A voice: “It’s the ensign!”
“How did you make it out of that hell alive?”
Two of them take my arms and hold me up. A hefty young lieutenant hurries towards me. He grasps my shoulders and stares at me in disbelief.
“Incredible! Is it really you? Come, sit down. We’ve reported you lost. The battalion pulled back at midday. I can’t believe you’re here!”
He lays me down on a mossy bank beside the path.
“I’d like some water.”
Several men reach their flasks out to me at once. I drink voraciously. As I come to my senses, I taste pálinka, but I keep swallowing automatically.
“You need to lie down. Rest, get your strength back. Come with me, I’ll take you to a good, deep hole, where you’ll be safe.”
The beefy red-haired lieutenant is from one of our companies. I’ve had relatively little to do with him. He’s from Debrecen and, with his purebred Magyar air of bravado, I had him down as a braggart. But now he takes me under his wing with genuine, warm-hearted comradeship. He leads me to a kind of broad pit, deep as a man is tall, beside a solitary little cottage. It even has a cover made from tree branches. We climb down a little ladder to get in. He puts some straw under me.
“Now then, lie yourself down here, put your knapsack under your head. Here’s a bit of bread and sausage for you. You eat that, get your strength back a bit.”
I fall asleep with the food still in my mouth, though it isn’t proper sleep. I can hear everything, yet I’m helpless, and through it all I am shaking continuously. It starts in my back and spreads to my arms and legs. I speak only once, to say I am very cold. He doesn’t answer: he’s sleeping like a corpse. Then I sink into oblivion, although I can still feel the shaking, but as if it were racking someone else’s body.
A hand is shaking my shoulder gently but persistently. I stagger to my feet, swaying as I put on my knapsack. We climb out of the pit and set off to find the others. The shelling has started up again, but not with the ferocity of the previous day. Whether because we have got used to it, or because we feel safe under the forest’s cover, we ignore it.
“Yesterday was dreadful. Out of your company, Földes was killed, Osztermann is missing, Kovács was shot in the knee—if he lives, he’ll be crippled for life. Kármán, in Third Company, had half his thigh shot away. Your company commander had a heart attack; they had to carry him off. Your lot were in the worst spot. The heaviest of the fighting between Lemberg and Rava Ruska was at Magierov-Dobrosin.[12] They’ve broken through the front. The whole Army is retreating towards the Carpathians.”[13]
Our task is to cover the retreat of the Third Army. What an honor.
“Are you all right? You’ve gone a funny color. Like pickled cucumber.”
“I don’t know, but I feel so weak, I’ll collapse any moment. I think it may be my heart.”
He grabs my wrist.
“Stop, will you! I can’t feel your pulse. You need to report sick as soon as we get back.”
We find the rest of the unit soon after. I hear a voice behind me.
“Ensign, sir! I’ve got your sword.”
It’s Jóska, grinning broadly. I am glad to see his healthy young face, and I clap him happily on the shoulder. I strap the sword on: this should really scare the Russians.
We report to Gyenes, the battalion commander. He eyes me suspiciously. He and two others are all the regular officers left. He addresses us curtly.
“We’ve incurred losses.[14] New units need to be formed from the remaining men and NCOs. There’s an officer shortage. Senior NCOs will take over command of some units.”
Under the direction of the adjutant, the men form up in twos; facing them, the NCOs. A small group of the remaining officers stand to one side. I lie down. One of the reserve lieutenants comes over.
“What’s the matter with you? You look dreadful. You’re not doing anything: a sudden movement could finish you.”
At that moment, six shrapnel shells howl overhead. The line of NCOs takes a direct hit. A row of three topple over lifelessly, like logs. A fourth has had his whole head torn off. He stays upright for a few moments, like an enormous jar of tomato paste, then keels over. I look around and see that I am practically alone; everyone has run into the thick of the forest.
The whole thing has happened in a small clearing in dense forest. How they can target us with such accuracy is a mystery. The only conceivable explanation would be some sort of signal—smoke, perhaps—from a forward observer.
The officers trickle back slowly, Gyenes first. The battalion’s medical officer, Győri, appears from behind a tree and takes a quick look at the dead. One of them is lying with his head towards me. The top of his skull is gone and the grayish-yellow brains are showing. Győri draws down the corners of his mouth and spreads his hands: nothing to be done.
I go over to Gyenes. I give a soldierly report: I feel very unwell, do I have his permission to report to the aid post? He looks me up and down.
“There’s no need to be so afraid.”
I draw myself up as best I can, but my voice is weak and querulous. “I’m not afraid. I did not withdraw yesterday. I held on, without food or water.”
“All right. That avenue of trees there leads to the castle. There’s an aid post there.”
