On the southbound train Zündel shared a compartment for some of the way with two senior officers in the Swiss Army. Because he was so overtired, he had bought himself a first class ticket, but there was no prospect of sleep now, the presence of the two men was too distracting for that. They were so close to him he could reach out and touch them, and yet miraculously they had no authority over him! If he had been wearing his own military uniform from national service, they would have ordered him out of the compartment. Under the given circumstances, they had asked him politely whether there happened to be two seats free, and he had replied: Yes.
To begin with, they read. They tackled the local Zürich paper together, and from time to time exchanged sections. Every so often, one or other of them would shake his head. Zündel looked up at the luggage rack and took in their caps: one major, one lieutenant colonel. Officers’ caps, he had felt from when he was a child, led a mysterious life of their own. As did hats in general. No other garment is so provocatively self-sufficient. For all that, hats may sometimes make one curious about the wearer, but the heads of his fellow travelers disappeared behind the pages of their newspaper. Zündel tried to read them too, but from four feet away, all he could decipher was the occasional headline. “Good Digestion Essential to Well-being, Scientists Say.” He was on the point of evaluating this claim when the major lowered his part of the paper, yawned, and said: Ah well. Whereupon the lieutenant colonel also yawned, said: Ah well, and put down his part of the paper.
Then both were silent, leaned back, and looked thoughtfully up at the ceiling ventilator.
Rover isn’t what he used to be, said the lieutenant colonel at last. – Mine is fading too, replied the major, he’ll be twelve in autumn, and yours? – A year older! But he’s a good loyal fellow, a bit sluggish, his tumor is giving him trouble. – Any pain? asked the major. – The vet says not, but who’s to know. – Quite so, quite so, said the major, and after a pause the lieutenant colonel said sorrowfully: He seems to be off his food though. – The major said: It’s the same with Rex, but you know, he still enjoys his Tapsy. – The lieutenant colonel: Tapsy? Hang on, isn’t that the firm that makes those chewing bones? A Swiss product, if I’m not mistaken. – You’re right, said the major, but they’re not what I have in mind, I’m referring to those air-dried fish flakes, I think they’re from a Dutch firm rather than one of ours, but I’m not certain, in any case: he’s quite devoted to them. – I see, said the lieutenant colonel, I’m not familiar with those. – Oodles of protein, said the major. Whereupon they both finally fell silent.
Zündel was frankly disappointed. He had been looking forward to a stimulating conversation on military leadership or national security. Instead of which, the two officers were talking about their dogs, and so giving each other proof of their humanity. Presumably they were more humane to their pets than their men, thought Zündel, and managed to rescue a little anger from the situation.
He betook himself to the dining car. The army, each time it hove into his consciousness, however innocently, had the effect of annoying him. It wasn’t that he objected to national self-defense; at the most, he objected to its advocates.. The army was just alien to him. Just as there are people who dislike cut flowers or string music, so he had no use for the military. And over the course of time he noticed that men who did were not his cup of tea. But since he tended to get on with people even if they had a different set of preferences to himself, he concluded that a susceptibility for the military – as opposed to a liking for concrete poetry or liver sausage (neither of which was the case with Zündel, though he had friends who did) – that this susceptibility couldn’t be a chance or secondary psychological factor, but was a direct representation of character. (It’s a similar case – thus Zündel – with a person’s voice: a loud, booming voice may not be disagreeable per se, but the association with its owner makes it so.)
In a word, Zündel’s antipathy to soldiering was primarily his dislike to spending time with men who were enthusiastic soldiers, NCOs and officers.
His natural unease had been further exacerbated at recruit school: Zündel had the impression that most of the officers put national security at the service of their personal neuroses, and at best, vice versa. The pleasure in giving orders and taking charge; the appetite for uniformity and square-bashing; the fanaticism with which short back-and-sides, done-up collars and shiny mess-tins were insisted on – all these, to Zündel’s mind, stood in no verifiable relation to love of country and national security. They had become autonomous compulsions and had lost all connection to any original purpose they might once have had. In fact, perversions was what they were. That was how Zündel saw it, who otherwise was at pains to be fair, even as his reservations over the course of time solidified into arguments that viewed what might once have been merely alien and irritating through the lenses of ethics and politics.
But almost always, when he got into arguments with supporters of the military, he would encounter a realism that was so unquestioningly robust, so shatteringly imperturbable that Zündel was apt to feel infantilized. His astonishment at the way people were unconditionally prepared to slaughter one another as soon as a few spiritually bereft father figures appeared on the scene, was probably a little naïve, and when he allowed the events of a day to pass review in bed at night, he no longer knew if the state of things that outraged him was an argument for the correctness of his position or – the said state of things – wasn’t rather confirmation for those who had calmly decided to factor it, the state of things, into their calculations.
