They marched, horse, foot, and the guns, North, Northwest.
“Where to?” ran the question from regiment to regiment.
Then the answer:
“To Russia!”
And cheers. For, while they had heard vaguely of England and France and America, Russia alone expressed to them all they hated and feared; and, gradually, their doubts and misgivings disappeared as time and again they passed long columns of prisoners in the familiar bottle-green of the Tsar’s soldiery, and as day after day the road tilted higher and the sharp scent of the foot hills boomed down on the wings of the morning wind and the ragged crags of Anatolia limned ghostly out of the purplish-gray welter.
Mehmet el-Touati was kept busy explaining to the men in his company, Southern and Western Turks all but himself.
“It’s the North,” he said. “It’s my own country. Russia is over yonder—” sweeping a hairy, brown hand toward the hills that rolled down in immense, overlapping planes, blue and orchid and olive green, while the high horizon was etched with the lacy finials of spruce and fir and dwarf oak.
“My own country,” he went on. “I can smell it, feel it. My heart is heavy with longing.”
A terrible nostalgia was in his soul. Too, day after day, as the weeks of fighting had grown into the drab, sad cycle of years, he felt more old and lonely and tired. There was something ludicrously pathetic, something almost tragic, in the picture of this middle aged, bearded, rheumy peasant shouldering a musket and fighting and killing.
But he did not complain, not even in his own heart. He marched on, patient, stolid. First there must be a victory. The Russian must be vanquished, the house of the Osmanli made safe.
Then peace—and the creaking of the water wheels, the chant of the mullahs, the happy laughter of the little children playing in the sun.
* * * *
By this time, since the roads were narrow, mere trails made by stray cattle and wild beasts, the army corps had split into a number of columns, each com posed of a half company with its complement of light mountain guns, taken into pieces and carried on the backs of small, mouse-colored mules; and the half company to which Mehmet el-Touati belonged was the rearmost column, winding along hot, jagged roads where occasional thickets threw fleeting moments of shade, up steep hillsides where thick, purplish-gold sun shafts cleft the black rags of the fir trees, through valleys sweating with brassy, merciless heat, past fields of young corn that spread beneath the pigeon-blue sky like dull, sultry summer dreams.
On, while their feet chafed and bled, while the knapsacks cut their shoulders, and the rifles felt like hundredweights!
A few of the Seventeenth, Kurdish tribesmen mostly, nomads drafted on the way from amongst the black felt tents, had tried to desert.
Why fight any more, had been their sneering comment, since their pockets were lined with Syrian and Armenian gold and they had their fill of Syrian and Armenian blood?
So they had snapped their fingers derisively and had glided into the night shadows like ghosts, relying on the hereditary, kindly negligence of their Osmanli overlord. But they had reckoned without the fact that the latter was no longer master in his own house that the brevet-major of the company was a Prussian drill sergeant, reared and trained with the Prussian ramrod, the Prussian code.
“Rücksichtslos—inconsiderate of everything except duty!” was his watchword, and his slogan was:
“I shall make an example—for the sake of discipline!”
He had halted the marching column—he drove them afterwards to make up for the time he had lost—until the deserters, one by one, had been recaptured, court-martialed, sentenced to death.
The melancholy Turkish staff officer who was attached to the Seventeenth to act as a sort of philosophic, good-natured yeast, had tried to argue the point, to reason; had said that Brevet-Major Krüger was making a slight error, that he did not know these people.
“They are like homing birds, these tribesmen,” he had said. “If a few of them want to go, let them. We can always get more, and you cannot catch the winds of heaven with your bare hands. These deserters are Kurds, nomads., unreliable cattle, while the bulk of the army is Turkish. You know yourself that the real Turk is patient and obedient.”
“Makes no difference! Schlechte Beispiele verderben gute Sitten—bad examples spoil good morals! If we let the Kurds do what they please, someday, when we least expect it, these stolid Turks of yours will take the bit between their teeth, and then there’ll be the devil to pay! No! I am a Prussian. I will have discipline. Discipline is going to win this war. I shall make an example of these fellows!”
