XI

The battlefield, deserted and silent, wavered in the evening mist. The steppe stretched limitless, flat as a sheet of packing-paper, dotted with stumps of trees set wide apart, leafless and mutilated by shells. The positions stood out like sombre lines, crooked and capricious, without beginning or end.

Close to the battery Bologa paused, seeking in the zigzag of trenches the foremost observation post where he had been the night before. When he believed he had found it, his thoughts wandered farther; they slipped under the barbed wire, along the five hundred and eighty-three metres to the border of the Russian trenches, where they remained without guide.

“A new life begins there, and a new world,” he said to himself with clutching neart.

In the dug-out he found waiting for him the second-lieutenant who had taken his place and who was eager to know what had happened to him and how the general had congratulated him. To escape his questions Bologa, with assumed gaiety, pitched him a tale and quickly changed the conversation. He said, uneasily, that they would have to keep their eyes open so as not to be caught by a sudden attack in view of the change of division. The second-lieutenant, to show that he was well up in strategical previsions, declared gravely that, as a matter of fact, he quite expected a surprise attack if the enemy had got wind of the intended change. In the end it was arranged that the second-lieutenant should keep a look-out at the chief observation post until two o’clock, when Bologa would go to relieve him.

Left alone, Bologa sat down to write a few words to his mother and to Marta, to let them know somehow, by covert words, that he could no longer stay here and that soon he would send them better news. But before he had put down a single syllable on the paper he thought better of it—any knowledge they had might be the cause of unpleasantness for them. Better they should know nothing. So instead of writing he fell to studying the map of the front with feverish attention, to tracing lines with his finger in order to discover a short, safe road. Petre found him thus occupied when he brought him his supper.

“Do you know, I am so hungry to-night that I could almost eat you!” Bologa cried laughingly, and thought to himself he must, in truth, make a good meal, because who knew what awaited him over there.

Immediately after he had eaten he lay down to rest, after having ordered Petre to awaken him without fail at one o’clock in the morning. He wanted to get a few hours’ rest because who knew when and where he would get his next rest?

Petre awoke him at the fixed time, and Apostol arose, spry and cheerful. In a few minutes he was ready to start. He looked round the silent dug-out, wondering which of his belongings he should take with him. He hesitated a little, and finally took nothing. The only thing he might need was his revolver, to save him from the Forest of the Hanged. As he went towards the exit he heard Petre’s usual good-bye: “May the Lord help you, sir!” He half thought of shaking hands with him, but decided to go on without stopping or answering.

The night felt damp. There was promise of rain and wind in the air. Bologa was glad, and turned a friendly eye on the cloudy sky. If it rained, he thought, it would, of course, be all the better.

Passing near Captain Cervenco’s dug-out and having another half-hour to spare, he stepped in to ask him how he was getting on. The captain was reading the Bible with tears streaming from his eyes as if he were trying to live down a great sorrow.

“What is it? What has happened?” Apostol asked in amazement. “What are you grieving for? Are you in trouble? Have you had bad news from home?”

“I am a tree without roots,” Cervenco said bitterly, with a despairing look. “Bologa, do you hear, to-night the Russians will attack us!”

Bologa turned pale as if he had received a slap in the face. A little while ago he, too, had talked of a possible attack, but merely to avoid embarrassing questions and to have a pretext for going to the observation post. An attack would upset all his plans.

“Impossible.… We’ve had no information,” he mumbled confusedly. “Whyever should they especially pitch on to-night?”

“Bologa, it is a certainty,” began the captain plaintively. “Believe me, a patrol brought me news last evening that over there they are making hasty preparations. You’ll see, Bologa. It’s always like that.”

For another ten minutes Cervenco kept on his lamentations, so that Apostol left him thoroughly upset, cursing the impulse that had caused him to call on the Ruthenian maniac. Outside, however, in the silence broken only by the wind and in the enveloping darkness, he became himself again and thought Cervenco must really be beginning to show signs of insanity if he dreamt of nothing but hand-to-hand fights and attacks.

The second-lieutenant was shivering at the observation post, and he saluted Bologa as he would a saviour.

“The infantry will have it that the Russians intend to attack us this very night,” whispered Bologa. “Did you notice anything?”

“Not a thing! Just silence and cold,” scoffed the second-lieutenant. “That’s always the infantry way, they are scared by every shadow. The Russians are not fools to attack us to-night like that, without preparations, when the change begins only the day after to-morrow!”

Bologa pressed his hand, well pleased, and wished him a good rest. He had never liked that second-lieutenant better than to-night. He seemed to have taken the very words out of his own mouth: “The Russians are no fools …”

When his eyes had become accustomed to the darkness, he looked uneasily across at the lines over there. Was there any movement to be seen or heard? A few minutes later a rifle shot rang out deafeningly somewhere near by. Though he knew by the sound of it that it was no Russian shot, his heart jumped. Other startled shots broke out immediately, then others on the right and left, but always farther away. Bologa grew calmer. They had probably come from startled sentinels.

Towards three o’clock, in order to reassure himself entirely, he ordered a rocket to be sent up so that he should see and convince himself. In the greenish light the ground between the trenches showed no signs of life. On the right, between the barbed wire, lay the body of a dead man. He had been killed two days ago on his way back from patrol, as likely as not by his own comrades—by mistake or through fright. Apostol’s eyes travelled over him as if he had been a mushroom, eager only to see the road which he had chosen on the map—a disused trench which began about twenty yards away and almost reached the Russian trenches. The observation post was surrounded by bushes, left there on purpose as camouflage. If he crawled from there through the two shell-holes he might manage to reach the disused trench unobserved, for the listening posts were a good way off. At the other end of the trench he would call out. He knew enough Russian for that.… Then …

The light of the rocket went out and Bologa was satisfied. At five o’clock exactly, when the darkness began to lift, he would start. Which meant he had another two hours to wait. His mind was so thoroughly made up that he felt neither emotion nor impatience. He waited with his eyes fixed ahead on his goal, his thoughts free. Time flowed over him as a cool and soothing water.

Presently the thought flashed through his mind that perhaps the Russians would receive him with contempt for being a deserter—he, an officer. At that very moment a prolonged and hoarse detonation rent the air. Apostol became rigid and remained tensely waiting. After a few seconds, which seemed to him unending, there came a terrible crash, as if the earth had been split asunder. This was followed by furious and more rapid firing. The seething darkness was furrowed by luminous trails.

“What can this be?” thought Bologa, looking at his watch and seeing that it was barely four o’clock. “The attack? So they were right after all! Which means that I …”

Apostol recognized that the Russian guns had concentrated a converging fire on their artillery, which now began to answer, but rather timidly, obviously dazed by the suddenness and fury of the attack.

“What shall I do now?” he asked himself with the telephone receiver at his ear, listening to the duel of the two artilleries.

All at once he heard on his right, about ten metres or so away, a whizz which ended in a quick bang. He turned his eyes in that direction, and it seemed to him that he saw an earth funnel being flung up into the darkness.

“They’ve started to blow up the infantry,” he mumbled desperately, his brain feeling like a dry sponge.

Some time passed. All around the shells fell more and more thickly. Then a long, sinister whizzing almost deafened him. His heart clutched, and the thought flashed through his mind: “That’s for me!”

In front of him, a few paces away, the sky opened and a shell carried off the roof of the observation post. Apostol felt a sharp stabbing pain in his breast and a blow on the helmet. He seized the theodolite with both hands to prevent himself from falling. Then it seemed to him he was lifted right up into the air and almost immediately he found himself again on the hard ground with a sharp pain in the thigh.

“Am I wounded, or …?”

His thought snapped like a thread.