Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts
Georgi Karaslavov
From Tango (1964)
Translated by M. Todorov
A terrible scene would occasionally crop up in his mind. It was in Macedonia, during the First World War. They had been ordered to attend an execution. Three soldiers had been tied to three separate stakes. They were ordinary, simple soldiers, whose lean bodies were shivering in the cold. A squad of men, chosen among their mates, stood near the stakes with loaded rifles. Then, after a sharp command, a volley of shots rang out, and when Todor finally opened his eyes he saw three riddled, crumpled bodies quivering on the stakes. How commonplace and yet how terrible all this had been! And it had been so terrible just because it was so commonplace. These dead soldiers had lovers, relatives and friends who knew nothing at the moment and who lived in the hope of seeing them, of meeting them again and taking them into their arms one day. As the years went by, the terrible scene of this execution – which had been ordered to “set an example to the others” – had gradually faded from his memory. Todor had hardly thought of it again until a year ago…He tried in vain to banish from his mind the vision of the three bodies quivering on the stakes, as though they still suffered from the cold…
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