“I’d ask, sir.”
“Ask who? God the Father?”
“A peasant, sir.”
“Oh, you mean a peasant would be hanging about there in the middle of the night, just waiting for you to ask him?”
“He might happen along …”
“Happen along indeed. … How’s your Hungarian?”
“Hungarian, sir?”
“Well, we ought to be good enough to advance the front line to Hungary, should we not? That would make him a Hungarian peasant.”
“No, I don’t speak a word of Hungarian, sir. I do have a touch of German, but Hungarian …”
“Of course you don’t! Can anyone do better than him?”
“I can, sir. I’m from Senta.”
“Well?”
“I can, sir. I speak Hungarian.”
“Now listen here, Mama’s boy,” the Major brought his face close to his and lowered his voice, and that spelled something truly dreadful, “is this your idea of a joke? A C.O.’s report? no fear! I’ll have you pissing blood, I will! ‘I speak Hungarian’? You’ll be speaking bloody Turkish before I’m done with you — and you’ll be free to complain to Father Allah and Saint Mahomet then!”
“I’m sorry, sir, I didn’t mean no … I thought …”
“Silence!” the Major shot the word at him like a bullet from a pistol. “ ‘I thought,’ indeed! You’re not supposed to think! You can sell your profound thoughts to your no-good buddies over in Senta! You’re just a lot of seditious rebels anyway, all of you from over the Danube and the Sava! Over here you think like I tell you to, see?”
“Yes, sir,” stammered the boy, but the Major was paying him no attention by then.
“Listen up, you … Silence! In a forest, where you can see no sun and no stars … and look at him, wants me to give him a compass, like hell I will! … you will orient yourself … listen up, look at him! … by moss. What’s so funny, look at him! (Nobody was laughing, of course.) Why moss? Anyone?”
“Sir,” spoke up Numbskull.
“Go ahead.”
“Moss grows on the shady side of the trunk, because that’s where it’s damp. …”
“Very good,” enthused the Major.
“Thank you, sah!” yelled Numbskull.
“Never mind thanking me — get on with it!”
“… and the shadow is, as we know, on the north side.”
“That’s right, on the north side! Damned good show!”
“Thank you, sah!” Numbskull was not forgetting the Royal Regs.
“Right, now establish your bearings. See that dork — thought he’d ask an enemy peasant. So smart he’d try to hitch a ride on a hedgehog.”
“Now that I know which way’s north, I position myself so as to face due north, where the moss is. Behind my back’s south, my right arm is east and my left arm west.”
“Damned straight!”
“Thank you, sah!”
“Wonder which fool chose to call you Dimwit.”
“Numbskull, sir,” Numbskull corrected him shyly and modestly. “It was only a joke, sir. …”
“This is no joking matter! This is not a circus! I’ll get that Nettle yet!”
“Sir, I never said anything about …”
“Silence! I know him — this is his brand of shenanigans! That Cossack from the steppe making my finest men a laughingstock! Here, you knew about this orientation by moss business all the time — why didn’t you come out with it right away?”
“I hadn’t remembered, sir, until you said.”
“Good. Sit down.”
“Thank you, sah!” Numbskull was not letting up. He sat down, broadcasting his pleasure.
The Major was very pleased, too. He was still shouting and swearing, but with a paternal smile — even addressing them as “lads”— “listen up, lads, look at him!” And it was all thanks to Numbskulclass="underline" he had created a cozy family atmosphere out of nothing, out of a handful of moss, as it were.
“Listen up, lads, look at him! Pay attention to me, slacker! Here, what is it we learned about orientation by moss? Let’s hear it from … you!” and he suddenly skewered a beanpole in the back row with his finger. The beanpole gave a start, jumped to his feet and said all about shadow, damp, north-south, east-west …
And everybody else turned out to have it down pat. Melkior, too, had it down.
“Very good, boys!” exclaimed the Major in delight.
“Thank you, sah!” thundered the boys. The Major marched down the aisle between the benches reveling in the tribute from the skin-shorn heads and went out of the triumphal door: with boys like that he had no fear of Hitler’s moustache or Mussolini’s shaven pate!
Melkior, too, was carried away by mellow thoughts: see how we could live in peace and mutual respect … If we took a leaf from Numbskull’s book … But how did he know which side the moss grew on?
“How? Heh-heh, I told you: nine Honors degrees!” replied Numbskull in the mess hall at lunch, tapping his nose. “You know the year of Luther’s death, not me. You can wipe your butt with all the Schopenhauers. What counts here, as you can see for yourself, is moss!” said Numbskull, eating Melkior’s lunch.
Lifemanship. Melkior felt his being trapped, deprived of ingenuity, exposed to Polyphemus the cannibal, defenseless. Oh Lord (why do you invoke Me, said the Lord, if you don’t believe in Me?), I will have to surrender. I have no choice but to surrender to the man-eating Cyclops, come what may. There are fifty-seven young men and thousands of young men more and millions of young men beyond them caught in a high-ceilinged cave overgrown with laurels, and Polyphemus the huge Cyclops has lifted a boulder and plugged the entrance to the cave … and everyone inside awaits, meek as lambs, for their destiny to be chosen by the Lord. So why should you worry at all about your stunted little body?
Polyphemus does not fancy gnawing scrawny bones. Maybe you will not be chosen at all for his Cyclopean meal? Maybe, maybe … Maybe is worse than “he will not eat you tomorrow.” Oh Lord, I don’t want maybe; give me certainty: deliver me or destroy me now! Throw me under Caesar’s mighty hooves to be trampled in a blaze of glory! Deliver me from Nettle, from fear, from shame, from barking at a lightbulb!
Fear prolongs life, someone had said in honor of Caution, but Numbskull’s uncomplicated art made Melkior’s pitiful cunning seem ridiculous. The way Numbskull had decoded his “secret device” at first sight! Read through it right off the bat and spotted it as naïve … and teased him for it. He was going to make mistakes under the expert’s knowing eye, bog down in details while forgetting the bigger picture, show his hand while hiding his nails. He feared Numbskull’s ingenuity and the man’s taking so damn much interest in him!
He opted for an unpleasant silence, in payment for the friendly care in bread and meat.
“All right, if you really don’t want it,” Numbskull ate from Melkior’s barely touched plate, but kept on musing in a conscientious and friendly manner: “Thing is, do you propose to wither away here from one day to the next? What difference will it make after all’s said and done: this way or … that? I’m afraid you’re going about this all wrong — your sum is lose-lose, no matter how you slice it.”
But Melkior wouldn’t listen to him anymore. He’d had it with that kind of logic in ATMAN’S school. Too many dreadful truths were concealed in that line of reasoning. He tossed and turned through another pointless night under the olive drab blanket trimmed with the royal tricolor, hopefully counting the beats of his racing pulse. He had trouble swallowing his saliva in his parched throat: a stab of pain appeared as a yearned-for promise. Strep—a warm, indeed seering, medicinal word, beyond the reach of the stable and Nettle, capable of reducing his tense vertical stature to a patient’s relaxed helplessness, to a white scene of whispers and obligatory quiet.