Then a firing squad. Blood stippling the dusty ground.
And Gottlieb Krüger was right. Perhaps, as the months dragged along on weary, bleeding feet and there was no end to suffering and dying, it was his slogan of discipline—with its obbligato accompaniment of court-martial and death—which kept the Seventeenth as a fighting unit fully as much as the ancient fear and hatred of the Russian.
Then, one day, Mehmet el-Touati overheard a few words not meant for his ear; and, with a suddenness that to a Westerner would have seemed dramatic, even providential, but that to him, Turk, Moslem, was merely a prosy sending of Kismet to be accepted as such and used, a veil slipped from his eyes and slowly, in his grinding, bovine mind, he dovetailed what he overheard into relationship with himself, his own life, his past and present and future.
It was late in the afternoon and the company was camping in a little grove, spotted with purple lilac trees and walled in with the glowing pink of the horse-chestnut. The soldiers had loosened the collars of their tunics and lay stretched in the checkered, pleas ant shade, sipping quickly brewed coffee, smoking acrid Latakia tobacco, talking of home, and Mehmet el-Touati, on the way to a little spring to fill his water canteen, happened to pass the tent where the Prussian brevet-major was sharing the contents of his brandy flask with the Turkish staff officer.
As he passed, a few words drifted through the tent flap, flew out on the pinions of Fate, buffeted against the stolid mind of Mehmet el-Touati with almost physical impact—caused him to tremble a little, then to drop to the ground, to creep close, to listen, tensely, with breath sucked in, lungs beating like trip hammers.
“Russia is smashed!” the Prussian was saying in his halting, guttural Turkish. “The Russians have signed a peace treaty with us, with Austria, with Bulgaria, with your country—Turkey. There’ll be a little desultory border fighting—but all danger is past. The Russian is out of the running.”
“You are sure of that?” asked the other.
“Absolutely. Remember the despatches I received this morning?”
“Yes.”
“They were from headquarters. The peace treaty at Brest-Litovsk had been signed. Russia is out of the running—as harmless as a bear with his teeth and claws drawn. And now—”
“And now?” breathed the staff officer.
“And now?” came the silent echo in Mehmet el-Touati’s heart, as he glued his ear against the tent.
“And now you Turks are going to see some real fighting. Of course I am only guessing. But I lay you long odds that your crack troops—like this regiment, the Seventeenth—are going to be sent to the Western front, brigaded with Prussians—and used against the French and British. Or perhaps they’ll be sent to Albania to fight with the Austrians against the Italians, or to Macedonia to stiffen the Bulgarians a little.”
“You mean to say the war is not over—with the Russian beaten?” asked the Turkish staff officer.
“Your war? Yes. It is over. But our war is not! And you are going to fight for us, my friend—and you are going to toe the mark and fight well. For—” he laughed unpleasantly, “remember our Prussian slogan—Discipline! Discipline!”
Mehmet el-Touati crept away, into the shadow of a horse-chestnut tree, to think. But he did not have to think long.
Only one fact stood out: the Russian was beaten; Islam was safe—and the house of the Osm
anli.
Nothing else mattered.
The West front? Albania? Macedonia?
The French and British and Italians?
No, no! He shook his head. He knew nothing about them. They were not in his life, his world. Russia was beaten. Islam was safe, and he had done his duty, and now he must go home and look after his fields and his wife and his children. They had been neglected so long.
He must go soon. Today. This very night. For here he was in the foot hills of his own country, where he knew the roads.
But—how?
He remembered the Kurds who had tried to desert, who had been caught, court-martialed, shot, by orders of—
Yes! By orders of the Prussian, the foreigner!
The Turkish staff officer would not care. He would argue that one man more or less in the company was not worth the trouble of halting the column, of searching the surrounding valleys and mountains with a fine-tooth comb.
