Читать книгу My Austrian Love - Maxime Provost - Страница 5

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Sergeant Young gives a few orders and then turns to me.

"I have read that first chapter of your book," he says. "For a man without any experience as a writer it is not so bad. But, of course...."

Sergeant Young, my particular chum, is the most extraordinary man of the regiment. Take a pint each of Figaro and d'Artagnan, half a pint of demigod, a spoonful each of Scotchman, Frenchman, and South African, mix well and put into khaki: You will have Sergeant Young ready for use. Since the beginning of the war he has been dreaming of a commission and, my word, nobody ever deserved one if he does not. We have been together at the Dardanelles, and what remains of our Division—although it is not much—was saved by him.

He is a funny man. You do not know whether he is rich or poor, for one day he has the manner of a grand seigneur and the next day he is satisfied with a beggar's fare. You cannot guess what he is in civil life. At one moment you may take him for a broker from the Stock Exchange, at the next for an art critic, or a farmer, an innkeeper, an accountant, a horsebreaker, a historian, or a miner. We only know that he is a splendid soldier and an excellent fellow.

It is in his quality of an art critic that I have given him to read the first chapter of my book.

"You see," says he, "if I were to write a book, I would begin with the beginning."

"I do begin with the beginning," I retort, "only there are some preliminary facts which may as well be told in the course of the narrative. I like to enter in medias res."

"You need not swank about your Latin," he answers. "You remind me of the War Office. They (he has an undescribable way of accentuating the word they when he speaks of the War Office) they, too, like young officers to get acquainted with the 'preliminary facts in the course of the narrative'; while my opinion is: An officer must begin with the beginning. Look here, P. C., suppose you had been Holy Moses, you would have written the Bible thus: 'God created man in his own image, after having created the great whales, and even at an earlier date two great lights. I may as well tell you that before that he had said: Let there be light, and that at the very beginning he had created heaven and earth.'"

And very sternly the Sergeant adds:

"I wish to know why you were in Munich...?"

"I wanted to improve myself in the noble art of composition."

"Don't interrupt me ... and why you left it for Vienna?"

"I will tell you."

He: "Not yet. I must hear about another thing first. Did you miss a rat yesterday?"

I (with an expression of guilt): "I did."

He: "I thought as much. But that bacon was not bacon at all, and therefore ought not to have been bad. We will find a prompt remedy to this sort of things. Write down what I will dictate to you."

I take a sheet of paper and my fountain pen. It's one I found on the body of a dead Turk, but, my word, he might have bought a decent one before getting shot.

This is what the Sergeant dictates:

"To the Editor of the Evening News, London, E.C. "Sir,

"The enemy is in our midst, and our brave army is sold to alien scoundrels. Some Germans have secured Government contracts for bacon. But, of course, the Government, which never knows what to do when the Evening News has not told them beforehand, have omitted the principal thing. Is there a single word in these contracts to specify that bacon must be flesh of swine? What Tommy gets under the designation of bacon I don't know, but the German contractors do.

"I am,

"Sir,

"Yours truly...."

"You sign," he adds.

"Your name?" I ask.

"My name? Never!" he cries.

His name is the one thing of which he is afraid. When he but thinks of his name his heart sinks. His name is his secret. He has enlisted under a false name. He calls himself Charles Young, but in reality he is Friedrich Wilhelm Young.

When my chum was born, his father was under the influence of the deeds of the then Crown Prince, our dearly beloved Big Willy's dad. It was at that time the fashion to admire, nay, to love the German. Love is blind, and old Young called young Young: Friedrich Wilhelm.

Under this name he fought in the Boer War and climbed up the ladder from Private to Captain, while his brother Charles only advanced from Private to Corporal. After the Boer War Friedrich Wilhelm went back to ordinary civil life, and poor Charles—the real Charles, of course—was gathered to his people (to avoid saying crudely that he died).

