I feel myself pushed aside. Ludwig Breyer stands up and goes out over the square toward the dark lump of death.
"Ludwig!" I shout.
But he still goes on—on—I stare after him in horror.
"Back!" comes the command once again from the Town Hall steps.
For a moment Ludwig stands still. "Fire away, Lieutenant Heel!" he calls back to the Town Hall. Then he goes forward and stoops down to the thing lying there on the ground.
We see an officer come down the steps. Without knowing quite how, we are suddenly all standing there beside Ludwig, awaiting the coming figure that for a weapon carries only a walking-stick. He does not hesitate an instant, though there are now three of us, and we could drag him off if we wanted to—his soldiers would not dare to shoot for fear of hitting him.
Ludwig straightens up. "I congratulate you, Lieutenant Heel. The man is dead."
A stream of blood is running from under the dead man's tunic and trickling into the cracks between the cobblestones. Near his right hand that has thrust forward, thin and yellow, out of the sleeve, it is gathering to a pool of blood that reflects black in the moonlight.
"Breyer," says Heel.
"Do you know who it is?" asks Ludwig.
Heel looks at him and shakes his head.
"Max Weil."
"I wanted to let him get away," says Heel after a time, almost pensively.
"He is dead," answers Ludwig.
Heel shrugs his shoulders.
"He was our comrade," Ludwig goes on.
Heel does not answer.
Ludwig looks at him coldly. "A nice piece of work!"
Then Heel stirs. "That does not enter into it," he says calmly. "Only the purpose—law and order."
"Purpose " replies Ludwig contemptuously. "Since when do you offer excuse for yourself? Purpose! Occupation—that is all that you ask. Withdraw your men, so that there shall be no more shooting!"
Heel makes a gesture of impatience. "My men stay where they are! If they withdrew they would be attacked to-morrow by a mob ten times as big— You know that yourself. In five minutes I occupy all the road heads. I give you till then to take off this dead man."
"Set to it," says Ludwig to us. Then he turns to Heel once again. "If you withdraw now, no one will attack you. If you stay more will be killed. And through you! Do you realise that?"
"I realise it," answers Heel coldly.
For a second longer we stand face to face. Heel looks at the row of us. It is a strange moment. Then something snaps.
We take up the limp body of Max Weil and bear him away. The streets are again filled with people. A wide passage opens before us as we come. Cries go up. "Noske bloodhounds!" "Police thugs!" "Murderers!" From Max Weil's back the blood drips.
We take him to the nearest house. It is the restaurant, the Hollandische Diele. A couple of ambulance men are already there binding up two people who lie on the dance floor. A woman with a blood-stained apron is groaning and keeps asking to go home. With difficulty they detain her till a stretcher is brought and a doctor arrives. She has a wound in the stomach. Beside her lies a man still wearing his old army tunic. Both his knees have been shot through. His wife is kneeling beside him moaning: "He didn't do anything! He was only walking by. I was just bringing him his supper——" She points to a grey enamel billy-can. "Just his supper——"
The women dancers are huddled together in a corner. The manager is running to and fro excitedly, asking if the wounded cannot be taken elsewhere—His business will be ruined, if it gets about. No guest will want to dance there again.—Anton Demuth in his gilded porter's uniform has fetched a bottle of brandy and is holding it to the wounded man's lips. The manager looks on in horror and makes signs to him, but Anton takes no notice. "Do you think I'll lose my legs?" the wounded man asks. "I'm a chauffeur?"
The stretchers come. Again shots are heard outside. We spring up. Hoots, screams, and a clatter of broken glass. We run out. "Rip up the pavement," shouts someone, driving a pick into the cobbles. Mattresses are being thrown down from the houses, chairs, a perambulator. Shots flash out from the square, and now are answered from the roofs.
"Lights out!" A man springs forward and throws a brick. Immediately it is dark. "Kosole!" shouts Albert. It is he. Valentin is beside him. Like a whirlpool the shots have drawn everyone in. "Into 'em Ernst! Ludwig! Albert!" roars Kosole. "The swine are shooting at women!"
We crouch in the doors of the houses, bullets lashing,men shouting; we are submerged, swept away, devastated, raging with hate; blood is spurting on the pavement, weare soldiers once more—it has us again, crashing and ragingwar roars above us, between us, within us—it is finished,comradeship riddled by machine-guns, soldiers shooting atsoldiers, comrades at comrades, ended, it is finished——
3.
Adolf Bethke has sold his house and come to live in the town.
After he took his wife back to live with him again all went well for a while. He did his work, she did hers, and it looked as if things would be all right again.
Then the village began to whisper. When his wife would go down the street in the evening voices would call after her; young men meeting her would laugh impudently to her face; women gathered up their skirts with pointed gestures. His wife never mentioned these things to Adolf. But she wilted under it and grew daily paler.
