"I don't know," he repeated. "For some time now I haven't known anything at all any more. Earlier everything was clear and now everything is confused. I'd like to go to sleep and wake up in another age. But things aren't made that easy. I have begun to think damned late. I'm not proud of it."
Fresenburg rubbed the scar in his face with the back of his hand. "Don't let it bother you. During the last ten years they've drummed our ears so full of propaganda that it was hard to hear anything else. Especially anything that doesn't have a shrill voice. Doubt and conscience. Did you know Pohlmann?"
"He was my teacher in history and religion."
"When you get home call him up. Perhaps he's still alive. Give him my regards."
"Why shouldn't he be alive? After all, he's not a soldier."
"No."
"Then he's sure to be alive. He can't be more than sixty-five."
"Give him my regards."
"Yes."
"I must go now. Take care of yourself. We probably won't see each other again."
"Not till I get back. That's not long. Only three weeks."
"Yes, of course. Well, take care of yourself."
"You too."
Fresenburg stamped off through the snow to his company quartered in the ruins of the next village. Graeber stared after him till he disappeared in the dusk. Then he went back. In front of the church he saw the dark shadow of the dog. The door opened and a very narrow beam of light shone out for an instant. Canvas had been hung in front of the entrance. The brief light seemed warm, and it would have been almost like home if one had not known why it was there. He approached the dog. The animal sprang away and Graeber saw the damaged images standing in the snow outside the church. Beside them lay the broken bicycle. They had been carried out; every scrap of space inside was needed.
He walked on toward the cellar where his section was quartered. A pale sunset hung behind the ruins. Near one side of the church lay the dead. In the melting snow three more old ones from October had been found. They were soft and looked as though they were already half earth. Beside them lay the others who had died only that afternoon in the church. They were still pale and hostile and strange and not yet resigned.
CHAPTER IV
THEY woke up. The cellar was shaking. Their ears rang. Debris was falling everywhere. The anti-aircraft battery behind the village was firing madly. "Out of here " shouted one of the recruits.
"Quiet! Don't strike a light."
"Out, out of this rat trap!"
"Idiot! Where to? Be quiet! Damn it, are you all still recruits?"
A dull crash shook the cellar. Something broke and fell in the darkness. There was a crackling and shattering sound of stones, plaster, and wood. Pale lightnings whipped through the opening in the cellar.
"Some have got buried back there!"
"Quiet! That was just part of the wall."
"Out Before they bury us here!"
Figures could be seen in front of the dim cellar entrance. "Imbeciles!" someone swore. "Stay down here! You're safe from bomb fragments here."
The others paid no attention. They did not trust the un-reinforced cellar. They were right; just as were those that stayed. It was a matter of luck; one could just as well be crushed as killed by fragments.
They waited. Their stomachs were hollow and they breathed cautiously. They were waiting for the next hit. It must come close. But it did not. Instead they heard several explosions that followed one another in quick succession and were much farther away.
"Damnation!" someone shouted. "Where are our pursuit planes?"
"Over England."
"Shut up!" Muecke shouted.
"Over Stalingrad!" Immermann said.
"Shut up!"
The sound of motors came through in the pauses in the flak. "There they are!" Steinbrenner cried. "Those are ours!"
Everyone listened. Machine-gun fire trickled through the howling outside. Then came three explosions one after the other. They were hits close behind the village. Pale light skimmed through the cellar and in the same instant nightmarish white and red and green rushed in, the earth rose and burst in a storm of thunder and lightning and darkness. As it ebbed away there were screams from outside and the grating sound of walls crashing together in the cellar. Graeber pawed his way out from under the plaster. The church, he thought, and felt as empty as though only his skin was left and everything else had been squeezed out of him. The entrance to the cellar was still there; it was grayly visible as his blinded eyes began to see again. He moved. He had not been injured.
"Damn it!" Sauer said beside him. "That was close. I think the whole cellar behind us has been blown in."
They crawled over. The noise outside began again. In the midst of it one could hear Mueçke shouting commands. A flying stone had hit him in the forehead. Blood was running over his face, black in the flickering light. "Come on! Everyone! Dig them out! Who's missing?"
No one replied. The question was too silly. Graeber and Sauer were'clearing debris and stones away. It was slow work. Iron supports and big chunks of stone got in their way. They could barely see. There were only the pale sky and the glare of the explosions.
Graeber pushed the mortar aside and crept along the collapsed wall of the cellar. His face was close to the rubble and his hands kept feeling about. He listened intently, attempting to hear a cry or groan in the uproar, and at the same time he was groping through the ruins for human limbs. It was better this way than to dig at random. Time was vital when rubble fell.
