All quiet on the Western Front
heels. Behind her smiles a blue lake with white-horses, at the side
is a bright bay. She is a lovely girl with a delicate nose, red
lips, and slender legs, wonderfully clean and well cared for, she
certainly bathes twice a day and never has any dirt under her nails.
At most perhaps a bit of sand from the beach.
Beside her stands a man in white trousers, a bluejacket, and sailor's
cap; but he interests us much less.
The girl on the poster is a wonder to us. We have quite forgotten
that there are such things, and even now we hardly believe our eyes.
We have seen nothing like it for years, nothing like it for
happiness, beauty, and joy. That is peace time, that is as it should
be; we feel excited.
"Just look at those thin shoes though, she couldn't march many miles
in those," I say, and then begin to feel silly, for it is absurd to
stand in front of a picture like this and think of nothing but
marching.
"How old would she be?" Kropp asks.
"About twenty-two at the most," I hazard.
"Then she would be older than us! She is not more than seventeen,
let me tell you!"
It gives us goose-flesh.
"That would be good, Albert, what do you think?"
He nods. "I have some white trousers at home too."
"White trousers," say I, "but a girl like that----"
We look askance at one another. There's not much to boast of
here--two ragged, stained, and dirty uniforms. It is hopeless to
compete.
So we proceed to tear the young man with the white trousers off the
hoarding, taking care not to damage the girl. That is something
towards it.
"We could go and get deloused, anyway," Kropp then suggests.
I am not very enthusiastic because it doesn't do one's clothes any
good and a man is lousy again inside two hours. But when we have
considered the picture once more, I declare myself willing. I even
go farther.
"We might see if we could get a clean shirt as well----"
"Socks might be better," says Albert, not without reason.
"Yes, socks too perhaps. Let's go and explore a bit."
Then Leer and Tjaden stroll up; they look at the poster and
immediately the conversation becomes smutty. Leer was the first of
our class to have intercourse, and he gave stirring details of it.
After his fashion he enjoys himself over the picture, and Tjaden
supports him nobly.
It does not distress us exactly. Who isn't smutty is no soldier; it
merely does not suit us at the moment, so we edge away and march off
to the delousing station with the same feeling as if it were a swell
gentlemen's outfitters.
* *
The houses in which we are billeted lie near the canal. On the other
side of the canal there are ponds flanked with poplars;--on the other
side of the canal there are women too.
The houses on our side have been abandoned. On the other side though
one occasionally sees inhabitants.
In the evening we go swimming. Three women come strolling along the
bank. They walk slowly and don't look away, although we have no
bathing suits.
Leer calls out to them. They laugh and stop to watch us. We fling
remarks at them in broken French, anything that comes into our heads,
hastily and all jumbled together, anything to detain them. They are
not specially wonderful pieces, but then where are such to be had
about here?
There is one slim little brunette. Her teeth gleam when she laughs.
She has quick movements, her dress swings loosely about her legs.
Although the water is cold we are very jovial and do our best to
interest them so that they will stay. We try to make jokes and they
answer with things we cannot understand; we laugh and beckon. Tjaden
is more crafty. He runs into the house, gets a loaf of army bread
and holds it up.
That produces a great effect. They nod and beckon us to come over.
But we don't dare to do that. It is forbidden to cross to the
opposite bank. There are sentries on all the bridges. It's
impossible without a pass. So we indicate that they should come over
to us; but they shake their heads and point to the bridge. They are
not allowed to pass either. They turn away and walk slowly down the
canal, keeping along the tow-path all the way. We accompany them
swimming. After a few hundred yards they turn off and point to a
house that stands a little distance away among the trees and
shrubbery.
Leer asks if they live there.
They laugh--sure, that's their house.
We call out to them that we would like to come, sometime when the
guards cannot see us. At night. To-night.
They raise their hands, put them together, rest their faces on them
and shut their eyes. They understand. The slim brunette does a
two-step. The blonde girl twitters: "Bread--good----"
Eagerly we assure them that we will bring some with us. And other
tasty bits too, we roll our eyes and try to explain with our hands.
Leer nearly drowns trying to demonstrate a sausage. If it were
necessary we would promise them a whole quartermaster's store. They
go off and frequently turn and look back. We climb out on the bank
on our side of the canal and watch to see whether they go into the
house for they might easily have been lying. Then we swim back.
No one can cross the bridge without leave, so we will simply have to
swim over at night. We are full of excitement. We cannot last out
without a drink, so we go to the canteen where there is beer and a
kind of punch.
We drink punch and tell one another lying tales of our experiences.
Each man gladly believes the other man's story, only waiting
impatiently till he can cap it with a taller one. Our hands are
fidgety, we smoke countless cigarettes, until Kropp says: "We might
as well take them a couple of cigarettes too." So we put some inside
our caps to keep them.
The sky turns apple-green. There are four of us, but only three can
go; we must shake off Tjaden, so ply him with rum and punch until he
rocks. As it turns dark we go to our billets, Tjaden in the centre.
