The Road Back (26 page)

Once in Flanders after a fierce bombardment, it was long before help could come up for one of our men who had been wounded. We put all our field-dressings on him and bandaged him up as best we could, but it was no use, he still bled on, just bled away to death. And behind him all the while stood an immense cloud in the evening sky—a solitary cloud—but it was a great mountain of white, golden and red splendour. Unsubstantial and lofty it towered up over the shattered brown of the landscape. It was quite still and it glowed, and the dying man was quite still and he bled, as if the two belonged together; and yet to me it was incomprehensible that the cloud should stand there so lovely and^ unconcerned in the sky while a man died.

The last light of the sun has tinged the heather to a dusky red. Plovers rise complaining on unstable wing. The cry of a bittern sounds up from the lake. I still gaze out over the wide, purple-brown plain. There was a place near Houthoulet where so many poppies grew in the fields that they were entirely red with them. We called them the Fields of Blood, because whenever there was a thunderstorm they would take on the pale colour of fresh, newly spilled blood. It was there Köhler went mad one clear night as we marched by, utterly wasted and weary. In the uncertain light of the moon he thought he saw whole lakes of blood and wanted to plunge in——

I shiver and look up. But what does it mean? Why do these memories come so often now? And so strangely, and so differently from out there; at the Front? Am I too much alone?

Wolf stirs and barks quite loudly, though gently, in his sleep. Is he dreaming of his flock, I wonder? I look at him a long time. Then I wake him and we go back.

It is Saturday. I go over to Willy and ask him if he will come into town with me over Sunday. But he dismisses the idea altogether. "We're having stuffed goose tomorrow," says he. "I can't possibly leave that in the lurch. What do you want to go away for?"

"I can't stick Sundays here," I say.

"I don't understand that," he objects, "not considering the grub!"

So I set off alone. In the evening, vaguely hoping for something, I go out to Waldman's. Here is immense activity. I stand about and look on for a while. A mob of young fellows who missed the war by a hair, is swilling about and about on the dance-floor. These are sure of themselves, they know what they want. Their world has had a clear beginning, it has a definite, goal—success. And though younger than we, they are much more accomplished.

I discover among the dancers the dainty little seamstress with whom I won the prize for the one-step. I ask her to dance and after that we remain together. I had my pay only a few days ago, and on the strength of it I now order a couple of bottles of a sweet, red wine. We drink it slowly, but the more I drink the more I sink into a strange moodiness—What was it Albert said about having somebody all to oneself?—I listen pensively to the chatter of the girl, as she twitters like a swallow of the other seamstresses, about the pay for making underclothing, about new dances and a thousand other nothings. If only the pay would go up by a couple of pence a piece, she would be able to lunch in a restaurant and then she would be happy. I envy her her simple existence and ask her more and more questions. I should like to ask everyone who is here so laughing and gay, how he lives. Perhaps among them is one who could tell me something that would help me.

Afterwards I go home with the Swallow. She lives in a
grey block of tenements, high up under the roof. We stand
a while at the door. I feel the warmth of her hand in mine. 
Her face glimmers uncertain in the darkness. A human
face, a hand, wherein is warmth and life. "Let me go with 
you!" I say hastily. "Let me come in——"

Cautiously we steal up the creaking stairs. I strike a match but she blows it out immediately, and taking me by the hand, leads me after her.

A little narrow room. A table, a brown sofa, a bed, a few pictures on the wall; in the corner a sewing-machine, a lay-figure of bamboo, and a basket of white linen to be sewn.

The little girl promptly produces a primus and brews
tea of apple-peelings and tea-leaves that have been ten
times boiled and dried out again. Two cups, a laughing, 
slightly mischievous face, a disturbing little blue dress, the 
friendly poverty of lodgings, and a little Swallow, its youth 
its only possession—I sit down on the sofa. Is this how love 
begins? So light and playfully? Is that all it needs, just to
jump over oneself and away?——

The little Swallow is fond. It belongs, of course, to her life that someone should come here, take her in his arms, and then go away again. Then the sewing-machine drones, another comes, the Swallow laughs, the Swallow weeps, and sews away for ever—She casts a gay coverlet over the sewing-machine, thereby transforming it from a nickel and steel creature of toil into a hillock of red and blue silk flowers. She does not want to be reminded now of the day. In her light, soft dress she nestles down in my arms, she chatters, she whispers and murmurs and sings. So slender and pale—half-starved she is, too—and so light that one can easily carry her to the bed, the iron camp-bed. Such a sweet air of surrender as she clings about one's neck! She sighs and she smiles—a child with closed eyes, sighs and trembles and stammers a little bit. She breathes deep and she utters small cries. I look at her. I look again and again. I too would be so. Silently I ask: Is this it? Is this it?— And the Swallow names me with all kinds of fair names, and is embarrassed and tender and nestles close to me. And as 
I leave her I ask: "Are you happy, little Swallow?" Then 
she kisses me many times and makes faces and waves and 
nods and nods——

But I go down the stairs and am full of wonder. She is happy!—How easily! I cannot understand. For is she not still another being, a life unto herself, to whom I can never come? Would she not still be so, though I came with all the fires of love? Ach, love—it is a torch falling into an abyss, revealing nothing but only how deep it is!

I set off down the street to the station. This is not it; no,
this is not it either. One is only more alone there than 
ever——

The lamp casts a circle of light upon the table. Before me is a pile of blue exercise books, and alongside a bottle of red ink. I look through the note-books, mark the mistakes, lay the blotting-papers inside and clap them to.

I stand up. Is this life, then? This dreary uniformity of days and lessons? But how empty it leaves all the background! There is still left much too much time to think. I hoped the routine would quiet me, but it only makes me more restless. How long the evenings are here!

