The setting sun shone full on the window which looked out on the garden. A band of gold quivered slantingly across the table and on the yellow floor right up to the door, separating Ilona from Apostol like an enchanted bridge. The happiness in his heart hurt him, and just one thought filled his brain: if Ilona only knew what she was saying she would feel ashamed and would run away. He stood up in order to beg her not to leave him, although the girl was still speaking with those strange flashes in her eyes. The pool of light between them laughed and seemed to mirror its laughter in Ilona’s cheeks. Then Apostol forgot why he had got up and wondered how to go across to her without disturbing the patch of sunshine. While he wondered he found himself right in the track of the rays and stopped, disconcerted, for the girl was also coming towards him, as if pushed forward by some secret force. Her lips were still moving, but he no longer heard her voice. He whispered hoarsely:
“Thank you, Ilona … for …”
He looked into her eyes and he could see himself as in a mirror. He raised his arm a little as if to take her hand and suddenly caught her round the waist. The girl relaxed in his arms with a weak protest:
“My goodness! You … you really should not …”
Their burning lips met and clung together for some minutes with furious passion. Then Ilona came to her senses, slithered out of his arms and straightened the kerchief on her head with one and the same movement, and disappeared through the door.
Simultaneously the magic of the room seemed to vanish like a dream. Apostol looked round apprehensively. He felt suddenly as if he were in a strange house. The strip of sunlight was still there, but now the melancholy of twilight was in its tremulous gleams. Then the whole room seemed to fill with his thoughts, as if they were a flight of birds escaped from a cage.
“What’s the meaning of all these ridiculous romantics of a schoolboy in love?” he said to himself with a disgust which he knew very well was not genuine, but which he hoped nevertheless would help to quieten the regret which was piling up in his heart. “Such a fuss, such excitement, for …”
And at the same time, in another part of his brain, surged the tantalizing question: “Where has Ilona gone?”
He ran his hands through his brown hair as if he were trying to calm his thoughts. Then he approached the window on the left to distract himself by looking out. The courtyard was surrounded by a paling, and in the garden over the road the white trees in bloom brightened the gathering twilight. Near the gate, leaning against the fence, was an infantry soldier, very dirty and ragged, with his helmet pushed back on his neck, his face hairy like that of an ape. He was talking gently and happily to someone who was in the lobby and he was constantly showing his white, glinting teeth. Apostol’s eyes tried to ignore him, but his heart asked: “To whom is the fellow talking?” He felt sure he was gossiping with Ilona, and at the thought his face unconsciously contracted with pain. The soldier caught sight of him at the window and immediately his laughter stopped and the white teeth were hidden behind a look of nervous gravity. He sprang to attention, pulled up his helmet, saluted and then slowly, keeping the comer of his eye on the dangerous window, he shuffled farther along in the courtyard until he was out of the lieutenant’s sight.
“What does it matter to me with whom that lout was talking, even if it was with her!” said Bologa in answer to the question which still filled his mind. “I’ll become the laughing-stock of the place if I start doing that sort of thing,” he added irritably, and sat down again on the little chest where he had been sitting just now when Ilona had been in the room.
He tried to think of something else, but he felt he couldn’t. In his heart he heard a clear voice say: “I love Ilona.” Then he gave in to that voice and his soul grew serene and was filled with a new alluring joy. He gave himself to this joy, shyly and selflessly as a girl gives herself to her first love. The grey twilight filtered in through the window-panes, in between the somnolent geraniums, enveloping him in a net of happiness.
Presently he tore himself away from his dreams, put on his cap and went out. In the lobby doorway the dirty infantryman was still gossiping with an artilleryman, and Bologa, seeing him, was glad. He avoided looking round for Ilona, both in the lobby and in the courtyard. The coolness of the twilight seemed to sober him.
He reached the street but did not turn towards the centre of the village, but in the opposite direction, as if he were running away from a danger. He walked along for some five minutes, then the lane forked abruptly on the banks of the noisy river. In the sky, on the very summit of the hills whose feet bathed in the waters of the river, the white moon rose, cold as an eye from another world. Bologa, as if he had recovered a forgotten treasure, drank in with passion the heavenly light.
