Forest of the Hanged

by Rebreanu, Liviu;

  As the gravedigger gave no hint of ceasing, but, on the contrary, seemed to have just got into his stride, Bologa got up, cutting short the conversation by inviting him to continue their talk some other time, for now he had to see to his work. Paul Vidor heartily agreed “that that was true”, but waited for the lieutenant to lead the way out.

  Apostol Bologa, irritated by the peasant’s insistence, crossed over into his office, took the plan of the front, ordered the non-coms. to keep on with their work as he himself had some official work to see to to-day, and walked out into the enclosure and into the young spring sunshine. The light and heat enticed him to look round against his will, as if he were looking for someone. On the high step inside the stable door sat Ilona, with her elbows leaning on her knees and her face resting between the palms of her hands. When their eyes met, Apostol understood what he had been looking for, and all the blood rushed to his face. He smiled at Ilona without meaning to do so, telling himself the while that he must take no notice of her and that she had the most fascinating voice he had ever heard.

  Out in the street it seemed to him as if he were awakening from some accursed spell. Turning into the main street, towards the centre of the village, he thought: “If a little peasant girl is able to damp my faith and imperil my resolution, then I think it were better I shot myself.” And he felt for his revolver, as if he wished to prove to himself that he would not falter.

  He stopped short before the church and asked himself where he was going? Oh yes, he remembered now, he was taking his bearings under the pretext that he wished to call on his superiors and on his friends. Then he’d go this very night. He must not lose a single day, not a single minute. Not until he was safely on the other side could he find peace and happiness.

  The priest’s house across the way, opposite the church, seemed clad in sunshine. Apostol remembered that Ilona had told him that the priest preached in Hungarian, and he recalled Boteanu’s shame in the train and his abject cowardice. He turned his head away.

  He did not know which way to go. There was nothing in the village he wanted to see; only the front was of interest to him. So it would be better for him to go off there immediately, report himself to the colonel, examine the ground, and choose his place. Perhaps he’d see Klapka; in fact, he must tell him. All at once, from a house near the church, Meyer emerged, muffled in a heavy coat with collar turned up in spite of the fact that the sun filled the earth with an intoxicating warmth.

  “Doctor! Doctor!” shouted Apostol, seeing that Meyer was going on and had not seen him.

  The doctor turned round, and the grim face relaxed a little when he saw that it was Bologa who had hailed him and was hastening after him. They went on together towards the improvised hospital, located in the village school. On the way Apostol told him how he had got over his wounds. The doctor, a reserved man, did not question him as to his present destination, but when the hospital door was reached, Bologa told him that he wished to go to the front to get his bearings but had no horse. Meyer offered him his own, but in the same breath said in a friendly tone:

  “You are very thin, Bologa, be careful! Leave heroic deeds for a little while and look after yourself, otherwise I expect you’ll be coming to me again in a day or so—as a patient! I think you have a touch of fever as it is, your eyes are too glassy. I think they might have given you some sick-leave to enable you to get your strength back. Anyway, take my advice and go slow!”

  “I feel as strong as a dragon, doctor!” answered Bologa with unnatural gaiety.

  The doctor muttered something into the collar of his greatcoat, but Apostol didn’t even attempt to catch what he said, his soul was so full of hope.

  V

  Apostol Bologa rode off with the map of the front in his hand. Lunca was a long village on the left bank of a little noisy stream, caught closely between two rows of hills, covered with pine-and beech-trees. The highroad ran through the centre of the village, and the railway ran behind the houses through gardens and meadows which rose on the sloping hill-side. Round the station the valley widened out like the bottom of a cauldron, but beyond the village it narrowed again right up to the mouth of the torrent which ran down from the mountains on the left. Both the railway and the highroad crossed the river on a common bridge which had recently been repaired. Bologa went on for about thirty paces and then discovered on the bank of the river the road leading to the front. Here there was less traffic and the houses were few, some perched like nests in far-off clearings. The road ascended continually, and the river narrowed but became more buoyant, like an exuberant and turbulent child. In the bluish background were the crests of the mountains, crenelated in places like gigantic ramparts.

