The Road Back (23 page)

He is breathing hard, "It must have been for something, Ludwig! When I first heard there was revolution, for one brief moment I thought: Now the time will be redeemed— now the flood will pour back, tearing down the old things, digging new banks for itself—and by God, I would have been in it! But the flood broke up into a thousand runnels; the revolution became a mere scramble for jobs, for big jobs and little jobs. It has trickled away, it has been damned up, it has been drained off into business, into family, and party. But that will not do me. I'm going where comradeship is still to be found."

Ludwig stands up. His brow is flaming, his eyes blaze. He looks Rahe in the face. "And why is it, Georg? why is it? Because we were duped, I tell you, duped as even yet we hardly realise; because we were misused, hideously misused!—They told us it was for the Fatherland, and meant the schemes of annexation of a greedy industry.—They told us it was for honour, and meant the quarrels and the will to power of a handful of ambitious diplomats and princes.—They told us it was for the Nation, and meant the need for activity on the part of out-of-work generals!"—He takes Rahe by the shoulders and shakes him. "Can't you see? They stuffed out the word Patriotism with all the twaddle of their fine phrases, with their desire for glory, their will to power, their false romanticism, their stupidity, their greed of business, and then paraded it before us as a shining ideal! And we thought they were sounding a bugle summoning us to a new, a more strenuous, a larger life. Can't you see, man? But we were making war against ourselves without knowing it! Every shot that struck home, struck one of us!—Can't you see?—Then listen and I will bawl it into your ears. The youth of the world rose up in every land believing that it was fighting for freedom! And in every land they were duped, and misused; in every land they have been shot down, they have exterminated each other! Don't you see now?—There is only one fight, the fight against the lie, the half-truth, compromise, against the old order. But we let ourselves be taken in by their phrases; and instead of fighting against them, we fought for them. We thought it was for the Future. It was against the Future. Our future is dead; for the youth is dead that carried it. We are merely the survivors, the ruins. But the other is alive still—the fat, the full, the well content—that lives on, fatter and fuller, more contented than ever! And why? Because the unsatisfied, the eager, the storm-troops have died for it. But think of it! A generation annihilated! A generation of hope, of faith, of will, strength, ability, so hypnotised that they have shot down one another, though over the whole world they all had the same purpose!"

His voice breaks. His eyes are full of passion and sobs. We are all standing now. "Ludwig," I say and put my arm about his shoulder.

Rahe takes up his cap and tosses the stone back into the case. "Good-bye, Ludwig, old comrade!"

Ludwig stands there facing him. His lips are pressed together, his cheek bones stand out. "You are going, Georg," he stammers, "but I am staying. I'm not giving in yet!"

Rahe looks at him a while. "It is hopeless," he, says calmly, and adjusts the buckle of his belt.

I go with Georg down the stairs. The leaden dawn is
already showing through the door. The stone steps re-echo 
and we come out into the open as from a dugout. The street 
is empty and grey. It drags away into the distance. Rahe 
points along it. "All one long fire-trench, Ernst—" He in
dicates the houses: "Dugouts, every one—the war still 
goes on—but a dirty, low-down war—every man against 
his fellow "

We shake hands. I cannot speak. Rahe smiles: "What's 
troubling you, Ernst? It's not a war at all out East, you 
know. Cheer up, we're soldiers still. And this isn't the first 
time we have parted——"

"I think it's the first time we have really parted, Georg," I say hastily.

He stands there a moment longer before me. Then he nods slowly and goes off down the street, spare, calm, without once looking round. And for a space I still hear the clatter of his steps when he has already disappeared.

I
nstructions have aerived requiring that Returned Men shall be treated with indulgence in the examination. They are to be allowed to submit subjects in which they are specially interested, and in those are to be examined.

