‘Do you think that the Greeks, who we esteem so highly, would have produced such wonderful works of art and such monumental ideas if the people had been worthless, if nothing but a handful of talented individuals had lived amongst them, while the masses were inept? No, the nation worked together as a whole, generation after generation, to accumulate such talent in the figures of Plato, Phidias and Homer. For this reason it is wrong to eulogise these men for having given us such works of genius; rather we ought to eulogise the nation that gave birth to such men. Indeed, it would be better if we forgot the names of these men altogether. And so it is not pointless when a war like this occurs. Many have to die; the entire people must suffer terribly.
‘But know this: greatness comes only from suffering! Did the Greeks not suffer? And can there be greater suffering than war? We must all suffer now, and our people should be happy to enjoy the privilege of suffering more than any other in this war. This suffering is the price we have to pay to ensure that men will arise from our midst who will tower above the rest of us and guarantee the honour and glory of our nation for all time. There is but one thing to consider, my friend: on your own you are nothing, but the honour and greatness of your people is everything.’
Schlump said nothing, for he realised that the swarthy soldier meant what he said. But as he sat there in silence, he wondered why this man who’d talked so big had opted for a soft job here rather than heading straight for the trenches, where surely he’d be able to experience far greater suffering for his nation. Looking at him frankly, Schlump posed this very question. The philosopher answered, ‘I am here because my captain ordered me here. I will go at once to the trenches, and with a joyful heart, if he so commands. But I also know,’ he added, lowering his voice, ‘I also know why providence led me to a place where I have a lot of time on my hands. Look, I know that we are going to win the war’ – at this Schlump gave a look of astonishment – ‘and after the war there will be a great united Europe in which the soul of every people will be free to unfold itself. Its leader will be a man with a superhuman soul, a man from our nation, which has suffered more than any other.’
He spoke increasingly softly. ‘Friend, I have been called upon to create a language for this united Europe, with whose help all nations will be able to live side by side in harmony, working happily, in peaceful competition. The name of this language is Europarozn. I need to work on it for another five years at most; the war is going to last that long.’ He showed Schlump a huge stack of paper that he carried around in his kitbag. He’d written it all at night, when he was undisturbed. ‘To make room in my kitbag,’ he whispered, ‘I ate my iron rations.’
Schlump left the room shaking his head, flabbergasted at the peculiar madness of Gack the philosopher.
•
The captain in charge of the postal censor’s office came from Breslau and was a refined gentleman. He’d been summoned from home directly to Imperial Headquarters, where he was awarded the Iron Cross, second class. He won the Iron Cross, first class during his time in Maubeuge when two women were killed in the course of an air attack. Unable to retreat to the safety of the cellar in time, the captain had been wounded by a small splinter in the thumb, which had then bled. For this he also received the black Wound Badge. He’d been transferred to the postal censor’s office because he could speak Polish, but he never monitored the Polish post.
He presided over the office with great skill by signing his name three times a day. This lasted from eleven in the morning till twenty to twelve, at which time his duties were complete for the day. He had two orderlies whose tasks were to feed his pigs and send large packages back home.
One day he called Jolles into his office. ‘Now, Jolles,’ he said, ‘let me tell you what happened to me today. I was coming out of the officers’ mess when I caught sight of the following lines daubed on a wall: “With equal rations and equal pay, the war would be over any day!” Are you acquainted with this little rhyme, Jolles?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘I see. Well, it’s quite new to me. Utter nonsense, of course. Anyway, on I go a little further and bump into a chap who’s clearly straight out of the trenches. Uniform in an appalling state. Jumps down from the pavement and stands to attention. But his deportment! Belly out, head to one side, hollow back. I stop him. “Don’t you know that you salute an officer by putting your hand up to your cap?”
‘ “Sorry, Captain,” the fellow grins, “I thought that because the uniform was so fine I had a general in front of me!” What do you think, Jolles, how am I to interpret that?’
