VIII

“Have you heard the news, Petre?” said Apostol the next day to his orderly, who was squatting in a corner, reading with ardour and religious fervour The Dream of the Mother of God. “In a week’s time, or at the most in two weeks’ time, we are going home, to Ardeal.”

“The Lord be praised!” answered the soldier, his face shining with joy, and he began to cross himself. “At last the Lord and the Blessed Mother have granted it! Most of them have had a week now and again, some even more; only we seem to be treated as if we had the plague.”

Bologa’s smile on seeing the man’s joy was almost malignant, and he continued mockingly:

“What! Did you think we were going there to amuse ourselves? Put that out of your mind, my lad! We are going there to fight, to fight the Rumanians.…”

“My God, sir!” exclaimed Petre, starting up. “God forbid that such a thing should happen!” he added, crossing himself several times. “O Lord, protect us and do not abandon us! What sinfulness, sir! And shall not God strike them dead?”

The orderly’s consternation was balm to his wound.

“If a simple man like that revolts, then what must I do?” Bologa said to himself, looking gratefully at Petre. And then immediately came the thought: “Surely, then, the general will also understand?”

Since the night before the thought of the general had pursued him, and he tried continually to strengthen his resolution. He told himself that he had thought it all out carefully, that he had seen all the probabilities and that—Klapka was wrong. Besides, Klapka was a coward who saw executioners and hangmen everywhere. Whereas he, Apostol Bologa, with three proofs of bravery on his breast … Advice had always annoyed him, but now Klapka’s advice infuriated him. Resignation seemed to him a brute-like attitude, unworthy of a man. He felt that to make no attempt to-day would be as great a crime as had been his joining the Army.

The thought that he might have to go there stuck in his mind like an enemy bayonet. He would have to tear it out or life for him would be impossible. The more so because in the light of to-day’s fears the memories of the past besieged him like sinister threats.

His hope in the general of the division dispersed his fears. That also proved Klapka wrong. He made up his mind to go to headquarters and explain the situation to him, to petition him and to assure him most solemnly that he would do his duty anywhere else but there. He wanted to go at once, to get it over more quickly and set his mind at rest. He put up his hand to take down the receiver in order to phone through and ask when the C.O. could see him. At the last minute, however, he refrained. How could he ask the general to transfer him when no one as yet was supposed to know of the intended change? He would be asked how he knew, who had told him. It would be a dirty trick to betray Klapka; it would be …

“Well, I’ll have to wait for the present,” he said to himself, “at least until the news of the proposed change has become known unofficially. I must act with care and dignity!”

He grew calmer. Three days went by. There was no whisper of a rumour that the division was being transferred. Nor did Klapka come again. It seemed as if he dreaded meeting Bologa, who, growing more and more hopeful, had begun to think that perhaps the order had been countermanded. His heart throbbed with a pleasant emotion. And because he felt happy he wrote a long and hopeful letter to his mother, two whole pages of which were devoted to the condemnation of Palagiesu’s action with regard to Protopop Groza. He also wrote a passionate letter to Marta, telling her that his love was as strong as ever, in spite of all his suffering, and that he could hardly wait for the hour when he would be able to take her in his arms.

Another serene day passed. Then the second-lieutenant of the battery told him that he had heard from an infantryman that in four days at latest the whole division was being sent to the Rumanian front. Bologa turned pale, but he asked for particulars. The second-lieutenant then said, further, that the infantry officers had been told the news in confidence three days ago and the advance troops of the exchange division had actually arrived in Zirin.

That night the search-light reappeared in the next sector. Bologa, at the command post, with the telephone receiver at his ear, listened to the indications from the observation post. The guns boomed harshly, hoarsely, the earth shook, and from the roof of the dug-out, from between the heavy beams, thin trickles of sand oozed.

“Suppose someone else puts it out,” he thought with odd regret.

When the booming ceased and he heard that the light had disappeared, Bologa felt pleased. He remembered that Klapka had spoken of a decoration for whoever destroyed the search-light.

“In any case, the lucky man who hits it is sure to be mentioned in dispatches,” he thought, turning his back on the telephone. “I wonder who it will be.”

Within him a voice answered that it must be he. He tried to stifle it, but the voice became commanding. Then there flashed through his mind the thought that if he should have the good luck to destroy the Russian search-light, and if, as a reward, he should be mentioned in dispatches or decorated, how easily and with what good chances of success would he then be able to go to General Karg!

This idea seemed to him so wonderful that he was amazed that it had not occurred to him immediately he had made up his mind to go to the general. All thoughts of sleep left him; he rushed to the map and began to calculate and to mark until daylight with untiring energy and with a sure confidence that his life depended on what he would do in this connection.

