Three Comrades

by Erich Maria Remarque

  We passed along the street in which it had happened. Under the street lamp was still a black patch of blood. Köster switched off the lights. We ran along close by the kerb and surveyed the street. Not a soul was to be seen. Only from a lighted pub we heard voices.

  Köster pulled up at the crossing. "Stay here," said he; "I want to have a look in the pub."

  "I'll come with you," I replied.

  He gave me a look that I recognised from the times when he would go on patrol by himself. "I won't settle anything in the pub," said he. "He might get away from me still. I only want to see if he is there. Then we'll wait for him. You stay here with Gottfried."

  I nodded and he disappeared in the scurry of snow. The flakes flew in my face and melted on my skin. I suddenly couldn't bear Gottfried's being covered up, as if he didn't belong to us any more, and I pushed the coat from his head. The snow now fell on his face also, on his eyes and his lips, but it did not melt. I took a handkerchief and wiped it away, and put the coat over him again.

  Köster came back. "Nothing doing?"

  "No," said he.

  He got in. "Now we'll just drive round the other streets. I've got a feeling we must be going to meet them any minute."

  The car bellowed and was immediately throttled down again. Softly we stole through the white, eddying night, from street to street; at corners I held Gottfried tight, so that he should not slip off; and every now and then we would pull up a hundred yards beyond a pub and Köster would run back with long strides to look in. He was obsessed with grim, cold hate; he did not think first of taking Gottfried home; then twice he started to do so, but turned again because he fancied that just at that moment the four might be under way.

  Suddenly, in a long bare street, we saw a dark group of people far ahead. Köster at once switched off the ignition; and soundlessly, without lights we came up. The people did not hear us. They were talking together. "There are four," I whispered to Köster.

  At the same moment the car bellowed, raced the last two hundred metres, rode up on to the pavement and with a grinding skid stopped not a yard from the shouting people. Köster hung half out of the car, his body a steel bow ready to spring, and his face unrelenting as death.

  It was four harmless old people. One of them was drunk. They started to curse. Köster did not reply. We drove on.

  "Otto," said I, "we won't get him to-night. I don't believe he'd trust himself on the streets."

  "Yes, perhaps," he replied after a while, and turned the car.

  We drove to Köster's. His room had its own entrance, so we did not need to wake anybody. As we were getting out I said: "Why didn't you want to tell the police what he looked like? We would have had help then in the search. And we did see him well enough."

  Köster looked at me. "Because we're going to settle that by ourselves, without any police. Do you think—" His tone was quite soft, restrained and terrible— "Do you think I'd hand him over to the police, anyway? So he'll get a few years' gaol? You know very weU how all these cases end. These chaps know they'll find easy judges. We're having none of that. And what's more if the police did find him, I'd swear it wasn't he, so I could get him after. Gottfried dead and he alive . . . We're having none of that."

  We lifted the stretcher from the seats and carried it in through the whirling snow and the wind, and it was as if we were back in Flanders carrying to the rear a dead comrade from the front line.

  We bought a coffin and a grave in the parish cemetery. Gottfried had often said, when we had discussed it, that crematoriums were not for soldiers. He meant to lie in the earth on which he had lived so long.

  It was a clear sunny day when we buried him. We put Km in his old service uniform with the sleeve torn by shell splinters and still stained with blood. We shut the coffin ourselves and carried him down the stairs. There were not many who came with us: Ferdinand, Valentin, Alfons, Fred the bartender, Georg, Jupp, Frau Stoss, Gustav, Stefan Grigoleit, and Rosa.

  At the gate of the cemetery we had to wait some time. There were two other funerals there before us, one with a black motor hearse, the other with black-and-silver-draped horses and an endless procession of mourners who seemed to keep themselves well amused.

  We lifted the coffin from the car and lowered it with ropes ourselves. The gravedigger was satisfied, as he had enough to do at the other graves. We had got a parson too. We didn't know what Gottfried would have said to that, but Valentin had been for it. We had at least asked him not to make any speeches. He was only to read a passage from Scripture.

  The parson was an elderly, shortsighted chap. As he approached the grave side he tripped over a clod of earth and would have fallen in had not Köster and Valentin caught him. As it was the Bible and his spectacles which he was about to put on slipped from his hand. They fell into the grave. Dismayed he stared after them.

  "Never mind, Herr Pastor," said Valentin, "we'll make good the things for you."

  "It's not the book so much," replied the parson gently, "but I need the glasses."

  Valentin broke a twig from the cemetery hedge. Then he knelt down by the grave and contrived to hook the spectacles by one of the arms and lift them out from among the wreaths. They were gold-rimmed. The Bible had slipped sideways in between the coffin and the earth; to get it one would have to lift out the coffin again and go in after it. Not even the parson wanted that. He stood there bewildered. "Should I say a few words instead?"

  "Don't worry, Herr Pastor," said Ferdinand. "He's got the whole Testament down there now."