I trudge slowly off. I must have gone about three hundred paces when I hear the howling of shrapnel directly above me. They’re shelling individuals now. With the last of my strength, I flop down by the thick trunk of a chestnut tree beside the drive.
The next instant it feels as though the earth has collided with another planet, and I am caught between the two.
There is a silence so deep that I think I have gone deaf.
As I come to, there is blood running from around my eyes and from my nose, into my lap.
After a few minutes, someone tries to lift me from the ground. It is Csambalik. There is a look of horror on his face.
“Sir, we have to leave. They’re shelling the drive.”
He picks up my cap. It is shot through. I try to explain that I am hurt, but only a meaningless stammering comes from my lips.
The strong, stalwart fellow half supports and half drags me away, my legs collapsing under me.
The aid post resembles a butcher’s shambles. Screaming wretches are being operated on, out in the open, on tables. They sit me down, and a doctor inspects my head wound.
“You’re lucky. One centimeter closer to your ear, and that would have been it.”
Hastily, they bandage me up and wipe the blood from my face. Someone lifts me up, though I still weigh seventy kilos. It’s Jóska. He carries me up the steps of a fabulously beautiful staircase and into a magnificent chamber, where he lays me down on the silk covers of a bed guarded by gilded griffins—muddy, filthy, and bloody as I am. A second later, I am unconscious, either having passed out, or simply fallen asleep.
How long I remain like this, I don’t know; although, at some level below my suspended self-awareness, I can hear, over and over, a rushing sound. Eventually, I come to recognize the sound for what it is: shelling. It no longer troubles me. I go on lying there, sunk in utter lethargy, until Jóska appears and puts an end to my calm.
“Sir! Sir! I’ll help you get up. We have to evacuate the castle.[15] The Russians are coming.”
Complete indifference has overcome me, a wonderful feeling of equanimity. Apart from a dull ache in my head, I feel nothing. Even the unpleasant sensation I felt at my heart yesterday has gone. Why won’t they just let me lie here?
Jóska stands beside me stiffly, but with visible impatience.
“I’ll bring half a mess tin of coffee. They’re handing it out at the moment, but they’re in a hurry now, they’re packing up. You’re going to be put onto a cart, sir. They’re putting the non-walking wounded onto peasant carts. Please get up quickly, sir!”
Quickly! My face twists into a smile. The patches of dried blood at the roots of my stubbly beard tug oddl
y at my face and neck. I try to raise myself up on my elbows and then to slide myself off the edge of the canopied bed. I get to my feet, but my right knee gives way under me in an odd way. I just manage to grab hold of one of the griffins to save myself from falling over. With difficulty, I stand up, but I keep getting this strange sensation that my right leg belongs to someone else.
Jóska comes back with black coffee. I sit on the edge of the bed and drink about a quarter of a liter of it. I tell Jóska that my leg doesn’t feel right. He moves to my right side and holds me up.
“They’re saying that sir needs to hurry up, because they won’t wait. They can’t send an orderly, as they’re being used to load the wounded onto the cart.”
I can’t resist the temptation to gaze around the sumptuous two-story staircase, and the upper gallery with its ancestral portraits, spanning centuries, in baroque gilt frames. We finally shuffle our way down to the bottom of the semicircle of marble steps. Downstairs there is a wonderful marble fireplace, tapestries on the walls, and paintings: huge Dutch still lifes with hares and pheasants. I may be the last person to see all this, if war lays waste to it.
I am put up onto a long, narrow peasant cart. I sit down in the bed of the cart. Leaning my back against its side, I gaze in wonder at the castle’s fine façade. They load up the wounded, groaning and crying out, one after the other, until the cart is full.
“Giddyup!” calls the orderly.
7. BACK TO LIFE
THE CART set off, creaking under its unaccustomed load. Two shaggy-haired ponies strained against harnesses of twine; the sorry pair looked like two large mice. How could they cope with this load in soft sand? It was painful just to look at them. The Ruthene pummeled them, but they seemed not to feel a thing. Perhaps their thick coats absorbed the blows.
We left behind the castle’s outbuildings, the farmyard, the stables, the strawyard, until we were ambling along a track that ran among fields, some freshly ploughed, some planted with horse beans. At every lurch, a jolt of pain shot through my head, and the rest of the wounded groaned. One of them lay beside me, curled up into a ball. I could see no dressing on him. He had been shot in the stomach. Beside me sat a man supporting a broken arm with his other hand to lessen the jarring.
Jóska walked beside the cart with my sword slung from his shoulder. My knapsack was lost, with all my underwear, razor, and soap, among other things, as well as my money. Truly, no more worries or sorrows now, since I have nothing!
They would certainly be evacuating the field hospitals, and hopefully transferring us to regimental headquarters. Or—best of all—to a Budapest garrison hospital.
It dawned on me now that I was alive, and thinking about the future.
