by Paul Busson
He stopped exhausted, and breathing heavily.
“There’s some truth in what he says,” murmured Repke.
“And so you’re a traitor as well?” roared Zulkow, and he spat on the floor. “You Germans, you forget the only thing that can save the German national army and a wise brain leading it.”
“Germans on either side. They’ve always been a miserable betrayed people,” said Repke. “It’s a pity I’ve shot my load outside, Fritz Zulkow,” Wetzlaff shouted, half-jokingly. “I’d like to stop your drivelling mouth with something warmer; you stinker. You picture of a slave! You are rotting alive, and yet you have hymns of praise for the devil whose fury is killing us. But just wait till I am again on outpost duty. I’ll take off, by God I will... Hell and Satan! It’s on me again.”
He staggered out and we heard the gurgling of his blood.
“He’s got it badly,” said Repke to the angry Zulkow. “He doesn’t know what he’s saying.”
Kuhlemiek began singing in a hideous nasal tone that made us all shudder.
“The horror in the dark,
The brand-mark on the conscience,
The hand that was covered with blood,
The eye full of adultery,
The wicked mouth full of oaths,
The knave’s heart is disclosed.”
“God …” I was the one who cried out.
Outside a clear trumpet sounded. We listened.
“It’s the alarm,” cried Zulkow, and he began to force his sore feet into his frozen shoes. “The alarm.”
Hurriedly we collected our belongings by the light of the wretched fire.
Shots from the distance. On all sides the trumpets sounded. Wetzlaff stumbled in.
“Up, brothers, up!” he yelled. “We’ll light the imperial dog-vomit home! Vivat Fredericus!” It was indeed Wetzlaff.
He took up his musket, and bent over with agony. Zulkow groaned at every step. There was a noise of neighing horses, hooves clattered, men were running and orders were shouted out. Above all the uproar and the sullen cracking of musketry, sounded the voice of the Pietist, croaking and uncanny, for he insisted on singing his hymn to the end.
In the song there was terrible fear. Fear of what was to follow death. The drums were rolling.
Chapter Twenty
Heavy smoke billowed in clouds upon us, dissolving and thickening again into blue and white masses, and again melting. Smoke and stench, pervading everything. Hollow-sounding gunshots, the whistling of bullets. I stood in formation, bit the bullet out of the rancid, greased paper that held it, and put it in my mouth as I sent the black gunpowder down the heated barrel. Then I took the lump of lead and the patch with my fingers and rammed it down with the gun-rod till it was secured and the iron stick sprang back. This was what I had been taught at drill. My next action was to put gunpowder on the powder pan, cock the gun with my thumb, point perpendicularly and fire into the wall of mist ahead of me, where shadows were moving. The flint gave off a spark, a flame cracked before my eyes, and the swift recoil smashed against my sore shoulder.
At the end of the line a lieutenant flourished his spontoon and shouted.
“Geygeygey,”
I heard, and I could not understand anything he said. A large iron cannon-ball crashed past us, and another. A third came leaping into the thick of us and smashed Kuhlemiek’s feet.
“Jesus Christ!” he moaned out loud, and crawled a little distance through pools of his own blood. Then he fell face forward into the pool and was silent.
“Fli-fli-flideldidi,” beckoned the fifes. “Boom-boom-boom,” rattled the drummers in the sweat of their faces.
Marching feet rose and fell in rhythm, bayonets lay to the right, the dead laughed at us with insanely open mouths. A hussar sprawled with his head between his straddling legs. The blister on my heel was burning horribly, and my intestines rumbled. Lice crawled about me unendingly. Restlessly I looked round... There were lines and lines of blue coats, lean faces with short moustaches, white shoulder-belts, glittering muskets.
“KuhlemiekKuhlemiekmiekliekeliek …” the fifes seemed to be calling.
A row of red lights flashed in front of us. A cloud of smoke followed it. Repke screamed out, and caught his shanks with both his hands. A tall soldier near me made a jump like a carp and fell head-foremost into a snow-heap, his feet sticking upwards. Another man suddenly cried like a frog. I saw the blood welling up out of his ear. He came down to his knees. Zulkow suddenly had no head, and I was sprinkled with his hot blood. The ensign fell as if he had been cut down by an axe. Wetzlaff sat down and cried out:
“I can’t.”