Thus—there was just one way—
And so, that night, with no hatred in his heart but with a Moslem’s implacable logic guiding his hand, Mehmet el-Touati killed the Prussian officer and took the road toward his own country.
MORITURI
(An Episode of the Balkan War)
DRAMATIS PERSONAE
CAPTAIN BORIS PLOTKINE, Third Bulgarian Infantry.
CAPTAIN MEMET ABDERRAMANN TOUATI, First Turkish Cavalry.
LANCE-CORPORAL NADJ HANIECH, Second Battery Turkish Horse Gunners.
SCENE: Represents a battlefield in Macedonia. It is the early dawn of morning. The sky is pink and silver and orange, and as far as the eye can see, there are the shadowy, grim outlines of dead soldiers, Turks and Bulgarians, dead horses, broken wheels and dis mounted gun-limbers. A thick, humid haze rises from the slimy ground, and there is the acrid smell of battle, blood and powder and putrescence and dirt. In the far distance are heard the crunching wheels of commissariat wagons, the heavy grumble of artillery, and once in a while the sharp hissing of musketry fire.
TIME: November, 1912.
DISCOVERED: Plotkine and Touati, both badly wounded.
PLOTKINE (writhing on the ground; moaning)
Oh, Holy Kyrill and all the dear Saints this is in sufferable. I can’t stand it.
TOUATI (Slowly and painfully turning his head in the direction of Plotkine)
You’ll have to stand it, comrade.
PLOTKINE
Who’s there? a friend?
TOUATI
No. I am of the First Turkish Cavalry. I am Cap tain but never mind my name. I do not suppose a ceremonious introduction is necessary under the circumstances.
PLOTKINE
Come over and give a chap a bit of help, will you?
TOUATI
I am awfully sorry, but…
PLOTKINE (interrupting)
Oh, you’re wounded yourself, are you? Can you move?
TOUATI
Not as much as I’d like to. A piece of shrapnel struck me, and one of my legs is shattered it’s only just making a bluff at hanging together by a shred of skin.
PLOTKINE
I got mine through the chest right chest. (Short pause.) You talk jolly good Bulgarian. (Another pause.) I say, comrade, there must be a Turkish ambulance corps kicking about here somewhere. I can’t speak a word of Turkish and talking hurts me so my chest you know. Don’t you think you could call them?
TOUATI
Quite unnecessary, captain. There’s nobody here, nobody who could help us. The column marched away long ago. You see, we two are lying in a sort of hole in the ground. That’s why they didn’t notice us. Oh, well Allah’s will…
PLOTKINE (with sudden, helpless fury)
God’s curse on it, so we are lost what? helpless?
TOUATI
Yes, captain. You’re perfectly right.
PLOTKINE (after a short pause)
But couldn’t we help each other? somehow?
TOUATI
I don’t think I can do a thing. I am very weak, you know. I’ve lost so much blood. You see, it took me nearly all night to crawl six feet a little bit away from my brother.
PLOTKINE
From your brother?
TOUATI (passionless)
Yes. He’s dead, too. He was such a nice, brave young lad. But you see, this confounded heat and then this wretched humidity and so he’s been getting rather smelly. Nothing against him, you know, nothing against him. But I had to move and you see, it took me all night crawling—crawling—
PLOTKINE
And I can’t move at all, not at all. Even when I try to breathe hard, the air whistles through my lungs as if there’s a draft somewhere in my chest. And a ton of rock seems to lie on my legs. I can’t turn my head. I can’t see you. Can you see me?
TOUATI
Oh, yes. I am looking at you.
PLOTKINE
Then tell me: how far distant are we from each other?
TOUATI
I should judge about three yards. But for all it would help you or me it might as well be three thousand miles.
(Both are silent for several minutes; Plotkine sighs.)
PLOTKINE
I am hungry. Got anything to eat about you?
TOUATI
Yes. A few dried dates. Here, look out. I’ll throw them over so that you can reach them with your left hand. (He throws over a handful of dried dates to Plotkine, who takes them and eats.)