“Where are you taking us now?” I asked the orderly, who was ambling along beside me.
“We’re taking the shortest route to Lubaczow.[1] With any luck, we’ll catch the last train for the wounded, which leaves from there. It’s another fifteen kilometers, at least; three or four hours, if all goes well. That’s if these little nags”—he nodded towards the horses—“last out till then. Though they do say they’re tough. We’ll probably have to unload the walking wounded, or we’ll get stuck in this.”
I looked out over the deserted landscape, and a feeling of calm came over me. The rhythmical creaking of the wheel, as it wobbled from side to side, meant life. Step by step, it was rolling me towards life.
The cart’s cargo had gone quiet. The soldier with the stomach wound lay completely silent. A fly walked across his face and rubbed its hind legs together. It flew off, then landed again. Crows picked over the ploughed fields, as they did at home. I felt my eyes closing.
I woke suddenly: we had stopped. The orderly was talking to a Ruthene.
“Does anyone here speak Slovak?”[2] I asked.
Jóska volunteered. “He says there are Cossacks moving in the woods over to the left there.”
“That’s all we need. What are we going to do now? We can’t turn back.”
“We’ll have to take our chances. It might just be a false rumor.”
“Let’s keep going. Anyone who can walk should get off. They can hold on to side of the cart if they need to.”
Four or five of us resigned ourselves and climbed down, including my neighbor with the broken arm.
The orderly peered intently at the face of the man with the stomach wound. He called Jóska over. “Come on, help me get him down!” They pulled the poor fellow off the cart somehow. His curled-up body had stiffened, and they tried to straighten it out, pressing down on his knees. Then they laid him down, face up, by the side of the track, and scattered a little earth over him. As an afterthought, the orderly removed his dog tags. All this was done hastily: we must hurry. We set off again.
I realized that I was running a temperature. My face was burning and my throat was parched.
We approached a wretched little village. The Ruthene had come with us and he was chattering away. No one understood what he said, but that didn’t seem to bother him.
“What’s he on about?” I asked Jóska.
“Ah! That soldiers have taken everything they had. He’s asking for all sorts of things. Cigarettes. I’ve stopped paying any attention.”
My entire wealth consisted of five cigarettes. I handed one to him. He showed his gratitude.
“Vodu! Vodu!” He resumed his chatter.
Jóska translated. “He says we shouldn’t drink anything here. This is a Jewish village.”[3] I’d never heard anything like this before. “They don’t have anything. And anything they have, they’ve hidden.”
We had entered a poverty-stricken village of a few mean little houses. The streets were deserted; the inhabitants had retreated indoors, out of sight, from where they stole the occasional curious glance in our direction. One solitary Jew, wearing a kaftan, had summoned up the courage to stand at the roadside, holding out a wine glass filled with a yellowish liquid. I took it to be lemonade. I beckoned to him. Eagerly, he ran up to the cart.
“Limonade?”
“Ja, ja, sehr fein.”
He reached it out to me with a skinny hand. I took it gratefully and, without much analysis of the fluid’s composition, gulped it down in one go. It felt good. Whatever it was, it was liquid.
“Ich danke,” I said, handing back the glass. He stared at me with an expression of surprise and disappointment. Suddenly it dawned on me: his motivation wasn’t compassion towards the wounded. He wanted paying.
Rage filled me. Damned bloodsucker! He has the gall to screw money out of a poor wounded soldier who has escaped death by a hair and lost everything he had. I shouted at him: “Off with you! I have nothing!”
He jumped back in mortal fear and ran off, side-locks flapping madly, to one of the little huts. I had to smile: here was someone I could scare even in my sorry state. I had no idea I could still have such an effect.
Leaving the little village in its hollow, we slowly climbed to the top of the rise. In the far distance, back in the direction from which we had come, smoke rose in tumbling, swelling clouds, spreading out in a layer that blanketed the forests and fields; occasional billows pushed further up before they, too, dissolved and dispersed.
“The castle’s burning,” said the orderly, who was pushing the cart beside me.
The end of the baronial castle of the princes of Horyniec, of the art treasures and vast wealth, of the gallery of ancestral portraits and of the canopied, silk-draped Empire bed. Sic transit.
We had to push the cart, as by now the two poor beasts could scarcely keep it moving. I took out a cigarette and hunted for matches. Reaching into my trouser pocket, I discovered my trusty companion, sharer of my fate, the comrade that connected me to my former life: my watch. I was so filled with joy that I could kiss it. I had something, after all. Not just an object, but a true and staunch friend. I held it in my left hand and marveled at it as it measured off the seconds. It was actually running. I had no idea when I had last wound it.
<
br /> The orderly clicked his lighter, made from a Mannlicher cartridge case. “Sir!” I turned towards him and held out the cigarette with my right hand.
The Burning of the World Page 8