Now, when the world skirmish began, Friedrich Wilhelm wanted to enlist again. But he was afraid lest his name should be against him, and that they, taking him for a German, should not give him any chance of advancement. So he took his brother's papers and enlisted as Corporal Charles Young. The commission, he thought, would come in time. He became Sergeant; the commission, however, failed to come. He did wonders, yet he did not ... succeed.

One day, when Lord Kitchener came to France and had a look at his men, he saw my friend.

Kitchener had a marvellous memory. He recognized him.

"Your name?" he asked.

"Sergeant Young, sir."

"Any relation of Captain Friedrich Wilhelm Young, of the ......th regiment?"

"His brother, sir."

"What is he doing?"

"He is dead, sir."

"That is a great pity. He would be a Colonel by now, I am sure. He was very like you."

You cannot ask for more of a man, even of Kitchener. Sergeant Young asked for more, for a commission, but he did not get it. And since that day he is vexed, displeased, angry with his name. He positively dreads it. He never signs anything when he can avoid it, and if he does his signature is illegible. Even I must not sign for him.

So I put my own name at the end of the letter to the Evening News, my name, Patrick Cooper, out of which the Sergeant has made first P. C., then Police Constable, and finally Privy Councillor.

It is in the quality of Privy Councillor that I address my chum, when suddenly a vivid fusillade bursts forth.

"I say, Sergeant, don't you think we are damn short of hand grenades?"

Instantly the soldier in Charles Young awakes.

"How can it be possible?"

"I can't tell you."

For one minute he reflects. Then, suddenly, he bursts out:

"They will never learn any sense! So many hand grenades for each hundred yards! Whether the hundred yards are more or less exposed, they do not care! Without you, P. C., and me things would get desperate. But I'll keep an eye open."

There he stands erect, the nostrils of his big nose vibrating, flushed and eager, with his air of a natural leader. One more minute he ponders, and then:

"So long!" he says, and stamps away.

"I'm not going to let you go out in a rain of shrapnel like this," I cry, and try to hold him back. But he is not to be dissuaded, and storms out into the pelting rain of shells and bullets. Instantly the sound of his steps is lost in the roar of the iron downpour.

I pause for a moment. What can I do? This is such an everyday incident. Impending death is nothing in the least extraordinary. So, while the various sounds of war mingle in one single note, clamorous, huge, colossal, I resume my MS. and will tell a few of the "preliminary facts" Sergeant Young is so eager to know.

Of course, I was born at Hampstead. Sons of insurance brokers often are. You cannot read a biography of Mozart without finding some reference to the influence the beautiful country of Salzburg (see first chapter) had on his talent. I had to do with Hampstead; Belsize Park to be exact. The result is obvious. Mozart, when five, performed his first concerto publicly in the hall of the Salzburg University. I did not. Still I composed little waltzes. When six, Mozart was so innocent and natural that, after having played at Vienna before the Empress, he sprang upon her lap and kissed her heartily. I will not tell you tales and assert that I sprang upon Queen Victoria's lap, but I beat Mozart on one point: I published at eight (needless to say that dad paid the printing expenses) six sets of waltzes for the piano, while Mozart published only two sets of sonatas for the harpsichord and violin.

From this moment Mozart's life and mine differ more and more. Mozart came to London and lodged in Cecil Court, St. Martin's Lane, while I went to a preparatory school, the address of which I have forgotten. Afterwards Mozart removed to Frith Street, Soho, and gave concerts in the Great Hall at Spring Gardens and at Ranelagh, while I was sent to Harrow.

For years football and cricket interested me more than music. Contrary to the usual state of things, my mother did not believe in my musical talent, and my father did. Why! Had he not spent more than £30 on the printing of my waltzes (which, by the way, remained for ten years my opus one and only)? Of course they had not sold; but that proved that I was a genius. Only potboilers sold, in dad's mind. Had Wagner's works sold at the beginning? A composer I was born, and a composer I should remain. Mother would shake her head, but father was used to having his own way. So I had plenty of piano lessons on the "You need not practise to become a good pianist" method, and at eighteen I started anew, composing some more waltzes, of course much more elaborate.

