Men in War by Andreas Latzko (best fiction novels to read txt) 📕

astonishment and looked at their enemy as if to ask in reproach, “What are you doing?” Then they usually clutched at the bayonet and needlessly cut their fingers, too, before they fell over dead. If you didn’t know exactly what to do and didn’t hold your weapon back in time and withdraw it quickly from the wound, just when you saw the man’s eyes growing large, you would be carried along down with him or would get hit on the head by the butt-end of another enemy’s gun long before you could draw your bayonet out.

These were all things that John Bogdán had often discussed with his comrades after severe frays when they criticized the men who had fallen for behaving stupidly and who had had to pay with their lives for their awkwardness.

As he strode along in haste up the familiar road to the castle, he was fairly lost in recollections. His legs moved of themselves, like horses on the homeward way. He passed through the open grille gateway and was already walking on the gravel path, his head bowed on his chest, without noticing that he had reached home.

The neighing of horses woke him up from his thoughts with a start. He stood still, deeply stirred by the sight of the stables, only a few feet away, and inside, in the twilight, the gleam of his favorite horse’s flanks. He was about to turn off the path and make for the stable door when far away down below, at the other end of the large place, he saw a woman coming from the brickyard. She wore a dotted red silk kerchief on her head and carried her full figure proudly, and the challenging sway of her hips billowed her wide skirts as the wind billows a field of ripe grain.

John Bogdán stood stockstill, as if some one had struck him on the chest. It was Marcsa! There was not another girl in the whole country who walked like that. He threw his luggage to the ground and dashed off.

“Marcsa! Marcsa!” his cry thundered out over the broad courtyard.

The girl turned and waited for his approach, peering curiously through half-closed eyes. When almost face to face with her Bogdán stood still.

“Marcsa!” he repeated in a whisper, his gaze fastened upon her face anxiously. He saw her turn pale, white as chalk, saw her eyes leap to and fro uneasily, from his left cheek to his right cheek, and back again. Then horror came into her eyes. She clapped her hands to her face, and turned and ran away as fast as her legs would carry her.

In utter sadness Bogdán stared after her. That was exactly the way he had imagined their meeting again since Julia, the station-guard’s wife, the woman he had grown up with, had not recognized him. But to run away! That rankled. No need for her to run away. John Bogdán was not the man to force himself on a woman. If he no longer pleased her now that he was disfigured, well, then she could look for another man, and he, too—he would find another woman. He wasn’t bothered about that.

This was what he had wanted to tell Marcsa.

He bounded after her and overtook her a few feet from the machine shop.

“Why do you run away from me?” he growled, breathless, and caught her hand. “If you don’t want me any more, you need only say so. What do you think—I’m going to eat you up?”

She stared at him searchingly—in uncertainty. He almost felt sorry for her, she was trembling so.

“How you look!” he heard her stammer, and he turned red with anger.

“You knew it. I had them write to you that a shell hit me. Did you think it made me better-looking? Just speak straight out if you don’t want me any more. Straight wine is what I want, no mixture. Yes or no? I won’t force you to marry me. Just say it right away—yes or no?”

Marcsa was silent. There was something in his face, in his one eye, that took her breath away, that dug into her vitals like cold fingers. She cast her eyes down and stammered:

“But you have no position yet. How can we marry? You must first ask the master if he—”

It was as if a red pall woven of flames dropped in front of John Bogdán’s eyes. The master? What was she saying about the master? He thought of the humpback, and it came to him in a flash that the fellow had not lied. His fingers clutched her wrist like a pair of glowing tongs, so that she cried out with the pain.

“The master!” Bogdán bellowed. “What has the master got to do between you and me? Yes or no? I want an answer. The master has nothing to do with us.”

Marcsa drew herself up. All of a sudden a remarkable assurance came to her. The color returned to her cheeks, and her eyes flashed proudly. She stood there with the haughty bearing so familiar to Bogdán, her head held high in defiance.

Bogdán observed the change and saw that her gaze traveled over his shoulder. He let go her hand and turned instantly. Just what he thought —the master coming out of the machine shop. His old forester, Tóth, followed him.