‘Well, Captain,’ Jolles said with a serious face, ‘there’s no doubt about it; that was sheer mockery. Those fellows have no respect for officers any more. Let’s hope it doesn’t get any worse,’ he added with a smile. Then Jolles went to see Schlump and gleefully related the story.
But his prophecy had been right: it got much worse that evening. A theatre had been set up in Bohain, in a former dance hall. The performance was scheduled to begin at eight o’clock. The officers sat downstairs in the stalls. In the first rows were the rear-echelon officers and the ladies, behind them the front officers, but not many, then a few rear-echelon sergeants. Upstairs in the gallery, facing the stage, sat the soldiers, mostly wounded men from the hospitals. Schlump was upstairs too, with his friend Jolles.
It was long past eight o’clock, but the curtain had not yet been raised. The soldiers were getting restless and cracking jokes. In the front row one of them stood up, took off his coat, turned it inside out and put it back on with the lining showing. He hung his cap on his nose and started larking about. The soldiers were delighted by his clowning and applauded heartily.
The commanding officer, however, who was sitting downstairs in the front row between two St John’s nurses, was not at all pleased. He shuffled edgily on his chair, taking out his monocle and sticking it back into his pathetically daft face. When applause broke out upstairs, he leapt up and screeched to the soldiers in an irate voice, ‘I demand silence!’ At a stroke they went quiet. The clown, however, turned around and looked down in astonishment. Then he turned to his comrades and shouted, very audibly, ‘The colonel is right. You shouldn’t make jokes in front of these fine gentlemen. Instead, let’s sing a song together about the war. Ready?
‘Who has his fill of women and wine,
Whose bed is creaking all of the time?’
And the chorus of soldiers joined in:
‘It’s that bastard behind the line.’
The commandant leapt up, as red as a lobster, and was so irate that his voice cracked when he yelled, ‘Quiet!’
But the clown was not to be interrupted. He sang to the attentive audience:
‘Who has to starve, who has to sweat,
Who has to live in the filth and the wet?’
Chorus: ‘We do.’
‘Who’s nice to your face, who raises a glass,
But behind your back calls you an arse?’
Chorus: ‘The top brass.’
‘Who eats with the rats, who shits in the mud,
Before dying a nobody in his own blood?’
Chorus: ‘We do.’
The clown was about to continue but the commandant screamed like a lunatic, ‘Gendarme! Bring that man down now!’
There is nothing more odious to a front-line soldier than the sight of a military gendarme with the metal badge on his chest. They all started jeering and hooting and yelling: ‘Come up! Come up here!’ Then, all that could be heard amidst the rumpus were odd, scattered words: ‘Mincemeat . . . pulp . . . lights out . . . knives out . . . three men to stir the blood!’ The unfortunate gendarme had to obey his orders. Full of trepidation, he went upstairs; the jangling of his spurs could be heard through the racket. But upstairs it got quieter. They let him make his way past the front row to the middle. Then hundreds of fists laid into him, knocking the man over the railings. He lay motionless on the floor below; his neck was broken.
Two medical ord
erlies came forward and took him away. Downstairs, the ladies had jumped up from their seats in horror, and the officers formed a protective ring around them. A terrible scrum ensued, and within moments the entire hall was empty.
But a large pool of blood shimmered below the gallery.
•
As the communiqués said, our troops had been withdrawn to entrenched positions. The rear of the eighteenth army had long since retreated a considerable distance. First to Avesnes, but then further back to Belgium, to Charleroi. Not far from there, in one of those industrial villages on the Maas, the heroes of the postal censor’s office were to set up their headquarters. The whole of Belgium resembled a vast military camp, the railway stations were clogged with soldiers looking for their units, the rear was flooding backwards, and a covert excitement had taken hold of everyone. Strong words were hurled directly at officers, and it felt as if the end was near.
Schlump was lodging with Jolles in a splendid villa, where everything lay exactly as its owners had left it when they’d fled four years earlier. The servants still lived in their quarters on the ground floor, loyally looking after their master’s property.