II
Next day Apostol Bologa took charge again, and remembering the regulations, rang up the adjutant of the regiment and informed him that he had arrived in Lunca yesterday afternoon in consequence of the telegraphic orders received.
“There will be no need for me to report in person now, will there, because the work has accumulated over here?” concluded Apostol, and he was just about to hang up the receiver when he remembered something, and added in a slightly reproachful tone: “I say, I was forgetting. Just a minute! Tell me, old chap, why have you people chewed three days off my leave? Don’t you think I might be told the reason?”
“I’ve no idea,” answered the adjutant hastily. “Ask at headquarters if you want to know.”
Bologa winced. In his mind he relived the moment when he had shown his mother the contents of the telegram and she had felt sure that the order to return had been the result of Palagiesu’s denouncement. Why had he gone just then to Palagiesu to apologize, and why had he felt so happy because the notary had held back and made him beg before he had kindly consented to give him his hand? Now he felt slightly ashamed at the thought of his abasement, but still he did not regret it; on the contrary, he felt it had been a decent action, by means of which he had lightened and cleansed his heart. At that time he had not worried about the effect Palagiesu’s denouncement might have, so little had he cared just then about the world, or anything that was outside his own soul. To-day the figure of Palagiesu had abruptly come to the fore. Suppose the notary’s denouncement were really at the back of this? The general’s adjutant was a coward with a pliable back and would probably not tell him anything.… Still it would not hurt to try to pump him; the direct method always proved best in the end.
“His Excellency’s orders—His Excellency’s personal orders. I don’t know the reason,” buzzed General Karg’s adjutant into the phone.
“Then am I to report to His Excellency?” inquired Apostol.
“Why? You do your work and keep quiet! If it is necessary we’ll send for you, you needn’t worry. Just now important events are looming large—very important events! Everyone must be at his post!”
Apostol Bologa smiled derisively as he hung up the receiver, for the adjutant, who had never set foot in a trench, and who would have been capable of betraying any day all the generals in the Army to save himself from the firing-line, had, while he uttered “very important events”, hollowed his voice like a coffee-house hero.
Presently Apostol found himself studying intently the new plan of the front which had arrived during his absence and gave the exact positions. This was no approximate and out-of-date sketch, but an accurate map on which the position of each and all units, even the most insignificant ones, could be seen at a glance. So to-day he could get his bearings far better than that other time. Then he had been so excited, so nervous owing to his determination to cross over without fail. Or perhaps his excitement had been due to his sickness—or, who knew? it might have been caused by a cowardly fear that each moment would weaken his confidence in his own will and destroy his conviction that what he intended to do was right. He followed with his pencil the road that had taken him to Captain Klapka’s dug-out. Yes, but from there the infantry line was a goodish step; he saw
that now, and yet when he had been on the spot it had seemed to him so near! Of course that was because he had forgotten the winding roads which led to the front lines. If one kept to the main road one came upon the dismounted hussars. And Varga’s squadron—where was that? Ah, there it was—the third one! How curious the front was here—one lot on this ridge, those others on another ridge, and in between nothing—nothing—a thousand metres perfectly empty. He wondered why the line had been fixed that way. Why had not the hussars or the others been moved nearer? “I could have gone that way if I had known.… But suppose I had met Varga? He told me once that he would arrest me and …
“Well, I am wasting my time now anyway, because the Lord alone knows what will happen!” Bologa said suddenly to himself, as if he were feeling uneasy about something unknown.
He looked up. Opposite him at the other table, among the piled-up registers and documents, he saw the sergeant, on whose bent head the dust-covered window at the back shed a light as of old silver. Outside in the courtyard and beyond, right away to the foot of the hills which cut off the view, the stillness and peace was so complete that Bologa’s soul was again filled with hope and confidence. But he regretted that not the tiniest bit of sky came within his view.
Just when his heart was completely at peace Ilona appeared from somewhere in the courtyard, her face red and tired and her eyes flashing with anger. And as if he had fallen from a dizzy height, Apostol felt all the peace and content ooze out of his soul and in its stead surged a strange anxiety and an obstinate desire. He felt he wanted to leap out of his chair, run to Ilona, take her into his arms and keep her at his side for ever. He had not see her at all since she had run out of his arms and out of his room. Where had she been since, and why had she not come to him?
