Csardas (30 page)

“How could they do such a thing? How could they shoot a man who was one of their own officers?”

“You don’t understand, Eva. You don’t understand what horrible things happen! That wasn’t bad. What happened to Karoly wasn’t bad!”

He was like a madman, a controlled madman, and that made it worse.

“I’ve seen the bad things. I’ve seen them, Eva! Men together, advancing, retreating, it’s all the same. Mad, terrible, bad things.” He sat suddenly and began to rock to and fro. “Eva, I’ve done those things... terrible things... I’ve done them.” He gazed at her imploringly, and she, not understanding, tried to comfort him with all the senseless phrases that she had ever heard or read.

“Yes, Felix, of course. You are a soldier. You had to kill the enemy. It was part of your duty.”

“Not soldiers, Eva,” he moaned. “I didn’t kill soldiers. They were civilians—don’t you understand? Women.... Old men.... Children....”

She was cold, icily, clammily cold, and she wanted to get away. Malie shouldn’t have forced her to ask these questions; it was making Felix tell silly lies.

“I couldn’t control the men,” he cried, staring up at the ceiling. “We were advancing behind the front line and they learned that the Serbs were to be punished. Mackensen, victorious Mackensen, he conquered Serbia, and we—I—came behind. I couldn’t control them, Eva. The soldiers... every village... I wanted to stop them but I was afraid because they weren’t my men any more. I was afraid.”

Horrified she watched him drop his face into his hands and sob. She felt sick, ashamed, frightened.

“I’ll go to Malie now,” she cried shrilly, but before she could rise from her chair he was kneeling beside her, gripping her hands in his, gazing up at her.

“Don’t leave me now, Eva! Don’t go away now! Nobody knows, and I can’t sleep at night! We burned them, Eva, burned them alive! They stood round laughing, and... I had to stand there too. They wouldn’t stop so I had to pretend it was my orders.”

“Don’t tell me any more! I don’t want to know any more!” She placed her hands over her ears but Felix pulled them away.

“We cut them into pieces, little pieces, and then they pegged some of the women out”

“Stop!” she screamed. “Stop, Felix!”

“They—we—pegged the women out, and after they had used them they cut them in pieces too... and it went on and on, village after village. Sometimes we just tied them up and left them without water. Everything died: the cattle died, and the dogs and horses.... It went on and on. I was an officer and I had to pretend. Don’t you understand, Eva? I had to pretend.”

“I don’t want to hear any more!” she sobbed. “I don’t want to know any more.”

“Oh, Eva! Don’t turn away from me!” He began to cry into her lap. “I’m afraid to go to sleep at night. And they know, the authorities know that I was no good. I ran away in the end, I ran back to the supply lines with a silly story I made up, but they all knew. I wasn’t a proper officer. Mama had to go to Budapest and speak to some friends. I don’t have to go to war any more, but I can’t sleep. I can’t sleep and no one understands, and I can’t tell anyone, not even Mama!”

She felt sick. Her stomach was turning and twisting and there was a sharp, hideous pain in her bowels that made her want to run to the water closet. She tried to get up again but Felix, on his knees, stumbled after her, holding her skirt and crying into her hands.

“Please, please, Eva! Don’t despise me like the rest do! If I’d gone to Russia, like Karoly and Adam, it might have been different, just an ordinary war, shooting at the enemy. But they made me do this. What would have happened to anyone—Karoly, Adam, anyone—if they’d had to punish the Serbs!” He raised his face to her and curiously, in spite of the tears and the misery, it was more like the old face of Felix, before the twitch and the trickle of saliva.

“Eva, I needed someone! I needed to tell someone—if only Adam had been home; if only I could have seen Adam! I’m like a madman, I can’t stop thinking about it, seeing them roasting, bleeding, the bodies cut—”

“Stop!”

She took a deep, deep breath and then, because it was obvious that Felix was not going to let her move, she sat down again. She closed her eyes and tried to think of Malie. How would Malie have dealt with this horrible, sick, vile confession? What would Malie have done?

“Children too, Eva.” He was gasping, sobbing. “Children too, broken to pieces and—”

“Stop, Felix! You must stop! I promise you I will stay here. I will not run away. But you must stop telling me these things. I understand what... what you did”—she was trembling, shaking with nervous movement—“but now you must stop talking of them.”