He spent the whole day looking through his field-glasses, examining the sector with attention and comparing in his mind the points marked on the map. Towards evening he began to worry in case the search-light, which was to be his means of salvation, should not appear that night. Nevertheless, he was quite prepared to watch for it for a whole week if need be in order to destroy it. If only the order for exchanging did not come before! No, that could not happen; it must appear, it simply must …

That evening at ten o’clock he gave his orders, and made his way to the observation post in the front line. A cold, slow, monotonous rain was falling. Arrows of water, glinting like steel, spurted through the dark sky. The clay, moistened by the autumn rains, clung to the lieutenant’s boots and squelched at each step. The canopy of clouds seemed as if about to fall on the earth, dizzied by the endless darkness. Apostol Bologa, with his steel helmet pulled right over his eyes, wrapped in his fur-lined trench-coat with collar turned up, went forward cautiously, avoiding puddles, his chin sunk on his breast. His heart throbbed so violently that he did not even feel the beating rain.

He knew the way and the ground well. During the last three months, since this front had become fixed, he had covered this ground hundreds of times. He entered the labyrinth of communication trenches, where the water had gathered as in irrigation canals. His high Hessian boots sank up to the ankles in the clayey mud.

He was wet with perspiration by the time he reached the observation post, hidden in the front line of the trenches. He exchanged a few words with the wizened sergeant-major, and then sent him back to the battery.

Bologa felt his way gropingly and perched himself behind the theodolite. He could see nothing. The instrument was sheltered from the rain, but, on the other hand, the rain poured in through the holes in the roof at the back of the observation post. He tried to get his bearings, but the darkness was so thick that his eyes could make out no variation in the pitchy blackness. And in his ears the exasperatingly uniform patter of the rain which successfully drowned all sounds of life. He could feel the beating of his heart, but his brain seemed numb from too much thinking.

An hour later the patter died down a little and simultaneously Bologa realized that his mind had begun again to make plans and calculations. Then he found himself thinking:

“In weather like this I can cross over to the enemy without fear.”

As soon as he took in the import of his thoughts he curbed them with disgust. From the moment when he had become convinced that by destroying the worrying search-light he would win his salvation from General Karg, he had regretted and been ashamed that he had even contemplated deserting to the enemy. In two years of war he had become so deeply imbued with the military spirit that desertion, from whatever motive, seemed to him an unpardonable crime.

“All the same, if you want to get away more safely, you’ll have to go either at nightfall or at dawn,” came again into his mind, the same thought pursuing him persistently, like a fly which one attempts in vain to chase away.

Gradually the rain stopped and a strong wind began to blow with sinister howlings, unravelling the darkness a little and rushing violently through Bologa’s observation post. Before long he felt on his back a damp and icy patch. He cowered down, trying to protect his back, but the wind got through his clothes, through his skin, and clutched at his heart.

“And that search-light isn’t coming!” he murmured trembling.

His eyes darted with impatient fury through the thinning darkness. Humble signs of life began to be visible in the dead stillness. To the right and left stretched the infantry trenches, crooked and capricious, like coarse lines on a crumpled sheet of paper. Here and there, in front of the trenches, like mushrooms grown rigid or frozen, he saw or divined the listening posts. About thirty metres to the right Captain Cervenco’s sector began. “I wonder what Cervenco is doing? Dear old Cervenco!” Before him the plain stretched flat, lost in the darkness and whipped by the wind which now and again shook big drops of water out of the sky.

Apostol Bologa knew that exactly five hundred and eighty-three metres away lay the first line of the Russian trenches, and it seemed to him that he could distinguish the zigzags which meant the earthworks. His imagination travelled farther, and groping through the darkness found the second line, the third, the enemy’s batteries, the place where the search-light had last appeared.

Bologa did not dare to look at his watch for fear he should lose his hope of the search-light appearing. He was sure, however, that it was past midnight. “There is still time,” he said, more and more worried. His loneliness oppressed him. He felt a painful need of exchanging a word with someone, no matter whom, so long as he were not left alone to wait. The search-light had never shown itself before midnight. As a rule, it came at about two o’clock, so there was plenty of time; he could still hope. But suppose it did not come at all, then …

“It would be entirely their fault if I should ruin myself!” he thought with fury, shaking his fist at the invisible Russian lines.

And then suddenly, when he least expected it, right in front of him, in the battery’s own sector, as if brought to life by his defiance, flashed a blinding, arrogant light, throwing first its rays towards the sky lined with clouds and then dropping to earth quickly, with feverish tremors. Apostol closed his eyes, as startled as if he were face to face with a ghost, forgetting his guns and his anger, forgetting everything, as if he were in a dream.

“Hi! Are you asleep over there? The guns! Can’t you see the search-light?” growled a deep, mocking voice suddenly a few steps away in the infantry trench.

