The Road Back (33 page)

Where am I? Where was I? Have I been sleeping? The 
mysterious sense of union is still there, I listen, not daring 
to move. But it stays, and ever stronger and stronger grows
the joy and the lightness, the skimming, radiating. I lie on 
the grass; the butterflies have gone, and more remote the 
sorrel rocks to and fro, the ladybird has reached its goal, 
the gossamers cling to my clothes; the undulation, pulsa
tion remains, it mounts into my chest, to my eyes. I move 
my hands, what pleasure! I bend my knees, I sit up, my 
face is wet; and only then do I discover that I am weeping, 
incontinently weeping, as if all that were now over, gone 
forever.

I still rest a while. Then I get up and walk off toward the cemetery. I have not been there before. Today is the first time since Ludwig's death I have ventured out alone.

An old woman goes with me to point out Ludwig's grave. It lies behind a beech hedge and is planted with periwinkle. The earth is still loose, and forms a hill against which are leaning a few withered wreaths. The gilt lettering of the inscription has faded already, it is no longer legible.

I have been rather afraid to come here. But this stillness is without alarms. The wind blows lightly over the graves, the September sky stands golden beyond the crosses, and in the plane trees a blackbird is singing.

Ah, Ludwig, today for the first time I have felt something of home and peace, and you are not here! Even now I hardly dare to believe it, I still suspect it is but weakness and weariness. But perhaps it will yield to us some day; we have only to wait, perhaps, and be silent, and it will come to us of itself; perhaps just these, our bodies and the earth, perhaps these only have not abandoned us, and perhaps we need do nothing but just listen and follow them.

Ah, Ludwig! and there we were searching and searching; we lost our way and fell down; we looked for a purpose, and we tripped over ourselves; we did not find it—and you have gone under! And now, is it to be just a breath of wind over the grasses, a blackbird singing at evening, that rallies us and leads us back home? Can a cloud on the horizon, a tree in summer, have more power then, than so much will?

I do not know, Ludwig. I cannot believe it, for I had given up hope. But it is true that we do not yet know what surrender is, we have not felt its strength. We know only power.

But if it should prove a way, Ludwig—what is that to
me?—without you——

Night is rising up slowly beyond the trees, bringing with it again unrest and melancholy. I stare down at the grave.

Footsteps crunch on the gravel. I look up. Georg Rahe! He looks at me with concern and urges me to go home.

"It's a long while since I saw you, Georg," I say. "Where have you been?"

He makes a vague gesture. "I've been trying my hand at a lot of things."

"Aren't you a soldier, then?" I ask.

"No," he answers harshly.

Two women in mourning are coming down the path between the plane trees. They have little green watering-cans in their hands, and begin to water the flowers on an old grave. The perfume of mignonette and wallflowers floats across.

Rahe looks up. "I thought to find some remnant of com
radeship there, Ernst. But it was mere barbarised gang
spirit, a thin, ghostly caricature of the war. People who
imagined that by stowing away a few dozen rifles they
would be able to deliver the Fatherland!—hard-up, out-
of-work officers who knew nothing better to do with them
selves than to be on the spot wherever there was any pros
pect of trouble—hoboes, permanent tramps who had lost
touch with everything, and went merely in fear of having
to get back into civil life again—the last, toughest clink
ers of war. And among them a few idealists and a mob of
curious young lads out for adventure—hunted, embittered,
desperate and mistrusting each other. Yes, and then——"

He is silent a while and remains staring before him. With sidelong glances I study his face. He is nervous and haggard, there are dark shadows round his eyes. Then he straightens himself up. "Why shouldn't I tell you, Ernst— I've chewed on it long enough, God knows! We had a bit of a fight one day. Against Communists, so they said. But then when I saw the dead, workers, some of them still in their old army tunics and military boots, former comrades, something inside me tore. I cleaned up half a company of Englishmen once with my aeroplane—that didn't worry me at all, war was war. But these dead comrades here in Germany—shot down by their own former comrades—no, not forme, Ernst!"

I think of Weil and Heel, and nod.

A chaffinch starts to sing just above us. The sun is descending, more golden. Rahe spits out a shred of tobacco. "Yes, and then—then a bit later two of our fellows were 
suddenly missing. They had some scheme for betraying the
whereabouts of one of our plants of rifles, so it was said. 
And without any investigation at all their own comrades 
beat them to death with clubs one night in the forest.
Feme
, 
they call it, but lynching is what it is. One of the dead men
had been a corporal under me at the Front. A real gem of
a fellow! So then I chucked it." He looks at me. "And 
that's what it has turned into, Ernst. Yes, and to think of
those other days I to think with what a will, what a sally 
we set out in those other days!" He flings his cigarette 
away. "Where the hell is it now?" Then after a pause he 
says quietly, "And how could this other thing ever have 
come out of that?—that's what I'd like to know——"

We get up and go off down the avenue of plane trees to the exit. The sunlight plays in the leaves and flickers over our faces. It is all so unreal—these things we have been talking of, and this soft, warm wind of late summer, the blackbirds and the cold breath of memory.

"And what are you doing now, Georg?" I ask.

He tops the heads of the thistles with his stick as we
walk. "I've had a look at most things, Ernst—professions,
ideals, politics—but I don't fit into this show. What does it 
amount to?—everywhere profiteering, suspicion, indiffer
ence, utter selfishness——"

I feel rather exhausted with walking, so we sit on a seat on the Klosterberg.

