“He sings instead of …” On a table in the room a lamp, with smoke-blackened chimney, was burning with a sickly flame. Bologa threw his helmet on the chest and flung himself on the bed, where he lay full length on his back, his hands on his breast, his eyes fixed on the cracked and blackened ceiling. He felt terribly done up, as if he had been engaged on some very exhausting work.

“I’ll rest until mess-time and try to make my mind a blank,” he said to himself, yawning and closing his eyes. But immediately, from all the hidden places in his brain, thoughts swooped down on him like birds of prey, and in his ears the orderly’s song sounded as clear and loud as if he had been singing under his window. Dismayed, he reopened his eyes. The thought passed through his mind that he ought to call Petre after all, to tell him that to-morrow at dawn they were going back to the front, and that he was to be careful not to leave any of their things behind.… Simultaneously he realized that he was afraid to remain alone with his own thoughts, and he made answer to himself: “My conscience is quite clear.…” And immediately, as if they had been waiting for this, dozens of arguments sprang up in his mind, all tending to prove Svoboda’s guilt. Undoubtedly the fellow had tried to desert and turn traitor, therefore he, who, by chance, had been called upon to try and condemn him, had nothing to reproach himself with, nothing at all.… Nevertheless, while he was listening to these soothing justifications, there appeared on the ceiling with the blackened rafters, at first only like indistinct circles of light and then more and more clearly, the eyes of the man under the halter, with their proud and disquieting look which had been like an appeal and in whose strange fire the string of arguments melted helplessly.

“Will that Petre never leave off? Why doesn’t he leave off?” he thought presently, closing his eyes again and wearily giving up the struggle.

Now nothing but the song which the soldier was singing floated through his brain, sweet and soothing like a velvety caress, rousing whole strings of memories and wafting his soul on the wings of dreams, home to the little town of Parva on the banks of the Someş.

There stood the house he was born in, old and solid, right opposite the resplendent new church. From the flower-surrounded enclosure, through the branches of the walnut-trees planted on the day of his birth, one could see his father’s tomb, ornamented with a cross of grey stone on which the name, carved in gilt letters, could be seen a long way off: Iosif Bologa.

The house had many rooms, filled with stiff old furniture in mixed styles, and there was a big courtyard, at the far end of which were outbuildings, and beyond this a garden which stretched right down to the Someş with its gurgling waters. This, with a few acres of fertile land, had been the dowry of Doctor Hogea’s daughter. His grandfather had been the best doctor in Parva, and was also buried in the churchyard, where his tomb remained a lasting testimony to an honest life of hard work and to a worthy descendant of that prefect who had lived during the rebellion and the power of Avram Jancu. The happiest day in the old doctor’s life had been the day on which his daughter had been married by the Protopop Groza to the lawyer, Iosif Bologa. He lived but a few months after the marriage of his only child.

Maria had well deserved her good fortune. She had been a good, steady, sensible girl with a great faith in God. Left motherless at an early age, she had been brought up in a boarding-school for young ladies in Sibiu. There, just when she was about to take the final sixth form examination, she met at the house of her head mistress Iosif Bologa, who, a week later, without saying a single word to her on the subject, wrote to Doctor Hogea, of Parva, and asked for her hand. A week after that her father appeared and informed her that the “great lawyer” loved her, and three days later they celebrated the betrothal at the very house of the head mistress, who bemoaned the fact that “Mariti” had not had the chance to finish her schooling. She was engaged for five months, until—after long and complicated negotiations with his future father-in-law—Iosif Bologa decided to move his lawyer’s practice, which did not boast very many clients, from Sibiu to Parva. Thus Maria had had time to get used to the idea of marrying a man who, even after the betrothal, remained a stranger to her. Instead of love, she felt a scared respect for Bologa, partly due to the laudatory way in which her father always spoke of his future son-in-law.

Iosif Bologa was certainly not the type of man to satisfy the romantic dreams of a girl of seventeen. His hard, rugged face, with the deep-set eyes overshadowed by thick eyebrows, with the heavy chestnut moustache and square chin, blue from constant shaving, seemed to invite hate rather than love. Though he spoke little and was always serious, he had a deep, vibrant voice, proof of a kindly nature and of a soul that knew spiritual struggles. He was the eldest son of a poor priest in the Motzi district, in whose family the memory of their ancestor Grigore—a leader in Horia’s1 rebellion, who had eventually suffered death on the wheel at Alba-Iulia after the quelling of the peasants—remained as a trophy. In the soul of Iosif Bologa the remembrance of this heroic and martyred ancestor increased his zeal for hard work and set up an ideal. As soon as he had qualified as a lawyer he threw himself so wholeheartedly into politics that he succeeded in attaining the distinction of being the youngest person sentenced in the Memorandum2 trial and of spending two years in the State prison.

Apostol was born just at the time when his father was awaiting his sentence at Cluj. Until his father’s return from prison the child had known only a world surrounded by an idolizing maternal love. Deprived of love in early youth, Doamna3 Bologa became entirely wrapped up in her child—so much so that her pious soul was at times filled with misgivings. Did she not perhaps love her child more than the Almighty? In order to appease her conscience, she took great pains to instil into little Apostol’s heart a great love of God. Thus the child’s first recollections were dominated by a kind, gentle, and forgiving Deity, who, in exchange for daily prayers, granted men pleasures on earth and everlasting happiness in Heaven. In his lively imagination the countenance of that Deity was somehow mixed up with that of Protopop Groza, who came to see them often, who always asked for news of “our martyr”, and whose hand his mother always kissed.

His father’s return effected a great change, a kind of revolution, in Apostol’s life. The station platform was crowded with people, gentlefolk and peasants from the whole district.