They were printed, and although they proved once more the work of a genius, viz.: unsaleable, I managed to make a handsome profit on them. Daniel Cooper and Co., Insurance Brokers, returned to his printer, who asked this time for £44. Poor dad was quite willing to shell out, but I found the figure preposterous.

"I bet you," I declared, "that I will get it for half the price."

Daniel Cooper and Co. at once handed me a cheque for £22, and after much useless running about I had the thing printed in Germany for £11, and very nicely, too.

In the following two years I had several opportunities for similar transactions. But—I blush in writing it down this was the only money I made.

Finally mother declared that she was sick of the whole business, that a musician must have some sort of knowledge of his art, that music and Hampstead were inconsistent, and that music was not only cheaply printed in Germany but also well taught.

Months, however, went by before at last I was sent away. This delay was caused by mother's idea, that I must go and study in Leipzig, because my music was being printed there, while I wished to go to Vienna, where most of the great composers had worked and starved.

Now, as I had on the one hand no wish at all to starve and but little desire to work, and on the other hand plenty of pocket money, no one will be surprised to hear that I postponed the beginning of my studies for a few days and had a look at the city of Strauss and Lanner. For as such Vienna appeared to me at first, and this impression remained to the last.

Of all the towns of Europe Vienna is the Terpsichorean town. The Viennese are passionately fond of dancing, and the women, distinguished as they are by beauty, charm, and elegance, indulge in its pleasure even at the cost of more solid qualities. And they are dressed! In Paris dressing is a luxury, in London it is a mistake, in Berlin an impoliteness, but in Vienna it is a fine art. Ah, the Viennese women! You must admire them, whether you see the fashionable ladies parading in their carriages on a May day in the principal Avenue of the Prater, or the jolly, boisterous girls whirling about in October in the dancing room of one of the village style inns where the new wine is sold.

And there is always the same swing of the waltz, ever melodious, never monotonous, the same in the large brilliant cafés of the Prater as in the small, modest wine shops.

Oh Vienna! Town of song and dance, where is thy happiness now?

How these gay, pleasure-loving, genial people, so full of bonhomie and so markedly different from the nasty inhabitants of Berlin, could start this horrible war, is the one thing that must astonish anybody who knows Vienna even a little. I will say here, that one of the reasons why I write this book is precisely that I believe I have an explanation for this riddle, which seems nearly incapable of being solved.

These first days of Vienna appear to my memory as a kind of storm of jubilation, as a tempest of laughter and cries of amusement, of shouting and singing, of the frolicking of light feet, of the sweet weeping of violins.

And only the fact that I was living in a very middling first-class hotel spoiled my pleasure. It meant much money and little comfort. It meant, too, service by the worst waiters in the world. I don't know what London has ever found in the German or more correctly Austrian waiter. Happily the war has cleared him away. And even then a mistake, a prejudice was necessary. For we are not rid of him because he was a rotten waiter, but because the Evening News took this creature, the most brainless in the world, for a ... spy.

At least, after a week, remorse came. Here I was, in Vienna, supposed to learn the gentle art of music, and in reality spending the money of Daniel Cooper and Co., Insurance Brokers, London, E.C., on ... No! I am not going to blush over all the details. Besides, you have sufficient imagination to blush for me.

But while I talk of blushing, I may as well tell you that I was not found worthy of entering the conservatoire. This I regretted only because I had heard of an abundant flora of pretty girls which was to be found there. For every other reason private lessons seemed to me the better way to get acquainted with the mysteries of harmony and counter point.

I enquired and my choice fell soon on a man who, as an organist, was a local celebrity, although he had failed to achieve much success as a composer. His name was Robert Hammer, he was a genius and accordingly poor.

When I went to see him, I was really shocked, so great seemed his distress. His apartment on the top floor of a house in the suburbs was composed of one small room. There was a small iron bed, covered with big parcels of manuscripts, and a baby grand piano, also covered with music paper. There was a plain deal table, a kitchen table in fact, again heaped with papers, and two wooden chairs which excluded all idea of taking one's ease. The walls were hung with an old discoloured paper, and quite unadorned, save by a colour print representing the old Emperor Francis Joseph.

