Where the highroad crossed the railway line he remembered that coming back Klapka had avoided the Forest of the Hanged by riding along the railway line. He walked between the rails, which gleamed faintly like two unending sword-blades. Several times he looked towards the left, but the mist hid the view, and the darkness made one of sky and earth. He stumbled on the sleepers and caught his breath. The road here seemed more difficult. When he came out again on to the highroad the gurgling of the stream close by sounded to him like strange whisperings.
Before entering Lunca, at the beginning of the road leading to the front, he halted abruptly, as if something had hit him in the chest, and in his brain buzzed the question:
“Where, in point of fact, am I going? Where?”
And he felt a strange feeling of oppression and murmured painfully:
“I’ve left it at home. O God, what have I left at home?”
And for answer he went on towards Lunca.
The grave-digger’s house could barely be distinguished in the courtyard. Apostol entered hurriedly, as if he were late. The door of the lobby was wide open and flat against the wall, as always now since the weather had become warmer. He entered his room, felt for the matches in the usual place, and found them. He struck one, and saw Ilona lying on the bed, fully dressed, with eyes wide open, as if she had been expecting him, certain that he would come. He was not surprised either. The match went out, but Apostol could see her eyes in the dark. Then Ilona got up, and Apostol drew her to him despairingly, kissing her mouth, her eyes, her hair. Then suddenly he released her, afraid, muttering:
“I have forgotten something, and I don’t know … It’s not possible any longer, it’s not possible.”
The sound of his own voice calmed him. He lit a candle and set it slowly on the table. Ilona was staring at him with frightened eyes, feeling that a terrible danger was lurking near.
“God, what is it that I have forgotten, what is it?” said Apostol, looking at her questioningly.
Then he realized that he was lying, that he had come because of Ilona. But he hadn’t the strength to own that he had lied, and so he began to hunt round feverishly, turning over the books on the little chest and those on the shelf above his bed. Accidentally his hand encountered the map with the positions on the front, which he had completed one evening, and had forgotten there.
“Here it is! I have found it,” he shouted triumphantly at Ilona, to excuse his lie.
He opened it, glanced at the red-pencil marks, folded it in half, and slipped it into his pocket. Then he raised his eyes to Ilona and shivered. He said to himself, “I must explain to her,” and the roof of his mouth went dry. He felt he must. Thousands of thoughts chased through his mind, but they all either got mixed up together or else melted away so that they could not be formed into an “explanation”. But under the confusion of his thoughts a powerful torrent bore his soul far away, driving out all doubts and hesitations.
“Ilona …” he stammered, terrified because he could find no words to tell her.
“I know the mountains better,” whispered Ilona all of a sudden, guessing his thoughts. “I know all the hollows, all the paths, all the streams. I will be your guide!”
“No, no!” Apostol stared up, dazed. “You must not …”
His voice trembled. He was silent. But a few moments later he said again quietly:
“I’ll come back for you, Ilona—to marry you! Do you believe me?”
“I believe you!” she answered, looking wildly into his eyes.
Bologa put on his helmet and took a last look round. The room seemed to live and breathe out happy memories. Ilona threw herself into his arms and kissed him.
Then Apostol went out. In the lobby the thought crossed his mind that he ought to have put on warmer clothes and taken his revolver with him. In the middle of the courtyard he looked back. Ilona had blown out the candle. From the gate he could hear her quick and barefooted steps coming towards him, but he did not stop. In the street he heard her whispering voice, but caught only one word: “God!” He crossed himself fervently, raising his eyes towards the heavens. The sky was as black as the earth. But the sign of the cross had lit in his soul the light of faith, and reconciliation showed him the way.
XI
At the bridge of the stream which came from the front he had to wait to let the train pass. The bloodshot eye of the engine seemed to hurl itself at Bologa, who stood there calmly leaning against the railing, exactly as he had done a short while ago, while waiting with his mother for the arrival of the train from Bistritza.
