“A Confession” by Mark Cecil Stevens, page 4

        Still, I did not leave off my pursuit. It seemed to me that my failures, either to redeem the man or to intervene against his crimes, were bound up with the fate of all Budapest. The Russian siege tightened, pushing all of the soldiers to hilly Buda. I was with my father when his men blew one of the Danube bridges. I remember that I felt a renewed optimism once those bridges fell, separating us from the Pest shoreline, where the murders were carried out as well as from the balcony where my own impotence was laid out for me. There was a desperation as well to the retreat that promised a final battle, which would surely bring out my father’s valor, a quality on which I had hung all of my hopes for his defense.
        But for several weeks no battle came. With supplies cut off, there was little to steal, so I took to stealing from him alone. I ate his stale food, drank from his dented cup. And at night when I slept, I was wrapped up in his wool blanket, the sordid smell of fear and sweat in its fibers.
        And in those idle days that led up to the last, the boots stepped up their campaign, magnifying each fault and refusing to see mitigation. The boots decried the treatment of my father’s soldiers, their days filled with calisthenic exercises until they were exhausted, their evenings with lectures on morality as they wept and vomited. He suspected them of stealing from him, I imagine, and I must admit a certain guilt in seeing this passion play acted out each day. I told the boots that I was surely to blame, but they dismissed the thought out of hand, saying that my thefts at most gave impetus to his base impulses, that in the weakness of an army in retreat a man (or a certain sort of man, anyway) will show his strength in any way that he can. I knew that I could prove my point by no longer stealing from him, but I did not have the strength to go hungry, even for one day.
        It would hardly have mattered anyway, because it was only a day or two later when the Russians crossed the river and a mood of panic took hold among the soldiers. One of my father’s men tried to run off and my father beat him very badly in front of the others. The boots argued that this was proof positive that I had no influence on his treatment of the men in his charge. I tried to explain his aversion to cowardice, that it was inherent, inborn. They scoffed.
        Of course, on that last morning I was proven wrong. The fog was so thick that I could sense more than see that something was afoot with the soldiers. Disorganized footfalls and anxious chatter roused me from sleep. At first I thought that an attack was brewing, as the men lined up in the street. It took a short minute in the haze to realize that something else was happening. I could just make out a crowd of soldiers, but even in the mist I could see something in their posture that suggested retreat. Perhaps their shoulders hung low, or their rifles were unready. I’m not certain. In any case, I could see that they were running. Civilians pushed into the ranks, and their presence suggested more a mob than a militia. Mothers nervily pushed their perambulators against men in shabby coats. As the crowd broke loose at some invisible signal I can remember a fear set in that I would again lose my father. And so I ran to the building where he had been quartered and met him there for the last time.
        I ran right into him in the fog. We were both knocked to the ground in the impact, but he gained his feet more quickly than I. He stood over me and pulled out his sidearm. As he drew it down on me, my hand scrabbled at and freed a loose cobble in the street. There was a tense moment then as I wondered whether he would just shoot me and run off, but no such thing occurred. He squinted into the dim light and his arm softened. The pistol sank to his side. Then, and this is important now, he said my name very softly and like it was a question. I rose, and a look of recognition passed into his eyes. Then I took the stone that I had pried from the road and I smashed him again and again in his face until he was dead.
        And this, now, is what I would like you to understand. It was not, as you might suspect, that I resented his absence when he had gone, or that I was jealous of his trysts with Agnes that led me to kill him. It was also not that I was ashamed of the misery that he brought on others, or even that it was clear that we was running with the rest of the soldiers. None of these were even in mind at that moment, though any of them alone would have done for a reason. No, the things that inspired me were the sound of my voice on his lips and the acknowledgment in his eyes. Those I could not bear.
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