The Road Back (29 page)

The later it gets the more disturbed the city becomes. I go with Albert through the streets. Men are standing in groups at every corner. Rumours are flying. It is said that the military have already fired on a procession of demonstrating workers.

From the neighbourhood of St. Mary's Church comes suddenly the sound of rifle shots, at first singly, then a whole volley. Albert and I look at each other; without a word we set off in the direction of the shots.

Ever more and more people come running toward us. "Bring rifles! the bastards are shooting!" they shout. We quicken our pace. We wind in and out of the groups, we shove our way through, we are running already—a grim, perilous excitement impels us forward. We are gasping. The racket of rifle-fire increases. "Ludwig!" I shout.

He is running beside us. His lips are pressed tight, the jaw bones stand out, his eyes are cold and tense—once more he has the face of the trenches. Albert too. I also. We run toward the rifle shots, as if it were some mysterious, imperative summons.

The crowd, still shouting, gives way before us. We plough our way through. Women hold their aprons over their faces and go stumbling away. A roar of fury goes up. A wounded man is being carried off.

We reach the Market Square. There the Reichwehr has taken up a position in front of the Town Hall. The steel helmets gleam palely. On the steps is a machine-gun ready for action. The square is empty; only the streets that lead into it are jammed with people. It would be madness to go further—the machine-gun is covering the square.

But one man is going out, all alone! Behind him the seething crowd surges on down the conduits of the streets; it boils out about the houses and gathers together in black clots.

But the man is far in advance. In the middle of the square he steps out from the shadow thrown by the church and stands in the moonlight—"Back!" calls a clear, sharp voice.

The man is lifting his hands. So bright is the moonlight that when he starts to speak his teeth show white and gleaming in the dark hole of his mouth. "Comrades——"

All is silence.

His voice is alone between the church, the great block of the Town Hall and the shadow. It is alone on the square, a fluttering dove. "Comrades, put up your weapons!. Would you shoot at your brothers? Put up your weapons and come over to us."

Never was the moon so bright. The uniforms on the Town Hall steps are like chalk. The windows glisten. The moonlit half of the church tower is a mirror of green silk. With gleaming helmets and visors the stone knights by the doorway spring forward from the wall of shadow.

"Back! or we fire!" comes the command coldly. I look around at Ludwig and Albert. It was our company commander! That was Heel's voice. A choking tension grips me, as if I must now look on at an execution. Heel will fire —I know.

The dark mass of people moves within the shadow of the houses, it sways and murmurs. An eternity goes by. Two soldiers with rifles detach themselves from the steps and make toward the solitary man in the midst of the square. It seems endlessly long before they reach him—as though they marked time in some grey morass, glittering, tinselled rag puppets with loaded, lowered rifles. The man awaits them quietly. "Comrades——" he says again as they come, up.

They grab him by the arms and drag him forward. The man does not defend himself. They run him along so fast that he stumbles. Cries break out behind us. The mob is beginning to move, an entire street moving slowly, irregularly forward. The clear voice commands: "Quick! back with him! I fire!"

A warning volley crackles out upon the air. Suddenly the man wrenches himself free. But no, he is not saving himself! he is running toward the machine-gun! "Don't shoot, Comrades!"

Still nothing has happened. But when the mob sees the unarmed man run forward, it advances too. In a thin stream it trickles along the side of the church. The next instant a command resounds over the square. Thundering the tick-tack of the machine-gun shatters into a thousand echoes from the houses, and the bullets, whistling and splintering, strike on the pavement.

Quick as lightning we have flung ourselves behind a jutting corner of the houses. In the first moment a paralysing, cur-like fear seized me, quite different from any that ever I felt at the Front. Then it changes into rage. I have seen the solitary figure, how he spun round and fell forward. Cautiously I peer round the corner. He is trying to rise again, but he cannot. He only props on his arms, lifts up his pale face and groans. Slowly the arms bend, the head sinks, and, as though exceeding weary, his body sags down upon the pavement——Then the lump loosens in my 
throat——"No!" I cry, "No!" The cry goes up shrill be
tween the walls of the houses.

