About the war, the present, we had said all we had to say. Too often and too intimately had we seen the bared teeth in its hideous face, too often had its nauseating breath set our hearts quivering as we listened on dark nights to the wounded pleading in two languages between the lines. We loathed it too deeply to be able to believe in the cant sent up like soap bubbles by the riffraff on both sides to invest it with the virtues of a “mission.”
Nor could the future serve as a topic. The future was a black tunnel full of sharp corners that we were going to bump into, and we lived in dread of it, for the appalling existence we led as soldiers who had to wish for the war to be lost had hollowed out our hearts.
We talked about the past; about those meager rudiments of what our fathers might have called life. About that all too brief span of human memories caught between the rotting corpse of the Weimar Republic and that bloated monster of a state whose pay we had to pocket.
“Picture a little café,” said Hecker, “under some trees, maybe, in the fall. The smell of moisture and decaying leaves in the air, and you’re translating a poem by Verlaine. You’re wearing very light shoes, and later, when dusk falls in opaque clouds, you scuff your way home—know what I mean? You scuff your feet through the wet leaves and look into the faces of the girls coming toward you …” He filled our glasses, his hands as quiet as those of a kindly doctor operating on a child, we touched glasses and drank … “Maybe one of the girls smiles at you, you smile back, and you both go on your way without turning round. That little smile you exchanged will never die, never, I tell you … It may be your signal of recognition when you meet again in another life … an absurd little smile …”
A marvelously youthful light came into his eyes, he looked at me and laughed, and I smiled too, grasped the bottle and poured. We drank three or four glasses, one after another, and no tobacco ever tasted finer than the one that blended with the exquisite aroma of the cognac.
At intervals the sniper’s bullet would remind us that time was dripping remorselessly away; and behind our pleasure and our enjoyment of the hour there was again that inexorable threat to our existence that could wipe us out with a bursting shell, a sentry’s warning cry, or a command to attack or retreat. We began to drink faster, our conversation grew more distraught, the gentle contentment in our eyes was joined by passion and hatred; and when, as was inevitable, the bottom of the bottle became visible, Hecker would become unutterably sad, his eyes would turn toward me like blurred disks, and in a low, almost incoherent voice he would begin whispering: “That girl, you know, lived at the end of an avenue, and the last time I was on leave …”
That was the signal for me to cut him short. “Lieutenant,” I would say, coldly and severely, “be quiet, d’you hear?” He had told me himself, “When I start talking about a girl who lived at the end of an avenue, it’s time for you to tell me to shut up, d’you understand? You must, you must!”
And I obeyed this command, although it went against the grain, for when I reminded him, Hecker would stop in his tracks, the light in his eyes would go out, they would become hard and sober, and around his mouth the old creases of bitterness would reappear …
On that particular day, however, the one I am talking about, everything was unusual. We had been issued underwear, brand-new underwear, and a fresh supply of cognac. I had shaved and even gone so far as to wash my feet in the tin can; in fact, I practically took a bath, for they had even sent us new socks, socks with white borders that were still really white.
Hecker was leaning back on our pallet, smoking and watching me wash. It was absolutely silent outside, but this silence was evil and numbing, a threatening silence, and I could tell from Hecker’s hands when he lit a fresh cigarette from the old one that he was on edge and afraid: we were all afraid, everyone who was still human was afraid.
Suddenly we heard the faint scurrying sound the sniper’s bullet always made in the earth bank, and with this gentle sound the silence ceased to be unnerving. With one breath we both laughed out loud; Hecker jumped to his feet, stamped around a bit, and shouted like a child, “Hooray, hooray, now let’s get drunk, drunk in honor of our friend who always fires at the same place and always at the wrong place!”
He unfastened the catch, slapped me on the shoulder, and waited patiently until I had pulled my boots on again and seated myself in readiness for our drinking session. Hecker spread a clean handkerchief over the case and drew two light-brown cigars of impressive length from his breast pocket.
