The Road Back (30 page)

"Yes, let us go away, Adolf!" She flung herself upon 
him, and for the first time she now wept aloud. He held 
her close and kept repeating: "We'll look for a buyer to
morrow—tomorrow morning, first thing "And in a storm of resolution, of hope, anger and misery he took her. So despair gave place to passion, until at last it was silenced; and the weeping grew feebler and feebler, until it succumbed at last like a child's, to exhaustion and quiet breathing.

The candle was extinguished, the shadows were gone, and the woman slept, but Adolf still lay awake brooding. During the night the woman awoke, and feeling that she was still wearing the stockings she had pulled on when she meant to go away, she took them off and smoothed them lightly before laying them on the chair beside the bed.

Two days later Adolf Bethke sold his house and his workshop. Soon after he found rooms in the town, and the furniture was moved in. The dog had to be left behind. But hardest of all was to say farewell to his garden, which was then just in flower. It was not easy to go away so, and Adolf did not know what might come of it. But his wife was ready and resigned.

The apartment in the town is damp and dark; the stairway dirty and beset with an odour of washing, and the atmosphere heavy with neighbourly hate and stuffy rooms. There is little work, but only the more time to brood. The two are not happy. It is as if all they had fled from had followed them here.

Adolf squats in the kitchen and cannot understand why things do not get better. At night after the paper has been read and the food cleared from the table they sit down opposite each other, then the vacancy of gloom settles down over the place, until he is dazed with listening and brooding. His wife makes herself something to do, she polishes the stove perhaps, and when he says: "Come, Marie," then she puts away her cloths and her emery-paper and comes. And when, pitifully alone, he draws her down to him and whispers: "We'll do it yet," then she nods. But she continues silent; she is not gay as he would like. He does not realise that it is as much his fault as hers—that they have grown away from one another during the four years they have been separated, and that now they are only a burden to each other.—"Say something, can't you?" he reproaches her. She looks scared, and, complying, she says something—"What can she talk about? when does anything ever happen here in this house, in her kitchen?"—But when things so stand between two people that they must talk, already it is beyond their power ever to say enough to mend them. Talk is good only when happiness is behind it—then it runs easy and light; but where man is unhappy, what help is there then in such fickle, ambiguous things as words? They can only make matters worse.

Adolf follows his wife's movements with his eyes, and behind them he sees another, a younger, light-hearted woman, the wife of his memory whom he cannot forget. Then suspicion flares up, and in exasperation he says: "Still thinking of him, are you?" And as she looks at him in surprise, he knows the injustice of what he has said; yet for that very reason he plunges in still deeper: "You must be! You weren't like this before! What did you come back for, then? You could have stayed with him, you know."

Every word does violence to himself—but who is silent for that? He talks on until his wife retreats to the corner and stands up on the curb of the sink out of reach of the light; and again she is crying like a child who is lost—Ach, but we are all children, foolish, lost children, and ever the night stands round our house!

He can bear it no longer; he goes out and wanders aimlessly through the streets. He stands before shop windows but without seeing. He goes wherever there is light. Electric trams ringing, motor-cars hooting by; people bump into him, and within the yellow circle of the lamp-posts stand the whores. They rock their fat behinds, they laugh and prod one another—"Are you happy?" he asks, and goes with them, glad to see and to hear something fresh. But afterwards he mopes round again. He will not go home, and yet he would like to go. He makes the round of the pubs and drinks himself tight.

So I find him, and listen to him and look at him as he sits there, blear-eyed, belching his words, and drinking still —Adolf Bethke, the wariest, best soldier! the most faithful comrade, that has helped so many and saved so many!

who was shelter and comfort, and mother and brother to me so often out there, when the parachute-stars hovered and the nerves were broken by long attack and threatening death. We slept side by side in the wet dugouts; and when I was sick, he would cover me. He could do everything, he was never at a loss—And now here he is, caught in the barbed-wire, tearing his hands and his face, and already his eyes have become bleared. "Ah, Ernst," he says cheerlessly, "if only we had stayed out there!—at least we were

together there " I do not reply—I merely glance at my coat-sleeve where are a few washed-out, reddish blood stains. It is Weil's blood. Weil shot down by Heel's order. So far we have come. There is war again; but no comradeship——

Tjaden is celebrating his marriage to the horse-butchery. The business has developed into a perfect gold mine and Tjaden's interest in Mariechen has increased proportionately.

In the morning the bridal pair drive to the church in a black lacquered coach, bedecked in white silk—four-in-hand, of course, as is only proper for a union that owes its origin to horses. Willy and Kosole have been chosen as witnesses. For such a festive occasion Willy has bought himself a pair of white gloves, made of pure cotton.—That cost us a great deal of trouble. Karl had first to get for us half a dozen orders to purchase, and then for two whole days the search continued—nowhere did they stock Willy's size. But it was worth all the trouble. The chalk-white sacks that he finally settled on, go so marvellously with his newly dyed swallow-tail. Tjaden has on a frock-coat, and Mariechen is in a wedding dress, all complete with veil and orange blossom.

Shortly before their departure for the registry office there is a slight mishap. Kosole arrives, sees Tjaden in his frock-coat, and has an attack of hysteria. No sooner has he more or less recovered himself, than he will glance again, in the direction where Tjaden's fly-away ears are gleaming over his stand-up collar, and the trouble starts all over again. There is no help for it—he would be sure to break down again in the middle of the church and endanger the whole ceremony—so at the last moment I am obliged to take his place as best man.

The entire butchery has been decked out with garlands. At the entrance are flowers and young birch trees, and even the slaughter-house has a garland of fir branches, to which Willy, amid general acclamation, adds a placard with the word
"Welcome!"

Of course there is not a skerrick of horse-flesh on the table; nothing but the best quality pork is steaming in the dishes and before us stands an enormous joint of roast veal ready carved.

