Forest of the Hanged Read online

  “Doctor, doctor, will it last long ?” whispered Apostol Bologa, seizing the arm of the doctor, who was endeavouring to make his way through the closely huddled circle of soldiers.

  “You’ll see.… There’s no time now to …” the doctor replied in a worried voice. “Make way there! Good God! Now then, boys, let me through, will you?”

  Bologa had managed to slip through in the wake of the doctor until he had reached the foot of the grave opposite the gallows. His throat was parched, a bitter taste filled his mouth, and the excitement within him was almost painful. He felt glad that he would be able to see it all, and in order to calm his impatience, he looked round, seeking acquaintances and friends amongst the many war-strained faces frowning under the weight of the steel helmets.

  The general stood only a few paces away, dour and immovable. A little farther on, Lieutenant Gross, greatly agitated, followed with desperate attention every movement of the prisoner, who had been a good friend of his. Seeing Gross, Bologa remembered the foreign captain of a little while ago and discovered him standing not far behind the general, his chin resting in his hand and his figure as immovable as a statue.

  “What a man!” thought Bologa with annoyance. “He comes here straight from the station and wants to teach me humanitarianism as if I were a savage beast or …”

  At that moment a hand caught hold of his arm.

  “Ah, Cervenco!” murmured Bologa, looking round. “You here? I am surprised.… I am sure you did not come of your own free will. Did you know that I was on the court martial?”

  Captain Cervenco was prevented from answering by the voice of the prosecutor, which, sharper and harsher even than heretofore, barked:

  “Everybody fall back three paces! Make room! Make room!”

  The spectators, startled by the noise which dared to break the silence, hastened to fall back a few steps. Only the general remained in the cleared space round the margin of the grave. Standing by the stake, the condemned man, with a look of exaltation in his eyes, stared straight in front of him at the embankment, which cut off the view. Bologa, with a tight feeling at his heart, now looked straight into his large, burning, dark eyes. And he saw the man under the halter turn to the priest and heard him say very clearly:

  “I want to die more quickly.”

  The general knitted his bushy eyebrows and said to the prosecutor:

  “See what he wants.”

  But the prisoner now raised his eyes above the heads of the people and did not even seem to hear the prosecutor’s question. The latter, vainly waiting for an answer, suddenly called out, with a nervous ring in his voice:

  “Ready? Then … yes … then …”

  And, looking uneasily at the general, he moved on to the heap of freshly dug clay at the side of the grave, smoothed out the sheet of paper, which had become crumpled in his hand, and read out the sentence of the court martial of that division, which condemned Lieutenant Svoboda to death by hanging for treason and desertion to the enemy. His voice sounded hollow and unnatural; he stumbled over the words, which drew each time a sharp glance from the general, and at the end his voice was as hoarse as if he had yelled with all his strength a whole day.

  With flushed face, Apostol Bologa stared tensely at the prisoner. He could hear his own heart throb wildly, and the helmet on his head felt as tight as if it had been a few sizes too small for him and had been forced on. An unaccountable amazement filled his mind, for while the prosecutor was reading out the crimes from the sheet which trembled between his fingers, the face of the lieutenant under the halter had come to life, and the radiant and confident eyes seemed to look right into the next world. At first this look disconcerted and angered Bologa, but presently he felt distinctly the flame from the condemned man’s eyes shoot into his heart like a painful reproach. He tried to look away, but the eyes, which looked so contemptuously at death and were beautified by so great a love, fascinated him. And tensely he waited for the prisoner to open his mouth and utter one of those terrible cries of deliverance which the early Christian martyrs were wont to utter at the point of death, when the vision of Christ was vouchsafed to them.

  The prosecutor folded the sheet quickly, slipped it into his pocket and muttered something inaudible. The sergeant-major approached the prisoner and whispered very humbly:

  “Allow me … the cloak.”

