Part 4 (2/2)
”We'll leave them to you as a souvenir,” the trench commandant, who was just leaving the dugout with Weixler, laughed in his maundering way.
”You can have them dug in at night up there among the communication trenches, Captain. When it gets dark, the Italians direct their barrage fire farther back, and give you a chance to climb out. To be sure, they won't lie in peace there under the earth very long, because the sh.e.l.ls rip everything open right away again. I've had to have my poor ensign buried three times over already.”
”How did they get in here anyhow?” Weixler asked, pus.h.i.+ng himself forward. ”Did you have a fight in the trench?”
The other lieutenant shook his head proudly. ”I should rather say not.
The gentlemen never got as far as that. These three tried to cut the wire entanglements night before last, but our machine gun man caught 'em at it and his iron spatter spoiled their little game. Well, there they lay, of course, right under our very noses and they had on the loveliest shoes of bright yellow. My men begrudged 'em those shoes. There--” he ended, pointing with his finger at the feet of the pale sergeant--”there you see one pair. But we'll have to start now. March, sergeant! My respects, Captain. The Italians'll open their eyes when they come over to-night to finish us off comfortably and a hundred and fifty rifles go off and two brand-new bullet squirters. Ha-ha! Sorry I can't be here to see it! Good-by, little man! Good luck!” Humming a merry popular song he followed his men without looking back, without even observing that Marschner accompanied him a little on his way.
Gaily, as though on a Sunday picnic, the men started on the way, which led over the terrible field of shards and ruins and the steep, shot-up hill. What h.e.l.ls they must have endured there, in that mole's gallery!
The captain remained standing and heaved a deep sigh. It was as if that long, grey column slowly winding its way through the trench were carrying away the last hope. The back of the last soldier, growing smaller and smaller, was the world. The captain's eyes clung greedily to that back and measured fearfully the distance to the corner of the trench from which he must lose sight of it forever. There was still time to call out a greeting, and by running very fast one might still catch up and hand over a letter.
Then the last medium disappeared--the last possibility of dividing the world into two halves. And his yearning recoiled before the endless s.p.a.ce it had to bridge--and there was nothing else to bridge it but his yearning.
Marschner sank into himself as he stood deserted in the empty trench. He felt as though he had been hollowed out, and looked about for help, and his eyes clung to the depression from which the corpses had now been lifted. Only the three Italians were lying there, the life already gone from them. The one showed his face, his mouth was still wide open as for a cry, and his hands dug themselves, as though to ward off pain, into his unnaturally swollen body. The other two lay with their knees drawn up and their heads between their arms. The naked feet with their grey convulsed toes stared into the communication trench like things robbed, with a mute accusal. There was a remoteness about these dead bodies, a loneliness, an isolation about their bared feet. A tangled web of memories arose, a throng of fleeting faces glimmered in the captain's soul--gondoliers of Venice, voluble cabbies, a toothless inn-keeper's wife at Posilipo. Two trips on a vacation in Italy drove an army of sorrowing figures through his mind. And finally another figure appeared in that ghostly dance of death, his own sister, sitting in a concert hall in Vienna, care-free, listening to music, while her brother lay somewhere stretched out on the ground, rigid in death, an enemy's corpse just to be kicked aside.
Shuddering, the captain hastened back down the trench, as though the three dead men were pursuing him noiselessly on their naked soles. When he reached his own men at last, he felt as if he had arrived at a harbor of safety.
The sh.e.l.ls were now falling so thick that there was not a moment's pause between the explosions, and all sounds merged into a single, equal, rolling thunder, which made the earth tremble like the hull of a s.h.i.+p.
But there was a particularly sharp cras.h.i.+ng and splintering from one shot that hit the trench squarely and whirled the coverings above in all directions. A few minutes later two groaning men dragged down a corpse, leaned it against the trench wall, and climbed back to their posts through the narrow shaft. Marschner saw his sergeant get up and move his lips--then a soldier in the corner arose and took up his rifle and followed the two others heavily. It was all so comfortless, so unmercifully businesslike, precisely as when ”Next!” breaks into the monotony of the practising in the yard of the barracks, only with the difference that a little group at once gathered about the dead man, drawn by that shy curiosity which irresistibly attracts simple folk to corpses and funerals. Most of the men expected the same of him--he saw it in their eyes--that he, too, would go over and pay a last tribute of respect to the dead. But he did not want to. He was absolutely determined not to learn the fallen man's name. He was bent upon practising self-mastery at last and remaining indifferent to all small happenings. So long as he had not seen the dead man's face nor heard his name, only a man had fallen in battle, one of the many thousands. If he kept his distance and did not bend over each individual and did not let a definite fate come to his notice, it was not so hard to remain indifferent.
Stubbornly he walked over to the second shaft leading to the top and for the first time observed that it had grown quite silent up above. There was no longer any screaming or bursting. This silence came upon the deafening din like a paralyzing weight and filled s.p.a.ce with a tense expectancy that flickered in all eyes. He wanted to rid himself of this oppression and crept through the crumbling shaft up to the top.
