Эрих Ремарк - All Quiet on the Western Front / На Западном фронте без перемен. Книга для чтения на английском языке

After this they are detailed for further duties. ‘Kantorek and Boettcher – fetching the bread supply! Take the handcart!’

A couple of minutes later the pair of them set off with the handcart. Kantorek, who is furious, keeps his head well down. The janitor is quite happy, because he’s only got light duty.

The bakery is at the other end of town. They have to cross the whole town twice.

‘They’ve been doing it for a few days now,’ grins Mittelstaedt. ‘People are already starting to wait specially, so that they can see them.’

‘Fantastic,’ I say, ‘but hasn’t he put in a complaint?’

‘He tried. Our commanding officer laughed like a drain when he heard the story. He can’t stand schoolmasters. Besides, I’m going out with his daughter.’

‘He’ll mess up the exam for you.’

‘Who cares?’ says Mittelstaedt calmly. ‘And in any case the complaint he made couldn’t be upheld because I was able to show that he mostly had light duties.’

‘Couldn’t you really hammer him for once [211] hammer him for once – погонять его разок в хвост и в гриву ?’ I ask.

‘No, he’s too much of a weed for that,’ replies Mittelstaedt in a spirit of chivalry and generosity.

What is leave? Just a deviation that makes everything afterwards that much harder to take. Already the idea of saying goodbye is creeping in. My mother looks at me without saying anything. I know she is counting the days – every morning she is unhappy. It’s already a day less. She has tidied my pack away somewhere because she doesn’t want to be reminded by it.

The hours pass quickly when you are brooding. I try to shake it off and go out with my sister. She’s going to the slaughterhouse to get a few pounds of bones. These are highly prized, and early in the morning people are already queueing to get some. A good few of them faint.

We are out of luck. After we have taken it in turns to stand there for three hours, the queue disperses. The supply of bones has run out.

It’s a good job that I can draw my rations. I take some of my stuff to my mother, and that way we all get food that is a bit more nourishing.

The days get harder and harder, my mother’s eyes get sadder and sadder. Four days left. I have to go and see Kemmerich’s mother.

It would be impossible to put it down on paper. That trembling, sobbing woman shaking me and screaming, ‘Why are you still alive when he’s dead?’ and then weeping all over me and shouting, ‘Why are you out there at all – you’re just children —’ until she sinks down into a chair, still crying, and asks, ‘Did you see him? Did you see him then? How did he die?’

I tell her that he was shot through the heart and killed instantaneously. She looks at me doubtfully: ‘You’re lying. I know better. I know what a hard death he had. I heard his voice, I felt his terror in the night – tell me the truth, I want to know, I have to know.’

‘No,’ I say, ‘I was right next to him. He was killed outright.’

She begs me, softly now, ‘Tell me. You must. I know you just want to make me feel better, but can’t you see that you are hurting me more than if you told the truth? I can’t stand the uncertainty, tell me how it was, no matter how horrible. It will still be better than what I shall have to think otherwise.’

I shall never tell her, she’d have to make mincemeat out of me first. I’m sorry for her, but it also strikes me that she’s being a bit stupid. Why can’t she just accept it, Kemmerich is still dead whether she knows or not. When you have seen so many dead men you can’t really see the point of so much grief about a single one of them any more. So I tell her rather impatiently, ‘He died instantly. He didn’t feel a thing. His face was quite calm.’

She doesn’t say anything. Then she says, slowly, ‘Do you swear to that?’

‘Yes.’

‘By everything you hold sacred? [212] By everything you hold sacred? – Всем, что тебе свято? ’

God, is there anything I hold sacred? You soon change your views on that sort of thing where we are.

‘Yes, he died instantly.’

‘And may you not come back yourself if you haven’t told the truth?’

‘May I not come back myself if he didn’t die instantly.’

I would swear by anything in the world. But she seems to believe me. She sighs heavily, and cries for a long time. She wants me to tell her how it was, so I invent a story that by now I almost believe myself.

When I leave, she kisses me and gives me a photograph of him. He’s in his recruit’s uniform, leaning against a round table, the legs of which are rustic birch branches, and there is a painted forest as a background. The table has a beer tankard on it.

It’s the last evening at home. Nobody is much inclined to talk. I go to bed early, get hold of my pillow, hold tight to it and put my head into it. Who knows when I shall be lying in a feather bed again?

My mother comes into my room, very late. She thinks I am asleep and I pretend that I am. It would be just too hard to talk, to be awake together.

She sits there until it is nearly morning, although she is in pain and is often bent double with it. In the end I can’t take it any longer and pretend to wake up.

‘Go to bed, Mother, you’ll catch cold sitting here.’

‘I’ll have plenty of time to sleep later,’ she replies.

I sit up. ‘I don’t have to go straight back to the front, Mother. I’ve got four weeks in camp first. When I’m there I might be able to come over one Sunday.’

She says nothing. Then she asks softly, ‘Are you very frightened?’

‘No, Mother.’

‘I wanted to say something else to you. Be careful of those French women. They’re no good, those women out there.’

Oh Mother, Mother, to you I’m still a child – why can’t I just put my head in your lap and cry? Why do I always have to be the stronger and calmer one? I’d like to be able to weep for once and be comforted, and anyway I’m really not much more than a child – the short trousers I wore as a boy are still hanging in the wardrobe. It was such a little while ago, why did it pass?

I say, as calmly as I can, ‘There aren’t any women where we are stationed, Mother.’

‘And make sure you take good care when you are at the front, Paul.’

Oh Mother, Mother! Why don’t I take you in my arms and die with you? What wretched creatures we are! [213] What wretched creatures we are! – Какие мы все же несчастные создания!

‘Yes, Mother, I’ll take care.’

‘I shall pray for you every day, Paul.’

Oh Mother, Mother! Why can’t we get up and go away from here, back through the years, until all this misery has vanished from us, back to when it was just you and me, Mother?

‘Maybe you can get a posting that won’t be so dangerous.’

‘Yes, Mother. It’s quite possible they will put me in the kitchens.’

‘You take a job like that, whatever the others say —’

‘I’m not worried about what people say, Mother —’

She sighs. Her face is a pale glow in the darkness.

‘You really must go to bed now, Mother.’

She doesn’t answer. I get up and put my bedspread around her shoulders. She holds on to my arm and she is in pain. I take her across and stay with her for a little while. ‘You have to get better by the time I come back, Mother.’

‘Yes, son, yes.’

‘You really mustn’t send me your rations, Mother. We get enough to eat out there. You need it more here.’

How wretched she looks, lying there in bed, this woman who loves me more than anything in the world. When I’m just about to go she says quickly, ‘I got hold of two pairs of underpants for you. They are good quality wool. They’ll keep you warm. You mustn’t forget to pack them.’