  The upturned earth smelt strong. In one of the clods a white May-bug larva was crawling. When the earth was thrown in again he would still go on living down there, hatch out, and next year break through and come into the light. But Gottfried Lenz was dead. He was extinguished. We were standing by his grave, we knew that his body, his hair, his eyes were still there, changed already, but there still, and yet for all that, he was gone and would never return. It was past comprehending. Our skin was warm, our thoughts were busy, our hearts pumping blood through the arteries; we were there as before, as we were yesterday; we were not suddenly wanting an arm, we hadn't become blind or dumb, everything was as usual, soon we should go away—and Gottfried Lenz would stay behind and never come again. It was past comprehending.

  The clods fell hollow on the coffin. The gravedigger had given us spades, and now we buried him—Valentin, Köster, Alfons, and I—as we had buried many a comrade before. Droning, an old Army song beat through my brain, an old, melancholy soldiers' song that he had often sung— "Argonnerwald, Argonnerwald, a quiet graveyard art thou now . . ."

  Alfons had brought a simple, black wooden cross, a cross such as those that stand by the hundred'thousand on the endless rows of graves in France. We placed it at the head of the grave and hung Gottfried's old steel helmet on top.

  "Come on," said Valentin at last in a hoarse voice.

  "Yes," said Köster. But he still stayed. We all stayed.

  Valentin looked down the line of us. "And what for?" said he slowly. "What for? Damn it."

  No one answered.

  Valentin made a weary gesture. "Come on."

  We walked along the gravel path to the exit. At the gate Fred, Georg and the rest were waiting for us. "He could laugh so wonderfully," said Stefan Grigoleit, and the tears flowed down his helpless angry face.

  I looked round. No one was following us.

  Chapter XXV

  In February I was sitting in our workshop with Köster for the last time. We had had to sell it, and now were waiting for the auctioneer who was to put up for sale the fittings and the taxicab. Köster had prospects of a job in the spring as racing motorist with a small firm of car manufacturers. I was staying on at the International, and meant to try to get some additional work during the day in order to earn a bit more.

  A few people gradually assembled in the yard. The auctioneer came. "Are you going out, Otto?" I asked.

  "What for? It's all out there, and he knows his busine
ss."

  Köster looked tired. You could not easily tell with him, but if you knew him well, you could see. His face looked even more tense and hard than usual. Night after night he had been out, always in the same neighbourhood. He had long since found out the name of the fellow who had shot Gottfried. But he couldn't find him, because the other, for fear of the police, had changed his quarters and was in hiding somewhere. Alfons had dug all that out. He was waiting likewise. It was quite possible that the other chap was not in the city any longer. That Köster and Alfons were after him he did not know. They were waiting for him to come back when he would think himself safe.

  "I think I'll go out and watch, Otto," said I.

  "All right."

  I went into the yard. Our workbenches and the rest of the stuff were piled up in the middle. On the right by the wall stood the taxi. We had washed it clean. I examined the upholstery and the tyres. "Our jolly old milch cow," Gottfried had always called it. It wasn't so easy to part with.

  Some one clapped me on the shoulder. I turned round in surprise. An unpleasantly flashy young man in a belted overcoat confronted me. He blinked his eyes and twirled a bamboo cane in the air. "Hello! We know one another."

  An inkling rose in my memory. "Guido Thiess of the Augeka."

  "Good for you!" declared the fellow smugly. "Met over this self-same bus. A nasty piece of work you had with you then, I must say. All I could do not to land him a couple."

  Involuntarily my face contracted at the thought of him landing Köster a couple. Thiess interpreted it as a smile and on his side disclosed a rather lamentable set of teeth. "Still, bygones are bygones, Guido bears no grudges. You did pay an enormous price for the old grandfather, though. Was there anything left in it for yourselves?"

  "Yes," said I. "The car is good."

  Theiss gave a deprecating smirk. "If you'd taken my advice you would have had more. And me too. However, bygones are bygones. Forgive and forget. But to-day we can do the trick. We'll take it up to five hundred marks, eh? There's not a soul else to bid. Agreeable?"

  It dawned on me. He imagined we had passed the car on again then, and he did not realise that the workshop was ours. On the contrary he supposed we meant to buy it again.

  "The car's still worth fifteen hundred," said I. "Not counting the tax."

  "Exactly," declared Guido eagerly. "We go up to five hundred, I suggest. If we get it, I pay you three hundred cash on the spot."

  "Can't do it," said I. "I've got a client for the car."

  "In that case—" He wanted to make fresh proposals.

  "It's no good." I walked across to the middle of the yard. Up to twelve hundred hie had a free hand, I knew that now.

  The auctioneer began to put up the things. First the fittings. They didn't fetch much. The tools either. Then came the cab. The first offer was three hundred marks.

  "Four hundred," said Guido.

  "Four hundred and fifty," bid a chap in overalls after a long hesitation.

