The Road Back

  I make my way to Ludwig's. There is still a light in his room. I fling pebbles up at his window, and he comes down and opens the door for me.

  Up in the room Georg Rahe is standing in front of Ludwig's case of geological specimens, holding a large rock crystal and making it sparkle.

  "I'm glad I've seen you after all, Ernst," he smiles. "Just been round at your place. I'm leaving to-morrow."

  He is in uniform. "But, Georg," I say haltingly, "you don't mean——"

  "Yes," he nods. "That's it. Going to be a soldier again. It's all fixed. I start tomorrow."

  "Can you understand that?" I say to Ludwig.

  "Yes," he replies, "I think I understand. But it won'thelp him." He turns to Rahe. "You're disillusioned, Georg,that's your trouble. But just think a moment, after all, isn'tit only natural? Up at the Front there our nerves werealways strained to the utmost, any minute it might be amatter of life and death. So now, of course, they flap about like sails when the wind has dropped; and for the simplereason that here everything is a matter of small, painful advances——"

  "Exactly," agrees Rahe. "This petty pushing and shoving for grub and for place, with an odd ideal or two thrown in to make weight, it just nauseates me; I mean to clear out of it."

  "Well, if you must do something of that sort, why not join the Revolution?" I say. "You might even be War Minister."

  "Bah! this Revolution!" answers Georg scornfully. "It was made by a bunch of Party Secretaries, with their thumbs in line with the seam of their trousers. They've taken fright again already at the mere thought of their own audacity. Look at the way they are at one another's throats—Social Democrats, Independents, Spartacists, Communists! And in the meantime the other fellows are quietly potting off what few real brains they have among them, and they don't even see it!"

  "No, Georg," says Ludwig, "that's not it. We made revolution with too little hate, that's the whole fact of the matter; we wanted to be just to everybody from the very jump, and with the result that the whole thing has fizzled out. A revolution must first rage like a bush fire; then afterwards one can start in with the sowing. But we wanted to destroy nothing and yet to start afresh. We hadn't enough strength left to hate, we were so weary and burned up with the war. One can sleep for weariness even through a bombardment, you know that yourself. But even now it may not be too late to achieve by work what was missed in the assault."

  "Work!" answers Georg contemputuously and the rock crystal flashes under the lamp. "We can fight, if you like, but not work."

  "Then we must learn again," says Ludwig quietly from the corner of his sofa.

  "We're too demoralised for that," objects Georg.

  For a while neither speaks. The wind drones outside the windows. Rahe walks with great strides about Ludwig's little room, and it really does seem as if he did not belong here within these walls of books, and quietness and work—his clean-cut, keen features seem to be in place only over a field-grey uniform, as though he belonged to trenches and fighting and war. He props his arms on the table and leans over toward Ludwig. The lamplight falls on his shoulder-straps and behind him glitter the quartzes in the collection of stones.

  "What are we doing here, Ludwig?" he says deliberately. "Look about you. How slack I how hopeless it all isl We are a burden to ourselves and to everyone else. Our ideals are bankrupt, our dreams shattered; and we just run about in this world of earnest, purposeful people and profit-mongers, like so many Don Quixotes loose in a strange land."

  Ludwig looks at him a while. "It's my idea that we're sick, Georg. We have the war in our bones still."

  Rahe nods. "Yes, and we'll never get it out again!"

  "Don't you believe it!" retorts Ludwig, "else it will all have been in vain."

  Rahe crashes his fist down on the table. "It was in vain, Ludwig!—that's just what makes me mad! Think what men we were when we marched away in that storm of enthusiasm! It seemed as if a new age had dawned—all the old things, the rotten, the compromising, the partisan, all swept away. We were young then, as men were never young before!"

  He takes a lump of crystal from Ludwig's stone collection and holds it like a hand-grenade. His hands are trembling. "I have been in many dugouts, Ludwig," he goes on, "and we were all young men who sat there around one miserable slush lamp, waiting, while the barrage raged overhead like an earthquake. We were none of your inexperienced recruits either; we knew well enough what we were waiting for, and we knew what would come.—But there was more in those faces down in the gloom there than mere calm, more than good humour, more than just readiness to die.—There was the will to another future in those hard, set faces; and it was there when they charged, and still there when they died. We had less to say for ourselves year by year, we shed many things, but that one thing still remained. And now, Ludwig, where is it now? Can't you see how it is perishing in all the pig's-wash of order, duty, women, routine, punctuality and the rest of what they call life here? No, Ludwig, we lived thenl And though you tell me a thousand times that you hate war, yet I still say, we lived then. We lived, because we were together, and because something burned in us that was more than this whole muck-heap here!"

