II

The train panted and sweated, climbing up between mountains the peaks of which were still capped with snow. The spring sunshine bespattered the air with powdered silver. The woods and meadows trembled under the caresses of the fiery rays. New life, young and passionate, reanimated the whole face of the earth. Only the train, laden with men and material of war, huge, grinding, puffing, seemed a monster from another world, come to defy nature’s youth. The locomotive crawled along cautiously, as if it expected some enemy to appear in its path; it wriggled along under the stolid slopes and crags like a huge snake on the look-out for imaginary dangers at each twist and turn.

In a coach reserved for officers Apostol Bologa stop’d in the corridor by an open window, drinking in thirstily the mountain view, which reminded him of the valley of the Someş and made him forget his present destination.

Suddenly the door of the compartment behind him was opened and closed noisily, and in his ear Varga’s voice said gleefully:

“Do you know, Bologa, who is on our train? You’ll never guess! General Karg! Look round, there’s Gross. He has just been telling us.”

Apostol turned round. Through the glass door of the compartment could be seen, through a haze of cigar smoke, a few officers. Gross was banteringly explaining something with violent gestures.

“He said the general talked to him about us,” continued Varga. “In fact, he swears that the general said he wanted to see us, and especially you. When one comes to think of it, it would only be the natural thing to do, for we’ve shed enough of our blood for our country. Gross has been travelling on a job with the general, so perhaps it’s true what he says.”

Bologa felt a loathing for them all, beginning with Gross. That was why he had kept away from them, and so far he had only exchanged two or three casual words with the sapper.

“Does he? That’s fine!” he said, wishing to seem interested, but his eyes were disdainful.

“I’ll tell you what I thought we’d do,” the Hussar lieutenant began again, laying an arm across Bologa’s shoulder. “If we do manage to get a word with the general, we must try to convince him that we really do deserve some sick-leave after nearly five months of hospitals and suffering. Isn’t it true? I have great faith in Karg, in spite of his being severe and pig-headed, and, the Lord be praised, we have done our duty.”

“Yes, of course, it wouldn’t be a bad idea,” agreed Bologa, convinced that Varga’s hopes were childish, and longing to be alone again.

Varga cast a quick glance into the compartment, then, with a look of disgust, turned his back on it.

“I’m fed up with that sheeny and his anarchist theories. I really am, old chap. One can’t talk to him two minutes without his beginning to mock and scoff at all we hold sacred—our country, our faith, our past. I really was beginning to feel downright sick and afraid, Bologa!” And after a minute’s silence, he added: “You know, if I had to spend much time in his company I might discover some fine day that I had lost all my patriotic sentiments.”

“Sentiments that are genuine should resist any onslaught!” said Apostol dejectedly.

“That’s what they say, but in point of fact nothing resists for ever,” smiled Varga. “You yourself told me that once, when we were arguing in Budapest at my uncle’s, and I have never forgotten it. A drop of water can wear down a rock. And what about you: do you suppose you haven’t changed? Perhaps you yourself don’t realize it, but I, who shared the same room with you for nearly two months and had to put up with your weird behaviour—just you ask me, old chap! If my uncle, who was as fond of you as if you had been his own son, met you to-day, he would not recognize you, Bologa, really and truly! I repeat, perhaps you are not conscious of it, perhaps …”

Apostol Bologa seemed to read a hidden challenge in the hussar’s words. He answered with hostility, but also with a gravity in which struggled the desire to bare his soul, to lay it in the palm of his hand and to bear it aloft, proudly and confidently like a chalice, in the sight of all.

“I know perfectly well that I have changed. How can I help knowing it when the change was achieved in anguish, as if I had been born again? But it is as a result of that very change that I have acquired the real natural sentiments, as you called them just now. Only as a result of that change, Varga.”

The hussar was disconcerted. Bologa’s tone left no doubt as to his hostility, so he said in a low, dry voice, leaning his back against the door of the compartment and looking at Bologa intently:

“Bologa, it seems to me that your sentiments are unnatural.… Be careful!”

