He tried again, blotting his gaze to the torment around him. When he saw what his hand was executing, he crumpled the piece of paper bleakly. Hans, trapped on the wire, his mouth round with his cry. No, he would draw no more. The next afternoon, when Matron Kanzel, thinking to busy him, brought him fresh paper, he looked at it with a kind of terror and turned his face to the wall.
A few days later, a figure he only half remembered, appeared by his bedside.
‘Corporal Bahr,’ the man saluted.
Johannes took in a thin, ascetic face, a fine arched nose, fair hair. The features swam into place.
‘Lieutenant Schrader,’ Johannes didn’t return the salute, though he had nothing against the man who had always treated him fairly.
‘I thought I would try to see you during my leave. It occurred to me that no one might have told you what happened,’ he paused, looked Johannes in the eyes.
‘Hans, Private Müller. Is he…?’
The man shook his head, ‘Died before we could get the medics to him. After the men dragged you back into our trench. Apparently you keeled over just metres from it.’ Admiration flashed through his eyes. ‘Broken leg, apart from the shells, the shrapnel,’ he gestured vaguely to his neck, chest, arm.
‘And Private Müller?’ Johannes insisted. The man’s face grew grim.
‘The men said they had to pull you apart. The wire, you know, the blood,’ he looked away. ‘He spoke your name before he died. I thought you might want to know. You were friends, weren’t you?’
Johannes nodded, trembling.
‘The men were much relieved that the howling had stopped. It ate its way into them. Morale was low,’ he stopped himself, realising that he had transgressed the bounds of what should pass between officer and soldier. ‘Still, you’ll be pleased to have this,’ Schrader smiled thinly and pulled a letter from his jacket. ‘Two months leave. After you’re released from here. Not bad, eh.’
Johannes stared blankly at the piece of paper.
‘Maybe by then it will all be over.’
He didn’t answer.
The Lieutenant shuffled uncomfortably in front of him, ‘Well then,’ he raised his arm in salute, preparing to go.
‘And Private Müller’s things?’, Johannes suddenly asked.
‘They’ve been sent to his parents. Perhaps you might like to visit them. They’re not too far from Munich.’
He looked up at the man, something coalescing in him.
‘Yes, I might.’
‘I’ll get you their address. A rapid recovery then, Corporal Bahr.’
Johannes nodded. A distant but kindling sense of destination began to form in him.
On the day of his release from hospital, for the first time since his hospitalization Johannes studied his reflected image in the small glass. He saw a sallow haunted face, eyes that had lost their vivacity. His uniform swam over his shrunken frame. Matron’s warm glances, the other nurses’ had not prepared him for this: they had returned to him a sense that for all his inner torment, he was still a man. In his morphine-induced state, he had even dreamed that they desired him - Johannes, the man who had always believed that the body must be brought to a state of physical perfection in tandem with the soul.
The story the glass now told him was different. It spoke of a fractured creature, too poor a male specimen to bring to any woman. Johannes shuddered. Better not to think of that, or of anything else.
It came to him that throughout these last years all he had done was attempt to avoid thought, first after the fiasco with Bettina, then throughout these endless months of war.
When thought pounced on him unawares, he was filled with desperation. All his dreams, all his hopes of a changed world in which people lived freer lives, were closer to their bodies, their impulses, less constrained by hypocritical regulations and self-regulations, had shrivelled, taking him with them, leaving a mere husk.
And war, which he had conceived of as the great catalyst of the new? -The great event that would tear apart an old, moribund civilisation, what was it but an infernal and excessive perpetuation of the status quo? All the disciplinary institutions of the state and the self-discipline of its people were unveiled here for what they truly were: infernal machines of death.
Sometimes, in these last weeks, he had wished again for the relief that morphine brought, that floating distance between himself and the world, himself and himself. He had even once, pleading pain, asked Matron for a dose, but she had refused him roundly.
But where was Matron now? Johannes looked round the ward, made his last goodbyes. He learned that she was off-duty. That saddened him. He wrote a hurried note of thanks, then, his sack over his shoulder, he slowly left the hospital building. His legs felt awkward, ungainly as he stepped on the gravelled path. There was altogether too much air, too much sky. He felt a return of dizziness and stumbled. Ashamed of his own weakness, he forced himself to hurry on.