  Then, at a spot which widened out a little, the road, together with the rivulet, now a mere thread of silver, disappeared into the brushwood of the valley. And then a new road began the ascent towards the north, a war-road made by soldiers. Here Bologa met soldiers more frequently, some coming down, others going up, and he also met a few carts drawn by sorry nags.

  “At last I have arrived!” muttered Apostol, filled with excitement, stopping his horse and comparing the ground with his map. “The artillery lines must be quite near here.”

  He was standing on the fairly wide ridge of a hill sparsely covered with trees. The road here branched out fan-wise. Bologa first looked back. The rivulet was no longer visible, and the woody hills and slopes through which he had come now took on a different aspect.

  “If the batteries are here, then the infantry will be on the hills over there,” he thought, turning round quickly and looking with more attention at the row of ridges which cut off the horizon in front. “And a little more that way, perhaps even on the very next ridge, are the …”

  All around reigned a serene silence over which floated the sun’s smile like powdered gold. Not a pine-needle stirred in the wonder-struck trees, drinking in the gladness of the new spring. Apostol could hear the quick, hot beats of his heart, dominating by their passionate throbbing all the world around him.

  “It’s taken me three hours and a bit. It’s noon now!” he said suddenly, looking at his watch. Then he continued straight on, trusting to luck, for he could make out nothing from his sketch.

  A gunner led him to Klapka’s command post, which was only a few yards off the road by which Bologa had come. The captain was just sitting down to a meal in the little wooden hut, which was quite cosy and roomy, considering the circumstances. When Apostol appeared in the doorway, saluting with a slightly embarrassed smile, Klapka dropped the knife out of his hand and murmured some startled words in Czech. But, recovering himself quickly, he came to meet Bologa, embracing him and kissing him with tears of joy running down his cheeks.

  “Welcome back! Are you quite well again? Truly? Let me have a look at you! Why are you so pale? You’ll have your battery back, won’t you? In a day or two we are beginning serious work! But wait, sit down over there and let us eat together while you tell me everything from beginning to end. Begin from that night—you remember? Eh, eh! How I worried over you that night! Was it lucky, was it unlucky for you? God knows. One thing is certain, you have paid for the attempt with terrible suffering, dear Bologa. Do please sit down over there. That’s it. You can’t think how glad I am to see you again, safe and sound. Doctor Meyer assured us, of course very regretfully, that out of a mass of mutilated flesh rolled in the mud, such as you were when he had seen you last, immediately after the attack had been repulsed, it was impossible to reconstruct an artillery lieutenant, even if the whole medical faculty of the world were to put their heads together, and that nothing but the mercy of God could make you into a human being again. Then later, when we heard that you were on the way to recovery, Meyer said that you must have had a marvellously strong hold on life.”

  The captain chattered as if he had had no one to speak to for a century and now meant to pour out his whole soul. Apostol Bologa gladly accepted his invitation to eat. He was tired out by his journey and l
ack of sleep, and at his own place that morning, obsessed by the Hungarian girl’s strange glances, he had eaten as if with another man’s mouth. He hesitated just a second at the thought that he would probably again have to tell Klapka what he had already told him so often before. He was right. For the good part of an hour the captain examined him and cross-examined him like a judge, asking him minute details with regard to his wounds, to the meeting with the general in the train, etc.

  “I’m awfully sorry you are not staying with me, but for you it is far, far better to be in the village with the ammunition column,” said Klapka. “Besides, I’m sure you’ve had enough of dreams, haven’t you?” he added gently, as if he were afraid of reopening an old wound. “Fate gave you a warning that time.”

