acacias in front of the station-master's hut sent a greeting through the
window. Grimly John Bogdan dragged his heavy bag through the train
corridor, descended the steps hesitatingly, and stood there at a loss,
looking around for help as the train rolled on behind his back.

He took out his large flowered handkerchief and wiped off the heavy
beads of perspiration from his forehead. What was he to do now? Why had
he come here at all? Now that he had finally set foot again on the home
soil for which he had yearned so ardently, a great longing came over him
for the hospital, which he had left that very morning, only a few hours
before, full of rejoicing. He thought of the long ward with all those
men wrapped in bandages who limped and hobbled, lame, blind or
disfigured. There nobody was revolted by the sight of his mutilated
face, no indeed. On the contrary, most of them envied him. He was at
least capable of going back to work, his arms and legs were sound, and
his right eye was perfect. Many would have been ready to exchange places
with him. Some had begrudged him his lot and said it was wrong for the
government to have granted him a pension on account of losing his left
eye. One eye and a face a little scratched up--what was that compared
with a wooden leg, a crippled arm, or a perforated lung, which wheezed
and rattled like a poor machine at the slightest exertion?

Among the many cripples in the hospital John Bogdan was looked upon as a
lucky devil, a celebrity. Everybody knew his story. The visitors to the
hospital wanted first of all to see the man who had had himself operated
on seventeen times and the skin cut away in bands from his back, his
chest, and his thighs. After each operation, as soon as the bandages
were removed, the door to his ward never remained shut, a hundred
opinions were pronounced, and every newcomer was given a detailed
description of how terrible his face had been before. The few men who