“You can’t beat that,” he said as he laughed, “cognac and a good cigar!” We touched glasses, drank, and smoked with slow, rapturous enjoyment.
“How about you talking for a change?” cried Hecker. “Come on, tell me something about yourself,” he said, giving me a serious look. “You know something? You’ve never told me a thing, you’ve always let me rattle on.”
“There’s not much to tell,” I observed in a low voice, and then I looked at him, poured some more cognac, waited, and then we drank together, and it was marvelous to feel the cool, superbly warming drink flowing into us in a stream of dark gold. “You see,” I began diffidently, “I’m younger than you and a bit older. I was hopeless in school, so I had to quit and learn a trade, they apprenticed me to a cabinetmaker. That was pretty hard to take at first, but in time, after a year or so, I began to enjoy the work. There’s something tremendously satisfying about working with wood. You make yourself a drawing on some nice white paper, get your wood ready, clean, fine-grained planks, and then you plane them with loving care while the smell of wood rises into your nostrils. I believe I would have made quite a good cabinetmaker, but at nineteen I was called up, and I’ve never recovered from the first shock I got after passing through the barracks gates, not even now, after six years, that’s why I don’t talk much … With you fellows it’s a bit different …” I blushed, it was the longest speech I had ever made in my life.
Hecker looked at me reflectively. “I see,” he said. “I like the sound of that: cabinetmaker.”
“But haven’t you ever had a girl?” he suddenly resumed, raising his voice, and I knew at once that I would soon have to cut him short again. “Never ever? Haven’t you ever leaned your head on a soft shoulder and smelled her hair … never?” This time it was he who refilled our glasses, and with these two drinks the bottle was empty. Hecker glanced round with a look of terrible sadness. “No walls here to smash a bottle against, eh? Wait a minute,” he shouted suddenly with a wild laugh, “our friend must have something too, let’s have him smash it.”
He stepped forward and placed the bottle on the spot where the sniper’s bullets always struck the earth, and before I could stop him he had taken the next bottle out of our bar, opened it, and filled our glasses. We touched glasses, and at the same moment a gentle “ping” sounded from outside on the bank: we looked up in alarm and saw how for an instant the bottle stood steady, almost rigid, but the next instant its top half slid off, leaving the bottom half still standing. The chunk of broken glass rolled into the ditch almost to our feet, and all I remember is being frightened, frightened from the moment the bottle was shattered …
At the same time I was seized by a profound indifference while I helped Hecker empty the second bottle as fast as he filled our glasses. Yes, fear and at the same time indifference. Hecker was frightened too, I could tell; our agonized eyes avoided each other, and that day I couldn’t summon the strength to interrupt him when he started talking about the girl …
“You know,” he said urgently, looking beyond me, “she lived at the end of an avenue, and the last time I was on leave it was in the fall, real fall weather, late afternoon, and I can’t begin to describe how beautiful the avenue was.” A wild, rapturous, yet somehow frenzied happiness leaped into his eyes, and if only for the sake of that happiness I was glad I had not interrupted him; as he went on talking he worked his hands like a person trying to give shape to something without knowing how, and I could feel him searching for the
right expressions to describe the avenue to me. I filled our glasses, we drank up, I filled them again, we tossed them back …
“The avenue,” he said huskily, almost stammering, “the avenue was all golden—I’m not kidding, it really was, black trees with gold, and a grayish blue shimmer in the gold—I was in ecstasy as I walked slowly along under the trees as far as that house, I felt as if that fantastic beauty had spun a web around me, and I drank in the intoxicating transience of our human happiness. Do you know what I mean? That magical certainty moved me inexpressibly … and … and …”
Hecker was silent for a while, evidently searching for words again; I poured out some more cognac, we touched glasses, and drank: at that precise instant the bottom half of the bottle on the bank was shattered too, and with maddening deliberation the pieces of glass rolled one after another into the ditch.
I was startled to see Hecker jump to his feet, lean down, and thrust the blanket aside. I held on to his sleeve, and I knew now why I had been frightened all along. “Let go!” he shouted. “Let go … I’m going—I’m going to the avenue …” Outside, I stood next to him, holding the bottle. “I’m going,” whispered Hecker, “I’m going all the way along it, right to the end where the house is! There’s a brown iron gate in front of it, and she lives upstairs, and …” I ducked hurriedly as a bullet whistled past me into the bank, landing just where the bottle had stood.
Hecker was whispering incoherent, rambling words, on his face a look of serene happiness, mild and gentle now, and there might still have been time to call him back as he had ordered me to. From his ramblings I could distinguish only the same words, repeated over and over, “I’m going—don’t try to stop me, I’m going to the house where my girl lives …”
I felt a real coward, crouching there on the ground holding the bottle of cognac, and guilty at being sober, cruelly sober, while Hecker wore an expression of unutterably sweet, serene drunkenness. He was staring straight ahead at the enemy lines between black sunflower stalks and shelled farmhouses; I watched him narrowly as he smoked a cigarette.
“Lieutenant,” I called softly, holding out the bottle, “come and have a drink,” and when I tried to stand up I realized I was drunk too, and I cursed myself to the very depths of my being for not having called him back soon enough, for now it was obviously too late. He hadn’t heard me call, and just as I was about to open my mouth to call him again, at least to entice him back out of danger with the bottle, I heard the clear, high-pitched “ping” of an exploding bullet. With appalling suddenness Hecker turned round, gave me one brief and blissful smile, placed his cigarette on the bank, and collapsed, falling slowly, slowly backward. An icy hand gripped my heart, the bottle slid from my grasp, and I watched in shock and dismay as the cognac, gently gurgling, flowed out and formed a little puddle. Once again it was very quiet, and the silence was menacing …
At last I found the courage to raise my eyes and look into Hecker’s face: his cheeks had caved in, his eyes were black and rigid, yet his face still bore a hint of that smile which had blossomed there as he whispered those frenzied words. I knew he was dead. But all of a sudden I started shouting, shouting like a madman. I leaned over the bank, oblivious to all caution, and shouted to the next dugout, “Heini! Help! Heini, Hecker’s dead!” and without waiting for an answer I sank sobbing to the ground, seized by unspeakable horror, for Hecker’s head had raised itself a little, barely perceptibly, but visibly, and blood was welling out of it and a ghastly yellowish-white substance that could only be his brains; it flowed on and on, and frozen with terror I could only think: Where can all this blood be coming from, just from his head? The whole floor of our dugout was covered with blood, the clayey soil didn’t absorb it, and the blood reached the spot where I knelt beside the empty bottle …
I was alone in the world with Hecker’s blood, for Heini didn’t answer and the gentle swish of the sniper’s bullet was no longer audible …
Suddenly, however, the silence was rent by an explosion, I scrambled to my feet, and at the same moment something struck me in the back, although strangely enough I felt no pain. I sank forward with my head on Hecker’s chest, and while noise sprang to life around me, the frantic barking of the machine gun from Heini’s dugout and the sickening impact of the grenade launchers that we called pipe organs, I became quite calm: for mingling with Hecker’s dark blood that still covered the bottom of the dugout was a lighter, miraculously light blood that I knew was warm and my own; and I sank down and down until I found myself, smiling happily, at the entrance to that avenue which Hecker hadn’t known how to describe, because the trees were bare, solitude and desolation were nesting among wan shadows, and hope died in my heart, while far off, at an immense distance, I could see Hecker’s beckoning figure outlined against a soft golden light …
IN THE DARKNESS
Light the candle,” said a voice.
There was no sound, only that exasperating, aimless rustle of someone trying to get to sleep.
“Light the candle, I say,” came the voice again, on a sharper note this time.
The sounds at last became distinguishable as someone moving, throwing aside the blanket, and sitting up; this was apparent from the breathing, which now came from above. The straw rustled too.
“Well?” said the voice.
“The lieutenant said we weren’t to light the candle except on orders, in an emergency,” said a younger, diffident voice.
“Light the candle, I say, you little pipsqueak,” the older voice shouted back.
He sat up now too, their heads were on the same level in the dark, their breathing was parallel.
The one who had first spoken irritably followed the movements of the other, who had tucked the candle away somewhere in his pack. His breathing relaxed when he eventually heard the sound of the matchbox.
The match flared up and there was light: a sparse yellow light.
Their eyes met. Invariably, as soon as there was enough light, their eyes met. Yet they knew one another so well, much too well. They almost hated each other, so familiar was each to each; they knew one another’s very smell, the smell of every pore, so to speak, but still their eyes met, those of the older man and the younger. The younger one was pale and slight with a nondescript face, and the older one was pale and slight and unshaven with a nondescript face.
“Now, listen,” said the older man, calmer now, “when are you ever going to learn that you don’t do everything the lieutenants tell you?”
“He’ll …” the younger one tried to begin.
“He won’t do a thing,” said the older one, in a sharper tone again and lighting a cigarette from the candle. “He’ll keep his trap shut, and if he doesn’t, and I don’t happen to be around, then tell him to wait till I get back, it was me who lit the candle, understand? Do you understand?”
“Yessir.”
“To hell with that Yessir crap, just Yes when you’re talking to me. And undo your belt,” he was shouting again now, “take that damn crappy belt off when you go to sleep.”
The younger man looked at him nervously and took off his belt, placing it beside him in the straw.
“Roll your coat up into a pillow. That’s right. Okay … and now go to sleep, I’ll wake you when it’s time for you to die …”
The younger man rolled onto his side and tried to sleep. All that was visible was the young brown hair, matted and untidy, a very thin neck, and the empty shoulders of his uniform tunic. The candle flickered gently, letting its meager light swing back and forth in the dark dugout like a great yellow butterfly uncertain where to settle.
The older man stayed as he was, knees drawn up, puffing out cigarette smoke at the ground in front of him. The ground was dark brown, here and there white blade marks showed where the spade had cut through a root or, a little closer to the surface, a tuber. The roof consisted of a few planks with a groundsheet thrown over them, and in the spaces between the planks the groundsheet sagged a little because the earth lying on to
p of it was heavy, heavy and wet. Outside, it was raining. The soft swish of steadily falling water sounded indescribably persistent, and the older man, still staring fixedly at the ground, now noticed a thin trickle of water oozing into the dugout under the roof. The tiny stream backed up slightly on encountering some loose earth, then flowed on past the obstacle until it reached the next one, which was the man’s feet, and the ever-growing tide flowed all around the man’s feet until his black boots lay in the water just like a peninsula. The man spat his cigarette butt into the puddle and lit another from the candle. In doing so he took the candle down from the edge of the dugout and placed it beside him on an ammunition case. The half where the younger man was lying was almost in darkness, reached now by the swaying light in brief spasms only, and these gradually subsided.
“Go to sleep, damn you,” said the older man. “D’you hear? Go to sleep!”
“Yessir … yes,” came the faint voice, obviously wider awake than before, when it had been dark.
“Hold on,” said the older man, less harshly again. “A couple more cigarettes and then I’ll put it out, and at least we’ll drown in the dark.”
He went on smoking, sometimes turning his head to the left, where the boy was lying, but he spat the second butt into the steadily growing puddle, lit the third, and still he could tell from the breathing beside him that the kid couldn’t sleep.
He then took the spade, thrust it into the soft earth, and made a little mud wall behind the blanket forming the entrance. Behind this wall he heaped up a second layer of earth. With a spadeful of earth he covered the puddle at his feet. Outside, there was no sound save the gentle swish of the rain; little by little, the earth lying on top of the groundsheet had evidently become saturated, for water was now beginning to drip from above too.
“Oh, shit,” muttered the older man. “Are you asleep?”