One fine day, wishing to continue the discussion, Apostol called at the lawyer’s house. The latter was out, but Marta received him. He stayed half an hour chatting on indifferent topics, expecting Domsa to come in any minute. The next day he came again, and spent half an hour with Marta. Then for a whole week he went there every day at the same hour, and grew daily more pleased to find the lawyer out. During the following week he said to his mother joyously:
“Mother, I am going to marry Domsa’s daughter!”
Doamna Bologa was aghast. Marta seemed to her too coquettish and too frivolous. A girl brought up without restrictions—Doamna Domsa had died four years ago—could not be a suitable wife for Apostol. She tried to make him change his mind, and once again called in the aid of Protopop Groza. All to no purpose. The betrothal was celebrated quietly, just a family affair, and it was arranged that the wedding should take place in a year or two, when Apostol would have completed his studies.
Soon after the betrothal there came to Parva a lieutenant of the Imperial Light Infantry, son of the Hungarian judge and very arrogant and conceited. Apostol looked on him disdainfully, whereas Marta thought him interesting and attractive. The Sunday following his arrival the “Charity Ball” took place. Although Apostol did not care for dancing, on that night he danced furiously so as not to run the risk of letting “that other fellow” outdo him. The lieutenant, however, danced very little and with only three girls, one of whom was Marta. And Apostol saw the ill-concealed pride and pleasure which this caused her.
In three days the young man’s heart had become filled with bitterness. He was wretched, and thoughts of suicide floated through his mind. He compared himself with the lieutenant, and felt sure that Marta in her heart preferred the brilliant uniform … and he, being the son of a widow, had not even served in the Army. At one desperate moment he thought he would renounce this privilege in order to be able to come back in a year wearing an officer’s uniform and to show that he also could look like “that other fellow”. In any case, he was not going to be done out of Marta’s love. Just because she was like that he loved her all the more. He’d fight and win her for good and all. If she was not able to rise to his level, he would go down to hers. But Marta would have to love no one but him!
Just about that time rumours of war began to spread, and one fine day the lieutenant was obliged to cut short his leave and rejoin his regiment in a great hurry. Next day a triumphant Apostol called on Marta. But when the talk veered round to the lieutenant Marta remarked with melancholy eyes:
“A nice man! Now he will become a hero!”
Apostol’s face paled. He made up his mind to break off the engagement, to admit uncompromisingly to his mother that she had been right, and to go back to his books. But that would be cowardice. If at his first encounter with life he owned himself beaten, what would his future be?
And then on the top of his troubles came the war. And his “conception of life”, which for three years he had been building out of and propping up with philosophical reflections, tottered on its foundations. The war had not been reckoned with in his “conception”. And a decision had to be arrived at at once. He talked it over with Palagiesu, without result. Palagiesu declared emphatically that “we must all do our duty to our country”. This, however, was an opinion of a representative of the State and therefore enforced and not the spontaneous outcome of free conviction. Apostol, in his heart, believed that the best thing would be to ignore the war as something abnormal. Yes, that was all very well, but suppose he were called up tomorrow?
“You see, darling,” said his mother uneasily, “if you had but listened to us and gone into the Church you would be a priest to-day and there would be no need for you to worry about the war.… Whereas now, God only knows what …”
And Apostol, in order to convince himself more than for any other reason, made answer:
“One of these days I also shall go off to do my duty.”
Doamna Bologa, frightened and indignant, asked:
“You’d endanger your life? For whom and for what?”
“For my country,” muttered the student with an irresolute smile.
“We have no country!” exclaimed the mother indignantly. “This is not our country. It were far better for the horses of the Russians to trample over it!”
She sent immediately for Protopop Groza, and together they tried to evict from his mind these imprudent ideas. Apostol’s irresolution grew. He left the house with his mind in a whirl, and found himself presently in Domsa’s house.
“What, you? Our hope? You to fight for the Hungarians who fight us? When one has a country like ours one is not in any way obliged to worry one’s head about one’s duty to it—on the contrary!”
“And yet there’s the principle …” put in Apostol without conviction.
“What principle? When a man’s life is at stake all principles may go to the devil. We must wait, Apostol! Our watchword must be ‘Reserve’.”
“Reserve means passivity, and passivity is worse than death.…”
“Passivity keeps our hopes unharmed, whereas activity just now is synonymous with annihilation.”
Apostol was silent. In his heart he was now convinced that he need not go. But before he had time to answer Domsa, Marta, who had been out to see a friend, came in. The lawyer, as was his custom, left them alone.
“Everybody is joining up …” said Marta.
In her eyes, in her voice, Apostol caught a strange tremor. Marta was thinking of “that other fellow”. They talked for about an hour, and all the time Apostol saw that his fiancée was like a stranger to him, yet he knew that by a single gesture it was in his power to win her whole heart. For an hour he hesitated and then, as he was going, he looked deep into her eyes and said firmly:
“The day after tomorrow I am joining up.”
Marta smiled incredulously. But the next minute her cheeks flushed, her eyes flashed with pride, and with a passionate gesture she ran into his arms and kissed him on the lips. And in that kiss Apostol realized the fullness of his success.