  “Yes, Fate was against me that time because, to tell you the truth, my soul was not sufficiently prepared,” answered Bologa simply but with obvious satisfaction at being able to talk freely to someone about it. “Then I was convinced, right to the marrow of my bones, that my conviction was perfect, and yet the thought of death terrified me. The pain I have undergone has taken that conceit out of me, and to-day I know very well that only convictions for which you are ready to sacrifice, without hesitation, even life itself, can save you. And to-day I realize that the love of life is far stronger in my heart than my convictions. I have come to feel afraid of myself. Convictions and resolutions have a habit of crumbling away if you weigh and examine them too much, and I cannot help weighing and examining mine! That’s why I must go quickly before I can look into them too closely, otherwise who knows, perhaps … Only when man is alone with his soul, only then is there an equilibrium between his little inner world and the rest of the universe. As soon as reality from outside intervenes man becomes a helpless toy without a will of his own, going whither influences and decisions, strange to his real nature, lead him.”

  “Why, you talk even more than I do!” interrupted Klapka, smiling impatiently. “Suppose it is as you say, dear Bologa, although your views seem to me somewhat … childish, to say the least of it. The ideal remains here in my heart, and reality is reality, Bologa. Reality is revolution over there among the Russians, do you understand? Last night the news trickled through on the telephone; to-day it has been officially confirmed. Revolution has broken out in Russia—which means our hopes have vanished, like this, into thin air! Well, let us bow to the inevitable and carry on, Bologa!”

  Apostol remembered that the gravedigger had also mentioned the Russian revolution, but neither then nor now did the news startle him in the least. He answered rather more irritably:

  “What do I care what’s happening over there? I don’t want to know. It is the unknown that entices me, the unknown which is full of possibilities. All I seek in the world, either here or over there, is the salvation of my soul.”

  “You are as great a visionary as ever, Bologa.”

  “To you they may seem empty dreams, but all the purpose of my being palpitates in those dreams,” said Bologa with eyes which seemed to dart fire and made Klapka draw back. “You don’t suppose that I would not much rather just live on contentedly without worrying over anything? Sometimes I tell myself I am absurd, and yet I can’t stop myself.… That’s the unfortunate part!”

  Klapka was very comfortable where he was. He had got pally with the colonel. There had been no fighting all the winter, so no danger had threatened him. He still quite often had patriotic paroxysms and he secretly prided himself on them, but he took great care to conceal them and to reserve them for some more suitable occasion. And now also with Bologa—after the first outburst of gladness at seeing him had subsided, and especially since he understood that Bologa had not given up his thoughts of desertion, he reckoned it would be wiser not to get mixed up in such dangerous plans. So he took advantage of a short silence and changed the conversation, asking him if he had reported himself to the colonel and telling him that the commanding officer’s station was close by, not four hundred metres away. Soon after they went out, and Klapka hastened to show him which was the colonel’s hut.

  Naturally the colonel also wanted to hear Bologa’s adventures, so he had to go through them all over again. Nevertheless, half an hour later he returned to Klapka, rather annoyed that he had wasted his time instead of reconnoitring the front and planning his great adventure. How could he cross mountains which he had not even seen as yet?

  Behind the command post he saw that something unusual was going on: a group of Rumanian prisoners, surrounded by dismounted hussars, by divisional officers, and officers from the neighbouring batteries, gunners, etc. Apostol felt his knees give under him, and yet he could not stop himself from drawing near, although the only distinct thought in his mind was that he might not be able to find his horse at once, and get back quickly enough to the village.

  When he drew nearer, Klapka saw him and signed to him with his hand to hurry. In the midst of the gunners there stood a Rumanian officer, dark, with a little black, clipped moustache, bareheaded, his uniform bespattered with mud; farther away, guarded by four armed hussars, stood about seven soldiers, their faces distorted with terror, staring wildly at the group which contained their officer.

  “Bravo, that’s fine, you’ll be able to get us out of this fix!” called out Klapka, pointing to the prisoner second-lieutenant, his face reflecting a feminine curiosity. “Look here, for the last ten minutes we have been trying to understand one another, but it’s no go. That gentleman either doesn’t know or won’t know anything but Rumanian, and there’s no one else here who can interpret.”

