Act 1
Summary
It is November 1885, during the Serb-Bulgarian War. Raina Petkoff, a young Bulgarian woman, is in her bedchamber She is on the balcony admiring the beauty of the snow peaks on a starlit night .
Raina looks lovingly at Sergius' photo, dancing and dreaming of his bravery in defeating the Serbians. Then Raina's mother, Catherine, enters and says that Raina's fiancé , Major Sergius Saranoff, is the hero of a cavalry charge هجوم سلاح الفرسان because he has led قاد the Bulgarian army to a great victory .
Raina feels happy that her ideas about Sergius' heroism بطولة and patriotism وطنيته have come true . Now she is sure he is brave and she feels pity for the poor soldiers whom he fought. So she feels ashamed of doubting him before.
Louka (the servant) enters and says that all the windows must be shut. The Serbs are being chased through the pass and they may run through the town, so there may be shooting . Raina asks her to keep the shutter of the balcony open and promises to shut them if she hears any shoots.
Catherine and Louka leave. Raina admires her lover's portrait again and goes to bed with a novel. Suddenly she hears gunshots so she rushes to blow out the candles and hides herself in bed.
There is firing close by. Then the shutters of her balcony open and a figure enters closing the shutter behind him. She can hear him panting . Then a voice threatens to shot her if she doesn't keep silent. He asks her to light a candle. She sees a man of 35 "in great trouble, covered with mud and blood and snow.
He is wearing the uniform of a Serbian officer. He warns her that if the Bulgarian officers followed him to the room, he would be killed and he does not like to be killed.
The fugitive لاجئ tells her that because she is undress , it wouldn't be suitable if the soldiers came in. So she reaches for her cloak but he takes it before she can. Having her cloak can guarantee يضمن his safety far better than his revolver مسدسه so he throws it on the ottoman(sofa)
They hear shooting by voices insisting on مصمم على entering the house to look for a fugitive. Louka knocks on Raina's door. The fugitive quickly throws her cloak to her. Raina hides him behind
the curtains and opens the door.
Catherine has also come with a Russian officer to search Raina's room. After making sure that no fugitive is hiding there, the officer apologizes and leaves.
Raina asks Louka to leave the room and follow her mother to search the rest of the house. Louka has seen the revolver on the ottoman and her glances نظراتها tell Raina that she knows her secret(that the fugitive is hiding in the room). She leaves the room and Raina shuts the door carefully. Then the fugitive comes out of his hiding place and thanks Raina for saving his life.
Raina thinks that he is one of the Austrians whom she hates for helping the Serbs(their enemy) against the Bulgarians(her people). But he tells her that he is a Swiss mercenary hired by من the Serbs to fight for them. He asks her not to hate him and allow him to spend some more time in her bedroom as he is still in danger.
By chance, Raina sits on his revolver that he threw carelessly on the sofa and gives a cry . She understands what Louka was staring at . Raina's cry frightens him. When she sees him afraid, she hatefully gives it to him to protect himself.
The Swiss soldier confesses that the revolver is not loaded. He has no ammunition as he prefers to carry chocolates in the front to carrying cartridges in case he is hungry during the battle. Food is more important to him than bullets.
His words shakes Raina's idealistic ideas of courage, patriotism and manhood الرجولة . She gets very angry. But when she sees he is really hungry, she offers him some chocolate creams in an insulting way . The starving soldier eats it all.
Raina receives another shock when he says that old soldiers, like himself, prefer to carry food to the battle whereas the young, rash soldiers always carry revolvers and ammunition.
Raina gets more angry and takes the box nervously when he finishes. This frightens him again. So he asks her not to take revenge because he frightened her when he first came into her room. Raina hates much his cowardness and says that she is braver than him although she is a woman.
The man feels that she is romantic so he explains to her the realities of war . *He tells her that a man is forced to be afraid if he is under fire for three whole days without food. He tells her that he himself is so weak that she could easily make him cry by just insulting him. Raina is affected by his words. However, she says that Bulgarian soldiers are braver and will not change even if they are in worse conditions .
The man disagrees with her. He sees that their army won the battle by luck as the Serbs were sent the wrong ammunition. They could not fire for ten minutes. He thinks their army is unprofessional غير محترفيين : it was stupid of them to make a cavalry charge against a battery سرية مدفعية of machine guns. Raina asks him to talk more about their army. Bluntschli doesn't know that the leader of the Cavalry is her fiancé, so he made fun at Bulgarian army.
"It's a funny sight. It's like slinging إلقاء a handful of peas against a window pane لوح الشباك الزجاجى first one comes, then two or three close behind him; and then all the rest in a lump. مجموعة "
Raina thinks that Sergius must have been the first fighter because he is the bravest of them all. "You should see the poor devil pulling at his horse."
"Do you suppose that the fellow wants to
get there before the others and be killed?
However the fugitive tells her that it was his horse that pushed him ahead and could not be controlled.
Bluntschli tells her that only the young soldiers fight hard without knowing that they could be shot easily but the older soldiers went in groups afraid of being killed. So their wounds were only small cuts on the knees. Raina is sure that the leader was not a coward and she is eager شغوفة to know more of his work.
Bluntschli mocks at him and compares him to an operatic tenor مغنى أوبرا and to Don Quixote who charged at the windmills. دونكى شوت : قصة الطفل الذى يصارع طواحين الهواء بالسيوف ظنا منه أنها الأعداء.
Although Raina is hurt, she still believes in her fiancé's heroism. When she shows him the portrait of Sergius, her fiancé, he apologizes. But he makes matters worse by saying that Sergius must have been informed of the wrong ammunition in advance (He wanted to say that Sergius was a coward who took the advantage of his enemy's bad luck).
Raina's anger increases and she decides to do a soldierly act by asking him to go down the pipes again because he made fun of her future husband.
He is frightened and tells her that climbing up the pipe when the enemy was chasing him يطاردوه was easy but going down was impossible. So he asks her to give the alarm . Raina feels pity for him and says it is better for him to escape and not be caught. But he says that escaping is also death.
Raina, once again, feels pity because he is tired and sleepy. The fugitive prepares himself to go down. When he is about to leave, they hear firing so Raina pulls him back. She asks him to stay again and says he must know that they are hospitable. She starts to talk proudly about her father, their rich house and the library they own. She tells him that she will offer him refuge .
He asks her to tell her mother that he is here because as he could not stay in her room for long without her knowledge . As soon as she leaves, he falls into a deep sleep.
When Raina comes with her mother and finds him asleep, Catherine tries to awaken تيقظ him by shaking him hard. Raina stops her saying that "the poor darling must be worn out ". Catherine is surprised for this feeling.