Csardas Page 13

  In her stomach were the first stirrings of panic, not because of the noise or people but because, having disobeyed Papa, she might not be able to find Karoly. To risk all this and not be able to see him! A small sob caught at her throat and she swallowed quickly. An officer with a board and pencil in hand pushed hard against her and she grabbed at his sleeve.

  “Lieutenant Karoly Vilaghy? Where would—”

  “Stand to one side. Excuse me.” He smiled briefly and automatically, to show that he was a gentleman albeit a busy one, then shouldered away and was swallowed up in a mass of field grey and rifles.

  “Karoly?” She pushed and hunted through a sea of screaming, shouting humanity. An old woman stood, lost and hopeless, but there wasn’t time to help her. A soldier with his girl, straight from the country in her long black skirt and stitched blouse, embraced shamelessly and in oblivion. A small boy screaming with delight was riding on the shoulders of a middle-aged soldier.

  “Karoly?”

  She pressed through the double doors to the rail tracks—four tracks, three of them occupied, one train facing south and two north—how could she know where he would be? Where were the trains going? To Serbia, Russia, or just to another allocation centre? How could she find him when she didn’t even know which front he was posted to?

  And then there were whistles, shouts, the rumble of engines, people calling from the tracks alongside one of the northbound trains. Flowers were being thrown into windows, flags waved; there were last embraces and tears and soldiers jumping quickly onto the mounting steps, pushing their way into the carriages so that they caught a last glimpse of those left behind. A bell rang and a bewildered guard tried to run along the track and move everyone back. With a mighty lurch, like a prehistoric monster rising from sleep, the train began to move away.

  “Karoly! Karoly!” Oh, God, suppose he was on that train! And she was on the wrong side and couldn’t even see clearly who was in the coaches. She rushed along the length of the train on her left, to the end where she could cross the track. A ramp was up against a cattle car and horses were being led onto the train.

  “Karoly!”

  Now she must search systematically: two trains remained, and if she didn’t allow herself to panic it was logical that—were he still here—she would find him. Up one side of the train, along the flat, baked earth, look up through every window, then to the side to peer through the crowds. But they would keep moving; that woman she had seen a long way back just a minute ago. She wanted to order everyone to stay where they were so that she could conduct her search in an orderly fashion.

  Halfway through checking that train, it too began to pull away and again she wanted to scream. Now there was only one train and if she couldn’t find him it was all wasted; the trouble with Papa would all be for nothing!

  She began to run, hurrying to make her way through the crowds and over the empty track to the other line. It was quieter now, with only one train, and some of the women began to melt away. But she still couldn’t see him. He must have gone....

  “Malie!” A touch on her shoulder, a hand, a familiar smell—how could he have a smell that she recognized?—“Oh, Malie!” and he was there, looking unfamiliar in field grey but oh so familiar with his thick, fair hair and wide shoulders. “I couldn’t find you!”

  “In the restaurant.”

  The one place she hadn’t looked. His arms were round her and she pressed against his coat, hugging him, terrified that it might be the last time she would ever see him. “Malie, I love you so much!”

  Karoly, Karoly. Papa would never understand. Poor, poor Papa.

  “I sent a message—Adam Kaldy. I said... I said I would pray for you.”

  “I love you so much, Malie.”

  “And I you.”

  “Don’t let him separate us. Promise me you will remember me.”

  “Oh, Karoly!” She was laughing and crying—laughing because here, in this terrible railway station, she was able to say what she liked without fear or inhibition. “I would come with you now if I could.”

  “A camp follower!” He hugged her to him again, wrapping her in his arms and lifting her a little so that her cheek was against his.

  “I’ll wait, no matter what Papa says or does. Write to me—write to Kati. She will bring me the letters. And if... if there is no answer, if Papa finds a way of stopping that too, write to Roza at the farm. She can read and she will find a way of letting me have the letters. Uncle Sandor will bring them to me.”

