The Sleepwalkers (85 page)

“What, are you thinking of going out at this late hour, Lieutenant Jaretzki?”

Sister Mathilde was sitting near the porch of the hospital, and Lieutenant Jaretzki, standing in the illuminated doorway, lit himself a cigarette.

“It was too hot to-day to go out …” he clicked his lighter shut, “a good invention, these petrol lighters … you know, don’t you, that I’m going away next week, Sister?”

“Yes, so I heard. To Kreuznach, to a convalescent home? … You must be glad to get out of here at last.…”

“Oh, well … I suppose you’re glad to get rid of me.”

“You haven’t been exactly a good patient.”

Silence.

“Come for a little walk, Sister, it’s cool now.”

Sister Mathilde hesitated:

“I have to go in again soon … but, if you like, let’s take a short turn.”

Jaretzki said reassuringly:

“I’m quite sober, Sister.”

They went out into the road. The hospital with its two rows of lighted windows lay to their right. The outline of the town beneath them was just discernible, its mass was a little blacker than the blackness of the night. A few lights were burning there, and on the hills, too, a light now and then gleamed from some solitary farmhouse. The town clocks struck nine.

“Wouldn’t you like to be leaving too, Sister Mathilde?”

“Oh, I’m quite happy.… I have my work.”

“It’s really frightfully decent of you to come for a walk with a good-for-nothing down-and-out like me, Sister.”

“Why shouldn’t I go for a walk with you once in a way, Lieutenant Jaretzki?”

“Why not, indeed.…” After a while: “So you want to stay here all your life, do you?”

“Not exactly … not when the war’s over.”

“Then you’re going home? … to Silesia?”

“How do you know that?”

“Oh, one soon finds out these things … and you think that it’ll be a simple matter just to go home … as if nothing had happened?”

“I haven’t really thought about it … things always turn out differently.”

“Do you know, Sister … now, I’m quite sober … but it’s my firm conviction that none of us will ever really get home again.”

“But we all want to get home again, Lieutenant; what should we have been fighting for, if not for our homes?”

Jaretzki stood still.

“What have we been fighting for? What have we been fighting for … you’d better not ask, Sister … besides, just as you said, things always turn out differently in any case.”

Sister Mathilde made no reply. Then she said:

“What do you mean exactly, Lieutenant?”

Jaretzki laughed:

“Well, should you ever have expected to be going for a walk with a boozing, one-armed engineer? … you’re a Countess, aren’t you?”

Sister Mathilde did not answer. She was not a Countess, but she was certainly a
von
and her grandmother was a Countess.

“Perhaps it doesn’t matter a rap … if I’d been a Count I should just have been the same, I should have had to booze just the same … you see, we’re all much too lonely for a thing like that to make much difference to us … you’re not offended, are you?”

“Oh, why should I? …” she saw his profile against the darkness and was afraid that he might try to seize her hand. She crossed to the other side of the road.

“Time to turn back now, Lieutenant.”

“You must be lonely too, Sister, or else you couldn’t stick it out … let’s be glad that the war isn’t coming to an end.”

They were once more at the iron gate of the hospital. Most of the
windows were now dark. One could see the lowered lights in the sick wards.

“Well, now I’m going to have a drink, all the same … you wouldn’t join me in any case, Sister.”

“It’s high time I was in, Lieutenant Jaretzki.”

“Good-night, Sister: thank you very much.”

“Good-night, Lieutenant.”

Sister Mathilde felt somehow disappointed and depressed. She called after him:

“Don’t be too late in coming back home, Lieutenant.”

