The Trap. Ludovic Bruckstein

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СКАЧАТЬ or in the road in front of the mayor’s office or the church, and they chat about what is happening in the village and in the town, in the land and in the world. And what peasant carries a heavy knapsack on his back on a Sunday? In the end, if anybody had been curious enough to see what was in that double knapsack, he would have been astounded and prompted to make the sign of the cross: what kind of peasant went around with a toothbrush and tubes of toothpaste in his knapsack? Not to mention novels, the fifth volume of an architectural treatise, sketchbooks and coloured pencils. And a large pair of binoculars… A peasant with binoculars!

      But the streets were deserted, all was quiet, and the air was fresh and cool. There was no other soul to be seen, no sound to be heard, not even the sound of Ernst’s footsteps, since he trod on the pillows of leather soles. He walked down a number of side streets, then down the street that led to Morii Park, flanked by lindens and horse chestnuts, and came to the River Iza, which flowed yellow and sluggish at the bottom of Solovan Hill. He climbed the narrow wooden bridge, a cart’s width wide, with the thought of crossing quickly and then vanishing among the paths that wound between the briars and trees, leading up the hill. But reaching the middle of the wooden bridge, he suddenly came to a stop, taking fright. At the other end of the bridge, by the spring of clear water that poured through a small wooden trough at the bottom of Solovan Hill, and which was called Pintea’s Spring, Ernst espied a military tent of dirty khaki. The barrel of a gun poked through the flap of the tent. Ernst stood stock still, as if rooted to the spot. The round steel eye of the gun barrel gazed at him motionlessly. Ernst stood still, as if hypnotised by the gaze. Alone there on the wooden bridge, he was obviously the perfect target in the sights of the carbine. Just one detonation, and his entire journey, barely begun, would be over. There, at the gateway to the town…

      Ernst looked into the barrel of the gun. The gun looked back at him, motionless. Yes, it was not moving. Ernst came to his senses. His mind began to work feverishly. It meant that neither was the man behind the gun moving. He plucked up courage, gripped the haft of the hunting knife inside his pocket, and slowly, softly resumed crossing the bridge. In his leather moccasins he trod as if on cotton wool. He made no sound. He moved closer and closer toward the barrel of the carbine. He reached the tent and cast a glance through the flaps. Within, the soldier on guard was lying on the ground, fast asleep, his head resting on the rifle butt. He was a reservist, quite old, in a rumpled and patched honvéd uniform, albeit buttoned up to the neck in regulation fashion. The pointed military cap, with a rosette, was pulled down tightly over the sweating head, and from beneath it, at the temples, poked bristles of grey hair. The face was bony, heavy jawed, deeply furrowed, sunburnt. The face of a peasant from the Panonian steppe.

      The man suddenly moved his head and began to breathe like a bellows. Ernst quickly went around the tent and climbed the hill. After reaching the top, by winding paths and shortcuts, he stopped to catch his breath.

      From there, in the clear morning air, he could see the town below, with its red roofs of tile or sheet metal coated with red lead, and its white roofs of galvanised zinc. Amid the roofs soared the spires of the churches, the fortress-like turrets of the Palace of Culture, and the bastions of the so-called Redoubt, where the town’s cinema was housed and on whose upper floor the Military Club held balls, and where on Sundays and national holidays the military band played rousing marches. From the top of Solovan Hill could also be seen the town’s two-storey buildings (there were no three-storey buildings): the boys’ lyceum, the teachers’ college, the intricate tracery of the façade of the girl’s gymnasium school, and the old, drab prefecture and town hall. Also visible were the four large synagogues, but the dozens of houses of prayer, scattered all over town, alongside the ordinary houses, could not be made out. Spreading from the edge of town could be seen the Bulgarians’ gardens, with their perfectly rectangular vegetable patches, in every shade of green, and the peasants’ maize fields, flanked by rows of sunflowers, and the swift Tisza and the yellow, sluggish Iza, which enclosed the town, making it an island. Below him, at the bottom of Solovan Hill he could see the dirty green of the khaki canvas tent, in which the soldier was fast asleep, his head resting on the stock of his rifle. That poor soldier was sleeping peacefully, without any inkling of the danger he had been in. If he had stopped him and asked for his papers, Ernst would have jumped on him and stabbed him in the belly with his knife. What else could he have done?

