Chapter 8

It was just like this that the three war correspondents saw him lying at the edge of the woods on that midsummer morning and--turned away involuntarily with almost the military exactness of soldiers at a "right about face." Their visit was meant for _me_! I was to furnish them with carriage and horses because the automobile that was to have darted them through the danger zone was lying on the road to Goerz with a broken axle.

Charming gentlemen, in wonderfully well-cut breeches and traveling caps, looking as if they had stepped out of a Sherlock Holmes motion picture. They offered to carry letters back and deliver messages, and they found everything on my place perfectly fascinating, and laughed heartily at my mattress of willow twigs--and were particularly grateful when the carriage stood ready to carry them off before the daily bombardment of the Italians began.

On driving out of the woods they had to pass the wounded man again with the hideously disfigured face. He was crouching on the meadow. But this time they did not see him. As if at command they turned their heads the other way and with animated gestures viewed the damage done by an air raid the day before, as though they were already sitting over a table in a coffee-house.

I lost my breath, as though I had run a long distance up-hill. The place where I stood suddenly seemed strange and altered. Was that the same piece of woods into which shells had so often come crashing, which the huge Caproni planes had circled about with wide-spread wings like vultures, shedding bombs, while our machine guns lashed the leaves with a hailstorm of shot? Was it out of _this_ piece of woods that three men had just driven off, healthy, unscathed, gaily waving their caps? Where was the wall that held us others imprisoned under the cracking branches? Was there not a door that opened only to let out pale, sunken cheeks, feverish eyes, or mangled limbs?

The carriage rolled lightly over the field, trampled down brown, and the one thing missing to make it the perfect picture of a pleasure trip was the brilliant red of a Baedeker.

Those men were riding back home.

To wife and child, perhaps?

A painful pulling and tugging, as though my eyes were caught to the carriage wheels. Then my body rebounded--as if torn off--back into emptiness, and--at that moment, just when my soul was as if ploughed up by the carriage and laid bare and defenseless by yearning--at that moment the experience sprang upon me--with one dreadful leap, one single bite--incurable for the rest of my life.

Unsuspecting, I crossed over to the wounded man upon whom the three had so unceremoniously turned their backs, as though he did not also belong to the interesting museum of shell holes that they had come to inspect. He was cowering near the dirty ragged little Red Cross flag, with his head between his knees, and did not hear me come up. Behind him lay the brown spot which stood out from the green still left on the field like a circus ring. The wounded soldiers who gathered here every morning at dawn to be driven to the field hospital in the wagons that brought us ammunition had rubbed this spot in like a favorite corner of a sofa.

How many I had seen crouching there like that, for ten--often twelve hours, when the wagons had left too early, or had been overcrowded, or, after violent fighting, had stood waiting in line at the munitions depot behind the lines. Happy fellows, some of them, with broken arms or legs, the war slang, "a thousand-dollar shot," on their pale, yet laughing lips--enviously ogled by the men with slight wounds or the men sick with typhoid fever, who would all gladly have sacrificed a thousand dollars and a limb into the bargain for the same certainty of not having to return to the front again. How many I had seen rolling on the ground, biting into the earth in their agony--how many in the pouring rain, half buried already in the mud, their bodies ripped open, groaning and whimpering and outbellowing the storm.

This man seemed to be only slightly hurt in the right leg. The blood had oozed out on one spot through the hastily made bandage, so I offered him my first-aid package, besides cognac and cigarettes. But he did not move. It was not until I laid my hand on his shoulder that he raised his head--and the face he showed me threw me back like a blow on the chest.

His mouth and nose had come apart, and crept like a thick vine up his right cheek--which was no longer a cheek. A chunk of bluish red flesh swelled up there, covered by skin stretched to bursting and shining from being drawn so tight. The whole right side of his face seemed more like an exotic fruit than a human countenance, while from the left side, from out of grey twitching misery, a sad, frightened eye looked up at me.

Violent terror slung itself round my neck like a lasso.

What was it? Such a frightful thing as that even this field, this waiting-room to the Beyond, had never witnessed before. Even the awful recollection of another wounded man who had stood at this same spot a few days before, his hands looking as though they were modeling something, while in actuality they were carefully holding his own entrails--even that hideous recollection faded before the sight of this Janus head, all peace, all gentle humanity on one side; all war, all distorted, puffed-up image of fiendish hatred on the other side.

"Shrapnel?" I stammered timidly.

The answer was confused. All I could get out of it was that a dumdum bullet had smashed his right shinbone. But what was that he kept mumbling about a hook each time his hand trembled up to his glowing cheek?

I could not understand him; for the thing he had gone through still seethed in his veins so violently that he spoke as though it were just then happening and I were witnessing it. His peasant's mind could not comprehend that there were people who had not seen or heard of the tremendous misery of the last hours he had gone through. So it was more by guess-work that I gradually pieced together his story from unfinished sentences, coarse oaths, and groans.

