Veil of Madness

Lieutenant Lusak burst through the bunker’s steel-plated door. He wandered onward, only to hit his knee in some furniture, however, not even capable of noticing the pain, he strolled until an he reached awfully carpentered chair, which he laid upon with the grace of a rhinoceros falling unconscious. The battle wasn’t going as planned, the regiment’s morale had been faltering ever since the Serbs started their vicious assault to restore every inch of their lost homeland.

Lusak wasn’t something of a patriot but was deeply shaken by the sheer number of defeats dealt to the Austro-Hungarian forces. If anything, he felt obligated to at least seem competent among his associates and superiors, therefore, he placed great emphasis on the preparation of the men he oversaw, taking part in every decision that was being made, knowing of all the aspects of the terrain, and all around being an acceptable leader.

            Nevertheless, his troops seemed ignorant of his strife towards an improved overall performance. The men only cared about their scarce rations and took every opportunity to get as drunk as possible from liqueurs reminiscent of alcohol, used for sanitizing wounds. They performed their tasks with sloth and sometimes outright disobeyed their officer’s orders.

Lusak brushed off a few pieces of freshly dried mud from his overgrown mustache as he contemplated all the triumphs he would have achieved, had his plans been executed to the letter. Instead of the pride from all these glories, inside his mind a fog of bitterness and lost hope resided. Since the start of the war, he had become a husk of his former active and opportunistic self.

            As he was staring at the gloomy dwelling’s wall with thoughts of smashing his head on the afore mentioned surface, the heavy door opened once more, and private Hynek entered, completely covered in wet clumps of soil, with his hand, as if nailed to his forehead, frozen in a salute. As usual, the soldier showed a disgustingly innocent smile, reminiscent of individuals typically locked in asylums. Nevertheless, his eyes were the most prominent feature of his round face, as they bore a highly specific tone of light blue.

This colour reminded the lieutenant of his youth in the wonderful city of Prague. There, life consisted of walks through gardens carefully perfected by a long lineage of aristocratic ancestors, interrupted by feasts of the most succulent courses known to man, and at night, the whole nobility of the imaginary Czech kingdom’s capital gathered to celebrate their wealth through drinking and dancing and spending said wealth on said luxuries, and all the fair women wore this type of azure, because it was fashionable in that particular month.

            And there, Lusak was truly happy, surrounded by all the glee and bliss and satisfaction a man can ever wish to desire. However, as the war erupted, this paradise, like a Persian carpet, had been pulled right from under his feet, and, as military tradition dictated, secured him a spot on the Southern front. There he was now, broken, looking into the blue eyes of a man, searching for pretty baronesses, because he knew there was probably no way he could ever see them again.

But the war dragged on and Lusak realized the absurdity of this situation of him and his subordinate staring with deep gazes at each other. “That smile”, he thought, “it seems so natural, as if it was a chestnut tree in the middle of a field… at the same time being as fabricated and manmade as a 42-centimeter Howitzer.”

The officer didn’t sense the need to scold this half-illiterate hillbilly, but he felt that it was his duty. “An action must be done from duty, in order to have moral worth”, claimed Kant or some other Prussian philosopher, the Czech lieutenant wondered. Lusak, refreshed with intellectual grounding, led a determined assault against his subordinate:

“Hynek, why in the 7th circle of Hell are you not fighting alongside your comrade…?”

“To the commander I report with the utmost respect that the Serbs have broken our lines, captured the entirety of the 11th battalion and are rapidly closing in on us, therefore, in a couple of minutes they will reach this headquarters,” declared the private with a tone as calm as if he claimed dinner was ready.

At this point, Lusak felt a small quantity of heat gather in his head. As the seconds passed, the steam started accumulating, and suddenly, the otherwise self-restricting man burst into a rage never fathomed of as possible. He jumped up, grabbed and smashed the chair onto the rough floor, as he shouted at the private:

“Every single one of my men seems to be mentally challenged, but you are the most obnoxious of all of them! I am going to go insane, and we are all going to rot on the fields near the Danube!” the commander laughed with a maniacal laughter “You sons of…!”

Because of his vision turning red and the heavy imprecations, the lieutenant did not realize the private gently shuffling towards him. Hynek appeared in front of his superior and grabbed him with an iron grip. The commander froze. However, he did not stop his speech because of being rendered immobile, he could have fought against his restrainer. It was because of the sheer astonishment: on the face of his captor, the yo-yo smile was no more, as Hynek looked upon Lusak with eyes colder than steel and spoke:

“You are going to listen to my words as if I were His Majesty, Franz Joseph, the Emperor of Austria, do you understand?! Your statement about us perishing here, far from our homeland is undoubtedly a substantial possibility, we will lie down and wither to fine dust, as all man do. However, speaking for myself, I do not wish to depart from this world a broken-minded sack of meat. So far, I have fought through this war without succumbing to insanity, and I wish to persist in this habit. You may ask me how I managed to achieve this, through the fog of fatigue and malnourishment, the rhythmic sounds of marching boots, the continuous thunder of heavy artillery, as dozens of men break down, giving up any value previously found in their lives and accepting the salvation brought by a bayonet placed between their ribs, through this crackling storm of horror? In our training, we were told that shrapnel would be the greatest threat to our bodily integrity, therefore, my comrades opted for wearing any scavenged plating they could find, a veil of steel, we call it, a piece of metal against other speeding shards of metal. I myself have been the bearer of one, a mask I have been carrying with me ever since I left the door of my apartment: a veil of madness, to protect what’s behind it. I strongly encourage you to wear one as well.”

Hynek paused and wiped his forehead as if placing back a part of a theatrical costume, as his eyes emitted warmth once more.

“Now, Lieutenant Lusak, with the utmost respect, I request permission for us to run for our lives.”

Rácz Mózes   XI. R