“Yes, I wondered that as well. In fact I was about to call for help in case he went completely loopy and started attacking me. But once I’d got my breath back he asked me again, so I told him that although I’d never had a great deal of opportunity to make comparisons—at convent we had to bathe wearing linen gowns—if he really had to know I thought that mine were quite dark, what with being half-Romanian and fairly brownskinned. And that did it: the silly fool just sat back and nodded to himself as if to say ‘Yes, just as I thought,’ then announced to me that we could never marry. ‘Why not?’ I said. ‘Because science has shown that dark nipples in a woman are a sign at least of Latin and possibly even of Jewish ancestry. No true German of pure racial stock can ever think of diluting the blood by miscegenation with those of other races. Women of pure Nordic race invariably have rose-pink nipples.’ ”
“I see what you mean. And what did you have to say to that?”
“I didn’t cry. Once I’d got over my surprise I just laughed and told him he was either joking or completely mad, and that either way I didn’t want anything to do with someone who sorts the human race into bloodlines like a racehorse breeder. In fact I told him that if he wanted a nice Germanic brood mare with a backside on her like the side of a house and blond plaits hanging down over her rose-pink nipples he’d better go putting advertisements in the local papers in the Salzkammergutt. The impertinent sod! And what’s wrong with Jewish ancestry anyway? I don’t know whether I’ve got any, but the de Bratianus have got a bit of just about everything else, so I’d be surprised if they didn’t have that as well.”
I considered all this for a while. “Yes, I suppose that it does sound a bit odd really, Liserl. But that isn’t conclusive proof of insanity. We’re all of us a little mad about something, and I’ve often seen that even the most reasonable people can have a potty opinion about something or other. When I was a cadet on my first voyage my old captain Slawetz von Lowenhausen was as fine a sailor as you could hope to meet—we’d all have followed him to the ends of the earth. But he had a thing about the crew shaving the hair off their legs: tried to make us do it each month because he believed it prevented malaria.”
“Yes, I know. But I still say he’s completely cracked. It’s just that there are so many cranks in Germany nowadays—weltpolitikers and macht- politikers and Wotanists and sun-worshippers and vegetarians and racial hygienists—that you don’t notice it any more. But believe me, if someone as bright as Svetozar von Potocznik can seriously believe that the worth of human beings is determined by the colour of their nipples, then there’s no hope for any of us. He’s mad I tell you: I’d suspected as much before then but ignored my instinct. It was a good thing I found out when I did—and that I met you the following week.” She turned to me. “You don’t care what colour my nipples are, do you Otto? And I’ll bet you’ve had more opportunity than most for making comparisons.”
“My dearest love, if they’re yours then for all I care they might as well be viridian or cobalt blue.”
She cuddled up to me as we walked. “You are sweet. I thought you’d say something like that.”
We set off to return to Vienna on the last day of August. We had agreed that Elisabeth would hand in her month’s notice when she got back to the hospital, and would then move to live with my Aunt Aleksia in her flat on the Josefsgasse. For my part I would return to my flying duties and hope that somehow, Zugsfuhrer Toth, Zoska and the Blessed Virgin between them would contrive to keep us airborne. So we bade my father farewell. He hardly noticed our departure since he was leaning over a world-map on the dining-room table, engrossed in a pamphlet concerning German plans for building a giant ship canal through the Caucasus and Hindu Kush to the head waters of the Ganges, so that ships would be able to steam overland from Rotterdam to Calcutta. He had asked my professional opinion upon the project as a naval officer, and had not been at all pleased when I had commented that it seemed an expensive way of avoiding seasickness. We took a fiacre to the station, and caught the local stopping train to get us to Oderberg junction so that we could board the Cracow—Vienna express.
We were only a couple of minutes out of the station at Grussbach when the train suddenly came to a shuddering, clanking halt in the middle of a pine forest. For some time there was no sound except the hissing of steam. Then there were shots in the wood, and the unmistakable crash of a stick-grenade. We waited uneasily. After a few minutes we heard the sound of voices and the crunch of boots on the trackside ballast. It was a party of five or six yellow-helmeted gendarmes with rifles slung at their shoulders, leading a captive. He was about nineteen or twenty I should think: tousle- haired, unshaven and with his face streaked with blood. He was wearing a tattered army greatcoat. His hands were tied behind his back and they were pulling him along by a halter around his neck, kicking him to his feet each time he stumbled and fell. They disappeared and the train started to move once more. The conductor came into our compartment.
“What on earth was all that about?” I asked him as he clipped my rail warrant.
“Nothing really, Herr Leutnant, just some trouble further up the line.”
“Trouble with whom?”
“With bandits, Herr Leutnant.” He lowered his voice. “At least, that’s what we’re supposed to say. Everyone knows it’s really deserters.”
“Deserters? Surely not around here, this far from the Front.”
“Deserters sure enough: men who came home on leave and didn’t bother reporting back. There’s a lot of them in these forests now. They live by robbing the farms—though from what I hear there’s more than enough of the villagers who’ll give them food and hide them in their barns. Dirty rotten Czechs—the Bohmes all want shooting if you ask me. There’s not one of them wouldn’t run away if you gave them the chance.”
10 PAPER AEROPLANES
I returned to Fliegerfeld Haidenschaft-Caprovizza on the first day of September 1916. It appeared that not a great deal had happened during my fortnight’s absence. The Sixth Battle of the Isonzo had fizzled out around 20 August, as the Italians ran low on artillery shells. In those two weeks they had captured the town of Gorz and had then pushed on to the Carso Plateau to a maximum depth of about five kilometres, leaving them now with a more or less straight front line some ten kilometres in length, running from Gorz down the shallow depression called the Vallone to reach the sea a little to the east of Monfalcone. It had cost them something over sixty thousand lives to gain, and us about the same number to lose. Both sides were now gathering their breath and preparing for the next round.
Flik 19F had flown a number of reconnaissance flights when requested by Army Headquarters, and had also done a little long-range bombing, losing one Brandenburger along with Fahnrich Baltassari and Corporal Indrak in an attempt to bomb the rail junction at Treviso. Otherwise there was little to report in the first couple of weeks after my return to the unit. Zugsfuhrer Toth had been home on leave to visit his parents in Hungary. I would dearly have loved to have been able to question him more closely about this, since Toth having parents was a concept that I found quite fascinating, giving rise to visions of creatures sitting around a fire on the floor of a cave gnawing the bones of an aurochs. But my Latin was not quite up to the task; and anyway Toth, though impeccably “kor- rekt” in his relations with officers—at least when not tipping them out of aeroplanes—was someone who would not willingly discuss his private life with strangers.