I feel myself pushed aside. Ludwig Breyer stands up and goes out over the square toward the dark lump of death.

"Ludwig!" I shout.

But he still goes on—on—I stare after him in horror.

"Back!" comes the command once again from the Town Hall steps.

For a moment Ludwig stands still. "Fire away, Lieutenant Heel!" he calls back to the Town Hall. Then he goes forward and stoops down to the thing lying there on the ground.

We see an officer come down the steps. Without knowing quite how, we are suddenly all standing there beside Ludwig, awaiting the coming figure that for a weapon carries only a walking-stick. He does not hesitate an instant, though there are now three of us, and we could drag him off if we wanted to—his soldiers would not dare to shoot for fear of hitting him.

Ludwig straightens up. "I congratulate you, Lieutenant Heel. The man is dead."

A stream of blood is running from under the dead man's tunic and trickling into the cracks between the cobblestones. Near his right hand that has thrust forward, thin and yellow, out of the sleeve, it is gathering to a pool of blood that reflects black in the moonlight.

"Breyer," says Heel.

"Do you know who it is?" asks Ludwig.

Heel looks at him and shakes his head.

"Max Weil."

"I wanted to let him get away," says Heel after a time, almost pensively.

"He is dead," answers Ludwig.

Heel shrugs his shoulders.

"He was our comrade," Ludwig goes on.

Heel does not answer.

Ludwig looks at him coldly. "A nice piece of work!"

Then Heel stirs. "That does not enter into it," he says calmly. "Only the purpose—law and order."

"Purpose " replies Ludwig contemptuously. "Since when do you offer excuse for yourself? Purpose! Occupation—that is all that you ask. Withdraw your men, so that there shall be no more shooting!"

Heel makes a gesture of impatience. "My men stay where they are! If they withdrew they would be attacked to-morrow by a mob ten times as big— You know that yourself. In five minutes I occupy all the road heads. I give you till then to take off this dead man."

"Set to it," says Ludwig to us. Then he turns to Heel once again. "If you withdraw now, no one will attack you. If you stay more will be killed. And through you! Do you realise that?"

"I realise it," answers Heel coldly.

For a second longer we stand face to face. Heel looks at the row of us. It is a strange moment. Then something snaps.

We take up the limp body of Max Weil and bear him away. The streets are again filled with people. A wide passage opens before us as we come. Cries go up. "Noske bloodhounds!" "Police thugs!" "Murderers!" From Max Weil's back the blood drips.

We take him to the nearest house. It is the restaurant, the Hollandische Diele. A couple of ambulance men are already there binding up two people who lie on the dance floor. A woman with a blood-stained apron is groaning and keeps asking to go home. With difficulty they detain her till a stretcher is brought and a doctor arrives. She has a wound in the stomach. Beside her lies a man still wearing his old army tunic. Both his knees have been shot through. His wife is kneeling beside him moaning: "He didn't do anything! He was only walking by. I was just bringing him his supper——" She points to a grey enamel billy-can. "Just his supper——"

The women dancers are huddled together in a corner. The manager is running to and fro excitedly, asking if the wounded cannot be taken elsewhere—His business will be ruined, if it gets about. No guest will want to dance there again.—Anton Demuth in his gilded porter's uniform has fetched a bottle of brandy and is holding it to the wounded man's lips. The manager looks on in horror and makes signs to him, but Anton takes no notice. "Do you think I'll lose my legs?" the wounded man asks. "I'm a chauffeur?"

The stretchers come. Again shots are heard outside. We spring up. Hoots, screams, and a clatter of broken glass. We run out. "Rip up the pavement," shouts someone, driving a pick into the cobbles. Mattresses are being thrown down from the houses, chairs, a perambulator. Shots flash out from the square, and now are answered from the roofs.

