Part 8 (2/2)

”Shrapnel?” I stammered timidly.

The answer was confused. All I could get out of it was that a dumdum bullet had smashed his right s.h.i.+nbone. But what was that he kept mumbling about a hook each time his hand trembled up to his glowing cheek?

I could not understand him; for the thing he had gone through still seethed in his veins so violently that he spoke as though it were just then happening and I were witnessing it. His peasant's mind could not comprehend that there were people who had not seen or heard of the tremendous misery of the last hours he had gone through. So it was more by guess-work that I gradually pieced together his story from unfinished sentences, coa.r.s.e oaths, and groans.

For a whole night, after a repulsed attack on the enemy's trench, he had lain with a broken leg, unconscious, near our own wire entanglements.

At dawn they threw out the iron grappling hook for him, with which they pull over into the trench the corpses of friend and foe so as to be able to bury them unceremoniously before the sun of Goerz has a chance to do its work. With this hook, dipped in hundreds of corpses, a dunce--”G.o.d d.a.m.n him!”--had torn his cheek open before a more skilful hand caught hold of it and got him over safely. And now he asked humbly to be taken away to the hospital quickly, because he was worried--about his leg and being a crippled beggar the rest of his life.

I ran off as though mad dogs were at my heels, over rocks and roots, through the woods to the next detachment. In vain! In the whole woods there was not a single vehicle to be found. I had given up the last one to those three war correspondents.

Why had I not asked them to take the one wounded man lying on the field along with them and leave him at the hospital that they would pa.s.s? Why had they themselves not thought of doing their human duty? Why?

I clenched my fists in impotent fury and caught myself reaching for my revolver as though I could still shoot those gay sparks in their carriage.

Breathless, overheated from the long race, I tottered back, my knees trembling the whole way. I felt utterly broken, as though I were carrying on my shoulders a picture, weighing a ton, of men who for sport angle for human carrion.

An odd choking and tickling came into my throat--a sensation I had not known since childhood--when, back at my post again, I had to listen to the low whimpering of the helpless man.

He was no longer alone. In my absence a little band of slightly wounded men had joined him. Peering between the tree trunks I saw them sitting in a circle on the field, while the man who had been hooked was hopping about holding on to his injured leg and tossing his head from one shoulder to the other.

Towards noon I sent my corporals in search of a vehicle, promising them a princely reward, while I ran to the field again with my whisky flask.

He was no longer dancing about. He was kneeling in the center of the circle of wounded men, his body bent over, rolling his head on the ground as though it were a thing apart from himself. Suddenly he jumped up with such a yell of fury that a frightened murmur came even from the line of wounded men, who had been sitting there indifferent, sunk in their own suffering.

That was no longer anything human. The man's skin could not stand any more stretching and had burst. The broad splits ran apart like the lines of a compa.s.s and in the middle the raw flesh glowed and gushed out.

And he yelled! He hammered with his fist on the enormous purplish lump, until he fell to his knees again moaning under the blows of his own hand.

It was dark already when--at last!--they came and carted him away.

And when the night slowly wove its web of mist in the woods and I lay wrapped in a mound of blankets, the only one who was still awake in the throng of black tree-trunks that moved closer together in the darkness--there he was back again, standing up stiff in the moonlight, his tortured cheek, huge as a pumpkin, s.h.i.+ning blue against the black shadows of the trees. It glimmered like a will-o'-the-wisp, now here, now there. Night after night. It shone into every dream, so that I forced my eyelids open with my fingers--until, after ten frightful nights, my body broke down and was carried, a shrieking, convulsed heap, to the same hospital in which He had succ.u.mbed to blood-poisoning.

And now I am a madman! You can read it, black on white, on the placard at the head of my bed. They pat me on the back soothingly, like a shying horse, when I flare up and ask to be let out of this place in which _the others_ should be shut up.

But the others are free! From my window I can look over the garden wall into the street, and see them hurrying along, raising their hats, shaking hands, and crowding in front of the latest bulletin. I see women and girls, dressed coquettishly, tripping along with pride s.h.i.+ning in their eyes, beside men whom a cross on the breast brands as murderers.

I see widows in long black veils--still patient. I see lads with flowers stuck in their helmets ready to leave for the war. And not one of them rebels! Not one of them sees bruised, mangled men cowering in dark corners, men ripped apart by grappling hooks, men with their entrails gus.h.i.+ng out, and men with blue s.h.i.+ning cheeks.

They go by under my window, gesticulating, enthusiastic; because the enthusiastic phrases arrive coined fresh every day from the mint, and each person feels sheltered and enveloped in a warmth of a.s.sent if the phrases ring clear from his lips. I know that they keep quiet even when they would like to speak, to cry out, to scream. I know that they hunt down ”slackers,” and have no word of abuse for those who are a thousand times worse cowards, those who clearly recognise the utter senselessness of this butchery of millions, yet will not open their mouths for fear of the censure of the thoughtless crowd.

From my window I can see the whole globe spinning round like a crazy whirligig, whipped on by haughty lords in cunning calculation and by venal servants in sneaking submissiveness.

I see the whole pack! The bawlers who are too empty and too lazy to develop their own selves and want to puff themselves with the glittering praise meant for their herd. The scoundrels who are protected by the ma.s.ses, carried by them and fed by them, and who look up sanctimoniously to a bogy of their own invention, and hammer that bogy into the conscience of millions of good men, until the ma.s.s has been forged that has neither heart nor brain, but only fury and blind faith. I see the whole game proceeding madly in blood and agony. I see the spectators going by indifferently, and I am called a madman when I raise the window to call down to them that the sons they have born and bred, the men they have loved are being chased like wild animals, are being butchered like cattle.

Those fools down there, who for the sake of respectable condolence calls, for a neighbor's eyes raised heavenward in sympathy, sacrificed the splendor and warmth of their lives, who threw their flesh and blood into the barbed wire entanglements, to rot as carrion on the fields or be hooked in with grappling hooks, who have no other consolation than that the ”enemy” have had the same done to them--those fools remain free; and in their despicable vanity and wicked patience they may daily shove fresh hecatombs out to the cannons. But I must stay here impotent--left alone with the relentless comrade that my conscience gives birth to over again every day.

I stand at my window and between me and the street lie piled high the bodies of the many I saw bleeding. And I stand here powerless--because the revolver that was given me to shoot down poor homesick devils, forced into a uniform by iron necessity, has been taken from me, out of fear that I might dislodge a few ma.s.s murderers from their security and send them as a warning example down to their victims.

So I must stay here, as a seer over the blind--behind iron gratings. And all I can do is consign these leaves to the wind--every day write it all down again and keep scattering the pages out on the street.

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