The Road Back (19 page)

Valentin looks round. "I have to go back for a moment," I say hastily. "I want to speak to someone. I'll be here again in a minute." and I run off in search of the red hat, the red glow in the mist, the bright days of my youth before uniforms and trenches.

"Adele——"

She looks round. "Ernst! You back again!"

We walk side by side. The mist flows between us. Wolf jumps about us and barks, the trams are ringing, and the world is warm and soft. The old feeling is there once again, full, tremulous, wavering; the years are blotted out, an arch has flung over into the past, a rainbow, a bright bridge through the mist—

I have no idea what we are talking about—what does it matter?—the point is that we are walking side by side; that this sweet, inaudible music of other days is here again, a cascade of dreams and desire, beyond which shimmers silken the green of meadows; beyond which sings the silver chatter of the poplar trees and the smooth horizon of youth shows clear like the dawn.

Were we walking long?—I do not know. I run back alone. Adele has said Good-bye. But still like a big, many-coloured banner there waves within me joy, and hope and fullness; the little room where I was once a boy, Summer, the greenspires and the open wide world.

As I run back I bump into Willy and we go on together in search of Valentin. We overtake him. With every appearance of joy, he is darting off after some fellow whom he gives a resounding slap on the back. "Hullo, Kuckhoff, old son! where have you sprung from?" He holds out his hand. "This is a bit of luck, eh? Fancy meeting again like this."

The other looks at him a while deprecatingly.

"Ah, Laher, I think?"

"Sure, why we were together on the Somme, don't you remember? and how, right in the middle of the bloody stunt, we polished off those fritters Lilly sent me? It was Georg brought them up, with the mail. A damned risky thing to do, you know, what?"

"Yes, indeed," says the other.

Valentin is quite excited by his memories. "He got it properly later on, though," he continues—"You'd gone then of course. Lost his right arm, he did. Stiff luck on a coachman like him. I suppose he's had to start something else now too.—And where have you been hiding all this time, eh?"

The other makes an evasive answer, then says patronisingly:

"Nice to have met you.—And how are you getting along now, my man?"

"Eh?" retorts Valentin in astonishment.

"How are you getting along? What are you doing now?"

Valentin has still not recovered. "My man?" For a moment he continues to stare, at the other as he stands there before him in his elegant raincoat. Then he glances down at his own things, goes fiery red and pushes off. "Skunk!"

I feel sorry for Valentin. It is the first time apparently that the idea of a difference has struck him. Until now in his mind we had all been just plain soldiers. And with one single "My man," this conceited puppy has now shattered bis simple faith.

"Don't let that worry you, Valentin," I say. "It's the likes of him that pride themselves on how much their fathers earn. That's their business."

And Willy supplements with a few forceful expressions.

"Fine sort of pal he is, anyway," says Valentin at last sullenly.—But that does not take the taste away.—It works on chokingly within him.

Fortunately at that moment we run into Tjaden. He is as grey as a floor-cloth. "Say!" says Willy. "The war's over now, you know! Couldn't you give yourself a good wash once in a while?"

"Not just now," explains Tjaden solemnly. "But next Saturday I will. I'm even going to have a bath then, and to get deloused, too, what's more."

We start in surprise. Tjaden have a bath! What ever's the matter with the man? He must have stopped something, surely, that time he was buried last August. Willy, who is quite floored, puts a hand to his ear. "I'm afraid I haven't understood you properly. What did you say you are going to do on Saturday?"

"Have a bath!" says Tjaden proudly. "I'm getting engaged next Saturday night."

Willy stares at him as if he were some strange kind of parrot, then gently he puts his great paw on Tjaden's shoulder and says in a fatherly tone: "Say, Tjaden, do you sometimes have a stabbing pain in the back of the head? Or a funny buzzing sort of noise in yours ears?"

"Only when I'm half starved," Tjaden reassures him; "and then I have a regular bombardment in my belly, too— an awful feeling that is, I tell you I But to come back to my fiancee: she isn't beautiful, mind you, she has two left legs and she squints a bit; but she makes up for it with a heart, and then, you see, her father's a butcher."

A butcher! The light begins to dawn. Tjaden volunteers yet more information. "You'd be surprised, she's just crazy about me. And, well, it's catch as catch can these days. Times are bad, you know, so a man has to make some sacrifices. But a butcher will be the last man to starve. And anyway, engaged is after all still a long way from married."

Willy listens with growing interest. "Tjaden," he begins,
"you know we have always been good friends——"

"Certainly, Willy," interrupts Tjaden, "you may have a few sausages. And chops too, to go with them, for mine. Come round next Monday. We are having a white sale on Monday."

"White sale? What do you mean?" I ask mystified. "Have you a drapery business, as well?"

"No, not that, but you see, we are killing a white horse."

We promise faithfully to be there, and go on our way.

Valentin turns in at the Altstädter Hof, where the artists put up. A group of Lilliputians are already sitting at supper as we enter. There is turnip soup on the table and beside each is a piece of bread.

"Let's hope they at least can get a square meal off their ration-cards," growls Willy. "They'll have smaller bellies, I suppose, wouldn't you think?"

Pasted on the walls there are play-bills and photographs —vari-coloured patches, some of them half-torn, and pictures of weight-lifters, and female lion-tamers, and clowns. They are old and faded. The front-line has been the arena for weight-lifters, crack riders and acrobats during the past few years, and there they had no need of placards.

Valentin points to one of them. "That was me once." In the picture is a fellow with a pouter's chest turning a somersault from a horizontal bar away up the dome of a circus. But with the best will in the world one could not recognise Valentin in it any more.

