III
They passed through a coach crammed full of soldiers and civilians all mixed up together. Peasants with scared faces congested the narrow corridor, so that they might keep an eye on their bags and bundles. They spoke little and in low voices, as if they were afraid of someone overhearing them. In the comer nearest to the officers’ coach a Rumanian priest, tall, thin, with a scanty little goatee beard, and poorly clad, was talking dejectedly with three peasants who, to judge from their appearance, were Hungarians.
Apostol, pushing his way through the crowd, heard the Rumanian language as he was passing behind the priest, and, looking back for a second but without stopping, seemed to glimpse a face he knew. Because of the congestion he had no time to look round again, but the face of the priest lingered in his mind, and he kept on asking himself:
“Who can he be and where have I met him?”
In the next coach travelled General Karg. Here the corridor was encumbered with officers of all ranks, gossiping together and each one waiting for a lucky chance to exchange a word unofficially with the general. The coffee-coloured curtains of His Excellency’s compartment were drawn and the adjutant had just come out, on his own initiative, to ask the gentlemen in the corridor to be quieter and avoid the danger of ruffling His Excellency’s temper. Just at that moment Varga arrived. He took the adjutant aside and whispered:
“Gross told us that the old man wanted to see us—me and Bologa.… Do remind him, like a good chap!”
The adjutant shook hands with Bologa, whom he had not met since that stormy interview with the general, and then entered the general’s compartment sighing despondently:
“We’ll try.”
Five minutes later the door was half pushed back, the adjutant half leant out and called out pleasantly:
“Bologa, come along, please, His Excellency wishes …”
He met Varga’s questioning eyes and shrugged slightly, his face apologetic, as who would say: “Them’s my orders!”
General Karg was in high spirits and excellent temper. He had at last succeeded, with great trouble, in getting himself recommended for the Order of Maria Theresa. He was sitting near the window with his short legs comfortably stretched out, his swarthy face turned towards Apostol Bologa, who had entered and saluted.
“Well, are you all right again?” asked the general carelessly, holding out his beringed hand and giving him a long look.
Bologa answered with a hesitating smile. His face was yellow, drawn, his lips colourless, only his eyes burnt, fed by an inward fire. The general again looked him up and down and then offered him a seat at his side. On the seat opposite His Excellency sat a colonel with angular features, who was a stranger, and a thin-faced major, whose eyes sparkled with intelligence. The adjutant, again hearing too much noise in the corridor, slipped out to warn the gentlemen out there anew that the noise might possibly anger His Excellency.
The general asked Bologa all sorts of questions: about his wound, about the hospitals at which he had been, about his recovery, etc.; but while Bologa answered he saw all the time an unspoken question in the general’s eyes, which roused his defiance just as Varga’s had done a little while before. Otherwise Karg, by the tone of his voice and the kindness which softened his harsh face, showed a real interest in him, an almost natural interest. At last the expected question came, but put in a joking, friendly form:
“Well, you see, the world has not turned to dust because you are here with us?”
Apostol saw clearly in the eyes of the general that he expected him to answer with a brief “No”. That was why he could not help one second’s hesitation, which, however, almost immediately died of its own accord. Then he spoke with a temerity heightened by the clearness of his voice:
“I have never been a coward, Excellency, that is why I will confess to you now that in my soul a world has turned to dust!”
The fat, beringed fingers tugged nervously at the straggly moustache, and the broad eyebrows were tightly drawn together as the general asked, rather bewildered:
“What do you mean? What world has turned to dust?”
Bologa smiled so serenely that the general’s frown was transformed into an impatient curiosity and his hand dropped again quietly on to the arm-rest.
“I once read somewhere, Excellency,” explained Apostol in the same clear voice, “that the heart of the human embryo in the first few weeks of gestation is situated not in the body but in the head, in the middle of the brain, and that not till a later stage does it move down lower, separating itself from the brain for ever. How wonderful it would be, Excellency, if the heart and brain had remained one, entwined, so that the heart would never do what the brain forbade, and, more especially, the brain would never act against the advice of the heart!”
The general stared at him a few minutes and then looked at the others and burst into a hearty laugh, opening his mouth wide, his moustache bristling and his whole face wrinkling up and looking for all the world like the shell of a bad walnut.
“Damned interesting!” he mumbled, laughing.
Then, mastering his laughter with difficulty and with a visible embarrassment at having given way so freely to his mirth, he resumed his ordinary gravity, and then related to the colonel that Bologa had begged him not to send him to the Rumanian front and that, in spite of this, he, the general, had forgiven him because he knew him to be a very capable and conscientious officer, although now he saw that he was an obstinate one as well. The colonel listened respectfully until the general stopped speaking, and then as respectfully remarked:
“Of course, I don’t approve, Excellency, the law does not allow me to, but I can put myself into the lieutenant’s place and I understand his bitterness. It is, indeed, regrettable that those in power should not have taken general precautions in this respect, so as to avoid such delicate situations, in the interest of the combative quality of the Army.”
Apostol shuddered as if the colonel’s words were needles being stuck into his heart, because to-day he no longer wanted to be understood; on the contrary, he wanted motives for hatred and defiance to fan and feed the flame of his conviction.
