Three Comrades

by Erich Maria Remarque

"That's not the point," he replied. "With a cough like that you mustn't sit with Fräulein Hollmann. You come with me."

  With strange satisfaction I took off my shirt in the consulting room. Good health up here seemed almost unjustifiable. You felt like a profiteer or a lead-swinger.

  The doctor eyed me curiously. "You look as if you were pleased," said he, puckering his brow.

  Then he examined me carefully. I contemplated the bright objects against the wall, breathed deep and slow, and quick and short, in and out, as he required. As I did so, I felt the prickle again and was pleased now to have less advantage over Pat.

  "You've taken a chill," said the doctor. "Go to bed for a day or two, or any rate stay in your room. You mustn't go into Fräulein Hollmann's room."

  "Can I talk through the door?" I asked. "Or over the balcony?"

  "Over the balcony yes, but only a few minutes, and through the door, too, for that matter, provided you gargle well. As well as a chill you have smoker's cough."

  "And the lungs?" I somehow expected that at least some little detail there might not be quite in order. I should have felt better in relation to Pat then.

  "I could make three sets out of your lungs," declared the doctor. "You're the healthiest person I've seen in a long time. You have a pretty hard liver, that's all. You drink too much probably."

  He prescribed something for me and I went back.

  "Robby," said Pat from her room, "what did he say?"

  "I mustn't come in to you, for the time being," I replied through the door.

  "Strictly forbidden. Risk of infection."

  "You see," said she alarmed, "I always wanted you not to, any more."

  "Risk of infecting you, Pat. Not me."

  "Don't talk nonsense," said she. "Tell me, truly, what is the matter?"

  "That is the truth. Nurse"—I winked at the nurse, who had just brought me the medicine—"tell Fräulein Hollmann which of us is the more dangerous."

  "Herr Lohkamp," declared the nurse. "He is not to be allowed in, so that he won't infect you."

  Pat looked incredulously from the nurse to me. I showed her the medicine through the door. Then she realised it was true and began to laugh, more and more; she laughed till the tears ran down her cheeks, and she started coughing painfully so that the nurse had to run and support her.

  "My God, darling," she whispered, "that is too funny! And how proud you look!"

  She was quite gay the whole evening. Of course I did not leave her to herself, but sat on the balcony till midnight in a thick coat, a scarf round my neck, a cigar in one hand and a glass in the other, a bottle of cognac at my feet, telling her stories of my life. Interrupted and egged on by her soft birdlike laughter I lied for all I was worth, just to see the smile slip into her face. I made the most of my barking cough'and drank the bottle empty, and next morning was cured.

  The föhn came again. The wind rattled at the windows, the clouds hung low, the snows shifted and slumped and boomed through the nights, and the patients lay awake, irritable and excited, listening out into the darkness. On sheltered slopes the crocuses began to flower, and on the roads among the sleighs appeared the first high-wheeled vehicles.

  Pat grew steadily weaker. She could not get up any more. At night she would often have fits of choking. Then she would turn grey from fear of dying. I would hold her damp, feeble hands. "If I can only get through this hour," she coughed, "just this hour, Robby. It's now they die—"

  She was afraid of the last hour between night and morning. She believed that with the end of the night the mysterious stream of life became weaker and almost expired—and she dreaded only that hour and did not want to be left alone. For the rest she was so brave that I had often to clench my teeth.

  I had my bed moved into her room and sat with her when she waked and the desperate imploring look would come in her eyes. I often thought of the morphia phials in my bag, and would not have hesitated to do it, had she not been so grateful for every new day.

