Innocent Soldier (9780545355698)

by Holub, Josef

  My head is reeling. I can’t see anything. It’s as though I’m in a thick fog. The deserter is coming closer. I can hear his whistling breath. Did he just look at me reproachfully? He flings himself farther, under the lashing leather. He’s made it! No, at the last moment he stumbles. The man next to the end put out a foot and tripped him. But he picks himself up and reaches the end of the alley. And so wins back his own life.

  The young baby face doesn’t get as far as me. He’s left on the floor halfway down. The last of them makes it about three-fourths of the way. He’s stopped moving. Even so, his comrades continue to thrash him.

  So two of them are done for. Beaten to death by their comrades. That’s why they don’t rate a Christian burial. Holes are dug for them among the suicides, against the cemetery wall. They’re put in the ground in the middle of the night. Without any drums or ceremony. That’s what everybody tells each other later on, in the collection depot. It’s no great loss. Soldiers aren’t worth much, and deserters aren’t worth anything. It’s wrong that one of them came out of it alive. Doesn’t usually happen. Deserters deserve to die, simple as that. What sort of army would that be, if soldiers were just allowed to clear off any time they felt like it? How would kings and emperors fight their wars?

  6

  So in the end, I’d rather stay where I am, with the soldiers. If desertion carries such grim consequences. Maybe I’ll try it some other time. When things look more promising. Or maybe there’ll be a miracle, and Sergeant Krauter will be told by the Almighty to bite the dust. So that I can get some peace and quiet.

  But for the time being, he continues to bully me.

  My sky blue uniform will never be clean again.

  “Private Bayh is a disgrace!” the sergeant yells any chance he gets. “It appears he must wallow around in the mud like a sow.”

  And I can’t get the smell of horse dung off my hands.

  Then all at once, everything seems to take a turn to the better. Maybe fortune has an occasional attack of vertigo, or just a fit of hiccups.

  On one particularly stinking day, I march past a young lieutenant just as he’s crossing the barracks yard. Because a lieutenant doesn’t give ground to a private, he only barely scrapes past me. It’s not my fault that he barely scrapes past me, because I’ve just been ordered by Sergeant Krauter to march smack through the biggest puddle in the yard. So it’s no wonder that the white pants of the lieutenant catch several streaks of dirt. He looks down at them and becomes enraged.

  “Hey!” he yells. “What do you think you are doing, soldier?”

  But I am under orders from the sergeant, so I can’t pay any special attention to the officer. I carry on marching through the big puddle. After all, I never had any orders to stop.

  The sergeant sees what happened, and he tries to make himself scarce. But the lieutenant, who is steaming mad by now, grabs him by the lapels and makes him stand to attention.

  “What do you think you’re playing at, getting that fellow to spray me with dirt? Do you have any idea who’s talking to you, man?”

  The sergeant goes yellow and bumpy like an old plucked fowl.

  “I’m afraid I didn’t see you coming, sir!”

  “What do you mean, you didn’t see me? And what are you doing, keeping that boy tramping through puddles hour after hour?” the lieutenant asks indignantly.

  I like hearing this, so to make sure I don’t miss anything, I carry on marching on the spot. Of course the sergeant doesn’t admit he’s only bullying me for the devilish pleasure of it, because he enjoys having another human being in his power. No, of course he doesn’t tell the lieutenant anything about his evil pleasure in my misery. “Purely a pedagogical measure, sir,” he reports. “Transport soldier Bayh is a mulish individual, and, as if that weren’t enough, he’s as thick as two short planks. The least I want to do is get him to respond when he hears his own name.”

  Suddenly, the lieutenant commands: “Hold! Enough.” He must mean me. I don’t see anyone else marching. Then he orders, “Come over here.” Of course, I obey immediately.

  “So he’s thick, is he?” the lieutenant asks the sergeant. “Really thick?”

  “Even thicker than that! Your Grace, he’s a moron.”

  The lieutenant looks me up and down.