Then he stretched full length... Someone who had been shot blind was crawling in front of me... Ramler’s right hand hung helplessly out of his sleeve. He looked at it with wonder. His musket was on the ground. Something big came sweeping down on us... White coats, black cuirasses. Broad blades, striking at us, horses snorting, and starting away frightened. One horse reared in front of me. I saw the rider; he held his basket-hilt before his face with one hand, while the other clung convulsively to the pommel of his saddle. I saw his white uniform under the edge of his dark cuirass and I lunged hurriedly at him with my bayonet. It ran into something soft. The horseman fell forward on the animal’s neck, stared into my face, and cried out:
“You! …” Phöbus Merentheim... He fell down with a clatter. I saw no more of him. But immediately someone had replaced him, rising in his stirrups, and struck at my head so quickly that I staggered. The edge of my leaden helmet cut my forehead, something warm and thick trickled down over my eyes. My feet went on marching. My arms held my musket and bayonet out in front of me. I took it from the throat of a brown horse. The horsemen were gone, they had disappeared before I was aware.
“No rest, no rest, no rest,” went the drums.
I slept as I walked on. We were advancing among houses. A woman cried out in terror, and fell down on her face with outstretched arms. A pig ran squealing past us. Then we entered a little wood, treading over corpses and guns. A lean dog, with its tail between its legs, went skulking by. A peasant was lying with his body torn open, without bowels. The dog had come from him. Bushes, hoary, thick, impassable. I crawled in. There was a heap of moss. A bed, a bed... I burrowed myself into it. No one saw me. Wonderful, soft, warm moss.
The bayonet stained with the blood of Phöbus lay somewhere in the snow-clad forest, along with my musket and helmet, my bandelier and sidearms. Many days had passed since I crossed the frontier. I wore a tattered coat that I had found in a bullet-riddled house, and trousers I had taken off a hanged man. Frost and vermin had made a festering wound on my right leg; the pain of it worried me, and my nose and lips were very sore. I had spent my nights in barns or on haystacks, shivering in the bitter cold; and I appeased my hunger as best I could with last year’s turnips, tough and frozen. But at last I was sitting in a roadside inn. The landlady had charitably given me a bowl of warm food, and allowed me to sit near the warm stove.
But I had been made to understand that if genteel customers entered the inn, I was to leave at once. Not on any account was I to hang about the table, begging. The barmaid also pitied me. Furtively she gave me a large loaf of bread, and filled my glass with thin beer. I, Baron Melchior von Dronte, had now become acquainted with the life of the despised and poor, the down-and-out, the outlawed. And I had experienced more Christian charity among the humblest of people than among those who had their coats-of-arms painted on their pews in church. And yet how hard men had been to me these recent days! It is true that in such times as these nobody was willing to open his door to a stranger in rags.
War raged all around, with its terrible victories and parleys, robbery, marauding, rape and arson. Consequently it was a marvel to me when the landlady at the inn had said:
“Come in and eat and warm yourself. You look the picture of Death in Basel.”
At a table next to me sat a merchant, or cattle-dealer. He wore a thick, light
-coloured coat of coarse fabric, a broad Hessian peasant’s hat was lying beside him on a bench, and on his shoulders he had a wallet with a leathern flap, studded with many curious brass figures. His face was the ugliest and most repulsive I had ever encountered. He would stretch his broad face into a grin that reached from one of his pointed ears to the other, or else he would extend it into a pig’s snout, to suck the wine from his glass. His vulture nose moved up and down, and his yellow wolf eyes, with oblique and oblong pupils like those of a goat, squinted hideously.
Yet none but I took any heed of the ugly fellow. At times it seemed to me that from his folded wallet there came a twittering and wheezing, as of mice. Often he rolled his squinting eyes in my direction and laughed at me in a familiar way, as if we were old acquaintances. I racked my memory, trying to recollect where I could have seen that face before, but for all my trouble I could not bring myself to remember. Then I heard a handsome travelling-coach draw up outside the inn, and some finely-dressed tradespeople entered the room, welcomed with exceeding politeness by the landlady and the maid. I thought it was time for me to depart, and I slipped quietly through the door. But when I stood in the stormy thawing wind on the muddy road and tried to gather my rags about me, so as to protect as much of my nakedness as I could, a shrill laugh sounded close and startled me. The man with the wallet was walking by my side, as if we had always been companions.
