But that pain soon disappeared as if it had never existed.
Damian scratched his head for a moment, then read the letter again.
[If the lieutenant comes to our house and I prepare a full feast for him, he may look forward to that.
Oh, and I see nothing wrong with being the one coming to you.
All you have to do is say, I will buy a train ticket to Lithuania within two hours.
Written on October 22, 1878, to Lentry, who is impatiently anticipating the day of meeting you.]
“You look pleased, Lieutenant.”
"Huh?"
Damian looked up from the message he was immersed in.
Then some of the sergeants took the same position, resting their cheeks on their palms, staring at him with half-closed eyes.
He asked them with a puzzled face:
"What do you mean?"
"I mean you read the letter."
Damian turned his gaze between Lentry's message and the members of his company, and said:
“It's just normal...”
When he said that, they all laughed disdainfully as if they agreed on it.
"With this face you say he's normal?"
Damian ran his hand over his face with his fingertips, showing that he did not understand what they meant.
Sergeant Penas said, waving his hand:
“Your face is back to normal now, but moments ago you were smiling broadly!”
“Big smile?”
“Yes, while you are staring at the letter.
You claim that she is not your fiancée, and yet you look at her with more affection than I look at my wife.”
"I do that?"
When Damian still looked confused, the soldiers all shook their heads at once.
“Yes, you, Lieutenant!”
"This never happened."
"It happened!"
Then he found him in front of six witnesses with their own eyes, who denied what he said and confirmed:
“I wish you looked at us the way you look at her.”
“As for us, we were treated harshly, and this hurt our feelings.”
“The lieutenant who is with us now is not the lieutenant who is reading her letters, as if they are two different men.”
Damian was about to feel the injustice, when they whispered among themselves:
“He says she is not his fiancée!”
“Just talk, but she is his fiancée, no doubt.”
"What's her name?
Oh, we don't know the name, but her nickname is Bentri?"
Then they gave him bright looks, and extended their hands demanding:
“Do you have a picture of her?”
Damian answered them with a grim face:
"Not with me."
"truly?"
"Not with me."
"Aren't you lying?"
"I'm not lying, I swear I don't have anything to do with it.
I don't even know her face at all."
"How do you not know him?"
"Because I've never seen it, not even in a picture."
"What?
Why didn't you see her picture?"
“Because we have never exchanged pictures... and I have no desire to.”
They whispered again:
"It doesn't look like he's lying."
“His facial expression is sincere…or so it seems.”
"No, the lieutenant is good at lying if he wants.
He's feigning innocence now."
Then their whispering stopped, and one of them asked him:
“So what is her profession?”
"I don't know."
"Why don't you know?"
"If I didn't ask her."
Looks of suspicion surrounded him again:
"Really?"
"Why didn't you ask?"
“Because I saw no reason to do so.”
The people let out groans of astonishment:
"Wow!
Do you love a woman and know nothing about her?
Do you really love her?"
“Aren’t you curious about her, Lieutenant?”
"Not that I'm uncurious, but…"
"But what?"
"..."
Damian realized that whatever his answer would not satisfy them, he preferred silence.
How can he explain to them that he has no desire to go through the trouble of searching for the details of a person who is merely a passerby, and that he will be forgotten when the correspondence stops, and that he does not want to be a burden on her heart?
"But what?
Continue!"
“Why are you holding your tongue?”
A woman named Nicole, a sergeant, shook her head and said to the others:
“Leave him, people like us will never understand him.”
He didn't know whether she was defending him or disgracing him.
"Okay, one last question if you'll excuse me?"
When one of them raised his hand, Damian allowed him to speak.
"What is it?"
"Do you really love her?
Is it from one side, or from both sides?"
Then fatigue began to weigh down his eyelids, so he massaged them with the palm of his hand and said:
“You… even the middle academy students who insist that their professor tell them the story of his first love, don’t act like this.”
Nicole approached him, putting her arm on his shoulder, feigning familiarity, and then said:
“But, Lieutenant, perhaps due to your young age...
I mean your youth... you do not understand some things.”
Although Nicole was below his, she was ten years his senior, so his promotion to lieutenant had been unusually rapid.
And it wasn't just Nicole, the youngest sergeant in the company was nineteen years old.
If they were ranked by age, Damian was only next to last, and most of his soldiers were older than him.
That is why, if there were no military restrictions, they would treat him as someone he saw as younger and nicer, and now Nicole addressed him in this manner:
“No man spends that much time with someone who doesn't care about her.”
Damian's heart trembled when he heard this phrase, as it was the same phrase he himself had said to Linter on the day they spoke about Greene.
“A… uh…?”
While he was taken aback by this discovery, Nicole patted him on the back and withdrew, saying:
“Anyway, don't deny too much, and try to make things better with her.”
Then she clapped her hands and announced to the rest of the company:
“Come on, stop joking around, Lieutenant, before it is said that we are overstepping our bounds.
Go, go!”
“Ah…it was fun.”
They dispersed reluctantly, as they feared that Damian would give them a cold stare and then order them to dig as punishment.
As for him, he was so immersed in his thoughts that he did not notice their separation.
His mouth remained half open, his eyes fixed on the letter in his hand.
'Yes…?'
He felt as if someone was dancing a loud tap dance in his head, and he could not connect one idea to another.
'Yes…?'
He put his hand on his left pocket, where he always keeps a handkerchief, and felt his heart beating there.
'Is this possible?'
He started throwing his hand over his face due to the intense heat he felt, until when he noticed that the letter was still in that hand, he panicked and quickly stuffed it into his pocket, as if he was covering up something dangerous.
That action had no meaning.
M.
Cute
'But I don't know her full name nor her face!'
He tilted his head to the right, wondering at himself.
'I?'
The more I thought, the more ridiculous it became.
Is it possible to develop affection for someone who didn't even intend to care about him?
“An illusion, nothing but an illusion.”
He lightly slapped his cheeks with his hands and said:
"It's just Nicole's illusions."
He did not want to acknowledge it.
He knew that confession meant the beginning of trouble.
He shook his head stubbornly.
It was not until three days later that Damian mustered up the courage to open Lentery's letter again.
The rest of the letter was nothing but passing talk about daily affairs.
When he finished reading it, he shook his head and said to himself:
'Here you've read it, and that's okay.'
He no longer felt that palpitation that had plagued him before, so he sat down to write the reply lightly.
As usual, he wrote about some news and conversations, and Lentry’s response came with a laughing tone, as joyful as her familiar voice in his imagination, as if he were addressing a friend and nothing more.
Yes, a friend... even if it is just a passing person, friendship is possible.
But the problem came from where he did not expect:
“These days, Green is away learning about the trade caravan, and I have no other interlocutors except my father, the servants… and you.
I don’t just want letters, I would like us to meet face to face and chat, it should be the most enjoyable.”
In every letter, Lyntry was trying to narrow the distance between them, while he let her words pass without an answer on that point, as if he was gently repelling her.
Perhaps his intention reached her, as this was a hint from him to stay away.
She remained silent about the matter, just as she had done the day he blocked her in the family conversation.
But…
"If something happens, please tell me.
I'm worried about you."
If he cannot control even his own heart, how can he control someone else's heart?!
No matter how much he ignored and tried to stay in place, she was moving towards him step by step.
The letters continued until the end of the year, and Damian was in the trenches, when he suddenly realized how hesitant he was as he wrote and received those letters.