The Road Back (18 page)

"May we have a drink of water, anyway?" Albert calls after her. She turns round ungraciously and pours us out one glass.

"Now, be off! I haven't time to waste standing about," she snaps. "You ought to be at work instead of stealing other people's time."

Albert takes the glass from her and smashes it down oa the floor. He is speechless with rage. So I speak for him. "May you get cancer, you old slut!" I roar. But now the woman turns on us and lets fly, hammer and tongs, like a tinsmith in full swing. We take to our heels. The strongest man could not stand up to that.

We trudge on. As we go we meet whole hordes of scroungers. They circle about the farmsteads like hungry wasps round a piece of plum-tart. We begin to see now how the farmers must be driven almost mad by it, and why they become so abusive. But we persist all the same, get fired out here, perhaps score something there, are cursed by other foragers and curse again in return.

During the afternoon we all foregather at the pub. Our booty is not much—a few pounds of potatoes, some meal, a few eggs, apples, a couple of head of cabbage and some meat. Only Willy is sweating. He comes in last of all with half a pig's head under his arm. Other packages are bulging from his pockets. But as against that, he no longer has any greatcoat. He has exchanged it, because he has another at home that Karl gave him, and then, he thinks that after all Spring must come again sometime.

We have still two hours before the train leaves, and they bring me luck. In the bar-room is a piano of sorts, on which I give a performance of
The Maiden's Prayer
, all pedals down. This brings out the landlady, who listens a while and then beckons me to go outside with her. I elbow my way into the lobby, where she explains to me that she is very fond of music, but unfortunately no one who can play ever comes there. Then she asks me if I would not be willing to come again, and passes me half a pound of butter, saying that there is more where that came from. I fall in with the proposal of course, and undertake to play two hours each time for as much. I return to the piano and as the next item do my best with the
Heidegrab
and
Stolzenfels am Rhein
.

Then we set off for the station. On the way we meet a lot more foragers, all intending to return by the same train as ourselves. But they are frightened of the gendarmes. At last a whole troop has collected and they stand outside in the windy darkness, hiding in a corner some little distance from the station so as to escape observation before the train shall arrive. Once aboard there is less risk of being caught.

But we are out of luck. Two gendarmes with bicycles suddenly appear before us. They have ridden up silently from behind.

"Halt! All remain where you are!"

There is a terrible commotion. Everyone begging and praying. "Let us go, quick! We have to catch the train!"

"The train won't be here for a good quarter of an hour yet," says the fatter of the two, unperturbed. "This way, all of you." He indicates a street lamp. They will be able to see better there. One stands guard to see that nobody sneaks off, while the other conducts the examination. Nearly all are women, children or old folk; most of them stand silent and resigned——They are used to being treated so, and never dared really to hope they might have the luck to get home with a half-pound of butter.

I take a good look at the gendarmes—yes, there they are, just the same, just as notty and superior in their green uniforms, their red faces, their swords and their revolvers as they used to be up the line——Might! I I say to myself, Might, always Might—and be it no more than an inch it is merciless.

One woman has some eggs taken from her. Just as she is about to make off, the fat fellow calls her back. "Hey! what have you got there?" He points to her skirt. "Out with it!" She is obstinate and squats on the ground. "Quick, out with it!" From under her skirt she produces a piece of bacon. He puts it with the rest. "Thought you'd get away with it, did you?" She can hardly believe what has happened and keeps on making grabs to get it again. "But I paid for it!—every bit of my money it cost me!"

He shoves her hand away, at the same time hauling out a length of sausage from inside a woman's blouse. "Scrounging's forbidden, you know that yourself."

The woman is quite willing to forgo the eggs, but she pleads to have back the bacon, "Well, give, me the bacon, at least. Whatever shall I say when I get home? It's for my children!" She kneels in the mud.

"Go to the Food Office and see about getting extra ration-cards!" snarls the gendarme. "That's none of our business. Next!" The woman staggers away, vomits and shrieks: "Is that what my man was killed for!—that my children should starve!"

A young girl who is next, crams, gulps, chokes down her butter; her face is smothered in grease, her eyes goggle, she wolfs and gorges, so as to have at least a little before it is taken away from her. But it is small comfort—she will only be sick after and probably get diarrhoea as well.

"Next!" No one moves. The gendarme, who is stooping down, calls again: "Next!" He straightens up wrathfully and meets Willy's eyes. Perceptibly calmer, "Are you next?" he asks.

"Am I hell?" answers Willy unamiably.

"What have you got in that parcel?"

"Half a pig's head," explains Willy frankly.

"Well, hand it over."

Willy does not move. The gendarme hesitates, and then gives a glance at his colleague who promptly takes up a station beside him—That is a bad mistake. Neither of them seems to have had much experience in these things, nor to be used to any resistance. The second fellow ought to have seen long ago that we are together, even though we have not spoken a word to one another. He should have stood off to one side and covered us with his gun. Not that that would have troubled us much—what's a revolver, after all? But instead of that, he goes and plants himself right alongside his colleague, lest Willy should cut up rough.

The consequence becomes clear immediately. Like a lamb Willy passes up his half, a pig's head. The astonished gendarme takes it from him, and so becomes as good as unarmed, "both hands being full. At the same instant Willy calmly lands him one on the mouth, and knocks him over. Before the second can collect himself Kosole butts him upward under the chin with his bony skull, and Valentin is already behind him, squeezing so hard on his wind-pipe that his mouth comes wide open. Kosole swiftly rams a newspaper into it. Both the gendarmes are now gurgling and gulping and spitting, but it is no good; there is paper in their throats, and their arms are being twisted behind them and made fast with their own cross-straps. It was quick business. Now, where to put them?