Bologa came to with a start. He knew that voice; it belonged to a very tall and thin infantry lieutenant, who ostensibly looked down on all gunners. He surveyed with the theodolite the source of the light and then barked a curt order into the mouthpiece of the telephone. A few seconds later the boomings began, slow and deliberate. But still the white rays glided on slowly, indifferent to the angry shells, cleaving the darkness and, as if defiantly, drawing nearer to Bologa. Then, as if they had not actually discovered him cowering in his damp observation post, they strayed over him, enveloping him in their cold magic, penetrating through his stricken eyes into all the hidden places of his heart, upsetting and confusing his thoughts like an unexpected sunrise. At first Apostol felt nothing but an immense hatred for the light which took him into its embrace without his leave. But when he tried to utter two words into the telephone to correct the aim of the guns, he found he could not tear his gaze away from it. The blandishments of the tremulous rays began to appear to him as sweet as the kisses of a maiden in love. Their spell was so strong that he no longer even heard the booming of the guns. Unconsciously, like a passionate child, he stretched out both hands towards the light, murmuring with parched throat:

“The light! The light!”

But at that very second, as if chopped off by the sword of an executioner, the rays went out and Bologa’s eyes were filled with darkness. He didn’t know what had happened. The guns continued to shoot at slow intervals as he had ordered.

“I think I’ve smashed that search-light,” he thought, wondering how he could have brought himself to do such a blackguardly action and rejoicing that he had done it.

He remained dazed for a while, feeling that there was something he still had to do, and unable to remember what it was. Then suddenly, dismayed, he felt for the receiver and shouted:

“The rockets! The rockets!”

On the sullen sky there rose, hissing angrily, a globe of light like a spying eye. At the spot where the search-light had been Bologa, through his field-glasses, saw a quantity of little black worms rolling about helplessly. The light in the sky soon went out and simultaneously the guns became dumb of their own accord, without order from him, as if they had become satiated and were now satisfied. The darkness enwrapped Apostol like a rough shroud, and his eyes, with enlarged pupils, strained in aimless expectancy. In his innermost being, however, he yearned for the light—the kind, caressing light.

Then he heard again, this time just behind him, the voice of the infantry lieutenant:

“At last! Well, it’s a good job you’ve finished with that search-light, for it had become a real disgrace! As likely as not you’ll be presented with a medal for bravery, because that’s how decorations are given in our Army.… In any case, I congratulate you.… Good night!”

Without waiting for an answer, the lieutenant, muttering to himself, went off through the puddles of the communication trench.

“God! What has happened?” Bologa asked himself apprehensively, trying to rouse himself from the numbness which had paralysed his thoughts.

The wind blew colder now, scattering again the thin, enervating drizzle. The drops rolled down his back like a thin trickle of sand. “That’s how the thoughts in my brain are—weak, undecided, groping.” Little by little, however, he managed to straighten them out. So he had attained his aim and he would now be able to go to the general. There would be no need now for him to go with his division to the Rumanian front, that was almost certain. Then, why did he not rejoice as he had rejoiced when the idea had come to him to destroy the search-light? Instead of an answer the white light which he had strangled just now flashed up in his soul, shining like a distant beacon. And the radiance resembled now Svoboda’s countenance under the halter, now the vision which he had had as a child in the church before the altar, after his special prayer to God. The light put an end to his doubts and set his heart at rest as if it had opened out a straight, smooth road for him in a wild untrodden jungle. An hour ago all his hopes had been centred in others, and he had had no confidence in himself. Now he knew that he would sooner cross Fate than pollute his soul—for in his soul, in the light, lay his salvation.

The darkness thinned gradually. The wind blew unceasingly, and sometimes it sent out a call, long drawn out, troubled, with a note of shame and warning in it. Then, like a temptation, the thought that this was the hour for deserters slipped again into Bologa’s mind. And the thought no longer seemed to him repulsive, just as if all his former convictions had been wiped off his brain.

A sergeant came to take his place, although Apostol had forgotten to give the order. He felt sorry to leave the loneliness, which now seemed precious to him. He made his way along the zigzagged trenches, behind the sentries standing rigid with their rifles at their side. As he was making his way towards the communication trench, he ran into Captain Cervenco.

“I haven’t been able to close my eyes all night,” murmured the captain dejectedly. “I am sorry that you have destroyed the search-light, I don’t know why … You’ve killed the light, Bologa!”

“The light is here!” answered Bologa triumphantly, beating his breast with his hand.

“Yes, yes, you are right! The light is there, and the suffering, too! The whole world is there!” added Cervenco with a glint in his eyes.

Apostol went on through the twisting trenches, his back bent, his eyes shining, his soul full of confidence, reconciled and contented as if he had been purified in a bath of virtue.