A Game of Soldiers. Stephen Miller

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СКАЧАТЬ my thanks for taking extra precautions.’

      ‘It’s only logical,’ the boy said. ‘There’s value here.’ He looked back along the train.

      Andrianov smiled. ‘Maybe I will need you in the future. Occasionally I need men who can do difficult things. I look for men who can keep sight of the future, I look for someone with heart. Such men are valuable. I may call on you for a favour at some time. I am expanding my business interests here, eh?’

      The boy laughed. ‘Business? That’s for later, eh? We are both from the action cell, and when the Bulgarians finally come to their senses and surrender, then we’ll hide these guns until we can turn them on the Austrians and regain Bosnia.’

      They had stopped by the engine. ‘I want you to know that you’re performing a great service, helping to steal these guns,’ Andrianov said. The two young men were already climbing into the engine compartment. The driver and fireman looked at him for a moment and then turned their faces away, frightened.

      The first boy leaned out of the cabin. ‘We don’t need to eat lunch with you and we don’t need your kid gloves and your patronizing, excellency. Just keep the guns coming. Go!’ he said, pushing the driver in the back, and then turned for a moment, still smiling.

      ‘Here!’ Andrianov called. He pulled out a sheaf of bills and held them up to the boy. There was the sharp screech of a whistle and the great driving wheels began to slowly roll along the track. The boys were looking away – maybe they hadn’t heard him. Andrianov started walking along beside the engine. He suddenly felt a wave of admiration for the dirty young men, for their courage, and even for their foolish bravado. He had met them here on the battlefield and they were the real thing. ‘Here!’ he called out again, holding up the money. ‘For the cause!’ he called to them.

      The boys turned and saw him stumbling along, the banknotes drifting out of his fingers. For a moment they watched him and then turned away, laughing, with their eyes set on the track ahead. Then they were past him and the sound of the engine faded and was replaced by the clanking of the wheels of the wagons as they rolled over the joins in the rails, gathering speed, turning northwest towards their ultimate destination in Serbia.

      Andrianov looked around at the little station. The whole place was filthy and there was a sour reek from the toilets. Now that the guns were on their way to Serbia, he might as well get back to Bucharest.

      Mattei, the chauffeur, had come out of the little house. ‘Do you want me to set out something, excellency? Or shall we continue to the city?’

      He turned to the chauffeur. ‘Let’s drive for a while. This place is tiresome.’

      He settled himself in the rear seat, undid the boots and laid them on the floor, sat there in his stockinged feet as the big car gathered speed. There was no traffic to speak of, only an occasional cart. The road was too bumpy for him to read or do any work. He opened the windows and stared out at the torn fields. Every few kilometres they would see someone. A collection of huts in various states of collapse along the road. The soldiers had stripped everything, the fields had been harvested early and then abandoned. The landscape was bleak. At Novi Pazar they had to pause to cross a hastily built dyke where the road had been repaired.

      The car slowed for a crossroads further along and they stopped, waiting for a ragtag parade of Rumanian infantry staggering along in the dust. They were the heroes of the war, having rushed down to attack Bulgaria from the rear, and now they controlled this entire region. They were victorious, but you would never know it; they were caked with dirt, some had lost their headgear, others wore bandages. The chauffeur sat there, the engine idling along while they waited. The soldiers looked up at them as they walked past, grumbling abuse and curses in their direction. They were led by an officer who rode a brindled nag and appeared to be falling asleep in the saddle. His men’s curses woke him up and he looked up and then saw their car there, marvelled at it for a moment, tried to peer through the darkened glass, then touched his hand to his cap in salute.

      The soldiers took only a quarter of an hour to file by. There was a gap where the fighters left off and the walking wounded began. They were escorted by a single mud-caked wagon drawn by four mules. From the back of the wagon Andrianov could see the bloody splints on the legs of men who couldn’t walk projecting over the lip of the tailboard.

      The chauffeur put the car in gear and they wove their way across the bumpy intersection between the groups, shifted up a gear and continued along the road to Bucharest.

      Only a few kilometres further there was what passed for an inn. Here there was no destruction. They slowed down to look at it; only a dilapidated house, stables, and a brace of privies set against the edge of the road, with a single acacia casting some shade in the courtyard. Mattei looked around at him and shrugged, Andrianov motioned in the mirror, and they pulled over.

      It had grown hot and he had taken off his jacket. Now he undid his cravat and opened his shirt. Across the road there was a burned-out building, some telegraph poles that had been uprooted and pushed down into the ditch. A tangled coil of wire.

      He was stiff from sitting in the hot car and he walked up the road to loosen his legs. In the distance he glimpsed a figure, someone working in the fields. As he got closer he saw it was a woman. She was bent over, grasping handfuls of straw and severing them cleanly with a short type of sickle, more of a knife. She was working her way along a row and then she would stop and hoe in the stubble. She had been doing this all day judging from the expanse of turned earth around her.

      The wind was warm and he could smell the rot of the soil. The sun had arced towards the west. Above him a single hawk wheeled in slow watchful circles.

      He walked closer until she saw him, then he stopped and gave a little nod, smiled. She straightened from her cutting. He could see now that she was possessed of that particular kind of peasant beauty that was so rare; a young woman with her husband gone to the war, a widow perhaps. Tall with strong legs and full breasts that pressed against the fabric of her simple blouse.

      The light was rosy and it brought out her colour. She was deeply bronzed from her labours in the fields, and her dark hair was streaked with amber highlights from the summer’s light. To gather her hair she had tied it back with a simple kerchief of lime-green cloth, imprinted with some tiny pattern. Her eyes were clear and blue as she looked at him, a blank expression on her face. The way someone would behold an angel, or an apparition.

      She held her hand up to her brow to shade her eyes, and there was a flash of white as she grimaced to make him out in the flare of the sunlight. Exquisite, he thought. Pure.

      From behind him there was a rustling and he turned and saw a cackling old woman approaching from the adjacent field. She ran up to him as best as her bowed legs could carry her – toothless gums, muttering a stream of unintelligible commentary to him, bowing, stooping, and curtsying as she hobbled out of the ditch.

      As she reached him she began to extend her hands, her fingers wanted to tug at his rolled-up sleeves, but then would draw back at the last moment, afraid to soil the fabric of his shirt.

      The girl looked at him for a long moment, then bent and continued with her crops. He watched her a little longer, then searched in his waistcoast pocket, dug out the banknotes the Serbians had refused, peeled one off.

      ‘Tell her to come with me,’ he said, handing the note to the old crone. She grasped it by the corners and stared at it as if there were an important message written across its surface, then began rubbing it to see if it would simply fade away. After a moment she looked up at him and then back out to where the girl was working.

      ‘Tell СКАЧАТЬ