  I sat by her and told her anything that came into my head. She was not allowed to talk much, and liked listening to me while I told her all the things that had ever happened to me. She enjoyed most to hear stories of my schooldays, and often, after she had had an attack and was sitting, stricken and pale, among the pillows, she would ask me to do a turn imitating one or another of my old schoolmasters. Gesticulating and blustering, plucking an imaginary red beard, I would roam around the room, delivering myself in a snarling voice of some of the riper plums of schoolmasterly wisdom. Each day I added new ones to my repertory, and before long Pat was familiar with all the rowdies and ragamuffins of our class, who were forever preparing fresh vexations for the masters. Once the night nurse arrived, attracted by the sonorous bass of our head master; and, to Pat's delight, it was a long time before I could convince her I had not taken leave of my senses, merely because I was hopping around the room in a pelerine of Pat's and a wideawake hat, reading the laws of the Medes and Persians to a certain Karl Ossage who had been caught secretly sawing the legs of the teacher's desk.

  Then slowly the daylight trickled through the window. The backs of the mountains became knife-sharp, black silhouettes. The sky behind them began to recede, cold and pale. The night-lamp on the table faded to pale yellow and Pat laid her wet face in my hands. "It's over, Robby. Now I have one more day again."

  Antonio brought me his radio. I connected it to the electric light and the heating, and tried it out with Pat that, night. It squeaked and quacked and then suddenly out of the scratching a clear, sweet music disentangled itself.

  "What's that, darling?" asked Pat.

  Antonio had given me a wireless journal as well. I flipped it open. "Rome, I believe."

  Then almosfc-immediately came the deep, metallic voice of the announcer: "Radio Roma—Napoli—Firenze—"

  I turned farther. A pianoforte solo. "I don't have to look that up," said I. "That's Beethoven's Waldstein Sonata. I could play it once—in the days when I still imagined that sometime or other I was going to become a music teacher, or a professor, or a composer even. But that was a long time ago. I couldn't do it now. Let's turn on again. They're not pleasant memories."

  A rich contralto, soft and caressing: "Parlez-moi d'amour—"

  "Paris, Pat."

  A talk on how to combat red spider. I turned again. Advertisements. A quartet. "What's that?" asked Pat.

  "Prague. String quartet, Opus 59, Beethoven," I read out.

  I waited till the movement ended, then turned again, and 'all at once there was a violin, a marvellous violin. "That'll be Budapest, Pat. Gipsy music." I adjusted the dial accurately. Full and sweet the melody now floated above the orchestra of cymbals, fiddles and pan pipes. "Lovely, Pat, eh?"

  She was silent. I turned round. She was crying with wide-open eyes. I flicked off the instrument.

  "What is it, Pat?" I put my arm around her thin shoulders.

  "Nothing, Robby. It's stupid of me. But to hear that— Paris, Rome, Budapest—my God, and I would be happy if I could get down even to the village once again."

  "But Pat . . ."

  I told her everything I could to take her mind from it. But she shook her head. "I'm not sad, darling. You mustn't think that. I'm not sad when I cry. It just comes over me sometimes, but not for long. I think too much for that."

  "What do you think about then?" I asked, and kissed her hair.

  "About the only thing I can think of now—about living and dying. Then when I am sad and understand nothing any more, I say to myself that it's better to die while you still want to live, than to die and want to die. What do you think?"

  "I don't know."

  "Yes, you do." She rested her head on my shoulder. "If you want to live still, then there must be something you love. It's harder, but it's easier too. You see, I had to die; and now I'm just thankful I have had you. I might easily have been alone and unhappy. Then I would have been glad to die. Now it is hard; but to make up, I'm quite full of love, as a bee is ful
l of honey when it comes back to the hive in the evening. If I had to choose, of the two I would still choose the same."

  She looked at me. "Pat," said I, "there is still a third —when the föhn stops, then you'll get better and we'll go away from here."

  "She continued to look at me searchingly. "I'm afraid for you, Robby. It's much harder for you than for me."

  "Let's not talk about it any more," said I.

  "I only said it, so you shouldn't think I was sad," she replied.

  "I don't think you are sad," said I.

  She laid her hand on my arm. "Won't you let the gipsies play again?"

  "Would you like to hear them?"

  "Yes, darling."

  I turned on the instrument, and softly, then fuller and fuller, the violin with the flutes and muffled throb of the cymbals resounded through the room.

  "Lovely," said Pat. "Like a breeze. A breeze that floats you away."

