All Quiet on the Western Front (14 page)

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.”

“We might almost have known you were coming,” laughs my sister, “there is just your favourite dish, potato-cakes, and even whortleberries to go with them too.”

“And it is Saturday,” I add.

“Sit here beside me,” says my mother.

She looks at me. Her hands are white and sickly and frail compared with mine. We say very little and I am thankful that she asks nothing. What ought I to say? Everything I could have wished for has happened. I have come out of it safely and sit here beside her. And in the kitchen stands my sister preparing supper and singing.

“Dear boy,” says my mother softly.

We were never very demonstrative in our family; poor folk who toil and are full of cares are not so. It is not their way to protest what they already know. When my mother says to me “dear boy,” it means much more than when another uses it. I know well enough that the jar of whortleberries is the only one they have had for months, and that she has kept it for me; and the somewhat stale cakes that she gives me too. She must have got them cheap some time and put them all by for me.

I sit by her bed, and through the window the chestnut trees in the beer garden opposite glow in brown and gold. I breathe deeply and say over to myself:—“You are at home, you are at home.” But a sense of strangeness will not leave me, I cannot feel at home amongst these things. There is my mother, there is my sister, there my case of butterflies, and there the mahogany piano—but I am not myself there. There is a distance, a veil between us.

I go and fetch my pack to the bedside and turn out the things I have brought—a whole Edamer cheese, that Kat provided me with, two loaves of army bread, three-quarters of a pound of butter, two tins of livered sausage, a pound of dripping and a little bag of rice.

“I suppose you can make some use of that——”

They nod.

“It is pretty bad for food here?” I enquire.

“Yes, there’s not much. Do you get enough out there?”

I smile and point to the things I have brought. “Not always quite as much as that, of course, but we fare reasonably well.”

Erna takes away the food. Suddenly my mother seizes hold of my hand and asks falteringly: “Was it very bad out there, Paul?”

Mother, what should I answer to that! You would not understand, you could never realize it. And you shall never realize it. Was it bad, you ask.—You, Mother,—I shake my head and say: “No, Mother, not so very. There are always a lot of us together so it isn’t so bad.”

“Yes, but Heinrich Bredemeyer was here just lately and said it was terrible out there now, with the gas and all the rest of it.”

It is my mother who says that. She says: “With the gas and all the rest of it.” She does not know what she is saying, she is merely anxious for me. Should I tell her how we once found three enemy trenches with their garrison all stiff as though stricken with apoplexy? against the parapet, in the dug-outs, just where they were, the men stood and lay about, with blue faces, dead.

“No Mother, that’s only talk,” I answer, “there’s not very much in what Bredemeyer says. You see for instance, I’m well and fit——”

Before my mother’s tremulous anxiety I recover my composure. Now I can walk about and talk and answer questions without fear of having suddenly to lean against the wall because the world turns soft as rubber and my veins become brimstone.

My mother wants to get up. So I go for a while to my sister in the kitchen. “What is the matter with her?” I ask.

She shrugs her shoulders: “She has been in bed some months now, but we did not want to write and tell you. Several doctors have been to see her. One of them said it is probably cancer again.”

I go to the district commandant to report myself. Slowly I wander through the streets. Occasionally someone speaks to me. I do not delay long for I have little inclination to talk.

On the way back from the barracks a loud voice calls out to me. Still lost in thought I turn round and find myself confronted by a Major. “Can’t you salute?” he blusters.

“Sorry, Major,” I say in embarrassment, “I didn’t notice you.”

“Don’t you know how to speak properly?” he roars.

I would like to hit him in the face, but control myself, for my leave depends on it. I click my heels and say: “I did not see you, Herr Major.”

“Then keep your eyes open,” he snorts. “What is your name?” I give it.

His fat red face is furious. “What regiment?”

I give him full particulars. Even yet he has not had enough. “Where are you quartered?”

But I have had more than enough and say: “Between Langemark and Bixschoote.”

“Eh?” he asks, a bit stupefied.

