United States or Kazakhstan ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
And this was the most gruesome as he now thought of his subordinates and fellow-officers, he saw them all going about exactly like poor Meltzar, without heads on their bodies. He shut his eyes and tried to recall the looks of his gunners in vain! Not a single face rose before his mind's eye.
So then it was not because of his being young and stupid that Meltzar had behaved as he did; not because he had come direct from the military academy to the trenches. The phonograph record was to blame, the phonograph record!
Lieutenant Kadar simply could not understand why it was that six months before, right away, when young Meltzar announced his entrance into the battery, he had not guessed what they had done to the boy in the hinterland. They had given him a different head.
I beg pardon, Lieutenant " Miska begged, and very, very gently stroked his master's quivering knees with his big hard palms. But Lieutenant Kadar heard him not. Neither did he feel the heavy hand resting on his knees. For, opposite him, young Meltzar was still sitting with a flat, black, round head on his neck on which the Rakoczy March was ingraved in spirals.
He had fallen flat and it was an eternity before he got his breath back again. Then then Miska's recollections of things after this were a bit hazy then he remembered an indescribable heap of splintered boards and fallen beams, a hash of rags, cement, earth, human limbs, and quantities of blood. And then then he remembered young Meltzar.
And now Lieutenant Kadar saw it very distinctly: all the men had records on their necks like young Meltzar. Not a single one carried his own head. But when the shells burst with a howl from the lacquered horns and flew straight into an ant-hill, then the flat, black discs broke apart and at the very same instant changed back into real heads.
Meltzar was still sitting upright with his back against the remains of the wall, and the record that had just played the Rakoczy March and had miraculously remained whole was perched on the place where his head belonged. But his head was not there. It was gone completely gone, while the black record remained, also leaning against the wall, directly on top of the bloodsoaked collar. It was awful.
These people evidently did not get their heads back until they were about to die. Somewhere somewhere far back far back of the lines, their heads had been unscrewed and replaced by records that could do nothing but play the Rakoczy March. Prepared in this fashion, they had been jammed into the trains and sent to the front, like poor Meltzar, like himself, like all of them.
And all at once the officer realized that for the past six months he had done poor Meltzar a grievous injustice. How could the poor fellow help his stupidity, how could he help his silly, high-flown patriotic talk? How could he possibly have had sensible ideas with a record for a head? Poor Meltzar!
Word Of The Day