Steiner’s features hardened. His eyes narrowed, and Schnurrbart hastened to apologize. ‘I don’t mean to step on your toes,’ he said hastily, already regretting having brought up the subject. Steiner had indicated on former occasions that this was something he did not want to talk about. But after all, they had been together for more than three years now. What harm was there in asking? Annoyed, Schnurrbart knocked out his pipe against the leg of the table and crammed it into his pocket. If he doesn’t want to talk, that’s all there is to it, he thought, yawning ostentatiously. ‘Think I’ll turn in,’ he murmured. ‘I’m dead tired.’
But this time Steiner relented. ‘Wait.’ He glanced quickly over at the sleeping men; then he laid his arms on the table and leaned forward. ‘I had a girl, but she’s dead,’ he said.
In the silence that followed the roaring wind shouldered the door as though it would knock it down. So that’s it, Schnurrbart thought, trying to keep his expression blankly polite. He leaned back in the chair, crossed his legs and met Steiner’s eyes squarely. ‘I can imagine how it must feel,’ he said carefully.
He fell silent again. Somewhere nearby a heavy shell burst. The bunker rocked, and one of the sleeping men groaned and mumbled something. Schnurrbart looked at the door. A thin ribbon of snow lay on the floor just below the threshold. ‘This will go on for ever,’ he murmured. Steiner said nothing, and at last Schnurrbart turned to face him again and asked: ‘What was her name?’
‘Anne.’
Schnurrbart nodded. ‘Nice name,’ he said noncommitally. ‘What happened to her?’
‘She died in an accident,’ Steiner replied curtly, and Schnurrbart had the feeling that this was the most he was going to learn. He scratched his head, searching his mind for some way to turn the conversation toward some other subject. But again Steiner anticipated him. Gesturing toward the door, he said: ‘It was weather just like this. The two of us used to do a lot of mountain climbing. Just below the peak the storm caught us by surprise. She slipped and -’ He fell silent, staring into the flickering candle flame.
Again there was a long pause. Schnurrbart hunched his shoulders uncomfortably as he spoke. ‘Terrible. When did it happen?’
‘In thirty-eight. Shortly before the war started.’
‘Five years ago. Seems like a long time to me.’
‘Seems long to you, does it,’ Steiner said tightly. He shook his head slowly. ‘It was yesterday, I tell you. Yesterday and today and tomorrow and always.’ A strand of dark hair fell across his forehead; he brushed it aside with an impatient movement of his hand. ‘You see,’ he said, ‘you see, it was all my fault, mine alone. I let go of her—these hands you see here let go of her. If you had been through it you would never forget it, any more than I can.’
His face suddenly seemed corroded as though acid had flowed across his skin. If only I had not started it, Schnurrbart thought. In an agony of discomfiture he reached for his pipe again and began filling it once more. The wood in the stove crackled and popped. After a while he began to feel the silence like a physical pain. He propped his elbows on the table, cleared his throat several times, and said at last: ‘I know what you mean; it’s hellish for you. But you can’t go on feeling the same way for ever.’
Slowly, Steiner lifted his hands from his face and stared at his friend. ‘For ever?’ He moved his head as if listening for something. Then he gave a strained laugh. ‘No, it will not go on for ever. It will stop when I meet her again,’ he said.
‘Meet her?’ Schnurrbart asked blankly.
‘Of course. You may think I’m off my head, but I tell you I will meet her again. If I’m still here, she must be too. Somewhere, when this war is over, she will cross my path.’
‘That’s going pretty far,’ Schnurrbart said.
Steiner shook his head. ‘Everyone goes as far as he can.’
For a while there was silence between them, until Schnurrbart ventured again: ‘Suppose you don’t meet her?’ he asked.
Steiner slowly turned his face toward him. ‘What’s that?’
‘I mean, what will you do if you don’t meet her?’
Steiner waved that away with a light motion of his hand. ‘If I live through this war,’ he said quietly, ‘I will meet her. And if I don’t come out of it -’ He stood up, stepped up quickly to the tiny window by the door, and peered out.
Schnurrbart drew the pipe from his mouth and sat looking meditatively at the toes of his boots. When he glanced up he saw that Steiner was watching him with an expression of mockery.
