Men in War by Andreas Latzko

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John Bogdan thrust his fist into his mouth and dug his teeth into the
flesh, until the pain of it at length helped him subdue his sobbing.
Then he buried his head in his hands and tried to think.

Never in his life had anything gone amiss with him. He had always been
liked, at school, in the castle, and even in the barracks. He had gone
through life whistling contentedly, a good-looking alert lad, an
excellent jockey, and a coachman who drove with style and loved his
horses, as his horses loved him. When he deigned to toss a kiss to the
women as he dashed by, he was accustomed to see a flattered smile come
to their faces. Only with Marcsa did it take a little longer. But she
was famous for her beauty far and wide. Even John's master, the lord of
the castle, had patted him on the shoulder almost enviously when Marcsa
and he had become engaged.

"A handsome couple," the pastor had said.

John Bogdan groped again for the little mirror in his pocket and then
sat with drooping body, oppressed by a profound melancholy. That thing
in the glass was to be the bridegroom of the beautiful Marcsa? What did
that ape's face, that piece of patchwork, that checkerboard which the
damned quack, the impostor, whom they called a distinguished medical
authority, a celebrated doctor, had basted together--what did it have to
do with _that_ John Bogdan whom Marcsa had promised to marry and
whom she had accompanied to the station crying when he had gone off to
the war? For Marcsa there was only _one_ John Bogdan, the one that
was coachman to the lord of the castle and the handsomest man in the
village. Was he still coachman? The lord would take care not to disgrace
his magnificent pair with such a scarecrow or drive to the county seat
with such a monstrosity on the box. Haying--that's what they would put
him to--cleaning out the dung from the stables. And Marcsa, the
beautiful Marcsa whom all the men were vying for, would she be the wife
of a miserable day laborer?

No, of this John Bogdan was certain, the man sitting on the bench there
was no longer John Bogdan to Marcsa. She would not have him now--no more
than the lord would have him on the coachman's box. A cripple is a
cripple, and Marcsa had engaged herself to John Bogdan, not to the
fright that he was bringing back home to her.

His melancholy gradually gave way to an ungovernable fury against those
people in the city who had given him all that buncombe and talked him
into heaven knows what. Marcsa should be proud because he had been
disfigured in the service of his fatherland. Proud? Ha-ha!

He laughed scornfully, and his fingers tightened convulsively about the
cursed mirror, until the glass broke into bits and cut his hand. The
blood trickled slowly down his sleeves without his noticing it, so great
was his rage against that bunch of aristocratic ladies in the hospital
whose twaddle had deprived him of his reason. They probably thought that
a man with one eye and half a nose was good enough for a peasant girl?
Fatherland? Would Marcsa go to the altar with the fatherland? Could she
show off the fatherland to the women when she would see them looking at
her pityingly? Did the fatherland drive through the village with ribbons
flying from its hat? Ridiculous! Sitting on the bench opposite the
station, with the sign of the village in view, a short name, a single
word, which comprised his whole life, all his memories, hopes and
experiences, John Bogdan suddenly thought of one of the village
characters, Peter the cripple, who had lived in the tumbledown hut
behind the mill many years before, when John was still a child. John saw
him quite distinctly, standing there with his noisy wooden leg and his
sad, starved, emaciated face. He, too, had sacrificed a part of himself,
his leg, "for the fatherland," in Bosnia during the occupation; and then
he had had to live in the old hovel all alone, made fun of by the
children, who imitated his walk, and grumblingly tolerated by the
peasants, who resented the imposition of this burden upon the community.
"In the service of the fatherland." Never had the "fatherland" been
mentioned when Peter the cripple went by. They called him contemptuously
the village pauper, and that was all there was to it.

John Bogdan gnashed his teeth in a rage that he had not thought of Peter
the cripple in the hospital. Then he would have given those city people
a piece of his mind. He would have told them what he thought of their
silly, prattling humbug about the fatherland and about the great honor
it was to return home to Marcsa looking like a monkey. If he had the
doctor in his clutches now! The fakir had photographed him, not once,
but a dozen times, from all sides, after each butchery, as though he had
accomplished a miracle, had turned out a wonderful masterpiece. And here
Julia, even Julia, his playmate, his neighbor, had not recognized him.