  It was an evening concert from a garden restaurant in Budapest. Occasionally the conversation of the guests was audible through the whispering music, and now and then one caught a clear jovial shout. One could imagine the chestnuts of the Margaretheninsel already in their first leaf; shimmering in the moonlight and moving as if stirred by the breeze of the fiddles. Perhaps it was a warm night already there, and the people sitting in the open, with glasses of yellow Hungarian wine in front of them, the waiters running to and fro in their white jackets, the gipsies playing, and then afterwards they would walk home tired, through the green spring dawn. And there lay Pat and smiled, and never again would come out of this room, never again get up off this bed.

  Then suddenly everything went very swiftly. The flesh of the dear face melted. The cheekbones protruded and at the temple the bone showed through. Her arms were thin as a child's arms, the ribs stretched taut under the skin and the fever raged in ever fresh bouts through the frail body. The nurse brought oxygen balloons and the doctor came every hour.

  One afternoon her temperature dropped with inexplicable suddenness. Pat waked up and looked at me a long time.

  "Give me a looking-glass," she whispered then.

  "What do you want a looking-glass for?" I asked. "Rest, Pat. I think you're over it now. You have hardly airy temperature."

  "No," she whispered in her threadbare, burnt-out voice. "Give me the looking-glass."

  I walked round the bed, took the looking-glass and let it drop. It broke in pieces. "Sorry," said I, "to be so clumsy. It just dropped out of my hand and now it's in a thousand pieces."

  "There's another in my handbag, Robby."

  It was a tiny chromium mirror. I wiped my hand over it to dull the surface, and gave it to Pat. Laboriously she rubbed it clean and looked into it intently. "You must go away, darling," she whispered.

  "Why? Don't you like me any longer?"

  "You mustn't see me any more. That isn't me any more."

  I took the looking-glass. "These metal things are no good, Pat. Just see what I look like in it. Pale and thin. Whereas I'm brown and strong. It's all wavy, the thing is."

  "I want you to keep a different memory of me," she whispered. "Go, darling. I'll see it through now by myself."

  I quieted her. She asked for the mirror again and her handbag. Then she began powdering her poor emaciated face, her torn lips, the heavy, brown hollows under her eyes. "Just something, darling," said she, trying to smile. "You mustn't see me looking hideous."

  "Do what you will," said I, "you will never be hideous. For me you are the most beautiful woman I have ever seen."

  I took away the mirror and the powder box, and laid my hands gently around her head. After a while she grew restless.

  "What is it, Pat?" I asked.

  "It ticks so loud," she whispered.

  "What? The watch?"

  She nodded. "It's so threatening—"

  I took the watch off my wrist.

  She looked anxiously at the second hand. "Throw it away."

  I took the watch and flung it against the wall. "There, it's not ticking any more now. Now time is standing still. We've torn it in two. Now only we two are here; we two, you and me and no one else."

  She looked at me. Her eyes were very big.

  "Darling—" she whispered.

  I could not bear her glance. It came from far away and passed through me to some place beyond.

  "Old lad," I murmured, "dear, brave, old lad."

  She died in the last hour of the night, before morning came. She died hard and no one could help her. She held my hand fast, but she did not know any longer that I was with her.

  One time someone said: "She is dead."

  "No," I replied, "she is not dead yet. She is still holding my hand fast."

  Light. Intolerable, harsh light. People. The doctor. Slowly I opened my hand. Pat's hand dropped down. Blood. A distorted, suffocated face. Tortured, fixed eyes. Brown, silky hair.

  "Pat," said I. "Pat."

  And for the first time she did not answer me.

  "I'd like to be alone," said I.

  "Shouldn't we first . . . ?" asked someone.

  "No," said I. "Go out. Don't touch her."

  Then I washed the blood from her. I was like wood. I combed her hair. She grew cold. I laid her in my bed and covered her with the bedclothes. I sat beside her and could not think. I sat on the chair and stared at her. The dog came in and sat with me. I watched her face alter. I could do nothing but sit vacantly and watch her. The morning came and it was she no longer.

  THE END