‘What are you thinking?’ he asked.
Schnurrbart sensed that he was seeking a quarrel. ‘This and that,’ he said, shrugging pacifically.
‘Give it up,’ Steiner said with scorn. ‘You can’t understand it anyway.’
‘Why not?’
‘You can’t,’ Steiner repeated with sudden anger. ‘None of you can understand it; you’re a crude lot.’
‘Look here -’ Schnurrbart began, but Steiner cut him off.
‘A crude lot; you cannot imagine what a woman can mean. For all of you a woman is nothing but something to sleep with, and it doesn’t matter who she is as long as she lies down.’ His voice had risen, and some of the men on the cots woke up. They stared sleepily over at the two, and one of them grumbled: ‘Be quiet, damn it, let a man get some sleep!’
With a thrust of his hands Steiner forced himself from the wall and took four big strides over to the man’s side. ‘You shut up!’ he snarled. ‘Shut up, you damned idiot! Sleeping and eating and -’ He fell silent abruptly. Disgusted, he gazed for a moment at the cowed faces of the men, and whirled around.
As he went to the door, Schnurrbart gripped his arm firmly. ‘If you want to believe that kind of thing, go ahead,’ he said quietly. ‘But you aren’t fair to the fellows there.’
Steiner stared into his eyes. Then suddenly he leaned forward and asked: ‘What about you? Aren’t I unfair to you too?’ He turned and left the bunker.
Every time he remembered that incident, Schnurrbart had felt a mingling of uneasiness and satisfaction. He was surer than ever that a wrong word at the time was all that was needed to make any future relationship with Steiner unendurable. As it was, they had become quite close. Not as close as he had hoped, for even afterwards Steiner never quite dropped his reserve. There was no one at all in the platoon who could boast of sharing his undivided confidence. Every so often, in small matters, he would make it clear that he wanted to remain aloof and that he felt obligations toward none of them. He kept his thoughts to himself even at such times as this, when he was undertaking a dangerous reconnaissance which might well turn out badly.
The thought brought Schnurrbart to the present. Sighing, he peered over the top of the trench. Darkness hung among the trees like powdered soot. He glanced at the luminous dial of his wristwatch; in letting his mind wander, he had wasted more than twenty minutes. In a hurry now, he scrambled out of the trench, listened again for a few seconds and then turned toward the bunker.
A figure appeared out of the darkness and came toward him rapidly, He recognized Hollerbach.
‘You haven’t heard from Steiner, have you?’ he asked.
‘No, the devil only knows where he is.’
‘It’s sickening,’ Schnurrbart grumbled. ‘Always this hide and seek business. He might have taken one of us with him.’
Hollerbach shrugged. ‘You know how he is.’ Although Schnurrbart was good -sized, Hollerbach towered over him. His head was uncovered, and his pale blond, almost white hair gleamed like a helmet in the night. He, with Krüger, was one of the few ‘old boys’ in the platoon. A steady, easy -going fellow, he was noteworthy for receiving a letter from his girl in almost every mail. For the past week, however, no mail had reached the battalion, and Schnurrbart recalled the rumours of a huge encirclement in which the entire Caucasus army was trapped. Although he took little stock in these tales, he was aware of the possibility that a good many unpleasant surprises might be in store fo
r them all. If only Steiner were here, he thought. Aloud he said: ‘He’s stubborn as a mule.’
‘Since he came back from leave he’s been in a bad mood,’ Hollerbach said. ‘Wish I knew what happened back there.’
‘So do I.’ Schnurrbart had given the matter much thought these past several months.
‘At any rate,’ Hollerbach lingered on the subject, ‘he must have kicked up his heels quite a bit to get himself demoted from sergeant to private and four months in a punishment battalion besides.’
Schnurrbart scratched his belly thoughtfully. He didn’t particularly want to go into this matter. The platoon had heard one thing and another, but the reasons for Steiner’s demotion remained obscure. ‘There’s less to it than you think,’ he replied in a standoffish tone. ‘All a man has to do is to jabber and they get him for it.’
