The Road Back (8 page)

Frau Homeyer is not to be comforted. "There'll be trouble about it, I know. That Binding man has such a terrible temper."

"But what do you take me for?" asks Willy, beginning to feel really slighted. "Do you think I let so much as a mouse see me? I'm no novice, you know. This makes just the tenth I've swiped now. A jubilee bird, you might say. We can eat him in perfect comfort, and your Binding won't know one thing about it." He shakes it affectionately. "You certainly will taste good! Do you think I should boil him or roast him?"

"Do you imagine I would eat one little bit of it?" cries Frau Homeyer beside herself. "You take it back at once."

"I'm not quite balmy," explains Willy.

"But you stole it!" she laments desperately.

"Stole it?" Willy bursts into laughter. "That's a nice thing to say! Commandeered, this was. Boned. Picked up, if you like. But stolen? When a man takes money, then perhaps you can talk of stealing, but certainly not when he just bags a little bit of something to eat. In that case we would have stolen a lot in our time, eh, Ernst?"

"Sure, Willy," I say. "He just ran out to meet you, I dare say. Same as the one at Staden that belonged to the O.C. No. 2 Battery. Remember? And you made fricasseed chicken for the whole company out of it. Half and half— to one hen add one horse—that was the recipe, wasn't it?"

Willy beams and pats the stove plate with his hand. "Cold!" he says disappointed, and turns to his mother. "Haven't you any coal, then?"

Frau Homeyer cannot speak for agitation, she can only shake her head. Willy reassures her with a wave of the hand. "Never mind, I'll scrounge some tomorrow. Well make do for the moment with this old chair here—it's pretty wobbly, you see, not much good for anything any more really."

Frau Homeyer looks at her son uncomprehendingly. She snatches the chair and then the fowl out of his very hands and makes off with it to milkman Binding's.

Willy is righteously indignant. "So, off he goes and sings no more!" he says sadly. "Do you understand that, Ernst?"

I understand well enough that we may not take the chair—though up the line we once burned a whole piano to make a dapple-grey horse come tender; and that at home here we must not yield to every involuntary twitching of our fingers—though out there everything eatable was looked on as a gift from God and by no means as a problem in morals—perhaps I can understand that also. But that a fowl that is already dead should be taken back to where the merest recruit knows it can only cause a lot of unnecessary trouble —that seems to me just plain madness.

"If it isn't the custom, then we must starve, that seems to be the way of it, eh?" says Willy, quite nonplussed. "And to think we might have been having fricasseed chicken inside half an hour, if only we'd been on our own with the boys! And I meant to serve it with white sauce, too!"

His eye wanders from the stove to the door and back again. "The best thing for us to do would be to make ourselves scarce," I suggest. "Looks to me as if there's a strafe brewing."

But Frau Homeyer is back again already. "He isn't at home," she says out of breath, and, all excitement, is about to open her mind further when suddenly she notices that Willy has put on his things. Immediately it all is forgotten. "You aren't going away already?"

"Just for a little bit of a patrol, mother," he says, laughing.

She starts to weep. Willy, rather embarrassed, slaps her
lightly on the shoulder. "I'll be back all right. Well always 
be coming back now. A bit too often, perhaps, I shouldn't 
wonder——"

Side by side, our hands in our pockets, we set off at a swinging pace down Castle Street. "Shouldn't we collect Ludwig?" I ask.

Willy shakes his head. "No, let him sleep. That's better for him."

The town is disturbed. Motor-lorries filled with sailors go roaring through the streets. Red flags are flying.

Bundles of handbills are being unloaded and distributed in front of the Town Hall. The people snatch them from the hands of the sailors and glance through them eagerly. Their eyes shine. A gust of wind swoops down upon the packages and sends the broadsheets whirling up into the air like a flock of pigeons. The sheets catch in the bare branches of the trees and hang there rustling. "Comrades," says an old chap in a field-grey overcoat, "things will be better now, comrades." His lips are quivering.