The first thing he saw was Weixler's curved back. He was holding his field-gla.s.s glued to his eyes under cover of a shooting s.h.i.+eld. The others were also standing as if pasted to their posts, and there was something alarming in the motionlessness of their shoulder blades. All at once a twitching ran through the petrified row. Weixler sprang back, jostled against the captain, and cried out: ”They are coming!” Then he stormed to the shaft and blew the alarm whistle.
Marschner stared after him helplessly. He walked with hesitating steps to the s.h.i.+eld and looked out upon the wide, smoke-covered field, which curved beyond the tangle of wires, grey, torn, blood-flecked, like the bloated form of a gigantic corpse. Far in the background the sun was sinking. Its great copper disc already cut in half by the horizon seemed to be growing out of the ground. And against that dazzling background black silhouettes were dancing like midges under a microscope, like Indians swinging their tomahawks. They were still mere specks. Sometimes they disappeared entirely and then leaped high, and came nearer, their rifles wriggling in the air like the feet of a polyp. Gradually their cries became audible and swelled louder and louder like the far barking of dogs. When they called ”Avanti!” it was a piercing cry, and when the call ”Coraggio!” went through their lines, it changed to a dull, thunderous roll.
The entire company now stood close-packed up against the slope of the trench, their faces as of stone, restrained, pale as chalk, with lipless mouths, each man's gun in position--a single beast of prey with a hundred eyes and arms.
”Don't shoot! Don't shoot! Don't shoot!” Lieutenant Weixler's voice yelled without pause through the trench. His command seemed to lay its grasp on every throat and to hold the fingers moveless that greedily clasped the triggers. The first hand grenade flew into the trench. The captain saw it coming, then saw a man loosen from the ma.s.s, reel toward the dugout with outstretched arms, bending over, a veil of blood covering his face. Then--at last!--it was a relief--came the beating of the machine guns, and at once the rifles went off, too, like the raging of an angry pack. A cold, repulsive greed lay on all faces. Some of the men cried out aloud in their hate and rage when new groups emerged out there behind the thinning rows. The barrels of the rifles glowed with heat--and still the rumbling cries of ”Coraggio!” came nearer and nearer.
As though in a frenzy of insanity, the silhouettes hopped about out there, sprang into the air, fell, and rolled over each other, as though the war dance had only just reached the climax of its paroxysm.
Then Captain Marschner observed the man next to him let his rifle sink for a moment and with hasty, shaking hands insert the bayonet into the smoking barrel. The captain felt as though he were going to vomit. He closed his eyes in dizziness and leaned against the trench wall, and let himself glide to the earth. Was he to--to see--that? Was he to see men being murdered right alongside of him? He tore his revolver from his pocket, emptied it, and threw it away. Now he was defenseless. And suddenly he grew calm and rose to his feet, elevated by a wonderful composure, ready to let himself be butchered by one of those panting beasts who were storming on, chased by the blind fear of death. He wanted to die like a man, without hatred, without rage, with clean hands.
A hoa.r.s.e roar, a frightful, dehumanized cry almost beside him wrenched his thoughts back into the trench. A broad stream of light and fire, travelling in a steep curve, flowed blindingly down beside him and sprayed over the shoulder of the tall pock-marked tailor of the first line. In the twinkling of an eye the man's entire left side flared up in flames. With a howl of agony he threw himself to the ground, writhed and screamed and leaped to his feet again, and ran moaning up and down like a living torch, until he broke down, half-charred, and twitched, and then lay rigid. Captain Marschner saw him lying there and smelt the odor of burned flesh, and his eyes involuntarily strayed to his own hand on which a tiny, white spot just under his thumb reminded him of the torments he had suffered in his boyhood from a bad burn.
At that moment a jubilant hurrah roared through the trench, rising from a hundred relieved throats. The attack had been repulsed! Lieutenant Weixler had carefully taken aim at the thrower of the liquid fire and hit at the first shot. The liquid fire had risen up like a fountain from the falling man's stiffening hand and rained down on his own comrades.
Their decimated lines shrank back suddenly before the unexpected danger and they fled pell-mell, followed by the furious shots from all the rifles.
The men fell down as if lifeless, with slack faces and l.u.s.terless eyes, as though some one had turned off the current that had fed those dead creatures with strength from some unknown source. Some of them leaned against the trench wall white as cheese, and held their heads over, and vomited from exhaustion. Marschner also felt his gorge rising and groped his way toward the dugout. He wanted to go into his own place now and be alone and somehow relieve himself of the despair that held him in its grip.
”h.e.l.lo!” Lieutenant Weixler cried unexpectedly through the silence, and bounded over to the left where the machine guns stood.
The captain turned back again, mounted the ladder, and gazed out into the foreground of the field. There, right in front of the wire-entanglements, kneeled an Italian. His left arm was hanging down limp, and his right arm was raised beseechingly, and he was crawling toward them slowly. A little farther back, half hidden by the kneeling man, something kept stirring on the ground. There three wounded men were trying to creep toward their own trench, pressing close to the ground.
One could see very clearly how they sought cover behind corpses and now and then lay motionless so as to escape discovery by the foe. It was a pitiful sight--those G.o.d-forsaken creatures surrounded by death, each moment like an eternity above them, yet clinging with tooth and nail to their little remnant of life.
”Come on! Isn't there a rope somewhere?” an old corporal called down into the trench. ”I'm sorry for the poor devil of an Italian. Let's pull him in!”
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