No Man's Land (82 page)

from
All Quiet on the Western Front

translated by Brian Murdoch

W
HEN ROLL CALL IS OVER
Kat says to me, ‘How do you fancy roast goose?'

‘Not a bad idea,' I reply.

We climb on to a munitions convoy. The ride costs us two cigarettes. Kat has taken careful note of the place. The shed belongs to the headquarters of some regiment. I decide that I will fetch the goose, and I get instructions on how to do it. The shed is behind the wall, and only barred with a wooden peg.

Kat cradles his hands for me, I put my foot in and scramble up over the wall. Meanwhile Kat keeps a look-out.

I wait for a few moments to let my eyes get used to the dark, then pick out where the shed is. I creep towards it very quietly, grope for the peg, take it out and open the door.

I can make out two white shapes. Two geese. That's a nuisance; if you grab one, the other one will make a racket. So it'll have to be both of them – it should work, if I'm quick.

I make a jump for them. I get one of them straight away, then a couple of seconds later the other one. I bang their heads against the wall like a madman, trying to stun them. But I obviously don't use enough force. The beasts hiss and beat out all round them with their wings and their feet. I fight on grimly, but my God, geese are strong! They tug at me and I stumble this way and that. In the dark these white things have become terrifying, my arms have sprouted wings and I'm almost afraid that I'll take off into the skies, just as if I had a couple of observation balloons in my hands.

And then the noise starts; one of them has got some air into his throat and sounds off like an alarm clock. Before I can do anything about it I hear noises coming towards me from outside, something shoves me and I'm lying on the ground listening to angry growling. A dog. I look to one side, and he makes for my throat. I lie still at once and pull my chin down into my collar.

It's a bull mastiff. After an eternity it draws its head back and sits down beside me. But whenever I try to move, it growls. I think for a moment. The only thing I can do is try and get hold of my service revolver. At all events I have to get out of here before anyone comes. Inch by inch I move my hand along.

I feel as if this is all going on for hours. Every time I make a slight movement there is a threatening growl; I lie still and try again. The minute I get hold of my gun, my hand starts to tremble. I press down against the ground and think it out: pull the gun out, shoot before he can get at me, and get the hell out as quickly as possible.

I take a deep breath and calm myself. Then I hold my breath, jerk up the revolver, there is a shot and the mastiff lurches aside, howling, I make it to the door of the shed and tumble over one of the geese, which was flapping out of the way.

I make a grab while I'm still running, hurl it with a great swing over the wall and start to scramble up myself. I'm not quite over the wall when the mastiff, which has come to itself again, is there and jumping up at me. I drop down quickly. Ten paces away from me stands Kat with the goose in his arms. As soon as he sees me, we run for it.

At last we can get our breath back. The goose is dead, Kat saw to that in a moment. We want to roast it straight away, before anyone realizes what has happened. I fetch pots and some wood from the huts, and we crawl into a small, deserted shed that we know about and which is useful for things like this. We put up a thick covering to block the only window hole. There is a makeshift cooker there – an iron plate lying across some bricks. We light a fire.

Kat plucks and draws the goose. We put the feathers carefully to one side. We want to use them to stuff two small pillows, with the motto ‘Sweet Dreams though the Guns are Booming' on them.

The barrage from the front can be heard as a dull humming all around our hideout. Firelight flickers on our faces, shadows dance on the walls. Airmen drop bombs. At one point we hear muffled screaming. One of the huts must have been hit.

Aircraft roar. The
ratatat
of the machine-guns gets louder. But our light can't be seen from anywhere outside.