Zündel saw that there were many people who were inclined to deal with the available realities more or less trustingly. Their pliancy always paid off, since the existing state of things, broad-shouldered as it is, tends to offer shelter and confidence.
The realist is always right. As soon as he has buried the warmer ideals deeply enough, all he ever gets to hear is confirmation. When a war breaks out, he nods, flattered. Didn’t he always say so? The catastrophe bore him out, and that was the pleasing side of it. The realist didn’t ask for a war. That’s why he was in favor of arms and armaments. But even the realist cannot avoid the inevitable, which is why he takes proper precautions. Then when it comes to pass, the inevitable, it merely proves how necessary the preparations were. The worst-case scenario is a fair judge. Whoever prepares for it never goes unrewarded.
When Zündel returned to the compartment, both officers were leaning deeply and crookedly back into the upholstery. Both were slumbering open-mouthed. Both were snoring, not loudly, but audibly. My God, thought Zündel, there I am in the dining-car racking my brains about national security, and those two are sawing away to themselves. He clambered over three legs, and resumed his seat.
I should like to be light-footed, he thought. Cheerful, balanced, and frivolous, a squirrel, my God, I can’t manage it, I can’t manage it.
And with that he too fell asleep.
Voices half-woke him, sounding like distant splashing, without meaning. Gradually he was able to pick out individual words, such as “Troop Concentrations” and “State of Readiness.” Eventually, a whole sentence became snagged in his consciousness, and that finally woke him up: “The biggest pain in the bum are those men who shuffle past me instead of saluting me alertly and looking me in the eye.”
Aha, thought Zündel, such are the preoccupations of these Rip Van Winkles, now things are getting interesting. He blinked his eyes, and was startled. The two gentlemen were upright, capped, and reaching for their briefcases. As the train started to brake, they left the compartment. They drew the sliding door shut gently after them. Zündel opened his eyes and saw that they had reached Bellinzona.
He thought of Zuberbühler. Zuberbühler was the association of choice not only for the army, but also for Bellinzona. It was there that that extraordinary pavour had put him under some pressure, the repetition course before last. One evening with drink taken.
Mate, he said, you’re all right, but you’re a hopeless intellectual. Zündel flew into a rage and replied: What’s the difference between me and any other worker? I get tired at night. I get my biological drives at weekends. I belch, swear, fart, and drink beer. I do the lottery. I’m frustrated. What’s supposed to be the big difference? – Zuberbühler had patted him on the back and said: But you’re still an intellectual. – And Zündel, almost beseeching him: Why? – Zuberbühler, paternally: Because you don’t know what you want. Because you’re capable of endless suffering. Because you won’t leave yourself or the world around you alone for just one second. Because the camera in your head whirs the whole time – even when you’re fucking. That’s why.
Gruffly, Zündel had said he knew what he wanted all right, but it couldn’t be expressed that easily, the thing about fucking was something he, Zuberbühler, had no way of knowing, and reveille was at six.
During the hour-long wait between trains in Milano, Zündel sat in the station buffet again, on the same stool as four days before. Four days like four years. He thought of his grisly find. The finger had twice come up in his dreams. Waking too he took charge of the inexplicable, and wanted to wait for it to come clear.
There was a couple seated at the little table next to his. The young man was wearing a check shirt. He was sobbing silently. The woman stroked his neck, and dabbed away his tears with a piece of orange tissue-paper. How sweet, thought Zündel. North of here, women tend to get hard when men show weakness to them. Once, many years before, he thought he had been left by Magda, had sunk further and deeper into despair and hopelessness, had thirsted for just one tender word. At last Magda had sat down opposite him – upward of two feet – and said: We need to talk about our relationship. – And hadn’t it been just like that this time, when he came home with his tooth gone, injured, oppressed, robbed? Oh yeah, I’m sitting somewhere, thinking about my wife, my profession, my handful of friends, I am dispensable to the nth degree, without much self-pity, without much future. The fact that I exist I can infer from the waiter, who gives me my change. – The meaning of life. You clear your throat when that comes into play, and you remember puberty. But the question of existence is sticky, and it’s especially persistent in the case of those who – in the negative, of course – have long ago answered it. Odd, isn’t it, that there are problems that have to be solved before they become pressing.