So deep was John Bogdan sunk in his misery, so engulfed in grim plans of
vengeance, that he did not notice a man who had been standing in front
of him for several minutes, eyeing him curiously from every angle.
Suddenly a voice woke him up out of his brooding, and a hot wave surged
into his face, and his heart stood still with delighted terror, as he
heard some one say:

"Is that you, Bogdan?"

He raised himself, happy at having been recognized after all. But the
next moment he knitted his brows in complete disappointment. It was
Mihaly the humpback.

There was no other man in the whole village, even in the whole county,
whose hand John Bogdan would not at that moment have grasped cordially
in a surge of gratitude. But this humpback--he never had wanted to have
anything to do with him, and now certainly not. The fellow might imagine
he had found a comrade, and was probably glad that he was no longer the
only disfigured person in the place.

"Yes, it's I. Well?"

The humpback's small, piercing eyes searched Bogdan's scarred face
curiously, and he shook his head in pity.

"Well, well, the Russians certainly have done you up."

Bogdan snarled at him like a vicious cur.

"It's none of your business. What right have you to talk? If I had come
into the world like you, with my belly on my back, the Russians couldn't
have done anything to me."

The humpback seated himself quietly beside John without showing the
least sign of being insulted.

"The war hasn't made you any politer, I can see that," he remarked
drily. "You're not exactly in a happy frame of mind, which does not
surprise me. Yes, that's the way it is. The poor people must give up
their sound flesh and bone so that the enemy should not deprive the rich
of their superfluity. You may bless your stars you came out of it as
well as you did."

"I do," Bogdan growled with a glance of hatred. "The shells don't ask if
you are rich or poor. Counts and barons are lying out there, rotting in
the sun like dead beasts. Any man that God has not smitten in his cradle
so that he's not fit to be either a man or a woman is out in the
battlefield now, whether he's as poor as a church mouse or used to
eating from golden plates."

The humpback cleared his throat and shrugged his shoulders.

"There are all sorts of people," he observed, and was about to add
something else, but bethought himself and remained silent.

This Bogdan always had had the soul of a flunkey, proud of being allowed
to serve the high and mighty and feeling solid with his oppressors
because he was allowed to contribute to their pomp in gold-laced livery
and silver buttons. His masters had sicked him on to face the cannons in
defense of their own wealth, and now the man sat there disfigured, with
only one eye, and still would not permit any criticism of his gracious
employers. Against such stupidity there was nothing to be done. There
was no use wasting a single word on him.

The two remained sitting for a while in silence. Bogdan filled his pipe
carefully and deliberately, and Mihaly watched him with interest.

"Are you going to the castle?" the humpback asked cautiously, when the
pipe was at last lit.

John Bogdan was well aware just what the hateful creature was aiming at.
He knew him. A Socialist--that's what he was, one of those good-for-
nothings who take the bread out of poor people's mouths by dinning a lot
of nonsense into their ears, just like a mean dog who snaps at the hand
that feeds him. He had made a good living as foreman in the brickyard,
and as thanks he had incited all the workmen against the owner, Bogdan's
master, until they demanded twice as much wages, and were ready to set
fire to the castle on all four corners. Once Mihaly had tried his luck
with him, too. He had wanted to make his master out a bad man. But this
time he had bucked up against the right person. A box on his right ear
and a box on his left ear, and then a good sound kick--that was the
answer to keep him from ever again trying to make a Socialist of John
Bogdan, one of those low fellows who know no God or fatherland.

Mihaly moved on the bench uneasily, every now and then scrutinizing his
neighbor from the side. At last he plucked up courage and said suddenly:

"They'll probably be glad up there that you are back. Your arms are
still whole, and they need people in the factory."

Bogdan turned up his nose.

"In the brickyard?" he asked disdainfully.

The humpback burst out laughing.

