"Have some iodine put on it," Mueller said. "Where's the infirmary?"
"In the third house on the right, sir."
"Go there at once."
Muecke went. Mueller looked across at the dead. The woman lay sunk over forward on the wet ground. "Put them in and cover them up," he said. He was suddenly very angry without knowing why.
CHAPTER II
THAT night the rumbling on the horizon got heavier. The sky was red and the flickering of the artillery fire was more distinct. Ten days earlier the regiment had been withdrawn from the front and was now in reserve. But the Russians were coming closer. The front shifted from day to day. There was no longer any exact line. The Russians were attacking. They had been attacking for months. And for months the regiment had been going back.
Graeber awoke. He listened to the rumbling and tried to go to sleep again. He could not. After a while he put on his boots and went outside.
The night was clear and not cold. From behind the woods on the right came the sound of explosions. Parachute flares hung like transparent jellyfish in the air and showered down their light. Further toward the rear searchlights were probing for airplanes.
Graeber stopped and looked up. The sky was" moonless but full of stars. He did not see them; he only saw that it was a good night for fliers.
"Nice weather for men on leave," someone beside him said.
It was Immermann. He was on sentry duty. Although the regiment was in reserve, guerrillas had filtered in everywhere and sentries were posted at night.
"You're early," Immermann said. "You still have half an hour before the change. Tunt in and get some sleep. I'll wake you."
"I'm not tired."
"Furlough fever, eh?" Immermann looked questioningly at Graeber. "What luck! Furlough!"
"I haven't got it yet. They could still cancel all leaves at the last moment. That's happened to me three times before."
"It could be. How long have you been due?"
"Nine months. Something always interfered. Last time it was a flesh wound that wasn't good enough for a trip home."
"Tough—but at least you're eligible. I'm not. Unreliable. A hero's lot, and nothing else. Cannon fodder and fertilizer for the thousand-year Reich."
Graeber glanced around.
Immermann laughed. "The German glance. Don't worry, everyone's snoring. Steinbrenner too."
"I wasn't thinking of that," Graeber replied angrily. He had been thinking of it.
"So much the worse." Immermann laughed again. "It's got so far into our bones we don't even notice it any more. It's comic that in our heroic age the informers spring up like mushrooms in the rain! It makes one stop and think, doesn't it?"
Graeber hesitated a moment. "If you know that so well you ought to look out for Steinbrenner," he said finally.
"I don't give a damn for Steinbrenner. He can do me less harm than he can do you. Simply because I don't care. For somebody like me that's a sign of honesty. Too much tail-" wagging would make the big boys suspicious. An old rule for former party members, to keep from being suspected. Don't you agree?"
Graeber blew on his hands. "Cold," he said.
He did not want to get into a political discussion. It was better not to get involved in anything. He wanted to have his furlough, that was all, and he didn't want to endanger it. Immermann was right; distrust was the commonest quality in the Third Reich. One wasn't really safe anywhere. And when you aren't safe you'd better keep your mouth shut.
"When were you home last?" Immermann asked.
"Two years ago."
"That's a damn long time. You'll be amazed when you get back."
Graeber made no reply.
"Amazed," Immermann repeated, "at all the changes."
"What changes can there be?"
"You'll see."
Graeber felt for a moment a sharp fear like a stab in the stomach. He was familiar with that; it came now and then suddenly and without reason, and was not surprising in a world in which for so long nothing had been sure.
"How do you know that?" he asked. "You haven't been on furlough."
"No. But I know. In the disciplinary company you hear more than you do here."
Graeber stood up. Why had he come out? He did not want to talk. He had wanted to be alone. If he were only away! It was almost an obsession. He wanted to be alone, alone for a couple of weeks, alone in order to think, that was all. There was so much he wanted to think about. Not here—but back there, at home, alone, away from the war.
"Time for sentry change," he said. "I'll get my stuff and wake Sauer."
The rumbling went on through the night. The rumbling and the flickering on the horizon. Graeber stared across. The Russians—in the fall of 1941 the Fuehrer had announced they were done for, and it had looked that way. In the fall of 1942 he had announced it again, and it had still looked that way. But then had come the inexplicable time in front of Moscow and Stalingrad. Suddenly there were no further advances. It was like witchcraft. And all at once the Russians had had artillery again. The rumbling on the horizon had begun, it had drowned out the Fuehrer's speeches, it had never ceased, and then it had driven the German divisions before it, the road back. They had not understood, but suddenly rumors were abroad that whole army corps had been cut off and had surrendered and soon everyone knew that the victories had transformed themselves into flight. Flight as it had been in Africa, when Cairo had already seemed so close.
Graeber stamped his way around the village. The moonless light distorted all perspectives. The snow caught it and threw it back diffusedly. Houses seemed farther away and woods nearer than they actually were. There was a smell of strangeness and of danger.
