Austrian Heads

Austrian Heads

So, their friendship never stopped since then. Now they were also together, Martin was his personal adjutant, and in this three years their friendship grew into this rare kind of direct, almost instinctive and telepathic understanding. Once Martin made a joke on this topic, stating: “The awkward side of our understanding is that we don’t need to speak any more. First, because we know anyway what the other thinks; second, because by keeping silent we express our thoughts in a clearer way than putting them in speech!”
Trakl remembered this. He startled from his bewitched silence. He chose a mildly slopped side with his eyes, naturally shaped and grown into an almost perfect amphitheater, turned south-east. The soldiers were tired of everyday marches. After the endless months in the mud of the rainy and snowy trenches, the strong dose of sun will do them good. He ordered that the soldiers are given their food when they arrive and that they rest for four hours. The usual schedule and regime of guard was the final part of the order that lieutenant Musil forwarded.
Entre nos, my dear captain, I think that here in this primordial region of eternal silence we are very safe, safer than in our barracks at Linz, said the lieutenant while they slowly walked towards the place they chose for their rest.
You mean the order to put guards? Asked captain Trakl.
Yes, I think that any reason for putting guards other than the rules of the service, even when such a reason would exist, would be a miracle? Said Musil.
Captain Trakl smiled: Meine Lieber Nauptmann! I believe in miracles. That is part of my job!
… … … … … … … … … … … … … …
Martin Lupino, the adjutant of captain Trucks, assumed the position next to his superior. Although Trakl never introduced the slightest note of subordination in their communication, not even when he was ordering him in front of others, Martin had a feeling of endless respect and even admiration to Trakl. Maybe the difference in their social status was not quite an insignificant factor. If it ever had any influence, this factor played its role at their first meeting – when the young Lupino served tea to the Trakl family, distinguished guests in the hotel where Martin had been accepted as an assistant and occasionally, a waiter. Very handsome, with a good figure, Martin was a hardworking young man, with a feisty temperament, and the same afternoon, him and the slightly older Franciscus Trakl competed fiercely in a breathtaking ski race along the steepest ski slope. The social barrier between these two boys was then completely erased. Still, everything that Trakl said or did afterwards fascinated Martin, and this thrill with his friend was an excellent formula for their business relation, not hurting his vanity and not imposing any forced obligations. The closeness of their souls remained intact.
Now Martin felt that his friend the captain had entered a completely special mood, as he had never shown until then. Something happened with Trakl. Something happened with him as well, with all of them in this magical space of green sky island, dived into blue. Something had come over the hundred and sixty men comfortably lying in the deep fragrant grass, hidden in the middle of the flowers at the slopes of the natural amphitheater chosen by the captain for rest, as if created for a dream that should not stop.
There are some situations, Martin, started Trakl. Situations that come from nowhere. They fall on some area as a fog, they overcome the people and their thoughts become thick, sticky premonition. All plans stop, every difference is erased, thought disappears. The captain did not look at Martin. His eyes wandered far, focused somewhere in the endlessness, maybe several centimeters above the very forehead of God. He knew that Martin understands him better than he managed to understand his own thought. In these cases, not the things that we want, neither those that we strive for happen to us, but the things that a situation carries within. We stick to this feeling, we separate from ourselves, we give in to something that is indifferent to us, and what predetermines us – as some sunny area that gives in to the twilight without objection, not knowing and not asking what it brings.
Then both happiness and misery happens to us easily.
Here, this overcomes me now.

… … … … … … … … … … … … … …

Stretched on the comfortable side, leaning on their backpacks, with their shirts undone, barefoot, to rest their feet and air their shoes, Trakl’s soldiers slept. All of a sudden, while his men surrendered to the sun and that surreal beauty everywhere around him, from time to time still releasing their backpack and untying the shoelaces of the heavy shoes, the captain found his destiny. Although he was still standing, he again forgot everything that preceded this moment, as when in a dream, the other dream descends and with the soft wing of forgetfulness it covers both the dreamer and the first dream.
Martin, comfortably lying on his back, let himself to the hypnotic force of the sky ink spilt on this morning, clear as if it had fell from the first drop of the God’s pen. He counted seven big eagles silently circling in spirals, raising towards the blue endlessness that opened like a bell in front of them. It looked that with every new circle they untied a new huge sack, tied with invisible ties that they carried in their beaks; and they threw handfuls of golden yellow, powder-blue, white, gentle pink flowers, large like stars, and it silently covered the startled desert like think hives of snowflakes.
Now I understand the stories in which the soul of the main character hides in the eagle. The body would never agree to leave such a deadly beauty. The eagle is a soul that repents its yearning for immortality by sacrificing everything that is beautiful. Because, beauty dies, and it has to be paid with life.
Martin did not answer anything. He knew that his friend, captain Trakl looked at those eagles at the same time as him, that left the magnificent allegory of this world, and that he did not expect a comment, but he just expressed their common trembling before what shook them both to the bottom of their souls.

2018-08-21T17:23:39+00:00 March 1st, 2002|Categories: Prose, Literature, Blesok no. 25|0 Comments