Арнольд Цвейг - Outside Verdun

Kroysing watched his charge approvingly. He’d brought him here partly to study his behaviour at the edge of the abyss. No doubt about it: he’d done well. Let him go back to his stuffy old company, he thought, and then my suggestion will seem to him like a message from heaven.

‘Why are you shaking your head, Bertin?’ he asked behind his back.

‘I can’t see anything,’ Bertin answered, climbing down carefully.

‘Reason should have told you that would be the case.’

‘Sometimes we believe appearances more than reason.’

‘All right,’ said Kroysing. ‘Now we can get some sleep.’

On the way back, the moon and stars lit the pitted area. Refreshed from his sleep, Bertin gladly breathed in the air, which cooled as they pushed on. The burnt smoke from the explosives hadn’t blown this way; the night wind had driven it to the river. After half an hour of walking in silence, Kroysing tapped Bertin on the shoulder and pulled him back a little.

‘I don’t know if we’ll get a chance to speak tomorrow, as you’re sleeping in Süßmann’s billet and clearing off early,’ he said. ‘You’ve seen what kinds of nice surprises the Frogs have in store for us. We got off lightly today; tomorrow could be a different story. For that reason, I’d like to prevail on you again in relation to our small family matter. There are a couple of objects in my desk drawer that belonged to my brother and a couple of papers that Judge Advocate Mertens must receive as soon as someone has signed a certain harmless slip of paper. If I’m not able to do it, I’ll rely on you. Will that be okay?’ he asked urgently.

And after a moment’s thought Bertin said, ‘That’ll be okay.’

‘Excellent,’ said Kroysing. ‘Then all that remains is for me to carry out a commission on behalf of my brother, who sends you his fountain pen through me.’ Kroysing’s big hand held out a black rod.

Bertin was taken aback. His eyes under the rim of his helmet timidly sought those of Kroysing, whose war-like face was dusky in the gloaming. ‘Please, don’t,’ he said quietly. ‘This belongs to your parents.’

‘It belongs to you,’ retorted Kroysing. ‘I’m executing his will.’ Bertin hesitantly took the gift from Kroysing’s fingers and looked at it, concealing his superstitious feelings. ‘I hope it will serve you longer than it did the youngster and remind you of the Kroysings’ gratitude every time you put it to paper. A writer and a pen like that go together.’

Bertin thanked him uncertainly. The pressure of the long, hard object in the breast pocket of his tunic felt new and strange: the Kroysings held him fast.

THE EARTH WAS a rusty disc, capped by a pewter sky from which rain had been falling for a month.

On 20 October, four tired ASC men trudged up morosely from Moirey station. They and Sergeant Knappe, the ammunitions expert, had been engaged in the tedious task of loading powder charges on to a goods lorry and now they were done. All of them longed for a cigarette or a smoke of a pipe, but it was out of the question. Their wages weren’t due until the day after next, when they would all get their tobacco ration for the next 10 days. Until then, they helped each another out. Private Bertin, for example, had promised to give one of his remaining cigarettes to each of the other three, as the paper irritated his sensitive throat. Shivering and fed up, the four men tramped back along the main road to the depot. The road was covered in a layer of whitish mush as thick as a thumb unsuited to their lace-up shoes. The men wore tarpaulins wrapped round them like short hooded coats to protect them from the rain, but as they’d already done a day’s shift in Fosses wood, the stiff canvas material was soaked through. The canvas jackets they wore underneath were damp too. Only their tunics were still dry, and if it got any colder they could put their coats on for another layer. These four very different men had all volunteered to help the ammunitions expert; Lebehde the shrewd inn-keeper had offered because he hoped to bum a smoke from the railwaymen, Przygulla the farm labourer because he did everything Lebehde did, good-natured Otto Reinhold because he didn’t want to leave his fellow skat players in the lurch and Bertin for reasons connected with his visit to the front-line trenches.

Sergeant Knappe, a thin, hollow-cheeked men with a straggly, blonde beard, was extremely conscientious and reliable, the sort who usually makes it to 80 although he looks like a consumptive. Lebehde the inn-keeper was a well-known figure. Until his death by a Reichswehr bullet in the desperate workers’ uprising of 1919 in the Holzmarkstraße-Jannowitzbrücke area of Berlin, he would use his energy and powers of persuasion to pursue what he thought was right, a benevolent smile always crinkling the corners of his eyes. Przygulla the farm labourer, a neglected child from a family of nine or 10, might have turned out differently and had a livelier intelligence if the growths behind his nose had been removed when they should have been. As it was, his thick lips hung open because he had trouble breathing, which made him look stupid. Otto Reinhold, finally, was pleasantness itself. His friendly face, toothless smile and bluish eyes might have lent him a spinsterish air, but a carefully trimmed moustache asserted his virility. He was also a respected master plumber from Turmstraße in Berlin-Moabit.

Private Bertin had changed a lot since he’d been ‘up front’. Everyone said so. He couldn’t forget the Saxons’ haggard faces, their worn skin and sleepless eyes – couldn’t forget that it had now been raining in those trenches for a month, that the men ‘up front’ scarcely saw hot food and were surrounded by a layer of sludge, which covered their hands, clothes and boots. Their dugouts were irretrievably swamped, and their every step took them through slippery, squishing mud. All the shell holes were now flooded pools, and the roads, pathways and traverses had been impassable for ages. It was inhuman, which was why Bertin had volunteered to do overtime that day. He’d explained this to his comrade Pahl, but Pahl was having none of it – he said it was for those at the front to think about the causes and consequences of their situation.

The four men were tired and hungry. They wished they had something to smoke and longed to remove their wet things by a warm stove. It was between 4pm and 5pm, and the damp air made the early dusk even darker. It happened not to be raining at that moment, but just wait until evening.

At the end of the road, along which those French prisoners had once marched, a car appeared. It approached quickly with its lights off as regulations required. Karl Lebehde studied the approaching vehicle, his hand under the peak of his cap. ‘Blimey,’ he said to Przygulla the farm labourer, ‘take a look at that. Looks like that chap’s hung a cloth over his headlights.’

Meanwhile, the ‘chap’ had drawn considerably closer, and the cloth was revealed to be a square black and white pennant with a red border. The large dun-coloured saloon with two officers in the back was hurtling towards them. ‘Lads,’ shouted Przygulla the farm labourer. ‘Line up! The crown prince!’

The regulation salute for members of the imperial family was for the men to stand stock still at the side of the road and follow the passing vehicle with their eyes. The four weary men now did this. They stood in the clabber, pressed their hands to their sides and awaited the inevitable muddy spray from the vehicle. The driver, who was probably a common soldier like them, would not be allowed to slow down just to save four ASC privates in grey oil-cloth caps an hour cleaning their uniforms. Splat! The vehicle sped past. But then something remarkable happened. As a slim man with his chin wrapped in a fur collar lifted his glove in the direction of his cap, the other man in the back of the car lent out of the window and threw something. It landed some way back due to the speed at which the vehicle was travelling. The speeding car disappeared into the distance, and it was all over.