Where the public road crossed the path, a large car blocked his crossing. Its door opened. A woman gestured to him. He looked at her unseeingly.
‘Corporal Bahr. Don’t you know me?’
The voice woke him. He saw a large blonde woman with grey eyes in a neat tailored suit.
‘Matron?’ he asked uncertainly.
‘Yes,’ she laughed at his confusion, ‘though when I’m not wearing blue, you can call me Hilda. Come, come,’ she patted the seat next to her, ‘we’ve been waiting for you. You need a good meal, or what passes for such these days.’
He slipped in beside her, relieved to be in an enclosed space again, to allow his will to slip away.
The car rolled smoothly forward. He saw the city streets pass before him, strange and yet ordinary - undamaged buildings, shop fronts, people, women. Yes, that was part of the strangeness, so many women in the streets, brisk-paced, determined.
Matron followed his glance. ‘Yes,’ she said ruefully, ‘a great deal has changed.’ Suddenly she took his hand and placed it firmly on her leg so that he could feel the silk of her stocking beneath the thin fabric of her skirt. She moved a little closer.
Johannes closed his eyes, letting the warmth of her permeate him. He sniffed in her fragrance, felt lulled, heard her laugh as if at a great distance, ‘Anything to heal the soldiers of the fatherland.’
The words jangled, but he let them pass, unwilling to rupture the warmth that engulfed him, the soft roll of the car.
‘And here we are,’ she said brightly after what seemed to him far too short a time. ‘A little good food, and then you’ll see how much better you feel.’
‘Yes,’ Johannes murmured vaguely.
In the restaurant, there were too many people about, their voices rushed, guttural. He let her order for him, watched her bright, calm, ageless face. She radiated health. He ate slowly, not tasting the food, but wanting to do it justice to please her. She chatted cheerfully, untroubled by his lack of response. He was glad when the meal was over, though thrown into a quandary when she asked him whether he wanted to catch the three o’clock train or leave the following morning.
‘Is there a hotel near the station?,’ he asked. He suddenly felt weak, unable to imagine how he would find hotel or train.
Her lips curled, ‘I’ll take care of everything, Corporal Bahr.’
They were in the car again, the clustered apartment blocks gave way to peaceful leafy expanses, and then an ornate iron gate, a tree-lined drive, a large house.
‘Is this the hotel?’ Johannes asked, liking the quiet, wondering that it could still exist.
‘A kind of hotel.’ She smoothed her skirt and led him towards the door. ‘But my very own. You can spend the day here, the night. It will make a change. From all that,’ she waved vaguely into the distance.
The house had a hush about it. Its heavy furniture and rich brocades, seemed to have remained unchanged for centuries. The room she showed him to looked out over calm gardens. A hammock swung between two young oaks. She followed the direction of his eyes.
‘Perhaps you’d like to rest a little?’
He nodded gratefully, followed her down to the gardens. In the leafy shade of the hammock, for the first time in months, the closing of his eyes did not signal the return of battle. Instead, in that half-state between dream and waking, he saw female forms, matron amongst them, supple, swaying in a slow archaic dance. He remembered a time so very long ago when he had dreamt of women as strong recuperative forces, maternal icons, embodiments of nature’s saving grace. He dozed peacefully.
But later that night when she came to his bed, offered red lips, skin fragrant with soap, he felt no answering stir in his body. It was as if some fire in him had died, obliterated by that greater conflagration. None of her gestures could kindle it. And her repeated attempts only awakened those other images, so that her red lips became a bloody gash, her rounded stomach poured out entrails, until Johannes pushed her away.
Despair bit at him bringing with it a new emotion: shame.
‘It happens sometimes, you know,’ she was kind. ‘The war, the shock…’
When she had left him, Johannes wept for the first time. Wept for Hans, for the curly-haired French youth, for the dead, for himself. When he woke, it was as if from a great distance. He couldn’t place the room. He couldn’t read his identity from the blue-curtained window, the ornate lamp. Where was he? Who was he? Strangely, the questions induced no panic. He felt calm, so calm that he wondered if perhaps he had died in the night.