For a whole night, after a repulsed attack on the enemy's trench, he had lain with a broken leg, unconscious, near our own wire entanglements. At dawn they threw out the iron grappling hook for him, with which they pull over into the trench the corpses of friend and foe so as to be able to bury them unceremoniously before the sun of Goerz has a chance to do its work. With this hook, dipped in hundreds of corpses, a dunce--"God damn him!"--had torn his cheek open before a more skilful hand caught hold of it and got him over safely. And now he asked humbly to be taken away to the hospital quickly, because he was worried--about his leg and being a crippled beggar the rest of his life.

I ran off as though mad dogs were at my heels, over rocks and roots, through the woods to the next detachment. In vain! In the whole woods there was not a single vehicle to be found. I had given up the last one to those three war correspondents.

Why had I not asked them to take the one wounded man lying on the field along with them and leave him at the hospital that they would pass? Why had they themselves not thought of doing their human duty? Why?

I clenched my fists in impotent fury and caught myself reaching for my revolver as though I could still shoot those gay sparks in their carriage.

Breathless, overheated from the long race, I tottered back, my knees trembling the whole way. I felt utterly broken, as though I were carrying on my shoulders a picture, weighing a ton, of men who for sport angle for human carrion.

An odd choking and tickling came into my throat--a sensation I had not known since childhood--when, back at my post again, I had to listen to the low whimpering of the helpless man.

He was no longer alone. In my absence a little band of slightly wounded men had joined him. Peering between the tree trunks I saw them sitting in a circle on the field, while the man who had been hooked was hopping about holding on to his injured leg and tossing his head from one shoulder to the other.

Towards noon I sent my corporals in search of a vehicle, promising them a princely reward, while I ran to the field again with my whisky flask.

He was no longer dancing about. He was kneeling in the center of the circle of wounded men, his body bent over, rolling his head on the ground as though it were a thing apart from himself. Suddenly he jumped up with such a yell of fury that a frightened murmur came even from the line of wounded men, who had been sitting there indifferent, sunk in their own suffering.

That was no longer anything human. The man's skin could not stand any more stretching and had burst. The broad splits ran apart like the lines of a compass and in the middle the raw flesh glowed and gushed out.

And he yelled! He hammered with his fist on the enormous purplish lump, until he fell to his knees again moaning under the blows of his own hand.

It was dark already when--at last!--they came and carted him away. And when the night slowly wove its web of mist in the woods and I lay wrapped in a mound of blankets, the only one who was still awake in the throng of black tree-trunks that moved closer together in the darkness--there he was back again, standing up stiff in the moonlight, his tortured cheek, huge as a pumpkin, shining blue against the black shadows of the trees. It glimmered like a will-o'-the-wisp, now here, now there. Night after night. It shone into every dream, so that I forced my eyelids open with my fingers--until, after ten frightful nights, my body broke down and was carried, a shrieking, convulsed heap, to the same hospital in which He had succumbed to blood-poisoning.

And now I am a madman! You can read it, black on white, on the placard at the head of my bed. They pat me on the back soothingly, like a shying horse, when I flare up and ask to be let out of this place in which _the others_ should be shut up.

But the others are free! From my window I can look over the garden wall into the street, and see them hurrying along, raising their hats, shaking hands, and crowding in front of the latest bulletin. I see women and girls, dressed coquettishly, tripping along with pride shining in their eyes, beside men whom a cross on the breast brands as murderers. I see widows in long black veils--still patient. I see lads with flowers stuck in their helmets ready to leave for the war. And not one of them rebels! Not one of them sees bruised, mangled men cowering in dark corners, men ripped apart by grappling hooks, men with their entrails gushing out, and men with blue shining cheeks.

They go by under my window, gesticulating, enthusiastic; because the enthusiastic phrases arrive coined fresh every day from the mint, and each person feels sheltered and enveloped in a warmth of assent if the phrases ring clear from his lips. I know that they keep quiet even when they would like to speak, to cry out, to scream. I know that they hunt down "slackers," and have no word of abuse for those who are a thousand times worse cowards, those who clearly recognise the utter senselessness of this butchery of millions, yet will not open their mouths for fear of the censure of the thoughtless crowd.

From my window I can see the whole globe spinning round like a crazy whirligig, whipped on by haughty lords in cunning calculation and by venal servants in sneaking submissiveness.

I see the whole pack! The bawlers who are too empty and too lazy to develop their own selves and want to puff themselves with the glittering praise meant for their herd. The scoundrels who are protected by the masses, carried by them and fed by them, and who look up sanctimoniously to a bogy of their own invention, and hammer that bogy into the conscience of millions of good men, until the mass has been forged that has neither heart nor brain, but only fury and blind faith. I see the whole game proceeding madly in blood and agony. I see the spectators going by indifferently, and I am called a madman when I raise the window to call down to them that the sons they have born and bred, the men they have loved are being chased like wild animals, are being butchered like cattle.