With Adolf it was the same. If he went to a pub, the conversation would immediately stop; if he visited anyone, he would be received with an embarrassed silence. Veiled hints and oblique questions were gradually ventured. Over the cups coarse innuendoes would be spoken, and after him would sound mocking laughter. He did not know quite what to do about it—Why, thought he, should he be accountable to the whole village for what was no man's affair but his own?—A thing that not even the parson appreciated, but eyed him disapprovingly through his gold spectacles whenever he passed him. It tormented him; but neither did Adolf speak of it to his wife.
And so they lived for some time, till one Sunday evening the pack of tormentors, grown venturesome, presumed to call after his wife in Adolf's presence. Adolf flared up. But she put her hand on his arm. "Don't mind them, they do it so often that now I don't hear any more."
"Often, do they?" Now at last he understood why she had become so silent—In a fury he made a rush to catch one of the fellows that had called out, but he vanished behind his companions who presented a barricade with their backs.
They went home and in silence turned in to bed. Adolf stared into the darkness. Then he heard a hushed, subdued sound, his wife was weeping under the bedclothes—Probably she had often lain so, while he slept. "Don't worry, Marie," he said gently, "though they should all talk." But she cried on.
He felt helpless and alone. Darkness stood hostile at the window, and the trees outside whispered like gossiping crones. Gently he laid his hand on his wife's shoulder. She looked at him, her eyes filled with tears. "Let me go away, Adolf; then they will stop."
She got up. The candle was still burning and her shadow staggered large through the room, it slid across the walls;
and by contrast she was small and frail in the feeble light. She sat down on the edge of the bed and reached for her clothes. Weird and gigantic the shadow reached out also, like a noiseless fate that had stolen in through the window out of the watchful darkness, and now grotesque, distorted, and tittering, was mocking her every movement—Soon he would fall on his prey and drag her off into the outer, droning darkness.
Adolf jumped up and plucked the white muslin curtains across the windows, as if thereby to shut off the low room against the night that stared in through the black, rectangular panes with its lusting owl's eyes.
The woman had already drawn on her stockings, and now reached for her bodice. Then Adolf stood beside her. "But Marie——" She looked up, and her hands dropped. The bodice fell to the floor. Adolf saw in her eyes the misery, the misery of dumb creation, the misery of a stricken animal, the forlorn, comfortless misery of those who cannot de
fend themselves. He put his arm about her shoulders. How soft and warm she was! How could anyone throw stones at her?—Did they not both mean well? Why then, should men torment and hound them so mercilessly?—He drew her to him and she yielded herself, her arm was about his neck and her head was on his breast. And so they both stood in their night-shirts, shivering, each sensible of the nearness of the other, each desiring to take comfort in the warmth of the other. They squatted together on the edge of the bed and said little; and when the shadows on the wall before them again began to dance because the wick of the candle had fallen over and the flame was about to go out, Adolf with a gentle motion of his great hand drew his wife into bed with him, as much as to say: Let us stay together; Let us try again—and he said: "We will go away from here, Marie." That was the only escape.
"Yes, let us go away, Adolf!" She flung herself upon him, and for the first time she now wept aloud. He held her close and kept repeating: "We'll look for a buyer tomorrow—tomorrow morning, first thing "And in a storm of resolution, of hope, anger and misery he took her. So despair gave place to passion, until at last it was silenced; and the weeping grew feebler and feebler, until it succumbed at last like a child's, to exhaustion and quiet breathing.
The candle was extinguished, the shadows were gone, and the woman slept, but Adolf still lay awake brooding. During the night the woman awoke, and feeling that she was still wearing the stockings she had pulled on when she meant to go away, she took them off and smoothed them lightly before laying them on the chair beside the bed.
Two days later Adolf Bethke sold his house and his workshop. Soon after he found rooms in the town, and the furniture was moved in. The dog had to be left behind. But hardest of all was to say farewell to his garden, which was then just in flower. It was not easy to go away so, and Adolf did not know what might come of it. But his wife was ready and resigned.
The apartment in the town is damp and dark; the stairway dirty and beset with an odour of washing, and the atmosphere heavy with neighbourly hate and stuffy rooms. There is little work, but only the more time to brood. The two are not happy. It is as if all they had fled from had followed them here.
Adolf squats in the kitchen and cannot understand why things do not get better. At night after the paper has been read and the food cleared from the table they sit down opposite each other, then the vacancy of gloom settles down over the place, until he is dazed with listening and brooding. His wife makes herself something to do, she polishes the stove perhaps, and when he says: "Come, Marie," then she puts away her cloths and her emery-paper and comes. And when, pitifully alone, he draws her down to him and whispers: "We'll do it yet," then she nods. But she continues silent; she is not gay as he would like. He does not realise that it is as much his fault as hers—that they have grown away from one another during the four years they have been separated, and that now they are only a burden to each other.—"Say something, can't you?" he reproaches her. She looks scared, and, complying, she says something—"What can she talk about? when does anything ever happen here in this house, in her kitchen?"—But when things so stand between two people that they must talk, already it is beyond their power ever to say enough to mend them. Talk is good only when happiness is behind it—then it runs easy and light; but where man is unhappy, what help is there then in such fickle, ambiguous things as words? They can only make matters worse.