Nevertheless, he remained at his desk and lowered his eyes again on to the map. On his lips he felt again the scorching touch of last night’s kiss. In his soul remnants of the peace of a moment ago still lingered, but in his brain stormy thoughts and doubts seethed. He vaguely felt that between God and his love there yawned an abyss, and he could not understand the purpose of this abyss. If God was love, why was not, then, Ilona comprised in Him?
III
In the afternoon Apostol Bologa went off to the General Ammunition Depot to have a talk with the commander, who lived beyond the railway station in a tumble-down hut so as to be near the depot, which had been excavated in the side of a hill. There he ran into Lieutenant Gross.
“What are you doing here, old fellow?” asked Apostol, crossing himself1 and pressing his hand warmly.
“I have been working here with a small detachment for the last four days,” answered the sapper, also delighted to meet him.
The commander was out and Bologa decided to wait for him, especially as Gross was there to keep him company. After a few questions and answers the lieutenant said all at once:
“Don’t think, Bologa, that I have forgotten that reproach of yours—you remember, in the general’s courtyard at Zirin!”
“What reproach?” asked Apostol, puzzled.
“What! You don’t remember?” continued Gross almost mockingly. “Oh, well, of course, at that time all you could think of and fear was the Rumanian front, so perhaps you didn’t even realize what you were saying! But I haven’t forgotten, my friend! And look you, that reproach of yours is still stuck here in my soul like a nail! And you were wrong! For seven months I have ruminated over your words and I have been waiting to give you the answer. You practically told me that I was a coward because I said one thing and acted another.”
“Oh yes …” murmured Bologa, ashamed. “Yes … that is to say, not exactly a coward.… In fine, at that time I felt such bitterness in my heart, my dear chap, that …”
“I am a coward and a hypocrite, I acknowledge!” hissed Gross, seemingly infuriated by his comrade’s diffidence. “Because the time hasn’t come yet! But when the time comes I shall be thorough, Bologa, don’t worry! Now I receive the orders, grind my teeth, and execute them. I don’t complain and I pity no one, but I collect the drops of hatred for the day which will come without fail, which is coming nearer! Here frankness in any form meets with bullets. So that my cowardice is a weapon of war and of defence. We must carry on until our sun shall rise, we must carry on and live if we want that sun to rise!”
Bologa was taken aback at the hatred which flamed in the lieutenant’s eyes and said sadly:
“You’ll never be happy, Gross, because your heart is full of hatred!”
“I don’t need happiness—but I need revenge! Happiness is the shield of cowardice, whereas revenge …”
“Is also a form of happiness,” smiled Bologa, interrupting him.
“Of course, if that’s what you mean by happiness,” said Gross angrily. “I suppose when you are thirsty happiness is a glass of water!”
“Happiness is always love,” said Apostol Bologa in a changed voice, looking at him a little reproachfully.
“And love is God,” added Gross, laughing ironically. “Yes, yes, we know all about it! The beginning and the end is God, because we have no idea whence we came or whither we go, so we substitute for the darkness a big, empty word.”
“Once you feel God in your soul you no longer ask to have either the past or the future explained,” Bologa went on quietly. “When you really believe you have risen above life!”
“What’s the matter, Bologa? Have you gone crazy?” abruptly asked the other man, looking at him very seriously.
“No past or future knowledge will ever be able to stifle the voice of God in the soul of man!” continued Apostol with humble fervour. “Everywhere doubts assail one; only in God can one find conciliation without doubts! If God is not in one’s soul one is for ever puzzling over the purpose of life and never can one be certain what is right or what is wrong, for what was right to-day will be wrong tomorrow. The minute that God would abandon man definitely, without hope, the world would become an immense machine without controller, condemned to go on creaking endlessly to no purpose. In such a world life would be such cruel torture that no living creature could endure. It would, indeed, mean the end of the world.”