  Guido went up to five hundred. The auctioneer asked around. The chap in overalls said nothing. Guido winked at me and held up four fingers. "Six hundred," said I.

  Guido shook his head and went to seven hundred. I bid further. Guido followed desperately. At a thousand he made imploring gestures and indicated with his finger that I might still earn one hundred. He bid one thousand and ten.

  By eleven hundred he was red and hostile, but still squeezed out eleven hundred and ten. I went to eleven hundred and ninety,'expecting from him a bid of twelve hundred. Then I meant to stop.

  But Guido was now furious. It annoyed him that, according to his reading, he was being squeezed out; and he suddenly offered thirteen hundred. I calculated swiftly. If he really intended to buy, he would certainly have stopped at twelve hundred. Now he merely meant to drive me up, out of revenge. He supposed from our conversation that fifteen hundred was my limit and saw. no' danger to himself.

  "Thirteen hundred and ten," said I.

  "Fourteen hundred" bid Guido swiftly.

  "Fourteen hundred and ten," I replied hesitantly. I was afraid I might be left hanging.

  "Fourteen hundred and ninety!" Guido looked at me, triumphant and mocking. He imagined he had salted my soup good and properly.

  I fixed his eye and said nothing. The auctioneer asked once, twice, then he raised the hammer. The moment the car was knocked down to Guido his expression changed from triumph to utter amazement.

  Completely at a loss, he came over to me. "I thought you meant—"

  "No," said I.

  He recovered himself and scratched his head. "Damn. It won't be easy to persuade the firm. Thought you would go to fifteen hundred. Still—I have at least pinched the old bus from you this time."

  "You were meant to," said I. Guido did not understand. Only when he saw Köster coming did it suddenly dawn on him, and he ran his fingers through his hair. "Good God, the car belonged to you? Ass, utter ass that I am! Sold. Diddled. O Guido, that this should happen to you! Caught by the old old trick. However—no use crying over spilt milk. The wiliest dog falls for the easiest bait. We'll make it up next time."

  He sat down to the wheel and drove off. Our eyes followed the car, and we did not feel very happy.

  In the afternoon Mathilda Stoss came. We had still to settle with her for the last month. Köster gave her the money and suggested she should apply to the new owner of the workshop for the job of charwoman. We had already installed Jupp with him. But Mathilda shook her head. "No, no, Herr Köster, I've finished. My bones are-getting too stiff."

  "What do you think of doing then?" I asked.

  "I'm going to my daughter. She's married in Bunzlau. D'you know Bunzlau?"

  "No, Mathilda," I replied.

  "But Herr Köster?"

  "Me neither, Frau Stoss."

  "Funny," said Mathilda, "nobody knows Bunzlau. I've asked so many people. Yet my daughter's been married there twelve years. To a clerk."

  "Then there will be Bunzlau too, you may be quite sure of that, if a clerk lives there."

  "What I say. But it is funny all the same that nobody knows it, eh?"

  We agreed. "How is it you haven't been there all these years then?" I asked.

  Mathilda smirked. "Well, there was something. But now they want me to see the children. They have four already. And little Eduard must come too."

  "I believe there's very good schnapps to be had around Bunzlau," said I. "Damson or something—"

  "Nothing like that," said Mathilda. "As a matter of fact that was the something. My son-in-law's a 'teetotaller,' if you please. That's people who don't drink anything."

  Köster fetched the last bottle from the empty shelf. "Well, Frau Stoss, in that case we must drink a farewell schnapps together."

  "I'm with you," said Mathilda.

  Köster put the glasses on the table and filled them. Mathilda poured down the rum as if it were running through a sieve. Her upper lip worked-vigorously and her moustache twitched.

  "One more?" I asked.

  "I won't say no."

  She got another big glassful, then she said good-bye.

  "All the best in Bunzlau," said I.

  "Yes, thanks very much. But it's funny, isn't it, nobody knows it, eh?"

  She waddled out. We stood around a while longer in the workshop, "We might as well go too, I suppose," said Köster.

  "Yes," I replied. "There's nothing more to do here."

  We locked the door and went out. Then we fetched Karl. He was in a garage near by and had not been sold with the rest. We drove to the bank and Köster paid in the money to the Receivers. "I'm going to have a sleep now," said he. "Will you be free after?"

  "I've taken the whole evening off to-day."

  "Good, then I'll be along at eight."

  We ate in a little pub in the country and then drove in again. As we arrived at the first streets one of the front tyres punctured. We changed the wheel. Karl hadn't been washed for a long time and I got pretty dirty. "I must just h
ave a wash, Otto," said I.

  Near by was a rather large Café. We went in and sat at a table by the entrance. To our surprise the place was almost completely full. A woman's band was playing and there was great activity; the orchestra had coloured paper caps, some of the guests were in fancy dress, paper stream^ ers flew from table to table, balloons ascended, waiters ran to and fro with trays piled high and the entire place was filled with movement, laughter and noise.

  "What's on here, then?" asked Köster.