All quiet on the Western Front
the canal. We do not run, we walk beside one another with long
strides.
"That was worth a ration-loaf," says Leer.
I cannot trust myself to speak, I am not in the least happy.
Then we hear footsteps and dodge behind a shrub.
The steps come nearer, close by us. We see a naked soldier, in
boots, just like ourselves; he has a package under his arm, and
gallops onward. It is Tjaden in full course. He has disappeared
already.
We laugh. In the morning he will curse us.
Unobserved, we arrive again at our sacks of straw.
* *
I am called to the Orderly Room. The Company Commander gives me a
leave-pass and a travel-pass and wishes me a good journey. I look to
see how much leave I have got. Seventeen days--fourteen days leave
and three days for travelling. It is not enough and I ask whether I
cannot have five days for travelling. Bertinck points to my pass.
There I see that I am not to return to the front immediately. After
my leave I have to report for a course of training to a camp on the
moors.
The others congratulate me. Kat gives me good advice, and tells me I
ought to try to get a base-job. "If you are smart, you'll hang on to
it."
I would rather not have gone for another eight days; we are to stay
here that much longer and it is good here.
Naturally I have to stand the others drinks at the canteen. We are
all a little bit drunk. I become gloomy: I will be away for six
weeks-- That is lucky of course, but what may happen before I get
back? Shall I meet all these fellows again? Already Haie has
gone--who will the next be?
As we drink, I look at each of them in turn. Albert sits beside me
and smokes, he is silent, we have always been together;--opposite
squats Kat, with his drooping shoulders, his broad thumb, and calm
voice--Müller with the protruding teeth and the booming laugh; Tjaden
with his mousey eyes;--Leer who has grown a full beard and looks at
least forty.
Over us hangs a dense cloud of smoke. Where would a soldier be
without tobacco. The canteen is his refuge, and beer is far more
than a drink, it is a token that a man can move his limbs and stretch
in safety. We do it ceremonially, we stretch our legs out in front
of us and spit deliberately, that is the only way. How it all rises
up before a man when he is going away the next morning!
At night we go again to the other side of the canal. I am almost
afraid to tell the little brunette that I am going away, and when I
return we will certainly be far away from here; we will never see one
another again. But she merely nods and takes no special notice. At
first I am at a loss to understand, then it suddenly dawns on me.
Yes, Leer is right: if I were going up to the front, then she would
have again called me "pauvre garçon"; but merely going on leave--she
does not want to hear about that, that is not nearly so interesting.
May she go to the devil with her chattering talk. A man dreams of a
miracle and wakes up to loaves of bread.
Next morning, after I have been de-loused, I go to the rail head.
Albert and Kat come with me. At the halt we learn that it will be a
couple of hours yet before the train leaves. The other two have to
go back to duty. We take leave of one another.
"Good luck, Kat; good luck, Albert."
They go off and wave once or twice. Their figures dwindle. I know
their every step and movement; I would recognize them at any
distance. Then they disappear. I sit down on my pack and wait.
Suddenly I become filled with a consuming impatience to be gone.
* *
I lie down on many a station platform; I stand before many a
soup-kitchen; I squat on many a bench;--then at last the landscape
becomes gloomy, mysterious, and familiar. It glides past the western
windows with its villages, their thatched roofs like caps, pulled
over the white-washed, half-timbered houses, its corn-fields,
gleaming like mother-of-pearl in the slanting light, its orchards,
its barns and old lime trees.
The names of the stations begin to take on meaning and my heart
trembles. The train stamps and stamps onward, I stand at the window
and hold on to the frame. These names mark the boundaries of my
youth.
Smooth meadows, fields, farm-yards; a solitary team moves against the
sky-line along the road that runs parallel to the horizon--a barrier,
before which peasants stand waiting, girls waving, children playing
on the embankment, roads, leading into the country, smooth roads
without artillery.
It is evening, and if the train did not rattle I should cry out. The
plain unfolds itself.
In the distance, the soft, blue silhouette of the mountain ranges
begins to appear. I recognize the characteristic outline of the
Dolbenberg, a jagged comb, springing up precipitously from the limit
of the forests. Behind it should lie the town.
But now the sun streams through the world, dissolving everything in
its golden-red light, the train swings round one curve and then
another;--far away, in a long line one behind the other, stand the
poplars, unsubstantial, swaying and dark, fashioned out of shadow,
light, and desire.
The field swings round as the train encircles it, and the intervals
between the trees diminish; the trees become a block and for a moment
I see one only--then they reappear from behind the foremost tree and
stand out a long line against the sky until they are hidden by the
first houses.
A street-crossing. I stand at the window, I cannot drag myself away.
The others put their baggage ready for getting out. I repeat to
myself the name of the Street that we cross
over--Bremerstrasse--Bremerstrasse--
Below there are cyclists, lorries, men; it is a grey street and a
grey subway;--it embraces me as though it were my mother.
Then the train stops, and there is the station with noise and cries
and sentries. I pick up my pack and fasten the straps, I take my
rifle in my hand and stumble down the steps.
