“I beg respectfully, sir, to point out that it is you and not I who mention Herr Esch by name. So I’m not mistaken, and he’s the fine informer, is he? Ah, if that’s the way the wind’s blowing, and it’s to please Herr Esch that you do his dirty work for him, then all I ask, my dear sir, is to be arrested.”
This shaft went home. The Major pointed a finger at Huguenau and stammered with difficulty:
“Out you get … out you get … I’ll have you thrown out.”
“As you please, Herr Major … quite as you please. I know what I have to expect from a Prussian officer who adopts such means to remove a witness of his defeatist speeches in communistic gatherings; it’s all very well to trim your sails to the wind, but it’s not my habit to denounce the trimmer.… Salut.”
These last words, which were really sheer nonsense and only added by Huguenau to embellish his rhetoric, were not even heard by the Major. He kept on murmuring tonelessly: “Out you get … he’s to get out … the traitor” long after Huguenau had left the room and disrespectfully banged the door behind him. It was the end, the unchivalrous end! he was branded for ever!
Was there still a way of escape? no, there was none … the Major drew his army revolver from the drawer of his desk and laid it before him. Then he took a sheet of letter-paper and laid it also before him; it was to be his petition for a successor to relieve him. He would have preferred simply to ask to be cashiered in disgrace. But the punctual performance of official duties must go on. He would not leave his place until he had handed everything over in a regular manner.
Although the Major believed that he was doing all this with prompt and soldier-like dispatch, his actions were extremely slow and every movement cost him a painful effort. And it was with an intense effort that he began to write: he wanted to write with a firm hand. Perhaps the very intensity of the strain he put upon himself prevented him from getting further than the first words: “To the …” he had traced upon the paper, in letters that seemed unrecognizable even to himself, and there he stuck—the pen-nib was splintered, it had torn the paper and made an ugly splutter. And firmly, even convulsively, clutching the pen-handle the Major slowly crumpled up, no longer a Major but a worn old man. He attempted again to dip the broken nib into the ink but without success, he only knocked over the inkpot, and the ink ran in a narrow stream over the top of the desk and trickled on to his trousers. The Major paid no attention to it. He sat there with ink-stained hands and stared at the door through which Huguenau had vanished. But when some time later the door opened and the orderly appeared he managed to sit up and stretch out his arm commandingly: “Get out,” he ordered the somewhat flustered man, “get out … I am staying at my post.”
CHAPTER LXXX
Jaretzki had gone off with Captain von Schnaack. The sisters were still standing in front of the gate waving after the carriage that was taking both men to the station. When they turned to re-enter the house Sister Mathilde looked peaked and old-maidish. Flurschütz said:
“It was really terribly decent of you to take him under your wing last night … the fellow was in an awful state … where on earth did he get hold of the vodka?”
“An unfortunate man,” said Sister Mathilde.
“Have you ever read Dead Souls?”
“Let me think … I believe I have.…”
“Gogol,” said Sister Carla, with the pride of ready information, “Russian serfs.”
“Jaretzki is a dead soul,” said Flurschütz, then, after a pause, pointing to a group of soldiers in the garden, “… that’s what they all are, dead souls … probably all of us, too; it’s touched all of us somewhere.”
“Can you lend me the book?” asked Sister Mathilde.
“I don’t have it here … but we can get hold of it … as for books … do you know, I can’t read anything now.…”
He had sat down on the seat beside the porch and was staring at the road, at the mountains, at the clear autumnal sky that was darkening in the north. Sister Mathilde hesitated a moment, then she too sat down.
“You know, Sister, we really need to discover some new means of communication, something beyond speech … all that is written and said has become quite dumb and meaningless … something new is needed, or else our chief is absolutely in the right with his surgery.…”
“I don’t quite understand,” said Sister Mathilde.
“Oh, it’s not worth bothering about, it’s just … I only meant that if our souls are dead there’s nothing for it but the surgical knife … but that’s just nonsense.”