Albert has the idea—fifty yards off he has found a lonely little house, in the door of which a heart has been cut—the station privy. We set off at a trot. We shove the two in. The door is oak, and the bolts thick and strong. It will be a good hour before they are out again. Kosole is most considerate—he has even piled their bicycles in front of the door.

The other foragers have watched us apprehensively.

"Grab your things!" says Ferdinand grinning. Already the train is whistling in the distance. They look at us timidly, but do not need telling twice. One old woman is quite panic-stricken.

"Oh, God," she wails, "you have assaulted the gendarmes—that's terrible—terrible!"

Apparently she thinks it is a capital offence. The others, too, are rather worried about it—Fear of uniforms and policemen is in their very bones.

Willy grins. "Don't carry on, mother—even though the whole government were here, we wouldn't let them take anything from us! Old soldiers and their mess-mates hand over their grub?—A nice state of affairs that would be!"

It is fortunate that village railway stations so often lie far from the houses, for no one has seen anything of what we have done. The station-master now comes out of his office, yawning and scratching his head. We march up to the barrier, Willy with his half a pig's head again under his arm. "Me give you up?" he murmurs, stroking it fondly.

The trains starts. We wave from the window. The astonished station-master thinks it is intended for him and waves back. But we mean the privy. Willy leans far out, watching the red cap of the station-master.

"He's gone back into the office!" he announces triumphantly. "The gendarmes will be able to keep themselves busy a long time, now."

The tension relaxes in the faces of the foragers. They venture to talk again. The woman with the bacon laughs with tears in her eyes, so grateful is she. Only the girl who swallowed the butter is still weeping inconsolably. She was too hasty; and besides, she is already beginning to feel sick. But now Kosole shows what he is made of. He gives her the half of his sausage which she tucks away in her stocking.

As a precaution we dismount at a station well without the town, and cut across the fields to gain the road. We had meant to do the last stretch on foot but encounter a motor-lorry loaded with cans. The driver is wearing an army greatcoat. He lets us ride with him, and so we tear along through the darkness. The stars are shining. We squat one beside the other and from our parcels there is issuing a rare smell of pork.

The High Street is under a wet, silvery, evening mist. The street lamps have big yellow courtyards of light about them and the people are walking on cotton-wool. Shop windows show up to right and left like mysterious fires. Wolf swims up through the fog and dives into it again. The trees gleam black and wet under the street lamps.

With me is Valentin Laher. He is not complaining exactly, but he cannot forget the famous acrobatic turn with which he made such a hit in Paris and Budapest. "That's all finished now, Ernst," he says. "My joints creak like a stiff shirt and I've got rheumatism, too. I've rehearsed and rehearsed till I've dropped. It is no use trying it any more."

"What will you do, then, Valentin?" I ask. "The State should give you a pension really, the same as it does retired officers."

"Ach, the State!" answers Valentin contemptuously. "The State only gives those anything that open their mouths wide enough. I'm working up a couple of turns with a dancer just now, a bit of a leg-show, you know. It promises well enough as regards a public, but it's not much—a decent artist ought to be ashamed of doing such a thing really. But then what's a man to do? he must live."

Valentin is going for a rehearsal now, so I decide to accompany him. At the corner of Hamken Street a black bowler hat goes trundling past us in the fog, and beneath it a canary-yellow mackintosh and a portfolio.—"Arthur!" I shout.

Ledderhose stops. "My hat!" exclaims Valentin, "But you have got yourself up swell!" With the air of a connoisseur he fingers Arthur's tie, a handsome affair in artificial silk with lilac spots.

"Oh yes, not so bad, not so bad," says Ledderhose flattered and in haste.

"And the lovely Sunday-go-to-meeting lid, too!" says Valentin with renewed astonishment, examining the bowler.

Ledderhose is in a hurry. He taps his portfolio. "Busi
ness! Business——"

"Don't you run the cigar shop any more?" I ask.

"Sure," he replies. "But one extends gradually. You don't happen to know of any offices to let, I suppose? I pay any price."

"Offices? Can't say we do," says Valentin. "We haven't got so far yet. But how does the missus suit you these days?"

"How do you mean?" asks Ledderhose cautiously.

"Well, you used to moan about it out there enough. She was grown too scraggy for you, so you said, and now you were all out for fat ones."

Arthur shakes his head. "I don't remember to have said that." And he vanishes.

Valentin laughs. "How they do change, eh, Ernst? What a miserable poor worm he was up the line; and now look, what a swell business man! Remember how the blighter used to pig it out there? But he won't hear of it any more! He'll be President of some League or other for the Promotion of Pure Morals yet, you see!"

"Things do seem to be going bloody well with him though," I say meditatively.

We stroll on. The fog drifts and Wolf plays with it. Faces come and go. Suddenly in the white-clear light I see a glistening, red patent-leather hat, and beneath it a face softly bloomed with the dampness that makes the eyes shine the more brightly.

I stand still. My heart is beating fast. That was Adele! Swiftly memories spring up of other evenings when we sixteen-year-olds would hide outside the doors of the gymnasium, waiting till the girls should come out in their white sweaters; and then we would run after them down the streets, and overtake them, only to stand before them, breathing hard, silent, staring at them—till they would break away and the chase start all over again—And the afternoons when, if we happened to meet them somewhere, we would walk shyly and stolidly after them, always a few paces behind them, much too embarrassed to speak to them, and only as they turned in at some house, would we suddenly summon up all our courage and shout after them, "See you again!" and run away.