  Svoboda, without looking at him, slipped off the cloak at once and remained in a civilian’s suit with a turned-down collar which left bare his long, slim, white throat. Then he took off his hat, smoothed the hair on his forehead, and kissed passionately the crucifix in the hand of the priest, crossing himself the while quickly. Then he looked about, slightly dazed now, as if he had forgotten something. Then, with a flash of joy, he remembered, and mounted the stool near the fir stake. With his shining eyes and his white, radiant face, he looked as if he were about to announce to the world a great victory.

  “Go on, man, don’t be afraid,” muttered the trembling sergeant-major to the little corporal, taking him by the shoulders and pushing him gently towards the prisoner.

  The corporal approached hesitatingly, not knowing what to do. He looked back over his shoulder, and, at a sign from his superior, stretched up his arms towards the halter.

  “Off with the tunic!” barked the general in a voice of thunder. “A soldier in uniform may not act as executioner!”

  A minute later the corporal, now in his shirt-sleeves, and bareheaded like another prisoner, once more stretched out his hands towards the rope. Meanwhile, however, Svoboda had of his own accord slipped the noose over his head, as if he were merely trying on an unaccustomed collar.

  “Pull the stool away!” whispered again the sergeant-major.

  The corporal snatched the stool clumsily from under the prisoner’s feet. The arm of the gallows creaked and the body began to twirl in trying to find a support. In the eyes the strange radiant light blazed in quick flashes, which seemed to grow brighter and brighter. Bologa could see the eyes swell and turn purple, but they kept their spiritual brightness, as if death itself could not put it out or destroy it.

  The sergeant-major said something again to the corporal, who rushed forward desperately and with both hands seized the twitching feet of the hanging man.

  “Let go!” shouted the horrified prosecutor. “Stand back! What are you doing?”

  The doctor at Apostol Bologa’s side stood, watch in hand, waiting. It was getting darker and darker. The wind had stopped abruptly, like a runner who comes suddenly upon a precipice. Then the silence which followed was pierced through and through by a long-drawn moan like a call.… Bologa was the only one who turned round to look, and he saw a soldier, whose face bore the scar of a bad wound, with the tears streaming down his cheeks, moaning with pity. He wished to sign to him to stop, but when he saw the flash of tears in the eyes of others around him, he became confused, and the roof of his mouth went dry.

  “Why does that soldier moan?” he thought to himself, trying to think calmly. But even as the thought passed through his mind, his eyes again met the eyes of the man on the gallows, and he saw that the light which had shone in them a minute ago so bravely and confidently was now struggling desperately with the coming darkness.

  A few minutes passed. The hanging body had long since stopped twitching. The twilight covered the whole earth with a black pall.

  “What are we doing here, doctor?” suddenly burst out the general bearishly. “Can’t you see it’s dark?”

  “Our duty, Excellency,” answered the doctor quietly, his eyes on his watch.

  “What duty! Make your declaration! That’s your duty!” said the general roughly.

  The doctor shrugged his shoulders, drew nearer the stake and felt the hanging man’s pulse, then muttered:

  “He died quicker than is usual, as if he had been tired of living.”

  “We don’t want comments,” stormed the general. “The result!”

  “Excellency, the prisoner has expired,”
reported the doctor, saluting.

  “Now? What?” asked the general, impatiently turning to the agitated prosecutor.

  “Excellency, the sentence has been carried out!” answered the prosecutor hastily, clapping his heels together like a zealous recruit.

  The general had come on purpose to make a speech on desertion to the enemy, and more especially on the punishment which would be mercilessly meted out to all those who forgot the duty of a soldier. But now he felt too tired and was no longer inclined for speeches.

  “Then we had better go,” he muttered, and turned so swiftly that the men had barely time to draw back and make way for him.

  The prosecutor quickly gave the necessary orders to the sergeant-major and then ran after the general to explain to him that the hitches which had occurred were entirely due to the lack of sense of duty amongst the men. All the others followed in the wake of the general, and the plain re-echoed with the sound of many feet. Only Apostol Bologa seemed rooted to the spot, his eyes fixed on the hanging man, whose coat-tails flapped in the wind.

  “Poor fellow!” suddenly said the tear-filled voice of Captain Cervenco, close to Bologa.

  “What? What do you say?” asked Bologa, jumping, and added immediately, to hide his emotion: “Why ‘poor fellow’? Why should …?”