Marcsa bounded past Bogdán like a cat and ran up to the lord and bent over and kissed his hand.

Bogdán saw the three of them draw near and lowered his head like a ram for attack. A cold, determined quiet rose in him slowly, as in the trenches when the trumpeter gave the signal for a charge. He felt the lord’s hand touch his shoulder, and he took a step backward.

What was the meaning of it all? The lord was speaking of heroism and fatherland, a lot of rubbish that had nothing to do with Marcsa. He let him go on talking, let the words pour down on him like rain, without paying any attention to their meaning. His glance wandered to and fro uneasily, from the lord to Marcsa and then to the forester, until it rested curiously on something shining.

It was the nickeled hilt of the hunting-knife hanging at the old forester’s side and sparkling in the sunlight.

“Like a bayonet,” thought Bogdán, and an idea flashed through his mind, to whip the thing out of the scabbard and run it up to the hilt in the hussy’s body. But her rounded hips, her bright billowing skirts confused him. In war he had never had to do with women. He could not exactly imagine what it would be like to make a thrust into that beskirted body there. His glance traveled back to the master, and now he noticed that his stiffnecked silence had pulled him up short.

“He is gnashing his teeth,” it struck him, “just like the tall Russian.” And he almost smiled at a vision that came to his mind—of the lord also getting a smooth face and astonished, reproachful eyes.

But hadn’t he said something about Marcsa just then? What was Marcsa to him?

Bogdán drew himself up defiantly.

“I will arrange matters with Marcsa myself, sir. It’s between her and me,” he rejoined hoarsely, and looked his master straight in the face. He still had his mustache, quite even on the two sides, and curling delicately upwards at the ends. What was it the humpback had said? “One man goes away and lets his head be blown off.” He wasn’t so stupid after all, the humpback wasn’t.

What Bogdán said infuriated the master. Bogdán let him shout and stared like a man hypnotized at the nickeled hilt of the hunting-knife. It was not until the name “Marcsa” again struck his ear that he became attentive.

“Marcsa is in my employ now,” he heard the lord saying. “You know I am fond of you, Bogdán. I’ll let you take care of the horses again, if you care to. But Marcsa is to be let alone. I won’t have any rumpus. If she still wants to marry you, all well and good. But if she doesn’t, she’s to be let alone. If I hear once again that you have annoyed her, I’ll chase you to the devil. Do you understand?”

Foaming with rage, Bogdán let out the stream of his wrath.

“To the devil?” he shouted. “You chase me to the devil? You had first better go there yourself. I’ve been to the devil already. For eight months I was in hell. Here’s my face—you can tell from my face that I come from hell. To play the protector here and stuff your pockets full and send the others out to die—that’s easy. A man who dawdles at home has no right to send men to the devil who have already been in hell for his sake.”

So overwhelming was his indignation that he spoke like the humpback Socialist and was not ashamed of it. He stood there ready to leap, with tensely drawn muscles, like a wild animal. He saw the lord make ready to strike him, saw his distorted face, saw the riding-crop flash through the air, and even saw it descending upon him. But he did not feel the short, hard blow on his back.

With one bound he ripped the hunting-knife out of the scabbard and thrust it between the lord’s ribs—not with a long sweep, so that some one could have stayed his arm before he struck. Oh, no! But quite lightly, from below, with a short jerk, exactly as he had learned by experience in battle. The hunting-knife was as good as his bayonet. It ran into the flesh like butter.

Then everything came about just as it always did. John Bogdán stood with his chin forward and saw the lord’s face distorted by anger suddenly smooth out and turn as placid and even as if it had been ironed. He saw his eyes widen and look over at him in astonishment with the reproachful question, “What are you doing?” The one thing Bogdán did not see was the collapsing of the lord’s body, for at that instant a blow crashed down on the back of his head, like the downpour of a waterfall dropping from an infinite height. For one second he still saw Marcsa’s face framed in a fiery wheel, then, his skull split open, he fell over on top of his master, whose body already lay quivering on the ground.

 

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