Since that walk through the evening fields with Esch the Major often found himself going through Fischerstrasse after his day’s work was done, indeed he often caught himself slowing down a street or two farther on, standing uncertainly for a moment, and then turning back. One could have literally affirmed that he went slinking round and round the office of the
Kur-Trier Herald.
Perhaps he would actually have gone in had he not feared an encounter with Huguenau, and he did not want to meet Huguenau; the mere prospect of meeting him in the street filled him with embarrassment. But when Esch suddenly appeared instead of Huguenau, he could not tell at first whether he had not feared this encounter even more. For there he was, the Town Commandant in full uniform, his sword at his side, standing with a newspaper civilian fellow, standing in his uniform in the open street, and he had not only offered the fellow his hand but, instead of leaving it at that, he was actually filled with happiness, forgetting all decorum, because the man showed signs of accompanying him. Still, Esch had removed his hat most respectfully, and the Major was staring at close-cropped bristling grey hair,—and it was like an assurance, like a sudden evocation of Bible classes at home, and at the same time it was the reaffirmation of that afternoon’s brotherhood, bringing with it the need to say something kind to this man who was almost a friend, even if it were only that Esch might cherish a happy memory of him; he hesitated a little longer and then said: “Come along.”

As a result, these walks became frequent. Not so frequent, indeed, as the Major or even Esch would have liked. For not only were the times becoming more exacting—troops were continually being billeted and
withdrawn again, columns of motor transport rattled through the streets, and the Town Commandant had often to work all through the night—but Major von Pasenow could not bring himself to the point of haunting the
Herald
office again, and it was some time before Esch realized this. When he did, however, he began to make allowances; he waited discreetly near the Major’s headquarters, and when practicable took Marguerite with him. “The little monkey insists on coming with me,” he would say; and though the Major was not quite certain whether the child’s insistence was to be considered delightful or intrusive, he accepted it kindly and stroked Marguerite’s black curls. Then the three of them would wander over the fields or down the path beside the bushes on the river-bank, and often it was as if there stirred a yearning of farewell, a gentle and wistful flowing of the heart, a living ebb of resignation; it was like that certitude of the end in which every beginning has its source. But gentle as it was, it contained a trace of dejection, perhaps because Esch had no part in this farewell, perhaps because it was proper that he should be so excluded, perhaps, however, because Esch remained inscrutable on these points, persisting in a disappointing silence. That was somehow dark and secretive, for there was still a fading hope that everything could be made right and simple if Esch would only speak. Alas, it was amazingly difficult to determine precisely what he expected Esch to say; still, Esch ought to have known what it was. So they went on in silence, in the silence of the evening light and of a growing disappointment, and the radiance lying on the fields became a misleading and weary brightness. And when Esch took off his hat to let the wind blow through his short bristling hair, that gesture took on such an unseemly intimacy that the Major almost pitied the little girl for having fallen into the power of such a man. Once he said: “Little slave-girl,” but that too died out in weary indifference. Marguerite, however, ran on ahead and did not concern herself about the two men.

They had climbed to the top of the valley ridge and were following the edge of the forest. The short dry grass crackled under their shoes. Stillness lay over the valley. One could hear the creaking of the carts on the road below, the stubble-fields revealed the brown soil, and the wind blew cool from the dusky depths of the foliage. The vineyards hung green on the slopes, in the rustling of the trees the, silvery, metallic sharpness of autumn was already discernible, and the stiff stems by the forest edge with their black and red berries were ready to shrivel up. Over
the western flanks of the hills the sun was sinking, blazing like fire in the windows of the valley houses. Each house was standing on a long carpet of shadow pointing east; one could look down on the roofs of the prison buildings, flecked with red and black, and see right into the bleak, waste courtyards where there were also gloomy sharply cut shadows.

A small field-path led down the slope and entered the main road close by the prison. Marguerite, running on ahead, had turned down it, and the Major took this as a sign from God: “We’ll turn back,” he said listlessly. But when they were about half-way down they both came to a stop and listened: a curious brumming noise assailed them in rhythmic jerks; it came from below, but one simply could not tell from what quarter. Nothing could be seen but a car coming speeding from the town with its engine humming in the usual way and its horn hooting every minute or so; a long cloud of dust trailed behind it. The uncanny noise had nothing to do with the car. “An ominous sound,” said the Major uneasily. “Some kind of machine,” said Esch, although it sounded not at all like a machine. The car followed the windings of the road and with much tooting of its horn arrived at the prison. Esch’s sharper eyes observed that it was the Commandant’s official car, and he became uneasy when he noted that it did not appear again on the other side of the prison buildings. But he said nothing, only hurrying his steps. The curious sound grew harder and more sharply accentuated, and when they came in sight of the prison gate they could see the car halted there among a crowd of excited people. “Something has happened,” said the Major, and now they could hear welling from the barred and railed-in windows of the prison a frightful chorus beat out in bars of three phrases: “We’re hungry, we’re hungry, we’re hungry.… We’re hungry, we’re hungry, we’re hungry.… We’re hungry, we’re hungry, we’re hungry …” and from time to time the chorus was interrupted by a conglomerate farmyard howl. The chauffeur came running to meet them: “Please, sir, it’s a rebellion … we have been looking for you everywhere …” then he ran back to summon the gatekeeper.