  I’m so dirty, I can hardly see out of my eyes. I feel as ashamed as a naked man in church. From top to bottom I’m spattered with barracks mud.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Adam Feu … no! Georg Bayh,” I stumble. It always happens like that, when I’m asked unexpectedly. I just can’t get used to my name being Bayh.

  What will the officer think of me? That I’m as thick as they say? He looks like a decent fellow, the lieutenant. He can’t be that old. His voice wobbles around as if it hasn’t completely broken. He seems to have the same trouble I do. He has to be careful his voice doesn’t crack, because the others will make faces and grin at him. Very annoying. I wonder how old the lieutenant can be? Soldiers are supposed to be eighteen and over. Not less. After all, they don’t want children in the army. Except for me. But that’s a different story. In my case, it’s a mistake. With a lieutenant, it can be quite a normal state of affairs. There are apparently quite a lot of lieutenants who are seventeen. An aristocrat who goes to cadet school at the age of ten can well be a lieutenant by the time he’s seventeen.

  Not long ago, a sergeant was telling us how he knew a nobleman who had family all over the world. All his male relatives were with the army. He had an uncle who was a colonel with the Prussians, a brother who was a captain of horse with the Austrians, a cousin with the English redcoats, one who was a general for the czar, and one with the Turkish sultan. The whole clan knew and supported one another. That’s why even the dimmest nobles get somewhere. At least in the army.

  The lieutenant takes a long and thorough look at me.

  “Well, now! What’s your real name? Are you Adam Feu or Georg Bayh?” he suddenly asks.

  The sergeant thrusts himself forward.

  “Your Grace can see for himself. The boy is so stupid he doesn’t even know his name. He’s a real idiot, I say.”

  “Will you keep your opinions to yourself unless I happen to ask you for them!” the officer snarls at him. Next he orders me to get myself cleaned up, and then go and report to him, Lieutenant Count Lammersdorf in the officers’ building. There, I’m going to have to get to work on his pants.

  The lieutenant turns to the sergeant, who’s standing there, frozen like a statue. “So you reckon transport soldier Bayh or Feu or whatever his name is, is really stupid?”

  “Absolutely, sir,” barks back the sergeant dutifully.

  Another lieutenant comes by, stops, and looks at me, the filthy transport soldier. The two officers seem to be acquainted. “Here’s a possibility,” says the first lieutenant to the second, reflectively, without looking at me or the sergeant. “I need a replacement for my servant. He’s such an incorrigible gossip. Where does that get us, if an officer’s servant passes on everything he sees and hears in the mess? An officer’s servant has to keep his lip buttoned.”

  “Well?” asks the second lieutenant. “And what’s that got to do with this dirty specimen here?”

  “This young fellow has certain advantages,” says the first lieutenant. “It seems he’s so thick he doesn’t even know his own name. And there’s no better servant for an officer than a fool. Plus I have a feeling that once he’s been properly cleaned up and dressed, he’ll actually look quite presentable.” The two lieutenants smile to themselves at the same time.

  “What do you think?” he asks.

  “Cat’s mess and trouser dung,” says the other. “If he’s as stupid as that, he won’t even understand what we are talking about. And if he does understand anything, he won’t understand it properly. He doesn’t need to be clever to be able to brush and polish. You can do that with a small brain. And if there’s something he doesn’t know how to do, he’ll probably be
able to pick it up eventually.”

  “Exactly!” crows the first lieutenant, and then he hisses in the sergeant’s face: “And this has nothing to do with you, by the way.”

  “No, sir! Nothing to do with me,” affirms the sergeant.

  Neither the one nor the other nor the third of them says a word to me, and of course none of them asks me what I think. I really didn’t know how stupid I was. But in the army, all things are possible. You can’t be surprised by anything.

  And so it comes that I have to leave my lodgings with the horses and move into a little room in the officers’ quarters. I can’t say I’m overjoyed. I’d much rather be with horses than some wellborn officer. I know I can get on with horses, but a titled officer is another matter. But maybe I’ll learn. The way I once learned with horses.

  7

  I’m living with the lieutenant now. After a couple of days, it dawns on me that an officer is only human as well. Sometimes my noble master has nothing noble about him. If there’s no one watching him he can behave just like a stable boy. But I like that in him.