  While Apostol Bologa was gazing agitatedly, now at the officer, now at the soldier prisoners, a Hussar lieutenant, pitted with small-pox and with a huge nose, began to relate for at least the tenth time how he had run across the Rumanian patrol behind the lines. They had obviously lost their way through not knowing the ground: it would seem they had intended to slip in amongst the infantry and cavalry which occupied the left wing of the division front. Apostol heard the hussar’s words as in a dream, for his eyes and heart were with the prisoners, reading their thoughts in Rumanian, embracing them and telling them he was one of them and that that very night he would be where they had come from. Then, shivering as with cold, he approached the captive second-lieutenant and said, with the glimmer of a smile in the corner of his thin lips:

  “Now that you are a prisoner you must …”

  The prisoner was not in the least surprised to hear him speak Rumanian. He turned furious eyes on Bologa and stopped him short with a voice full of hatred:

  “You over here behave like savages with your prisoners. A brute of an officer hit me across the loins with a stake because I could not and would not betray my Army and my country! That’s sheer barbarity, that’s what it is …”

  The prisoner’s indignation re-echoed more mightily in Apostol’s heart than it would have done in a microphone. His cheeks flushed and his glance softened. He felt an irresistible longing to get into spiritual touch with the prisoner. He wanted to hold out his hand and raised his arm slightly, hesitatingly, saying, in a voice shaking with emotion:

  “Yes, yes, that’s quite true, quite true—I am also a Rumanian.”

  “If you were a real Rumanian you would not shoot your brothers,” answered the young officer quickly, with such contempt that his whole face was changed by it. “Your place, sir, would be on the other side, not here. But Rumanians such as you …”

  Bologa turned white. His arm stiffened and his fists clenched. The whole world seemed to be rolling down madly into an abyss. The thought of hurling himself at the lieutenant and dragging the contempt out of his heart shot through his mind. But simultaneously he realized that the prisoner would make him the laughing-stock of the officers. Bewildered, he turned his back on the Rumanian and looked at the others with a wavering smile, now expecting them to save him from this awful situation. Captain Klapka’s voice ended his torture with a question burning with curiosity:

  “What does he say? What’s
he say?”

  “Nothing; he won’t speak,” muttered Apostol, relieved, as if he had awakened from a nightmare. After a moment or two he added, with a horrified glance towards the prisoner, who, still muttering indignantly, had turned his head away: “I’ve … I’ve done my duty and I’ve tried to …”

  The prisoners were escorted farther on to another command, and the group of onlookers melted away in a few minutes. Klapka waited, somewhat embarrassed, feeling that Bologa wanted to say something to him.

  “Do you know what the prisoner said to me?” suddenly burst out Apostol, his face set grimly. “He insulted me and treated me with contempt, captain, do you hear? He spat on me! You see now that I must go at once, that I haven’t another minute to lose … that to-night … Oh, how kindly I felt towards him, and how he humiliated me!”

  Klapka was staring at him and understood that he expected an answer, or at least some word of consolation, but he was afraid to speak. Bologa stood waiting with eyes staring into the captain’s silence, then he whispered:

  “Good-bye!”

  Klapka’s orderly brought his horse, and Apostol mounted and rode off without looking round again.

  “Au revoir, Bologa!” the captain called after him.

  To Apostol it seemed as if Klapka were mocking him. He touched the horse with the spurs. He must get back to the village as quickly as possible, to make his preparations and be done with it. In his soul writhed a hell with tongues of fire so consuming that every moment they threatened to exhaust all the sources of his will. He again felt that he was running along the brink of the abyss, and the temptation to go over was lying in wait for him in a cloud of fog, in which the mind could no longer make any decision.… So he must hurry … hurry …

  Half-way home he remembered that he had come to reconnoitre the front and to choose his route, and all he had done was to lose his time. He half thought of returning, then he said to himself that the plan with the positions would be sufficient guide and would show him the unoccupied places, which was what he needed to know. He could get as far as the first lines, and after that he’d trust to luck.