Leer calls out to them. They laugh and stop to watch us. We fling remarks at them in broken French, anything that comes into our heads, hastily and all jumbled together, anything to detain them. They are not specially wonderful pieces, but then where are such to be had about here?
There is one slim little brunette, her teeth gleam when she laughs. She has quick movements, her dress swings loosely about her legs. Although the water is cold we are very jovial and do our best to interest them so that they will stay. We try to make jokes and they answer with things we cannot understand; we laugh and beckon. Tjaden is more crafty. He runs into the house, gets a loaf of army bread and holds it up.
That produces a great effect. They nod and beckon us to come over. But we don’t dare to do that. It is forbidden to cross to the opposite bank. There are sentries on all the bridges. It’s impossible without a pass. So we indicate that they should come over to us; but they shake their heads and point to the bridge. They are not allowed to pass either. They turn back and walk slowly down the canal, keeping along the towpath all the way. We accompany them swimming. After a few hundred yards they turn off and point to a house that stands a little distance away among the trees and shrubbery.
Leer asks if they live there.
They laugh—sure, that’s their house.
We call out to them that we would like to come, sometime when the guards cannot see us. At night. To-night.
They raise their hands, put them together, rest their faces on them and shut their eyes. They understand. The slim brunette does a two-step. The blonde girl twitters: “Bread—good——”
Eagerly we assure them that we will bring some with us. And other tasty bits too, we roll our eyes and try to explain with our hands. Leer nearly drowns trying to demonstrate a sausage. If it were necessary we would promise them a whole quartermaster’s store. They go off and frequently turn and look back. We climb out on the bank on our side of the canal and watch to see whether they go into the house, for they might easily have been lying. Then we swim back.
No one can cross the bridge without leave, so we will simply have to swim over to-night. We are full of excitement. We cannot last out without a drink, so we go to the canteen where there is beer and a kind of punch.
We drink punch and tell one another lying tales of our experiences. Each man gladly believes the other man’s story, only waiting impatiently till he can cap it with a taller one. Our hands are fidgety, we smoke countless cigarettes, until Kropp says: “We might as well take them a few cigarettes too.” So we put some inside our caps to keep them.
The sky turns apple-green. There are four of us, but only three can go; we must shake off Tjaden, so ply him with rum and punch until he rocks. As it turns dark we go to our billets, Tjaden in the centre. We are glowing and full of a lust for adventure.
The little brunette is mine, we have settled all that.
Tjaden drops on his sack of straw and snores. Once he wakes up and grins so craftily that we are alarmed and begin to think he is cheating, and that we have given him the punch to no purpose. Then he drops back again and sleeps on.
We each get hold of a whole army loaf and wrap it up in newspaper. The cigarettes we put in too, as well as three good rations of liver-sausage that were issued to us this evening. That makes a decent present.
We stow the things carefully in our boots; we have to take them to protect our feet against treading on wire and broken glass on the other bank. As we must swim for it we can take no other clothes. But it is not far and quite dark.
We make off with our boots in our hands. Swiftly we slip into the water, lie on our backs and swim, holding the boots with their contents up over our heads.
We climb out carefully on the opposite bank, take out the packages and put on our boots. We put the things under our arms. And so, all wet and naked, clothed only in our boots, we break into a trot. We find the house at once. It lies among the trees. Leer trips over a root and skins his elbows.
“No matter,” he says gaily.
The windows are shuttered. We slip round the house and try to peer through the cracks. Then we grow impatient. Suddenly Kropp hesitates:
“What if there’s a Major with them?”
“Then we just clear off,” grins Leer, “he can try to read our regimental numbers here,” and smacks his behind.
The door of the courtyard stands open. Our boots made a great clatter. The house door opens, a chink of light shines through and a woman cries out in a scared voice.
“Ssh, ssh! camerade—bon ami—” we say, and show our packages protestingly.
The other two are now on the scene, the door opens and the light floods over us. They recognize us and all three burst into laughter at our appearance. They rock and sway in the doorway, they laugh so much. How supple their movements are.
“Un moment—” They disappear and throw us bits of clothing which we gladly wrap round ourselves. Then we are allowed in. A small lamp burns in their room, which is warm and smells a little of perfume. We unwrap our parcels and hand them over to the women. Their eyes shine, it is obvious that they are hungry.
Then we all become rather embarrassed. Leer makes the gestures of eating, and then they come to life again and bring out plates and knives and fall to on the food, and they hold up every slice of livered sausage and admire it before they eat it, and we sit proudly by.
They overwhelm us with their chatter;—we understand very little of it, but we listen and the words sound friendly. No doubt we all look very young. The little brunette strokes my hair and says what all French women say: “La guerre—grand malheur—pauvres garçons——”
I hold her arm tightly and press my lips into the palm of her hand. Her fingers close round my face. Close above me are her bewildering eyes, the soft brown of her skin and her red lips. Her mouth speaks words I do not understand. Nor do I fully understand her eyes; they seem to say more than we anticipated when we came here.
