Still, that might pass. But even the talk is different, and that derives from the clothes too. Fellows who formerly wouldn't have said booh to a goose are now playing the heavy uncle. The men with good clothes have a patronising air, and those with shabby ones are for the most part silent. A schoolmaster, who was formerly a corporal and a bad one at that, condescends to ask Karl and Ludwig about their examination. If I were Ludwig I'd pour my beer down his neck. Karl, thank Heaven! makes a few unflattering remarks about education and examinations and the rest of it, and extols business and trade, instead.
The talk here makes me quite ill. I would rather we had never come together again—then at least we might still have preserved a memory. In vain do I try to picture all these fellows in dirty uniforms again, and this Konersmann's Restaurant as a canteen in the rest area. It cannot be done. The things here are stronger—the things that differentiate us from one another are too powerful. The common interest is no longer decisive. It has broken up already, and given place to the interest of the individual. Now and then something still will shine through from that other time when we all wore the same rig, but already it is diminished and dim. These others here are still our comrades, and yet our comrades no longer—that is what is so sad. All else went west in the war, but comradeship we did believe, in; now only to find that what death could not do, life is achieving—it is driving us asunder.
But we are unwilling to believe it. We all sit down at one table together—Ludwig, Albert, Karl, Adolf, Willy, Tjaden, Valentin. A feeling of gloom is over us.
"Anyway, we'll stick together," says Albert glancing toward the big room. We agree and shake hands on it, whilst over yonder the good clothes are already beginning to draw their chairs closer together. We do not mean to be party to this reclassification. We will start with what the others are discarding. "Come on, Adolf," I say to Bethke, "join in too." He lays his great paw on our hands and for the first time in many a day he is smiling again.
We sit there together a while, but Adolf Bethke soon goes. He looks rather bad. I remind myself that I must go and see him one of these days.
A waiter appears and whispers something to Tjaden. He dismisses him with a shake of the head—"Ladies have no business here." We look up in surprise. Tjaden smiles, flattered. The waiter returns, and behind him, with quick strides, comes a great, strapping wench. Tjaden is taken aback. We grin. But no, he knows how to look after himself. He makes a grand gesture: "My fiancée."
For Tjaden that ends the matter, so Willy undertakes the further introductions. He begins with Ludwig and ends up with himself. Then he invites the girl to be seated. She does so. Willy sits down beside her and rests his arm along the back of her chair. "Your father is the famous butcher at Neuengraben, I believe?" he says by way of opening the conversation.
The girl nods. Willy draws up closer. That does not worry Tjaden in the slightest. He laps up his beer contentedly. But under Willy's gay and insistent talk the young lady begins to thaw.
"I've so much wanted to meet you gentlemen," she tells us. "Dearie has told me so often about you, but whenever I asked him to bring you out he never would."
"What?" says Willy, annihilating Tjaden with a glance, "bring us out? But of course, we should be awfully pleased, really most extraordinarily pleased to come. The old rascal, he never said a word of it to us!"
Tjaden begins to show signs of uneasiness. Kosole leans forward. "So Dearie, has often told you about us, has he? And what has he told you exactly, I wonder?"
"We must be going now, Mariechen," Tjaden breaks in, making to rise. But Kosole pushes him down again into his chair. "Pray, be seated, Dearie. What did he tell you, now, Fräulein?"
Mariechen is utterly confiding. She looks at Willy coyly: "Would you be Herr Homeyer?" Willy bows to the Butchery. "Then it was you that he saved?" she prattles on, while Tjaden fidgets in his chair as if he were seated on an ant-heap. "But you haven't forgotten, surely?"
Willy holds bis head. "I was buried afterwards, you know," he explains. "And that plays the very deuce with a man's memory I It was most unfortunate. Such a lot of things slipped my memory then."
"Saved?" asked Kosole eagerly.
"I'm going, Mariechen; are you coming or aren't you?" says Tjaden. Kosole holds him fast.
"He is so shy," giggles Mariechen beaming. "And first he had to kill three negroes who wanted to butcher Herr Homeyer with their tomahawks! One of them with his fist, too——"
"With his fist," repeats Kosole in a hollow voice.
"Yes, and the rest with their own tomahawks! And then afterwards he carried you back." Mariechen surveys Willy's six feet five and a half inches and nods approbation of her fiancé. "There's no harm in telling for once of what you did, Dearie."
"No, indeed!" agreed Kosole. "It's a thing that ought to be told, once."
For a moment Willy gazes deliciously into Mariechen's eyes. "Yes, he's a wonderful fellow!" he assures her. Then he nods across at Tjaden. "Just come outside with me a moment."
Tjaden rises dubiously. But Willy means no harm. A few minutes later the two reappear arm in arm. Willy stoops down to Mariechen: "Well, so that's settled—I'll be calling round tomorrow evening. I have still to thank him for rescuing me from those negroes—— But, you know, I saved your fiancé once, too."
"No! Did you really?" says Mariechen astonished.
"Perhaps he'll tell you about that, too, some day," grins Willy. With a sigh of relief Tjaden now steams out with his lady.