And so we sit facing one another, Kat and I, two soldiers in shabby battledress, roasting a goose in the middle of the night. We don't talk much, but we have a greater and more gentle consideration for each other than I should think even lovers do. We are two human beings, two tiny sparks of life; outside there is just the night, and all around us, death. We are sitting right at the edge of all that, in danger but secure, goose fat runs over our fingers, our hearts are close to one another, and time and place merge into one – the brightnesses and shadows of our emotions come and go in the flickering light of a gentle fire. What does he know about me? What do I know about him? Before the war we wouldn't have had a single thought in common – and now here we are, sitting with a goose roasting in front of us, aware of our existence and so close to each other that we can't even talk about it.

It takes a long time to roast a goose, even when it is young, and there is plenty of fat. And so we take turns. One does the basting, while the other gets a bit of sleep. Gradually there is a wonderful smell all around us.

The noises from outside all merge into one another, become a dream which disappears from the waking memory. Half asleep, I watch Kat as he lifts and lowers the basting spoon. I love him; his shoulders, his angular, slightly stooped frame – and then I see woods and stars behind him, and a kindly voice says words to me that bring me peace, me, an ordinary soldier with his big boots and his webbing, and his pack, who is making his tiny way under the sky's great vault along the road that lies before him, who forgets things quickly and who isn't even depressed much any more, but who just goes onwards under the great night sky.

A little soldier and a kindly voice, and if anyone were to caress him, he probably wouldn't understand the gesture any more, that soldier with the big boots and a heart that has been buried alive, a soldier who marches because he is wearing marching boots and who has forgotten everything except marching. Aren't those things flowers, over there on the horizon, in a landscape that is so calm and quiet that the soldier could weep? Are those not images that he has not exactly lost, because he never had them to lose, confusing images, but nevertheless of things that can no longer be his? Are those not his twenty years of life?

Is my face wet, and where am I? Kat is standing in front of me, his gigantic distorted shadow falls across me like home. He says something softly, smiles and goes back to the fire.

Then he says, ‘It's ready.'

‘OK, Kat.'

I shake myself. The golden-brown roast is glowing in the middle of the room. We get out our folding forks and pocket-knives and carve ourselves off a leg each. We eat it with army-issue bread that we dip into the gravy. We eat slowly and enjoy it to the full.

‘Like it, Kat?'

‘Great. How about you?'

‘Great, Kat.'

We are brothers, pressing one another to take the best pieces. When we have finished I smoke a cigarette and Kat has a cigar. There is a lot left over.

‘Kat, how about us taking a bit over to Kropp and Tjaden?'

‘Right,' he says. We cut off a chunk and wrap it up carefully in newspaper. We were planning to take the rest back to our billets, but Kat laughs and just says, ‘Tjaden.'

I agree that we'll have to take it all. So we make our way to the hen-run prison to wake up the pair of them. Before we go we pack away the feathers.

Kropp and Tjaden think we are a mirage. Then they get stuck in. Tjaden is gnawing away, holding a wing with both hands as if he were playing a mouth organ. He slurps the gravy out of the pot and smacks his lips. ‘I'll never forget you for this.'

We walk back to the huts. There is the great sky again, and the stars, and the first streaks of dawn, and I am walking beneath that sky, a soldier with big boots and a full belly, a little soldier in the early morning – and beside me walks Kat, angular and slightly stooping, my pal.

The silhouettes of the huts loom over us in the dawn light like a black and welcome sleep.

ERICH MARIA REMARQUE

THE DEAD MAN'S ROOM

from
All Quiet on the Western Front

translated by Brian Murdoch

W
E OFTEN GET VOLUNTEER AUXILIARY NURSES
from the Red Cross. They are well meaning, but they can be a bit on the clumsy side. When they re-make our beds they often hurt us, and then they are so shaken that they hurt us even more.

The nuns are more reliable. They know how to get hold of us, but we would really prefer them to be more cheerful. Some of them do have a good sense of humour, it's true, and those are great. There is no one who wouldn't do anything in the world for Sister Tina, a wonderful nurse, who cheers up the whole wing, even when we can only see her from a distance. And there are a few more like her. We'd go through hell and high water for them. We really can't complain – you get treated like a civilian by the nuns here. On the other hand, when you think of the garrison hospitals, then you really start to worry.