The people made way for the Major, but he had come to a stop. The air was still vibrating with the threefold chorus, and now Marguerite began to dance in time to it: “We’re hungry, we’re hungry, we’re hungry,” she carolled. The Major gazed at the building with the dreadful impenetrable windows, he gazed at the dancing child whose laughter seemed to
him strangely mechanical, strangely evil, and horror overwhelmed him. Implacable destiny, inevitable trial! The chauffeur was still pulling at the iron bell and beating on the gate, but at last the grille was opened and the gate turned creaking and heavy on its hinges. The Major was leaning against a tree and his lips murmured: “This is the end.” Esch moved as if to help—the Major waved him off. “This is the end,” he repeated, but he drew himself up, touched the ribbon of his Iron Cross, and then, his hand on his sword-hilt, advanced quickly towards the prison gate.

He vanished inside it. Esch sat down on the small escarpment beside the road. The air was still shattered by the syncopated cries. A single shot rang out, followed by a renewed howling. Then a few last cries like the last drops from a turned-off water-tap. Then there was silence. Esch watched the gate that had closed behind the Major—“This is the end,” he echoed, and went on waiting. But the end did not come, no earthquake broke out, no angel descended, and the gate was not opened. The child squatted beside him, and he would have liked to take her in his arms. Like the wings of a stage scene the prison walls towered up to the bright evening sky, like teeth with gaps between them, and Esch felt far away from himself, far away from what was happening around him, far away from everything; he shrank from changing his posture and was no longer aware how he came to be there. Beside the gate hung a notice-board that could no longer be deciphered; of course it was a list of visiting-hours, but they were only words. For even the demagogues and murderers and deformed creatures that were imprisoned would come out of their prison into a new and more enlightened community in a Promised Land. He heard the child say: “There’s Uncle Huguenau,” and he saw Huguenau pass by at the double, saw him and was not surprised, so soundless was everything, soundless the step of Huguenau, soundless the movements of the people by the gate, soundless as the movements of artistes and rope dancers when the music has ceased, soundless as the paling of the clear evening sky. Remote beyond recovery lay the distant horizon before the dreamer, yet he was no dreamer but an orphan seeking vainly for his home; and he was like a man whose desire has transformed itself without his knowing it, like one who has merely deadened his pain but cannot forget it. The first stars came out in the sky, and it was to Esch as if he had sat for days and years in that self-same spot, wrapped in a padded and spectral silence. Then the movements of the waiting crowd became more infrequent, more shadowy, died away completely, and there
remained a soundless waiting black mass before the gate. And finally Esch was aware only of the damp grass resting against the palm of his hand.

The child had vanished; perhaps she had gone off with Huguenau; Esch did not bother, but stared at the gate. At last the Major appeared. He walked quickly with an unusually undeviating air, it almost looked as if he had a limp and were trying to conceal it. He made straight for the car. Esch had sprung to his feet. The Major was now standing in the car, he stood there drawn up to his full height and looked over Esch’s head, over the heads of the crowd that were pressing in silence round the car; he looked along the white road ahead of him and over at the town, in which lights were already twinkling from the windows. In the near vicinity a red light shone out; Esch knew where that was. Maybe the Major had observed it too, for he now looked down at Esch and said, gravely holding out his hand: “Well, it doesn’t matter.” Esch said nothing; he shouldered his way quickly through the crowd and took the path over the fields. Had he turned round, however, and had it not been so dark, he could have seen that the Major remained standing in the car, looking after him as he vanished into the night.