"Hullo! Looks as if there's something doing here," I say.

We set off at the double. The nearer we approach to the Cathedral Square, the denser is the throng. The square itself is crammed with people. A soldier is standing on the theatre steps and making a speech. The chalky light of a carbide lamp is flickering on his face. We cannot understand properly what he is saying, for the wind sweeps over the square in spasmodic, long-drawn gusts, each time bringing with it a wave of organ music in which the thin, halting voice almost drowns.

A vague, tense excitement is hanging over the place. The crowd stands like a wall—almost all are soldiers, some of them with their wives. Their silent faces have the same grim expression as when they peered out across No Man's Land from under their steel helmets. But something more is in their look now—hope for a future—elusive expectancy of a new life.

Shouts come from the direction of the theatre, and are answered by a subdued roar. "That's the stuff!" cries Willy joyfully. "Now for some fun!" Arms are raised. A sudden tremor passes over the crowd, the ranks begin to move. A procession forms itself. Shouts, cries: "Forward, comrades!" Like an immense deep sigh the sound of marching rustles over the pavement. We swing into line automatically. On our right is an artilleryman; ahead, an engineer. We form up squad by squad. Few of us are known to the other, yet at once we trust each other. They are our comrades, that is enough. "Come, Otto, join in!" shouts the engineer in front of us to one who as yet has not moved.

He hesitates. His wife is with him. She slips her arm into his and looks at him. He smiles awkwardly: "Afterwards, Franz."

Willy pulls a wry face. "When petticoats appear comradeship's finished, you take it from me!"

"Ach, rot!" protests the engineer, giving him a cigarette. "Women are one half of life—But there's a time for everything, of course."

Involuntarily we fall into step. But this is another kind of marching from that we have been used to. The pavement echoes, and like lightning a wild breathless hope sweeps over the column, as though the road would now lead us straight on into the new life of freedom and justice.

But already, after only a few hundred yards, the procession stops. It has halted in front of the Mayor's house. Some workers rattle at the outer door. All remains quiet; but the pale face of a woman is seen a moment behind the shut windows. The rattling increases; a stone is thrown at the window. A second follows. Splintered glass falls clashing into the front garden.

Then the Mayor shows himself on the balcony of the first floor. He is greeted with shouts, he tries to protest but none will hear him. "Come out! Come with us!" cries somebody.

The Mayor shrugs his shoulders and nods assent. A few minutes later he is marching at the head of the procession.

The next to be hauled out is the chief of the Food Control Office. Then a bewildered, bald-headed fellow who has been profiteering in butter. We missed nabbing a corn dealer—he shut himself up just in time when he heard us coming.

The procession now marches to the Castle and piles up before the entrance to the District Headquarters. A soldier dashes up the steps and goes inside. We wait. The windows are all alight.

At last the door opens again. We crane our necks. A man with a portfolio comes out. He turns out some sheets of paper from his case and in a monotonous voice begins reading a speech. We listen intently. Willy puts both hands to his great ears. Being a good head taller than anyone else, he follows the sentences more easily and repeats them aloud. But the words prattle away over our heads. They echo and die away, but they do not touch us; they do not sweep us away, they do not stir us, they only prattle and prattle away.

We begin to grow restive. We do not understand this. We are accustomed to act; but the fellow up there only talks and talks. Now he is exhorting us to calmness and prudence. But then nobody has been imprudent as yet!

At last he goes off. "Who was that?" I ask disappointedly.

The artilleryman beside us knows everything. "President of the Workers' and Soldiers' Council. Used to be a dentist, I believe."

"Aha!" growls Willy, turning his red head uncomfortably from side to side. "What a frost! And me thinking we were off to the station and then straight to Berlin!"

Shouts began to come from the crowd; they multiply. "The Mayor—let the Mayor speak!" He is pushed up the steps. In a calm voice he explains that the whole matter it being thoroughly looked into. Beside him, stuttering, stand the two profiteers. They are sweating with fright. But nothing is done to them either. They come in for some abuse, but that is all, no one takes the trouble to lift a hand against them.