You could buy anything you wanted in Belgium; Schlump and Jolles thought they were in paradise. They got hold of the tastiest titbits and lived even better than in Bohain. The caretaker’s wife cooked for them, and everything was as good as it could be.
But this charmed life was short-lived. One day the news came through that our troops had to leave their fixed positions, and that both Lille and Tournai were now under threat. Belgian territory was no longer regarded as safe; it was time to move on again. The postal censor’s office was in an old house beside the garden of a wonderful little castle, in which the officers of some rear unit had set up a mess. One morning Schlump went over and said hello to the cook standing by the gate. ‘Comrade,’ the cook called out. ‘Listen to this – last night all my officers did a runner, in secret, without saying a word!’
‘What!’ Schlump exclaimed. ‘Crikey! That’s not good.’ He hurried back to Jolles and told him the news. Jolles became deadly serious. ‘It’s high time we made ourselves scarce too,’ he said.
A few minutes later the soldiers at the postal censor’s office were discussing what to do. They came to the following conclusions:
One: There wasn’t a moment to lose.
Two: Schlump was in charge of provisions. To this end he had to get the cook to join forces with them and bring all his supplies.
Three: Jolles had to negotiate with the railwaymen to secure a carriage.
Four: The orderlies were to negotiate with the captain.
Each of them went about their task. Schlump soon won the cook over. It transpired that he had the most amazing supplies, which would last for a month at least. The captain agreed to everything. Jolles, on the other hand, was having trouble. The freight yard was full of trains, which were all ready to be sent eastwards. But there was a lack of locomotives. Jolles reported back and got them all to give him money, whatever they had left, so he could persuade some railwaymen to hook up one more carriage to the first train scheduled to leave. Its locomotive had been in steam for two days and was waiting for a clear track.
It worked. All day long they toiled to load their carriage with supplies: huge quantities of conserves, bread, fat, cigarettes by the thousand, schnapps and large bottles of rum. In addition there were mattresses to sleep on, blankets, and a little stove, which they set up immediately. That evening they moved into their carriage. The captain sat in one corner, looking troubled. Beside him stood Gack the philosopher, equipped for action with his kitbag and rifle, keeping watch. They waited the whole of the following day and night, eventually getting bored by the delay.
On the afternoon of the third day, Schlump and Jolles left the train. They went to Charleroi to say goodbye to the war and the rear echelon over a bottle of wine. The city felt like it did during the annual fair. Soldiers streamed out of every alley; wherever you looked, you saw field-grey uniforms. They went into a bar which until then had been out of bounds to soldiers. Every table was full of officers, who were surprised to see the two of them come in, but they didn’t say anything. Jolles ordered the best wine he knew from his considerable experience, and they celebrated a wonderful quiet hour. They moved on to a cabaret theatre where the Belgians went to drink their absinthe. The locals sat at small round tables, hats on their heads, and some danced between the chairs to the music. They were all very excited. On the podium beside the band stood a beautiful girl with a wooden leg, singing a wonderful selection of songs, the audience joining in occasionally.
All of a sudden a surprised voice shouted out Schlump’s name. It was the architect he’d made the counterfeit money with. They celebrated their reunion, drinking greater volumes at greater speed.
Eventually Schlump could only see the world through a fog. He could just about make out that all the tables and chairs had been overturned, and that the pretty girl with the wooden leg seemed to be rolling around with someone on the podium. They left around midnight. Jolles had disappeared and Schlump staggered back with the architect to his billet in Rue du Mont, where he had a large room with two beds. They lay down. The cool air had sobered them up slightly. ‘Look,’ the architect said, ‘I’m on my way home with a civilian and a wagon with two horses. In the end I worked in an exchange bureau like you, and now I’ve got to take the coffers to Germany. With my horse and the Frenchman who’s been my agent; he’s got to decamp with me, obviously. We’ve got around a million and a half in the till. Recently the French have been coming to give us masses of German money. They want their own local-issue money back.’ Schlump had already fallen asleep and couldn’t hear the architect.