Unfortunately the subjects in which we are specially interested do not figure in the syllabus, so we simplify matters after our own fashion. Every man is to submit two questions in each subject and to undertake to be able to answer them. Westerholt has seated himself at the master's desk, and before him are several large, blank sheets of paper with our names. We begin to dictate to him the questions that we wish to be asked.

Willy is uncommonly fastidious. He turns over and over the pages of his history book, and only after long searching up and down does he plump at last for the two questions following: "When was the battle of Zama?" and "When was the reign of Otto the Lazy?"

Westerholt and Albert take the lists of questions and subjects to the several masters. They go first to the Principal, who eyes them with some apprehension; he has not been led to expect any good at our hands. He studies the lists and then lays them aside with a gesture of disgust. "But, gentlemen, the Minister requires that you submit such fields as you may be specially interested in, that is to say, certain definite large sections from each course of study. But what you offer here is no more than bare, simple questions."

"The fields of our interest are no greater," answers Albert.

"But then, don't we make up for it, by knowing them so very
trés bon?
" adds Westerholt.

The Principal hands the lists back. "No, I cannot agree to that. It would merely be to make a farce of the whole examination!"

"Well, isn't it so, anyway!" retorts Westerholt, beaming.

The Principal shrugs his shoulders, but eventually. accepts the lists.

Willy unfortunately turns up two hours late for the essay, having got drunk with Karl the night before. Hollermann is greatly perturbed, and asks Willy if he thinks he can now finish in time. Willy nods confidently, sits down in his place, takes from the pocket of his cut-away the essay written already for him by Ludwig, spreads it out in front of him and then gratefully lays down his heavy head for a short nap. He is still so befuddled during the Divinity test that he nearly gives up his answers in Nature Study by mistake. He has brought the whole lot along all in one envelope. Albert just prevented it at the last moment.

We profit by the intervals during the oral examinations to have a last game of skat. That is one of the few things we really did learn to some purpose in the army.

Whenever one of the players is summoned for examination, he either puts down his cars for the moment and resumes the play afterwards, or else gives his hand to someone he can trust to get everything out of it that is in it.

Willy has such incredible luck that he forgets everything else in the excitement of the play. Just as he is beginning to bid on a wonderful hand—a solo grand, without two, and with Schneider—he is called up for examination in Literature. He looks at the cards in despair. "I'd rather fail than not play out this hand!" he declares. But finally he puts his cards into his pocket, making the other two promise over a handshake to wait until he returns, and not to monkey with the hands in the meantime. The consequence is that he has forgotten the answer to one of his questions in Literature. "Literature is the crucial subject, you know," says Hollermann, full of concern—"if you get below three, you fail."

Willy brightens up. "What will you bet I don't make it?" answers Willy, his head still full of the solo grand in his pocket, and persuaded that a Returned Man could not possibly fail. The form-master shakes his head. He is used to taking a lot from Willy. He waits patiently. Then all at once Willy pulls it off, and comes back in hot haste to take Reinersmann's and Westerholt's scalps. "Ninety-one!" says he triumphantly, and collects the money.

We all pass, of course. The Principal, taking heart again a little now that he is about to get rid of the worst of the blackguards, cannot deny himself this opportunity of addressing to us yet a few golden words. He would like to make this leaving school a solemn sacrament, and begins to explain to us that having been so straightened by our arduous experience, we are now to pass out into life with high hope and good will. "'Pass out' is not good," interrupts Willy. "We've damned near passed out too often already in the other direction." The Principal draws in his horns. He sees that we are not amenable to soft soap. Even now reconciliation is not possible with such unprofitable, ungrateful material.

We go our ways. The next draft take their examination in three months' time. Ludwig has to wait till then, though it was he who wrote the answers for at least four of our fellows. But it is the primary law of this world where the old rule the young, that one must serve one's time. It is no question of ability. Else what would become of the old dodderers who cling to their power?

A few days after the examination we are sent out on probation to teach in the neighbouring villages. I am glad. I am fed up with this aimless loafing around. It has produced only brooding, and melancholy, and senseless noisy riot. Now I will work.

