Lefine suppressed the desire to hit his friend. If you always looked after other people, you ended up failing to look after yourself - a dangerous defect that he was at no risk of succumbing to. ‘Mademoiselle Mitterburg is my sister, or as good as, and she’s rich,’ added Relmyer. ‘She can lend you money, or give it to you ... She’ll do it without hesitating if I ask her to.’
Now Lefine was interested. If they were to be paid for doing a favour, that put everything in a different light.
‘She’ll get you invited to receptions,’ continued Relmyer.
‘I know, yes ...’ Margont cut in before Relmyer could also promise them the moon.
‘But for pity’s sake, for the love of Christ, you have to make my captain loosen my reins!’
‘Tell me the whole story and I’ll see if I can plead your cause with
your superiors.’
They settled down in the shade of a large oak tree. While Relmyer finished unbuttoning his dolman, he contemplated his lieutenant’s stripes. The silver chevrons contrasted elegantly with the dark green of the cloth. I’m not used to them yet,’ he declared, smiling. ‘I was only recently promoted, following a happy conjunction of circumstances.’
Relmyer leant back against the trunk but could not keep still, constantly trying to find a more comfortable position. ‘I’m hunting a man. He’s probably close by, perhaps in one of these forests ...’
As he said that word, he made a sweeping gesture. There were certainly forests round about. Their dark expanses dotted the countryside.
‘I am Austrian by birth. I was abandoned at the age of one. I don’t know why. Perhaps because my family could not afford to keep me. Or maybe my parents were killed in the war, or carried off by illness ... or possibly I was the cruel result of the adulterous affair of one of my parents. I was placed in the Lesdorf Orphanage, north of Vienna. The children were well cared for there. It was the least that could be done, let me tell you, since several of the orphans had lost their parents in wars against the French, the Italians, the Turks or God knows who else. You were taught good manners, the Bible, patriotism ...’
He laughed sarcastically - he was wearing a French uniform.
‘Not to mention reading and mathematics, especially mathematics for the boys. You see, you have to be a good mathematician if you are going to become an effective gunner: measurement of angles, calculation of the curve of the shot...’
Lefine and Margont were perplexed.
‘Gunner?’ said Margont, astonished.
Relmyer smiled, a bitter, ironic smile. ‘Of course! All these little boys orphaned by war were to be turned into soldiers. Wars are always hungry, so it is convenient that war nourishes war.’
He picked up a stone and threw it in an arc. ‘Bang!’ he joked when it landed. ‘It doesn’t work with everyone. Some marry and go into business or work the land of their new family, others move away,
hoping to change their luck ... but many do become soldiers. I met Luise in the orphanage.’
Margont thought he had remained impassive, but perhaps his expression had changed because Lefine turned towards him as if he had given away his feelings. The sergeant’s face registered enlightenment. He had just discovered the key to the mystery.
‘She was abandoned when she was two years old. It’s terrible! She was barely older than I was. We grew up together. When she was eight, a miracle occurred. The miracle that we all dreamt of. She was adopted. Her new mother was beautiful! Elegant, considerate, smiling ... and her father, although less warm, was also happy, even if he didn’t show it in public. The Mitterburgs are rich Viennese bourgeoisie. They came to Lesdorf because they couldn’t have children of their own. They chose Luise after three visits. The day they took her away, we all clustered round the carriage, in case they wanted a second child ... I’m sorry, I’m boring you with my reminiscences. Anyway, for a long time there were three of us: Luise, Franz and me. Since we didn’t have any family, we made our own. Franz was our little brother, at least he was little in stature - he didn’t know his date of birth. We spent all our time together. After she left, Luise often came to see us. Or she badgered her parents to let us come and visit her. Everything was shattered one day in April 1804. I was fifteen at the time.’
His body grew rigid. His recollections were extremely painful. ‘Franz and I went for a walk in the forest. We were playing at ... I don’t know what at.’
He did remember, in fact, but since then, childish pastimes had exasperated him.
‘We were playing hide-and-seek, not knowing that someone else was playing hide-and-seek with us. I don’t know how long the man had been watching us. A few minutes? An hour? Several days? Several weeks? We often went to the woods. Perhaps he had been spying on us for a long time, having worked out when we had free time. Or perhaps he came across us by accident. If you don’t know the area around Vienna, you won’t know that vast tracts have been cleared to make farmland. But several areas are still forested.
It was springtime, the sun was shaded by leaves and the sunlight didn’t travel far. If you left the beaten track, it was easy to get lost. I had just surprised Franz behind some shrubbery and I threw myself on him. We were playing at war.’
Relmyer shivered. ‘I’m still playing at it today, in a way ... The man appeared out of nowhere. He came from the forest, not along a path. I saw him briefly. He threatened us with a pistol and ordered us to turn round. I thought he was a robber, that he would let us go because we had nothing. But no. He forced us into the woods. We were walking in front of him and he was guiding us. He deliberately complicated the route. Finally we arrived at a ruined farm, very isolated. The road leading to it was completely obscured by branches and shrubs, the collapsed walls covered in ivy. He took us into one of the old buildings. There was a trap door, which led down into a cellar. After he had forced us into the cellar, he removed the ladder and left. He abandoned us there, imprisoned in that damned room like two birds in a cage!’
Margont felt the weight of oppression. Imprisonment, even imaginary imprisonment, was intolerable to him.
‘Franz and I were left there for hours with nothing to eat or drink. Later I learnt that we had been missing for two days. We could barely see, the trap door was impossible to reach, and in any case the man had removed the lock. We shouted and banged on the walls but no one came to our rescue. Who would be out walking in that area? And anyway, the cellar was in a much better state than the external walls, and the ceiling had been carefully sealed. The man had fitted out the cellar so that no one would be able to hear us. By the second day, we were so weak that our captor would have been able to do whatever he liked to us without our being able to defend ourselves ...’
Relmyer then related his escape and how Franz had disappeared by the time he got back. ‘Franz’s body was found the next day in another part of the forest, hidden under branches. He had been stabbed and also abused. Someone had mutilated his corpse in exactly the same way as Wilhelm’s by carving a smile with a knife!’ Relmyer remained frozen, his face strained, as he recalled the
horror of the body.
After a silence, Margont asked: ‘How long did it take for you to find help and get back to the cellar, after your escape?’
‘It’s hard to say. I was so exhausted I wasn’t exactly racing along, and of course I was lost in the forest. Eventually I stumbled on a path that led me out of the woods. I returned to Lesdorf and raised the alert. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find the damned farm again. We had to wait for the police to arrive with several volunteers to organise a massive search and we finally found it. So I would say between seven and ten hours.’