The Radetzky March Read Online Free PDF Page B

low, he asked her whether she had read the vile selection. She nodded with a smile.
    “It’s a pack of lies!” shouted the captain and hurled the book upon the damp soil.
    “It’s for children,” his wife gently answered.
    The captain turned his back on her. Anger shook him like a storm shaking a flimsy shrub. He hurried indoors, his heart pounding. It was time for his chess game. He took the saber from its hook, buckled the strap around his waist with a nasty and violent jerk, and loped wildly out of the house. To anyone who saw him he looked as if he were out to massacre a drove of enemies. With four deep furrows in his narrow brow under the rough short hair, he lost two games at the café without saying a word, knocked the clattering figures over with a fierce hand, and said to his opponent, “I have to confer with you!” Pause. “I’ve been abused,” he resumed, peering straight into the lawyer’s sparkling glasses, and noticed after a while that words were failing him. He should have brought the primer along. With that odious object in hand, he would have had a far easier time explaining things.
    “What kind of abuse?” asked the lawyer.
    “I never served with the cavalry.” That was how Captain Trotta felt he might best begin, although he himself realized he was not making himself clear. “And here these shameless writers write in the children’s books that I galloped up on a sorrel, they write, on a sweat-covered sorrel, to rescue the monarch, they write.”
    The lawyer understood. He knew the piece himself from his sons’ books. “You’re taking it too seriously, captain,” he said. “Don’t forget, it’s for children.”
    Trotta looked at him aghast. At that instant, the entire world seemed allied against him: the authors of primers, the lawyer, his wife, his son, the tutor.
    “All historic events,” said the lawyer, “are rewritten for school use. And to my mind this is proper. Children needexamples that they can grasp, that sink in. They can find out the real truth later on.”
    “Check!” cried the captain, standing up. He went over to the barracks, surprised the officer on duty, Lieutenant Amerling, with a woman in the assistant paymaster’s office, personally inspected the sentries, sent for the sergeant, commanded the junior officer on duty to report, had the company fall in, and ordered rifle drill on the parade ground.
    The men obeyed, confused and trembling. A few were missing from each platoon; they were nowhere to be found. Captain Trotta ordered their names read out. “All absentees are to report to me tomorrow!” he told the lieutenant. Panting and gasping, the troops did their rifle exercises. Ramrods clattered, straps flew, hot hands clapped upon cool metal barrels, huge gun butts stamped upon the dull, soft ground.
    “Load!” commanded the captain. The air quivered with the hollow rattling of the blank cartridges. “Half an hour of salute drilling!” commanded the captain. Ten minutes later, he changed the order. “Kneel down for prayers!” Appeased he listened to the numb thud of hard knees on soil, sand, and gravel. He was still captain, master of his company. He would show those writers.
    That night he did not go to the officers’ mess; he didn’t even eat, he went to bed. His sleep was heavy and dreamless. The next morning, at the officers’ roll call, he submitted his complaint, terse and sonorous, to the colonel. It was passed on. And now began the martyrdom of Captain Joseph Trotta von Sipolje, the Knight of Truth. It took weeks for the Ministry of War to notify him that his complaint had been forwarded to the Ministry of Religion, Culture, and Education. And more weeks dragged by until one day the minister’s answer arrived. It read:
    Your Lordship
,
    Dear Captain Trotta
,
    In reply to Your Lordship’s complaint regarding Text No. 15 in the authorized readers written and edited by Professors Weidner and Srdcny for Austrian elementary and secondary