“Are you threatening me ?” asked Apostol ironically.

“Your sentiments are leading you straight into the arms of the enemy.”

“Which enemy?” repeated Bologa mockingly.

“The enemy of our country, no matter who he is!” retorted Varga a little more sharply. “At this minute you, my friend, are a deserter in thought and feeling!”

Apostol gave a slight start, then he said quickly, almost passionately, taking hold of Varga’s sleeve and staring intently into his eyes:

“Listen, Varga. Not long ago you boasted that you’d always keep a heart under that military uniform of yours. Put aside your casuistic reasoning and tell me what would you do if, for example, you happened to belong to the Russian Army and they sent you to fight the Hungarians, who had come to free you?”

“Stop, stop … you’ve got it wrong, old fellow!” stammered the lieutenant, reddening. “First comes our country …”

“Don’t beg the question,” insisted Bologa triumphantly. “Answer honestly! In such cases there cannot be two answers.”

Varga was silent. The question, and especially Bologa’s courage, embarrassed him. At last he said hesitatingly:

“There is one law for all and one duty to which we are bound by oath. If anyone attempts to judge these through the prism of sentimental selfishness, then …”

“Law, duty, oath, are of value only until you impose upon yourself a crime against your conscience!” interrupted Apostol quickly. “No duty on earth has the right to trample on a man’s soul, but if it tries to all the same, then …”

Bologa broke off abruptly with a vague gesture which might mean everything or nothing. Varga, taken aback, stammered with wide eyes:

“Then my suspicions … So you have thoughts of desertion?”

“Thoughts?” murmured Apostol with a strange smile. “Thoughts are changeable, Varga! But in my innermost being I have a deep conviction, and if it bids me go over to the enemy, that is to say your enemy, I shan’t hesitate a minute to do my real duty. And I am sure you others, if you judged honestly and without prejudice, would say I was right and would approve what I had done. I am sure that you, yourself, deep down in your heart …”

“No, no, Bologa, you are quite mistaken!” Varga, now having recovered himself, said dryly. “I’d never approve! I deprecate crime!”

“You would not?” queried Apostol with real surprise, adding immediately in a jesting tone: “You may rest assured that I won’t ask for your approval. At most, if I happened to have to pass through your sector, and if I had the bad luck to meet you … perhaps then there might be a question of it.… But suppose it did happen, who knows what turn the conversation might take!”

“God grant you do no such thing, Bologa, for your sake!” replied the lieutenant gravely and threateningly. “I would arrest you, I would even shoot you if you tried to resist—in spite of your having been my friend!”

“Don’t excite yourself!” came from Bologa, now again derisive. “I’ll avoid your sector as I would the plague.… Now are you satisfied?”

“You may be joking, Bologa, but I mean …”

“I am not joking at all,” retorted Apostol, becoming suddenly defiant.

Lieutenant Varga felt personally much irritated at the things he had been compelled to listen to, and Bologa’s serenity and positiveness infuriated him. The thought of denouncing him actually crossed his mind—he would get the punishment he deserved that way. But police work was repugnant to him. Also, he reflected, they had been too intimate friends not so very long ago for them to fall out on things which, after all, were Bologa’s own private business. Probably, if one could see into the minds of all officers, one would be pretty horrified at what one discovered. Most of them, of course, hid their thoughts, whereas Bologa at least was sincere.

“That’s all nonsense, old chap!” Varga resumed, after a pause, in a changed voice and with assumed cheeriness. “We’d far better get along to General Karg and see if we can wangle some sick-leave!”

“That’s just what it is, nonsense!” smiled Apostol, softened. “All human words are mere nonsense in the crises of life.”

Varga led the way down the dirty corridor flooded with young sunshine. The train had just left a curve and the coach rocked as if it meant to topple over. The Hussar lieutenant clung to the wall with his hands, cursing furiously, but Bologa, only a few steps behind, walked boldly and easily as on a footpath.