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

The other man makes a gurgling noise. To me it sounds as if he is roaring, every breath is like a scream, like thunder – but it is only the blood in my own veins that is pounding so hard. I’d like to stop his mouth, to stuff earth into it, to stab again – he has to be quiet or he’ll give me away; but I am so much myself again and suddenly feel so weak that I can’t raise my hand against him any more.

So I crawl away into the furthest corner and stay there, my eyes fixed on him, gripping my knife, ready to go for him again if he moves – but he won’t do anything again. I can hear that just from his gurgling.

I can only see him indistinctly. I have the one single desire – to get away. If I don’t do so quickly it will be too fight; it’s already difficult. But the moment I try to raise my head I become aware that it is impossible. The machine-gun fire is so dense that I would be full of holes before I had gone a step.

I have another go, lifting up my helmet and pushing it forwards to gauge the height of fire. A moment later a bullet knocks it out of my hand. The gunfire is sweeping the ground at a very low level. I am not far enough away from the enemy trenches to escape being hit by one of the snipers the moment I tried to make a break for it.

It gets lighter and lighter. I wait desperately for an attack by our men. My knuckles are white because I am tensing my hands, praying for the firing to die down and for my mates to come.

The minutes trickle past one by one. I daren’t look at the dark figure in the shell hole any more. With great effort I look past him, and wait, just wait. The bullets hiss, they are a mesh of steel, it won’t stop, it won’t stop.

Then I see my bloodied hand and suddenly I feel sick. I take some earth and rub it on to the skin, now at least my hand is dirty and you can’t see the blood any more.

The gunfire still doesn’t die down. It’s just as strong now from both sides. Our lot have probably long since given me up for lost.

It is a light, grey, early morning. The gurgling still continues. I block my ears, but I quickly have to take my hands away from them because otherwise I won’t be able to hear anything else.

The figure opposite me moves. That startles me, and I look across at him, although I don’t want to. Now my eyes are riveted on him. A man with a little moustache is lying there, his head hanging lopsidedly, one arm half crooked and the head against it. The other hand is clasped to his chest. It has blood on it.

He’s dead, I tell myself, he must be dead, he can’t feel anything any more; that gurgling, it can only be the body. But the head tries to lift itself and for a moment the groaning gets louder, the forehead sinks back on to the arm. The man is not dead. He is dying, but he is not dead. I push myself forward, pause, prop myself on my hands, slip a bit further along, wait – further, a terrible journey of three yards, a long and fearsome journey. At last I am by his side.

Then he opens his eyes. He must have been able to hear me and he looks at me with an expression of absolute terror. His body doesn’t move, but in his eyes there is such an incredible desire to get away that I can imagine for a moment that they might summon up enough strength to drag his body with them, carrying him hundreds of miles away, far, far away, at a single leap. The body is still, completely quiet, there is not a single sound, and even the gurgling has stopped, but the eyes are screaming, roaring, all his life has gathered in them and formed itself into an incredible urge to escape, into a terrible fear of death, a fear of me.

My legs give way and I fall down on to my elbows. ‘No, no,’ I whisper.

The eyes follow me. I am quite incapable of making any movement as long as they are watching me.

Then his hand falls slowly away from his chest, just a little way, dropping only an inch or two. But that movement breaks the spell of the eyes. I lean forward, shake my head and whisper, ‘No, no, no’ and lift up my hand – I have to show him that I want to help him, and I wipe his forehead.

The eyes flinched when my hand came close, but now they lose their fixed gaze, the eyelids sink deeper, the tension eases. I open his collar for him and prop his head a bit more comfortably.

His mouth is half open and he makes an attempt to form some words. His lips are dry. I haven’t got my water bottle, I didn’t bring it with me. But there is water in the mud at the bottom of the shell hole. I scramble down, take out my handkerchief, spread it out, press it down, then cup my hand and scoop up the yellow water that seeps through it.

He swallows it. I fetch more. Then I unbutton his tunic so that I can bandage his wounds, if I can. I have to do that anyway, so that if I get caught the other lot can see that I tried to help him, and won’t shoot me outright. He tries to push me away, but his hand is too weak. The shirt is stuck fast and I can’t move it aside, and since it is buttoned at the back there is nothing for it but to slit it open.

I look for my knife and find it again. But as soon as I start to cut the shirt open his eyes open wide again and that scream is in them once more, and the look of panic, so that I have to close them, press them shut and whisper, ‘I’m trying to help you, comrade, camarade, camarade, camarade – and I stress the word so that he understands me.

There are three stab wounds. My pack of field dressings covers them but the blood flows out underneath, so I press them down more firmly, and he groans.

It’s all I can do. Now we must just wait, wait.

Hours. The gurgling starts up again – how long it takes for a man to die! What I do know is that he is beyond saving. To be sure, I have tried to convince myself otherwise, but by midday this self-delusions has melted away, has been shot to pieces by his groans. If I hadn’t lost my revolver when I was crawling along I would shoot him. I can’t stab him.

By midday I am in that twilight area where reason evaporates. I am ravenously hungry, almost weeping for want of food, but I can’t help it. I fetch water several times for the dying man and I drink some of it myself.

This is the first man I have ever killed with my own hands, the first one I’ve seen at close quarters whose death I’ve caused. Kat and Kropp and Muller have all seen people they have hit as well, it happens often, it’s quite common in hand-to-hand fighting —

But every gasp strips my heart bare. The dying man is the master of these hours, he has an invisible dagger to stab me with: the dagger of time and my own thoughts.

I would give a lot for him to live. It is hard to lie here and have to watch and listen to him.

By three in the afternoon he is dead.

I breathe again. But only for a short time. Soon the silence seems harder for me to bear than the groans. I would even like to hear the gurgling again; in fits and starts, hoarse, sometimes a soft whistling noise and then hoarse and loud again.

What I am doing is crazy. But I have to have something to do. So I move the dead man again so that he is lying more comfortably, even though he can’t feel anything any more. I close his eyes. They are brown. His hair is black and slightly curly at the sides. His mouth is full and soft underneath his moustache; his nose is a little angular and his skin is tanned – it doesn’t seem as pale as before, when he was still alive. For a moment his face even manages to look almost healthy, and then it gives way quickly to become the face of a dead stranger, one of the many I have seen, and every one of them looks alike.

His wife is bound to be thinking of him just now: she doesn’t know what has happened. He looks as if he used to write to her a lot; she will go on getting his letters, too – tomorrow, next week – maybe a stray one in a month’s time. She’ll read it, and he’ll be speaking to her in it.