  “Oh, Malie! Now I am happy. You have come to me and I am happy. Nothing matters, does it? It will come right—the marriage fee, and your papa. Just love me, Malie. Everything will be all right.”

  His large body, his arms, his face, his eyes. Remember them all, engrave them on your mind in case it is the last time. Remember the words, remember that he loves you, remember how he looked when he spoke, for now, at this moment, he is wholly yours.

  The whistles began again, the engine, the steam, the bells. The frantic guard began his sheepdog tactics up the sides of the train. A last grasping of the beloved body, his mouth on hers—without passion because now there was only the frenzied necessity of expressing their love. “Darling Malie.”

  He pulled away and jumped onto the steps of the moving train. The white lace shawl caught in the buckle of his belt and went with him. He tried to unravel it but already he was moving away and she shook her head and waved at him. She saw him smile, lift the shawl to his lips, and mouth the words, I love you.

  They watched the train disappear in the distance, she and all the other women. There had been so much noise and now, within a few brief seconds, it was silent: no band, no engines, no whistles or bells, just women standing on the baked earth clutching handkerchiefs and bags and trying not to let despair overwhelm them. The station was strange, quiet, uncanny, with, overhead, two doves lifting and falling in the summer air.

  Women in lace dresses and expensive hats, women in black peasant scarves, women in cheap coats and mended gloves, old women, young women, ugly, pretty, poor, rich, they drew together because only they understood; not even the men on the train understood. They waited together until their strength united and they knew they could face the world outside with dignity.

  Then began a quiet brushing of skirts along the ground as the gentle procession moved out into the street and back to their homes.

  7

  Resolutely, and with panache, the war began. To the south went the punitive expedition to Serbia. To the north and east, the great armies of Brudermann, Dankl, and Auffenberg prepared to stop the Russian steam-roller before it could even begin. The Germans had obliterated the Russian army at Tannenberg, and now the time was ripe for Franz Josef’s military machine to destroy the southern arm of the Czar.

  Forward into Russian Poland they advanced—twenty, thirty, forty miles into good rich farming country from which the grain had already been harvested. There were apples on the trees, cattle fat from their summer grazing, and at night when they bivouacked they were able to eat well from the produce all around them—suppers elegantly served by their orderlies of roast pig, butter, eggs, vegetables, and fruit. It was more exciting than the usual summer manoeuvres because here and there was real opposition—not too much, just enough to raze a few village farmhouses and test the magnificent new howitzers from the Skoda Works. Fifty miles in and the weather was still good. In the evening, while the tents were being pitched and the tables laid, it was often possible to bathe in a stream or pool, removing the dust and grime of the day’s ride before sitting down to a pleasant supper.

  There were cavalry skirmishes. On the skyline could be seen waiting groups of Russian horsemen and sometimes they could be drawn into a minor charge, a little gentle shooting, before disappearing into the landscape. It was exciting, a little dangerous, and a chance to prove that they were still soldiers and could fight.

  It was difficult to pin down the first signs of uneasiness. Cavalry reconnaissance reported more
and more Russian horsemen in the area, and when the wind blew from the south they could hear very dimly the sound of regular cannon fire. There was hesitation and some conjecture. There was no danger from the north, the Germans had seen to that, but what was happening in the south? They were fifty miles into enemy Poland, and slowly they were becoming aware that their right side was unprotected and exposed. The holiday air began to disperse and, their sense of isolation in enemy territory growing, they scoured the countryside for signs of advancing Russian troops. When they found them it was from the one direction they did not expect—from behind.

  They tried to turn the guns, the transports, the mechanized tractors—all the heavy artillery which formed the strength of their army. The skirmishes gave way to battles, to machine-guns in the face of cavalry charges, to murderous stands where it was uncertain from which direction the Russians would attack. The Slavs and Czechs began to desert, not just in ones and twos but in whole companies, vanishing into the countryside where it was impossible to shoot them down.