Two days later he left for Cluj and presented himself at the recruiting station, where a lanky colonel congratulated him warmly. When he had put on his uniform, he stared at himself in the glass and hardly recognized himself, so soldierly had his appearance become. The town throbbed with an enthusiasm which was infectious. On the pavements, in the cafés, at the University, everywhere people were gay, as if the war had freed them from some terrible danger, or as if it promised them some heavenly bliss. In this atmosphere the remnants of his hesitation melted away like wax. He felt proud and happy in his spruce gunner’s uniform, and he saluted smartly all the officers he met, deeply convinced that in doing this he was also doing his duty to his country.
He trained for two months at the artillery school, after which he was sent to the front. Then he was made an officer, and was twice wounded, the first time slightly, but the second time so badly that he had two months in hospital and one month’s sick-leave at home; he was decorated three times and promoted lieutenant—all in two years. The war had taken front place in his “conception of life”, from which, a little while ago, he had wished to eliminate it. Now he said to himself that was the true source of life and the most effective means of selection. Only in the face of death did man understand the true value of life, and only by danger was the soul properly disciplined. Then had come the court martial which had condemned Svoboda. And after that the gibbet and the eyes of the condemned man and the Rumanian song of the orderly—like a reproach …
1 The Rumans of Transylvania and the Banat, having been deprived of their ancient privileges, rose under Horia, Closca and Crischanu in 1785. They were suppressed, but subsequently Joseph II declared the peasants free.
2 At Hermannstadt, in July 1893, a Pan-Rumanian Congress drew up a memorandum of the grievances of the Rumanians in Transylvania. The Austrian Premier had twenty of the leaders tried and imprisoned on a charge of treason.
3 Rumanian for “Mrs”.
III
“Sir, it is late; time for supper.”
Apostol Bologa opened his eyes, his mind confused. By his bedside stood the orderly, mumbling these words softly, like a witch weaving a spell.
“What is it, Petre? Have I been asleep?” asked the lieutenant, jumping up and glancing quickly at his wrist-watch. “That’s nice! I’ve missed the mess.… And it’s your fault. I don’t know where you’re always stuck, instead of being here to help me.”
While he was scolding Petre he knew perfectly well that he was trying to stifle memories which had caught him in their toils and which he dreaded like the pricks of an unforgiving conscience. Anxious to go, he could not find his helmet, and muttered:
“Turn up the lamp; this place is like a crypt.”
From beside the lamp the orderly picked up a letter and held it out.
“It came midday, but with all this hullabaloo …”
Apostol took the letter, looked at the address, and then remained several minutes staring vacantly at Petre as if he did not dare to read it.
“Fine thing this; I am even afraid of Mother’s letter,” he thought bitterly. “To such a state of cowardice has the execution of a traitor reduced me!”
Thereupon he sat himself down angrily on the chest, drew the lamp nearer, tore open the envelope, and read without stopping:
MY LONGED-FOR DARLING,
I am terribly worried about you, for I have not had a word from you for a week. Here the earth groans under the number of troops and Austrian soldiers. We live in fear and trembling. I feel a little easier since I have been told that there has been no recent fighting in the part where you are. Oh, if only God would make it all end, for so much warring has embittered our souls and dried up our tears.
We are always hoping to see you arrive unexpectedly, even if it be only for a few days; other officers get leave frequently. We also have a major quartered on us: a very good fellow—a Pole. The poor man sighs all day for his family, for he is married and has six children. Do you know, my darling, they have taken Protopop Groza away and have interned him in Hungary because Palagiesu denounced him and said that he was a danger to the peace of the community. O Lord, great is Thy patience and Thy mercy! And Palagiesu boasts, even in my presence, that had he wished he could have had him hanged, for, he says, his hand is heavy on those who cannot keep quiet. But, he says, he pitied Groza’s eighty years, otherwise he would not have been satisfied with mere internment. For, he says, the Protopop preached from the pulpit that we were not to give up the language of our ancestors nor our faith in God, but that we were to hold them sacred. And for this they arrested him and locked him up, and there is only the deacon left to take the services both at the big church and across the water, at the little church in Jerusalim. I pray fervently to God all the time, and I do hope that our prayers will find pity and compassion in Heaven.
I often think and shiver as to what would happen if your poor father were alive! My God, how brave he was! Perhaps you would not be where you are either, for nothing on earth would have made him allow you to go: But I, a poor widow, what am I to do? I weep, and pray the Almighty to care for you and protect you, and to enlighten your soul and your path in life.
If only peace would come, so that men might be freed from torture and terror! For since Rumania has entered the war we feel even more embittered and heartsick.
Marta says she has written to you constantly but that two letters of hers have remained unanswered, and that she thinks that perhaps you are offended about something or other. Write to her, my dear boy, for Domsa is very decent and cares for you like a father. She is a good girl, too, and soft-hearted, but she is young and inexperienced. She keeps on telling me that she misses you terribly, but she can’t stay at home, and must needs talk and joke with all the little officers round here—that’s how things are now. If you were at home we would also have someone to lean on. But it doesn’t matter, the storm will pass and God will reward each one according to his deserts. Until the hour of our salvation comes I seek consolation in your letters. I wait for them and tremble when they don’t come. For you are my consolation, my hope in this world, and my faith in God.
