8. The Forest of Birch Trees

Every morning, hungry for battle, the General embarked on a long march from Scheller Street to Krieger Park that took him ninety minutes and for which he arose at six fifteen when it was still night in winter and day had broken in summer. The General’s room did not have a window with the luxurious false exterior balcony like the one Mr. Pallud occupied in the middle of the hall: his had only one paltry window that opened into an airshaft facing the blind wall of the house next door and allowed a little sunshine to enter, a bit more in summer when it was less needed and close to midday when it was more of a bother than a convenience. Neither sun nor light mattered to the General: he had not had the curtains removed and although he slept summer and winter with the glass panes open and closed them when he left to keep out bugs and dirt, he never looked out and did not need light at all. He dressed in the dark because he knew perfectly well where he had left each item of clothing before he went to bed: pants, socks, shirt, vest, tie, jacket, every accessory, belt, gloves, hat, shoes, every detail, glasses, keys, shoehorn, and wallet. He placed his folded pajamas on the bed and left in darkness for the hallway. The glass doors that faced the garden let in a little light, a gray luster that struck the rug and with great effort rose up on the walls but never reached very high. In the light shining off the plaster, the General entered the bathroom, relieved himself, washed his face and hands, brushed his teeth, moistened his hair and combed it, and left without returning to his bedroom; he left with a pace barely slower and more careful than the one which in six minutes he would use on Scheller Street toward Muse Avenue. He considered the way he moved, dressed, avoided making noise, and maintained everything orderly as important steps in everyday life that should be performed without distraction; punctuality was a cardinal virtue along with prudence, justice, strength, and temperance, but also the highest virtue if that were possible because while the others were mere outward appearances, punctuality could not be concealed and never feigned: at six thirty-four he unlocked the chancel door, at six thirty-five he opened the door to the street, he closed it, and he left. He arrived at Krieger Park at seven twelve, walked down the cinder-covered paths, entered the grove of birch trees, went around the fountain, climbed up to the pergola, came down again, and traversed the walkways, and at seven twenty-eight he returned, arriving at Scheller Street at eight and entering the dining room to have breakfast at five after eight.

The arrival of a new guest did not bother him nor was he bothered that Madame Helena had provided her with the large suite that faced the garden, the best of the house, with her own bath, four windows and a glass door to the gallery and the terrace, according to the servant girl. He had nothing to do with those people, and even less with a foreign woman who fortunately was not French, something which would have made him obliged to force Madame Helena to choose between himself and the interloper and to leave the house if its lady were disposed toward that woman, but, almost worse although it required no action on his part, she was a female of a race destined to serve and obey. The General greeted Mr. Pallud because he could not fail to do so: Pallud was a habitually disorganized man so sometimes they coincided and met in a doorway or one of them arrived at the bathroom while the other was leaving. He respected Madame Helena as discrete, strong, decisive, and capable of taking charge. He was courteous to young Gangulf who would perhaps become a worthwhile man in spite of his chosen profession when by his bearing and manners he could just as well have been in the military. He was not interested in the ex-prima donna or her daughter and saw them rarely, only from a distance during meals, or in the other woman, who had a store or something in the elegant part of Morgenröte Street but who occupied the worst room of the house, with a window to the garden to be sure, but the smallest one, the farthest up, like a servant’s or governess’s room and thus, by the General’s calculations, the cheapest. He said good morning and good evening to the service personnel and did not react rudely if the girl who cleaned his room took it upon herself to speak to him; he did not need to greet the cook because he never saw her; he had seen her only once, a week before moving there, on the day he had gone to see the boarding house on Scheller Street on the advice of his student’s mother when they had beaten Bazaine’s troops, when he had asked to be shown the kitchen: but he had not greeted her that day since he still did not live in the house.

The day Madame Nashiru arrived was one of many for the General: the almanac indicated a day, and afterwards, insignificantly, he did not know exactly which one in September of 1902; but on that day and precisely that day he had noticed the first chill of autumn, which was useful information only for the choice of clothing. After breakfast he left more warmly clad for the morning and made his way to the museum’s library where Mr. Kämpfer had ready the atlas, two treatises on strategy, one by Bonastruc de Porta and one by Watling, and the second volume of The Compendium of Famous Battles, subtitled Modern Wars. He went to the desk to the right that was tacitly reserved for him and there spread out the maps, opened the book by Watling and went to war thinking as he had thought on other afternoons like that one that he had not fallen into the trap of superficiality because of books like the ones by Knoche and Watling and protocols like the one about the war that Kao Lieu Tchiyueng had embarked upon against the Tartars. He did not return for tea at the boarding house on Scheller Street and only left the library when closing time was announced. Then he abandoned the books, put the notes he had taken into the left pocket of his coat, said good evening, and left.

The General always moved his bowels between twenty minutes and a half hour after lunch and bathed in the afternoons, before the evening meal: not only was it the time when no one else wanted the bathroom, most of all his neighbor on that floor who was usually occupied with his little dolls, and neither would the foreign guest, who had a bath just for herself in her suite, which seemed quite convenient because nothing would have been more disagreeable than to have to use the same sanitary services as a woman, even worse in this case because it involved a woman of another race; in addition it was more healthy to bathe at that hour than in the morning, it predisposed one for sleep, cleansed the skin and removed all the floating grime that the body had accumulated during the day, and returned muscle tone lost during inevitable periods of inaction during daily life; it was an advantage to be able to put on proper clean clothing for the evening dinner, and it gave one the sense of freshness and agility needed to end the day as it had begun. That afternoon he submerged himself in barely warm water and let the cold water run until he was wrapped motionless in an icy block that firmed his flesh and clenched his jaw. He remained stretched out, only his head above water, unmoving, forcing his body to accept the biting cold until it was defeated, counting the seconds like a prayer, imagining ice walls melting around him. When the cold ceased to exist and victorious blood thumped in his neck, wrists, temples, and stomach, he arose, soaped up, and rubbed down with a horsehair cloth. He submerged himself again to remove the soap, left, toweled himself dry, and began to dress. He arrived at the salon a minute before the serving girl lit the lights in the dining room and Madame Helena invited the guests to enter, and there he saw the foreign woman for the first time.