Prevod

The detachment had marched all morning, and after a brief halt they had been obliged to press on, meaning to camp after nightfall, as God might ordain, at the edge of the forest. The rain—rare in that climate during the month of December—had fallen without cease in thick, close, slanting threads. Caught unawares by this whim of the clouds, with neither blankets nor greatcoats, soldiers and officers resigned themselves to the water, or rather made a joke of it; and it took all the quicksilver of youth, all a soldier’s spirit, all the stoicism of the Spanish character, not to curse the very devil at finding themselves soaked like sponges. It was hot, and the streaming water seemed only to thicken the sticky, stifling heat, made unbearable by the march. To sweat your guts out and get drenched at the same time, damn it! And there was nothing for it but to keep walking, to relieve the little town besieged by the insurgents, where the inhabitants were putting up a desperate, heroic defence under the command of their parish priest, a very plucky Dominican friar... The thought of saving Spanish men and women from death and outrage heartened the detachment and lent wings to their feet, though the mud, which rose to their knees, shod them with lead.

They halted at the entrance to the forest of necessity, because they could no longer see, and because human strength, too, has its limits. Almost at that very instant the downpour ceased, as though some typhoon had swept it away, and a patch of cloudless sky appeared. The Spaniards took this as a good omen and prepared to camp beneath an ancient, spreading tamarind tree, whose sour-fleshed fruit they knew to be a sure remedy for fatigue and fever. The moon, filtering waves of pearl-grey light through the dense branches tangled with lianas and thick with enormous ferns, was welcomed as a friend; to its light they added the flame of a campfire that would scarcely burn, and soldiers and officers half dried themselves, fanning themselves with coconut leaves, for the damp heat was suffocating.

Once the sentries had been posted, the soldiers sought in sleep—or rather in a heavy, restless stupor—the rest they so badly needed after that exhausting day; but the captain, tall, dark and lean, leaning against the trunk of the tamarind, and the lieutenant, very young and boyish, with a sweet, feminine face, remained standing a moment, their eyes open, as though questioning the night.

“Pepe,” the captain said suddenly, “do you know, my heart tells me they’ll have surrendered by the time we arrive? If I had my way... I’d get them all up this minute, mount my horse, and we’d go on, man, straight on!”

“The men can barely drag themselves along,” objected the lieutenant, who was dropping with sleep. “They say their feet feel like burning coals, and they’re soaked to the bone...”

“Bah! Once they’ve dozed for a quarter of an hour, I’ll prod them and they’ll spring up fresh as daisies... As if I didn’t know my own men! They’re made of iron... forged in Eibar.”

“But what makes you think they’ve surrendered over there? They have arms, ammunition, and, needless to say, courage; the church and its tower are strong; there’s a good bamboo stockade and another wall of rammed earth. You could hold off an army with less than that, and the men trying to get into Arringuay are only a handful...”

“You’re right,” declared the captain, “except about the handful, because there are hundreds of them there, perhaps thousands. But do you know what drives me to despair most about this halt? Don’t you remember what night it is? We haven’t had a moment’s peace for eight days, and it’s summer here when it’s winter back home... What, don’t you know it’s...?”

“Christmas Eve!” exclaimed the lieutenant with deep feeling, his blue-grey eyes clouding with homesickness. “Christmas Eve! And I’d forgotten, old fellow! Christmas Eve! Oh, to be eating almond soup and fruit compote with cinnamon tonight at Aunt Dolores’s! With my little cousins, beside Fanny! A man gets so sick of seeing yellow faces with jutting cheekbones! Hurrah for the women of our Spain!”

“This is Spain too,” the captain answered gravely. “What a world it is! You’re thinking of the girls... and I’m thinking of my little boy, born three months ago... I haven’t seen him yet.”

“Christmas Eve!” repeated the lieutenant with the feminine face. “Look here; perhaps it’s foolishness or madness... but something strange has just stirred in my soul, old fellow, and I feel as you do... I’d like to do something great tonight.”

“So you can write home about it!” “No, so I can tell the Emperor of China!” The friends’ hands sought each other and clasped firmly; the fire, almost extinguished by the damp ground, cast a red glow over the two officers’ faces; and the lieutenant, wide awake now, electrified, spoke in a low voice, fervent as a plea:

“Let’s wake them, old fellow, let’s wake them! We’ll soon cover the three or four leagues left... The guide told me he knows a shortcut...” Fifteen minutes later, neither more nor less, the detachment was marching again—or rather dragging itself painfully along, hacking through the thick lianas and tangles of vines, sinking into pools where yellowish leeches fastened their suckers to the men’s legs, and hearing the iguana and the venomous palay snake slither through the undergrowth. Clouds had covered the moon again, and the darkness was almost complete; the troops groped their way forward, laughing and swearing, but without complaint, without longing for their interrupted rest. A man who tripped over a tree trunk and fell flat on his face would curse and get up again, without even thinking to see what harm he had done himself. Yes, a fine time for pampering themselves! When Arringuay might be burning and the damned rebels disembowelling its inhabitants! Get those legs moving! And a fever of will, of desire, of self-sacrifice drove their exhausted bodies onward, cleared their drowsy heads, and lent strength to the weakest, to those who could scarcely support their own weight... They moved as one moves in a nightmare.

It was midnight on the stroke when they sighted the enemy. To tell the truth, what they sighted was a cluster of houses wrapped in flames, a group of huts from which cries arose: the captain had guessed right; Arringuay was already in the attackers’ hands. Barricaded in the church, a few men under the command of the friar were still holding out; shots sounded from the direction of the square; the town, now defenceless, had been given over to pillage and slaughter. The Spaniards rushed into it, and a confused struggle followed in the shadows or by the light of the fire, trampling over livid corpses riddled with wounds and living men still writhing, grappling with the bandits and crossing their faithful swords and gleaming bayonets with those strange savage weapons, their campilans and their krises undulating like serpents. The fight, however, was brief; with nasal cries and shrill screeches betraying at once their rage, ferocity and caution, the horde passed along the order to retreat, and, leaving a fresh crop of corpses in the square and streets—for the troops, tired as they were, struck hard—the rebels fled in disorder. Weeping for joy, the defenders of Arringuay came down from the tower in whose ruins they had expected to be buried. The friar, still clutching his Remington, ran to meet the captain, and those two men who did not know each other, who had never seen each other before, but who, at the moment of meeting, were one and the same idea inhabiting two different bodies, embraced with that long, ardent warmth known only to those who love each other dearly...

The soldiers, their spirits now revived, thought neither of food nor of sleep. They went from house to house helping to put out the fire. And the friar and the captain, understanding that this was no time to give way to their feelings, agreed in a few words on what must be done, then began issuing orders and carrying them out in person. Like a flock after the wolf’s attack, the inhabitants gathered in the square: mothers searched for their children, brothers for brothers; they called to one another and counted their numbers; some carried out the wounded on their backs. A sergeant came up with a baby in his arms; he had just found it in a little house that was beginning to burn, where there was nothing but a dead woman lying in a pool of blood. The creature was a little yellow doll, crying its heart out; but the sight of that doll stirred the captain’s longings and yearnings, all the more keenly on this night when little children are especially sacred. He bent down and tenderly kissed the orphan, and the lieutenant, with a charming youthful smile, raised it in his hands and showed it to the crowd, saying playfully:

“Look what a Christ Child has come our way tonight!” “The little devil’s ugly enough, Lieutenant,” declared the sergeant. “He’s the only one we have...!” And the child, of Malay stock, was made much of and pitied and fussed over, until a Chinese woman took charge of him and brought him to her long breast; into her hand the captain slipped all the money he had.