Lakubeit brought the review very quickly to an end. He went into the office with Colonel Tarabas, gave orders for the clerks to be sent away, sat down, glanced through the papers, arranged them with his skilful, skinny hands in separate piles, smiled occasionally, smoothed one pile tenderly and then another, looked at Tarabas sitting opposite him, and said:
“Colonel Tarabas, you don’t understand all this!”
So there was something, apparently, which the mighty Tarabas did not understand; though everybody knows that, since Tarabas had gone into the war, such a thing did not exist.
“Yes,” General Lakubeit repeated in his thin voice, “you don’t understand these things, Colonel Tarabas.”
“No,” said the mighty Tarabas, “no, I don’t. I can’t make head or tail of them. The two captains I put on to the work because I thought that they were experts — they were in the statistics department during the war — and the clerks I got down specially, they don’t understand this business either. They bring me reports that I can’t make head or tail of; I admit it. I’m afraid they only complicate things worse than ever.”
“Exactly,” said General Lakubeit. “I shall send you an adjutant, Colonel Tarabas. A young fellow. Don’t treat him with too much contempt, will you? He was not at the front. Feeble constitution. Not fit. Not one of nature’s soldiers like, thank heaven, you are, Colonel. As a matter of fact he was my assistant for ten years before the war. I must tell you — I hope it won’t make any difference — that I was a lawyer in my civilian days. And an auditor in the war, not a fighting man. You’ll have noticed that, most likely. And your father’s lawyer, by the way. I saw him only a week ago and had a talk with him, your old father. He didn’t send you his love.”
General Lakubeit paused. His penetrating, monotonous words seemed to stand there in the room, each one for itself; hard, sharp, they stood still all round Colonel Tarabas like a little fence of thin, planed posts. Only the small word “Father” broke their uniformity, and stood up more noticeable than the rest. All at once Colonel Tarabas seemed to feel himself growing smaller and smaller; yes, without doubt he felt himself undergoing a physical shrinking. Whereas earlier in the day he had in vain endeavoured, out of politeness and deference to his superior officer, to make himself appear less than the general, now he did all he could to maintain his proper size, and sit there bolt upright and broad, like the mighty Tarabas he was. He could still look through the window over the top of General Lakubeit’s bald head, and noted the fact with satisfaction. Outside was sunlit autumn. A golden chestnut tree stood near the window, with half its leaves already gone. Behind it, looking near enough to touch, shone the intense blue of the sky. For the first time since his childhood Colonel Tarabas was conscious of the strength and power of nature; he could smell the autumn through the window, and wished that he might be a boy again. For a short while he sank into a reverie of his childhood, but knew as well that he was only taking flight there from this present hour, that he was only running away from it back into the past, the mighty Tarabas. Whereat he went on growing small, infinitesimal, until at last he sat there before General Lakubeit like a little boy.
“I’ve been meaning to go and see my people,” he lied.
General Lakubeit seemed not to hear this remark.
“I knew you,” said Lakubeit, “when you were still a lad. I’ve often visited your father. And then you were mixed up in that St. Petersburg affair. You recollect. It cost enormous trouble — and money, an enormous lot of money too. After that you went to America. Then there was the episode with that bar-keeper you had a fight with. …”
“The bar-keeper?” said Tarabas.
How long it was since he had thought about that man, and about Katharina. Now he saw them all again, Katharina, the café-owner’s immense red maw, his cousin Maria, the heavy silver cross between her breasts, the large glass globe and the gipsy’s face beyond it.
“In New York,” Tarabas began suddenly, and it was as though somebody else were telling it, some other speaking through his mouth, “at an amusement park in New York a gipsy told my fortune; she said that I would be a murderer and a saint. … I believe the first part of that prophecy …”
“Colonel Tarabas,” said little Lakubeit, holding his thin claw up to his face with the fingers far apart, “the first part of that prophecy has not yet been fulfilled. You did not kill that man in New York. He’s not alive, however. He joined up in the war and was killed. At Ypres, to be exact. That affair gave us a lot of trouble, too. Justice, you know — if you’ll allow me to digress a moment — does not let wars interfere with it. You were kept track of. There would have been a nice degradation in store for you if you had done for the good man that time. And by the by, the young man I’m sending down here to you looked after that matter for you. You’ve something to thank him for, I assure you! Your father was in a state!”
It was very quiet. Lakubeit’s monotonous voice moved like a breeze, a gentle one, blowing towards Colonel Tarabas. A gentle, stubborn, inescapable breeze. It, too, was wholly familiar, and disagreeable at the same time. It rose out of wholly familiar, disagreeable, long-forgotten years.
“And my cousin Maria?” asked Tarabas.
“She is married,” said Lakubeit. “She’s married to a German officer. It seems she fell in love with him.”
“I was in love with her too,” said Tarabas.
There was no sound after that. Lakubeit folded his hands. His fingers thrust through each other made a bony fence across the table with the neat piles of documents behind it.
But Colonel Tarabas let his hands lie limp and loose upon his thighs. He felt that he could lift neither his hands from his legs nor his feet from the floor. Maria had fallen in love with a foreign officer. The mighty Tarabas had been betrayed! Another had wronged the terrible Tarabas, who until then had only wronged and done violence to others. Poor Tarabas was the victim of great and bitter wrong. It mitigated somewhat his own violence; it was, therefore, when all is said and done, a kindly wrong. It is atonement, atonement, O Tarabas, thou man of violence!
“The chief thing,” General Lakubeit began, “the chief thing is for you to clean up this regiment of yours. You’ll have to throw out at least half of them. We shall require precise information as to the origins of every single one you keep. Colonel Tarabas, we’re building up a new army. It must be an army we can rely upon. The men from here, there, and everywhere that you can’t keep, we’ll deport them or lock them up, or hand them over to their various consuls. In short, we’ll get rid of them by some means or other. It doesn’t matter really how. Be sure and keep enough musicians. Music is important. And — all else being equal — keep as many as you can that can read and write. But give them all their full pay. Those you’re getting rid of, too. You’ll find it easier to get them to give up their arms if you see that they have plenty of beer tomorrow and the day after. Say it’s the general’s treat, if you like. — Well, that’s all, I think!” concluded Lakubeit, and rose.
In silence, as they had come, they drove to the station. It was evening. The station lay past Koropta to the west. The highroad went straight as an arrow towards the setting sun, which, seen above the yellow brick of the station, showed a sad flushed face beyond the smoke-clouds of the shunting engines. Its reflection hung in the immense and shiny black peak of the general’s cap. The elegant lieutenant on the back seat stared, stiff and silent, at this small reflection.