Those fools down there, who for the sake of respectable condolence calls, for a neighbor's eyes raised heavenward in sympathy, sacrificed the splendor and warmth of their lives, who threw their flesh and blood into the barbed wire entanglements, to rot as carrion on the fields or be hooked in with grappling hooks, who have no other consolation than that the "enemy" have had the same done to them--those fools remain free; and in their despicable vanity and wicked patience they may daily shove fresh hecatombs out to the cannons. But I must stay here impotent--left alone with the relentless comrade that my conscience gives birth to over again every day.

I stand at my window and between me and the street lie piled high the bodies of the many I saw bleeding. And I stand here powerless--because the revolver that was given me to shoot down poor homesick devils, forced into a uniform by iron necessity, has been taken from me, out of fear that I might dislodge a few mass murderers from their security and send them as a warning example down to their victims.

So I must stay here, as a seer over the blind--behind iron gratings. And all I can do is consign these leaves to the wind--every day write it all down again and keep scattering the pages out on the street.

I will write indefatigably. I will sow the whole world with my pages. Until the seed shall sprout in every heart, until every bedroom will be entered by a blue apparition--a dear dead one showing his wounds; and at last, at last, the glorious song of the world's redemption will resound under my window, the wrathful cry shouted by a million throats:

"Man Sal-ad!"

V. A HERO'S DEATH

The staff physician had not understood. He shook his head, vexed, and looked questioningly over the rims of his glasses at his assistant.

But his assistant had not understood either, and was embarrassed, and stood stiffly without saying anything.

The only one who seemed to have any clue at all to the man's ravings was his orderly. For two tears glistened on the upturned ends of his waxed mustache. But the orderly spoke nothing but Hungarian, and the staff physician turned away with a muttered "blooming idiot". Followed by his flaxen-haired assistant, he made his way toward the operating room, panting and perspiring.

The huge ball of cotton, inside of which, according to the placard hanging at the top of the bed, was hidden the head of First Lieutenant of the Reserves, Otto Kadar, of the ----th Regiment of Field Artillery, sank back on the pillow, and Miska seated himself again on his knapsack, snuffed up his tears, put his head between his big unwashed hands, and speculated despairingly about his future.

For it was plain that his Lieutenant could not last much longer. Miska knew what was hidden in the huge cotton ball. He had seen the crushed skull and the horrible grey mess under the bloody splinters which were the brains of his poor Lieutenant, who had been such a good man and kind superior. Miska could not hope for such wonderful luck a second time. You didn't come across such a kind-hearted master twice in your life. The many, many slices of salami that the Lieutenant always had given him from his own store of provisions, the gentle, cordial words that Miska had heard him whisper to every wounded man--all the memories of the long, bloody months he had gone through dully beside his master almost like a comrade, rose to his mind. He felt dreadfully sorry for himself, the good fellow did, in his infinite defenselessness against the huge war machine into which he would now be thrown again without the sure support of his kind Lieutenant next to him.

His broad peasant's head between his hands, he crouched like a dog at the feet of his dying master, and the tears rolled gently down his cheeks and stuck one by one on the ends of his mustache glued with dust and pomade.

It was not quite clear to Miska either just why the poor Lieutenant kept clamoring so frightfully for his talking-machine. All he knew was that the officers had been sitting under cover, listening to the Rakoczy March on the phonograph, when suddenly that accursed shell burst upon them and everything disappeared in smoke and earth. He himself had been knocked unconscious by a heavy board which came out of a clear sky and hit him on the back. He had fallen flat and it was an eternity before he got his breath back again.

Then--then--Miska's recollections of things after this were a bit hazy--then he remembered an indescribable heap of splintered boards and fallen beams, a hash of rags, cement, earth, human limbs, and quantities of blood. And then--then he remembered--young Meltzar. Meltzar was still sitting upright with his back against the remains of the wall, and the record that had just played the Rakoczy March and had miraculously remained whole was perched on the place where his head belonged. But his head was not there. It was gone--completely gone, while the black record remained, also leaning against the wall, directly on top of the bloodsoaked collar. It was awful. Not one of the soldiers had dared touch the upright body with the record exactly like a head on its neck.

Brrr! A cold shiver ran down Miska's back at the recollection, and his heart stopped beating in fright when just at that moment the Lieutenant again began to scream:

"Phonograph! Only a phonograph!"

Miska jumped up and saw the huge ball of cotton lift itself with an effort from the pillow, and his officer's one remaining eye fix greedily upon some invisible object. He stood there ashamed, as though guilty of a crime, when indignant glances were darted at him from the other beds in the ward.