  But he did not finish, nor did he wait for the captain’s answer. He set off on the road towards the village as if he were afraid that the night would catch him there. Thirty paces on he caught up Klapka.

  “Well, did you like it, philosopher?” asked the captain with a gentle reproach in his voice.

  “Sir, punishment—crime—the law …” stuttered Apostol Bologa, upset by the captain’s question.

  “Yes, yes, but still … a human being!” muttered Klapka darkly.

  “Human being … human being … human being …” repeated Bologa, shivering.

  The darkness around them had increased considerably. Bologa looked back over his shoulder. On the plain, as far as the eye could see, black silhouettes moved hither and thither like restless phantoms. Only the gallows shone white, indifferent, amongst the white crosses in the military cemetery.

  Bologa shivered again. An icy feeling clutched at his heart. He whispered fearfully:

  “What darkness, Oh God, what darkness covers the earth …”

  His voice trailed like the song of a sick man and died away in the moans of the wind.

  II

  The darkness gripped the straggly village, in which there dwelt to-day more enemy soldiers than civilians. The dark houses kept an anxious watch over the wide unballasted road, full of holes and deeply rutted by the thousands of wagons which passed unceasingly on their way to the front, loaded with provisions for the men, and always returned loaded with the wreckage of battles.… Here and there shone an eye of yellow sickly light which meant headquarters, hospitals, and taverns.

  Cursing and swearing, the men coming from the execution floundered into the large puddles.

  Apostol Bologa walked silently at the side of the foreign captain. He continually tried to increase his pace in order to separate himself from this distrustful fellow, who seemed to reproach him even when he did not speak. But in some odd way he expected him every moment to make some momentous statement, and he was so annoyed that the other kept his lips tightly closed that he felt like screaming.… And the damp, overwhelming night tightened its iron grip more and more pitilessly round his heart.

  Then, opposite a house with lighted windows, the sound of the general’s voice reached their ears. Klapka started and said: “I stop here … to …”

  Bologa did not answer, did not even salute, but went on more quickly, relieved and glad to be free of him and fearful lest he should call him back, just as if the captain were directly responsible for the burden which weighed down his soul. Soon he turned off into a narrow little street and entered the yard of the reed hut where he was quartered. From an outhouse at the back came the strains of a mournful song. It angered him that his orderly should be in a singing mood just then. Nevertheless, he listened awhile, thinking: “It’s a Rumanian song.…” He opened his mouth to shout for Petre, but changed his mind and hastily walked into the passage. He could not find the door of the room and that infuriated him. “He sings instead of …” On a table in the room a lamp, with smoke-blackened chimney, was burning with a sickly flame. Bologa threw his helmet on the chest and flung himself on the bed, where he lay full length on his back, his hands on his breast, his eyes fixed on the cracked and blackened ceiling. He felt terribly done up, as if he had been engaged on some very exhausting work.

  “I’ll rest until mess-time and try to make my mind a blank,” he said to himself, yawning and closing his eyes. But immediately, from all the hidden places in his brain, thoughts swooped down on him like birds of prey, and in his ears the orderly’s song sounded as clear and loud as if he had been singing under his window. Dismayed, he reopened his eyes. The thought passed through his mind that he ought to call Petre after all, to tell him that tomorrow at dawn they were going back to the front, and that he was to be careful not to leave any of their things behind.… Simultaneously he realized that he was afraid to remain alone with his own thoughts, and he made answer to himself: “My conscience is quite clear.…” And immediately, as if they had been waiting for this, dozens of arguments sprang up in his mind, all tending to prove Svoboda’s guilt. Undoubtedly the fellow had tried to desert and turn traitor, therefore he, who, by chance, had been called upon to try and condemn him, had nothing to reproach himself with, nothing at all.… Nevertheless, while he was listening to these soothing justifications, there appeared on the ceiling with the blackened rafters, at first only like indistinct circles of light and then more and more clearly, the eyes of the man under the halter, with their proud and disquieting look which had been like an appeal and in whose strange fire the string of arguments melted helplessly.