“I didn’t even look at the time,” thought he, watching the dark carriages running past, and noting curiously the harsh grinding of the wheels and thinking they could not have been oiled for months. “It must be past nine … But what do I care? There’s plenty of time. If only God will help me to …”
Then he turned to the left along the waterside. The murmur of the restless waters floated away through the mist. Here and there on the hills flickering lights—marking unseen houses—trembled like glow-worms. The road wound greyly in the darkness. Now and again a silver streak flashed through the stream.
Although he had only once before travelled that way, Apostol had the impression that he was walking on a road on which he had journeyed thousands of times. He did not grope at all. He walked on through the darkness, as if he were walking on a pavement at high noon. He was not tired. In his heart he felt like a pricking the longing to get there more quickly. But not once did the question “Where?” appear in his mind. It seemed either as if that point did not interest him, or as if he knew only too well the place he had to reach.
The road ascended continually. Now the stream was on his right. A few white stars trembled like a little garland of hope on one comer of the sky above the summit of a treeless mountain.
“What would Klapka do if he saw me now?” Apostol said to himself rather gleefully when he arrived on the height where the batteries were.
There was no mist here, but nevertheless the darkness seemed denser, thicker. Bologa tried to find Klapka’s dug-out, but gave it up and did not stop. The map with the positions of the units began to unroll itself in his mind. He remembered that the principal road led right up to behind the regiment of dismounted cavalry which formed the left wing of the division. But about 500 metres along it another road branched off, towards the infantry sector; this was the road he must follow. While he was working this out Lieutenant Varga’s face unexpectedly flashed into his mind, and he thought with a smile:
“Varga is expecting me all the time.”
He went on serenely. The road descended into an arid crooked valley.
“I only hope I won’t run into a patrol,” said Apostol to himself, without fear, as if he were talking of someone else.
Then after a few steps he could hear the tramp of his boots on the bumpy road and the clinking of his spurs. The thought again passed through his mind that he ought to turn off to the right, towards the infantry regiment. But it wavered and did not seem to take root, and instead he found himself saying happily:
“Really I have been amazingly lucky not to meet a single soul. I think it really must be true that I was born under a lucky star!”
He wanted to laugh and to start running, in order to arrive more quickly, but the road began to ascend again, and the going became rough. Apostol had to stop twice to wipe the perspiration from his face. Finally, he arrived in a glade where the road disappeared.
“I believe there is a parting of the ways here,” mused Bologa, trying in vain to find the road again.
The tops of the fir-trees were outlined black against the sullen sky, showing by a wavy line the margin of the glade. Apostol made his way towards the lowest point where another valley should start. And as he entered into the wood he felt, indeed, under his feet a beaten track. He stopped to rest a minute and to wipe the perspiration off his face and neck. Suddenly he held his breath and listened. Behind him in the glade he heard footsteps. He
flattened himself against a thick tree-trunk. The steps seemed to come nearer, and he caught a few foreign words spoken in a smothered voice. Two shadows were moving along the outskirts of the wood; they were going away from him. Apostol waited a little while. His heart was beating violently. Again the map appeared before his mind. The infantry trenches were on two peaks, the Rumanian trenches were lower …
“Then perhaps I am on the other side already … perhaps I have crossed our lines!” he thought with a thrill of joy, forgetting his fatigue. “The Lord be praised! Now the worse danger is over. O Lord, do not abandon me!”
He crossed himself, thrilling with relief and gratitude, and his lips muttered fragments of prayers.
He went on, his heart aching with joy. After a few steps he caught his foot in a rotten tree-trunk put across the road as if on purpose. He skirted it. Ten metres further on, however, another tree barred the way. Then a little farther on he came upon some barbed wire stretched across and twisted round the trunks of the fir-trees. He tried to slip through the barbed wire fence, but found it impossible. Hoping to find a way in, he turned towards the left. He went on about thirty steps and found a gap. On the other side of the fence he turned to the right and went straight on in order to get back to the track. He couldn’t find it again. He went straight on and once more found himself facing a wire fence.
