Csardas (17 page)

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.

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 side 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.

The Moravians began to shout and cry out. Two of them stood, tried to run back into the forest behind, and were picked off by rifle fire. The remnants of the gun crew and Karoly’s cavalry fired into the horsemen at random, and the Russians, slowed by the mud, lost three of their men. Adam, crouching behind the gun axle, sighted, fired, sighted and fired. His bandaged hand made him clumsy, but when the breech was empty he threw the rifle down and snatched one from a prostrate infantryman. The Russians faltered, spurred their horses out of the mud as quickly as they could, and scrambled back up into the trees.

Karoly slithered forward to the front of the gun carriage. His troopers and the remnants of Adam’s gun crew were cowering miserably against the front wheels.

“All right! Spread out; face the woods. You there, the man at the end, watch the far side of the track as much as you can.” He settled himself alongside them, sighting his rifle towards the trees and straining his eyes into the gloomy, rain-darkened forest. Another long silence, disturbed only by the sound of water on branches and the chesty breathing of the man on his right. Then a flash, a movement to the side, and the Cossacks broke cover from the trees again. “Fire!”

Four horsemen went down. A horse crumpled to its knees and the Russian jumped clear and tried to clamber back up the bank. Karoly hit him in the back of the head. This time the Russians came on, undeterred by the mud or their fire, but now the men round the gun carriage were becoming organized, taking confidence from the presence of Karoly in their midst.