Sister Mathilde thought of something:
“Didn’t Lieutenant Jaretzki say something like that when his arm had to be amputated?”
“Very possibly he did, he’s infected with radicalism too … of course he couldn’t be anything but radical … like every trapped animal.…”
Sister Mathilde was shocked by the word “animal”:
“I believe he was only trying to forget everything … he once hinted at that; and all that drinking …”
Flurschütz had pushed his cap back; he felt the scar on his forehead and passed his finger over it.
“Well, I shouldn’t be surprised if we were entering on a time when people will do nothing but try to forget, only to forget: to sleep and eat and sleep and eat … just like our fellows here … to sleep and eat and play cards.…”
“But that would be dreadful, to live without ideals!”
“My dear Sister Mathilde, what you are seeing here is scarcely the war, it’s only a miniature edition of the war … you haven’t been out of this place for four years … and all the men keep a shut mouth even when they’re wounded … keep a shut mouth and forget about it … but you can take my word for it, not one of them has brought back any ideals.”
Sister Mathilde got up. The thunder-clouds were now outlined against the clear sky like a broad black wall.
“I’m going to apply for a field hospital again as soon as I can,” he said.
“Lieutenant Jaretzki believes that the war is never going to come to an end.”
“Yes … perhaps that’s just why I want to get out there again.”
“I suppose I ought to go out there too.…”
“Oh, you’re doing your bit here, Sister.”
Sister Mathilde looked up at the sky.
“I must bring in the deck-chairs.”
“Yes, you’d better do that, Sister.”
CHAPTER LXXXI
It was Saturday; Huguenau was paying out the week’s wages in the printing-room.
Life had gone on in the usual manner; not for a moment had it occurred to Huguenau that as an openly advertised deserter who was already being tracked down he really should take to flight. He had simply stayed where he was. Not only because he was already too much bound up with local affairs, not only because a business conscience cannot bear to see any enterprise abandoned in which a considerable sum of money has been invested, whether one’s own or another’s—it was rather a feeling of general indefiniteness that kept him where he was and prevented him from admitting defeat, a feeling that compelled him to assert his reality against that of the others. And though it was somewhat nebulous, yet it resolved itself into a very definite idea: that the Major and Esch would get together behind his back and sneer at him. So he stayed where he was, only making an agreement with Frau Esch that meals he did not consume were to be made up to him, thus enabling him to avoid without material loss the hateful midday dinners.
Of course he knew that the trend of affairs was not favourable to the taking of action against a single insignificant Alsatian deserter; he felt himself relatively secure, and moreover he had positively a strangle-hold on the Major. He knew that, but he preferred not to know it. On the contrary he played with the thought that the luck of war might take another turn, that the Major might again be a power in the land, and that the Major and Esch were only waiting until then to crush him. It was for him to foil them in good time. Maybe it was sheer superstition, but
he could not afford to fold his hands, he had to use every minute of his time, he had far too many urgent things to settle; and although he could not have told precisely whither this urgency was driving him, yet he consoled himself with the reflection that it was only their own fault if he laid counter-mines against his enemies.
Now he was paying out the wages. Lindner regarded the money, counted it over again, looked at it once more and left it lying on the table. The apprentice compositor was standing by, equally silent. Huguenau was puzzled:
“Well, Lindner, why don’t you pick up your money?”
Finally, with obvious reluctance, Lindner brought out the words:
“The Union rate’s ninety-two pfennings.”
That was something new. But Huguenau was not at a loss:
“Yes, yes, in large printing-works … but not in a tight squeeze like this … you’re an old, experienced workman and you must know the condition we’re in. With enemies on every hand, nothing but enemies’ … if I hadn’t set the paper on its legs again there wouldn’t be any wages at all to-day … that’s all the thanks I get. Do you imagine I wouldn’t be glad to give you twice as much … but where am I to get it from? Perhaps you think we’re a Government paper bolstered up with subsidies … then, of course, there would be some sense in your joining the Union and asking for Union rates. I would join it myself; I’d be much better off.”