“This is apparently a dead angle which they have shut off with several rows of obstacles to prevent surprises,” Apostol said to himself patiently, with unshaken trust.
He again turned to the left and kept alongside the wire fence, reckoning there must be a small gap somewhere. After ascending for about ten minutes it occurred to him that he was probably straying too far away from the bottom of the valley, so he retraced his steps to try the other side. He now went right down into the valley and up another slope, a steeper one. The forest here seemed denser and younger. From time to time the low branches clutched at Apostol’s clothes like hands trying to stop him. The ascent tired him. He kept on mopping his neck with his damp handkerchief, and the hot sweat rolled down incessantly from his hair into his collar and down his back.
At last the forest became less dense and the wire fence disappeared at the foot of a steep which rose towards the sky like a wall. Bologa halted a minute to get his breath and to cool himself a little. At the base of the steep he found another track. Relieved and rested, he started down the valley and descended for about five minutes. Then the track skirted a rock and narrowed into a corridor with the walls of the steep on one side and the trunks of the fir-trees on the other. For the first time Bologa began to feel really tired. His feet ached and his knees felt strange. He had got out of practice of long marches, and to-day he had walked a great deal. His hair was wet, and from under the hot helmet the perspiration oozed and trickled down his temples. He took his helmet off because it felt so tight that he simply couldn’t bear it on any longer. He took hold of it by the chin-strap, and as he walked swung it rhythmically to and fro in his left hand. Suddenly the helmet struck against something with a metallic sound. Apostol stopped in surprise. He put out his hand. A fir-trunk so resinous that his fingers got sticky, and again the barbed wire—three rows with frequent entanglements. Bologa became uneasy. He had hit on the track used by the reconnoitring patrols in the valley between the two enemy lines. Suppose he ran into a reconnoitring patrol. For a moment he thought of turning back as far as the point where the barbed wire ended, and there going down into the valley to cover up his tracks. He could wait in the wood even until daylight if necessary, protected and sheltered.… Nevertheless he continued on his way, as if that thought of turning back had concerned someone else, not him.
The track again ran round the foot of a rock, and Apostol banged right into a tall man, who, jumping backwards, shouted in a hollow voice:
“Halt! Wer da?”1
The voice seemed familiar to Apostol. He answered:
“Offizier.”
A short, suffocating silence followed. Bologa’s eyes searched the darkness keenly. Then suddenly an electric pocket-torch shot out a streak of white light and the voice that had spoken sounded again, clearer this time, reflecting surprise and satisfaction:
“Ah! Bologa!”
Now Apostol recognized Varga’s voice, and under the helmet, which gleamed in the reflection of the rays, he could see his round eyes, like two black glass beads. And all at once a violent shudder ran through him, as if he were a sleep-walker who had awakened from sleep on the brink of a precipice.
Lieutenant Varga wavered a few seconds, mumbling. In his right hand trembled the barrel of a revolver, with its muzzle pointed straight at Bologa. Then he shouted in a voice like a knife-blade entering living flesh:
“Disarm him, corporal!”
A puny soldier stepped out from behind Varga.
Apostol murmured lazily:
“I am not armed.”
The man stopped two paces away. Varga hissed impatiently, furiously:
“Corporal! Search him!”
Apostol said nothing more. The hands of the soldier ran over his pockets, quickly, nervously.
“May you live long, sir, he hasn’t any.”
“Four men to act as escort!” shouted Varga again curtly and icily. “The corporal to walk behind!”
Apostol Bologa flattened himself out against the rock to make way for the lieutenant. In passing him Varga turned his face towards Apostol, who felt his harsh, cutting, stinging breath.
Then the streak of light was swallowed up in the maze of darkness.
1 “Halt! Who goes there?”
