Free An Ermine in Czernopol by Gregor Von Rezzori Page A

the way a very rich man holds them in disdain. In doing so he sets a high price—too high, perhaps. But he’s one of those men who are more than willing to bleed to death.”
    Whether he was aware of this general resistance or not, Tildy did not counter it with anything except himself: his impeccable performance of duty, his cool, elegant propriety that was the tersest possible, and his deadly earnest.
    â€œGod knows, it’s not that what he does is too little,” sighed Herr Tarangolian. “On the contrary: it’s too much—too much for Czernopol. But Czernopol is drawing the short end of the stick, if you know what I mean. Let me tell you a story: His people idolize him. Recently, however, one of his men had stayed a few days beyond his leave, and when he came back, he brought his esteemed major a chicken, not as a bribe—heaven forbid—but as a gesture, and in order to mollify him. Still, a chicken is quite a lot for a young farm boy. So what does Tildy do? He assembles the entire company and informs them of the incident. He punishes the man for staying over his leave—not too severely, but not too mildly, either. And he orders that the chicken, which a sergeant was holding next to him on a kind of tray—or was it a cushion for medals—in short, Tildy orders that the chicken be thrown into the regimental kettle. Can you believe it? One chicken in a soup for four thousand soldiers? Even a child knows that the quartermasters steal meat by the ton. But in the name of justice: a single chicken! Even his own recruits no longer take him seriously. No, no, nothing good will come of that.”
    Herr Tarangolian spoke with stageworthy pathos.
    â€œAnd I don’t mean his career as a soldier, although that, too, is doubtful. His superiors can’t abide him, without exception. They respect him, to be sure, but they don’t trust him. They find him odd, and, to put it frankly, disturbing. Recently someone asked me in all earnestness if he might not be an Englishman working for the secret service. Why does he trim his mustache the way he does? But all joking aside: the man will destroy himself in one way or the other. There’s something Spanish about him. He is a hidalgo . Not a conquistador, no Cortés or Pizarro or Alvarez—he lacks their greed, he doesn’t have enough plebeian blood for that. Nor is he Iñigo de Loyola, although I admit he shares the same rigor and passion for a Madonna embroidered on a flag. A shame to find such traits wasted on a cavalryman, isn’t it? But, then again, would Roland and El Cid be able to conquer anything better than a heavyweight championship? For all we know a stigmatized headwaiter might soon proclaim himself lord of the world! But the hidalgo I mean is the other one, the knight of the sad countenance, Don Quixote. That is Tildy’s character through and through. He is indeed the last knight. He is incapable of taking revenge on his own predicament, like everyone else in Czernopol, by laughing at it. Do you know that people deliberately play pranks on him and place bets on how he will react, and that every time the fellow who chooses the most humorless possibility is the one who wins! He himself supposedly said he knows only two types of response: the witty one and the just one. Yes, you heard right: the witty and the just! My God, what an alternative! … And then, on top of that,” Herr Tarangolian added with faux seriousness, “on top of that, this woman …”
    One day this woman stood in front of us, spoke to us, stroked our hair, kneeling down to pat Tanya—and we failed even to recognize her.
    I believe that happened during the same year, on one of those late-spring days so much like lilac, under the deep mussel-blue of a sky pregnant with rain. We hadn’t seen her coming, because the lance-leaf fence was overgrown, and our garden was hedged by thickets of foliage, like the upholstery