No Man's Land (78 page)

Throughout the land, in corrugated-iron hutments, the timber houses of the country, and cabins of tarred pasteboard, were scattered the signallers, the telegraph-companies, repair-parties, and labourcompanies. They knew there would be plenty for them to do next day, so they sat listening to the spirit of the snow as he clapped his hands and drummed and beat upon their walls, and they watched the cracks which had let in so many draughts, getting gradually blocked up, so that a genial warmth began to spread about the room. There were some pleasant trips before them in the morning, but they would not think about that now. This evening they would play
skat
under the lamp or sleep in their bunks. It would do no harm to grease their boots again, oil the soles, and hold their puttees up against the light to see if there were any holes in them.

Snow upon Mervinsk… The city, on the slope of its low hill, was protected from the weather, and some distance from the centre of this whirling storm. But at nights the street grew full of snow. Winter had begun. It was now time to see whether there was wood enough stacked up in the courtyards, so that at least they might keep warm. The Jewish and Polish cab-drivers were polishing up their little Russian street-sleighs. Over the open spaces on the outskirts of the town, between railway buildings, platforms, hutments, store-houses, and over the town itself, blew an icy wind with flurries of snow, a faint image of the storm that roared and revelled in the forest. But no one minded the windy tournament in the sheltered streets of the town that was their home. This time the snow was falling heavily. It had begun the day before, and now it was lying two feet deep. Electric light had been newly installed, and a sturdy little dynamo made the wires hum with throbbing life. Would the snow bring them down? – that was what everyone was thinking about. If they held, they held. If they broke, offices, hutments, and prisons would be plunged in darkness till they were repaired.

*

When, early in the morning after Lychow's departure, an order was received from the Kommandantur that the prisoner Bjuscheff was not to leave his cell that day, the corporal on duty whistled through his teeth and merely said:

‘So soon?'

Daylight was slow in coming. When they crowded into the yard for parade, some rubbed their eyes and thought the snow looked very comfortable, others hoped for a little snowballing. But the sergeant-major detailed the men for duty and kept them busy supervising the gangs of civilians who were sweeping away the snow; after which, quite casually and without any explanation, he gave the order about Grischa; and so Grischa was allowed to snore in peace.

He slept on in happy ignorance, and as the day was dark, he slept till late into the morning, and the guard were not disposed to wake him. As compared with Lychow, he was but a mole, he could not know what was happening in the kingdom of the gods, how his protector had gone on leave, though he had left Winfried with full authority to represent him in the matter. When Grischa at last awoke about midday, much refreshed by his sleep, but hungry and chilled to the bone, he had a somewhat uncanny feeling. The sense of time, which never entirely forsakes a man, told him that several hours of the day had already gone. He was amazed that nobody had opened the door, that he had not been called for parade or for breakfast. Under his bed was a secret and forbidden store of cigarettes, bread, all sorts of odds and ends, and a little money. The stove would want stoking up to-day, he thought; he felt terribly cold. Unfortunately he had given Max's bottle of schnapps to Babka. He had, however, such profound confidence in his friend the General, that he merely thought some detail of the daily routine had gone wrong; he never guessed that his own life was at stake. He drew his stool up to the window: a thick cushion of white snow lay along the narrow projecting ledge in front of it. Snow lay everywhere. Grischa's heart rejoiced. Snow meant home: snow meant Vologda, and the little sledge in which Grischa raced over the steppes drawn by his grandfather's solitary dog. Snow was an infinite playground: snow was so clean that a boy might eat it, snow was so soft that a boy might roll in it; it was warm and it was cold. A snowfall in Mervinsk might well have surprised him; but it merely gave him intense pleasure. For in his home at Vologda, towards the end of October, the great snowstorms had already begun to sweep over the long-since frozen steppe, and with the snow came sledges in which men travelled all the faster to their friends. ‘This snow,' said Grischa to himself with a smile, ‘is blowing in the Germans' faces.' As he was hungry, he lit a cigarette and smoked with tolerable contentment though he was shivering with cold. He unfolded his cloak which had served him as a pillow, and put it on. ‘Ah, that's better,' he thought with satisfaction, ‘now I don't mind what happens.' And something did happen. He had not smoked a third part of his yellow cigarette when a guard hammered on the cell door.

