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

Then their train leaves and I walk back.

In the evening I spread some of the jam on a pancake, and eat a few. I don’t enjoy them. So I go out to give the pancakes to the Russians. Then it occurs to me that my mother cooked these herself, and that she was probably in pain when she was standing over the hot stove. I put the parcel back into my pack and only take two pancakes over to the Russians.

We’ve been travelling for a number of days. Then the first aircraft appear in the sky. We roll along past transport convoys. Guns, guns. We change to the field railway. I try to find my regiment. Nobody knows exactly where it is at the moment. I stay overnight somewhere, draw my rations somewhere in the morning, and get a few vague instructions. And so I set off on my way again, with my rifle and pack.

When I get to where the regiment is supposed to be, the place has been shot to pieces and there isn’t anybody there. I find out that we have been turned into a so-called flying division, one they can send wherever things are hottest. I don’t like the sound of that. People tell me about the large-scale losses that we are supposed to have suffered. I ask about Kat and Albert. Nobody knows anything about them.

I carry on searching, wandering about all over the place. For one night, and then for another, I have to camp out like a Red Indian. Then I get definite news, and I am able to report to the guard room by the afternoon.

The sergeant keeps me there. The company will be back in two days and there’s no point in sending me out. ‘How was leave?’ he asks. ‘Good, eh?’

‘Yes and no,’ I reply.

‘Right, right,’ he sighs, ‘if only you didn’t have to go away again. That always mucks up the last half good and proper.’

I hang about until the next morning when the company gets in, grey, dirty, ill-tempered and gloomy. Then I jump up and push in amongst them, looking around – there’s Tjaden, Muller blowing his nose, and there are Kat and Kropp. We put our palliasses together. I’m feeling guilty, though there isn’t any reason why I should. Before we turn in I bring out the rest of the potato pancakes and jam, so that they can have some too.

The two outside pancakes are a bit mouldy, but they are still edible. I take these myself and give the less stale ones to Kat and Kropp.

Kat chews and asks me, ‘I bet these are from your mother?’

I nod.

‘They’re good,’ he says, ‘you can taste where they’re from.’

I could almost weep. I don’t know myself any more. But things will get better again here with Kat and Albert and the others. This is where I belong.

‘You’re in luck,’ whispers Kropp just before we go to sleep at last, ‘there’s word that we are being sent to Russia.’

To Russia. There’s no war there any more.

In the distance there is the thundering of the front. The hut walls rattle.

Suddenly it is all spit-and-polish [222] spit-and-polish – показной порядок . Every five minutes we have to parade. We are inspected from all sides. Anything torn is replaced with something decent. I get hold of a spotless new tunic. Kat, of course, manages a whole new uniform. The rumour starts up that peace is coming, but the alternative rumour seems more likely, that we’re being transported to Russia. But why would we need better gear for Russia? Then at last it filters through to us: the Kaiser is coming to review the troops. That’s why there have been so many inspection parades.

For a week you might have thought that we were in training camp, because there is so much work and drill going on. Everyone is bad tempered and edgy, because we are not keen on all this spit-and-polish, and even less so on parade-ground marching. Things like that annoy soldiers even more than being in the trenches.

At last the moment arrives. We stand to attention and the Kaiser appears. We are curious to see what he looks like. He paces along the parade line and I’m a bit disappointed; from his pictures I had imagined him to be bigger and more powerful, but mainly to have a great booming voice.

He gives out a few medals and chats to one or two of the soldiers. Then we are marched off.

Afterwards we talk about it. ‘So that was the supreme commander, the head of them all,’ says Tjaden in amazement. ‘Absolutely everyone has to stand to attention in front of him, whoever they are.’ He thinks about it. ‘Even Hindenburg has to stand to attention in front of him, right?’

‘He certainly does,’ confirms Kat.

Tjaden isn’t finished yet. He ponders for a while, and then asks, ‘Does a king have to stand to attention in front of an emperor?’ Nobody is quite sure, but we don’t think so. They are both so high up that proper standing to attention doesn’t apply.

‘You don’t half talk some nonsense [223] You don’t half talk some nonsense – Далась тебе вся эта чепуха ,’ says Kat. ‘The main thing is that you know when to stand to attention.’

But Tjaden is completely fascinated by it. His imagination, which is not usually very fertile, starts to work overtime. ‘Now just a minute,’ he announces, ‘I really can’t believe that an emperor has to go to the lavatory just like I do.’

‘You can bet your life he does,’ laughs Kropp.

‘And if you take away the number you first thought of, then Bob’s your uncle,’ adds Kat by way of explanation. ‘Tjaden, the lice have got to your brain – the best thing you can do is get to the latrines yourself and come back when you’re thinking straight and not talking like a kid.’

Tjaden clears off.

‘There is one thing I’d like to know, though,’ says Albert, ‘and that’s whether there would still have been a war if the Kaiser had said no.’

‘I’m sure there would,’ I put in. ‘After all, they say that he didn’t want to fight at all at the beginning.’

‘Well, if not just him, then perhaps if, let’s say twenty or thirty people in the world had said no?’

‘Maybe not then,’ I admit. ‘But they all did want a war.’

‘It’s funny when you think about it,’ continues Kropp. ‘We’re out here defending our homeland. And yet the French are there defending their homeland as well. Which of us is right?’

‘Maybe both,’ I say, though I don’t believe it.

‘Well then,’ says Albert, and I can see that he is trying to drive me into a corner, ‘our teachers and preachers and newspapers all tell us that we are the only ones with right on our side, and let’s hope it’s true – but the French teachers and preachers and newspapers all insist that they are the only ones in the right. How does that figure?’

‘I don’t know,’ I reply, ‘but at any rate there is a war and every month more countries want to take part.’

Tjaden comes back. He is still worked up and joins in the debate again straight away by asking how a war starts in the first place.

‘Usually when one country insults another one badly,’ answers Kropp, a little patronizingly.

But Tjaden isn’t going to be put off. ‘A country? I don’t get it. A German mountain can’t insult a French mountain, or a river, or a forest, or a cornfield.’

‘Are you really that daft or are you just pretending?’ grumbles Kropp. ‘That isn’t what I mean. One nation insults another…’ ‘Then I shouldn’t be here at all,’ answers Tjaden, ‘because I don’t feel insulted.’

‘It’s hopeless trying to explain anything to you,’ says Kropp with some irritation, ‘it’s got nothing to do with a yokel like you.’

‘In that case I can certainly go home, then,’ insists Tjaden, and everybody laughs.

‘Come on, it means the nation as a whole, that is, the state —’ calls out Muller.