  The artillery companies began to break down the massive howitzers ready for the retreat order, but when it came it was too late. The rains had begun and the roads and farm tracks, unable to support the weight of armies, quickly turned into glutinous mud that swallowed the expensive motorized equipment. Infantry and horses tried, hopelessly, to pull out some of the smaller guns, only to have them sink again farther along the retreat, the retreat which was rapidly turning into a rout.

  Karoly had lost contact with most of the rest of his battalion, even Stefan Tilsky, with whom he had managed to stay close during the battle and early retreat. Stefan, the only one of his brother officers whom he had ever considered his friend, had suddenly become very dear to him during the fighting. They had shared men and food and horses, had cheered each other whenever possible, and had discovered, in the curious way of men at war, that they were both better and more human than either of them suspected. When he lost Stefan—last seen charging furiously into a group of Russian infantrymen—he had felt betrayed and abandoned, much more so than when he had first been informed that the army was isolated, almost surrounded, in the heart of enemy territory.

  Orders were to retreat over the River San with as little loss as possible. It was the only way they could retreat, and even that was proving more and more difficult as the Russians pushed up from the south. With what remained of his troop he tried to make his way to where the River San and comparative safety should be. They trudged over the soggy plains, leading their horses and spread out as wide as possible in order to pick the firmest ground. A change of terrain forced them to close in again as the open ploughed land ceased at the edge of a wood. A cart track, now half a metre of mud, led through the trees. The sides of the track were scattered with small guns and dead infantrymen.

  In a woody morass of mud, with rain drenching men and horses and steam rising from both, he saw an officer of artillery shouting at a hybrid collection of straining men who were trying to clear the axles of a small howitzer from the mud. The officer was swearing, quietly and intensely, and something about the way he stood, moved, shouted, brought to Karoly’s exhausted vision a picture of beet fields and meadows and gentle walks in the summer sun. He led his horse forward and waited until the artillery officer had trudged back to the near side of the gun carriage. It was Adam Kaldy.

  “Adam?”

  His brown hair was plastered flat beneath his cap and rivulets of rain poured down the sides of his nose. His left hand was bandaged, and blood oozed soggily out of the rag. He glared ferociously at Karoly; then the solid features broke into a wide smile which instantly vanished.

  “Karoly, old friend! How many horses do you have?”

  Karoly looked at the sad, sick beasts behind him, and then at Adam’s great gun carriage. “Five that are still fit. The rest are lame or covered in galls.”

  Adam nodded. “They will do, they will do. Harness them up to the carriage, old friend. I need them for my gun.”

  Ahead stretched the track, churned mud and water. From the high banked trees at the sides of the road rain poured in a series of tiny falls and gullies. In one or two places the mud had given way to rain-pocked pools.

  “Do you think you can get the gun through that?”

  Adam studied the track. “I’ve checked forward. Round the corner the ground rises and it is better. We have saved this gun from the Cossacks for the last three days. On two occasions it has saved us. Do you know how far we are from the river?”

  “Soon, I hope.”

  “An hour away. And we are near a bridge that the infantry are holding for us.”

  He considered carefully, thoughtfully. His expression was one that Karoly had seen many times on his face, as though he were deciding what crop he should plant on his farm next year. Finally he nodded.

  “I think we must try to save the gun. We shall need it on the other side of the river. So many of our guns have gone, we shall have nothing for defence.”

  Karoly shouted an order to his tiny group of cavalry. They slithered forward knee high in the mud and began to harness the beasts to the front of the carriage. From the rear appeared a group of infantrymen, only half of whom still had their rifles. One was wounded and dragged miserably in the rear, supported on each side by a comrade.

  “You men! Here! Collect brushwood from the forest—plenty, enough to throw in front of the horses and under the wheels of the carriages!” The men stared stupidly at him, not moving or answering, and Karoly, driven to frustration, pulled his revolver and pointed it at the largest soldier. “Deserters!” he shouted. “Czech deserters. Obey orders or I shoot!”