After the veal Tjaden removes his frock-coat and takes off his collar. This enables Kosole to go to work in more comfort, for until now he has not dared let his gaze wander without running the risk of bringing on a choking fit—We all follow Tjaden's example and things begin to be comfortable.

During the afternoon his father-in-law reads a document making Tjaden a partner in the butchery business. We all congratulate him, and then Willy in his white gloves solemnly bears in our wedding present—a brass tray with a set of twelve cut-crystal schnapps glasses. Also three bottles of cognac from Karl's stock. The father-in-law is so touched by it that he offers Willy a position as manager of a chop-house he is proposing to open during the next few weeks somewhere or other. Willy agrees to think over the matter.

Ludwig also looks in for a moment during the course of the evening. At Tjaden's special request he comes in uniform, for Tjaden is anxious to show his people that he had a real Lieutenant for his friend at the Front. He soon goes again, but the rest of us stay until nothing is left on the table but bare bones and empty bottles.

It is midnight when we turn out at last into the street. Albert makes the suggestion that we now go to the Café Gräger.

"That's all shut down long since," says Willy.

"We can get in round the back," persists Albert. "Karl knows how."

We none of us have any real desire to go now, but Albert insists so long, that at last we give in. It surprises me rather, because usually Albert is the first to want to go home.

Although the front of the Café Gräger is all quiet and in darkness, when we cross the courtyard at the back we find everything there still in full swing—Gräger's is the profiteers' haunt, and every day business goes on there into the small hours of the morning.

One part of the room is made up of little cubicles with red velvet curtains. That is the wine department. Most of the curtains are drawn. Squeals and laughter issue from behind them. Willy grins from ear to ear: "Gräger's Private Moll-Shop, eh?"

We find seats for ourselves well to the front. The cafe is chock full. To the right are the tables for whores— Where business prospers gaiety flourishes, so twelve women are none too many here. But even they have competition, so it seems. Karl points out Mrs. Nickel to us, a voluptuous, dark-eyed hussy. Her husband is a profiteer in just a small way of business, who, but for her, might well have starved long ago. She helps him out by treating alone with his business confreres at her flat, usually for one hour.

At every table there is an excited back and forth of mumblings, whispers, asides and confused din. Fellows wearing English-made suits and new hats are led aside into corners by others in swallow-tails and no collars; with an air of secrecy packets and samples are brought out of side-pockets, examined, handed back, proffered again; notebooks appear, pencils are in motion; every now and then somebody will get up and go off to the telephone, or outside; and the air is humming with talk of truck-loads, of tons, of butter, herrings, bacon, flasks, dollars, gulden, stocks and shares, and figures.

Close beside us a particularly hot dispute is raging over a truck-load of coal. But Karl dismisses it with a scornful gesture. "That's just hot-air business! Somebody has heard tell of something or other, a second passes it on, a third interests a fourth; they run up and down and make a great deal of fuss, but there's seldom anything in it really. They're just the hangers-on, who will be happy if they can pick up a little commission by the way. The real profiteer-captains deal only with one or at most two middlemen, whom they know at first hand. That fat chap over there, for instance, bought two truck-loads of eggs in Poland yesterday. At the moment, they're ostensibly on their way to Holland, so I'm told; they'll be labelled afresh en route, and then come back again to be sold as Dutch new-laid eggs at three times the price. Those fellows ahead there are cocaine dealers; they make immense profits, of course. That's Diederichs sitting over there on the left—he deals only in bacon. Also very good."

"And it's for these swine we have to go round with a bellyache!" growls Willy.

"You'd have to do that anyway," replies Karl. "Why, only last week there were ten kegs of butter sold off by the State, because they'd been let go rotten through long standing. And it's the same thing with corn. Bartscher has just bought a couple of truck-loads for a few pence, because it had been allowed to get soaked with rain in some tumbledown State storehouse and was all mildewed."

"Who did you say?" asks Albert.

"Bartscher. Julius Bartscher."

"Is he here often?"

"Oh, yes, I think so," says Karl. "Want to make a deal with him?"

Albert shakes his head: "Has he got much money?"

"Like hay," replies Karl, with a certain tone of respect.

"I say! just look! there comes Arthur!" cries Willy, laughing.

The canary-yellow mackintosh enters by the back door. A couple of people stand up and make toward him. He brushes them aside, salutes this one and that one patronisingly, and walks on down the tables like a general.

I notice with surprise what a hard, unpleasant air his face has taken on, a look that is there even when he smiles.

He salutes us rather loftily. "Sit down, Arthur," smirks Willy. Ledderhose hesitates, but he cannot resist the opportunity of showing us, in his own domain here, what a big noise he has become.

"Just for a moment, then," says he, taking Albert's chair, who is now ranging through the room as if in search of somebody—I am about to go after him but refrain, supposing that he has merely to go into the yard a moment. Ledderhose calls for schnapps, and is already chaffering about five thousand pairs of army boots and twenty truck-loads of old stores with a fellow whose fingers are fairly flashing with diamonds. With an occasional glance Arthur reassures himself every now and then that we are also listening.

But Albert is going along the cubicles. Someone has said something to him that he cannot believe, but which, for all that, has stuck in his brain all the day like a thorn. When he peers through a chink into the last cubicle but one, it is as if an immense dagger were suddenly descending upon him. He reels a moment, then he rips the curtain aside. On the table are champagne glasses, and beside them a bouquet of roses. The table-cloth is awry and hanging half on the floor. Beyond the table a fair-haired person is curled in a settle. Her clothing is in disarray, her hair dishevelled, and her breasts are still bared. The girl's back is toward Albert, and she hums a tune as she combs her hair before a little mirror. "Lucie," says Albert hoarsely.