He only stopped at Munich to change trains. There was no one he wanted to see or to be seen by. The sight of so many young crippled men, walking on sticks, their eyes glazed, was oppressive. It was like the hospital ward without the moaning. He fled the city.
By the time he reached Weilheim, it was dark. He sat on a bench in the station, exchanging desultory comments with other soldiers. He dozed. In the morning, light came with the newspaper headlines blaring German victories in Poland and Russian retreats.
Around the kiosk, people cheered. ‘It will all soon be over,’ they congratulated each other. One old man in a farmer’s cap slapped him on the back. Johannes managed something akin to a grin. He profoundly wished he could share their optimism, but all he wanted was to get out of there, to create the greatest distance possible between himself and the war.
He asked the man, if he knew a way to get to Rottenbach. ‘Try the market,’ the man advised him. ‘One of the farmers is bound to be going that way.’
The lavish colours of the market set up a hum in him. Heaped greens, lush golds, fiery reds, muted purples, fruit, vegetables, buckets of dahlias. His sight was rivetted, seemed to take on sharp focus for the first time in months. He fingered an apple.
‘Take it, take it. Eat,’ a voice from behind the stall ordered him.
He looked up to see a tiny grey-haired woman with the kindly face of a garden gnome. Johannes searched for some change in his pocket.
‘No, no,’ she shooed the money away. ‘We have enough here.’
He tried a smile, a thank you, his lips again feeling stiff.
‘Do you know anyone who might be going towards Rottenbach, today?’ he asked her.
She pointed, ‘Three stalls down. Ask for Otto. Going to visit the girlfriend, eh?’
He didn’t gainsay her.
Otto turned out to be a farmer with bandy legs and a dour, weathered face.
‘Yes, I can take you. If you help me load up. About half past one,’ shrewd eyes examined Johannes suspiciously. ‘You’re not deserting, are you?’
Johannes shook his head. ‘No. On leave.’
‘Too bad,’ the man looked at him slyly. ‘We could use some extra hands on the farm. You can pay, yes?
Johannes reached into his pocket.
‘Later, later,’ the man looked round him furtively. ‘Come back at half one.’
Johannes was punctual, helped load the cart, though his shoulder ached with the weight of crates. He sat next to Otto on the rough wooden seat and watched the horses straining. Otto chatted and was surly by turn. He complained about having to leave town so early, without his lunch, unheard of before the war, but now there was only his wife and himself, and too much to do. Even his daughter had gone off. To work in a munitions factory. He scowled. The boys now, that was different. They had to do their duty. On the Russian front. His voice was a mixture of resentment and pride.
Johannes offered little, answering only to direct questions. But slowly a picture of what the war had wrought even so far from the front, even in these peaceful hills where the sun shone with a moist brilliance, began to build up in his mind.
Otto dropped him at a fork in the road. In response to Johannes’s profuse thanks and the notes he pulled from his pocket, he offered a set of complicated instructions, turns here, a field to be crossed there, another road, and he should arrive at his destination.
Johannes walked, two kilometres, four, five. Slowly. Distance was irrelevant, punctuated only by the wayside crucifixes with their carved weather-beaten saviours, mourning over the countryside. He stopped before a rough-hewn figure who had fallen from his lichen covered post and was swinging erratically in the wind. An upside down Christ, dangling from his nailed feet. He was tempted to rectify him, but no… His present posture was far more apposite.
He walked on past stretches of waving corn, then wheat. A heavy physical heat suffused everything. Only gradually did his ears grow attuned to the sound of birds, bees straying through the fields, corn rustling in the breeze, so different from the clamour of the battle field. He had forgotten.
Towards sunset, he learned from a boy who was leading some dappled cows across the road, that the Müller farm was just past the next village.
‘Have you got any empty cartridges,’ the boy asked him excitedly.
Johannes shook his head.
‘Too bad. What about a grenade? Could I see a grenade?’