  My new work isn’t so bad. I only need to work like half a farmhand. Or even less. I don’t have anything to do with my lieutenant’s food. The officers always mess together. They’ve got their own cook, or even two cooks, so that they don’t have to eat as commonly as the common troops. In the morning I wake my gentleman. I brush his lieutenant’s coats, and in the evenings, I pull the boots off his feet, polish them to a mirroring shine, wash his pants and socks, run errands for him and I don’t know what else. My new service is bearable, easy, and good. No more backbreaking labor. No stable cleaning, no heavy wheelbarrow loads to be trundled onto the dung heap. And every little detail is explained to me. Whatever I haven’t expressly been told to do, I can leave undone. Does the lieutenant really take me for so stupid that he has to tell me everything? As if I had nothing but straw between my ears? Never mind. What’s much more important is that Sergeant Krauter doesn’t have me in his power anymore. Because a lieutenant is far senior and has much more authority than a sergeant.

  The lieutenant owns a couple of racehorses. Beautiful creatures. Purebred Arabs. But he won’t let me near them. Is that on account of my stupidity, too? He’s brought his own stable boy along from home. I’m jealous.

  My room is tiny, but I have it all to myself. My bed, too. Never in my life have I had my own room. What more could I want? It’s a big step forward. All at once, I feel proper and distinguished. In fact, I feel much better off here than I was with my farmer.

  What about my officer? He’s very young and very spoiled. I bet he’s never had to muck out a stable or castrate a tomcat with a couple of stones. But in spite of that, he’s still a decent sort, even if there’s something half done about him. He’s halfway between mother’s milk and rum punch, as the old folks would say. But the officer’s saber and the epaulettes, they give him a lot of authority.

  I’m completely satisfied with my new life. I have enough to eat, I have a roof over my head, no fleas or lice, and a uniform that fits. I had to trade in the sky blue gear, which I couldn’t get clean anymore anyway, for a green uniform. I’m no longer part of the horse artillery, but with the mounted Jagers, like my noble lieutenant.

  And suddenly it’s not just that I may ride, I have to. That’s how quickly life sometimes changes. I have no trouble with the riding. After all, I sat up on horseback even when I was a little boy, bareback. A saddle makes things even easier. It fits your bottom like a glove.

  My lieutenant didn’t want to be attended by some kind of scarecrow, so he took the trouble to come along when I was being kitted out. He saw to it that the seat of my new pants doesn’t hang down to the back of my knees. So everything’s shipshape. Well, everything would be, if only the lieutenant would treat me like a normal human being. Which he won’t. He treats me like a little snot nose, or a person with a shrunken or underdeveloped brain.

  It’s enough to make you despair. Am I really such a useless dimwit?

  Maybe it’s not the lieutenant’s fault. Maybe all the noble gentlemen are like that and see in the rest of humanity only fools to give orders to.

  Every evening, the wellborn gentlemen pay calls on one another. Sometimes they meet at one officers place, sometimes another’s. Sometimes they collect at my lieutenant’s. Then I have to serve wine and pear brandy and run around topping up glasses. It can go on half the night. Usually, it ends around midnight because there are a couple of elderly gents in the officers’ building who can’t drink as much as they’d like, and who need sleep on account of their years. The young lieutenants, though, they can put away wine by the liter, and they smoke their smelly pipes like Croats and talk all sorts of nonsense. At first, it sounded very clever to me, but before long I realized that it was all empty talk. It’s just as well if I forget it as soon as I’ve heard it.

  Sometimes the gentlemen speak in French. That sounds better behaved and cleverer because I really haven’t the foggiest what they’re talking about. And they laugh as wildly as the head stable boy used to do when he patted the maid on the behind or pushed his hand up her skirts. The more wine the officers drink, the more stupid stuff they talk. Almost every time, I have to clear away someone’s puke. Most of the lieutenants, it seems, can’t judge how much wine they can pour into themselves before they start to overflow.

