Forest of the Hanged

  “But, mind you,” he added passionately, “these are abominable photographs, especially my wife’s! She is a thousand times lovelier … dainty, sweet, and pretty. That’s why her photographs can never do her justice. To know her is to adore her!”

  He kissed the photographs, put them away, and murmured softly, his eyes full of tears:

  “Because of them and for their sake I am as I am, Bologa! Otherwise, God knows, perhaps I, also … As it is I can’t … I am capable of any act of cowardice or meanness if it but keep me from dying before I have embraced them … What would you? I am an unfortunate wretch.… And for all that, in two years I have been home only once—for five days! Do you understand? Oh, the devils, the devils!”

  He ground his teeth while the tears ran down his plump cheeks, now flushed with passion. Steps were heard coming down into the dug-out, and Klapka shut up abruptly and looked fearfully towards the entrance. It was a second-lieutenant who had come to arrange with Bologa about the night duty.

  “The search-light may visit us again to-night and it would be good to prepare a warm reception for it …” suggested the subaltern.

  They sat at the table, spread out the maps, consulted together, found the place where the search-light had last appeared and deliberated as to where it was likely to appear that night. They lit a candle-end, made calculations and drew up range-tables.

  His mind full of the enemy search-light, Apostol Bologa completely forgot Klapka. All that night he was on the look-out, running from the command post to the guns, from the guns to the various observation posts of the battery, going even as far as the observing station of the infantry line, as agitated as if his whole happiness and the fate of the whole world were at stake. The hours slipped by, daybreak came, but the search-light did not appear.

  And the next night the same thing happened, and the next. Not until the fifth night, when they no longer believed it would come, did it actually shine again, more defiantly and mockingly than ever. Dozens of shells were spent, but the light flashed on unconcernedly over the fields furrowed with trenches.

  The next day, about midday, Bologa again came face to face with Klapka in the battery plotting-room. He was very pale and his eyes looked more troubled and protruding than usual. He told Bologa that the colonel had just ordered him point-blank to put an end to the searchlight scandal because their section had become the laughing-stock of the Army, and he had added that the divisional commander had promised a decoration to whoever should put a stop to the Russian mockery.

  “Last night I marked it down and it eluded us all the same!” exclaimed Bologa furiously, ending with a Hungarian oath. “In the whole of my two years’ service I have never received a reprimand, and now, because of a bally …”

  “Don’t lose your temper, friend, and don’t swear,” answered Klapka dejectedly. “The reprimand was not intended for you but for me!”

  “It’s intended for us all, sir, and that’s just …”

  “Perhaps, before I took charge, but to-day all the guilt is mine! I felt that very clearly from the colonel’s words and tone, from … He asked me why I had been transferred to this front, do you understand?”

  The captain sat down on the chair near the table with the maps and looked at Bologa questioningly and afraid. The latter answered uneasily:

  “In the interest of the service, of course. In war-time nothing else counts.”

  “Well, the colonel knows, he must know, and still he asked me,” said Klapka in a lower tone with a shade of mystery in his voice. “And when I funked and told him a lie he did not move an eyelid, and I felt ashamed of my cowardice!”

  He fell silent, awaiting an answer or question. But the attitude and tone of the captain perturbed Bologa and aroused anew in his soul all the disquiet which he had thought allayed for good. He would have liked to protest and be done with this fellow who pursued him with his confidence and forced him to share ideas fraught with so much danger, but he was aghast to find that at the bottom of his heart these ideas were dear to him, and that he kept them stored there like precious jewels.

  “Sir,” murmured Apostol, staring into the other man’s eyes beseechingly.

  In that look and tone Klapka seemed to find a stimulant which lifted the anxiety from his face. He sighed deeply, as if he were about to make a clean breast of it, and said:

  “This cowardice stifles me, Bologa! I can’t stand it! I thought that if I concealed it I could get rid of it, but now it is strangling me. You saw the look in Svoboda’s eyes under the gibbet? You must have noticed it—everybody saw the contempt, the pride, the hope. That death is the heroic one for us! On the Italian front a Rumanian was hanged for the same crime. I was quite close and he had that same look when facing the halter. But then I did not understand. Only a few months later did I grasp with fear and dread the meaning of that look. Three officers from my own regiment, one out of my own division—all Czechs—were caught one night between the lines with plans and maps and secret papers. I was to have been the fourth, but on the day fixed for our desertion I received a letter from home and I hid like a thief. The letter reminded me of my home, my children, my wife; in the letter I found hope of a future and of happiness, I found much love, all the love of my life. How could I risk all this for something … for something … for a dream? I, too, was had up with them before the court martial as an accomplice. And there I shook them off as I would leprosy, and I denied everything, clinging desperately to a shameful life. And they kept silent and did not even look upon me with contempt. The scythe of death flashed before their eyes, but they did not flinch. And then, when the sentence of death by hanging was read out they all three shouted with one voice, in front of the court: ‘Long live Bohemia!’ while I shook like a wretched beggar asking for alms. And to prove to all that I was innocent I went to see them executed. You see to what lengths cowardice can drive one? Near the village there is a forest through which the army has cut special roads for the requirements of the front. These roads are hidden from Italian aeroplanes. I accompanied the convoy of execution and we reached a large clearing. The convoy halted in the centre of the clearing and I looked round for the gibbets. There were no gibbets, but on each tree men were hanging, strung up on the branches. All were bareheaded, and from the neck of each man dangled a label bearing the words ‘A TRAITOR TO HIS COUNTRY’, inscribed in three languages. My heart froze within me, but still I did not dare to tremble. To enable me to hide more easily my terror I had the idea of counting them, to see how many there were.…You see how base man is! But how could I count them when the whole forest was full of hanged men? Perhaps fear made them seem more numerous than they really were! Then I closed my eyes, thinking with stupid amazement: ‘This is the Forest of the Hanged.’ A Hungarian major, a tall fellow with the profile of a bird, whispered into my ear, perhaps to challenge me: ‘They are all Czechs, both officers and men, only Czechs!’ I made no rejoinder, as if I had thought his remark had been meant for a reproach. Then all three were hanged simultaneously on the same tree, an old beech with hollow trunk. When the noose was put round their necks I looked at their eyes. They were shining brightly, like stars which announce the coming of the sun, with so much nobility and hope that their faces seemed bathed in a radiance of glory. Then I felt proud of being the kinsman of the radiant three and I longed thirstily for death! But only for a moment, a single moment! Then I became aware of the struggling bodies. I heard the creaking of the branches and my heart trembled silently, timorously, thievishly, so that no one near me should hear it. A few days later I was transferred as a suspect. Now you know why I was transferred. And do you think that I had at least the decency to shed tears on my return from the Forest of the Hanged? Or even in the train on my way here? Or since I am here? I rejoiced, Bologa, do you hear?—I rejoiced that I was alive, that I had escaped from the Forest of the Hanged! Until just now I rejoiced, until the colonel asked me why I had been transferred! Just now I wept for the first time, with my head buried in my cloak so t
hat not even my orderly should hear me. Only just now—because I am terrified of the Forest of the Hanged! Because the Forest of the Hanged has followed me here!”

  Klapka stopped speaking, his eyes so wide and terrified that Bologa’s heart was filled with compassion. In the silence of the dug-out their hearts beat with the same tremulousness. The lieutenant wished to say something comforting and found himself whispering:

  “Sir, the Forest of the Hanged …”

  He realized what he had said, and dropped his eyes helplessly, humbly.

  “Now you see what the colonel meant, don’t you?” said the captain, shaking himself as if he wished to shake off a weight. “And his remark about the search-light? You see how the two are connected? The remark is a threat for me—either the search-light or …”

  He shook himself again and continued in a strangled voice: “We must destroy that search-light, Bologa, my brother in anguish! Otherwise …”

  “The Forest of the Hanged!” breathed Apostol, his eyes flashing with a new hatred which had sprung up in his heart unnoticed.

  Klapka, as if the telling of it had lightened his heart, now spoke of nothing but the Russian search-light and began to point out places on the map, to take measurements, to combine figures and formulae. Bologa listened to him more and more morosely without uttering a word. The captain’s voice, tremulous with fear, began to arouse his indignation. He controlled himself, but a feeling of hatred seemed to infuse itself into his blood and spread through his veins like a poison. He stared at the map and saw only the captain’s fingers which held the compass and moved hither and thither, casting a strange shadow shaped like a gibbet.

  Presently Klapka went off, relieved and full of trust, with a smile on his face, leaving Bologa alone in the damp dug-out.

  VI

  His heart throbbed within him and his brain seethed. He stood still a minute, staring after Klapka, then he threw himself into the chair facing the map, clinging to the compass as if his salvation depended on it. But even his fingers obeyed him no longer. Within his soul and all around him there was an anguish in which his whole life was being engulfed.

  He rested his head on his hands and stared at the lines, dots and angles marked on the map. They seemed to him cabalistic signs, and he wondered how he had managed to understand them up till to-day. And simultaneously a question sprang up in his mind: what was he doing here? Then round this question answers grouped themselves, explanations, more questions and more answers, which in proportion as they became more numerous became more unsatisfactory because none of them opened out a way to salvation.

  “How ridiculous I was with my conception of life!” he thought all at once. “How was it that I did not realize that a stupid formula could never cope with life.”