“Now tell me, your Baronial grace,” he bleated, staring at me fixedly, “why is it that I see you in such strange attire? You were much better suited by the new lavender grey coat you wore the day you looked on with your father when the executioner broke the bones of Heiner Fessl!”
I started as I remembered. It was the filthy fellow who had perched in the lime tree overlooking the marketplace.
Chapter Twenty One
“Who are you?” I gasped.
“I? Oh, just Fangerle, a catcher,” he answered, quite humbly this time. “I am content if after a lot of trouble I succeed in filling my wallet, for then my master, who is called the Highest-and-Lowest, will be pleased. But just now I have an extra hard job on hand, and I should be glad for someone to join me at it. There’s plenty of money to be made out of it. Does it please you, my Lord Baron?”
“Look here,” I said angrily, and I raised my stick. “I’m pretty well down-and-out, but if you come with your gallows-face to insult me I’ll soon show you that even in rags I can still be a noble.”
The man bowed as if I had scared him, and besought me obsequiously not to take it the wrong way. His profession was that of a jester, he explained, and he made much money at peasant weddings and funeral banquets. And, he added, although I might be angry at his saying so, he considered it a disgrace for a member of the House of Dronte to tramp about in such a state when it would be quite easy for me to make a hundred thalers in a few minutes. And before I had time to reply he plunged his crooked fingers into his wallet and pulled out a handsome cloth bag that clinked pleasantly.
“A hundred thalers on the spot,” he whispered in my ear. “Hee hee-hee.”
And all the air seemed to echo him. But that echo was caused by a big flight of crows and jackdaws, which flew overhead, cawing and chattering; and when I looked up one of the crows detached itself from the flock and flew down to us, so low that I saw plainly the expression of its round eyes, black and cunning. My companion raised his head and called out:
“Black dove, go and tell the Highest-and-Lowest that Fangerle is on his way and will deprive the silent one of his solace.”
“Craw-craw,” cried the crow, and sprang away to join the rest of the birds.
“What are you chattering about?” I demanded of the man, who was clinking his money-bag. “What do you mean by it?”
“This?” he replied. “Oh, it’s one of my tricks, that’s all. Mark you this: when you are driving in a carriage and a dirty barking cur, like your father’s black bitch, Diana, runs after you, you have only to turn and tell the animal which way you are going, for it to stop at once. I have just done that with the raven. Otherwise Master Hammerlein’s canary would still be flying after us.”
My eyes stared longingly at the clinking bag. I was thinking that with a hundred thalers I could make myself a presentable human being again. Then I heard a strange squeak proceeding from the wallet.
“What have you got in there, squeaking like that?” I asked.
“In my bag?” The pedlar grinned hideously. “Oh, just a few little beasts I have caught and am taking to their place.”
“What sort of little beasts?” “Soul-mice, tiny soul-mice I’ve ferreted out.”
“Soul-mice?”
“It’s just a word,” he laughed.
He dipped his hand into the bag and drew out a small, shadowy-grey creature, that struggled and screamed. He put it back quickly, and though I had not had time to see what it was exactly, I shuddered. A howling blast of wind took me by surprise and almost knocked me over. The moneybag fell out of his hand, and bright, brand-new thalers rolled on to the ground. He snatched them up hastily, and thrust them back into safety. My desire for money grew greater.
“What must I do to get some money?” I asked.
He stood still, screwed up his eyes horribly, and distorted his face into another grin.
“Anon, my boy, my brave boy, anon: just a minute or two of patience, till we come to the chapchap”
A fit of coughing nearly broke his throat. I looked in the direction of his outstretched hand, and saw that we were approaching a chapel by the roadside, not far from the village. I walked on quickly, so quickly that the pedlar found it difficult to keep up with me. When we reached the chapel he halted, squatted down on the ground and scratched the back of his pointed ear with his fingernails, letting his face hang down. I was angry with impatience.