There are other rooms adjoining. In passing I see Leer, he has made a great hit with the blonde. He’s an old hand at the game. But I—I am lost in remoteness, in weakness, and in a passion to which I yield myself trustingly. My desires are strangely compounded of yearning and misery. I feel giddy, there is nothing here that a man can hold on to. We have left our boots at the door, they have given us slippers instead, and now nothing remains to recall for me the assurance and self-confidence of the soldier; no rifle, no belt, no tunic, no cap. I let myself drop into the unknown, come what may—yet, in spite of all, I feel somewhat afraid.
The little brunette contracts her brows when she is thinking; but when she talks they are still. And often sound does not quite become a word but suffocates or floats away over me half finished; an arch, a pathway, a comet. What have I known of it—what do I know of it?—The words of this foreign tongue, that I hardly understand, they caress me to a quietness, in which the room grows dim, and dissolves in the half light, only the face above me lives and is clear.
How various is a face; but an hour ago it was strange and it is now touched with a tenderness that comes, not from it, but from out of the night, the world and the blood, all these things seem to shine in it together. The objects in the room are touched by it and transformed, they become isolated, and I feel almost awed at the sight of my clear skin when the light of the lamp falls upon it and the cool, brown hand passes over it.
How different this is from the conditions in the soldiers’ brothels, to which we are allowed to go, and where we have to wait in long queues. I wish I never thought of them; but desire turns my mind to them involuntarily and I am afraid for it might be impossible ever to be free of them again.
But then I feel the lips of the little brunette and press myself against them, my eyes close, and I want it all to fall from me, war and terror and grossness, in order to awaken young and happy; I think of the picture of the girl on the poster and, for a moment, believe that my life depends on winning her. And if I press ever deeper into the arms that embrace me, perh
aps a miracle may happen.…
So, after a time we find ourselves reassembled again. Leer is in high spirits. We pull on our boots and take our leave warmly. The night air cools our hot bodies. The rustling poplars loom large in the darkness. The moon floats in the heavens and in the waters of the canal. We do not run, we walk beside one another with long strides.
“That was worth a ration-loaf,” says Leer.
I cannot trust myself to speak, I am not in the least happy.
Then we hear footsteps and dodge behind a shrub.
The steps come nearer, close by us. We see a naked soldier, in boots, just like ourselves; he has a package under his arm, and gallops onward. It is Tjaden in full course. He has disappeared already.
We laugh. In the morning he will curse us.
Unobserved, we arrive again at our sacks of straw.
I am called to the Orderly Room. The Company Commander gives me a leave-pass and a travel-pass and wishes me a good journey. I look to see how much leave I have got. Seventeen days—fourteen days leave and three days for travelling. It is not enough and I ask whether I cannot have five days for travelling. Bertinck points to my pass. There I see that I am not to return to the front immediately. After my leave I have to report for a course of training to a camp on the moors.
The others envy me. Kat gives me good advice, and tells me I ought to try to get a base-job. “If you’re smart, you’ll hang on to it.”
I would rather not have gone for another eight days; we are to stay here that much longer and it is good here.
Naturally I have to stand the others drinks at the canteen. We are all a little bit drunk. I become gloomy: I will be away for six weeks—that is lucky, of course, but what may happen before I get back? Shall I meet all these fellows again? Already Haie and Kemmerich have gone—who will the next be?
As we drink, I look at each of them in turn. Albert sits beside me and smokes, he is cheerful, we have always been together;—opposite squats Kat, with his drooping shoulders, his broad thumb, and calm voice—Müller with the projecting teeth and the booming laugh; Tjaden with his mousey eyes;—Leer who has grown a full beard and looks at least forty.
Over us hangs a dense cloud of smoke. Where would a soldier be without tobacco? The canteen is his refuge, and beer is far more than a drink, it is a token that a man can move his limbs and stretch in safety. We do it ceremonially, we stretch our legs out in front of us and spit deliberately, that is the only way. How it all rises up before a man when he is going away the next morning!
At night we go again to the other side of the canal. I am almost afraid to tell the little brunette that I am going away, and when I return we will be far from here; we will never see one another again. But she merely nods and takes no special notice. At first I am at a loss to understand, then it suddenly dawns on me. Yes, Leer is right: if I were going up to the front, then she would have called me again “pauvre garçon”; but merely going on leave—she does not want to hear about that, that is not nearly so interesting. May she go to the devil with her chattering talk. A man dreams of a miracle and wakes up to loaves of bread.
Next morning, after I have been de-loused, I go the rail head. Albert and Kat come with me. At the halt we learn that it will be a couple of hours yet before the train leaves. The other two have to go back to duty. We take leave of one another.
“Good luck, Kat: good luck, Albert.”
They go off and wave once or twice. Their figures dwindle. I know their every step and movement; I would recognize them at any distance. Then they disappear. I sit down on my pack and wait.
Suddenly I become filled with a consuming impatience to be gone.
I lie down on many a station platform; I stand before many a soup-kitchen; I squat on many a bench;—then at last the landscape becomes disturbing, mysterious, and familiar. It glides past the western windows with its villages, their thatched roofs like caps, pulled over the white-washed, half-timbered houses, its corn-fields, gleaming like mother-of-pearl in the slanting light, its orchards, its barns and old lime trees.