‘True enough.’ While the conversation lapsed, Schnurrbart reckoned out the time on his fingers. It was just half a year ago that Steiner had rejoined the company. He had been wounded at Izyum and invalided back home. There something must have happened that he refused to talk about. At any rate he had been transferred to Disciplinary Battalion 500. After doing his spell in that unit, he had been promoted to corporal, and six months ago had turned up in the company again—a bit more close -mouthed and grim than he had been before. Schnurrbart recalled how he had responded to all questions with an indifferent shrug, until at last they gave up asking him. In any case, the hectic pace of recent weeks had kept them concentrating on the present. The retreat from Tuapse to this position could no longer be termed ‘an elastic defence’. It really looked like the beginning of the end. Thinking of that, and of Steiner, Schnurrbart sighed.
‘I suppose we’ll have to look for him,’ he said impatiently.
‘I’ve been thinking about that. Where can you look for him in this darkness ? For all we know there are still Russians over there.’
Schnurrbart was inclined to agree. He hitched up his cartridge -belt, settled back and said: ‘Why don’t you go back to where it’s warm. I’ll stay here and keep my ears open, just in case. If anything comes up, you know where I am.’
Hollerbach nodded and started wearily back toward the bunker.
By now most of the men had dozed off. Dorn alone continued to sit at the table. Since he had to relieve Dietz in an hour, there was little point to lying down now. Besides he had been bothered for days by painful cramps, probably from the skimpy rations, which did not let him sleep.
He glanced about at the furnishings of the bunker, and sighed. For two weeks they had worked like dogs, had brought stuff from the nearest villages, had dug, carpentered, made window frames, fixed straw mattresses—done everything possible to make the bunker comfortable, and now all that work was for nothing. How hard we cling to a place, he thought, if we have done things to it that make for a bit of pleasantness. Of course it was only a hole in the ground. But for all of them, leading the soldier’s nomad life, it was much more. In this land of boundless expanses and unnerving strangeness, this land with which none of their memories were linked, the bunker was a semblance of home. And like home, they attached all kinds of emotions to it.
Now again they were pulling up stakes, forging out into the unknown, with all the apprehension such moves carried with them. Steiner’s report had not sounded encouraging. Who could say where they would spend tomorrow night?
He sighed and looked at his watch. Time for him to take over. Heavily, he stood up, clapped the steel helmet on his head, took his rifle and went out. As he raised his face, he felt rain falling. Cautiously he climbed the slippery steps. His glasses misted over. He removed them and tried to accommodate his eyes to the darkness. A few steps away from the door he came upon Dietz, who was leaning against a tree.
‘You here already?’ Dietz asked.
‘It’s time,’ Dorn replied. Dietz took a step closer to him. His teeth chattered lightly as he said: ‘Dirty weather.’ He eased the rifle from his shoulder and shook himself. ‘Nice time we’re going to have tonight,’ he said. ‘A regular funeral march. Just imagine it —twenty miles in this kind of weather through a swampy forest.’
‘It will be ghastly,’ Dorn agreed.
‘If only the rain would stop,’ Dietz said, peering in an effort to see Dorn’s face. They both fell silent and stared gloomily into the night.
The rain drizzled down steadily; the trees let fall big drops which slapped into the dry leaves on the ground. Dorn draped his groundsheet over his steel helmet and leaned against a tree. ‘Well, take it easy,’ Dietz said. He gave Dorn a helpful pat on the shoulder and disappeared into the bunker. Minutes passed. The darkness seemed to grow thicker. From somewhere sounded the wailing cry of an owl. A gust of wind shook the trees, producing a pattering like hailstones on the roof of a tent. Dorn pushed the steel helmet back from his forehead and strained to see into the blackness of the woods. His glasses were in his pocket; in weather like this they were useless.
What could be keeping Steiner so long, he wondered. His stomach cramps were getting worse. He pressed his fist into his belly and held his breath. For a few seconds the pain diminished. But when he removed his fist, it returned with redoubled intensity. He bent over, and when that brought no relief squatted on his heels. It was more bearable that way. He propped his chin in his hand and became aware of his unshaven face. His skin was damp and sticky. Filth, he thought in disgust; everything is filthy, body, underclothes, everything. After a while he propped both arms on his thighs and let his head droop; his rifle he held clamped between his legs. Again and again he heard strange noises, but he was too apathetic to pay attention to them. It was as though his basic fear, which had been with him for so long that it felt like part of himself, was overlaid by dull indifference.
