Forest of the Hanged

by Rebreanu, Liviu;

  While the telephone officer bellowed into the apparatus the adjutant stopped his grumbling all at once, and laying his hand on Varga’s arm muttered in a different tone, almost astonished:

  “One can see he’s been through barbed wire. His clothes are torn.… He may be injured?”

  Varga glanced quickly at Bologa, knitting his brows; then with a shrug he said:

  “He may.”

  At that minute Apostol, as if he had felt their eyes on him, raised his own and looked at them. Varga turned his head away and crossed over to the telephone officer.

  “I am dead-beat,” muttered Apostol in a strange, cracked voice, meeting the adjutant’s eyes. “My legs cannot support me any longer. May I sit down over there for a little while?”

  “Yes, yes; why not? Do!” stammered the adjutant, as if startled by his voice. Then he added in a firmer tone, addressing the soldiers on guard: “Just shove that man’s feet on one side!”

  “Sir, here is the division, the division is at the other end!” shouted the telephone officer, getting up and taking off the ear-phones.

  Apostol Bologa, exhausted, sank down on the corner of the bed. His soul was full of gratitude, and his dry lips mumbled unconsciously:

  “Thank you … very good …”

  After a moment he felt better, and began to look round and to ask himself perplexedly: “What am I doing here?” He saw the adjutant standing at the telephone, and Varga next to him bending forward slightly from the waist, listening. Then he heard the adjutant speaking and listened carefully:

  “A patrol—in charge of an officer—of course—has caught an artillery lieutenant who was trying to desert to the enemy. What was that? What’s his name? Lieutenant Varga in command of Squadron III.… Oh, the prisoner? What’s the prisoner’s name, Varga?”

  “Bologa, Apostol,” whispered Varga.

  “Lieutenant Bologa, Apostol—Bo-lo-ga, of the Artillery.… I don’t know—yes, yes, of course.… Now what are we to do with him?—with the prisoner, I mean, of course.… What a question! … Naturally we must send him to you, but I want to know what we are to do now, now? … What? We are to send him along now? In the middle of the night? … Oh, yes! I see.… All right, all right, I understand. Varga is to write out a report explaining the circumstances in which he caught him, and to make a sketch of the place? That’s it, isn’t it? Naturally the report is to be handed to us and then we are to hand it on to you … Very well! … I beg your pardon? … Search? … Documents? … I don’t know. Varga will do all that is necessary. All right, all right.… Good night!”

  Handing the receiver to the telephone officer, the adjutant explained to Varga:

  “You heard? I repeated on purpose so that you should hear. You are to have him searched in case he has documents or arms, or goodness knows what.… So you’d better sit down over there and write out your report! But make it short, without rigmaroles! I shan’t wait because I feel absolutely dead.… The telephone officer will give me the report tomorrow morning to send on in the proper form. The prisoner remains here under the guard of your men, and you are responsible for him.”

  “As soon as I have finished my report I take no further responsibility,” answered Varga shortly. “At most I can leave you my two men, but only until the morning, and only on the condition that you don’t send them off somewhere on some errand or other.”

  “Oh, very well, I’ll take the responsibility. You all run away from responsibility,” grumbled the adjutant; then, looking at the prisoner, resumed: “He doesn’t look as if he were likely to run away.… And, anyhow, where could he run to?”

  Apostol smiled gratefully and wanted to tell him not to worry, for now it was all over. But the adjutant buttoned up the collar of his coat, saying again grumblingly:

  “You woke me up for …You soulless creature! … Well, good night everybody!”

  Lieutenant Varga was filled with a vague embarrassment. He felt he ought to ask the prisoner a few questions, to find out what had been his intentions. It even flashed across his mind that perhaps the man had not even intended to desert, but had lost his way, not knowing the ground. Otherwise why should he just choose to go through his own sector, more especially as he had once threatened him? He went to the table, cleared a space, got writing materials out, still wavering. Then suddenly he turned and said to Bologa, irritably and harshly:

  “Turn out everything you have in your pockets!”

