The Road Back (22 page)

I feel rather foolish, but at the moment I cannot think what to say. All this talk I have been using for years suddenly seems to me crude and repulsive—Fortunately Anton has now to resume his poise and dignity; a car is coming. A slim creature steps out and goes in through the door; she is stooping forward a little; she holds her fur to her breast with one hand, and her hair shows gleaming under a close-fitting golden toque; her knees close together, little feet, and a small face. With light, springy ankles she trips by me, wafting a faint, bitter smell, and I am filled with a wild desire to be able to go in with this lovely creature through the revolving doors, in to the tables there, into that pampered, prosperous atmosphere of colour and light, and so to saunter on through a benign, carefree existence, surrounded by waiters and servants, well wrapped in a protective, insulating layer of wealth—rid for ever of all the poverty and filth that for years have been our daily portion.

I suppose I look rather school-boyish, for suddenly Anton looses a peal of laughter from under his beard, and with a sly look and another prod, he says: "Though they go in silks and satins, in bed they're all the same."

"Naturally," I say, and follow up with a smutty joke so that he won't see through me. "Till one o'clock then, Anton!"

"Why not?" he responds solemnly, "or Bongsoahr, as the Frenchman says."

I wander on, my hands thrust deep into my pockets. The snow mashes under my shoes. I kick it off angrily. What could I do anyway, even supposing I might dine with a woman like that? I should only be able to stare at her, that's all. I couldn't even eat without getting into a mess. And how difficult, I think to myself, how difficult to pass a whole day with such a being! Always on the watch, always on the alert. And then at night—but I wouldn't have even the faintest notion how to begin! Not that I am altogether ignorant of women, of course, but what I do know I learned from Jupp and from Valentin. With such ladies as these that would clearly never do.

June 1917, was the first time I was with a woman. Our company was back resting in the huts at the time. It was midday and we were fooling about in the meadow with a couple of dogs that had run up to us. With flying ears and glistening coats the beasts would go bounding through the tall, summer grasses, and the sky was blue and the war far away.

Then Jupp came trotting across from the orderly-room. The dogs ran toward him and jumped up on him, but he shook them off and called out: "An order's just come through. We're to hop over tonight!"

We knew all that that meant. Day after day the rumble of the drum-fire of the Big Offensive had come rolling back to us over the western horizon; day after day we had seen the spent regiments returning, and if we asked any man what it was like, he would merely respond with a gesture and continue to stare straight ahead; day after day truck-loads of wounded had been streaming past; and day after day, today for to-morrow, we had been digging long ditches for graves.

We got up. Bethke and Wessling went to their packs for writing-paper; Willy and Tjaden walked over to the cookhouse; and Franz Wagner and Jupp persuaded me to go with them to the brothel.

"Why, Ernst lad," said Wagner, "you don't mean to say you're never going to know what a woman is? Who can say but we may all be dead before morning? Looks to me as if they've a heap of new artillery up there. It would be just too absurd to die virgin."

The Field Brothel was in a small town, distant about an hour's walk. We got permits, though not without waiting a long time—other regiments were also going up the line, so they were many that came there in haste to snatch whatever of life they might still get. In a small office we had to give up our permits and unbutton our flies. Then an A.M.C. corporal examined us to see that we were fit, and we received an injection of a few drops of protargol, while a sergeant-major was explaining that the fee was three marks and that on account of the crush ten minutes was all the time that could be allowed us. Then we queued up on the stairs.

The line moved slowly forward. At the top of the stairs the doors kept banging, and each time a man would come out; then "NextI" would be called.

"How many cows are there?" inquired Franz Wagner of a sapper.

"Three," said he. "But you don't get any choice. It's a lottery—if your luck's out, then you fall for a grandmother."

Stewing there in the heat and sweat and stinking breath of the famished soldiers on the frowsy staircase, I began to feel sick. I would have been glad to get out of it—my curiosity had gone, but I was afraid the others would make fun of me, so I waited.

At last came my turn. The man who had been before me stumbled out and I stepped into the room. It was low and dark, and reeked so of carbolic and sweat that I thought it strange to see the branches of a lime tree just outside the window, and the sun and wind playing in the fresh, green leaves—so withered and used up did everything in the room appear. There was a dish with pink water on a chair and in the corner a sort of camp-bed on which was spread a torn sheet. The woman was fat and had on a short, transparent chemise. She did not look at me at all, but straightway lay down. Only when I still did not come, did she look up impatiently; then a flicker of comprehension showed in her spongey face. She perceived that I was still quite young.

I simply could not; horror seized me and a choking nausea. The woman made a few gestures to rouse me, gross, repulsive gestures; she tried to pull me to her and even smiled as she did so, sweetly and coyly, that I should have compassion on her—what was she, after all, but a poor, army mattress, that must bed twenty and more fellows every day?—but I laid down only the money beside her and went out hastily and down the stairs.

Jupp gave me a wink. "Well, how was it?"

"So, so," I answered like an old hand, and we turned to go. But no, we must first go before the A.M.C. corporal again and make water under his eyes. Then we received a further injection of protargol.

"So that is love," thought I dumbly, despairingly, as we packed up our things; "so that is the love my books at home were so full of—of which I had expected so much in the vague dreams of my youth!" I rolled up my greatcoat and packed my ground-sheet, I received my ammunition and we marched out. I was silent and sorrowful, and I thought upon it: how now nothing was left me of those high-flying dreams of life .and of love, but a rifle, a fat whore and the dull rumble out there on the sky-line whither we were now slowly marching. Then came darkness, and the trenches and death.— Franz Wagner fell that night, and we lost besides twenty-three men.