His head drooped lower and lower. His lips were parted and he could feel the spittle trickling from his mouth. In his present state it gave him a spiteful, silly satisfaction to let himself go completely. This is what I am really like, he thought, this is me. If Maria could see me now. The thought of his wife revived him momentarily. He raised his head and closed his mouth. Maria, he thought, Maria, Betty, Jürgen. Jürgen would be going to school this year. He shook his head at the swift passage of time. Then he tried to picture his wife taking Jürgen to school every morning. He smiled happily, and the smile lingered when his thoughts had already taken a graver turn. There was Betty, two years younger than Jürgen, a quiet, serious child like her mother. Always rather sickly, and not like other girls the same age. The doctor had said Betty ought to be sent to a rest -home in the country for a few months. If only there were no war. Certainly it couldn’t go on much longer, but how would it end?
He was still thinking about this when a hand gripped his shoulder brutally and pulled him to his feet. Paralysed by fright, he stared into the face of Steiner. ‘Existential philosophy, Professor,’ Steiner said coldly, ‘presupposes existence. You won’t exist much longer if you go to sleep at your post. Pick up your gun.’ Released from his grip, Dorn stooped for the rifle on the ground. When he had straightened up he saw that Steiner was listening to the sounds from the woods. He turned to Dorn: ‘You can do sentry duty sitting, for all I care, but don’t fall asleep.’ Then he climbed down into the bunker. A few minutes later he was back, carrying blankets and ground -sheets. He spread the blanket out on the ground, hung the canvas over his shoulders and sat down at the foot of a tree. ‘Sit beside me,’ he ordered Dorn. ‘By night you see better from lower down.’
Dorn obeyed in silence. He had recovered from his slump and now felt guilty. Ought he to mention his cramps to Steiner, he wondered. But oddly enough, he no longer felt any pain. For a few minutes they sat without talking. Then Dorn asked: ‘Did you go to the highway?’
‘Yes.’
‘And—how does it look?’
‘Lovely,’ Steiner said with a humourless laugh.
Anxiously, Dorn peered into his face. ‘What does that mean? Did you see any Russians?’
‘I certainly did. Infantry, trucks, tanks—the whole damn Russian army.’
Dorn stared at him aghast. ‘On the highway?’
‘Not in the air, I assure you.’
Dorn took a deep breath. ‘My God,’ he murmured. He could feel his legs growing leaden; the wet uniform seemed to weigh him down like a suit of armour.
Steiner drew his knees up closer to his body and thrust his tommy -gun between them. ‘Why the surprise,’ he said scornfully. ‘That was predictable. I warned you, didn’t I?’
‘So you did.’ Dorn pushed the steel helmet back from his forehead. ‘Then we cannot use the highway?’
‘I doubt whether the Russians will let us have a concession for it. But we must cross it in any case.’
‘But you said yourself that the Russians -’
‘We’ll just have to wait until the traffic slackens off. It ought to be quieter by tomorrow morning.’
‘But that’s hopeless,’ Dorn said, hoarse with agitation. ‘Can’t we avoid the highway altogether?’
‘That would mean covering twice the distance. We haven’t the time. If the Russians reach Krymskaya before us, we’re sunk.’ Steiner’s very matter -of -factness made Dorn feel panic. He rubbed his wet face with the back of his hand and stammered: ‘Then what are we going to do?’
Steiner snorted angrily. ‘You heard what I said. We’re crossing the highway.’
‘And suppose the Russians see us?’
‘Then we’ll clap our hands and say good morning.’
Dorn closed his eyes before the wave of fear that swept him. He saw Russian columns marching toward him, a thousand tommy -guns pointed at him. It might be better if we left right away, he thought. It’s so dark now that the Russians could not see us. The thought bucked him up a little. ‘Why do you want to wait until morning?’ he asked Steiner. ‘Our chances would be better under cover of darkness.’
‘I’ve considered that. But don’t forget we’re setting out into unknown terrain. Besides, if we should come upon Russians unexpectedly in the darkness, we could easily lose touch with one another. I’ve thought it all over carefully. We’ll cross the road shortly before dawn; I want to be able to see what we are going into.’
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