Part 7 (1/2)
Since when is the commander instructed by his subordinates as to what is possible and what is not?”
Blue in the face with rage he took a pen and wrote this single sentence in answer to the report: ”The sector is to be held.” Underneath he signed his name in the perpendicular scrawl that every school child knew from the picture card of the ”Victor of ----.” He himself put the envelope into the motor-cyclist's hand for it to be taken to the wireless station as the telephone wires of the brigade had long since been shot into the ground. Then he bl.u.s.tered like a storm cloud from room to room, stayed half an hour in the card room, had a short interview with the chief of the staff, and asked to have the evening reports sent to the castle. When his rumbling ”Good night, gentlemen!”
at last resounded in the large hall under the dome, every one heaved a sigh of relief. The guard stood at attention, the chauffeur started the motor, and the big machine plunged into the street with a bellow like a wild beast's. Panting and tooting, it darted its way through the narrow streets out into the open, where the castle like a fairy palace looked down into the misty valley below with its pearly rows of illuminated windows.
With his coat collar turned up, His Excellency sat in the car and reflected as he usually did at this time on the things that had happened during the day. The correspondent came to his mind and the man's stupid question, ”When does Your Excellency hope for peace?” Hope? Was it credible that a man who must have some standing in his profession, else he never would have received a letter of recommendation from headquarters, had so little suspicion of how contrary that was to every soldierly feeling? Hope for peace? What good was a general to expect from peace? Could this civilian not comprehend that a commanding general really commanded, was really a general, just in times of war, while in times of peace he was like a strict teacher in galloons, an old duffer who occasionally shouted himself hoa.r.s.e out of pure ennui? Was he to long for that dreary treadmill existence again? Was he to hope for the time--to please the gentlemen civilians--when he, the victorious leader of the ----th Army, would be used again merely for reviews? Was he to await impatiently going back to that other hopeless struggle between a meager salary and a life polished for show, a struggle in which the lack of money always came out triumphant?
The general leaned back on the cus.h.i.+oned seat in annoyance.
Suddenly the car stopped with a jerk right in the middle of the road.
The general started up in surprise and was about to question the chauffeur, when the first big drops of rain fell on his helmet. It was the same storm that earlier in the afternoon had given the men at the front a short respite.
The two corporals jumped out and quickly put up the top. His Excellency sat stark upright, leaned his ear to the wind, and listened attentively.
Mingled with the rus.h.i.+ng sound of the wind he caught quite clearly, but very--very faintly a dull growling, a hollow, scarcely audible pounding, like the distant echo of trees being chopped down in the woods.
Drumfire!
His Excellency's eyes brightened. A gleam of inner satisfaction pa.s.sed over his face so recently clouded with vexation.
Thank G.o.d! There still was war!
IV. MY COMRADE
(_A Diary_)
This world war has given me a comrade, too. You couldn't find a better one.
It is exactly fourteen months ago that I met him for the first time in a small piece of woods near the road to Goerz. Since then he has never left my side for a single moment. We sat up together hundreds of nights through, and still he walks beside me steadfastly.
Not that he intrudes himself upon me. On the contrary. He conscientiously keeps the distance that separates him, the common soldier, from the officer that he must respect in me. Strictly according to regulations he stands three paces off in some corner or behind some column and only dares to cast his shy glances at me.
He simply wants to be near me. That's all he asks for, just for me to let him be in my presence.
Sometimes I close my eyes to be by myself again, quite by myself for a few moments, as I used to be before the war. Then he fixes his gaze upon me so firmly and penetratingly and with such obstinate, reproachful insistence that it burns into my back, settles under my eyelids, and so steeps my being with the picture of him that I look round, if a little tune has pa.s.sed without his reminding me of his presence.
He has gnawed his way into me, he has taken up his abode within me. He sits inside of me like the mysterious magician at moving-picture shows who turns the crank inside of the black booth above the heads of the spectators. He casts his picture through my eyes upon every wall, every curtain, every flat surface that my eyes fall on.
But even when there is no background for his picture, even when I frantically look out of the window and stare into the distance so as to be rid of him for a short while, even then he is there, hovering in front of me as though impaled upon the lance of my gaze, like a banner swaying at the head of a parade. If X-rays could penetrate the skull, one would find his picture woven into my brain in vague outline, like the figures in old tapestries.
I remember a trip I took before the war from Munich to Vienna on the Oriental Express. I looked out upon the autumnal mellowness of the country around the Bavarian lakes and the golden glow of the Wiener Wald. But across all this glory that I drank in leaning back on the comfortable seat in luxurious contentment, there steadily ran an ugly black spot--a flaw in the window-pane. That is the way my obstinate comrade flits across woods and walls, stands still when I stand still, dances over the faces of pa.s.sers-by, over the asphalt paving wet from the rain, over everything my eyes happen to fall upon. He interposes himself between me and the world, just like that flaw in the window-pane, which degraded everything I saw to the quality of the background that it made.
The physicians, of course, know better. They do not believe that He lives in me and stays by me like a sworn comrade. From the standpoint of science it rests with me not to drag him round any longer, but to give him his dismissal, precisely as I might have freed myself from the annoying spot by angrily smas.h.i.+ng the window-pane. The physicians do not believe that one human being can unite himself at death with another human being and continue to live on in him with obstinate persistence.
It is their opinion that a man standing at a window should see the house opposite but never the wall of the room behind his back.
The physicians only believe in things that _are_. Such superst.i.tions as that a man can carry dead men within him and see them standing in front of him so distinctly that they hide a picture behind them from his sight, do not come within the range of the gentlemen's reasoning. In their lives death plays no part. A patient who dies ceases to be a patient. And what does the day know of the night, though the one forever succeeds the other?
But I know it is not I who forcibly drag the dead comrade through my life. I know that the dead man's life within me is stronger than my own life. It may be that the shapes I see flitting across the wall papers, cowering in corners and staring into the lighted room from dark balconies, and knocking so hard on the windows that the panes rattle, are only visions and nothing more. Where do they come from? _My_ brain furnishes the picture, _my_ eyes provide the projection, but it is the dead man that sits at the crank. He tends to the film. The show begins when it suits Him and does not stop as long as He turns the crank. How can I help seeing what He shows me? If I close my eyes the picture falls upon the inside of my lids, and the drama plays inside of me instead of dancing far away over doors and walls.