“I can’t, Eva! I can’t!”

“Yes you can, Felix. If you stop talking I will stay here with you. See, I will hold your hand.” Yes, that was good. Malie would have held his hand. Malie always held people when they were wild and hysterical. “I will hold your hand, but if you go on telling me—telling me... the things, then I will go away.”

“Oh, no,” he sobbed. “Don’t go away, Eva. Everyone has gone away. In the office, at Budapest, they don’t talk to me; they put the papers on my desk but they don’t talk to me. I have no one, Eva. No one!”

It was too much. She didn’t want the responsibility of this helpless, disintegrating man. She was sorry for him, but she didn’t know what to do.

“Eva, how can I sleep without dreaming? What can I do? The pictures in my mind... the time that—”

“I shall go away,” she screamed. “I shall go away.” His mouth trembled and he clenched his lower lip between his teeth. “I’ll stop, Eva. I won’t talk any more.”

“No. Don’t talk any more.”

He was gripping her hand very tightly. His head was close to her knee and as she looked down she could see the beautiful tearstained profile, the dark lashes wetted into spikes, the high smooth cheekbones, the lips trembling like a child’s.

“Oh, Felix!” she said piteously, and at the sorrow and kindness in her voice he looked up into her face.

“You’ll help me, won’t you, Eva?

“How can I help you? What can I do? I don’t know what to do.” She remembered Malie suddenly, Malie upstairs, waiting to know how Karoly had died. “It’s all too much: the war, Karoly, now you.... I don’t know how to help anyone. I—”

“But you’ll pray for me, Eva, won’t you?”

“I’ll pray, but what good will it do?” she cried. “Malie prayed for Karoly, and your mama prayed for you all through the war. What good did it do?”

“Mama doesn’t understand,” he said, frustrated and desperate. “Mama is good, and she is always there, and she will make things come right for me; she stopped them from discharging me from the army. But she doesn’t know why they think I am a coward. And I can’t tell her. She wouldn’t understand.” He gripped her hand again, gazed up, then frenziedly kissed her fingers. “You understand, Eva. You understand and you’ll help me! You’ll make the dreams go away. You’ll make me stop thinking about it!”

Beneath the horror and the great weight of responsibility she felt a tiny throb of acid satisfaction. At last there was something the old witch hadn’t been able to do for her son. He had come to her, Eva, hadn’t he? He wanted Eva, not Madame Kaldy.

“How can I stop, Eva? How can I stop thinking?”

“You—you can think of nice things: the farm in summer, the picnics, the dances....”

It was a futile suggestion and she knew it. Felix wrinkled up his face and moaned, “No, no!”

“You can come to see me, Felix.” She was groping, fumbling in the dark for a way to help him combat a nightmare she could hardly cope with herself. “You can come to me, or if you are in Budapest and the dreams... then you must sit down and write to me.”

“Yes,” he cried eagerly. “Yes, if I share it with you, if I tell you—”

“No!” She swallowed hard, then tried again. “You must not talk of—of the... things. You must just write, or come and see me, and you will say, ‘Eva, I am afraid and unhappy, and I am lonely,’ and then I will know what is troubling you and I will think of you and pray for you and talk to you—not about Serbia, just talk. And after a little while you will feel better.’”

“Yes, Eva.” His eyes were fixed on her face, in their depths the same faith and hope that she had seen in Leo’s when Malie was promising something.

“We will never talk of... specific things again, but you will know that I am sharing your... unhappiness, and then it will be better.”

“Oh, yes!”

“Now get up, Felix. You must try to start living as a gentleman again. You must try to have nice manners and be polite, and then, you will see, everyone will like you again.”

He looked miserable and unbelieving, and so she hurried on.

“And soon the war will be over and you can come back to town and your post in the land registration office, and everyone will forget the war and what has happened.”

He smiled uncertainly and then rose slowly to his feet and began to dust the knees of his beautifully cut trousers. Even in grief and despair and humiliation, he was still incredibly handsome.

“You must go now, Felix. Say good-bye to Mama, and I will go and tell Malie—” Oh, it was all too much! She still had to tell Malie.

“You won’t tell your sister about—about us, and... everything?”

“Of course not.”

