The Doll - Bolesaw Prus [73]
But when, at about ten that evening, wearing my half-jerkin and thick boots, I embraced him, and lifted the latch to leave the room where we had lived together for so long, something strange came over Jan. Suddenly he got up from his chair, pressed his hands together and cried: ‘You blackguard…where are you off to?’ And he threw himself down on my bed, sobbing like a child.
I fled. In the passage, lit dimly by an oil-lamp, someone stopped me. I almost jumped out of my skin. It was August Katz, dressed as befitted a March journey: ‘August, what are you doing?’ I asked.
‘Waiting for you.’ I thought he wanted to see me off: so we went to Grzybowski Square in silence, for Katz never had anything to say. The Jew’s cart I was to travel in was awaiting us. I embraced Katz and he me.
I got in…he followed: ‘Let’s go together,’ he said.
Then, when we had already passed Mitosna, he added: ‘It’s devilish hard and shaking so a man can’t sleep…’
Our journey lasted unexpectedly long, right up to October 1849—do you remember, Katz, my never-to-be-forgotten friend? Do you recall long marches in parching heat, when we sometimes drank water from puddles: or that march through a bog, when we got our powder wet: or those night bivouacs in forests or meadows, when one of us would push the other’s head off the kit-bag and secretly tug over the coat that served as covering for us both? Do you remember the baked potatoes and bacon which four of us cooked in secret, away from the rest of the platoon? I have often eaten potatoes since, but none ever tasted so good. Even today I can smell them, the fragrance of the steam from the saucepan and I see you, Katz, as you said your prayers, ate the potatoes and lit your pipe at the fire simultaneously, so as not to waste time.
Katz, if there is no Hungarian infantry or baked potatoes in Heaven, then you will have hastened there in vain. And do you remember the battle which we looked forward to so, as we rested after a skirmish? I will never forget it to my dying day and if the Lord God ever asks me why I lived in the world, I will answer ‘So as to experience such a day as that!’ Only you, Katz, understand me, because we both saw it. Yet at the time it seemed—nothing…
Our brigade halted a day and a half beforehand near a Hungarian village, the name of which I forget. It was a sight for sore eyes to see how they regaled us. A man might have washed himself in the wine (though it was not very good), and we were so sick of pork and paprika that no one would have eaten it, had there been anything else. But the music and the girls! The gipsies play wonderfully, and the Hungarian girls are really stunning. There must have been twenty of them, and yet tempers grew so hot that our men stabbed and hacked three peasants to pieces, and the peasants killed one of our hussars with a pole.
God knows how this fine entertainment would have ended had not a gentleman driving a four-in-hand covered with foam ridden up to headquarters during the greatest uproar. Some minutes later the news spread that a great crowd of Austrians was in the vicinity. They blew bugles for parade, the uproar died down, the Hungarian girls disappeared and men began whispering in the ranks of a battle.
‘At last!’ you said to me.
That same night we moved on a mile, and next day another mile. Couriers were riding in every few hours, and later every hour. This showed that our headquarters was in the neighbourhood and that something big was in the air. That night we slept in the open, without even stacking our rifles. As soon as it was dawn, we moved