The summer of 1940 in France. The stroll to Paris. The howling of the Stukas over a disconcerted land. Roads jammed with refugees and with a disintegrating army. High June, fields, woods, a march through an unravaged landscape. And then the city, with its silvery light, its streets, its cafés, opening itself without a shot fired. Had he thought then? Had he been disturbed? No. Everything had seemed right. Germany, set upon by war-hungry enemies, had defended itself, that was all.
And later, in Africa, during the enormous daily advances, in the desert nights full of stars and the clatter of tanks, had he thought then? No—not even during the retreat. It had been Africa, a foreign land, the Mediterranean lay between, then France and only after that came Germany. What was there to think about in that, even if it were lost? One couldn't win everywhere.
But then Russia had come. Russia and the defeats and the flight. And this time no sea lay between; the retreat went straight toward Germany. And it was not just a few corps that had been defeated, as in Africa—the whole German army had gone back. All at once he had begun to think. He and many others. That was easy and cheap. As long as they had been victorious everything had seemed to be in order, and whatever was not in order had been overlooked or excused because of the great goal. What goal? Had there not always been two sides to it? And had not one of them been from the start dark and inhuman? Why hadn't he thought about that sooner? But hadn't he really done so? Hadn't he often enough felt doubt and disgust and driven them away again and again?
He heard Sauer cough and walked around a couple of ruined cottages to meet him. Sauer pointed toward the north. A mighty, billowing fire thrust upward from the horizon. There was a sound of explosions, and sheaves of flame arose.
"Is that the Russians? There already?" Graeber asked.
Sauer shood his head. "No. Those are our engineers. They're blowing up that place over there."
"That means we're retreating farther."
"What else?"
They remained silent and listened. "I haven't seen an undamaged house in a long time," Sauer said after a while.
Graeber pointed over to the house where Rahe lived. "That one is still in pretty good shape."
"You call that good shape?- With the machine-gun holes and the burned roof and the wrecked barn?" Sauer exhaled noisily. "An undamage
d street is something I haven't seen in an eternity."
"Nor I."
"You'll soon see them. At home."
"Yes, thank God."
Sauer looked over at the conflagration. "Sometimes when you see how we are destroying Russia you could get scared. What do you think they would do to us if they got across our border? Have you ever thought about that?"
"No."
"I have. I have a farm in East Prussia. I still remember how we had to flee in 1914 when the Russians came. I was ten years old then."
"It's still a long way to the border."
"That depends. It can go damn fast. Do you remember bow fast we advanced in the beginning?"
"No. I was in Africa then."
Sauer glanced again toward the north. A fiery wall was rising there and then came a series of heavy explosions. "You see what we're doing there?" he said. "Now just imagine the Russians doing the same thing in our country—what would be left?"
"No more than here."
"That's what I mean! If we keep on going back it will happen."
"They're not at the border yet. You heard the lecture we had to go to day before yesterday. According to that we're shortening our lines in order to bring our new secret weapons into a favorable position for attack."
"Oh, nonsense! Who believes that sort of stuff? Then why did we advance in the first place? I'll tell you something: when we get to the border we must make peace, there's nothing else to do."
"Why?"
"But man, what sort of question is that? So they won't do the same thing to us that we've been, doing to them. Don't you understand that?"
"Yes. But what happens if they refuse to make peace?" "Who?"
"The Russians."
Sauer stared at Graeber. "They can't refuse! We offer to, and they have to accept. Peace is peace! The war will stop and we'll be saved."
"They'll have to make peace only if we surrender unconditionally. Then they will occupy all of Germany and you'll have lost your farm just the same. That's what you mean, or isn't it?"
Sauer was disconcerted for a moment. "Of course that's what I mean," he declared then. "But it is not at all the same thing. They wouldn't be allowed to destroy anything more if we surrender." He squinted his eyes and suddenly became a sly farmer. "Then our country will be undamaged and theirs will be smashed. Sometime or other they'll have to get out of Germany again and so in spite of everything we'll still practically win the war."
Graeber made no reply. Why am I talking again? he thought. I didn't want to get involved. Talking does no good. In these years what hadn't been talked over and picked to pieces? Every belief. Talking was dangerous and pointless. And the other thing, which had crept up noiselessly and slowly, was much too big and too vague and too sinister for talk. One talked about the service, about the food and about the cold. Not about the other thing. Not about that and not about the dead.
He returned along the road through the village. Planks and boards had been thrown across the streets to make it possible to cross the melted snow. The planks shifted as he walked over them and it was easy to slip off; there was no longer anything firm underneath.