  He felt a slight touch on his shoulder and then heard Adam repeating the order in German. Sullenly the men began to scramble up the banks of the wood and throw down brushwood. “Moravians,” Adam said apologetically. “There is a battalion of them on the road at the moment. They understand only German or Czech.”

  He felt foolish and annoyed. He should, of course, have realized. He was a regular officer and knew only too well the language barriers within the army. A violent unreasoning hatred of Adam, a farmer who had no knowledge of military matters, overwhelmed him. It was gone quickly, replaced by hatred of the rain, the mud, and the inefficiency of the high command who had led them into this purposeless confrontation with the enemy. The Moravians threw brush under the feet of the horses and then took up the side harnesses of the carriage.

  “Pull! Now, heave... and heave....” Straining, sinking into the mud; the axle didn’t move and one of the horses fell, screaming and frightened, trying to pull away from the harness.

  “Three hours we have been here,” said Adam. “How far behind are they?”

  “The mud is slowing them too. And they are looting, whatever is left to loot.”

  “Have you a cigarette?”

  He fumbled beneath his riding cape and from his pocket produced a cigarette. It was wet. “There’s no way of lighting it,” he said, but Adam took it, smiled, and placed it in his breast pocket.

  “Thank you. I will light it later. I will enjoy it later.” He turned away to shout again, and then he trudged forward and hauled one of the Moravians out of the way, taking his place and pushing at the wheel. He was a good soldier. There was mud on his face, up his arms and legs and down the front of his uniform. “Come and push, damn you!” he shouted at Karoly. “What use are the cavalry except to pull guns out of the mud?” He leaned forward, his brown, heavy face breaking into a grin, and the cigarette fell into the mud and was immediately trodden on by an infantryman. Adam swore descriptively and Karoly, infected by his tenacity, moved forward to join him.

  A rifle cracked. A bullet sang through the air at the place where he had just been standing. The Moravians threw themselves down into the mud, gripping their hands protectively over their heads. From the trees opposite came a volley of rifle fire. One of Karoly’s cavalrymen dropped into the mud, his face shattered, and hastily they ranged themselves along the sid
e of the gun carriage, sighting rifles into the wood where nothing, and no one, could be seen. The rifle fire from the wood spread out before them, along a wider front. The Russians were intending to surround them.

  “I think we shall have to abandon the gun,” Adam remarked slowly. “What a great pity.”

  “Give me back my horses and we will lead a diversion. Draw them off to the left, away from your gun.” Karoly was on his feet immediately, thankful to have some purpose, some opportunity of proving himself and his cavalry, of contributing to the saving of the howitzer. Adam pulled him down into the mud just before a fresh volley of rifle fire flew in their direction.

  “Please,” he said quietly, lifting his good hand in the air. “I grow nervous when you give them something to fire at. And when I am nervous I cannot think. Now.” His brow furrowed. “If we give you back your horses, we shall have nothing to pull with. Moreover you will undoubtedly be shot and this would make me very unhappy.” His teeth gleamed briefly in his tired brown face. “You would not draw them to the left. They do not want you. They want my gun. Therefore they would just shoot you as you galloped—and how would you gallop in this mud, my friend?—and then return their fire to us.”

  To Adam it was just like growing sugar beet—logical, painstaking, based on reason uncluttered by anger or pride or any other emotion. Karoly did not know whether to laugh at him or hit him. Their army was disgraced, defeated, abandoned. They lay in mud, rain beating down on them, victims of apathetic despair, and Adam pondered, oblivious of everything except the immediate problem before him.

  The fire from the wood ceased. Karoly felt a prickling along his spine. A sense of impending danger alerted every part of his body. Then there was a scream and from the high ground before them, backed from the left by a fresh volley of rifle fire, a troop of Russian cavalry plunged down into the mud, sabres threshing in their hands.