He shook his head again. Dimly he remembered his own excitement when he had first handled the weapons of war. Could it have been only two years ago?
He ruffled the boy’s hair. ‘They kill, you know. Have you ever seen a dead animal, a blasted animal.’
‘Yes,’ the boy hopped about from foot to foot excitedly. ‘Bam bam bam, there goes a Russkie.’
‘Switch the uniforms and your Russkie’s just a German,’ Johannes murmured.
The boy looked at him queerly, edged away.
Johannes heaved his sack onto his other shoulder and made his way. Gloom covered him again. Scratch the surface, lift away the thin restraining veneer, put them in a group, and men were all murderers. He suddenly recalled his last conversation with Bettina, her surprise at his sudden lust for battle. Johannes laughed out loud, painfully. He had set off to be transformed. And now he was, into even less of a man than he had been then.
The Müller farm stood on the edge of a deep valley. It was a modest affair. In the receding light, Johannes saw the gathered hay peeping out of the upper storey windows and behind the stone house, a wooden barn. There was no sign of any inhabitants but two window-boxes were bright with a profusion of geraniums. Johannes squared his shoulders and knocked at the door.
A woman opened to him, a square, lined face topped with streaked grey brown hair. But the blue eyes gave him a start. They were so like Hans’s.
‘Frau Müller?’ Johannes queried softly, his cap respectfully in his hand.
She looked at him uncomprehendingly, edged away from the door.
‘Frau Müller, I am a friend of your son’s.’
Tears leapt into her eyes. ‘Corporal Bahr?’ she asked softly, her voice filled with disbelief.
Johannes nodded.
The tears began to stream copiously down her leathery cheeks. She brought out a large man’s handkerchief to wipe them, apologized, ‘Do excuse me. Please, please come in. Karl, Karl,’ she suddenly rushed past him out of the house, down the slope to the barn. ‘Come quickly,’ she shouted, her words swallowed in a rush of dialect Johannes could barely make
out.
He sat down at the heavy oak table which took up a good part of the kitchen in which he found himself. Tiredness suddenly overwhelmed him. He was here. And now what?
But he had no time to think. A spare stooped man had come into the kitchen, was wiping his hands on his trousers, shaking his vigorously, ‘Corporal Bahr, Corporal Bahr. We are honoured by your visit.’
Schnapps found its way rapidly to the table. An oil lamp was lit.
‘Hans wrote to us about you, told us how much he admired you,’ Frau Müller spoke slowly as if each word was a pellet to be clawed from her innards. ‘Father Josef read the letters to us. Hans wrote very beautifully,’ she said proudly. The tears glistened on her leathery cheeks again. ‘Look, look what they sent us.’
He followed her. In a dim recess of the room, pinned to the wall, he saw the quick sketch he had made of Hans. It was grimy, the paper wrinkled, but they had placed it above a little shelf on which a wooden madonna, a candle and some trinkets stood. Made a shrine of it, a shrine to Hans. Johannes looked at the image and shivered. It was strangely alive: there stood Hans in all his stolidity, with his full lips and oddly sensitive eyes. He had loved him.
They all gazed at the image silently for long minutes. And then Herr Müller mumbled, ‘Tell us about him. Tell us about the front.’
Johannes told them, starting slowly and then waxing warm with descriptions of Hans’s exploits, his bravery, his fearlessness. He created a battle front of giants, an aura of heroism which was at once truth and illusion. The illusion, he realised, was essential for solace and in the telling, he tasted some of its consolation himself. He stopped short at describing the death. Some things did not need to be spoken. He simply told them that Hans had died as he had fought.
A supper of cabbage, potatoes, thick bread and cherry tart had come and gone. ‘You will stay in Hans’s room,’ Herr Müller said. It was an order, not a question, and Johannes found himself in a tiny chamber right at the back of the house where one room opened onto the next in a sequence of doors. The narrow straw mattress creaked as he turned on it. The small flickering candle showed white washed walls, a wooden crucifix. On the window ledge, there was a single book, a worn volume of Goethe’s poems.
Dreams of Innocence Page 17