We are all glowing and full of a lust for adventure.
The little brunette is mine, we settled that by cutting for her.
Tjaden drops on his sack of straw and snores. Once he wakes up and
grins so craftily that we are alarmed and begin to think he is
cheating, and that we have given him the punch to no purpose. Then
he drops back again and sleeps on.
We each get hold of a whole army loaf and wrap it up in newspaper.
The cigarettes we put in too, as well as three good rations of
liver-sausage that were issued to us this evening. That makes a
decent present.
We stow the things carefully in our boots; we have to take them to
protect our feet against treading on wire and broken glass on the
other bank. As we must swim for it we can take no other clothes.
But it is not far and quite dark.
We make off with our boots in our hands. Swiftly we slip into the
water, lie on our backs and swim, holding the boots with their
contents up over our heads.
We climb out carefully on the opposite bank, take out the packages
and put on our boots. We put the things under our arms. And so, all
wet and naked, clothed only in our boots, we break into a trot. We
find the house at once. It lies among the trees. Leer trips over a
root and skins his elbows.
"No matter," he says gaily.
The windows are shuttered. We slip round the house and try to peer
through the cracks. Then we grow impatient. Suddenly Kropp
hesitates:
"What if there's a Major in with them?"
"Then we just clear off," grins Leer, "he can try to read our
regimental numbers here," and smacks his behind.
The door of the court-yard stands open. Our boots make a great
clatter. The house door opens, a chink of light shines through and a
woman cries out in a scared voice.
"Ssh, ssh! camerade--bon ami--" we say, and show our packages
protestingly.
The other two are now on the scene, the door opens wide and the light
floods over us. They recognize us and all three burst into laughter
at our appearance. They rock and sway in the doorway, they laugh so
much. How supple their movements are!
"Un moment--" They disappear and throw us bits of clothing which we
gladly wrap round ourselves. Then we venture in. A small lamp burns
in the room, which is warm and smells a little of perfume. We unwrap
our parcels and hand them over to the women. Their eyes shine, it is
obvious that they are hungry.
Then we all become rather embarrassed. Leer makes the gestures of
eating, and then they come to life again and bring out plates and
knives and fall to on the food, and they hold up every slice of
liver-sausage and admire it before they eat it, and we sit proudly by.
They overwhelm us with their chatter;--we understand very little of
it, but we listen and the words sound friendly. No doubt we all look
very young. The little brunette strokes my hair and says what all
the French women say: "La guerre--grand malheur--pauvres garçons----"
I hold her arm tightly and press my lips into the palm of her hand.
Her fingers close round my face. Close above me are her bewildering
eyes, the soft brown of her skin and her red lips. Her mouth speaks
words I do not understand. Nor do I fully understand her eyes; they
seem to say more than we anticipated when we came here.
There are other rooms adjoining. In passing I see Leer, he has made
a great hit with the blonde. And he knows it, too. But I--I am lost
in remoteness, in weakness, and in a passion to which I yield myself
trustingly. My desires are strangely compounded of yearning and
misery. I feel giddy, there is nothing here that a man can hold on
to. We have left our boots at the door, they have given us slippers
instead, and now nothing remains to recall for me the assurance and
self-confidence of the soldier: no rifle, no belt, no tunic, no cap.
I let myself drop into the unknown, come what may--yet, in spite of
all, I feel somewhat afraid.
The little brunette contracts her brows when she is thinking; but
when she talks they are still. And often the sound does not quite
become a word but suffocates or floats away over me half-finished; an
arch, a pathway, a comet. What have I known of it--what do I know of
it?--The words of this foreign tongue, that I hardly understand, they
caress me to a quietness, in which the room grows dim, and dissolves
in the half light, and only the face above me lives and is clear.
How various is a face; but an hour ago it was strange and now it is
touched with a tenderness that comes, not from it, but out of the
night, the world and the blood, all these things seem to shine in it
together. The objects in the room are touched by it and transformed,
they become isolated, and I feel almost awed at the sight of my clear
skin when the light of the lamp falls upon it and the cool, brown
hand passes over it.
How different all this is from the conditions in the soldier's
brothels, to which we are allowed to go, and where we have to wait in
long queues. I wish I never thought of them; but desire turns my
mind to them involuntarily and I am afraid, for it might be
impossible ever to be free of them again.
But then I feel the lips of the little brunette and press myself
against them, my eyes close and I let it all fall from me, war and
terror and grossness, in order to awaken young and happy; I think of
the picture of the girl on the poster and, for a moment, believe that
my life depends on winning her. And if I press ever deeper into the
arms that embrace me, perhaps a miracle may happen....
. . . . . . . .
So, after a time we find ourselves reassembled again. Leer is in
high spirits. We pull on our boots and take our leave warmly. The
night air cools our hot bodies. The rustling poplars loom large in
the darkness. The moon floats in the heavens and in the waters of