  After these parties, my lieutenant usually lies in bed pretty wrecked and as pale and white as his nightshirt. He’s as whipped as a little doggie. It’s not a good time for him or me. He is in such a bad way, he has trouble keeping up his aristocratic manners. In the end, he even starts whimpering and sobbing to break your heart and calling for his mama. It’s as if his usual common sense is blotted out by weeds or dung heaps, and his soul has a lot of mess to deal with. When he’s at that stage, I can’t leave him on his own. I have to sit by his bed, hold the bucket ready, and talk to him about anything, just to try and calm him down. Tell him stories I heard from the hands and maids of my farmer, or others that happened to me. Or else I mix up all sorts of possible and impossible things. The way the old people do with their fairy tales. I expect the lieutenant is used to that from his mother or his nurse or some governess or other. Usually, he falls asleep while I’m talking to him. Sleep purifies body and soul and brings them back into balance somehow. Till the next time, anyway.

  8

  It’s a warmish evening, one of the last days in February. The first coltsfoot flower is blooming on the sunniest spot in the barracks yard. Of course, one coltsfoot doesn’t mean it’s spring. But it’s the first hint that it’s on its way.

  There’s a feeling of unrest in the reception depot. The officers’ building is like a chicken coop. Doors swinging, the gentlemen dashing in and out.

  My lieutenant’s cheeks are flushed with excitement too.

  “At last we’re going to see some action,” he says, like some first-grader who can’t wait to get to school. “Pack everything ready as for field march!” he orders me. “Tomorrow morning we’re moving out.”

  War? Even so, I’m pleased. At last I’m going to get out and see a bit of the world. I have no idea what war is like. I’ve never been in one, and I only know from hearsay that it’s when soldiers hack and stab and shoot at one another. And if you happen to be there yourself you have to try and make sure that the bullets fly past you, and that the sabers and lances miss when they hack and stab. War makes heroes. Who are generally dead by the time it’s over. Except for the generals. They can become heroes without dying first.

  The lieutenant’s squire suddenly comes down with something. The prospect of war probably gave him the runs. He’s no soldier after all, he’s just a squire. Why should he go to war? So I get his riding horse. And because a lieutenant count takes care of mounting and dismounting and riding, but quite naturally not feeding and currycombing, I suddenly find myself in charge of three horses, instead of just one.

  “Look after them carefully,” the lieutenant says anxiously. A
nd then he adds, in a funny squeaky voice, “I swear by the sun, the moon, and the stars, I’ll chop you up into little tiny pieces if anything happens to the horses.”

  But he doesn’t have to worry. I like horses best of all living creatures anyway.

  The mounted Jager regiment leaves the barracks in the morning at the prescribed time, and crosses the Neckar about an hour later. On the other side is a little village with a church and low farmhouses. The whole village quakes and trembles as the glittering, thundering troops make their way through on the narrow dirt road.

  I’m pretty pleased to belong to such a magnificent regiment. And to go to war as part of it. War can’t be so bad. We’ll just ride everything down. On my splendid Arab and with this glittering army, war can only be a beautiful thing.

  Where the war is going to be, though, no one is quite sure.

  Down in Spain, says someone. It’s supposed to be warm there all the time. And the girls are the most beautiful in the world. Dark and proud and crisp as honey cakes.

  In the east, say others. In Russia! Where else? The whole world knows Napoleon wants to conquer Russia. Russia’s not so good. It’s cold there, and the girls aren’t half so beautiful, but heavy and dumpy.

  Apparently, the crown prince is with the army. But he’s not traveling with our regiment. He’s taking some other route.

  If the king sends his son along, then the war’s in the bag. With an army like ours, and with the invincible Napoleon at the helm.

  Maybe I’ll be lucky enough to clap eyes on the greatest general in history for myself.

  The February sun is getting warmer and more pleasant. The regiments trot and march across the country at a comfortable pace. The wheels of the cannon and the many baggage and forage carts rut the big roads. Slowly the giant worm of the army winds its way forward. No need to hurry. The strength of horses and men must be conserved for the encounter with the enemy. And the reserves mustn’t fall too far behind.