"Everything," Elisabeth replied, beaming. "I used my lunch hour. All the applications have been made."
"Everything," Graeber said. "Then there is nothing more to be done."
"What needs to be done?"
"Nothing. I just suddenly got frightfully anxious. Perhaps what we are doing is a mistake. Perhaps it could hurt you." "Me? How?"
Graeber hesitated. "I have heard that sometimes an inquiry is made by the Gestapo. That's why we perhaps ought to have left everything alone."
Elisabeth stood still. "Have you heard anything?"
"No. Nothing. It was just that I suddenly got frightened."
"You mean I might be arrested because we want to get married?"
"Not that."
"What then? Do you mean they might find out my father is in the concentration camp?"
"Not that either," Graeber interrupted. "They certainly know that already. I mean that perhaps it would be better not to call anyone's attention to you. The Gestapo is unpredictable and someone there might get some idiotic idea. You know how that sort of thing happens. No trace of justice about it."
Elisabeth was silent for an instant. "Then what shall we do?" she asked.
"I've been thinking about it all day. But I believe there's nothing more we can do. If we withdrew your applications they might become all the more suspicious."
She nodded and looked at him strangely. "Just the same we could try to withdraw them."
"It's too late, Elisabeth. Now we must take the risk and wait."
They walked on. The factory was situated on a small square and was clearly visible. Graeber looked at it carefully. "Have you never been bombed here?"
"Not yet."
"The building stands pretty much in the open. It's easy to spot it as a factory."
"We have big cellars."
"Are they safe?"
"Fairly so, I think."
Graeber glanced up. Elisabeth was walking along beside him, not looking at him. "For God's sake, understand what I mean," he said. "I am not afraid for myself. I am simply afraid for you."
"You don't need to be afraid for me."
"Aren't you?"
"I have already had all the fears there are. I have no place left for new ones."
"But I have. When you love someone there are many new fears you didn't know about at all before."
Elisabeth turned toward him. She smiled suddenly. He looked at her and nodded. "I haven't forgotten the speech I made day before yesterday," he said. "Do you really have to be afraid before you know whether you love someone?" "1 don't know. But I think it helps."
"This damned outfit! I won't wear it again tomorrow. And I thought civilians had an enviable life!"
Elisabeth laughed. "Is it just the clothes?"
"No," he said with relief. "It comes from being alive again. I'm alive again and I want to go on living. And when that's how it is, apparently you become afraid again. It was horrible all day long. It's better now though—since I have seen you. And yet nothing has changed. Strange how little foundation there has to be for fear."
"Or love," Elisabeth said. "Thank God!"
Graeber looked at her. She was walking beside him free and unconcerned. She has changed, he thought. She changes every day. It used to be that she was afraid and I wasn't; now it's reversed.
They walked past the Hitlerplatz. Behind the church hung a splendid sunset. "Where's the fire now?" Elisabeth asked.
"Nowhere. It's just the sunset."
"The sunset! We don't count on that any more, do we?" "No."
They walked on. The sunset became stronger and deeper. It touched their faces and hands. Graeber glanced at the people who were coming toward them. He suddenly saw them otherwise than before. Each was now a human being with a fate of his own. It was easy to judge and to be brave when one had nothing, he thought. But when one possessed something the world changed. It made things easier and harder and sometimes almost impossible. It was still bravery, but it looked different and it had entirely different names and it really began only there. He took a deep breath. He felt as though he had returned from a long, dangerous patrol in enemy territory—less safe than before—but nevertheless secure for the moment.
"Strange," Elisabeth said. "It must be spring. After all, this is a bombed street and there is no sense in it—nevertheless I believe I already smell violets—"
CHAPTER XVIII
BOETTCHER was packing his things. The others were standing around him. "So you actually found her?" Graeber asked.
"Yes, but—"
"Where?"
"On the street," Boettcher said. "She was simply standing on the corner of Kellerstrasse and Bierstrasse. where the umbrella store used to be. In the first second, I didn't even recognize her."
"Where had she been all this time?"
"In a camp near Erfurt. But listen! So she's standing there by the umbrella store and I don't see her. I walk past and she calls after me, 'Otto! Don't you know me?' " Boettcher paused and looked around the barracks day-room. "But how are you expected to recognize a woman, comrades, when she has taken off eighty pounds!"
"What's the name-of the camp where she was?"
"I don't know. Forest Camp II, I think. I can ask her. But just listen now! So I start at her and say: 'Alma, you?' 'I!' she says. 'Otto, I had a sort of presentiment that you were on furlough; that's why I came back.' I go on staring at her. A woman that used to be as husky as a brewer's horse stands there, emaciated, only a hundred and ten pounds instead of almost two hundred, a skeleton, her clothes hanging, a beanpole!"