Gross stared at him, at first with smiling contempt, then with amazement, and, finally, he exclaimed, deeply indignant:
“For thousands of years man has been beating his breast and imploring the bounty of the God of Love, and every year more and more so! Because love is the dowry of the timorous and the helpless. The Christian martyrs died praising rather too loudly that God of Love. The victory of Christianity has been won by meekness, humility, and cowardice, that is why it has installed upon earth the reign of untruth, of hypocrisy, and of unfairness. The God of Love has murdered more men than all the other gods put together!”
“Love has never murdered, Gross,” put in Apostol serenely. “It is only mankind who kills in the name of love. But when the true domination of love will be here …”
“My dear fellow,” interrupted Gross excitedly, “the domination of true love can never come, because it would be an absurdity. Once man became convinced that beyond this, our earthly life, there awaited him after death a new happy life, then yes, in truth, our purpose of life would be at an end. Why should I go on living here if, with the help of a bullet, I can reach in one second the Kingdom of Happiness? He who honestly believes in an after-life and still tarries here is an imbecile, my dear chap!”
“He who really believes is one with God, both here and over there,” answered Bologa. “If God is everywhere there is no need for one to rush to Him by forcing the bolts of death!”
“Yes, yes, that’s how you all talk for the last two thousand years!” muttered the sapper, again contemptuous. “Always love in your mouth and the sword in your hand! Always hypocrisy. But not the occasional and temporal hypocrisy of the fighter, but dogmatized hypocrisy, which has become instinctive and unconscious.”
Walking to and fro in the little narrow room, Gross cast a furtive glance at Bologa now and
again, as if he were wondering whether to unveil to him all his thoughts. Finally, he stopped, his mind made up. His small eyes flashed and his voice had a new, passionate ring and strange inflections.
“Love has gone bankrupt, so has meekness and humbleness. Man now wants to be proud and masterful and selfish, to fight and to overcome his enemies, whoever and wherever they be. That is why we must sweep away the ruins from the soul of man and make ready for the coming of the new God, who asks for neither adoration nor abasement! Until to-day we were ashamed of the hatred in our soul, although hatred is own sister to love. Until to-day we have kept it hidden and squashed as if it were some poor little Cinderella or some remnant of animalism. From to-day onward we ought to give it the place of honour in human life, because men no longer want to die but to live. When you die fighting, death is redeemed, and if you win through fighting, victory is all the sweeter. Frankness, even if it be brutal, must take the place of hypocrisy! Nothing but hatred can destroy the falseness that poisons the world!”
Apostol Bologa, bewildered, almost frightened by the lieutenant’ outburst, stammered:
“Well, Gross, I thought you were a socialist and that …”
“And that under my label there was concealed another kind of hypocrisy?” said Gross, taking the words out of his mouth and speaking in a harsh, unpleasant voice. “The great merit of Socialism in the history of mankind is just that it has the audacity to preach hatred frankly, to divide men into two camps which shall hate one another for ever and aye! While the various forms of Christianity butcher mankind in the name of love, we declare without hypocrisy that we hate those who are in power and those who lie, that we mean to fight against them without mercy until we exterminate them. You others talk of love and God, but only so that behind this shield you may follow more easily other unconfessed aims! You, yourself, are a living example, that is why I have studied you closely ever since I have known you. For me you are an interesting case, Bologa. Don’t get angry, please! You, at the bottom of your heart, are a great Rumanian Chauvinist—now don’t protest, for it is as I say! Circumstances have thrown you into the war as they did others and your Chauvinism has been compelled to put on in turn various masks in order to escape from peril. You became a hero and distinguished yourself by words and deeds until the war or Fate, or the devil, wishing to make sport of you, sent you suddenly to face your Rumanians. I shall never forget your despair when I met you in the general’s courtyard on the Russian front. Your poor Chauvinism was torturing you, was clawing at your heart and searching for something! You would have murdered joyfully a thousand Russians or Italians to save yourself from shooting at your own people. To kill here would seem a crime to you, whereas elsewhere—anywhere else—you wouldn’t mind, or you’d consider it a deed of bravery. And now you have unearthed Love and God, behind which your Chauvinism can go on thriving quietly until a good opportunity will arise for you to run away! And all this in the name of Love, Bologa! Can’t you see that it is … it is horrible? Not your Chauvinism, but the hypocrisy, probably unconscious, in which it hides.”
Forest of the Hanged Page 19