the time he merely sat in the library engrossed in finding out as much as he could about Luna’s ancestry. He had the two rooms heated with a wood fire, and enveloped in the smell of burning logs, he would explore the subject of Luna and his forebears, giving free rein to his imagination rather than evaluating the facts. Since he felt that his own character could be explained best by that of the Jessierskys, it seemed to him that Luna’s nature might be revealed to him through a study of the Luna family. He would then know what to expect and how to guard against his attacks. In any case he had no choice but to deal with his enemy in this speculative fashion, for all during this period Luna gave no sign of life.

  In the course of these ruminations, Luna’s ancestors began to merge with his own. And not only the ancestors, but also the times and the places and Luna and he himself, Jessiersky, all began to become confused in his mind. He could not help think
ing, for example, that the Constable of Castile (from whom, as it had turned out, Luna was descended), that quixotic Bastard who had wanted to be recognized as the brother-in-law of John the Second, must have been very much like Pavel Alexandrovich Jezierskij who had been the brother-in-law of the rich Raczynskis. It seemed to him that the Luna Palace in Leon could not have looked very different from the Strattmann Palace in Vienna. He became convinced — and this he had admitted quite freely to the Millemoths — that if what had happened to his enemy had happened to him, he would have behaved no differently than this enemy of his.

  Jessiersky did not, of course, find in his library all the books he needed for his investigations. He, therefore, went to the public libraries for what he lacked and also went over a large number of still unpublished documents in the State Archives. This was a considerable undertaking, for the Lunas, although of distinguished origin, had centuries earlier sunk into insignificance and oblivion, and any marks they might have made on history had gone with the wind. A study of the Cronica de Alvaro de Luna, Caribay’s Compendio historial de las ordenes militares, the Annales of Zurita, and similar tomes, as well as the works of some Austrian historians and a considerable number of imperial edicts and special decrees, revealed the following facts:

  Alvaro de Luna, Count of Gormas, Constable of Castile, and Grand Master of the Order of Santiago, favorite and minister of John the Second, after having paved the way for the marriage of his master to Isabella of Portugal, managed also to ally himself with the Lusitanian kings by espousing Isabella’s sister, the Infanta Maria. At first the marriage was kept secret, but later on the practically omnipotent favorite decided to appear publicly as the brother-in-law of the ruler. Whereupon the House of Trastamara, which he had served for thirty years with such profit to himself that his estates had become bigger than those of all the rest of the Castilian nobility combined, withdrew its favor, and on the scaffold of Valladolid he met his end. Following the gruesome custom of the day, the executioner thrust his knife into his victim’s neck and then, in a rather leisurely fashion, proceeded to sever the head from the body. Some months afterward, Maria of Portugal gave birth to the fruit of her alliance with the adventurer, a boy, also named Alvaro. Of all his father’s vast estates, not an acre was left him, and throughout his life, he was hated by the royal house.