He went past the church. It was little and bullet-scarred and Lieutenant Reicke was lying inside it. The door stood open. The evening before two more dead soldiers had been found, and Rahe had ordered that all three be given a military burial next morning. One of the soldiers, a lance corporal, could not be identified. .His face had been eaten away and he had no identification marks. His stomach, too, had been torn open and the liver was missing. Foxes, very likely, or rats. How they had got at him was a puzzle.
Graeber went into the church. It smelled of saltpeter, decay, and the dead. He threw the beam of his flashlight into the corners. In one of them stood two broken images. A couple of torn potato sacks beside them showed that under the Soviets the room had been used to store vegetables. Nearby a rusty bicycle without chain or tires stood in the snow that had drifted in. In the middle of the room lay the dead on strips of canvas. They lay there severe and aloof and alone, and nothing mattered to them any more.
Graeber closed the door and went on around the village; shadows hovered about the ruins and even the feeble light, seemed traitorous. He climbed the rise on which the graves had been dug. The one for Reicke had been widened so that the two dead soldiers could be buried with him.. He heard the low sound of water trickling into the hole. The earth that had been shoveled out shimmered dully. A cross with the names on it leaned there. Anyone who wanted to could, for a couple of days, find out from it who lay there. Not for longer—the village would soon be a battlefield again.
From the rise Graeber looked out across the land. It was barren and dreary and treacherous; the light magnified and obscured, and nothing was familiar. Everything was foreign and penetrated by the chill loneliness of the unknown. There was nothing that one could rely on; nothing that offered warmth. Everything was as endless as the land. Without boundaries and alien. Alien outside and in. Graeber shivered. That was it. That was what had become of him.
A clump of earth freed itself from the-pile and he heard it fall with a thud into the hole. In this hard-frozen earth had the worms survived? Perhaps—if they had burrowed deep enough. But could they live yards deep? And what did they find there to live on? From tomorrow on they would have plenty if they were still there.
They had found enough in recent years, he thought. Everywhere we have gone they have been able to feed on superabundance. For the worms of Europe, Asia and Africa we have been the Golden Age. We have turned over to them armies of corpses. Not only soldiers' flesh—women's flesh, too, and children's flesh and the soft bomb-torn flesh of the aged. Plenty of all. In the sagas of the worms we will be for generations the kindly gods of superfluity.
He turned away. The dead—there had been too many. At first the others; principally the others—but then death had encroached more and more upon their own ranks. The regiments had constantly to be re-formed; of the comrades who had been there at the beginning more and more had disappeared, and now they were just a handful. Of the friends'he had had there was only one left—Fresenburg, commander of the fourth company. The others were dead or transferred or in the hospital or in Germany unfit for service, if they had been lucky. All that had once looked different. And it had been called by a different name, too.
He heard Sauer's step and saw him climbing toward him. "Has anything happened?" he asked.
"Nothing. I thought for a moment I heard something. But it was only the rats in the paddock where the dead Russians are."
Sauer glanced at the mound under which the guerrillas had been buried. "They at least got a grave."
"Yes. They had to dig it themselves, though."
Sauer spat. "You can really understand the poor beasts. After all, it's their land we're ruining."
Graeber looked at him. By night one had different thoughts than by day, but Sauer was an old soldier and not excessively emotional. "How did you hit on that?" he asked. "Because we're retreating?"
"Of course. Just imagine their doing the same thing to us some day!"
Graeber was silent for a while. I'm no better than he is, he thought. I too kept pushing the idea away as long as I could. "It's funny how you begin to understand others when you get your own ass in a sling," he said then. "As long as everything's fine you just don't think about it."
"Of course not. Everyone knows that."
"Yes. But it's not much of a testimonial, is it?"
"Testimonial? Who cares about a testimonial when his own neck's at stake?" Sauer looked at Graeber with a mixture of amazement and irritation. 'The things you educated fellows keep thinking up! We two didn't start the war and we're not responsible for it. We're only doing our duty. And orders are orders. Aren't they?"
"Yes," Graeber replied wearily.
CHAPTER III
THE salvo was quickly smothered in the gray wool of the huge sky. The crows perched on the walls did not fly up. They simply replied with s
cattered cries that seemed louder than the shots. They were accustomed to more than that.
The three canvases lay half sunk in the melting snow. The one around the faceless man had been tied shut. Reicke lay in the middle. The torn boot with the remnant of foot in it had been laid in its proper place. But while he was being carried across from the church it had been pushed to one side and now hung down. No one wanted to put it back in place again. It only looked all at once as if Reicke were trying to dig his way deeper into the earth.
They shoveled in the wet clods. When the grave was filled there was still a pile of earth left over. Muecke looked at Mueller. "Shall we stamp it down?"
"What?"
"Stamp it down, sir. The grave. Then we can get the rest of the dirt in and put a few stones on top. Because of the foxes and wolves."