Good-bye. Write to me soon. God bless you and keep you.
YOUR MOTHER.
Apostol folded up the letter again, slipped it slowly into his pocket, sighed, and with a wry smile said:
“Poor mother! One can see she is the great-granddaughter of Avram Jancu’s prefect.”
The contents of the letter weighed heavily on his mind. Only the part concerning Marta seemed to have made no impression, although, as a rule, it would have been that very part which would have set him thinking.
Looking up, he met the gaze of the orderly, who was staring at him with curious, humble eyes. Apostol started as if he feared that he had read his thoughts.
“What’s happening way down home, sir?” the soldier suddenly asked respectfully.
“What can happen, Petre? Trouble and bitterness,” answered Apostol gently.
He put on his helmet, turned up the collar of his trench-coat, and went out into the courtyard, followed by the orderly. At the gate he looked back and said in the same gentle voice:
“Remember, Petre, that tomorrow at daybreak we go back to the front. Get everything together.… It’s no use, Petre, one feels happier over there than here!”
IV
The officers messed in a one-time tavern, next door to the house where General Karg lodged. All the staff officers messed in the large front room, the windows of which were shuttered so as to prevent the light from showing outside. At the back, in the small room, messed those who were only passing through—that is to say, those on their way to or from the front who were compelled to stay there a while in connection with the numerous services of the division.
As he was late, Bologa did not want to go through the big room, so he went through the courtyard and into the lobby, where soldiers were busy washing up crockery, opening bottles and bringing in, through the passage from the distant kitchen, plates of food and bottles of wine. From here one door led directly into the big mess-room and another on the left into the “guests’ room”. A soldier rushed forward and opened the door for Bologa.
In the small room there were only two long tables and a broken-down couch on which were heaped, pell-mell, a pile of cloaks, helmets, revolvers, swords, bayonets.
There was no longer anyone sitting at the table on the right. A soldier with a long-shaped head and a forehead the width of a finger was leisurely clearing away and sweeping up the crumbs. The tobacco-smoke, the smell of food and drink, filled the room right up to the beamed ceiling, obscuring the light from the lamp with the rusty tin shade. The shutters of both windows were closed, and the holes in the shutters were stuffed up with dinner-napkins. There were no curtains to the windows, and on the walls there were a few corpses of overfed bugs.
At the upper end of the table on the left Captain Klapka was sitting, bareheaded, his round, clean-shaven face radiating kindness and gentleness in spite of the uneasy look in his eyes, which he tried to conceal under a formal and set smile.
As Bologa entered the room the sound of voices, which had been audible from the lobby, stopped abruptly, so that his “Good evening” fell into a startled silence. But by the time he had divested himself of his coat and helmet the wave of embarrassment had passed, and Lieutenant Gross, half in fun and half in earnest, called out:
“I believe you were ashamed to join us earlier, Bologa, weren’t you? Come, own up!”
“Ashamed? I? Whatever for?” shot out Apostol, stopping short.
“Do you think that we don’t know that you voted for death?” smiled Gross, making his voice less challenging because he saw Bologa was annoyed.
“Well, and what about it?” asked Apostol, his manner becoming stiffer. “In any case, I have to account to no one but my conscience, which found him guilty.”
“Conscience!” came plaintiv
ely all of a sudden from Captain Cervenco, who was sitting on Klapka’s left. “Who has a conscience left these days?”
That voice insinuated itself into Lieutenant Bologa’s ear like a needle. He wanted to answer but could not think of what to say. He stood looking at the speaker and his heart softened. Cervenco was a fine, strapping fellow with broad shoulders and a brown beard which covered almost the whole of his chest, and in his eyes there always lurked a look of undefined suffering. Bologa had met him at a hospital in Trieste, and had discovered in him the heart of an angel. He was a Ruthenian, a professor in a college at Stanislav. The officers all considered him a sort of maniac because during his two years’ soldiering he had never once touched a weapon of war. He always went into the fight armed merely with a reed wand and singing hymns. Cervenco, however, asserted loudly and unashamed that he would much rather chop off his hands than shoot at his fellow-creatures. And because he was extremely conscientious in his work and contemptuous of death, his superiors did not interfere with him, but merely said that he was a bit cracked.
“Everyone does his duty as he thinks is right,” muttered Bologa in answer to Cervenco. He sat down at the table opposite Klapka, and, turning to the soldier, ordered: “Bring me something to eat!”
The soldier disappeared. Presently Gross said rather harshly:
“No duty in the world would induce me to murder a comrade.…”
“Comrade?” shouted suddenly Lieutenant Varga, revolted, and jumped to his feet. “Traitors and deserters are your comrades? Gentlemen, you go too far. I personally can no longer listen indifferently to words so—so—compromising for any soldier who has still within him a spark of love for his country.”
Forest of the Hanged Page 4