“I haven’t joined the Union,” muttered Lindner.
“How do you know the Union rate, then?”
“One soon gets to hear of it.”
Huguenau had meanwhile considered the matter. Of course Liebel was at the bottom of this with his workshop propaganda. So he was an enemy too. But Liebel was a man to keep in with for the present. He said therefore:
“Well, we’ll manage some arrangement … let’s say, from November the new rate, and until then we’ll see what can be done.”
Both men professed themselves content.
In the evening Huguenau went to the Palatine Tavern to look for Liebel. The Lindner affair was really only a pretext. Huguenau was not at all ill-natured; he looked with clear eyes at the world; only a man has to know who are his enemies so that he can make a change of front when necessary. Oh, he knew well enough who his enemy was. They had managed to shut down the brothel and two outlying pubs … but when he offered to help them in their fight with the real subversive elements the Major had turned tail. Well, to-morrow he would butter the old man up again in the newspaper, this time for having closed the brothel. And Huguenau hummed to himself: “Lord God of Sabaoth.”
In the Palatine he found Liebel, Doctor Pelzer, who had volunteered as a private, and a few more. Pelzer asked at once:
“And where have you left Esch? we never see him at all nowadays.”
Huguenau grinned:
“Bible class for the Holy Sabbath … he’ll be getting himself circumcised next.”
They all roared with laughter, and Huguenau swelled with pride. But Pelzer said:
“All the same, Esch is a fine chap.”
Liebel shook his head:
“It’s almost incredible, the stuff that people swallow.…”
Pelzer said:
“It’s just in times like these that everyone has his own ideas.… I’m a Socialist, and so are you, Liebel … but that’s just why, all the same, Esch is a fine chap.… I like him very much.”
Liebel’s forehead, which rose up not unlike a tower, reddened, and the vein running over it stood out:
“In my opinion that kind of thing just makes people besotted and should be stopped.”
“Quite right,” said Huguenau, “destructive ideas.”
Someone at the table laughed:
“O Lord, how even the big capitalists are changing their tune!”
Huguenau’s eyeglasses flashed at the speaker:
“If I were a big capitalist I wouldn’t be sitting here, but in Cologne, if not in Berlin.”
“Um, you’re not exactly a communist either, Herr Huguenau,” said Pelzer.
“Nor that either, my dear Herr Doctor … but I know what’s just and what’s unjust … who was the first to expose the state of things in the prison? eh?”
“Nobody denies the services you’ve rendered,” conceded Pelzer, “where would we have got such a fine Iron Bismarck but for you?”
Huguenau became genial; he clapped Pelzer on the shoulder:
“Pull your grandmother’s leg, my dear fellow!”
But then he proceeded to let himself go:
The services he had rendered were neither here nor there. Of course he had always been a good patriot, of course he had acclaimed the victories of his Fatherland, and would anybody venture to blame him for that? but he had always known very well that that was the only way of rousing the bourgeoisie, who kept a tight hand on their ill-gotten gains, to do something for the children of the poor proletarian victims of the war; as far as he remembered it was he who had managed that! but what thanks had he got? it wouldn’t surprise him to find that secret police orders were already out against him! but he wasn’t afraid, let them do their worst, he had friends who would get him out of prison if necessary. This secret service work must in any case be put a stop to. “A man disappears, nobody knows how, and the next thing you hear is that he’s been buried in the prison yard; God only knows how many are still languishing in prison! No, we don’t get justice, we get only police justice! and the worst of it all is the sham piety of these police butchers; they have their Bibles always in their hands, but only to hit people over the head with. And they say grace before and after meat, but other people can starve to death, grace or no grace.…”
Pelzer had listened approvingly, but now he interrupted:
“Seems to me, Huguenau, you’re an agent provocateur.”