"You see, they're slaughtering to-morrow," says Willy.— But nobody is listening. We have had to control ourselves too long already, and we burst into shrieks of laughter, whinneying like a stableful of starved horses. Kosole almost makes himself sick, he shakes so. It is long before Willy can tell us what a very advantageous contract he has been able to make with Tjaden for a steady supply of horse-sausage. "I've got the old man in the hollow of my hand," he grins.
5.
I sat at home all the afternoon and tried to do something, but nothing has come of it. For an hour already I have been roaming aimlessly through the streets. In the course of my patrolling I go past the new restaurant, the Holländische Diele. This is the third gin shop to go up within the last three weeks. These things with their gay placards are springing up like mushrooms everywhere among the houses. The Holländische Diele is the largest and flashiest.
Before the illuminated glass door stands a porter, looking like a cross between a bishop and a colonel of the hussars, an enormous fellow with a gilded baton in his hand. I catch his eye—suddenly his dignity deserts him, and he prods me in the stomach with his club and grins: "Hullo, Ernst, you old scarecrow! Commong sa va, as the Frenchman says."
It is Corporal Anton Demuth, some time our sergeant-cook. I salute smartly; in the army we were always being told that salutes should be given to the uniform, not to the wearer. But this trick uniform here is very high class indeed, it calls for a bow at the least.
"Hullo, Anton!" I laugh. "But to get down to business, have you got anything to eat?"
"Bet your life," he answers affirmatively. "Franz Elstermann, remember Franz? lie's here in this syrup-shop too. He's the cook!"
"And what time did you say I should call?" I ask, for that in itself is sufficient recommendation. Elstermann and Demuth were the prize scroungers of all France.
"Some time after one, tonight," says Anton, giving me a wink. "We've just scored a dozen or so geese off a Food Officer Inspector—hush goods, you know. You can bet your life Elstermann will amputate a few of them first. After all, who's to say geese don't have wars where they might lose a leg or so, eh?"
"Nobody," I say. "Get much business here?"
"Packed to the doors every night. Take a look in."
He pulls the curtain a little to one side and through a chink I peer into the room. Soft, warm light over the tables, long trailers of bluish cigar smoke floating through it, carpets glowing, shining porcelain, gleaming silver. Women seated at the tables, surrounded b
y waiters, and men beside them who do not appear to be sweating in the least, nor are they even embarrassed. With what wonderful self-possession they give their orders!
"Well, my lad, how would you like to have one of them on the switchback, eh?" asks Anton prodding me again in the ribs.
I do not answer; this rich, colourful glimpse of life touches me strangely. There is something almost unreal in it, as if I only dreamed that I stood here on the dark street in the slushing snow and saw through the chink of a door this strange scene. It enchants me—though of course it is nothing, merely a few profiteers disgorging their money. But we lay too long out there in filthy holes under the ground not to feel sometimes a passionate, almost insane craving for luxury and elegance surge up in us—for does not luxury mean to be sheltered, to be cared for?—and that is the one thing we have had no knowledge of.
"Well, lad, what d'you think?" asks Anton again. "Nice soft little pussies to go to bed with, what?"
I feel rather foolish, but at the moment I cannot think what to say. All this talk I have been using for years suddenly seems to me crude and repulsive—Fortunately Anton has now to resume his poise and dignity; a car is coming. A slim creature steps out and goes in through the door; she is stooping forward a little; she holds her fur to her breast with one hand, and her hair shows gleaming under a close-fitting golden toque; her knees close together, little feet, and a small face. With light, springy ankles she trips by me, wafting a faint, bitter smell, and I am filled with a wild desire to be able to go in with this lovely creature through the revolving doors, in to the tables there, into that pampered, prosperous atmosphere of colour and light, and so to saunter on through a benign, carefree existence, surrounded by waiters and servants, well wrapped in a protective, insulating layer of wealth—rid for ever of all the poverty and filth that for years have been our daily portion.
I suppose I look rather school-boyish, for suddenly Anton looses a peal of laughter from under his beard, and with a sly look and another prod, he says: "Though they go in silks and satins, in bed they're all the same."
"Naturally," I say, and follow up with a smutty joke so that he won't see through me. "Till one o'clock then, Anton!"
"Why not?" he responds solemnly, "or Bongsoahr, as the Frenchman says."
I wander on, my hands thrust deep into my pockets. The snow mashes under my shoes. I kick it off angrily. What could I do anyway, even supposing I might dine with a woman like that? I should only be able to stare at her, that's all. I couldn't even eat without getting into a mess. And how difficult, I think to myself, how difficult to pass a whole day with such a being! Always on the watch, always on the alert. And then at night—but I wouldn't have even the faintest notion how to begin! Not that I am altogether ignorant of women, of course, but what I do know I learned from Jupp and from Valentin. With such ladies as these that would clearly never do.
June 1917, was the first time I was with a woman. Our company was back resting in the huts at the time. It was midday and we were fooling about in the meadow with a couple of dogs that had run up to us. With flying ears and glistening coats the beasts would go bounding through the tall, summer grasses, and the sky was blue and the war far away.