The general seemed surprised for a moment, but presently answered, convinced and with some pride in his voice:
“Obviously, obviously, it is so! From a humane point of view, of course. But if ‘the powers that be’ did not think of such a possibility? I can’t take all the responsibilities. At best I can only make things easier in certain cases, as in the case of this lieutenant, for example. Yes! Without doubt we must make things easier. As he is still weak from sickness, I want to protect him from the hardships of the front, and we’ll use him in a service which does not entail great fatigue. Look here, we’ll transfer him to the ammunitions! There you are, that’s what we’ll do. For we are humane—we, in our Army! Where else would a commander worry his head to pander to such scruples? … What do you think, major? Have you ever come across examples of such humaneness in any Army since the beginning of history? And it is us that our enemies accuse of barbarity! What a world! What injustice!”
Just then the adjutant slipped in again. The general cut short his reflections and ordered:
“Note that Lieutenant Bologa is being transferred to the ammunition column!”
While the adjutant was getting out his note-book, Apostol Bologa looked at them all in turn beseechingly. On all faces he saw compassion veiled by different kinds of smiles. He felt humble and small, though hatred seethed in his soul. He had wanted to provoke indignation and lo! he had found pity and understanding. He watched the adjutant’s pencil travel swiftly along the paper and suddenly exclaimed:
“Excellency, I would much rather take charge of my battery again.”
“Never mind,” murmured the general protectingly and gaily. “You must recuperate and get back your strength in an easier service where the dangers are not so great. I am glad you are still keen on the front, but for the time being I am compelled, in your interest, to oppose your wish and to spare you.”
The incomprehensible and unexpected kindness of the general exasperated Bologa. He wanted to say that service with the ammunition column was more fatiguing than with the battery, when all at once the thought of the Rumanian priest in the corridor flashed into his mind, and he felt a sudden overpowering longing to speak to him. Neither the general nor the front interested him any longer. He stood up, mumbled awkward words of thanks, pressed a fat, flabby hand, bowed and went out with a luminous look on his face.
He rapidly made his way to the soldiers’ coach and pushed past the peasants in the corridor. The priest was still at the same place. He saw him from afar, and the perspiration broke out on his forehead. Now he recognized him and felt overcome with joy.
“Don’t you know me, father?” he called out eagerly, holding out both hands.
The priest paled as if he had been caught committing a crime. When Bologa mentioned his name a spark of eagerness showed in his eyes, but it died out at once, and he looked round fearfully to see if no one were spying on him. The priest was Constantin Boteanu, who had been one of Apostol’s best chums at college.
“And where is your parish, Constantin?” asked Bologa eagerly, happily.
“Quite near Faget, where the High Command is—I don’t know what its name is in the Army,” answered the priest, embarrassed and nervous because he was talking Rumanian with an officer.
“Is it a Rumanian village?” insisted Apostol.
“Half and half; we call it Lunca, but in Hungarian it is called …”
“Lunca?” interrupted Bologa, as if he wished to stop him from uttering the Hungarian word. “Down our way there is also a village called Lunca. Do you remember?”
“Of course, I remember very well,” answered the priest. “But over here all the Rumanians talk Hungarian, that’s the custom when we are among Hungarians. And it is quite right that it should be so.”
“Why right, father?” exclaimed Apostol seriously. “Can’t you see that looking at it like that means that, sooner or later, you’ll be left without a parish?”
“Well, yes, that’s true enough,” murmured Boteanu, confused and smiling humbly. “What can I do, though? We have no power and can’t even interfere. Life lays such heavy burdens on us that I marvel how we can live at all”.
“When man has an ideal he faces all hardships,” said Bologa dejectedly and understandingly.
“Our ideal is God,” answered the priest with a diffidence which concealed bitter fear. “When one has suffered as we have one no longer trusts or hopes in anything but God.”
Then he told Apostol that, when the Rumanians had come into the war, the authorities had seized him and three of the peasant headmen and transported them to Hungary, near Dobritzin. His wife and his two babes had been left to the care of the Lord. For three months he had had no news of them, and he had felt sure that they must be dead. Only after the wheel of fortune had taken a turn in the opposite direction did he hear that they were well and were longing for his return. But many weeks had gone by and there had been no hint of his being allowed to go home. He had begged everybody in turn, he had humbled himself, he had kotowed, all in vain. Once they’d tell him his village was in the forbidden zone, then they’d say all Rumanians were suspects, then again that and the other, then something else. At last he begged to be allowed to bring over his family to Dobritzin until God should grant peace again. And then, unexpectedly, they set him free and allowed him to go home, bidding him look to his behaviour.
Apostol Bologa listened with a smile on his lips, but displeasure and disappointment gnawed at his soul. The priest’s nervousness and the diffidence which marked all his words and looks hurt him, although he tried to avoid seeing them. In his turn he told Constantin how he had fared in the war, and then, shaking hands with him, said:
“Well, Constantin, I’ll be sure to come over to your house soon, so that we can have a good old talk!”
The priest answered, panic-stricken:
“Please … My wife writes to say that there are always soldiers in and out of our house, for that’s how things are to-day”.
Bologa tried to smile, but his mouth set in a painful grin.