"Lights out!" A man springs forward and throws a brick. Immediately it is dark. "Kosole!" shouts Albert. It is he. Valentin is beside him. Like a whirlpool the shots have drawn everyone in. "Into 'em Ernst! Ludwig! Albert!" roars Kosole. "The swine are shooting at women!"

We crouch in the doors of the houses, bullets lashing,
men shouting; we are submerged, swept away, devastated, 
raging with hate; blood is spurting on the pavement, we
are soldiers once more—it has us again, crashing and raging
war roars above us, between us, within us—it is finished,
comradeship riddled by machine-guns, soldiers shooting at
soldiers, comrades at comrades, ended, it is finished——

Adolf Bethke has sold his house and come to live in the town.

After he took his wife back to live with him again all went well for a while. He did his work, she did hers, and it looked as if things would be all right again.

Then the village began to whisper. When his wife would go down the street in the evening voices would call after her; young men meeting her would laugh impudently to her face; women gathered up their skirts with pointed gestures. His wife never mentioned these things to Adolf. But she wilted under it and grew daily paler.

With Adolf it was the same. If he went to a pub, the conversation would immediately stop; if he visited anyone, he would be received with an embarrassed silence. Veiled hints and oblique questions were gradually ventured. Over the cups coarse innuendoes would be spoken, and after him would sound mocking laughter. He did not know quite what to do about it—Why, thought he, should he be accountable to the whole village for what was no man's affair but his own?—A thing that not even the parson appreciated, but eyed him disapprovingly through his gold spectacles whenever he passed him. It tormented him; but neither did Adolf speak of it to his wife.

And so they lived for some time, till one Sunday evening the pack of tormentors, grown venturesome, presumed to call after his wife in Adolf's presence. Adolf flared up. But she put her hand on his arm. "Don't mind them, they do it so often that now I don't hear any more."

"Often, do they?" Now at last he understood why she had become so silent—In a fury he made a rush to catch one of the fellows that had called out, but he vanished behind his companions who presented a barricade with their backs.

They went home and in silence turned in to bed. Adolf stared into the darkness. Then he heard a hushed, subdued sound, his wife was weeping under the bedclothes—Probably she had often lain so, while he slept. "Don't worry, Marie," he said gently, "though they should all talk." But she cried on.

He felt helpless and alone. Darkness stood hostile at the window, and the trees outside whispered like gossiping crones. Gently he laid his hand on his wife's shoulder. She looked at him, her eyes filled with tears. "Let me go away, Adolf; then they will stop."

She got up. The candle was still burning and her shadow staggered large through the room, it slid across the walls;

and by contrast she was small and frail in the feeble light. She sat down on the edge of the bed and reached for her clothes. Weird and gigantic the shadow reached out also, like a noiseless fate that had stolen in through the window out of the watchful darkness, and now grotesque, distorted, and tittering, was mocking her every movement—Soon he would fall on his prey and drag her off into the outer, droning darkness.

Adolf jumped up and plucked the white muslin curtains across the windows, as if thereby to shut off the low room against the night that stared in through the black, rectangular panes with its lusting owl's eyes.

The woman had already drawn on her stockings, and now reached for her bodice. Then Adolf stood beside her. "But Marie——" She looked up, and her hands dropped. The bodice fell to the floor. Adolf saw in her eyes the misery, the misery of dumb creation, the misery of a stricken animal, the forlorn, comfortless misery of those who cannot defend themselves. He put his arm about her shoulders. How soft and warm she was! How could anyone throw stones at her?—Did they not both mean well? Why then, should men torment and hound them so mercilessly?—He drew her to him and she yielded herself, her arm was about his neck and her head was on his breast. And so they both stood in their night-shirts, shivering, each sensible of the nearness of the other, each desiring to take comfort in the warmth of the other. They squatted together on the edge of the bed and said little; and when the shadows on the wall before them again began to dance because the wick of the candle had fallen over and the flame was about to go out, Adolf with a gentle motion of his great hand drew his wife into bed with him, as much as to say: Let us stay together; Let us try again—and he said: "We will go away from here, Marie." That was the only escape.