Because in actuality we were taking revenge for something beautiful that had been destroyed, something that had been the epitome of beauty in our childhood: that image of the hussar in front of the lance-leafed pickets along our garden. Tildy had become entangled in a farce, in a joke. He was attempting to coax beauty out of the mouth of a crazy person, and this beauty had been proven counterfeit; what’s more, the true creators of this ostensible beauty were on the same level as the smirking Kunzelmann: they were his German brothers. We no longer saw Tildy on his horse: the line
And the hardest struggle in the battle
was easily solved atop a saddle
cruelly exposed a deeper meaning, replacing the hussar’s beautiful feat of derring-do with the foolish act of a simple-minded cavalryman like the ones sitting in the Trocadero. The hussar had dismounted and was rooting in the mud. Tildy was mixed up in a literary quarrel, and consequently became the victim of ridicule, as a cavalryman.
Once more it was only much later that I would again encounter the tragicomic figure of a hussar lost in a world devoid of poetry — in a photo of the German crown prince, which I happened to see in the same seedy dive at the edge of town where Tildy’s fate would be determined. But back then we were unconsciously taking revenge on Blanche Schlesinger for the fact that the poetic symbol of our childhood had been destroyed. We had no idea what had caused the destruction, only a vague intimation that this figure had been stripped of its poetry — the hussar had dismounted and had become the gambling buddy of the German count with the Kunzelmann-like verse (“what makes men today are spades”) which added the macabre humor of the Ludenburg brothers floating off into the air to the absolute horror of the earth caterpillars exploding into fire butterflies. Tildy was caught up in everything that he had opposed as the hussar: his poetry had become embroiled in a literary controversy; his struggle for justice had been derided as untenable, he himself had fallen victim to Czernopol’s dominant reality, which was that of the smirking Kunzelmann.
Unschooled in literary fairness, we didn’t ask whether the conclusions we had drawn were false, whether the abstruseness of an occasional verse — that was clearly “witty,” although perhaps out of desperation — gave us the right to pronounce judgment, as though its author were unworthy of producing anything more beautiful, whereas what came out of the mouth of the poor insane locksmith Karl Piehowicz had to sound like it issued from the wellspring of beauty itself, as in the poem “Springtime,” (“All that is heavy sinks away from the things that expand”) or if the desperate wittiness of that shoddy effort from the trenches should be allowed to call Tildy’s noble efforts into question. In the poetic justice of childhood, which has its own laws, judgment had been passed on our hussar in the poem out of Gartenlaube, to which the great poet Karl Berlepsch had signed his name: “Into the dust, you proud rider!”
For that we took revenge on an innocent party — as always happens when taking revenge — namely Blanche. Only later did we realize this, and understand at the same time that our revenge was just, at least in the poetic, fairy-tale sense of childhood, because she had functioned as the messenger of the destruction of this poetry.
During these weeks two exciting events occurred, subsequently telescoped in memory in an odd and unsettling way due both to the turbulent events that followed and to our later illness. The first involved Herr Adamowski’s second visit; this time he was received by Aunt Paulette alone, that is to say accompanied only by Aunt Elvira. Our mother, whose relationship to her sister had become strained after the awful scene with Tanya, had excused herself with an obvious pretext and arranged an outing for us children, which ended up being canceled because of an unusually violent storm. The intense tropical downpour made such a spectacle that we completely forgot our disappointment at the missed excursion, and when it started to clear up after two hours of pouring rain we ran into the garden to see the damage that had been done. The drains were all stopped up; the water was foaming past the sandstone plinth of the lance-leaf fence like a wild brook and had formed a small lake on the lawn in front of our house. Keeping our feet dry required all our skill and attention, so that we didn’t notice what was happening around us, and didn’t look up until we heard a high-pitched woman’s laugh. Then we saw Herr Adamowski trying to navigate around the deepest puddles and streams, awkwardly on account of his deformity, while underneath the arc of water still cascading from the eaves of the dvornik’s hut was Frau Lyubanarov, leaning against the wall as usual, laughing out loud as she watched Herr Adamowski.
He appeared not to take offense at her rather tactless amusement, but merely trudged ahead, rocking from side to side, swinging his cork-soled boot into one puddle after the next. When he came close to where she was standing he stopped, leaning with his hand against the wall. She studied him with her golden, goatlike eyes.
“Well, old goat-hoof,” she said in a guttural voice. “New paths to travel?”
“Your lack of shame is magnificent,” he said. “You know that your blouse is wet and wrapped on you like a skin — that you can see right through? And you’re not wearing anything underneath.”
“That’s why I’m standing here. I like it when people see me.”
“I know. And who do you think will see you here?”
“Whoever comes by. I’m not picky — that’s something you should know as well.”
“And you never get enough?”
“Do you ever get enough?”
He bared his saw-teeth. “I never get enough from you.”
“And from that fool who poisons herself and stumbles through the streets like a drunk woman — what about her?”
“Whom do you mean?”
“Come on, let’s not pretend. You know as well as I do who I mean. I’m talking about my little sister, the fine lady. The major’s wife, who’s so far gone as to sell herself to you for a little pack of powder. Who’s finally landed completely in the mud. How is she in bed? As good as I am? I can do it even when I’m drunk — but her? It’s only you men who can’t when you’re plastered.”
“They ought to tie you to a stake and burn you. If you had lived a hundred years ago they would have done it, too.” He shoved his face right next to hers. “Where’d you come up with that?” he asked.
She gave a dark and throaty laugh. They stood there and looked at each other, face-to-face.
And suddenly the golden rain tree beside her parted, and a figure burst out and headed straight for Frau Lyubanarov.
It was the Widow Morar. As she later told us, she was on her way to us, and had arrived at the open gate just as the two had begun their conversation.
Like a fury she went after Frau Lyubanarov, screaming: “She’s lying, the tramp, she doesn’t know a thing — she doesn’t know anything and pretends to know everything in order to coax it out and then broadcast it to all her studs and stallions, so that the filth will lust after her. You don’t know a thing, you cesspit, who’ll open your legs for any Gypsy’s slime. In the mud, you say, you who are nothing but mud yourself. If it’s mud you want, then I’ll give it to you! Mud to mud!”