I explain to him that I arrived on leave only an hour or two since, thinking that he would then trot along. But not at all. He gets even more furious: “You think you can bring your front-line manners here, what? Well, we don’t stand for that sort of thing. Thank God, we have discipline here!”

“Twenty paces backwards, double march!” he commands.

I am mad with rage. But I cannot say anything to him; he could put me under arrest if he liked. So I double back, and then march up to him. Six paces from him I spring to a stiff salute and maintain it until I am six paces beyond him.

He calls me back again and affably gives me to understand that for once he is pleased to put mercy before justice. I pretend to be duly grateful. “Now, dismiss!” he says. I turn about smartly and march off.

That ruins the evening for me. I go back home and throw my uniform into a corner; I had intended to change it in any case. Then I take out my civilian clothes from the wardrobe and put them on.

I feel awkward. The suit is rather tight and short, I have grown in the army. Collar and tie give me some trouble. In the end my sister ties the bow for me. But how light the suit is, it feels as though I had nothing on but a shirt and underpants.

I look at myself in the glass. It is a strange sight. A sunburnt, overgrown candidate for confirmation gazes at me in astonishment.

My mother is pleased to see me wearing civilian clothes; it makes me less strange to her. But my father would rather I kept my uniform on so that he could take me to visit his acquaintances.

But I refuse.

It is pleasant to sit quietly somewhere, in the beer garden for example, under the chestnuts by the skittle-alley. The leaves fall down on the table and on the ground, only a few, the first. A glass of beer stands in front of me, I’ve learned to drink in the army. The glass is half empty, but there are a few good
swigs ahead of me, and besides I can always order a second and a third if I wish to. There are no bugles and no bombardments, the children of the house play in the skittle-alley, and the dog rests his head against my knee. The sky is blue, between the leaves of the chestnuts rises the green spire of St. Margaret’s Church.

This is good, I like it. But I cannot get on with the people. My mother is the only one who asks no questions. Not so my father. He wants me to tell him about the front; he is curious in a way that I find stupid and distressing; I no longer have any real contact with him. There is nothing he likes more than just hearing about it. I realize he does not know that a man cannot talk of such things; I would do it willingly, but it is too dangerous for me to put these things into words. I am afraid they might then become gigantic and I be no longer able to master them. What would become of us if everything that happens out there were quite clear to us?

So I confine myself to telling him a few amusing things. But he wants to know whether I have ever had a hand-to-hand fight. I say “No,” and get up and go out.

But that does not mend matters. After I have been startled a couple of times in the street by the screaming of the tram-cars, which resembles the shriek of a shell coming straight for one, somebody taps me on the shoulder. It is my Germanmaster, and he fastens on me with the usual question: “Well, how are things out there? Terrible, terrible, eh? Yes, it is dreadful, but we must carry on. And after all, you do at least get decent food out there, so I hear. You look well, Paul, and fit. Naturally it’s worse here. Naturally. The best for our soldiers every time, that goes without saying.”

He drags me along to a table with a lot of others. They
welcome me, a head-master shakes hands with me and says: “So you come from the front? What is the spirit like out there? Excellent, eh? Excellent?”

I explain that no one would be sorry to be back home.

He laughs uproariously. “I can well believe it! But first you have to give the Froggies a good hiding. Do you smoke? Here, try one. Waiter, bring a beer as well for our young warrior.”

Unfortunately I have accepted the cigar, so I have to remain. And they are all so dripping with good will that it is impossible to object. All the same I feel annoyed and smoke like a chimney as hard as I can. In order to make at least some show of appreciation I toss off the beer in one gulp. Immediately a second is ordered; people know how much they are indebted to the soldiers. They argue about what we ought to annex. The head-master with the steel watch-chain wants to have at least the whole of Belgium, the coal-areas of France, and a slice of Russia. He produces reasons why we must have them and is quite inflexible until at last the others give in to him. Then he begins to expound just where-abouts in France the break-through must come, and turns to me: “Now, shove ahead a bit out there with your everlasting trench warfare—Smash through the johnnies and then there will be peace.”