Page:The Best continental short stories of and the yearbook of the continental short story 1924-25.pdf/80

 merchandise, we smiled again at each other, and we greedily savored the silence about us. It was after the fourth mouthful, I believe, that the silence began to weigh heavily upon the sergeant.

“You see, old chap, those fellows seem to have had about enough of it.”

His voice and smile emerged from his beard as from a forest. For a moment he looked about without speaking, and then abruptly resumed, as one throws a few twigs on a fire to save it from going completely out, “Perhaps you didn’t hear about it. They were talking about it at the kitchen. A man who is candidate for section commander arrived with the news.” Certainly nothing like that had been heard of at the kitchen. That illy shaven fellow, you know—the spirit of warming up, was there, and that spirit has no trouble in finding followers! For that spirit, it was great fun to invent a thousand candidates like the one that was supposed to have brought the great news!

Now it was a fine autumnal day, one could look far over the country from where we were, and the mountains below us seemed like our great-grandmothers’ shawls, and the eddying clouds covered all.

“Well, it must happen, one day or another, don’t you think? Why, yes! We’ll put them—come, hurry up and boil the knedliky (balls of wheat flour, cooked in water—a very popular dish in Czechoslovakia) with the sauerkraut! What do you say? Shall we embark at Taravisio or Krainburg? For my part, I think it will be at Taravisio.”

“Yes, if the train isn’t kept waiting here too long.”

We had just set out again. The sergeant stopped when I uttered this unfortunate remark, and drew his finger across my forehead. “You must arrange all that when you get home. Do you hear even a single shot? No, you hear nothing. I tell you again, that candidate arrived with the news See there! There are two fine little easy chairs for us, and just pipe that little cascade close by!”

This time we exchanged, over our canteens, a still more intoxicated smile, for beside us a mountain cascade, loveliest