The Sojourn - Andrew Krivak [31]
Zlee laughed. “Well then, my brother, I’ll miss you, because I’d be happy doing nothing more than living the rest of my life as a shepherd,” he said, with only my father around to talk to, and that’s all he wanted to do now.
And I thought of the way in which my father had taken Zlee and shaped him and given him a life he certainly would never have known if he had remained on the streets of Eperjes with his mother until it came time for him to go off to war, and I asked him if he had ever heard from his mother, if he knew where she was, or ever thought of going to find her.
His mood darkened, and I saw a flash of the old mad dog in his eyes.
“Find her?” he said. “For years she knew where to find me, but after a few months of writing to tell me that she was getting herself back on her feet, and that she had met a wonderful man who was quite rich and looking forward to meeting me, it all stopped, and your father took me into the mountains. You don’t know how angry those letters made me, or how many times that winter I nearly left to go in search of her, just to see her, to see if she had lied about her life or not. At the camp that spring, I wanted to walk down into the city and find her, and show her that, in spite of her having left me, I had become a man. I had even risen early one morning, intent on going, but when I walked out the door of the cabin, I stood looking out over the hills. There was a faint light in the sky, a few sheep bleating, and Sawatch came up and lay down at my feet. I felt as though I couldn’t move, and I thought, What of her rich men and good life? Otec and you treat me like a son and a brother, and that’s already more than I ever expected to be given in any life.”
And that night she came to me in my dreams again, my own mother, and she seemed as fearful as she had been the last time, although she still appeared to be shimmering, as though the beatific perfection of that faded print my father kept, every curve and shadow of which I had memorized as a boy. She waved to me and began to walk away, and I shouted, “No!” She turned and, hands outstretched, said, “Stay, Jozef. You’ll be safe,” and I begged her to come back, but she kept walking, with her back to me, until she dissipated like a mist.
THREE DAYS LATER, WE CIRCLED BACK TOWARD DIVISIONAL headquarters near Görz and reported in. What we brought the major (we had to bring him something) was news of recently fortified Italian camps, accompanied by troop movement along the entire western stretch of river, from the Bainsizza Plateau down to Görz. Battle was imminent, and the Italians looked determined to make it their last.
It wasn’t their last, though. The Austrians expected a spring offensive, and our scouting confirmed this, but the high command’s best guess was that the Italians would proceed more tactically than they had in the past, using diversionary incursions upstream to draw our divisions holding the three mountains away from higher ground, and then attacking with their seemingly endless supply of troops. But the Italians had learned nothing in two years of fighting, and the emperor’s generals learned that for all of its ethnic factions, diversities, and desertions, theirs was an army of men who would go to their deaths throwing stones at the Italians rather than give an inch of homeland.
And so it began with little more warning than the suspicious activity Zlee and I and a few spotters reported to our command. At first light on the twelfth of May, we had just come off a week’s rest and were sitting in a good hide forward of our main trench, from which we had seen an artillery team in range. We wondered why they had exposed themselves so foolishly, but we never thought to question our luck. The officer was easy to identify as his gunners loaded and aimed their cannon. I reckoned him at 550 yards, a long shot,