The dancer with whom he proposes to work is already waiting. We pass on into the little hall at the back of the restaurant. Some stage scenery is leaning in a corner. It belongs to the farce;
Fly Little Pineapple, a humorous piece from the lives of our lads in field-grey, with songs for all
, which had a great run for over two years.

Valentin sets a gramophone on a chair and looks out some records. A hoarse melody issues croaking from the horn. The thing has been played to death, but one can still detect in it a vestige of wildness, like the used-up voice of a disconsolate woman who once was beautiful. "Tango!" Willy whispers to me with the air of an adept that does not betray the fact that he has just read the inscription on the record.

Valentin is wearing blue pants and a shirt, the woman is in tights. They practise an apache dance, and a fancy number where the girl finally hangs by the legs about Valentin's neck, while he gyrates as fast as he can.

The two rehearse in silence with grim faces. Only occasionally is a half-audible word spoken. The dim light of the lamp flickers. The gas hisses softly. The shadows of the dancers move immense across the scenery for the
Pineapple
.

Willy ambles back and forth like a bear, to wind up the gramophone.

Valentin finishes. Willy claps his applause. Valentin, ill-satisfied, makes a gesture to desist. The girl changes without even noticing us. Deliberately she unbinds her dancing shoes beneath the gas-light. The back arches lithely under the faded tights. She straightens up and raises her arms to draw over some garment. Lights and shadows play on her shoulders. She has beautiful, long legs.

Willy goes nosing round the room. He discovers a programme for the
Pineapple
. On the back are some advertisements. A confectioner, for instance, recommends bombs and shells made of chocolate, all ready packed to send off to the trenches. And a Saxon firm is offering paper knives made from shell-splinters, and closet paper with sayings of great men about the war—also two sets of picture postcards:—
The Soldier's Farewell and I stand in the Darkest Midnight
.

The dancer has dressed. In cloak and hat she looks quite strange. Before she was a lithe animal; now she is like all the others again. One would hardly believe that it is necessary only to put on a few bits of clothing to make so much difference. Most strange it is, how clothes do change people!  And uniforms more than all.

Willy goes every evening to Waldman's—That is a resort not far from the town where there is dancing in the afternoons and evenings.—I am going tonight, too, for Karl Bröger has told me that Adele is there sometimes. I should like to see her again.

All the windows of the garden ballroom at Waldman's are lit up. The shadows of the dancers move lightly across the drawn curtains. I take up a position at the bar and look round for Willy. Every table is occupied, there is not a chair free.—There has been a perfect frenzy for amusement these last few months since the war.

My eye suddenly lights on a dazzling white belly and the majestical claw-hammer of a swallow-tailed coat. Willy in his new cut-away! I stand there and blink. The coat is black, the vest white, and the hair red—a living flag-pole.

Willy receives my astonishment affably as admiration. "You might well stare!" says he, turning himself round like a peacock. "My Kaiser-William-Memorial Cut-away! How do you like it? You never would have thought that could come out of an army greatcoat, now, would you?"

He pats me on the shoulder. "But it's grand that you've come. There's a dance tournament to-night, we're all in for it, topping prizes! It starts in half an hour."

Until then one may still try out one's paces. Willy has a sort of female pugilist for a partner, a great hefty creature, as powerful as a shire stallion. At the moment he is practising a one-step with her in which speed is the most noticeable feature. Karl, on the other hand, is dancing with a girl from the Food Office, all tricked out with rings and chains like a sleigh-horse. In this way he combines business and pleasure most agreeably. But Albert—Albert is not at our table. A trifle shyly he salutes us from a corner where he is sitting with a fair-haired girl.

"We've seen the last of him," says Willy prophetically.

I take a stroll around in the hope of picking up a good dancer. That is no simple matter. Many who at table appear light-footed as a doe, turn out afterwards to dance no better than an elephant in pup. And good dancers are much coveted, of course.—However, I do at last succeed in bespeaking a little seamstress.

The orchestra sounds a flourish. A chap with a chrysanthemum in his buttonhole comes to the front and explains that a couple will now give a demonstration of the latest thing from Berlin—a Fox-trot! That is unknown here as yet; we have only heard tell of it.

We gather round curiously. The orchestra strikes up a syncopated measure and the pair begin to skip round each other like a couple of spring lambs. Sometimes they will retreat from one another; then they will link arms again and twirl limping in a circle. Willy is craning his neck, his eyes as big as saucers. Here at last is a dance after his own heart.

The table with the prizes is brought in. We barge across. There are three prizes each for the One-step, the Boston, and the Fox-trot. The Fox-trot rules us out, we cannot do that; but like old Blücher, we mean to knock, off the other two.

The first prize in each case is ten gull's eggs or a bottle of schnapps. Willy inquires suspiciously whether gull's eggs are edible. Reassured he comes back. The second prize is six gull's eggs, or an all-wool Balaclava cap; the third, four eggs, or two packets of
Germany's Heroic Fame
cigarettes. "We're not having them anyhow," says Karl, who knows about such things.

The competition begins. We have entered Karl and Albert for the Boston; Willy and me for the One-step. But we have not very high hopes of Willy. He can win only if the judges have a sense of humour.

In the Boston, Karl and Albert with three other couples reach the final round. Karl has the advantage—the high collar of his swagger uniform, his new patent-leather shoes, the chains and rings of his sleigh-horse make a picture of dazzling elegance that none could hope to rival. In style and deportment he is matchless, but in rhythm and sympathy Albert is at least as good. The judges are making notes solemnly, as though the elimination rounds for the Last Judgment were in progress at Waldman's. Karl wins and takes the ten gull's eggs—he knows the brand of schnapps too well, having sold it to the house himself. He very nobly presents us with the booty—he has better at home. Albert takes second prize. With an embarrassed glance in our direction he carries off his six gull's eggs to the fair-headed girl. Willy whistles.