In his face was trust, and hope, and dependence. It was flattering, the very thing she had longed for, but now it was all mixed up with women being pegged down and... stop!

“You must go now, Felix.”

“Yes. Good-bye, Eva.” At the door he stopped and said humbly, “Could I call this afternoon? Could we go walking together? We could have tea—coffee, that is—at the Marie Thérèse. That would be nice, wouldn’t it, Eva?”

“All right then.”

He smiled, like a child, but the smile made his face the same beautiful face that she had always worshipped. He left and she sat, drained and weak on the chair. Spasmodic shudders made her jerk and finally she rose and went across to the window, opened it, and breathed deeply. Down in the street, just turning into the square, she could see Felix. He was tall and wide-shouldered, his legs were long and strong and he moved as only a young Hungarian aristocrat could move, with strength and grace. It was strange that he should look just the same as he used to look.

She closed the window and went upstairs to talk to Malie.

When, on the morning of October the twenty-ninth, Adam looked from his trench dug into the side of a mountain and saw English tanks advancing over the Livenza valley, he knew they had lost the war.

They were terrifying, the English tanks. It was the first time he had seen them, although he had heard other men describe them. Ponderous, inhuman, monstrous, they drove forward over mud, rock, fallen trees, bodies, and guns and a terrible fear stopped his breathing. Nothing could stand against them. They were invincible. No amount of courage or strategy could achieve any kind of success against them. These paleolithic giants of destruction, above everything else, were the reason they had lost the war.

He looked back into the dugout, seeking human reassurance, the sight of men instead of vast machines that were nothing to do with soldiers, machines that could swallow, crush, and digest. They were still asleep, the three of them. Only three: Nemeth, who had miraculously survived Russia and Italy and was the only one of his old men still with him; Kovacs, who was forty-five and had a gastric ulcer; and the boy, Fekete.

The boy was pathetic in sleep. When he was awake he tried to behave like a man, to swear and smoke and talk with relish about killing the hated Italians, but in sleep he was a child, smooth-cheeked and with dark, unhappy stains under his eyes. He had been apprenticed to a tailor in Budapest and his hands were small and neat. He had handled the gun very well, when they had had a gun.

“Wake, wake!” He shook them, kicked them lightly as their exhausted bodies refused to move. “Get up! We must move quickly before we are cut off. Look.”

One by one they stumbled to the edge of the dugout. Nemeth urinated, his eyes still closed in sleep. Kovacs and the boy looked over the plain and saw the tanks. They were both silent, and Adam saw chill fear spread over their faces.

“Will they come up here?” asked the boy. His voice broke. It often did, but this time he was too afraid to bother with disguising it by coughing.

“No.” In fact he didn’t know whether or not the English tanks were capable of climbing the side of a mountain. They were so terrible to look upon, even from this height and distance, that he was prepared to believe they could do anything.

“Let’s go.”

They picked up rifles and packs and began to climb. Their legs were stiff, but the fear of the tanks drove them up into the cold October wind. The ground was rock and sparse grass, but as they climbed the grass ceased and it became just rock, wet with early morning mist.

Every so often they would look back, down at the valley, and then stand immobilized, gripped with fear that was unlike any other fear they had known in battle. Gunfire was bad, yes; it kept one constantly on guard. The next shell might be yours and the muscles in the back of the neck were always tensed, the body listening. Infantry attacks, machine-guns, all turned the bowels to water, made some men cry and others run. But the tanks were the invention of something other than man.
And God created a tank in his own image.
It was almighty and if man
had
made it he would be unable to control it. Like Frankenstein’s monster it would destroy everyone.

The boy had not moved for several moments. He was staring hypnotized down into the valley. Adam punched him in the stomach.

“Move. We are nearly at the top.”

The ridge was just above them. Behind that a small high valley, another ridge, and then a battalion post. There they would be given more hopeless, useless orders. They would obey them because there was nothing else to do.

Nemeth, old soldier, old friend, trudged quietly at the front. His pace was good; two and a half years up and down the splintered rock and ice of the Italian Alps had taught him a measured stride suitable for climbing. The other two, Kovacs and the boy, still walked like civilians. Hurrying, then pausing for breath, sweating in spite of the cold, rubbing the insides of their thighs where the muscles ached.