‘Russky,' said a voice, ‘you're smoking. Don't let anyone catch you; I don't mind, but if anyone comes I'll let you know.'

‘Come in, open the door, comrade,' said Grischa, astonished. ‘What's happening in Mervinsk?'

‘You may well ask,' said the other.

‘It's snowing,' said Grischa, by way of a reply.

‘You may say that,' said the other.

‘Is there no work to-day? Is it a holiday?'

‘You may say that too,' answered the voice, gruffly. It was Arthur Polanke of the Landwehr, from the Choriner Strasse, Berlin N., who was talking to the prisoner. ‘Yes, it's a holiday. To-day's Reformation Day; but that means nothing to you, you're little better than a heathen.'

‘It's all so quiet,' said Grischa. ‘I shouldn't mind a bit of breakfast.'

‘Of course it's quiet when the company's away on duty; but you can have some coffee, though if I were you I should wait till twelve o'clock. It won't be long; it's nearly half-past eleven now.'

‘Company away on duty?' said Grischa in astonishment. ‘Then why have I been in bed so long?'

The man outside was silent. He seemed to be reflecting for a moment whether he should speak; then he said in a low voice:

‘I'll tell you. The old man went on leave yesterday.'

‘Who?' asked Grischa innocently. ‘Brett-schneider?'

‘Lord, no, he's there all right. I meant your old man, Lychow. And we've had orders that you're not to be let out of your cell. It's a summer cell too, so they must have their knife into you again. And as your case isn't settled and you haven't got into any more trouble, you may explain it if you can, because I can't.'

Grischa listened, and laboriously reproduced these words and images in the terms of his own thoughts; then with a short laugh he said:

‘Beasts! They're revenging themselves while the General's away. Afterwards they'll say it was a mistake, or somebody's orders.'

As the prisoner could not see him, the guard grinned ominously and muttered: ‘I'm glad you take it like that. Now I'll open your cell, and you can clean it – that'll let some warmth into it. There's no work this afternoon, the stoves will all be going strong, and if the corporal on duty will look the other way, we'll leave the door open all the afternoon, so that you'll at least have company, and it will be nice and warm for you.'

And Grischa thanked him.

And when the dried vegetables and tinned beef were brought round at midday, Grischa's mess-tin was filled very full, and he thoroughly enjoyed his dinner.

Then he left his cell, which they had actually forgotten to lock, and went into the guardroom, where the men of the Landwehr were just lighting their pipes, and the barrack orderly was carrying off the empty mess-tins to wash them out with warm water and wood-shavings. When Grischa came in some of them glanced up from the cards which had been just dealt, others from their letters, or their books, and then turned back to what they were doing, with rather too noticeable an unconcern. Grischa filled a pannikin with hot water from the great iron cauldron on the stove, and was about to go and empty his mess-tin in the common trough outside – that invaluable trough that provided food for three pigs. And as Lychow lived near by, the men might rely on the fact that these animals would be fattened up for ham and bacon, and not wasted as mere pork, as happened to so many pigs behind the lines; strict orders were given that these valuable animals should have free access to the kitchen refuse. But when he had got to the door, Corporal Hermann Sacht walked up to Grischa and said:

‘Half a minute, Russky; you go and wash that out in your bucket.'

‘But what about the pigs?' Grischa answered with a smile.

‘We won't bother about the pigs to-day, old man,' said the corporal very gravely. ‘You mustn't be seen outside. You're to exercise in the yard from two to three, with the others; you'd better curl up in your bunk.'

From this, and from the strange deathly stillness that followed the corporal's words, Grischa understood. He stood motionless, his mouth and eyes grew a little pale, as he looked at the man who was almost his friend.

‘Now you know what's up,' said the corporal contemptuously; but the contempt was not for Grischa.

‘Yes,' said Grischa, ‘I do.' He cleared his throat sharply, and then, stiffly and with measured steps he crossed the room, followed by the looks of all that sat there, and passed along the dark passage to his cell; it was one of the first, on the right hand, against the outer wall. Hermann Sacht watched him go, and then went after him.

‘Leave the door of your cell open, Russky, you must keep warm, and if you want to smoke – well, we're smoking, and no one will notice you.'

And Grischa thanked him.

