OLD BIACH (shaking his head indignantly) The whole thing was exaggerated.
HONORARY COUNSELLOR Y’know what would do us good? Like when you used to be able to read — and by God, those were the days! — Russian troops encircled by German army—
OLD BIACH (enraptured by the rhetoric of the Neue Freie Presse) — and driven into the Masurian swamps!
HONORARY COUNSELLOR And what about Romania?
OLD BIACH Women got up in their finery were sitting at the tables in the brightly lit salons of the hotels in Bucharest. We can imagine—
HONORARY COUNSELLOR Why, what was going on?
OLD BIACH The painted women of Bucharest turn pale.
HONORARY COUNSELLOR That’s all malicious gossip.
OLD BIACH The city is panic-stricken, the windows shaking in their frames.
HONORARY COUNSELLOR Of course they were. But what can we expect?
OLD BIACH The advent of a golden age. The eyes of the peoples turn towards the West.
HONORARY COUNSELLOR Hearing you say that, you’d think it was the headline of one of Benedikt’s editorials, with a subheading in the Evening Edition. But—
OLD BIACH The women in Paris have their ears turned towards the East.
HONORARY COUNSELLOR How come?
OLD BIACH In the streets of Paris the eyes of the women are red with weeping.
HONORARY COUNSELLOR Oh, really! That’s nothing to laugh about — we’re no better off.
OLD BIACH (with gusto) Hymns resound in our hearts. The philosopher Fichte joined the Territorial Reserve.
HONORARY COUNSELLOR Wherever did you read that?
OLD BIACH (carried away by the story) He did his military exercises alongside the philologist Buttmann, the historian Rühs, and the theologian Schleiermacher. Buttmann and Rühs couldn’t ever distinguish between right and left. That era, which is so similar to our own, excites our curiosity, and perhaps the past can answer the question of how economic crises caused by a war evolve? The comparison leads to striking similarities, right down to the details. Are we not experiencing right now the miraculous birth of the nitrogen industry?
HONORARY COUNSELLOR I get the message. But do you know what we could do with?
OLD BIACH (vehemently) Strong characters, men who make a total break with the past and give themselves up to the instinctive urgings of the present, like a bride to her bridegroom.
HONORARY COUNSELLOR That depends.
OLD BIACH Sales sometimes decline in wartime, in peacetime too. Market factors are variable and need to be regulated by the state, which is attuned to the voice of the people and follows its lead, and which in these anxious moments of change calculates levels of need and of production as its supreme duty. The year of destiny is at hand.
HONORARY COUNSELLOR That’s pitching it a bit high, don’t you think—?
OLD BIACH (triumphantly) — How gloriously everything has turned out, the land free, our enemies repulsed, the Serbian troops eradicated, the Russian fortresses destroyed.
HONORARY COUNSELLOR Hang on! — What about the Austrian losses at Lutsk?
OLD BIACH (startled but composed) Flags at half mast! But why bother with such empty gestures?
HONORARY COUNSELLOR Now you’re talking as if we’d been completely victorious—
OLD BIACH (drawing breath) Russia in submission, Serbia crushed, Italy humiliated! Mankind’s burden has been lifted for decades to come, no longer shall one’s nerves be continually on edge, and that must spread a sense of well-being and usher in periods of amazing economic expansion that capture our imagination.
HONORARY COUNSELLOR Talking of being captured, at Lutsk—
OLD BIACH The historian will investigate reports on how news of the victory in eastern Galicia was received, and whether celebratory bonfires were lit on mountaintops and burning candles placed in the windows of houses—
HONORARY COUNSELLOR If you’ll forgive me asking — since I’m in the dark — where do you get your candles?
OLD BIACH —and ravishing music reflected the mood—
HONORARY COUNSELLOR All that stuff about Tarnopol is rubbish. Stick to the facts about Lutsk!
OLD BIACH (pensively) The late general secretary of the Austro-Hungarian Bank, Wilhelm v. Lucam, has been all but forgotten.
HONORARY COUNSELLOR How sad.
OLD BIACH The present governor, Herr v. Popovics, has a past which promises well for the future.
HONORARY COUNSELLOR Fine. But why do you bring that up?
OLD BIACH Can’t you just visualize the officer, the soldier, starting out from Cattaro in Montenegro to climb Mount Lovcen, up through scree and boulders, higher up through ice and snow, constantly threatened by enemy fire. He must have emerged transformed.
HONORARY COUNSELLOR I can well believe that. But what really impresses me is your lively imagination.
OLD BIACH The imagination revels in conjectures—
HONORARY COUNSELLOR Hang on a minute. You switch to the Austro-Hungarian bank, then jump from that to the summit of Mount Lovcen. But I’m interested in what you think about Lutsk—
OLD BIACH (timidly) We don’t want to awaken memories of Tyrtaeus and his Spartan war cries.
HONORARY COUNSELLOR But why not? Feel free.
OLD BIACH (snidely) Clemenceau will be astonished.
HONORARY COUNSELLOR Serve him right!
OLD BIACH (whimsically) The Russian poet Pushkin married a young girl of good family. Natalia Goncharova was flirtatious and Pushkin was jealous. The son of the ambassador of the Netherlands in St. Petersburg, Baron Georges Heeckeren, through trying to gain the affections of the beautiful woman, aroused the poet’s suspicions—
HONORARY COUNSELLOR I remember. That idiot Pushkin was killed in the duel. But what are you getting at?
OLD BIACH (musing) Posterity has not forgotten him, and at the inauguration of his monument Dostoevsky was invited to give the commemorative address. He said, the deepest conviction of the Russian people is: suffering must be endured! The communiqué from the German High Command reports that the enemy losses at Postov—
HONORARY COUNSELLOR Yes, all right, but at Lutsk, by my estimation, we lost—
OLD BIACH People walking in the streets exchange glances, trying to read in each other’s eyes their thoughts about Durazzo, Verdun, and the Champagne.
HONORARY COUNSELLOR And about Stanislau too, surely! What do you say about Stanislau?
OLD BIACH (with conviction) Stanislau is a dramatic warning that will curb General Brusilov’s arrogance and remind him how transitory the local Russian conquests are.
HONORARY COUNSELLOR And what do you say about Brody?
OLD BIACH (subdued) Brody is a sore point.
HONORARY COUNSELLOR And Gorlice?
OLD BIACH (casually) Gorlice is just a scratch.
HONORARY COUNSELLOR Take my word for it, things never turn out the way you imagine.
OLD BIACH In reality, lines and surfaces are inseparable from the body, yet our mental faculty operates with them and constructs sentences which are absolutely true, while neglecting breadth and depth. The battles on the Somme are among the bitterest disappointments.
HONORARY COUNSELLOR But all things considered, people must surely know what they want.
OLD BIACH Perhaps one day people will realize that there are no straight lines in the lives of different nations, but everywhere intersections and convergences.
HONORARY COUNSELLOR Hang on. The diplomats of the Entente—