V. A HERO'S DEATH
The staff physician had not understood. He shook his head, vexed, and looked questioningly over the rims of his glasses at his assistant.
But his assistant had not understood either, and was embarrassed, and stood stiffly without saying anything.
The only one who seemed to have any clue at all to the man's ravings was his orderly. For two tears glistened on the upturned ends of his waxed mustache. But the orderly spoke nothing but Hungarian, and the staff physician turned away with a muttered "blooming idiot". Followed by his flaxen-haired assistant, he made his way toward the operating room, panting and perspiring.
The huge ball of cotton, inside of which, according to the placard hanging at the top of the bed, was hidden the head of First Lieutenant of the Reserves, Otto Kadar, of the ——th Regiment of Field Artillery, sank back on the pillow, and Miska seated himself again on his knapsack, snuffed up his tears, put his head between his big unwashed hands, and speculated despairingly about his future.
For it was plain that his Lieutenant could not last much longer. Miska knew what was hidden in the huge cotton ball. He had seen the crushed skull and the horrible grey mess under the bloody splinters which were the brains of his poor Lieutenant, who had been such a good man and kind superior. Miska could not hope for such wonderful luck a second time. You didn't come across such a kind-hearted master twice in your life. The many, many slices of salami that the Lieutenant always had given him from his own store of provisions, the gentle, cordial words that Miska had heard him whisper to every wounded man—all the memories of the long, bloody months he had gone through dully beside his master almost like a comrade, rose to his mind. He felt dreadfully sorry for himself, the good fellow did, in his infinite defenselessness against the huge war machine into which he would now be thrown again without the sure support of his kind Lieutenant next to him.
His broad peasant's head between his hands, he crouched like a dog at the feet of his dying master, and the tears rolled gently down his cheeks and stuck one by one on the ends of his mustache glued with dust and pomade.
It was not quite clear to Miska either just why the poor Lieutenant kept clamoring so frightfully for his talking-machine. All he knew was that the officers had been sitting under cover, listening to the Rakoczy March on the phonograph, when suddenly that accursed shell burst upon them and everything disappeared in smoke and earth. He himself had been knocked unconscious by a heavy board which came out of a clear sky and hit him on the back. He had fallen flat and it was an eternity before he got his breath back again.