"This is unbearable!" cried a Major, who had been severely wounded, from the other end of the long ward. "Carry the man out."

But the Major spoke German, and Miska was more than ever at sea. He wiped the sweat of anguish from his brow and explained to a lieutenant in the next bed, since his master could not hear what he said anyhow, that the phonograph had been broken--broken into a thousand pieces, else he would never have left it there, but would surely have brought it along as he had brought everything else belonging to his Lieutenant that he had managed to find.

No one answered him. As at a word of command, each one of the officers the whole length of the ward stuck his head under his pillow and pulled the covers over his ears so as not to hear that horrible gurgling laugh which changed into a howl or into infuriated cries for the phonograph. The old Major even wrapped his blood-stained cloak around his head like a turban.

"Lieutenant! I beg pardon, Lieutenant----" Miska begged, and very, very gently stroked his master's quivering knees with his big hard palms.

But Lieutenant Kadar heard him not. Neither did he feel the heavy hand resting on his knees. For, opposite him, young Meltzar was still sitting with a flat, black, round head on his neck on which the Rakoczy March was ingraved in spirals. And all at once the officer realized that for the past six months he had done poor Meltzar a grievous injustice. How could the poor fellow help his stupidity, how could he help his silly, high-flown patriotic talk? How could he possibly have had sensible ideas with a record for a head? Poor Meltzar!

Lieutenant Kadar simply could not understand why it was that six months before, right away, when young Meltzar announced his entrance into the battery, he had not guessed what they had done to the boy in the hinterland.

They had given him a different head. They had unscrewed the handsome fair young head of a lad of eighteen and in its place put a black, scratched-up disc, which could do nothing but squeak the Rakoczy March. That had now been proved! How the boy must have suffered whenever his superior officer, his senior by twenty years, inflicted long sermons on him about humanity! With the flat, round disc that they had put on him he of course could not comprehend that the Italian soldiers being led past the battery, reeking with blood and in rags, would also much rather have stayed at home, if a bulletin on the street corner had not forced them to leave their homes immediately, just as the mobilization in Hungary had forced the Hungarian gunners to leave their homes.

Now for the first time Lieutenant Kadar comprehended the young man's unbending resistance to him. Now at last he realized why this boy, who could have been his son, had so completely ignored his wisest, kindest admonitions and explanations, and had always responded by whistling the Rakoczy March through clenched teeth and hissing the stereotyped fulmination, "The dogs ought to be shot to pieces."

So then it was not because of his being young and stupid that Meltzar had behaved as he did; not because he had come direct from the military academy to the trenches. The phonograph record was to blame, the phonograph record!

Lieutenant Kadar felt his veins swell up like ropes and his blood pound on his temples like blows on an anvil, so great was his wrath against the wrongdoers who had treacherously unscrewed poor Meltzar's lovely young head from his body.

And--this was the most gruesome--as he now thought of his subordinates and fellow-officers, he saw them all going about exactly like poor Meltzar, without heads on their bodies. He shut his eyes and tried to recall the looks of his gunners--in vain! Not a single face rose before his mind's eye. He had spent months and months among those men and had not discovered until that moment that not one of them had a head on his shoulders. Otherwise he would surely have remembered whether his gunner had a mustache or not and whether the artillery captain was light or dark. No! Nothing stuck in his mind--nothing but phonograph records, hideous, black, round plates lying on bloody blouses.

The whole region of the Isonzo suddenly lay spread out way below him like a huge map such as he had often seen in illustrated papers. The silver ribbon of the river wound in and out among hills and coppices, and Lieutenant Kadar soared high above the welter down below without motor or aeroplane, but borne along merely by his own outspread arms. And everywhere he looked, on every hill and in every hollow, he saw the horns of innumerable talking-machines growing out of the ground. Thousands upon thousands of those familiar cornucopias of bright lacquer with gilt edges pointed their open mouths up at him. And each one was the center of a swarming ant-hill of busy gunners carrying shot and shell.

And now Lieutenant Kadar saw it very distinctly: all the men had records on their necks like young Meltzar. Not a single one carried his own head. But when the shells burst with a howl from the lacquered horns and flew straight into an ant-hill, then the flat, black discs broke apart and at the very same instant changed back into real heads. From his height Lieutenant Kadar saw the brains gush out of the shattered discs and the evenly-marked surfaces turn on the second into ashen, agonized human countenances.

Everything seemed to be revealed now in one stroke to the dying lieutenant--all the secrets of the war, all the problems he had brooded over for many months past. So he had the key to the riddle. These people evidently did not get their heads back until they were about to die. Somewhere--somewhere--far back--far back of the lines, their heads had been unscrewed and replaced by records that could do nothing but play the Rakoczy March. Prepared in this fashion, they had been jammed into the trains and sent to the front, like poor Meltzar, like himself, like all of them.