  Apostol, with the remainder of the smile of a little while ago still on his face, got up and emptied his pockets. A soldier took the contents from him and put them on the table. Varga watched from under his eyebrows. The prisoner’s calm annoyed him. He was on the point of telling the soldier to see if … Then he relieved his anger by muttering an oath under his breath and, sitting down, began to examine every article. When he saw the map with the positions he could no longer restrain himself. He jumped up and, waving it at Bologa, shouted:

  “And what about this?”

  His eyes flashed with contempt, hate, and triumph. Then he wrote out the report and made a sketch calmly, with easy conscience, while Apostol, sitting on the edge of the plank-bed, racked his brain in vain trying to guess what the sheet of paper which Varga had brandished at him could possibly be.

  After he had wrapped up all the prisoner’s belongings and handed them to the telephone officer Varga ordered the soldiers to be very careful of their prisoner and to take it in turns to watch, and afterwards not to waste their time there. While he talked to the soldiers he was busily doing up the buttons of his coat. He put on his helmet, drew on his lined gloves, and against his will looked at Bologa. He was thinking that he ought to say something to him, a word of reproach or contempt, in order to humiliate him. And instead he said softly:

  “You see, Bologa? Do you remember when I warned you in the train, and after I … I am sorry that … I have done my duty—only my duty, as every man the world over should do, no matter where or in what circumstances.”

  His eyes encountered the other man’s tired and troubled gaze, and his last words faltered with uneasiness. He took a step towards Bologa to put out his hand. But realizing abruptly what he had been on the point of doing, he passed on without another glance in the prisoner’s direction. And on going out he coughed as if he wished to clear out from his heart all traces of emotion.

  Apostol sat on the corner of the plank-bed like a block of stone. Behind him the heavy snoring, like rusty saws at work, began again. One of the soldiers squatted down in the angle by the door with his rifle across his knees, and immediately fell asleep. The other stood first on one leg and then on the other, his eyes fixed immovably on the nail from which the lamp hung. The telephone officer looked round frequently, burning to know more, but not daring to ask anything.

  The tranquillity and light flowed into Apostol’s soul as into an empty vessel. Fatigue had killed all his thoughts. He lifted his left hand to take off his helmet and heard a ticking sound. He caught sight of the watch on his wrist and murmured, pleased:

  “Fancy, my watch is still …”

  He looked at the white face.

  “It is only one o’clock.… Only … which means it is seven hours since … seven … seven.”

  He forgot entirely what he had wanted to say. His arm fell limply on his knee. Then his lids closed, and his head, terribly heavy, sank on his chest.

  II

  At half-past six Apostol Bologa, escorted by four soldiers, in charge of a second-lieutenant, started for the headquarters of the division.

  “If we could only come across a cart of some sort, perhaps round by the artillery, it would be a good thing,” said the second-lieutenant with a backward glance as soon as they were on their way. “We’d get along more quickly and we would not tire ourselves out!”

  And indeed, quite near Klapka’s dug-out, they saw several carts ready to start, and the second-lieutenant immediately began to argue with a sergeant and to point out to him why it was imperative for him to gi
ve up one of his carts to them as far as Faget. The sergeant had belonged to Bologa’s battery, and seeing his former commander between bayonets, lost his head, and could not follow a single word of the second-lieutenant’s explanations, and kept on muttering:

  “Please, with all submission, we … orders please—with all submission …”

  The second-lieutenant lost his temper and began swearing and raving at him, saying he could not imagine that there existed a sergeant so stupid that he could not understand such a … At that point Captain Klapka approached the group, a sheet of paper in his hand. When he recognized Bologa he stood transfixed. The second-lieutenant hastened to get first innings and told the captain what a perfect idiot the sergeant was, and asked if he might have a cart, telling him what he knew about the prisoner. Klapka stood there a few moments, apparently listening to the lieutenant’s prattle but not hearing a single word. His arms and legs shook as he stood there staring at Apostol with horror in his eyes.