On the platform I look round; I know no one among all the people
hurrying to and fro. A red-cross sister offers me something to
drink. I turn away, she smiles at me too foolishly, so obsessed with
her own importance: "Just look, I am giving a soldier coffee!"--She
calls me "Comrade," but I will have none of it.
Outside in front of the station the stream roars alongside the
street, it rushes foaming from the sluices of the mill bridge. There
stands the old, square watch-tower, in front of it the great mottled
lime tree and behind it the evening.
Here we have often sat--how long ago it is--; we have passed over
this bridge and breathed the cool, acid smell of the stagnant water;
we have leaned over the still water on this side of the lock, where
the green creepers and weeds hang from the piles of the bridge;--and
on hot days we rejoiced in the spouting foam on the other side of the
lock and told tales about our school-teachers.
I pass over the bridge, I look right and left; the water is as full
of weeds as ever, and it still shoots over in gleaming arches; in the
tower-building laundresses still stand with bare arms as they used to
over the clean linen, and the heat from the ironing pours out through
the open windows. Dogs trot along the narrow street, before the
doors of the houses people stand and follow me with their gaze as I
pass by, dirty and heavy laden.
In this confectioner's we used to eat ices, and there we learned to
smoke cigarettes. Walking down the street I know every shop, the
colonial warehouse, the chemist's, the tobacconist's. Then at last I
stand before the brown door with its worn latch and my hand grows
heavy. I open the door and a wonderful freshness comes out to meet
me, my eyes are dim.
The stairs creak under my boots. Upstairs a door rattles, someone is
looking over the railing. It is the kitchen door that was opened,
they are cooking potato-cakes, the house reeks of it, and to-day of
course is Saturday; that will be my sister leaning over. For a
moment I am shy and lower my head, then I take off my helmet and look
up. Yes, it is my eldest sister.
"Paul," she cries, "Paul----"
I nod, my pack bumps against the banisters; my rifle is so heavy.
She pulls a door open and calls: "Mother, mother, Paul is here."
I can go no further--mother, mother, Paul is here.
I lean against the wall and grip my helmet and rifle. I hold them as
tight as I can, but I cannot take another step, the staircase fades
before my eyes, I support myself with the butt of my rifle against my
feet and clench my teeth fiercely, but I cannot speak a word, my
sister's call has made me powerless, I can do nothing, I struggle to
make myself laugh, to speak, but no word comes, and so I stand on the
steps, miserable, helpless, paralysed, and against my will the tears
run down my cheeks.
My sister comes back and says: "Why, what is the matter?"
Then I pull myself together and stagger on to the landing. I lean my
rifle in a corner, I set my pack against the wall, place my helmet on
it, and fling down my equipment and baggage. Then I say fiercely:
"Bring me a handkerchief."
She gives me one from the cupboard and I dry my face. Above me on
the wall hangs the glass case with the coloured butterflies that once
I collected.
Now I hear my mother's voice. It comes from the bedroom.
"Is she in bed?" I ask my sister.
"She is ill--" she replies.
I go in to her, give her my hand and say as calmly as I can: "Here I
am, mother."
She lies still in the dim light. Then she asks anxiously:
"Are you wounded?" and I feel her searching glance.
"No, I have got leave."
My mother is very pale. I am afraid to make a light.
"Here I lie now," says she, "and cry instead of being glad."
"Are you sick, mother?" I ask.
"I am going to get up a little to-day," she says and turns to my
sister, who is continually running to the kitchen to watch that the
food does not burn: "And put out the jar of preserved
whortleberries--you like that, don't you?" she asks me.
"Yes, mother, I haven't had any for a long time."
"We might almost have known you were coming," laughs my sister,
"there is just your favourite dish, potato-cakes, and even
whortleberries to go with them too."
"And it is Saturday," I add.
"Sit here beside me," says my mother.
She looks at me. Her hands are white and sickly and frail compared
with mine. We say very little, and I am thankful that she asks
nothing. What ought I to say? Everything I could have wished for
has happened. I have come out of it safely and sit here beside her.
And in the kitchen stands my sister making the evening bread and
singing.
"Dear boy," says my mother softly.
We were never very demonstrative in our family; poor folk who toil
and are full of cares are not so. It is not their way to protest
what they already know. When my mother says to me "dear boy," it
means much more than when another uses it. I know well enough that
the jar of whortleberries is the only one they have had for months,
and that she has kept it for me; and the somewhat stale cakes that
she gives me too. She has taken a favourable opportunity of getting
a few and has put them all by for me.
I sit by her bed, and through the window the chestnut trees in the
beer garden opposite glow in brown and gold. I breathe deeply and
say over to myself:--"You are at home, you are at home." But a sense
of strangeness will not leave me, I can find nothing of myself in all
these things. There is my mother, there is my sister, there my case
of butterflies, and there the mahogany piano--but I am not myself
there. There is a distance, a veil between us.
I go and fetch my pack to the bedside and turn out the things I have
brought--a whole Edamer cheese, that Kat provided me with, two loaves