  Now, looking back, it seemed to him that all his life had been as empty as a paper bag. He was ashamed of his past way of living, and he recalled with sad regret the times when Life had tried to draw him into her current and he had stupidly resisted, anxiously stifling his instinctive inclinations. Even his present struggles with their desperate attempts to overcome his heart’s bidding …

  “Sir, I have brought your dinner,” said the orderly suddenly, speaking from behind Bologa’s chair, where he had halted with his tray. Apostol, hearing the Rumanian tongue, sprang to his feet as if he had received a heavy blow on the head.

  “All right, all right, Petre,” he stuttered, startled, shaking on his feet, and he threw himself on his bed so that the orderly should not notice his perturbation.

  The orderly set the table, watching Bologa out of the comer of his eye. He saw that he was depressed and, wishing to sympathize with him, he asked humbly:

  “Have you had bad news from home, sir?”

  “What news, you ass?” vociferated Bologa furiously, sitting up. “What business is it of yours? You think of nothing but home, you damned fool—home!”

  The soldier stiffened where he stood, facing the lieutenant red with fury. He was a man of over thirty, tall, broad- shouldered, with hands like spades, bony cheeks, and wonderfully gentle eyes in which burnt piety and resignation. Apostol had had him as orderly for about seven months, and Petre looked after him with a canine devotion, happy that Apostol had taken him from the firing line. Besides, he had been specially recommended in a letter from Doamna Bologa, for he also came from Parva, had known the “young gentleman” in his cradle, and had five children waiting for him at home.

  Meeting the orderly’s eyes, the lieutenant’s fury melted in a wave of shame. He understood that it had been a sudden hearing of Rumanian which had driven him beside himself because it had come as a rebuke to his reproach-laden thoughts. He was sorry that he had lost his temper, and this regret gave him a feeling of self-satisfaction and nobility. He got up, took three steps towards the entrance of the dug-out, turned back, and said sadly and frankly, as if he were speaking to an old friend:

  “I am depressed, Petre, and I don’t know what is the matter with me.… O God, this war!”

  He shivered with apprehension. It was the first time he had ever complained of the war. Until now even the sufferings of war had seemed natural to him, and he had looked upon those who complained as cowards.

  The soldier, calm with the sombre light of resignation in his eyes, answered gravely:

  “God’s punishment, sir, for the sins of men.”

  “But what if it be not the sinners but the sinned against who suffer the punishment?” persisted Bologa.

  “God holds the scales evenly,” answered Petre with profound faith. “Death is no punishment. Life is a punishment. And it is only by means of the body’s pain and anguish that the soul’s salvation is attained.”

  Apostol sat down to eat. He had long been aware of his orderly’s deep faith and he had heard him utter these very words dozens of times before. Petre, who even at home was famed for his piety, had, as a result of war conditions, become a religious fatalist. Besides, as he was the only Rumanian in the regiment, he was the only one with whom Bologa spoke his native tongue. The soldier went on babbling about suffering and about God, and Bologa, while he ate, listened to him and thought to himself that never before had he listened to the fellow with so much affection. Presently he interrupted him and turned the conversation to Parva and to the folk at home. Petre sighed and filled the dug-out with all sorts of remembrances which moved them both equally. Apostol felt his heart swell, felt its passionate throbbing, and felt the throbbing turn into a song of victory. An immense tenderness filled his soul. Greatly moved, he turned his eyes on Petre, seeing embodied in him all Parva and all those who spoke the Rumanian tongue. He felt inclined to embrace him and to kneel at his feet and ask his pardon. Finally, unable to control himself any longer, he breathed happily:

  “Petre, Petre, my brother, my hope.…”

  The soldier was silent for a while, perplexed. Then he shook his head and said calmly and resignedly:

  “O Lord, help us …

  VII

  For several nights the search-light did not appear. Apostol Bologa, on the look-out at the observation post in the infantry trenches, waited for it with strained expectancy, bent on satisfying Klapka. In the stillness of the nights, broken only at rare intervals by stray rifle shots, he had plenty of leisure to weigh, as was his custom, his new creed, for he was convinced that nothing but that which could endure keen scrutiny of the mind was worthy to dwell eternally in the soul of man. And he rejoiced, feeling his spiritual regeneration, no matter how he viewed it, send a warm glow through his heart, whereas his old “conception”, for which he had risked his life for twenty-seven months, had always been as unkind to him as a stepmother. He now told himself that life acted only through the heart, and that without the heart the brain would be nothing but a mass of dead cells. But he was ashamed to think that it had required two years of war for him to reach the point from which he had started, against the advice of Doamna Bologa, of the Protopop, and of everyone else except Marta. Round his neck he wore a
locket which contained a mesh of blond hair and the picture of a charming little head. She had given him these when he had been home on leave and had whispered to him: “My hero!” She also called him that in her letters.