Franz Waechter doesn't regain his strength. One day he is taken out and doesn't come back. Josef Hamacher knows what has happened. ‘We won't see him again. He's been taken to the Dead Man's Room.'

‘What Dead Man's Room?'

‘You know, the Dying Room—'

‘What's that?'

‘The small room at the corner of this wing. Anybody who is about to snuff it gets taken there. There are two beds. It's called the Dying Room all over the hospital.'

‘But why do they do that?'

‘So they don't have so much work afterwards. It's easier, too, because it's right by the entrance to the mortuary. Maybe they want to make sure that nobody dies on the wards, and do it so as not to upset the others. They can keep an eye on a man better, too, if he is in there on his own.'

‘What about the man himself?'

Josef shrugs. ‘Usually he is past noticing much any more.'

‘Does everyone know about this?'

‘Anyone who has been here for a while finds out, of course.'

*

That afternoon Franz Waechter's bed is made up again. After a couple of days they come and take the new man away. Josef indicates with his hand where he is going. We watch a good few more come and go.

Relatives often come and sit by the beds crying, or talking softly and shyly. One old lady is very reluctant to leave, but she can't stay there all night, of course. She comes back very early on the following morning, but not quite early enough; because when she goes up to the bed there is already somebody new in it. She has to go to the mortuary. She gives us the apples that she had brought with her.

Little Peter is getting worse, too. His temperature chart looks bad, and one day a flat hospital trolley is put beside his bed. ‘Where am I going?' he asks.

‘To have your dressings done.'

They lift him on to the trolley. But the nurse makes the mistake of taking his battledress tunic from its hook and putting it on the trolley with him, so that she doesn't have to make two journeys. Peter realizes at once what is going on and tries to roll off the trolley. ‘I'm staying here!'

They hold him down. He cries out weakly with his damaged lung, ‘I don't want to go to the Dying Room.'

‘But we're going to the dressing ward.'

‘Then why do you need my tunic?' He can't speak any more. Hoarse and agitated, he whispers, ‘Want to stay here.'

They don't answer, and move him out. By the door he tries to sit up. His head of black curls is bobbing, his eyes are full of tears. ‘I'll be back! I'll be back!' he shouts.

The door closes. We are all rather worked up, but nobody says anything. Eventually Josef says, ‘Plenty of them have said that. But once you are in there you never last.'

*

They operate on me and I puke for two whole days. My bones don't seem to want to knit properly, says the doctor's clerk. There's another man whose bones grow together badly and he has to have them broken again. It's all pretty wretched.

Our latest additions include two recruits who have flat feet. When he is doing his rounds the chief surgeon finds this out and stops, delighted. ‘We'll get rid of that problem,' he tells them. ‘We'll just do a little operation and you'll both have healthy feet. Take their names, nurse.'

Once he has left, Josef – who knows everything – gives them a warning. ‘Whatever you do, don't let him operate on you. That business is the old man's medical hobby-horse. He's dead keen on anyone he can get hold of to work on. He'll operate on you for flat feet, and sure enough, when he's finished you won't have flat feet any more. Instead you'll have club feet and you'll be on crutches for the rest of your days.'

‘What can we do?' asks one of them.

‘Just say no. You're here to have your bullet wounds treated, not your flat feet. Think about it. Now you can still walk, but just let the old man get you under the knife and you're cripples. He's after guinea pigs for his experiments, and the war is a good time for him, just like it is for all the doctors. Have a look around the ward downstairs; there are at least a dozen men hobbling about after he's operated on them. A good few of them have been here since 1914 or 15 – for years. Not a single one of them can walk better than he could before, and for nearly all of them it's worse, most of them have to have their legs in plaster. Every six months he catches up with them and breaks the bones again, and every time that's supposed to do the trick. You be careful – he's not allowed to do it if you refuse.'