Then Jupp came trotting across from the orderly-room. The dogs ran toward him and jumped up on him, but he shook them off and called out: "An order's just come through. We're to hop over tonight!"
We knew all that that meant. Day after day the rumble of the drum-fire of the Big Offensive had come rolling back to us over the western horizon; day after day we had seen the spent regiments returning, and if we asked any man what it was like, he would merely respond with a gesture and continue to stare straight ahead; day after day truck-loads of wounded had been streaming past; and day after day, today for to-morrow, we had been digging long ditches for graves.
We got up. Bethke and Wessling went to their packs for writing-paper; Willy and Tjaden walked over to the cookhouse; and Franz Wagner and Jupp persuaded me to go with them to the brothel.
"Why, Ernst lad," said Wagner, "you don't mean to say you're never going to know what a woman is? Who can say but we may all be dead before morning? Looks to me as if they've a heap of new artillery up there. It would be just too absurd to die virgin."
The Field Brothel was in a small town, distant about an hour's walk. We got permits, though not without waiting a long time—other regiments were also going up the line, so they were many that came there in haste to snatch whatever of life they might still get. In a small office we had to give up our permits and unbutton our flies. Then an A.M.C. corporal examined us to see that we were fit, and we received an injection of a few drops of protargol, while a sergeant-major was explaining that the fee was three marks and that on account of the crush ten minutes was all the time that could be allowed us. Then we queued up on the stairs.
The line moved slowly forward. At the top of the stairs the doors kept banging, and each time a man would come out; then "NextI" would be called.
"How many cows are there?" inquired Franz Wagner of a sapper.
"Three," said he. "But you don't get any choice. It's a lottery—if your luck's out, then you fall for a grandmother."
Stewing there in the heat and sweat and stinking breath of the famished soldiers on the frowsy staircase, I began to feel sick. I would have been glad to get out of it—my curiosity had gone, but I was afraid the others would make fun of me, so I waited.
At last came my turn. The man who had been before me stumbled out and I stepped into the room. It was low and dark, and reeked so of carbolic and sweat that I thought it strange to see the branches of a lime tree just outside the window, and the sun and wind playing in the fresh, green leaves—so withered and used up did everything in the room appear. There was a dish with pink water on a chair and in the corner a sort of camp-bed on which was spread a torn sheet. The woman was fat and had on a short, transparent chemise. She did not look at me at all, but straightway lay down. Only when I still did not come, did she look up impatiently; then a flicker of comprehension showed in her spongey face. She perceived that I was still quite young.
I simply could not; horror seized me and a choking nausea. The woman made a few gestures to rouse me, gross, repulsive gestures; she tried to pull me to her and even smiled as she did so, sweetly and coyly, that I should have compassion on her—what was she, after all, but a poor, army mattress, that must bed twenty and more fellows every day?—but I laid down only the money beside her and went out hastily and down the stairs.
Jupp gave me a wink. "Well, how was it?"
"So, so," I answered like an old hand, and we turned to go. But no, we must first go before the A.M.C. corporal again and make water under his eyes. Then we received a further injection of protargol.
"So that is love," thought I dumbly, despairingly, as we packed up our things; "so that is the love my books at home were so full of—of which I had expected so much in the vague dreams of my youth!" I rolled up my greatcoat and packed my ground-sheet, I received my ammunition and we marched out. I was silent and sorrowful, and I thought upon it: how now nothing was left me of those high-flying dreams of life .and of love, but a rifle, a fat whore and the dull rumble out there on the sky-line whither we were now slowly marching. Then came darkness, and the trenches and death.— Franz Wagner fell that night, and we lost besides twenty-three men.
Drops of rain fall glittering from the trees; I turn up my collar. I often long for affection even now, for shy words, for warm, generous emotions; I would like to escape the crude monotony of these last years. But what if it actually came to pass?—what if all the gentleness and variety of those other days drew round me again? if someone actually did love me, some slim, delicate woman, such as the one there with the golden toque and the slim ankles—how would it be? even though the ecstasy of some blue, silver night should gather about us, endless, self-forgotten, in darkness.—Would not the vision of the fat whore come between us at the last moment? Would not the voices of the drill
-sergeants suddenly shout their obscenities? Would not memory, scraps of talk, army jokes, at once riddle and destroy every decent emotion? Even now we are still chaste in ourselves, but our imagination has been debauched without our being aware of it—before we knew anything of love at all we were already being lined up and examined for sexual diseases. The breathless wonder, the impetuousness, the night wind, the darkness, the questionings—all those things that were still with us when, as sixteen-year-old boys, we would race along after Adele and the other girls through the flickering, gas-lit wind—they never came back. Though the time was when the woman was not a whore, yet it did not come back—though I believed it might still be otherwise, and though she embraced me and I trembled with desire, yet it did not come back. Afterwards I was always wretched.
Unconsciously I begin to walk faster, breathe deeper. I will have it again—I must have it again. It shall come again, else what reason is there to live?