  “Will that Petre never leave off? Why doesn’t he leave off?” he thought presently, closing his eyes again and wearily giving up the struggle.

  Now nothing but the song which the soldier was singing floated through his brain, sweet and soothing like a velvety caress, rousing whole strings of memories and wafting his soul on the wings of dreams, home to the little town of Parva on the banks of the Someş.

  There stood the house he was born in, old and solid, right opposite the resplendent new church. From the flower-surrounded enclosure, through the branches of the walnut-trees planted on the day of his birth, one could see his father’s tomb, ornamented with a cross of grey stone on which the name, carved in gilt letters, could be seen a long way off: Iosif Bologa.

  The house had many rooms, filled with stiff old furniture in mixed styles, and there was a big courtyard, at the far end of which were outbuildings, and beyond this a garden which stretched right down to the Someş with its gurgling waters. This, with a few acres of fertile land, had been the dowry of Doctor Hogea’s daughter. His grandfather had been the best doctor in Parva, and was also buried in the churchyard, where his tomb remained a lasting testimony to an honest life of hard work and to a worthy descendant of that prefect who had lived during the rebellion and the power of Avram Jancu. The happiest day in the old doctor’s life had been the day on which his daughter had been married by the Protopop Groza to the lawyer, Iosif Bologa. He lived but a few months after the marriage of his only child.

  Maria had well deserved her good fortune. She had been a good, steady, sensible girl with a great faith in God. Left motherless at an early age, she had been brought up in a boarding-school for young ladies in Sibiu. There, just when she was about to take the final sixth form examination, she met at the house of her head mistress Iosif Bologa, who, a week later, without saying a single word to her on the subject, wrote to Doctor Hogea, of Parva, and asked for her hand. A week after that her father appeared and informed her that the “great lawyer” loved her, and three days later they celebrated the betrothal at the very house of the head mistr
ess, who bemoaned the fact that “Mariti” had not had the chance to finish her schooling. She was engaged for five months, until—after long and complicated negotiations with his future father-in-law—Iosif Bologa decided to move his lawyer’s practice, which did not boast very many clients, from Sibiu to Parva. Thus Maria had had time to get used to the idea of marrying a man who, even after the betrothal, remained a stranger to her. Instead of love, she felt a scared respect for Bologa, partly due to the laudatory way in which her father always spoke of his future son-in-law.

  Iosif Bologa was certainly not the type of man to satisfy the romantic dreams of a girl of seventeen. His hard, rugged face, with the deep-set eyes overshadowed by thick eyebrows, with the heavy chestnut moustache and square chin, blue from constant shaving, seemed to invite hate rather than love. Though he spoke little and was always serious, he had a deep, vibrant voice, proof of a kindly nature and of a soul that knew spiritual struggles. He was the eldest son of a poor priest in the Motzi district, in whose family the memory of their ancestor Grigore—a leader in Horia’s1 rebellion, who had eventually suffered death on the wheel at Alba-Iulia after the quelling of the peasants—remained as a trophy. In the soul of Iosif Bologa the remembrance of this heroic and martyred ancestor increased his zeal for hard work and set up an ideal. As soon as he had qualified as a lawyer he threw himself so wholeheartedly into politics that he succeeded in attaining the distinction of being the youngest person sentenced in the Memorandum2 trial and of spending two years in the State prison.

  Apostol was born just at the time when his father was awaiting his sentence at Cluj. Until his father’s return from prison the child had known only a world surrounded by an idolizing maternal love. Deprived of love in early youth, Doamna3 Bologa became entirely wrapped up in her child—so much so that her pious soul was at times filled with misgivings. Did she not perhaps love her child more than the Almighty? In order to appease her conscience, she took great pains to instil into little Apostol’s heart a great love of God. Thus the child’s first recollections were dominated by a kind, gentle, and forgiving Deity, who, in exchange for daily prayers, granted men pleasures on earth and everlasting happiness in Heaven. In his lively imagination the countenance of that Deity was somehow mixed up with that of Protopop Groza, who came to see them often, who always asked for news of “our martyr”, and whose hand his mother always kissed.