Drops of rain fall glittering from the trees; I turn up my collar. I often long for affection even now, for shy words, for warm, generous emotions; I would like to escape the crude monotony of these last years. But what if it actually came to pass?—what if all the gentleness and variety of those other days drew round me again? if someone actually did love me, some slim, delicate woman, such as the one there with the golden toque and the slim ankles—how would it be? even though the ecstasy of some blue, silver night should gather about us, endless, self-forgotten, in darkness.—Would not the vision of the fat whore come between us at the last moment? Would not the voices of the drill-sergeants suddenly shout their obscenities? Would not memory, scraps of talk, army jokes, at once riddle and destroy every decent emotion? Even now we are still chaste in ourselves, but our imagination has been debauched without our being aware of it—before we knew anything of love at all we were already being lined up and examined for sexual diseases. The breathless wonder, the impetuousness, the night wind, the darkness, the questionings—all those things that were still with us when, as sixteen-year-old boys, we would race along after Adele and the other girls through the flickering, gas-lit wind—they never came back. Though the time was when the woman was not a whore, yet it did not come back—though I believed it might still be otherwise, and though she embraced me and I trembled with desire, yet it did not come back. Afterwards I was always wretched. 

Unconsciously I begin to walk faster, breathe deeper. I will have it again—I must have it again. It shall come again, else what reason is there to live?

I make my way to Ludwig's. There is still a light in his room. I fling pebbles up at his window, and he comes down and opens the door for me.

Up in the room Georg Rahe is standing in front of Ludwig's case of geological specimens, holding a large rock crystal and making it sparkle.

"I'm glad I've seen you after all, Ernst," he smiles. "Just been round at your place. I'm leaving to-morrow."

He is in uniform. "But, Georg," I say haltingly, "you 
don't mean——"

"Yes," he nods. "That's it. Going to be a soldier again. It's all fixed. I start tomorrow."

"Can you understand that?" I say to Ludwig.

"Yes," he replies, "I think I understand. But it won't
help him." He turns to Rahe. "You're disillusioned, Georg,
that's your trouble. But just think a moment, after all, isn't
it only natural? Up at the Front there our nerves were
always strained to the utmost, any minute it might be a
matter of life and death. So now, of course, they flap about 
like sails when the wind has dropped; and for the simple
reason that here everything is a matter of small, painful 
advances——"

"Exactly," agrees Rahe. "This petty pushing and shoving for grub and for place, with an odd ideal or two thrown in to make weight, it just nauseates me; I mean to clear out of it."

"Well, if you must do something of that sort, why not join the Revolution?" I say. "You might even be War Minister."

"Bah! this Revolution!" answers Georg scornfully. "It was made by a bunch of Party Secretaries, with their thumbs in line with the seam of their trousers. They've taken fright again already at the mere thought of their own audacity. Look at the way they are at one another's throats—Social Democrats, Independents, Spartacists, Communists! And in the meantime the other fellows are quietly potting off what few real brains they have among them, and they don't even see it!"

"No, Georg," says Ludwig, "that's not it. We made revolution with too little hate, that's the whole fact of the matter; we wanted to be just to everybody from the very jump, and with the result that the whole thing has fizzled out. A revolution must first rage like a bush fire; then afterwards one can start in with the sowing. But we wanted to destroy nothing and yet to start afresh. We hadn't enough strength left to hate, we were so weary and burned up with the war. One can sleep for weariness even through a bombardment, you know that yourself. But even now it may not be too late to achieve by work what was missed in the assault."

"Work!" answers Georg contemputuously and the rock crystal flashes under the lamp. "We can fight, if you like, but not work."

"Then we must learn again," says Ludwig quietly from the corner of his sofa.

"We're too demoralised for that," objects Georg.

For a while neither speaks. The wind drones outside the windows. Rahe walks with great strides about Ludwig's little room, and it really does seem as if he did not belong here within these walls of books, and quietness and work—his clean-cut, keen features seem to be in place only over a field-grey uniform, as though he belonged to trenches and fighting and war. He props his arms on the table and leans over toward Ludwig. The lamplight falls on his shoulder-straps and behind him glitter the quartzes in the collection of stones.

"What are we doing here, Ludwig?" he says deliberately. "Look about you. How slack I how hopeless it all isl We are a burden to ourselves and to everyone else. Our ideals are bankrupt, our dreams shattered; and we just run about in this world of earnest, purposeful people and profit-mongers, like so many Don Quixotes loose in a strange land."

Ludwig looks at him a while. "It's my idea that we're sick, Georg. We have the war in our bones still."

Rahe nods. "Yes, and we'll never get it out again!"

"Don't you believe it!" retorts Ludwig, "else it will all have been in vain."

Rahe crashes his fist down on the table. "It was in vain, Ludwig!—that's just what makes me mad! Think what men we were when we marched away in that storm of enthusiasm! It seemed as if a new age had dawned—all the old things, the rotten, the compromising, the partisan, all swept away. We were young then, as men were never young before!"

He takes a lump of crystal from Ludwig's stone collection and holds it like a hand-grenade. His hands are trembling. "I have been in many dugouts, Ludwig," he goes on, "and we were all young men who sat there around one miserable slush lamp, waiting, while the barrage raged overhead like an earthquake. We were none of your inexperienced recruits either; we knew well enough what we were waiting for, and we knew what would come.—But there was more in those faces down in the gloom there than mere calm, more than good humour, more than just readiness to die.—There was the will to another future in those hard, set faces; and it was there when they charged, and still there when they died. We had less to say for ourselves year by year, we shed many things, but that one thing still remained. And now, Ludwig, where is it now? Can't you see how it is perishing in all the pig's-wash of order, duty, women, routine, punctuality and the rest of what they call life here? No, Ludwig, we lived thenl And though you tell me a thousand times that you hate war, yet I still say, we lived then. We lived, because we were together, and because something burned in us that was more than this whole muck-heap here!"