"Brickyard? Brickyard is good. Who needs bricks in war? The brickyard's
gone long ago, man. Do you see those trucks over there? They are all
loaded up with shells. Every Saturday a whole train of shells leaves
here."

Bogdan listened eagerly. That was news. A change on the estate of which
he had not yet heard.

"You see, there is such a nice division," Mihaly continued, smiling
sarcastically. "One goes away and lets his head be blown off. The other
remains comfortably at home and manufactures shells and decorates his
castle with thousand-dollar bills. Well, I'm satisfied."

"What are we to do, eh, shoot with peas or with air? You can't carry on
a war without shells. Shells are needed just as much as soldiers."

"Exactly. And because the rich have the choice of being soldiers or
making shells, they choose to make the shells and send _you_ off to
have your head blown off. What are you getting for your eye? Twenty-five
dollars a year? Or perhaps as much as fifty? And the others whom the
ravens are feeding on don't get even that out of the war. But the
gentleman up in the castle is making his five hundred a day and doesn't
risk even his little finger doing it. I'd be a patriot on those terms
myself. I am telling you the truth. At first, of course, they said he
was going to war, and he did actually ride off in great state, but three
weeks later he was back here again with machines and all the equipment,
and now he delivers fine orations in the townhouse and sends other men
off to die--and on top of it is gallant to the wives left behind. He
stuffs his pockets and fools with every girl in the factory. He's the
cock of the whole district."

Bogdan, his brows knit in annoyance, let the man talk on. But the last
part struck him with a shock. He pricked up his ears and grew uneasy and
for a while struggled heroically against asking a question that burned
on his lips. But in the end he could not restrain himself and blurted
out:

"Is--is Marcsa working in the factory, too?"

The humpback's eyes flashed.

"Marcsa, the beautiful Marcsa! I should say so! She's been made a
forelady, though they say she's never had a shell in her hands, but, to
make up, the lord's hands have--"

With a short, hoarse growl John Bogdan flew at the humpback's throat,
squeezed in his Adam's apple, pressing it into his neck, and held him in
a merciless clutch. The man beat about with his arms, his eyes popped
from his head in fright, his throat gurgled, and his face turned livid.
Then John Bogdan released his hold, and Mihaly fell to the ground and
lay there gasping. Bogdan quickly gathered up his things and strode off,
taking long, quick steps, as if afraid of arriving too late for
something in the castle.

He gave not another look back at Mihaly the humpback, never turned
around once, but quietly went his way and for a long while felt the warm
throat in his hand.

What was a man who lay gasping on the road to him? One man more or less.
In the rhythmic regularity of the marching column, he had passed by
thousands like him, and it had never occurred to his mind, dulled by
weariness, that the grey spots thickly strewn over the fields, the heaps
lining the roadway like piles of dung in the spring, were human beings
struck down by death. He and his comrades had waded in the dead, there
at Kielce, when they made a dash across the fields, and earthy grey
hands rose out of every furrow pawing the air, and trousers drenched in
blood and distorted faces grew out of the ground, as if all the dead
were scrambling from their graves for the Last Judgment. They had
stepped and stumbled over corpses. Once the fat little officer of
reserves, to the great amusement of his company, had gotten deathly sick
at his stomach because he had inadvertently stepped on the chest of a
half-decayed Russian, and the body had given way under him, and he had
scarcely been able to withdraw his foot from the foul hole. John Bogdan
smiled as he recalled the wicked jokes the men had cracked at the
officer's expense, how the officer had gone all white and leaned against
a tree and carried on like a man who has much more than quenched his
thirst.

The road glowed in the mid-day sun. The village clock struck twelve.
From the hill yonder came, like an answer, the deep bellow of the
factory whistle, and a little white cloud rose over the tops of the
trees. Bogdan quickened his pace, running rather than walking, heedless
of the drops of sweat that ran down and tickled his neck. For almost a
year he had breathed nothing but the hospital atmosphere, had smelled
nothing but iodoform and lysol and seen nothing but roofs and walls. His
lungs drew in the aroma of the blossoming meadows with deep
satisfaction, and the soles of his boots tramped the ground sturdily, as
if he were again marching in regular order.