The names of the stations begin to take on meaning and my heart trembles. The train stamps and stamps onward. I stand at the window and hold on to the frame. These names mark the boundaries of my youth.
Smooth meadows, fields, farm-yards; a solitary team moves against the sky-line along the road that runs parallel to the horizon—a barrier, before which peasants stand waiting, girls waving, children playing on the embankment, roads, leading into the country, smooth roads without artillery.
It is evening, and if the train did not rattle I should cry out. The plain unfolds itself.
In the distance, the soft, blue silhouette of the mountain ranges begins to appear. I recognize the characteristic outline of the Dolbenberg, a jagged comb, springing up precipitously from the limits of the forests. Behind it should lie the town.
But now the sun streams through the world, dissolving everything in its golden-red light, the train swings round one curve and then another;—far away, in a long line one behind the other, stand the poplars, unsubstantial, swaying and dark, fashioned out of shadow, light, and desire.
The field swings round as the train encircles it, and the intervals between the trees diminish; the trees become a block and for a moment I see one only—then they reappear from behind the foremost tree and stand out a long line against the sky until they are hidden by the first houses.
A street-crossing. I stand by the window, I cannot drag myself away. The others put their baggage ready for getting out. I repeat to myself the name of the street that we cross over—Bremerstrasse—Bremerstrasse—
Below there are cyclists, lorries, men; it is a grey street and a grey subway;—it affects me as though it were my mother.
Then the train stops, and there is the station with noise and cries and signboards. I pick up my pack and fasten the straps, I take my rifle in my hand and stumble down the steps.
On the platform I look round; I know no one among all the people hurrying to and fro. A red-cross sister offers me something to drink. I turn away, she smiles at me too foolishly, so obsessed with her own importance: “Just look, I am giving a soldier coffee!”—She calls me “Comrade,” but I will have none of it.
Outside in front of the station the stream roars alongside the street, it rushes foaming from the sluices of the mill bridge. There stands the old, square watch-tower, in front of it the great mottled lime tree and behind it the evening.
Here we have often sat—how long ago it is—we have passed over this bridge and breathed the cool, acid smell of the stagnant water; we have leaned over the still water on this side of the lock, where the green creepers and weeds hang from the piles of the bridge;—and on hot days we rejoiced in the spouting foam on the other side of the lock and told tales about our school-teachers.
I pass over the bridge, I look right and left; the water is as full of weeds as ever, and it still shoots over in gleaming arches; in the tower building laundresses still stand with bare arms as they used to over the clean linen, and the heat from the ironing pours out through the open windows. Dogs trot along the narrow street, before the doors of the houses people stand and follow me with their gaze as I pass by, dirty and heavy laden.
In this confectioner’s we used to eat ices, and there we learned to smoke cigarettes. Walking down the street I know every shop, the grocer’s, the chemist’s, the baker’s. Then at last I stand before the brown door with its worn latch and my hand grows heavy. I open the door and a strange coolness comes out to meet me, my eyes are dim.
The stairs creak under my boots. Upstairs a door rattles, someone is looking over the railing. It is the kitchen door that was opened, they are cooking potato-cakes, the house reeks of it, and to-day of course is Saturday; that will be my sister leaning over. For a moment I am shy and lower my head, then I take off my helmet and look up. Yes, it is my eldest sister.
“Paul,” she cries, “Paul——”
I nod, my pack bumps against the
banisters; my rifle is so heavy.
She pulls a door open and calls: “Mother, mother, Paul is here.”
I can go no further—mother, mother, Paul is here.
I lean against the wall and grip my helmet and rifle. I hold them as tight as I can, but I cannot take another step, the staircase fades before my eyes, I support myself with the butt of my rifle against my feet and clench my teeth fiercely, but I cannot speak a word, my sister’s call has made me powerless, I can do nothing, I struggle to make myself laugh, to speak, but no word comes, and so I stand on the steps, miserable, helpless, paralysed, and against my will the tears run down my cheeks.
My sister comes back and says: “Why, what is the matter?”
Then I pull myself together and stagger on to the landing. I lean my rifle in a corner, I set my pack against the wall, place my helmet on it and fling down my equipment and baggage. Then I say fiercely: “Bring me a handkerchief.”
She gives me one from the cupboard and I dry my face. Above me on the wall hangs the glass case with the coloured butterflies that once I collected.
Now I hear my mother’s voice. It comes from the bedroom.
“Is she in bed?” I ask my sister.
“She is ill——” she replies.
I go into her, give her my hand and say as calmly as I can: “Here I am, Mother.”
She lies still in the dim light. Then she asks anxiously:
“Are you wounded?” and I feel her searching glance.
“No, I have got leave.”
My mother is very pale. I am afraid to make a light.
“Here I lie now,” says she, “and cry instead of being glad.”
“Are you sick, Mother?” I ask.
“I am going to get up a little to-day,” she says and turns to my sister, who is continually running to the kitchen to watch that the food does not burn: “And put out that jar of preserved whortleberries—you like that, don’t you?” she asks me.
“Yes, Mother, I haven’t had any for a long time.”
All Quiet on the Western Front Page 10