Boettcher snorted. "How tall is she?" Feldmann asked, interested.
"What?"
"How tall is your wife?"
"About five feet three. Why?"
"Then she's average weight now."
"Average weight? But, man, what kind of nonsense is that?" Boettcher stared at Feldmann. "Not for me. As far as I am concerned she's a wisp. What does your damned average weight matter to me? I want to have my wife back the way she was, buxom, with an ass you could crack nuts on and not with a sorry coffee bean instead. What am I fighting for? For something like that?"
"You're fighting for our beloved Fuehrer and for our dear Fatherland—not for your wife's dead weight," Reuter said. "You ought slowly to have found that out after three years at the front."
"Dead weight? Who's talking about dead weight?" Boettcher looked from one to the other in anger and helplessness. "Live weight is what it was! And you can take all the rest and—"
"Stop!" Reuter lifted his hand in warning. "Think what you like but don't say it. And be happy your wife is alive."
"I am, of course! But can't she be alive and as buxom as she used to be?"
"But, Boettcher!" Feldmann said. "After all you can feed her up again."
"Really? And with what? With the little bit you can. get for ration coupons?"
"Try and see what you can get the back way."
"It's easy for you to talk! You and your good advice," Boettcher exclaimed bitterly. "I only have three days' furlough left. How am I to feed up my wife in three days? Even if she bathes in cod liver oil and eats seven meals a day, she can't gain more than a couple of pounds at most, and what does that amount to? Comrades, I am in a dreadful situation!"
"Why? After all, you still have the plump proprietress for fat, if that's what matters."
"That's just it! I thought if my wife came back I wouldn't so much as give a passing thought to the proprietress. I'm a family man and not a chaser. And now the proprietress pleases me more."
"You're just a damned superficial character," Reuter said.
"I am not superficial! With me everything goes too deep, that's my failing. Otherwise I could be perfectly satisfied. That's something you don't understand, you jokers."
Boettcher went to his locker and threw the last of his things into his knapsack. "Do you know where you and your wife will stay?" Graeber asked. "Or do you still have your old apartment?"
"Of cou
rse not. Bombed out! But I would rather live in a cellar in the ruins than spend another day here. The calamity is simply that my wife no longer pleases me. Of course I still love her, that's why I married her, but she simply no longer pleases me the way she is. There's just nothing at all I can do about it. What am I supposed to do? She feels it too, of course."
"How much more furlough have you?"
"Three days."
"Couldn't you pretend just for that bit of time?"
"Comrade," Boettcher said calmly, "in bed maybe a woman can pretend. Not a man. Believe me, it would have been better if I had gone off without finding her. As it is we simply torment each other."
He picked up his things and left.
Reuter looked after him. Then he turned to Graeber. "And you? What are your plans?"
"I'm going. to the commissary. Just as a precaution I'm going to ask again whether I need any more papers."
Reuter grinned. "Your friend Boettcher's bad luck hasn't scared you off, eh?"
"No. It's an entirely different kind of thing that scares me."
"Heavy weather," said the clerk at the commissary. "There's heavy weather at the front. Do you know what you're supposed to do in heavy weather?"
"Take cover," Graeber replied. "Any child knows that. But what has that to do with me? I'm on furlough."
"You think you're still on furlough," the clerk corrected him. "What's it worth to you if I show you an order that arrived today?" "That depends."
Graeber took a package of cigarettes out of his pocket and laid it on the table. He felt his stomach contracting. "Heavy weather," the clerk repeated. "Severe losses. Replacements required instantly. Men on furlough who have no urgent reason for staying are to be sent back immediately. Get it?"
"Yes. What are urgent reasons?"
"Death in the family, settling important family business, serious illness—"
The clerk reached for the cigarettes. "So disappear! Make yourself invisible. If they can't find you they can't send you back. Avoid the barracks like the plague. Crawl in some place until your furlough is over. Then report for duty. What can happen to you then? Punishment for failure to report a change of address? You're going back to the front anyway, basta."
"I am getting married," Graeber said. "Is that a reason?"
"You're getting married?"
"Yes, that's why I'm here. I wanted to know whether I needed any papers beside my pay book."
"Marriage! Perhaps that is a reason. Perhaps, I say." The clerk lit one of the cigarettes. "It could be a reason. But why take a chance? You, as a front-line hog, don't need extra papers. And if you do need some, come to me; I will arrange it for you on the quiet so that no one gets a whiff of it. Have you a decent outfit? After all, you can't get married in those rags."
"Can I make any sort of trade here?"
"Go to the sarge in charge of supplies," the clerk said. "Explain to him that you are getting married. Say I sent you. Have you still a few good cigarettes?"
"No. But perhaps I can get hold of another pack." "Not for me. For the sarge."