This was the first walk he had taken since he was wounded, the first
road he had seen since those wild marches on Russian soil. At moments he
seemed to hear the cannons roaring. The short struggle with the humpback
had set his blood coursing, and his memories of the war, for a time
stifled as it were beneath a layer of dust by the dreary monotony of the
hospital life, suddenly came whirling back to him.

He almost regretted having let that damned blackguard go so soon. One
moment more, and he would never have opened his blasphemous mouth again.
His head would have fallen back exhausted to one side, he would once
again have embraced the air longingly with outspread fingers, and then
in a flash would have shrunk together, exactly like the fat, messy
Russian with the large blue eyes who was the first man to present
himself to St. Peter with a greeting from John Bogdan. Bogdan had not
let _him_ loose until he had altogether quit squirming. He had
choked him dead as a doornail. And still he was a comical fellow, not
nearly so disgusting as that rascally humpback. But he was the first
enemy soldier whom he had got into his grasp, his very first Russian. A
magnificent array of others had followed, though the fat man was the
only one Bogdan had choked to death. He had smashed scores with the
butt-end of his gun and run his bayonet through scores of others. He had
even squashed with his boots the wretch who had struck down his dearest
comrade before his very eyes. But never again did he choke a man to
death. That was why the little fat fellow stuck in his memory. He had no
recollection of the others whatever. All he saw now in his mind was a
tangle of greyish-green uniforms. And as he thought of his heroic deeds,
the gnashing, the stamping, the gasping, and the cursing of the hand-to-
hand encounters resounded in his ears. How many, he wondered, had he
sent to the other world? God alone may have counted them. He himself had
had enough to do trying to save his own skin. Had a man stopped to look
around, he would have carried his curiosity to the next world.

And yet--there was another face that remained fixed in his memory. A
great big thin fellow, as tall as a beanpole, with enormous yellow
tusks, which he gnashed like a boar. Yes, he had as clear a picture of
him as if it had been yesterday. He saw him half-backed up against the
wall already, swinging his gun over his head. One second more, and the
butt-end would have come whizzing down. But a sleepy Russian was never
the man to get the better of John Bogdan. Before he had the chance to
bring down his gun, Bogdan's bayonet was in between his ribs, and the
Russian fell over on his own gun. The bayonet pierced him through and
through, and even went into the wall behind him, and came mighty near
breaking off.

But the same thing never happened to Bogdan again. It had happened that
once because he had thrust too hard, with clenched teeth, gripping the
rod in a tight clutch, as if it were iron that he had to cleave. The
fact was, he had not yet discovered that it really isn't so difficult to
mow down a human being. He had been prepared for any amount of
resistance, and his bayonet had glided into the fellow's body like
butter. His mouth had remained wide open in astonishment--he recalled it
to the dot. A man who has never tried a bayonet thrust thinks a human
being is made up all of bones, and he fetches out for a good hard
stroke. Then he's in a pickle to free his weapon again before one of the
messy-looking devils takes advantage of his defenselessness. The way to
do was to go at it very lightly, with a short jerky thrust. Then the
blade ran in of itself, like a good horse--you actually had trouble
holding it back. The most important thing was, not to take your eye off
your enemy. You mustn't look at your bayonet, or the spot you intend to
pierce. You must always watch your enemy so as to guess his move in
time. It's from your enemy's face that you must read the right moment
for stepping backward. They all behaved the same way--exactly like the
first tall wild fellow who gnashed his tusks. All of a sudden their
faces turned absolutely smooth, as if the cold iron in their body had
chilled their fury, their eyes opened wide in 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 Bogdan 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 Bogdan 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 Bogdan 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 Bogdan 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 Bogdan 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
Bogdan'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!" Bogdan 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 Bogdan, her head
held high in defiance.

Bogdan 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, Toth,
followed him.

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

Bogdan 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 Bogdan, 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?

Bogdan 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.

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