At the same time, Trotta was raised to the barony.

Baron Joseph von Trotta und Sipolje accepted these imperial gifts sullenly, as insults. The campaign against the Prussians was waged and lost without him. His resentment simmered. His temples were already turning silvery, his eyes dim, his steps slow, his hands heavy, his words fewer than ever. Though a man in the prime of life, he appeared to be aging swiftly. He had been driven from the paradise of simple faith in Emperor and Virtue, Truth, and Justice, and, now fettered in silence and endurance, he may have realized that the stability of the world, the power of laws, and the glory of majesties were all based on deviousness. Thanks to the Kaiser’s casually expressed wish, Reading Text No. 15 disappeared from the monarchy’s schoolbooks. The Trotta name survived only in the unknown annals of the’ regiment.

The major now vegetated as the unknown bearer of ephemeral fame, like a fleeting shadow that a secret object sends into the bright world of the living. On his father-in-law’s estate, he puttered about with watering cans and garden shears: similar to his father at the castle park in Laxenburg, the baron trimmed the hedges and mowed the lawn, guarded the forsythia in early spring and then the elderberry bushes against thievish and unauthorized hands; he supplanted the rotten pickets with fresh, smoothly planed ones, repaired tools and tackling, bridled and saddled his bay horses himself, replaced rusty locks on gates and portals, carefully wedged neatly carved slats in worn-out sagging hinges, spent days on end in the forest, shot small game, slept in the gamekeeper’s hut, looked after poultry, manure, and harvest, fruit and espalier flowers, groom and coachman. Penny–pinching and distrustful, he made his purchases, his sharp fingers fishing coins from the stingy leather pouch and slipping it back upon his chest. He became a little Slovenian peasant.

At times, his old anger would overcome him, shaking him like a powerful storm shaking a flimsy shrub. He would then whip the servant and the flanks of the horses, smash the doors into the locks that he himself had repaired, threaten to maim and murder the farmhands, shove his luncheon plate away in a nasty swing, and fast and grumble. Next to him lived his feeble, sickly wife in a separate room; the boy, who saw his father only at meals and whose report cards were submitted to him twice a year, eliciting neither praise nor reproach; the father-in-law, who blithely frittered his pension and had a weakness for young girls, who stayed in town for long weeks and feared his son-in-law. He was a little old Slovenian peasant, that Baron Trotta. Twice a week, late in the evening, by flickering candlelight, he still wrote his father a letter on yellowish octavo, the salutation Dear Father four male fingers from the top, two male fingers from the side. He very seldom received an answer.

The baron did occasionally think of visiting his father. He had long since begun missing the sergeant of the frugal government poverty, the fibrous shag, and the homemade brandy. But the son dreaded the travel expenses just as his father, his grandfather, and his great-grandfather would have done. Now he was closer to the war invalid at Laxenburg Castle than years ago, when, in the fresh glory of his newly bestowed nobility, he had sat in the blue lime-washed kitchen of the small official apartment, drinking rakia. He never discussed his background with his wife. He sensed that an embarrassed pride would come between the daughter of the older dynasty of civil servants and a Slovenian sergeant, so he never asked his father to visit him.

Once, on a bright day in March, when the baron was trudging across the hard clods to see his steward, a farmhand brought him a letter from the administration of the Castle of Laxenburg. The invalid was dead; he had passed away painlessly at the age of eighty-one. The baron said only, “Go to the baroness; my bag is to be packed; I’m going to Vienna tonight.” He walked on, entered the steward’s house, inquired about the sowing, discussed the weather, instructed him to order three new plows and send for the veterinarian on Monday and the midwife for a pregnant serving girl today, and then added, when leaving, “My father has died; I’m spending three days in Vienna,” saluted with a casual finger, and left.

His bag was packed, the horses were harnessed to the carriage; the station was an hour’s drive. He bolted down the soup and the meat. Then he told his wife, “I can’t go on! My father was a good man. You never met him.” Was it an obituary? Was it a lament? “You’re coming along!” he told his frightened son. His wife stood up to pack the boy’s things. While she busied herself on the next floor, Trotta said to the child, “Now you’ll see your grandfather.” The boy trembled and lowered his eyes.

The sergeant was lying in state by the time they arrived. Guarded by eight candles three feet high and by two war veterans, he lay on a bier in his living room, sporting a tremendous bristly moustache, a dark-blue uniform, and three twinkling medals on his chest.