"I'll see. Do you know whether in a war marriage the woman has to have any special papers?"
"No idea. But I think not. Since it has to -be done fast." The clerk looked at his watch. "Go right over to the supply department. The sarge is there now."
Graeber went to the wing where the supply department was. It was in the attic. The sergeant major was fat and his eyes were different colors. One was of an unnatural, almost violet blue, the other was light brown.
"Don't stare at me," he snapped. "Haven't you ever seen a glass eye before?"
"Sure. But never one that was so different in color."
"This isn't mine, you idiot." The sergeant major tapped the beaming blue eye. "I borrowed it from a friend. Mine fell out on the floor yesterday. It was brown. These things are too fragile. They ought to be made of celluloid."
"Then they would be a fire hazard."
The sergeant major looked up. He examined Graeber's decorations and then grinned. "That's right. Nevertheless, I have no uniform for you. Sorry. They're all worse than yours."
He glanced at Graeber piercingly with the blue eye. The brown one had grown duller. Graeber laid a package of Binding's cigarettes on the table. The sergeant major swept them with a glance from the brown eye, turned around and came back with a blouse. "This is all I have."
Graeber did not touch the blouse. He took out of his pocket a small bottle of cognac which he had brought with him as a precaution and placed it beside the cigarettes. The sergeant major disappeared and then returned with a better blouse and an almost new pair of trousers. Graeber reached for the trousers first; his own were much mended. He turned them over and noticed that the commissary watch-dog had folded them so that a spot as big as a man's hand had been hidden. Graeber looked at the spot in silence and then at the cognac.
"It's not blood," the sergeant said. "It's the best grade of olive oil. The man who wore them came from Italy. A little benzine and the spot will be gone."
"If it's so easy, why did he trade them and not clean them himself?"
The sergeant showed his teeth. "A good question. But the man wanted to have a uniform that smelled of the front. Something like the one you're wearing. Spent two years sitting in an office in Milan and writing letters from the front to his fiancée. Couldn't go home in new trousers that had only a dish of salad spilled on them. It's my best pair, really."
Graeber did not believe him but he had nothing more with him to improve the trade. Nevertheless he shook his head. "Well, then," said the sergeant major, "another proposition. You don't need to trade them. Keep your old rags, too. That way you'll have a dress uniform. Agreed?"
"Don't you need the old one to make the count come out?"
The sergeant gave a careless gesture. His blue eye caught a beam of sunlight that shot dustily through the window. "The count hasn't come out for a long time. What does come out any more, after all? Do you know?"
"No."
"Well then," said the sergeant major.
He was passing the City Hospital and stopped. Mutzig popped into his mind. He had promised to visit him. For a moment he hesitated, but then went in. He suddenly had the superstitious feeling again that he could bribe fate by doing a good deed.
The amputees were on the second floor. The ground floor of the hospital was assigned to the serious cases and those recently operated on who were still confined to bed; thus they could be more quickly moved to the cellar during an air raid. The amputees were not considered helpless, and so they had been placed higher up. During an alarm they could come to each other's assistance. A legless man could, it necessary, always put his arms around the necks of two armless amputees and get to the cellar between them, while the personnel were rescuing the serious bed cases.
"You?" Mutzig said to Graeber. "I never thought you would come."
"Neither did I. But you see I'm here."
"That's nice of you, Ernst. Stockmann is here too. Weren't you with him in Africa?"
"Yes."
Stockmann had lost his right arm. He was playing skat with two other cripples. "Man alive, Ernst," he said. "What's happened to you?" His eyes slid inquiringly over Graeber. He was instinctively looking for the wound.
"Nothing," Graeber replied. They all looked at him. They all had the same expression as Stockmann. "Furlough," he said in embarrassment. He felt almost guilty at being whole.
"I thought you got enough in Africa for a permanent pass home."
"They patched me up and then sent me to Russia."
"You were in luck there. I was, too, relatively speaking. The others all became prisoners of war. They couldn't fly any more out." Stockmann waved his stump. "If one can call this luck."
The man in the middle slapped his cards down on the table. "Are we playing or are we jawing?" he asked rudely.
Graeber saw that he had no legs. They had been amputated very high up. Two fingers were missing from his right hand, and
he had no eyelashes. The lids were new and red and gleaming and looked as if they had been burned.
"Go on playing," Graeber said. "I have time."
"Just this one hand," Stockmann announced. "We'll be through soon."
Graeber seated himself beside Mutzig at the window. "Don't pay any attention to Arnold," Mutzig whispered. "He's having his bad day."
"Is he the one in the middle?"
"Yes. His wife was here yesterday. After that he always has a couple of bad days."
"What are you gossiping about there?" Arnold shouted. "We are gossiping about old times. There's no law against that, is there?"
A Time to Love and a Time to Die Page 25