      But would he really have done it? And if he had tried to make a run for it, would the soldier really have shot him? He would have shot him without a doubt. He had his orders, after all.

      But what was that dirty green khaki canvas tent doing there anyway? What was that peasant from somewhere in the distant Hortobágy, from the Hungarian steppe, doing there in that mountain landscape, pointing a gun at the town? They had obviously posted sentinels at all the exits from the town. So quickly have the prison walls closed in on us, thought Ernst. But only on us? The war had reached the border. Wasn’t the soldier’s rifle pointed threateningly at all the town’s citizens? Wouldn’t anybody at all be ordered to halt?

      Just yesterday, the prison was a big as the whole country. You couldn’t enter or leave unsupervised. Now, the town was a prison, surrounded by invisible walls and guarded by soldiers. And tomorrow? What would tomorrow bring? The streets and then the houses would become prisons. And the walls would close in more and more narrowly, and every person would be a prison unto himself. And a prison guard unto himself…

      That evening Ernst arrived at the house of Ionu, Son of the Trustworthy One, over Argriș Hill. He had travelled by hidden paths, he had climbed the hills by steep shortcuts, untrodden by Sunday excursionists, whom you saw strolling along the winding paths, pausing from time to time to admire the landscape from the foot of Solovan Hill or sitting in a circle on the grass in the glades, peacefully eating sandwiches, drinking steaming coffee from thermos flasks, and avidly inhaling the pure air, as if performing a ritual. A sacred ritual: the inhalation of pure mountain air.

      Ernst emerged from the fir trees and on the smooth, gentle slope of the hill saw the house of Ionu Stan, known as Son of the Trustworthy One. The house was made of oak beams and had a tapering shingle roof, blackened by age and wood smoke. The house did not have a chimney, and in winter, the smoke from the stove rose into the attic and seeped out through the shingles. The whole roof used to smoke, like a huge tobacco pipe, laid on a snow-white tablecloth.

      But it was not winter now and no smoke seeped through the roof. In the dusk all the surroundings were deep green, apart from the house, blackened by time and soot, and the narrow path that led to it, which was clayey yellow in the fading light.

      Suddenly, a large sheepdog, with a round, stocky body covered in thick white fur, rushed furiously from the yard towards the approaching stranger. Ernst did not take fright. He sat down on the ground and there he remained, motionless. The dog circled him a few times and then stopped in front of him, growling contentedly. Ernst knew the dog. And the dog knew him. A few years previously, when he had approached the house for the first time, the dog had rushed out furiously, like a white cannonball. That time he had taken fright. He had been about to run away or to defend himself with his mountaineer’s cane. But Ionu Son of the Trustworthy One had shouted to him from the porch, telling him to sit down on the grass where he was and not to move. Ernst had sat down on the ground and waited, stock-still. The dog had circled him a few times, looking at him with its small red eyes. Ernst had then slowly stood up and the dog had escorted him at a distance of a few paces into its master’s yard.

      5

      Back then things always took the same course when he stopped off at Agriș Hill on a day trip. He would sit down with his fellow wayfarers on the bench on the veranda to drink a jug of fresh milk, to sample a slice of new cheese, and to chat with Ionu, who, although he lived up in the mountains, without a radio, without newspapers, was surprisingly well informed about what went on in the rest of the country and in foreign parts.

      Back then it was pleasant, the days were serene, and he used to be greeted with: ‘Welcome, young sir!’ and on leaving they would bid him: СКАЧАТЬ