I pack my trunk and set off with Willy. We have the good luck to be neighbours, our villages being barely an hour apart.

I get lodgings in an old farmhouse. There are oak trees just outside the window and the mild bleating of sheepcomes in from the stalls. The farmer's wife at once settles me into a big armchair and begins to lay the table. She has a fixed idea that all townsmen are half starved, and indeed, she is not so far wrong. With suppressed emotion I watch things almost forgotten make their appearance on the table—an enormous ham, sausages as long as your arm, snow-white wheaten bread and those buckwheat cakes with big lumps of ham in the middle, so beloved by Tjaden. There is a supply enough to feed a whole company.

I begin to hoe in. The farmer's wife stands by smiling broadly, hands on hips, obviously delighted. At the end of an hour I have to stop with a sigh, though Mother Schomaker still urges me on.

At that moment Willy comes in to visit me. "Now you can have your wish," I say to my hostess. "Now you will see something! I'm not a patch on him."

Willy does as a soldier should do. He wastes no time in ceremony, but gets on with the job. At the invitation of Mother Schomaker he begins with the buck-wheat cakes. By the time he has reached the cheese, the farmer's wife is leaning back against the cupboard and looking at Willy with admiration and astonishment, as if he were the eighth wonder of the world. Highly flattered she produces yet another great dish of pudding, and Willy puts that away too. "Well," says he taking a breather, but retaining his spoon when she clears away the dish, "that has given me a real appetite. What about a good square meal now?"

With this remark he wins Mother Schomaker's heart for ever.

Embarrassed and unsure of myself I perch at the Teacher's desk. Before me forty children are seated. These are the youngest. There they sit all in perfect alignment, their fat little fists folded over their boxes of slate-pencils and pens, their slates and note-books before them. The school has only three classes, so that in each there are children of varying ages. The smallest are seven, the oldest ten years of age.

The wooden shoes are scraping on the floor. There is a peat fire crackling in the stove. Some of the children with their woollen scarves and hairy, cow-hide satchels, have had to walk two hours to school. Their things have become wet and are now beginning to steam in the dry air of the room.

The smallest ones with their round apple cheeks stare up at me. A couple of girls are giggling secretly. One fair-headed child is absorbed in picking his nose. Another, under cover of the back of the boy in front of him, is stuffing down a thick slice of bread and butter. But every one of them watches my least movement with closest attentiveness.

I shift uncomfortably on my stool. It is only a week since I too was sitting on a form even as they, watching Hollermann's florid, hackneyed gestures while he talked about the poets of the Wars of Liberation. Now I am a Hollermann myself. At least to the youngsters down there. "Children, now we shall try to write a capital letter L," I say, and go to the blackboard. "Ten lines of L's, then five lines of Lina, and five lines of Larch."

I write out the words slowly with chalk. A shuffling and rustling begins behind me. I expect to find that they are laughing at me and turn round. But it is only the notebooks being opened and the slates put in readiness. The forty heads are bent obediently over their task.—I am almost surprised. The slate-pencils are squeaking, the pens scratching. I pass to and fro between the forms.

On the wall hangs a crucifix, a stuffed barn-owl and a map of Germany. Outside the windows the clouds drive steadily by, swift and low.

The map of Germany is coloured in brown and green. I stop before it. The frontiers are hatched in red, and make a curious zig-zag from top to bottom. Cologne—Aachen, there are the thin black lines marking the railways—Herbesthal, Liège, Brussels, Lille—I stand on tiptoe—Roubaix —Arras—Ostend—where is Mount Kemmel, then? It isn't marked at all—but there is Langemarck, Ypres, Bixschoote, Staden—how small they are on the map! tiny points only, secluded, tiny points—and yet how the heavens thundered 
and the earth raged there on the 31st July when the Big 
Offensive began, and before nightfall we had lost every of
ficer.