“Now speak out, or do you intend to play a joke with me?”
He became obsequious, bowed to me, and said in a low voice, almost a whisper:
“Baron von Dronte, I am a coward, and afraid of many things that would not frighten a brave soldier. There is a man inside this chapel. He is dead, so he can’t bite! He has two little sticks in his hands, one shorter than the other, which I must get away from him. It is just a grip and a jerk, and he will let go his hold.”
“But that’s grave-robbing,” I stammered. “It means the gallows if we are caught.”
“There are many names for jobs that bring profit,” he answered. And there are many gallows, but most of them are empty.”
His eyes glistened under his broad-brimmed hat like glow-worms.
“I’d do it myself,” he croaked huskily, “but I daren’t touch those sticks. Every man has his peculiarities. Many would rather die than touch a toad.”
“What sort of sticks are they that you want so much?”‘
“I have no use for them,” he hissed angrily, “but the dead man inside must be rid of them.”
Again I heard the coins clink in the bag. My wound ached. My shoes were full of water, my frostbitten toe was tormented.
“I’ll do it,” I said, and I turned to the chapel door and took hold of the latch. The man looked at me like a hawk. The day was growing dark. The wind rattled in the steep chapel roof, the trees rustled. I went inside. The blackness was already uncanny in the corners of the whitewashed chapel. I looked round. A coffin stood on a bier in front of the altar. A single candle flickered at one end. A watchman was sitting on the floor, fast asleep. By his side lay an empty bottle. In the coffin lay a dignified-looking old man. His face was furrowed and wrinkled; he was dressed in a new black watered silk coat. The vest, the breeches and the stockings were also black. A white, well-dressed wig framed his waxen, yellow, clever-looking face. He held in his folded hands a small cross!
I had seen many dead bodies in my time, I had even helped to bury them. Therefore I was not very sensitive at the sight of a corpse. But this old man with his clever, calm face, on which countless joys and sufferings were engraved, whose guard
lay close by in drunken sleep, leaving him defenceless to anything that might happen in the lonely church. The old man moved my compassion. And what were the sticks I had to rob him of? I understood: the cross of death which his hands held. It was a crucifix that I had to take from him! Surely it was not difficult to do that! I reached forward to the cross...
Was that a groan I heard? … I mastered myself, reflecting that the dead were well dead, and again I stretched out my hand. But I let it fall. What did it matter to the pedlar, with his repulsive goat’s eyes, whether the dead man was buried with this cross or without it. I would question him further, that squint-eyed villain with the thalers. I returned to the chapel door. It was only two paces away, but I looked back at the dead man as I reached it. He lay quiet and calm, but his waxen fingers seemed to clasp the cross anxiously. This horrid fellow outside who had hired me. Why should I, for the sake of this madman or scoundrel, rob a dead man of his cross? What had he chattered about when the raven flew overhead?
“I’ll rob the silent one of his solace.”
As I recalled the words I shuddered. Then I went quickly across to the sleeping watcher, took him by the shoulders and cried:
“Wake, man! There are robbers outside.”
“Where?”
The peasant, who was provided with a club, started up and looked at me in horror.
“Out yonder,” I said, and went through the door.
I heard the watchman hurriedly bolting it. I was in the windy road again. Crooked fingers clutched at my tattered coat, two eyes glimmered like brass, and the foul black mouth whispered:
“Throw it away, throw it away at once.”
“What am I to throw away, accursed one?”
I shouted in his face; “do you mean the Cross of our Lord Christ?”
Fangerle fell back as if I had struck him. Instantly he turned, writhing like a worm, and he started running. The wind blew after him and whirled his coat-tails grotesquely; and as he disappeared in the twilight it seemed to me as if an enormous bird with black wings flew over the ploughed fields, as an owl would fly... Then I recalled myself to my own position. There I was alone, without money, and wet through on a lonely road. I remembered the wallet with the soul-mice. Who were they, screaming so piteously in the evil one’s hunting bag? The Evil One’s! A paralysing terror seized me. Calling on the name of God a hundred times, I hurried away to the next village, not daring to look back again.