The spires of the town below shimmer green, the roofs steam, and smoke rises silver from the chimneys. Georg points down there: "Like spiders they lurk there in their offices, their shops, their professions, each one of them ready to suck the other man dry. And then the rest hanging over each one of them—families, societies, authorities, laws, the State! One spider's web over another! True, one may call that life, if one likes, and a man may even pride himself on crawling about under it his forty years and more; but I learned at the Front that time is not the measure of life. Why should I climb down forty years? I have been putting all my money for years now on one card and the stake has always been life. I can't play now for halfpence, and small advances."

"You weren't in the trenches the last year, Georg," I say. "Things may have been different with the Air Force, but sometimes for months together we would never see a single man of the enemy—we were just so much cannon fodder. There was no play, I assure you, no bidding, and nothing to put into the pool—there was merely waiting, till a man stopped his packet at last."

"I'm not talking of the war at all, Ernst—I am talking
of the youth and the comradeship——"

"Yes, that's all finished," I say.

"We have lived as it were in a hot-house," says Georg meditatively, "and now we are old men. But it's as well to be clear about it. I am not complaining: I'm merely balancing accounts. For me all roads are shut. There is nothing left but to vegetate. And I don't mean to do that. I mean to be free."

"Ach, Georg," I reply, "what you say only means an
end of things. But somewhere, somehow, there must be a
beginning for us too. I believe I had a first glimpse of it,
today. Ludwig knew it, but he was too sick "

Georg puts an arm round my shoulder. "Yes, yes, I 
know—you mean just be useful, Ernst——"

I lean against him. "When you say it, it sounds unctuous and hateful; but there must be a comradeship in it somewhere, Georg, though we don't understand it as yet."

I should like to tell him something of what I experienced there in the meadow. But I cannot hold it in words.

We sit in silence side by side. "Well, what are you going to do now, Georg?" I ask after a while.

He smiles thoughtfully. "I, Ernst?—It was damned bad luck I wasn't killed—As things are now I am merely rather ridiculous."

I push his hand away and look at him. "I think I'll go
off again for a bit first——" he reassures me.

He toys with his walking-stick and looks idly ahead. "Do you remember what Giesecke said once? In the 
asylum up there? He wanted to go to Fleury—back, you
see. He thought that might help him——"

I nod. "He's still up there. Karl went to see him the 
other day——"

A light breeze has risen. We look out over the town to the long row of poplars, where as boys we used to build tents and play at Red Indians. Georg was always the Chief; and I loved him as only boys, who know nothing about it, can love.

Our eyes meet. "Old Shatterhand!" says Georg solemnly, and then he smiles.

"Winnetou!" I reply just as quietly.

The nearer the day comes for the trial, the more often I think of Albert. And suddenly, one day, clear and vivid before me I see a wall of mud, a loop-hole, a rifle with a telescopic sight, and behind it a cold, watching, tense face: Bruno Mückenhaupt, the best sniper in the battalion, who never missed.

I jump up—I must go and see what he is doing—what he makes of it all now.

A high house with many flats. The stairs are running wet It is Saturday, and everywhere there are buckets, scrubbing-brushes and women with their dresses tucked up.

A shrill bell, far too noisy for the door. Hesitatingly someone opens. I ask for Bruno. The woman admits me. Mückenhaupt is in his shirt sleeves on the floor playing with his daughter, a little girl of five or thereabouts, with straw-coloured hair and a big blue bow. With silver paper he has laid down a river over the carpet and set little paper boats on it. Some have tiny tufts of wadding fixed on them —these are the steamers, with little celluloid dolls for passengers. Bruno is contentedly smoking a long, curly pipe. On the porcelain bowl is a picture of a solider kneeling and taking aim, with the legend:
Use Eye and Hand for the Fatherland!

"Hullo, Ernst," says Bruno, giving the little girl a pat and leaving her to go on with her play. We go to the sitting-room—a sofa and chairs of red plush, crochetted antimacassars spread over the backs, the floor so polished that I slip on it. Everything is neatly in its place; big conch shells, knick-knacks and photographs on the sideboard, and among them, in the middle, on red velvet under a glass dome, Bruno's medals.

We talk about the old times.—"Have you still got your marksman's card?" I ask.

"But what do you think, man!" protests Bruno reproachfully. "That has an honoured place!"

He brings it out from the drawer and turns over the pages with evident enjoyment. "Of course, summer was always my best time—you could see then till so late into the evening. Here—no, wait a minute—yes—June 18th, four head shots; 19th, three; 20th, one; 21st, two; 22nd, one; 23rd, none—wash out!—The sons of bitches got wise to it and were more careful—but here, look you, the 26th —a new lot came up who hadn't heard tell of Bruno— nine heads! What do you say to that now?"

He beams at me. "And all in two hours! It was comical —I don't know how it was, perhaps I was catching them under the chin and blowing them out, but anyway they shot up one after the other breast high above the trench like so many billy-goats—But see here now—29th June, 10.2 p.m., head shot—no joking mind you, Ernst—I had witnesses— see there it is:
Confirmed. Company Sergeant-Major Schlie!
Ten o'clock at night! almost in the dark! that's shooting for you, what? Man, but those were the times!"

"Yes, Bruno," I say, "the shooting was marvellous, no doubt about it,—all the same—what I mean to say is, don't you feel a bit sorry for the poor blighters sometimes?"

"What?" he says in amazement.

I repeat what I have said. "Of course, Bruno, one was right in the thick of it then—but today, it all looks rather different somehow."