  Then, cutting short with a gesture the young officer’s tale, he went quickly up to Bologa and said, his face distorted with fear:

  “So you tried all the same? Ah me! My foreboding was only too true! I dreamt of you again last night.”

  Apostol looked at the ground and shrugged his shoulders. The captain stood wringing his hands and mumbling all sorts of disconnected words, words of pity and horror, waiting in between, as if he expected Bologa to answer him. Suddenly he remembered that this man was under arrest for a terrible crime and that by standing there talking to him he risked being compromised, as had happened to him once before. He wanted to go away, but he could not.

  “I’m going to defend you, Bologa!” he murmured with a sudden resolve in which all his fears melted away. “I want to save you! Do you hear? You must be saved!”

  Bologa shuddered and looked at Klapka incredulously with a curious interest, as if he were seeing him now for the first time in his life.

  “Yes, yes … of course,” he whispered with a voice like a long-drawn-out sigh.

  “You poor unfortunate!” said the captain, again shaking his head, and then added: “Courage, courage, Bologa!”

  And he walked away quickly towards the command post without another backward glance.

  The cart arrived quickly, and at first they had to keep at a walk, for the descents were stiff and the slopes many. The second-lieutenant, very talkative, tried to converse with Bologa “to pass the time and forget our troubles”. He told him he was a Transylvanian Saxon, son of a peasant from a village near Brasov, half Rumanian and half Saxon. He would have been fairly well off had not his father married three times and had a child by each wife, so that now everything would have to be divided into three when the old man died. His two half-brothers, older than he, had stuck to the plough. Now, of course, they were also fighting, but both were alive. He himself had liked study, and he was a graduate of the Commercial Academy in Vienna. He had had a job as accountant kept for him in a bank in Sibiu. He had barely started there when the war broke out and his career was ruined. If only there were something “doing” in the Army! A military career would not be so bad either. Having finished his biography, he tried to find out how and when Bologa had been caught, and why he had been trying to desert. Because Apostol was not very communicative the second-lieutenant began to tell him of various “cases of desertion”.

  “In fact, in our own regiment we had one, not very long ago, about four months ago, a standard-bearer of Polish origin—a good fellow. God knows what came over him; anyway, they caught him and he confessed honourably: ‘Yes, I wanted to desert.’ And all the same he was just shot! You see? Because simple desertion is punished by shooting, that is to say it is a quasi-honourable death—a military death. At bottom there is no difference between the bullets of the execution platoon and the enemy’s bullets, except as regards calibre and quality, is there? Of course, when desertion is complicated by treason or some other capital crime, then the halter comes into play, and that without hope of escape. In such a case no court martial even debates the question, for the code is explicit: the halter! I know of a case in point—it was when I was with the IIth Division in Russia—a typical case, I might say …”

  The road was level now, and the driver whipped up his horses. The cart began to rattle and jolt so much that the second-lieutenant in the excitement of telling his tale bit his tongue badly. His face turned crimson with the pain, and he cursed under his breath. He tried to continue his tale, but the jolts maimed his words, and he was forced to keep silent. At last, fearing that his tongue was bleeding, he began to spit out towards the river which flowed on the right side of the road, exactly as the soldiers spat when they had a chance of a peaceful smoke.

  The noise of the wheels and the jolts of the cart cleared Apostol’s mind.

  “To-day at nine I was to condemn again. Now others will be condemning me!” he thought without fear, with almost a thrill of pleasure; and then: “I wonder who’ll be taking my place?”

  He tried to answer this, and thought of the various officers quartered there and of their rank, and of all sorts of unimportant things in connection with them. Then he forgot why he was worrying about the officers and remembered Ilona, and then the hanged men in the wood along the highroad. With a rather vague, not quite conscious, tinge of regret he thought: “We shall not be going past their houses now, and I don’t expect I’ll ever see Ilona again, but we have to pass the hanged men, and I’ll never be free of them!”