Huguenau scratched his head:
“And do you imagine that I haven’t had offers of that kind made to me? if I could only tell you … well, never mind.… I was always an honest man and I’ll remain an honest man if it should cost me my head … only I can’t stand that sham hypocrisy.”
Liebel said in agreement:
“This Bible stuff is only a stunt … the masters simply love to see the people fed on Bible texts.”
Huguenau nodded:
“Yes, first a text and then a bullet … there are plenty who had a hand in the shooting affair in the prison … well, I’d better say nothing. But I’d rather go to quod than to one of their Bible classes.”
So Huguenau aligned his position in the struggle then beginning between the upper and lower orders. And although Bolshevist propaganda was a matter of complete indifference to him, and he would have been the first to call for help if his own possessions had been in danger, although indeed it was only with great uneasiness that he reported in the Kur-Trier Herald the increasing number of inroads on property, yet he said now with honest conviction:
“The Russians are great fellows.”
And Pelzer said:
“I believe you, my boy.”
As they left the inn Huguenau shook his finger at Liebel:
“You’re another of these sham-pious Johnnies … egging on my good old Lindner against me, and yet I’m only working for the people … and you know it, too. Well, I suppose we’ll come to an understanding yet.”
CHAPTER LXXXII
An eight-year-old child has resolved to wander alone out into the world.
She walks along the narrow strip of grass between the wheel-ruts and sees the pale purple of fading clover-heads that have strayed there, dried cakes of cow-dung, hoary with age, that have grass growing in their cracks, and the prickly burrs that cling to her stockings. She sees many other things too, the meadow-saffron growing in the fields and two dun cows grazing on the valley slopes, and since she cannot be always looking at the landscape she looks also at her frock and sees the little wild roses printed on its black cotton: over and over again a fully opened flower and a bud together on one bright green stalk between two small g
reen leaves; in the middle of the opened rose there is a yellow point. She wishes that she had a black hat in which a rose with a bud and two leaves could be pinned—that would go well with the frock. But she has only a grey woollen cloak with a hood.
As she wanders along the river like this, one hand on her hip and the other clutching a mark to defray her expenses, she is in well-known country. She is not afraid. She walks through the landscape as a housewife might walk through her dwelling, and if the pleasant feeling in her big toe induces her to kick a stone off the strip of grass, that is only a kind of tidying up. All around her everything is clear. She can see the clumps of trees that stand clearly modelled in the transparent air of the early autumn afternoon, and the landscape has no mystery for her: behind the transparent air is the bright blue sky, among the transparent green leafage there appears from time to time, as if it could not be otherwise, a tree with yellow leaves, and often, although there is not a breath of wind, a yellow leaf comes fluttering from somewhere and slowly circling settles on the path.
When she turns her eyes to the right, yonder where the willows and bushes fringe the shore of the river, she can see the white boulders in the river-bed, she can even see the water; for the foliage of the bushes has thinned out with the autumn and reveals the brown branches, it is no longer the impenetrable green wall of summer. But if she turns her eyes to the left she sees the marsh-meadow: uncanny and malicious it lies there, and if one sets a foot in its grass the water plashes up and seeps into one’s shoes; one dare not try to cross a marsh like that, for who knows? one might sink and be smothered in the bog.
Children have a more restricted and yet a more intense feeling for nature than grown-ups. They will never linger at a beautiful prospect to absorb the whole of a landscape, but a tree standing on a distant hill can attract them so strongly that they feel as if they could take it in their mouths and must run to touch it. And when a great valley spreads before their feet they do not want to gaze at it, but to fling themselves into it as if they could fling their own fears in too; that is why children are in such constant and often purposeless movement, rolling in the grass, climbing trees, trying to eat leaves, and finally concealing themselves in the top of a tree or deep in the dark security of a bush.
The Sleepwalkers Page 74