Suddenly he found a hand that moved. "Here's someone!" he shouted. He dug away, searching for the head. He could not find it and pulled at the hand. "Where are you? Say something! Say where you are!" he shouted.
"Here," the buried man whispered in a pause in the firing, almost beside his ear. "Don't pull. I'm caught fast."
The hand moved again. Graeber tore the mortar to one side. He found the face. He felt the man's mouth. "Over here!" he shouted. "Help me here!"
There was only room in the corner for a couple of men to dig. Graeber heard Steinbrenner's voice. "Move over! Keep his face clear! We'll have to get at him from this side!"
Graeber squeezed himself aside. The others were working quickly in the darkness. "Who is it?" Sauer asked.
"I don't know. Who are you?"
The buried man said something. Graeber could not understand him. The others were working at his side. They pushed and pulled at the rubble. "Is he still alive?" Steinbrenner asked.
Graeber ran his hand over the face. It did not move. "I don't know," he said. "A couple of minutes ago he was still alive."
The noise began again. Graeber bent over the face in the rubble. "We'll have you out right away!" he shouted. "Do you understand me?"
He thought he felt something like a breath on his cheek but he was not sure. Above him Steinbrenner, Sauer, and Schneider were panting.
"He doesn't answer any more."
"We can't go on." Sauer struck his spade in front of him on something that rang. "There are iron girders here and the stones are too big. We need light and tools."
"No light," Muecke shouted. "Anyone who strikes a light will be shot."
They knew themselves it would be suicide to strike a light during the raid. "Idiotic ass!" Schneider growled.
"We can't get anywhere. We must wait till we can see."
"Yes."
Graeber crouched against the wall. He was staring up at the heavens from which the din poured down like a torrent into the cellar. He could recognize nothing. He only heard death, invisible and raging. It was nothing unusual. He had waited often before like this—and it had been worse.
Cautiously he ran his hand over the unknown face. It was now free of dust and dirt. He felt the lips. Then he felt the teeth. The open mouth closed. He felt the feeble bite on his fingers. The bite became stronger, then relaxed. "He's still alive," Graeber said.
"Tell him two men have gone out to find tools." Graeber brushed his fingers once more over th
e lips. They no longer moved. He searched for the hand in the rubble and held it tight. The hand too had ceased to respond. Graeber held it tight; that was all he could do. He sat thus and waited until the attack was over.
They brought tools and dug out the buried man. It was Lammers. He had been a tall, stringy fellow with eyeglasses. These, too, they found. They were lying a yard beyond him on the floor, and were unbroken, But Lammers was dead.
Graeber went on sentry duty with Schneider. The air was turbid and smelled of explosives. One side of the church had been blown in. The same thing had happened to the company commander's house. Graeber wondered whether Rahe was dead. Then he saw him standing, thin and tall, in the half-darkness behind the house; he was superintending the clean-ing-up operations at the church. Some of the wounded had been buried. The rest lay outside. They lay on blankets and on strips of canvas on the ground. Their eyes were directed upward. Not for help. They were afraid of the heavens.
Graeber walked past the fresh bomb craters. They stank and looked as black in the snow as if they were bottomless. Fog was already collecting in them. There was a small one near the hill on which the graves had been dug.
"We can use that one for a grave," Schneider said. "We have enough dead for it."
Graeber shook his head. "Where are you going to get the earth to fill it up with?"
"We can pry away from the sides."
"That won't help. The grave will still be deeper than the ground around it. It's simpler to dig a new one."
Schneider scratched his red beard. "Do graves always have to be higher than the ground around them?"
"Probably not. We're just used to it."
They walked on together. Graeber saw that the cross was missing from Reicke's grave. The explosions had hurled it somewhere into the night. Schneider paused and listened. "There goes your furlough," he said.
They both listened. The front had suddenly come alive. Parachute flares and rockets hung on the horizon. The artillery fire was heavier and more regular. The banging of mines could be heard. "Drum-fire," Schneider said. "That means we'll be thrown into the Une again. It's all up with your furlough."
"Yes."
They went on listening. Schneider was right. What they heard did not sound like a local attack. Heavy artillery preparation was going on along the whole unstable front. Early tomorrow, very likely, the general storm would break. Since nightfall the weather had become foggy, and it was growing steadily more impenetrable. The Russians would advance behind the fog as they had done two weeks before, when the company had lost forty-two men.
His furlough was done for. Graeber had never really believed in it anyway. He had not even written his parents about it. He had only been home twice since he had been a soldier and the last time seemd so long ago that it was already unreal. Nearly two years. Twenty years. It was all the same. He did not even feel disappointed. Just empty.
"Which direction do you want to take?" he asked Schneider.
"I don't care. To the right?"
"Good. Then I'll go around to the left."