  The sun shone hotly from behind. The forests on the mountains quivered under the caresses of the rays. Along the stony road the little stream, with silver glintings, ran noisily down into the valley like a turbulent child. From the jolting cart the fixed bayonets rose threateningly towards the heavens.

  Near the bridge over the river, when they turned into the main road, Apostol looked towards the right, trying to catch a glimpse of Ilona’s house, but Lunca was hidden behind a hill.

  And soon they approached the wood with the hanging men. Apostol did not want to look at it again. He bent his head low, and through a space between two of the planks forming the floor of the cart he watched the highroad running away under them. As soon as the tired horses reached the shade they slowed down until they were going at a walking pace. When the second-lieutenant saw the hanging bodies he could not hide his amazement, and even a certain delight, as if he had discovered some great novelty.

  “Just look, just look! How interesting!” he shouted, looking attentively now to the right, now to the left. “Keep them at a walk, lad, so that we should see better, for it really is very interesting. We at the front live as under the earth; we have no idea what’s going on in the world. They must all be spies, surely. Yes, spies of course, and traitors. Just fancy! Let’s see how many are there? Wait a minute … three … seven. Bravo! Our general is going it! Well, well! There’s no bunkum about him!”

  He laughed noisily and widely, and turned to Bologa to ask what he thought about it, forgetting that he was under arrest. But seeing him with head bent low, his long, thin, white neck showing, he suddenly remembered, checked his mirth abruptly, and filled with shame shouted violently to the driver:

  “Let them go, you fool! Do you want us to dawdle along here till noon? Or is it that you’ve never seen any hanged men before? You fool, you!”

  Apostol, his eyes fixed on the floor of the cart, saw, through the space between the planks, lying on the highroad which was running away from under them, a crooked, dry twig, in shape exactly like the branch on that tree on the left on which one man only had been hanged. A sudden strange fear ran through him, and, as if he were uttering a prayer, he began to mutter, moving his lips:

  “O Lord, O God …”

  By repeating these words with feverish hope, confidence re-entered his soul, and he said to himself, raising his head towards the sunny blue of the heavens:

  “Why should I die? I don’t want to die! Life is beautiful.… Life!”

  Now he felt an urgent nee
d to talk, to come to life again, to show that he was alive. He looked at the dumb second-lieutenant, and said with smiling eyes and tense voice, as if he were announcing some incredible news:

  “The weather is beautiful, isn’t it? The whole world is always beautiful—the whole world.”

  The second-lieutenant kept silence, confused. Apostol took hold of his arm and went on hurriedly, afraid lest he might forget what he wanted to say:

  “You were talking just now of various cases of desertion.… Well, comrade, you are still young and … Do you know that to-day at nine I was supposed to sit on the court martial?—to judge, of course … Does that not sound absurd now? I sat once before on a court martial—a very interesting case. A Czech second-lieutenant, a man called Svoboda. Do you understand? Svoboda … Czech … hanged!”

  The cart jolted so terribly that Apostol’s thoughts became muddled. He knew this, and yet persisted obstinately in continuing to tell the second-lieutenant about his “case”, and to explain to him that his intention … The jolting became even worse, and Apostol began to feel unhappy because they would be reaching Faget before he would have time to explain things clearly, so that the second-lieutenant should understand the exact state of affairs, just as if the latter had been a judge on whom his fate depended.

  III

  Almost on the same spot where he had stood in talk last night with the prosecutor and the burgomaster, Apostol Bologa, now in the midst of four soldiers with fixed bayonets, waited for the return of the second-lieutenant, who had gone to announce the arrival of the prisoner. At the back of the courtyard the same two cars and motor-cycles, outside the barn with the prisoners stood what looked like the same sentinel, in the corridor and before the door on the left the same crowd of soldiers. And the trees in flower behind the outhouses, and the well with its sweep in the middle of the courtyard. Only the sun shone more brightly, and the people in the courtyard, at the windows, and even in the street, stopped to stare at the officer with dirty, torn clothes, with face haggard from fatigue and excitement, who stood between the bayonets.