I go across to the barn. The cows snuff and stamp in the gloom. Beside them on low stools squat the milkmaids, each in a little room to herself, the walls formed by the black and white bodies of the animals. Small lanterns are flickering over them in the warm air of the stall, the milk spurts in thin streams into the bucket and the breasts of the girls joggle beneath their blue cotton blouses. They lift their heads and smile and breathe and show sound, white teeth. Their eyes shine in the darkness, and there is a smell of cattle and hay.

I stand a while at the door, then go back to my room. The blue note-books still lie under the lamp. Will they always lie so? And I? Shall I always sit there, till little by little I grow old and at last die? I decide to go to bed.

The red moon climbs slowly up over the roof of the barn and casts an image of the window on the floor, a diamond and a cross within it, that becomes gradually more and more askew the higher the moon rises. In an hour it has crept on to my bed, and the shadowed cross is moving over my breast.

I lie in the big, peasant bed with its cover of red and blue squares, and cannot sleep. Sometimes my eyes close, and I sink down whizzing through limitless space—but at the last moment a sudden, bounding fear jolts me back into wakefulness, and again I am listening to the church clock as it strikes the hours. I listen and wait and toss to and fro.

At last I get up and dress again. I climb through the window, lift out the dog and go off to the moor. The moon is shining, the wind blows gently and the plain stretches away. The railway embankment cuts darkly across it.

I sit down under a juniper bush. After a time I see the chain of signal-lamps light up along the track. The night train is coming. The rails begin to rumble softly, metallic. The headlight of the locomotive leaps up over the skyline, driving a billow of light before it toward me. The train roars past with bright windows; for one moment, scarce a breath, the compartments with their trunks and their fates are right close to me; they sweep onward; the rails gleam again with wet light and out of the distance now stares only the red rear-lamp of the train, like a glowing evil eye.

I watch the moon turn clear, then yellow. I walk through
the blue twilight of the birch woods; raindrops spill down
from the branches into my neck; I stumble over roots and
on stones and when I return the leaden dawn has come. The
lamp is still burning—desperately I glance round the room
—no, I cannot stick this! I should need to be twenty years
older to be so resigned——

Weary and spent I begin to undress. It is too much trou
ble. As I go off to sleep my hands are still pressed together
—I will not give up—I will not give up yet——

Then again I sink down through limitless space—— 

——and cautiously worm my way out. Slowly, one inch, and then another. The sun is burning on the golden slopes, the broom is in flower, the air hot and still; observation balloons and white wind-clouds hang on the horizon. The red petals of a poppy flower rock to and fro before my steel helmet.

A very faint, hardly audible scratching comes across to
me from beyond the brambles ahead. It is silent again. I 
wait on. A beetle with greenish-gold wings crawls up a
camomile stalk in front of me. His feelers are groping over
the jagged leaves. Again a light rustling in the noonday 
silence. The rim of a helmet shows over the bushes. A
forehead, clear eyes, a firm mouth—searchingly the eyes 
move over the landscape and return again to a pad of
white paper and some crayons. Quite unsuspecting of dan
ger, the man is making a pastel of the farm yonder and the 
dark copper-beeches in the quivering air——

I drag the hand-grenade toward me. It takes a long time. At last it is lying beside me. With my left hand I pull the button and count under my breath; then send the bomb flying in a low curve to the blackberry bushes and slip back swiftly into my hollow. I press my body close down on the earth, bury my face in the grass and open my mouth.

The crash of the explosion tears the air, splinters twanging—a cry goes up, long drawn; frantic with horror. I hold the second bomb in my hand and peer out from my cover. The Englishman is lying clear in the open field; his two legs are blown off at the knee, the blood is pouring out; the bands of his puttees far unrolled trail out behind him like loose ribbons; he is lying on his belly, with his arms he paddles the grass; his mouth is wide open, shrieking.

He heaves himself round and sees me. Then he props himself on his arms and rears his trunk like a seal, he shrieks at me and bleeds, bleeds. The red face grows pale and sinks in, the gaze snaps, and eyes and mouth are at last no more than black caverns in a swiftly decaying countenance, that slowly inclines to the earth, sags and sinks into the dandelions. Finished.

I worm myself off and begin to work my way back to our trenches. But I look round once more. The dead man has suddenly come to life again! he straightens up as if he 
meant to run after met I pull the string of the second 
hand-grenade and hurl it toward him. It falls a yard short, 
rolls on, and lies still. I count, count—why doesn't it ex
plode? The dead man is standing upright; he is showing 
his teeth! I throw the next hand-grenade—it, too, misses 
fire. He has made a few steps already—he is running on 
his stumps, grinning, his arms stretched out toward me—I 
hurl my last hand-grenade. It goes flying to his chest, he 
wards it off. I jump up to run, but my knees refuse to work, 
they are soft as butter. Endlessly, painfully I drag them 
forward; I stick fast to the ground; I wrench, I hurl myself 
forward. Already I hear the panting of my pursuer. I drag
my failing legs with my hands. But from behind me two 
hands close round my neck, they bear me backwards, to the 
ground. The dead man is kneeling on my chest; he hauls 
in the puttees trailing out behind him over the grass; he 
twists them round my neck. I bend my head away, I brace 
all my muscles. I fling myself to the right to escape the 
noose—ah! a jerk, a strangling pain in the throat. The 
dead man is dragging me toward the precipitous edge of the
chalk-pit. He is rolling me down into it, I lose balance, 
struggle to catch hold—I am slipping, I fall, cry out, fall 
endlessly, cry, hit something, cry——