The master—he was nearly seventy—seemed exceedingly shy. He did not appear to be greatly struck with the idea of giving lessons to a Mozart, even to one born in Belsize Park. He absolutely refused to name a figure as a payment for his trouble, and I had to name mine which, from an insurance broker's point of view, was cheap enough, but which evidently was a decisive factor for a starving Viennese musician.

He accepted, and the lessons began.

How can I give you an idea of old Robert Hammer? Imagine a sort of middle height peasant with a flavour of a protestant parson, the head of a Roman Emperor, Claudius, for instance; bald, but so bald, as to make believe that it was an artificial baldness, an exaggerated baldness that extended to the neck and the temples; no beard, no moustaches, no eyebrows. He was always dressed in black; his trousers were shaped like those of a British sailor, the coat ill fitting, too long and too wide, the sleeves reaching the fingertips. His collar was so narrow that it was scarcely visible, and his black tie resembled a shoe lace. As for his boots, I think it must be he who invented the fashion of the dainty things we wear in the trenches. He was always rolling a little snuff between his fingers. When he sat down to improvise on the organ or the piano, that little snuff was dexterously moved from the right to the left and back to the right and again to the left, according as the one or the other hand was in the better position to play with three fingers only. Of course, by degrees all the snuff would be lost and scattered over the keys. Then only old Hammer would do the really impossible thing, namely, juggle away the imaginary remains of the snuff into his nose.

He was at once a genius and a perfect fool, an old man and a baby; he possessed all possible refinement in his art, and was ignorant of any in life; no organist ever reached his perfection; no musician was a worse teacher.

He was a very friendly, kind man as long as his unbelievable absence of mind did not interfere with his kindness. He was one of the many types of Viennese musicians, and I do not think that you could find in the whole world one that would resemble him.

One morning, a fortnight or three weeks after my first lesson, he inquired about the life I was leading. And as I complained regarding the inconveniences of hotel life, he asked me why I should not hire a furnished room.

"I have been warned," I said, "that hotel life was still preferable to insect life."

He did not understand, and I had to explain.

"There are not insects everywhere," he answered. "You must know, of course, where to stay. There is my friend Doblana for instance, who has a very nice flat. His wife died a year ago, and he has now one room too many. Besides, his house would be the right thing for you, and you would enjoy his company. He is a musician who plays the horn in a most charming manner. You see, he is a Czech, and most Czechs have thick, fleshy lips, a peculiarity which enables them to play exceedingly well. The lips are most important when playing the horn. The oldest classics did not know that. This is the reason for their awkward writing. The first who recognized what could be achieved by the horn were Méhul and Beethoven, but Weber had to be born to invent the new perfect language of this wonderful instrument, the most sensual and the most chaste."

Mr. Doblana was forgotten, and his furnished room too. Good old Hammer was raving over the qualities of the horn, over Meyerbeer's cleverness to write for it, and over the various ways modern composers used it, especially Wagner.

But if Hammer had forgotten Doblana, I had not. The possibility of living in a musician's decent house was too tempting, and I decided to call upon him that very afternoon.

A rapid footstep interrupts me. It is Sergeant Young who comes back.

"That's all right, Police Constable," he says (I bet he has forgotten that my real name is Patrick Cooper), "you need not worry about these hand grenades, we'll have them in half a mo. I've blackmailed the colonel in the most shameless way, but I've succeeded."

He takes my MS. and reads the second chapter.

"That will never do," he says after a while. "If you mix up our trench business with your Austrian affairs, how do you hope that the reader will find his way?"

"He will muddle through."

"No publisher will accept it in this form."

"Well, he will have it edited. Editors must live."

The Sergeant sees that there is nothing to be done, and goes on reading.

"You did not say why you left Munich," he remarks at last.

"Oh!" I answer lightly, "because I had a ticket for Vienna."