The fog was settling in and became rapidly denser. It was like wading about in dark milk soup. It already reached to the neck and was billowing and seething coldly. Schneider's head swam away on its surface. Graeber walked to the left in a wide circle around the village. Now and again he was submerged. Then he came up again and saw at the edge of the milky surface the colored lights of the front. The firing was getting steadily heavier.
He did not know how long he had been walking when he heard a couple of single shots. Schneider, he thought. Probably getting nervous. Then he heard renewed shooting and now shouts too. He bent forward, sank into the protection of the fog, and waited, his rifle ready. The shouts came nearer. Someone called his name. He answered.
"Where are you?"
"Here."
He raised his head out of the, fog for an instant and at the same time leaped sidewise as a precaution. No one fired. He heard the voice now very close; but in the fog and the night it was hard to estimate distance. Then he saw Steinbrenner.
"The swine! They got Schneider through the head!"
It had been guerrillas. They had crawled up under cover of the fog. Schneider's red beard had apparently been an unmistakable target. No doubt they had expected to find the company asleep and the work of clearing up had spoiled their plan; but they had got Schneider.
"The bastards! We couldn't follow them in this damned soup!" 'Steinbrenner's face was wet with fog. His eyes sparkled. "We're to patrol in pairs now," he said. "Orders from Rahe. And not too far."
"All right."
They stayed close enough together to recognize each other. Steinbrenner peered sharply into the fog and glided cautiously forward. He was a good soldier. "I just wish we could grab one of them," he whispered. "I'd know what to do with him here in the fog. Jam a rag into his mouth so no one could hear, tie his arms and legs and then to work! You wouldn't believe how far you can pull an eye out before it tears." He made a motion with his hand as if slowly squashing something.
"I believe it," Graeber said.
Schneider, he thought. If he had gone to the left and I to the right they'd have got me. He felt no particular emotion. Similar things had often happened to him before. A soldier lived by accident.
They went on searching until they were relieved, but they found no one. The firing from the front reverberated. The sewing-machine rattle of the machine guns could be heard. The attack was beginning. "Here it comes!" Steinbrenner said. "If I were only up there! In an attack like this lots of replacements are needed. In a couple of days you might be a non-com."
"Or squashed flat by a tank."
"Oh, nonsense! That's what you old goats always think of right away. That's not the way to get ahead. Not everybody gets killed."
"Certainly not. Otherwise there'd be no war."
They crawled into the cellar. Steinbrenner spread out his blanket and arranged himself on his bunk. Graeber looked at him. This twenty-year-old had killed more men than a dozen old soldiers together. Not in battle; behind the front and in concentration camps. He had boasted of it more than once and was proud of having been especially sharp.
Graeber lay down and tried to sleep. He couldn't. He listened to the rumbling on the front. Steinbrenner fell asleep right away.
The day dawned gray and wet. The front was in uproar. Tanks were in battle. Toward the south the line was already pushed back. Airplanes droned. Transports were rolling across the plain. The wounded were coming back. The company was awaiting orders to move into the line.
At ten o'clock Graeber was summoned to report to Rahe. The company commander had changed his quarters. He now lived in another corner of the stone house which was still standing. Next to it was the company office. Rahe's room was at ground level. The furniture consisted of a three-legged chair, a large broken oven on which lay a couple of blankets, a campaign cot and a table. The windows had been mended with cardboard. The room was cold. On the table stood an alcohol burner with coffee.
"Your furlough has come through," Rahe said. He poured the coffee into a brightly colored cup without a handle. "Granted. You're surprised, aren't you?"
"Yes, sir."
"So am I. The form is in the office. Get it right away. And see that you leave immediately. Try to get one of trie cars to take you along. I expect all leaves to be canceled any minute. If you're gone you're gone, understand?"
"Yes, sir."
Rahe looked as though he was about to say something more. But then he reconsidered, came around the table and shook hands with Graeber. "All the best. And see that you get away from here. You're long overdue for leave. You've earned it."
He turned away and walked to the window. It was too low for him. He had to bend to look out.
Graeber turned and went around the house to the office. As he passed the window he saw Rahe's decorations. He could not see his face.
The clerk pushed the stamped and signed form toward him. "Damn your luck!"
he said ill-temperedly. "And not even married, eh?"
"No. But this is my first furlough in two years."
"Luck," the clerk repeated. "Furlough. When things are as hot as this!"
I didn't pick the time."
Graeber walked across to the cellar. He had stopped expecting the furlough and so he had not packed. There wasn't much to pack. Quickly he threw his things together. There was an enameled Russian icon among them that he intended to give his mother. He had found it somewhere along the way.
When he looked up Hirschland was standing in front of him. He held a piece of paper in his hand.
"What?" Graeber asked, and thought: Leave canceled! They've caught me at the last minute.