Adolf follows his wife's movements with his eyes, and behind them he sees another, a younger, light-hearted woman, the wife of his memory whom he cannot forget. Then suspicion flares up, and in exasperation he says: "Still thinking of him, are you?" And as she looks at him in surprise, he knows the injustice of what he has said; yet for that very reason he plunges in still deeper: "You must be! You weren't like this before! What did you come back for, then? You could have stayed with him, you know."
Every word does violence to himself—but who is silent for that? He talks on until his wife retreats to the corner and stands up on the curb of the sink out of reach of the light; and again she is crying like a child who is lost—Ach, but we are all children, foolish, lost children, and ever the night stands round our house!
He can bear it no longer; he goes out and wanders aimlessly through the streets. He stands before shop windows but without seeing. He goes wherever there is light. Electric trams ringing, motor-cars hooting by; people bump into him, and within the yellow circle of the lamp-posts stand the whores. They rock their fat behinds, they laugh and prod one another—"Are you happy?" he asks, and goes with them, glad to see and to hear something fresh. But afterwards he mopes round again. He will not go home, and yet he would like to go. He makes the round of the pubs and drinks himself tight.
So I find him, and listen to him and look at him as he sits there, blear-eyed, belching his words, and drinking still —Adolf Bethke, the wariest, best soldier! the most faithful comrade, that has helped so many and saved so many!
who was shelter and comfort, and mother and brother to me so often out there, when the parachute-stars hovered and the nerves were broken by long attack and threatening death. We slept side by side in the wet dugouts; and when I was sick, he would cover me. He could do everything, he was never at a loss—And now here he is, caught in the barbed-wire, tearing his hands and his face, and already his eyes have become bleared. "Ah, Ernst," he says cheerlessly, "if only we had stayed out there!—at least we were
together there " I do not reply—I merely glance at my coat-sleeve where are a few washed-out, reddish blood stains. It is Weil's blood. Weil shot down by Heel's order. So far we have come. There is war again; but no comradeship——
4.
Tjaden is celebrating his marriage to the horse-butchery. The business has developed into a perfect gold mine and Tjaden's interest in Mariechen has increased proportionately.
In the morning the bridal pair drive to the church in a black lacquered coach, bedecked in white silk—four-in-hand, of course, as is only proper for a union that owes its origin to horses. Willy and Kosole have been chosen as witnesses. For such a festive occasion Willy has bought himself a pair of white gloves, made of pure cotton.—That cost us a great deal of trouble. Karl had first to get for us half a dozen orders to purchase, and then for two whole days the search continued—nowhere did they stock Willy's size. But it was worth all the trouble. The chalk-white sacks that he finally settled on, go so marvellously with his newly dyed swallow-tail. Tjaden has on a frock-coat, and Mariechen is in a wedding dress, all complete with veil and orange blossom.
Shortly before their departure for the registry office there is a slight mishap. Kosole arrives, sees Tjaden in his frock-coat, and has an attack of hysteria. No sooner has he more or less recovered himself, than he will glance again, in the direction where Tjaden's fly-away ears are gleaming over his stand-up collar, and the trouble starts all over again. There is no help for it—he would be sure to break down again in the middle of the church and endanger the whole ceremony—so at the last moment I am obliged to take his place as best man.
The entire butchery has been decked out with garlands. At the entrance are flowers and young birch trees, and even the slaughter-house has a garland of fir branches, to which Willy, amid general acclamation, adds a placard with the word "Welcome!"
Of course there is not a skerrick of horse-flesh on the table; nothing but the best quality pork is steaming in the dishes and before us stands an enormous joint of roast veal ready carved.
After the veal Tjaden removes his frock-coat and takes off his collar. This enables Kosole to go to work in more comfort, for until now he has not dared let his gaze wander without running the risk of bringing on a choking fit—We all follow Tjaden's example and things begin to be comfortable.
During the afternoon his father-in-law reads a document making Tjaden a partner in the butchery business. We all congratulate him, and then Willy in his white gloves solemnly bears in our wedding present—a brass tray with a set of twelve cut-crystal schnapps glasses. Also three bottles o
f cognac from Karl's stock. The father-in-law is so touched by it that he offers Willy a position as manager of a chop-house he is proposing to open during the next few weeks somewhere or other. Willy agrees to think over the matter.
Ludwig also looks in for a moment during the course of the evening. At Tjaden's special request he comes in uniform, for Tjaden is anxious to show his people that he had a real Lieutenant for his friend at the Front. He soon goes again, but the rest of us stay until nothing is left on the table but bare bones and empty bottles.
It is midnight when we turn out at last into the street. Albert makes the suggestion that we now go to the Café Gräger.
"That's all shut down long since," says Willy.