"Well," says Willy, "the Mayor has his courage with him, anyway, I'll say that much."

"Pooh! he's used to it," says the artilleryman. "They 
drag him out like this every few days——"

We look at him in astonishment. "You mean this happens often?" asks Albert.

The other nods. "There are always fresh troops coming
back, you see, who think they must put matters right. And
—well that's all that comes of it "

"Damned if I understand that," says Willy.

"Nor me either," adds the artilleryman yawning largely. "Expected something different myself, I admit. Well, cheero! I'll be trotting along to my flea-bag, I guess. That's the most sensible thing to do."

Others follow suit. The square has emptied perceptibly. A second delegate is talking now. He also advises calm. The leaders will see to it all. They are on the job already. He indicates the lighted windows. The best thing would be for us to go home.

"Well! damn my eyes! So that is all?" I say peevishly.

We begin to feel rather absurd for having joined in with the mob. What did we want exactly when we came here? "Ach, shit!" says Willy disenchanted. We shrug our shoulders and slope off.

I walk home with Albert and then return alone. It is very strange—now that my comrades are with me no longer, everything around me begins to sway gently and become unreal. A while back it was all matter of fact and sure; and now it has suddenly come loose. It is so perplexingly new and strange that I hardly know whether I may not be dreaming it all.—Am I here? Am I really here again, home?

There are the streets, cobbled and sure; smooth, gleaming roofs, nowhere the gaping holes and gashes of shells; undamaged, the walls tower into the blue night, gables and balconies silhouetted against it, making dark shadows. Nothing here has suffered the teeth of war, window-panes are intact, and behind the bright clouds of their curtains lives a hushed world, very different from that howling place of death where till now I have made my home.

I come to a stand before a house where there is light in the lower windows. Muffled music is coming from it. The curtains are but half drawn and I can see inside.

A woman is seated at a piano, playing. She is alone. The only light is from a standard lamp and it falls on the white page of the music. The rest of the room is lost in a colourful gloom. A sofa, a couple of armchairs and cushions suggest a peaceful life there. On a settle a dog lies asleep.

I gaze like one enchanted. Only when the woman stands up and moves noiselessly to the table do I step back hastily. My heart is beating fast. In the wild light of the rockets, and among the shattered ruins of front-line villages, I had almost forgotten such things existed—such street-long, walled-in peace of carpets and warmth and women. I should like to open the door and go in and curl myself up on the settle; I should like to stretch out my hands to the warmth there and let it flood over me; I should like to talk and to thaw out there the hardness, the violence, all the past; to leave it behind me, peel it off like a dirty shirt.

The light in the room goes out. I walk on. But suddenly the night is full of dark cries and indistinct voices, full of faces and things gone by, full of questions and of answers. I wander far out beyond the limits of the city, and stand at last on the slope of the Klosterberg. Below lies the town all silver. The moon is reflected in the river. The towers seem afloat in the air, and all is unbelievably still.

I stand a while and then go back to the streets and the houses. Quietly I grope my way up the stairs that lead to my home. My parents are already asleep. I hear their breathing—the soft breathing of my mother, and my father's, heavier—and feel ashamed I have come back so late.

In my room I make a light. In the corner is the bed with fresh linen sheets, the covers turned back. I sit down on it and so remain for some time, lost in thought. At last I feel tired. Mechanically I stretch out and make to pull up the blanket. I sit up again suddenly—I had quite forgotten to undress. At the Front we always slept in our clothes just as we were. Slowly I take off my uniform, put my boots in a corner. Then, hanging over the end of the bed, I perceive a nightshirt. I hardly recognise the thing. I put it on. And all at once, while I am still pulling it over my naked, creeping body, my senses overwhelm me. I stroke the sheets, I bury myself in the pillows, I hug them to me, press myself down into them, into the pillows, into sleep, into life once again, and I know one thing and one only: I am here—I am here.