But then, at four in the morning, he woke with a start, as if someone had called his name. Still tipsy, he swiftly got dressed and crashed down the stairs. He hurried through streets he’d never seen. He was hit by blasts of cold air, and ravenous-looking workers shuffled past. A tram packed with people rattled down the street, and on one corner a half-naked, freezing girl called out in a weak, timorous voice, ‘Gazette, Gazette!’ Schlump took in all of this as if in a dream, but the girl’s voice penetrated deep into his soul and he would often think about it later on. He passed through unfamiliar suburbs; at some point he roamed across a temporary bridge over the Maas, and then all of a sudden he heard Jolles calling his name. He was standing beside their carriage. He stumbled in without thinking, and as he dozed off, he could hear the wheels squealing and the carriage rumbling. They were on the move. He’d arrived just in time.
When he awoke, they’d stopped outside Namur. It was afternoon and the train was making slow progress, often having to remain stationary for hours at a time. In Namur they stopped again for hours. Beside them was another train which had arrived before them and was also trying to head eastwards. Here they found out the latest news: a convoy of elegant automobiles had driven through Belgium and fled to Holland. Apparently the Kaiser had been amongst the passengers.
Gack, the tall philosopher, stood up and rolled his eyes. Raising his hand as if to take an oath, he said clearly and solemnly, ‘The Kaiser will never abandon his people. You will see, Comrades,’ he continued in an exalted and prophetic voice, ‘you will see that the holy war is just beginning. The Kaiser will rally around an elite of noble officers, placing himself at its head, and then march west. Dagger in hand, he will charge the enemy, and be joined by ever more groups comprising the noblest elements of our people. They will follow the white banner that the Crown Prince, his ensign, will unfurl. He will stop those who flee and he will terrify the enemy. He will breach the lines with his very body. He will fall in battle, but his body will accompany the offensive as a holy symbol of the holy war. It will be a majestic battle; the enemy will be petrified and the world will acclaim the heroes. We will conclude a noble peace in which revenge will have no place. We will plant the white banner in the earth, around which the very best of our people will hencefor
th assemble. Their names will never be known, for they will call themselves Germans. The entire people will emulate them in tireless labour, and they will be a model for all nations!’
He paused. The others stared at him in mockery. ‘He’s quite mad!’ Jolles said.
•
They stopped for ages in A., a small town between Namur and Liège. Suddenly Jolles came running in and said that the locomotive was moving off with the front half of the train. They leapt out and saw that he’d been telling the truth. They cursed furiously, but there was nothing they could do other than stay where they were. Schlump and Jolles headed into town to look for somewhere to stay; the others cleared out.
When the two friends arrived in the town, they got a shock. Flags were draped from all the houses; everywhere they saw the black, yellow and red Belgian colours: armistice! The civilians were wandering around looking proud and confident.
It was hard to find quarters. Everywhere was full of soldiers, no matter where they went, in every street, in every house – field-grey soldiers. They finally stumbled across an empty room where they could lodge with their supplies. All afternoon they hauled their goodies from the station and moved in. In the evening they went for a wander around the town. Jolles had found the rear headquarters and managed to obtain pay for all of them, including their arrears. Schlump was handed a fifty-mark note, which he slipped into his back trouser pocket. That money was going to come in handy. All the coffee houses and pubs were packed; on the pavements and squares the soldiers stood in groups chatting animatedly to each other. The most extraordinary rumours were voiced. One group claimed that revolution had broken out across the world, the British had deposed their king, the French were mutinying, and back home all the officers had been shot. They stopped French prisoners-of-war who had somehow escaped and were still wearing their red trousers, and jabbered on to them about world revolution. The Frenchmen just smiled, at a loss as to what to say. Others reported that the British had ignored the armistice and were advancing, destroying everything in their path. On the market square were service corps soldiers, each with a cow on the end of a rope, which they were selling for eight marks. A company of recruits had sold its machine guns to the civilians at two marks apiece.
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