About this time the snowstorm burst in full force over Mervinsk. The cell was full of smouldering twilight. Grischa stretched himself out on the bed, with his hands under his head, and covered by his two blankets. He reflected that a mattress, stuffed with wood shavings, did not give much warmth in winter. At first the shrill icy blasts of wind whistled through the window-frames, cleaving the tobacco smoke into whirling clouds, but in a few minutes that same wind had blocked up every crack with snow, and the air in the stone-paved cell gradually grew warmer.

‘Now it is finished,' thought Grischa, ‘and I must g0.'

Only a few minutes before, he had felt himself secure, sheltered by a protecting hand, and now the certainty of death was upon him, swift and inevitable, death while his limbs were strong and wholesome, and he turned over on his bed as if he felt the walls of his coffin against his body, and all were at an end. A bitter taste mounted to his palate from his throat, and he thought: ‘Well, I shan't be sorry when it's finished; now, at least, my troubles will be over.'

He sank back in utter exhaustion and despair, his mouth opened suddenly and as the pipe dropped from his hand he fell into a deep sleep, though, indeed, his heavy meal and the oncoming darkness had as much to do with it as the numbness at his heart. Men who have known something of life, and have had to bear a hand in tasks that they have hated, have no great need of telegrams and official instructions in order to grasp what is going on. Grischa, who was to be shot, and the company who were presumably to shoot him, alike knew what was to happen, even before Schieffenzahn, far away at Brest, had taken down the telephone receiver to send a certain order on its way along the wire.

Shortly before two o'clock Hermann Sacht, who had passed quietly by the open cell, said in astonishment to the corporal on duty:

‘Russky's asleep; do you think we'd better leave him alone?'

‘I don't mind,' said the corporal, ‘but orders are orders; he must go out for exercise.'

‘Yes, his health is very precious,' said Hermann Sacht, in grim irony, as he snapped the padlock on the cell door, ‘but perhaps he would like to have another look at the snow coming down, and hear the doves cooing up in the roof, and the sparrows fluttering through the drill-shed, which is the only place you get a breath of air in this sort of weather. Who do you think will have to do him in?'

‘We shall, of course; it's our job.'

‘That's right enough,' said Hermann Sacht, with a laugh, as he slung his rifle over his shoulder, ‘he'll be shot with the rifles he's cleaned himself.'

‘Oh, well, he'll be sure there'll be no dirt on the bullets,' said the other, nodding. ‘And we'll have our cartridge-cases to remember the Russky by, until we throw them away.'

‘Perhaps it would be a good thing to dig his grave soon; if we wait till the ground freezes it will take twice as long.'

‘And perhaps there'll be one of those coffins left which he and the little Jew sweated at for so long.'

‘Of course there will,' said one of the company, looking up from his game of draughts; ‘there are at least five in reserve and two extra big ones. He'd certainly fit one of those.'

‘Two minutes to two,' said the other with a whistle of surprise as he glanced at his watch. ‘Wake him up, and a pleasant afternoon to you.'

*

Under the drill-shed, which was well enough suited for parades and physical exercises, though it was hardly large enough for drilling, the wind blew wafts of snow, tiny icy crystals, or gusts of frozen rain, right under the roof almost to the inner wall. Little spectral eddies of dust arose from the ground, twisting like dervishes till they dropped and gave up their transient ghosts. The sparrows chirped busily in every corner, pecked about for seeds, or sat, puffed out like little balls, upon the rafters. From their safe, warm lodging in the roof came the contented cooing of the doves.

‘It's hardly weather for a walk even here,' thought Hermann Sacht as he stamped about patiently by the side of Grischa whose hands were thrust deep in his overcoat pockets. His woolly, khaki-coloured overcoat (one of those which Sluschin & Co. did so well over), and his German boots which did not match, kept him warm. He tramped along, inside the row of wooden roof supports, from one end to the other of the shed, ninety-three paces in all, and back again. And Hermann Sacht saw that he was thinking. But he was not exactly thinking: as he walked up and down, he watched the snow in the air, his eyes wandered over the dust on the ground, the wooden beams, the nails, the nests in their several corners, the dark nooks where the beams joined the rafters, the spiders' webs, and the fluffy little sparrows; and he listened to the cooing of the doves and the creaking of his guard's leather belt. As he took all these things in, he asked himself: