The Road Back (14 page)

In Albert's case this is not necessary; he has enough to hang out on his own account. At length the three are satisfactorily furnished, and Helmuth surveys his handiwork. "Superb!" says he. "Now for it! And for once show the bloody turnip-eaters what a real front-line man-eater looks like."

"Make your mind easy on that score," says Willy, now quite himself again.

The smoke of pipes and cigars fills the room. Desires, thoughts, ambitions in seething confusion. God only knows what will come of them. A hundred young soldiers, eighteen lieutenants, thirty warrant-officers and non-coms., all sitting here, wanting to start to live. Any man of them could take a company under fire across No Man's Land with hardly a casualty. There is not one who would hesitate for an instant to do the right thing when the cry: "They are coming!" was yelled down into his dugout. Every man has been tempered through countless, pitiless days; every man a complete soldier, no more and no less.

But for peace? Are we suitable? Are we fit now for anything but soldiering?

I
am on my way from the station to visit Adolf Bethke. I know this house at once—he has described it to me so often out there.

A garden with fruit trees. The apples have not all been picked yet. There are a lot lying in the grass under the trees. On an open space before the door is an immense chestnut tree and the ground beneath it is covered over and over with russet leaves, the stone table below and the bench also. The pinkish white of the burst, spikey husks, the lustrous brown of the fallen nuts gleams among the leaves. I take up one or two and look at the lacquered, veined, mahogany rind and the lighter coloured, germinal spot underneath. To think such things exist! I look about me—To think that there is still all this—these gay trees! blue, misty woods—yes, woods, not mere shattered tree-stumps; and this wind over the fields, without fume of powder or stink of gas; this greasy, glistening, ploughed earth with its pungent smell; horses pulling ploughs, not gun-limbers now; and following behind them, without rifles, the ploughmen, home again, ploughmen in soldiers' uniforms.

The sun is hidden by clouds floating above a little copse, but pencils of silver light shoot out from behind them. Children's gaily coloured kites swaying high up in the air. Lungs breathing deeply, the cool air streaming in and out—no guns, no trench-mortars now; no pack cramping the chest, no belt hanging heavy at the belly; gone from the neck the taut sense of wariness and watching, gone too the half-slinking gait that may be changed within the second to falling and lingering and horror and death. I walk free and upright with swinging shoulders and feel the strength and the richness of this moment—to be here, to be visiting Adolf, my comrade!

The door of the house stands half open. On the right is the kitchen. I knock. No one answers. "Good day!" I call. Nothing stirs. I go in farther and open yet another door. Somebody is seated alone at the table—now he looks up, dishevelled, an old uniform, a glance: Bethke!

"Adolf!" I exclaim, happily, "didn't you hear me? Asleep, were you, eh?"

Without shifting his position he gives me his hand.

"Thought I'd come over and see you, Adolf."

"That's good of you, Ernst," he says gloomily.

"Something the matter, Adolf?" I ask in surprise.

"Ach, don't ask, Ernst——"

I sit down beside him. "But, Adolf, old man, what's the matter with you?"

He parries. "Nothing, I'm all right; leave us alone, Ernst,
can't you?—It's good, though—it's good one of you has
come at last." He stands up. "It makes a man crazy, 
being alone here like this——"

I look around. There is no sign of his wife anywhere.

He remains silent a while, then suddenly says once again: "It's good you have come." He hunts about for some schnapps and some cigarettes. We have a spot out of two thick glasses with a pink inset underneath. Before the window lies the garden and the path with the fruit trees. There is a gust of wind and the garden gate rattles. Out of the corner a dark, weighted grandfather-clock sounds the hour.

"Good health, Adolf!" "Good health, Ernst!"

A cat steals across the room. It jumps up on the sewing-machine and begins to purr. After a while Adolf begins to talk. "They come here and talk, my people and her people—and they don't understand me, and I don't understand them. It's as if we weren't the same persons any more." He props his head in his hands. "You understand me, Ernst, and I you—but with these people, it's as if there were a stone wall between us."

Then at last I hear the whole story.

With his pack on his back and a whole sack full ofgood things, coffee, chocolate, and a length of silk even, enough to make a whole dress, Bethke came home. 

He meant to come softly and give his wife a surprise, I but the dog starts barking like mad, almost upsetting his kennel. Then Bethke can restrain himself no longer. He runs down the path between the apple trees—his path, his trees, his house, his wife! His heart is thudding in his throat like a sledge-hammer. He flings open the door, a great sigh, and then in—"Marie——"

Now he sees her. With his very glance he embraces her. It overwhelms him with joy—home, the dim light, the clock ticking, the table, the big armchair, and there, his wife!—he makes toward her. But she retreats before him, staring at 
him as if he were a ghost.

He suspects nothing. "Did I frighten you?" he asks, laughing.

"Yes," she says nervously.

"That will soon pass, Marie," he answers, trembling in his excitement—Now at last that he is here again in the room, his whole being is trembling. He has been away from it so long, too long!

"I didn't know you were coming so soon, Adolf," says his wife! She is standing with her back to the cupboard and gazing at him with great wide eyes. For an instant something cold suddenly grips him, it takes his breath away. "Aren't you even a little bit glad, then?" he asks awkwardly.

"Yes, Adolf, of course——"

"Has something happened?" he goes on, still holding all his traps in his hand.

Then the trouble begins. She puts her head down on the table and starts to blub.—He might as well know it at once—the others would only tell him, anyway.—She had an affair with a man! It just came over her; she didn't mean any harm; she had never thought of anyone but him.—Now let him kill her if he will.

Adolph stands there and stands. At last he notices that he still has his sack perched like a monkey on his shoulder. He looses it and starts to unpack; he is trembling; he keeps thinking to himself: "It can't be true, though, it can't be."—He goes on unpacking merely to do something, not to have to be still. The silk crackles in his hand, he holds it out: "I wanted to bring this for you," he says, and is still thinking: "It can't be, it can't be true."—Helplessly he holds out the red silk, and still nothing of what has happened sinks into his skull.

But she is weeping and will hear nothing. He sits down to think, and suddenly is conscious of a terrible hunger. On the table are some apples from the trees in the garden, good russets they are; he takes them and eats, he must do something. Then his hands become limp, and he has understood it. A raging fury rises in him. He must murder someone.—He runs out in search of the man.

But he does not find him. Then he goes to the ale house. There the men greet him, but there is an air of constraint; they talk warily, looking past him, choosing their words. So they know it.—Bethke behaves as if nothing were wrong—but no man could keep that up—He drinks off his pint and goes, just as somebody asks: "Been home yet?" And when he has left the bar-room there is silence behind him. He ranges hither and thither until it is late, and at last is standing again before his own house. What should he do? He goes in. The lamp is burning; there is coffee on the table, and fried potatoes in a pan on the hearth. "Ah, but how good, if only the other weren't true!" he thinks miserably. "Even a white, cloth on the table! But now it only makes it the harder."

His wife is there, and she is crying no longer. As he sits down, she pours out the coffee, and puts the potatoes and sausages on the table. But she has laid no place for herself.

He looks at her. She is pale and thin. It all surges up once again, it sweeps over him, sinks him in utter meaningless misery. He wants to know no more—he wants only to lock himself in, to lie down on his bed, to turn into stone. The coffee is steaming. He pushes it away, the pan too. The woman shrinks back. She knows what is coming.

But Adolf does not get up, he cannot. He merely shakes his head and says: "Go, Marie."

She makes no protest. She, casts her shawl about her shoulders, edges the pan a little toward him again, says in a timid voice: "At least, eat, Adolf——" and then goes.

She is going, she is going, her soft tread, soundless. The door shuts. Outside the dog barks, the wind moans at the window. Bethke is alone.

And then the night——

A few days like that alone in a house eat into a man come straight from the trenches.

Adolf tried to catch the fellow, but he always saw Adolf in time and made himself scarce. Adolf lay in wait and hunted for him everywhere—but he could not get him, and that quite destroyed him.

Then her people came and talked. He should reconsider it, they said; his wife had been straight again for a long time now; and then, to be alone for four years—that is no small thing; the man was to blame; and after all, people did a lot of strange things during the war.

"What's a fellow to do, Ernst?"—Adolf looks up.

"God, I don't know," I say. "It's a bloody shame."

"Worthy coming back home for, Ernst, eh?"

I refill the glasses and we drink. Adolf has no cigars in the house and does not want to go himself to the store, so I offer to fetch some. He is a heavy smoker; it might help matters if he had a few cigars. So I take a whole box full of "Woodman's Joy"—fat, brown stumps, that have not been misnamed, for they are pure beech leaf. Still, they are better than nothing.

When I re-enter the house someone else is also there, and I see at once that it is his wife. She carries herself upright, though her shoulders are frail—There is something pathetic about a woman's neck and shoulders. They are childlike in some way. One could never really bring oneself to be harsh with them—I don't mean the fat ones, of course, the ones with necks like hams.

"Good day," I say and take off my cap. She does not reply. I put the cigars in front of Adolf, but he does not touch them. The clock is ticking. Leaves of the chestnut tree fall spinning down past the window. Sometimes one will strike on the pane and the wind holds it there. The five earth-brown leaves all joined on one stem, look like outspread, clutching hands threatening from outside there into the room—brown, dead hands of autumn.

Adolf moves at last, and in a voice I do not know, says: "Go now, Marie."

She rises obediently like a school child, and looking straight before her, she goes. The slim neck, the frail shoulders—how can it be possible?

"Every day she comes like that and sits there and says nothing, and waits and looks at me," says Adolf morosely. I am sorry for him, but I feel sorry now for the woman, too.

"Come back to town with me, Adolf. There's no point in your squatting here," I suggest.

But he will not. Outside the dog starts to bark. His wife is going out at the garden gate now, back to her parents.

"Does she want to come back again, then?" I ask. He nods. I say no more. He must settle that for himself. "Won't you come with me?" I try once again.

"Later, Ernst."

"Well, have a cigar, anyway." I shove the box toward him and wait until he takes one. Then I shake hands with him. "I'll come and see you again, Adolf."

He comes with me as far as the gate. I turn again after a little while and wave to him. He is still standing in the little doorway, and behind him is the darkness of evening again, just as when he first climbed out and left us. He ought to have stayed with us. Now he is alone and unhappy, and we unable to help him, glad though we would be if we could.—Yes, things were much simpler at the Front—there, so long as a man was still alive, all was well.

I lie outstretched on the sofa, my head against the, arm, and my eyes closed. My thoughts move through my drowse in fantastic confusion. Consciousness hovers between waking and dream, and weariness like a shadow rides through my brain. Beyond, indistinctly, distant gun-fire floats in, shells pipe over softly, and the tinny ringing of gongs sounds nearer, announcing a gas-attack. But before I can grope for my gas-mask the darkness recedes without sound, the earth, against which my face is pressed, dissolves before a feeling of warmth, more bright; it turns again into the plush sofa-cover on which my cheek rests. Dimly, deep down, I am aware it is home. The gas-alarm of the trenches resolves into the subdued clatter of dishes which my mother is setting out cautiously on the table.