BOOK IV
I
APOSTOL Bologa walked serenely, as if all his troubles were at an end. The sweat had dried on his face and neck. It crossed his mind that he might catch cold, so he put on his helmet, carefully adjusting the strap under his chin. He remembered the barbed wire fence, and fearing he might scratch himself he kept his right arm motionless. He stared straight ahead of him, his head erect, his wide-open eyes drinking in nothing but darkness. Behind him he could hear tired pantings, and now and again the chink of arms. Before him walked an under-sized soldier, and above the soldier’s helmet he could see Varga’s silhouette, blacker than the darkness. He kept on treading on the heel of the soldier in front of him and continually wanted to apologize, but found himself totally unable to unclench his jaws in order to speak. In point of fact, no one uttered the slightest whisper; it was as if nothing had happened and as if nothing were about to happen. But every time Apostol distinguished the lieutenant’s silhouette just one thought would leap into his mind:
“At last … at last …”
He felt a strange relief, exactly as if he had had a happy escape from a great danger. The road back, though ascending, seemed to him much easier going than it had seemed coming down. Only the time seemed not to move at all, as if a heavy hand had stopped the works of the divine timepiece.
Presently a few rifle-shots rang out somewhere nearby in front. The sound was repeated by echoes more and more faintly.
“We have arrived! Thank God!” said Bologa to himself, as if the crack of fire-arms had announced a great joy for him.
But his joy was soon swamped by a multitude of thoughts set free by the echoes of the shots. He realized that he had been caught trying to get across, and fear gripped him. He reproached himself for having gone off without considering what he was doing, and without a weapon, so that now … He suddenly felt so tired that all his thoughts merged into one torturing desire to rest. The roof of his mouth was hot and parched, and he was again wet with perspiration. It was on the tip of his tongue to ask if they still had far to go. Gnawing fear possessed him that they would never arrive, and again that they would arrive only too soon.
“At last, at last,” buzzed again through his brain in answer to all his confused thoughts and feelings.
Then the convoy halted in a glade. Varga retained two soldiers to escort the prisoner, and he ordered the remainder of the patrol to retu
rn with the corporal to the squadron sector.
Apostol, a soldier on either side of him, followed Varga, who was now walking faster and with more confidence. In the wood the road was wide and easy going, and descended at a gentle incline. After a few minutes they skirted a hill. Among the sparse tree-trunks glimmered wavering spots of yellowish light. Here and there, like buffaloes at rest, were black huts half buried in the ground and camouflaged with dead branches and twigs. A sentinel with fixed bayonet demanded the pass-word, and Varga without halting threw him a word. From a dug-out situated on the very margin of the road issued a real concert of snores. They turned to the right, and suddenly Varga muttered, “Halt!” Bologa and the soldiers halted, and Varga entered a hut. After a few moments, however, he returned, and a voice from within could be heard clearly saying:
“Yes, that’s it, Varga, you hand him over to the regiment naturally with the usual formal proceedings.”
They went on for two minutes and arrived at the regimental command post, a large hut made of thick planks and surrounded by smaller huts. Varga descended into the large hut, where he stayed somewhat longer. He came out accompanied by a wizened, sleepy officer, who was grumbling crossly:
“The best would have been for you to keep him with you in your sector until the morning. If you are going to keep on rousing me from my sleep for every little unimportant matter …”
“If you’ll take the responsibility I’ll let him go!” said Varga irritably, more especially because the adjutant was saying this in front of Bologa. “I have done my duty.”
“Duty, duty,” murmured the officer sullenly. “Day and night … duty …”
About thirty paces farther on they all entered a large dug-out lighted by a large oil-lamp. In front of a telephone apparatus dozed a sergeant with the ear-phones on. On a plank-bed snored three other non-coms., all on their backs with mouths wide-open and faces shining with sweat. In the corner, on a table covered with documents, lay an open register. The telephone officer woke up with a start and turned an alarmed face towards the entrance.