PLOTKINE (between bites)
Thanks awfully. (Laughs.) You aim better than did your artillery at the Tschataldja lines.
TOUATI (very stiffly)
I beg your pardon. (Long silence.)
PLOTKINE
So you think there’s no hope for us, captain.
TOUATI
Only a miracle would help us.
PLOTKINE
I shall pray to my Patron Saint.
TOUATI
Well if it gives you any pleasure—
(Plotkine prays fervently for a few minutes. Then there is complete silence. They do not exchange a word for over half an hour.)
PLOTKINE (suddenly)
Ho there, comrade! Are you dead already?
TOUATI
No, not yet.
PLOTKINE
It must be getting on towards noon.
TOUATI
I think you’re mistaken. It’s hardly half an hour since I had the pleasure of making your acquaintance and that was early in the morning.
PLOTKINE
Which one of us is going to cash in first, do you think?
TOUATI
I think I’ll go out first. You see, the chances are that I’ll get gangrene very soon now.
PLOTKINE (after a short silence)
I say, captain. You speak very excellent Bulgarian. Where did you learn it?
TOUATI
I? Oh, I lived in Sofia for two years studied there at the Polytechnicon.
PLOTKINE (excited)
You don’t say so! Then you must know Professor Nyachnioff?
TOUATI
I certainly do.
PLOTKINE
Isn’t that odd? You know, I married his daughter little Lisaveta.
TOUATI
Oh, I remember her. I saw her once when I called on her father. She was a very charming girl.
PLOTKINE
Yes, isn’t she? She is an angel, I tell you. And how she loves me you’ve no idea, captain. If she knew that I’m lying here, dying why, the poor little kiddie she’d cry her eyes out I tell you, she’d kill herself.
TOUATI (a little doubtful)
You think so?
PLOTKINE (angry)
Don’t you believe it? I tell you she’ll kill herself when she reads my name in the list of those killed in battle. You’ll see.
TOUATI (with a laugh)
Pardon, comrade, but I don’t think I’ll see. Also, I don’t think we’ll be in the list of casualties. We’ll be amongst those who are reported missing; don’t you think so?
PLOTKINE
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God! that’s right. The poor little girl that’ll make it worse for her. There she’ll go on hoping for months and months. (He cries.)
TOUATI
Did that relieve your feelings, captain?
PLOTKINE
Oh, my body just feels paralyzed. I tell you, I can’t even move my fingers any more. Damn this war! What are we fighting about, anyway? Just because you confounded Turks insist on having Macedonia.
TOUATI
No because you are trying to steal it from us.
PLOTKINE
Yes as you wish. Makes no difference now. It’s all the same. Gracious Heavens, Tsar Ferdinand had enough territory, God knows. What does he want this infernal desert for? I tell you, when I was a child, hopping and playing about the rye-fields, I had no idea I’d have to die here, in this desert. And poor little Lisaveta will also die she loves me so much, the dear little girl. (Pause.) Why, there is no sense in all this this fighting this dying Tell me, where is the sense of all this?
TOUATI
You Christians are forever asking questions, and then you either get no answer at all, or you get several answers to the same question which is worse. We have war well and we are soldiers and so of course we die. What’s there extraordinary about that?
PLOTKINE
Yes but we die because of this confounded Macedonia this damned desert where nothing grows.
TOUATI (grimly)
Well, captain, even a desert will grow wheat if you give it enough manure and just look about you; look at yourself and at me smell our dead comrades. Oh, there’ll be enough manure, enough stinking dung for a good, rich crop. (Laughs.) Everything for which one dies is good. And then, there are so many human beings in this world. What do we count, you and I? Just think how many millions will come after us.
PLOTKINE
I have no children. And what possible good is it to Bulgaria if I die here? The priests will babble as before, the tschinovniks will steal as before and the comrades who return home will brag about their heroic deeds and their decorations. Nobody will think of me. My parents are dead and Lisaveta will kill herself—
TOUATI
The Second Achmed Abdullah Megapack Page 14