  He is breathing hard, "It must have been for something, Ludwig! When I first heard there was revolution, for one brief moment I thought: Now the time will be redeemed— now the flood will pour back, tearing down the old things, digging new banks for itself—and by God, I would have been in it! But the flood broke up into a thousand runnels; the revolution became a mere scramble for jobs, for big jobs and little jobs. It has trickled away, it has been damned up, it has been drained off into business, into family, and party. But that will not do me. I'm going where comradeship is still to be found."

  Ludwig stands up. His brow is flaming, his eyes blaze. He looks Rahe in the face. "And why is it, Georg? why is it? Because we were duped, I tell you, duped as even yet we hardly realise; because we were misused, hideously misused!—They told us it was for the Fatherland, and meant the schemes of annexation of a greedy industry.—They told us it was for honour, and meant the quarrels and the will to power of a handful of ambitious diplomats and princes.—They told us it was for the Nation, and meant the need for activity on the part of out-of-work generals!"—He takes Rahe by the shoulders and shakes him. "Can't you see? They stuffed out the word Patriotism with all the twaddle of their fine phrases, with their desire for glory, their will to power, their false romanticism, their stupidity, their greed of business, and then paraded it before us as a shining ideal! And we thought they were sounding a bugle summoning us to a new, a more strenuous, a larger life. Can't you see, man? But we were making war against ourselves without knowing it! Every shot that struck home, struck one of us!—Can't you see?—Then listen and I will bawl it into your ears. The youth of the world rose up in every land believing that it was fighting for freedom! And in every land they were duped, and misused; in every land they have been shot down, they have exterminated each other! Don't you see now?—There is only one fight, the fight against the lie, the half-truth, compromise, against the old order. But we let ourselves be taken in by their phrases; and instead of fighting against them, we fought for them. We thought it was for the Future. It was against the Future. Our future is dead; for the youth is dead that carried it. We are merely the survivors, the ruins. But the other is alive still—the fat, the full, the well content—that lives on, fatter and fuller, more contented than ever! And why? Because the unsatisfied, the eager, the storm-troops have died for it. But think of it! A generation annihilated! A generation of hope, of faith, of will, strength, ability, so hypnotised that they have shot down one another, though over the whole world they all had the same purpose!"

  His voice breaks. His eyes are full of passion and sobs. We are all standing now. "Ludwig," I say and put my arm about his shoulder.

  Rahe takes up his cap and tosses the stone back into the case. "Good-bye, Ludwig, old comrade!"

  Ludwig stands there facing him. His lips are pressed tog
ether, his cheek bones stand out. "You are going, Georg," he stammers, "but I am staying. I'm not giving in yet!"

  Rahe looks at him a while. "It is hopeless," he, says calmly, and adjusts the buckle of his belt.

  I go with Georg down the stairs. The leaden dawn isalready showing through the door. The stone steps re-echo and we come out into the open as from a dugout. The street is empty and grey. It drags away into the distance. Rahe points along it. "All one long fire-trench, Ernst—" He indicates the houses: "Dugouts, every one—the war still goes on—but a dirty, low-down war—every man against his fellow "

  We shake hands. I cannot speak. Rahe smiles: "What's troubling you, Ernst? It's not a war at all out East, you know. Cheer up, we're soldiers still. And this isn't the first time we have parted——"

  "I think it's the first time we have really parted, Georg," I say hastily.

  He stands there a moment longer before me. Then he nods slowly and goes off down the street, spare, calm, without once looking round. And for a space I still hear the clatter of his steps when he has already disappeared.

  PART V

  1.

  Instructions have aerived requiring that Returned Men shall be treated with indulgence in the examination. They are to be allowed to submit subjects in which they are specially interested, and in those are to be examined.

  Unfortunately the subjects in which we are specially interested do not figure in the syllabus, so we simplify matters after our own fashion. Every man is to submit two questions in each subject and to undertake to be able to answer them. Westerholt has seated himself at the master's desk, and before him are several large, blank sheets of paper with our names. We begin to dictate to him the questions that we wish to be asked.

  Willy is uncommonly fastidious. He turns over and over the pages of his history book, and only after long searching up and down does he plump at last for the two questions following: "When was the battle of Zama?" and "When was the reign of Otto the Lazy?"

  Westerholt and Albert take the lists of questions and subjects to the several masters. They go first to the Principal, who eyes them with some apprehension; he has not been led to expect any good at our hands. He studies the lists and then lays them aside with a gesture of disgust. "But, gentlemen, the Minister requires that you submit such fields as you may be specially interested in, that is to say, certain definite large sections from each course of study. But what you offer here is no more than bare, simple questions."

  "The fields of our interest are no greater," answers Albert.

  "But then, don't we make up for it, by knowing them so very trés bon?" adds Westerholt.

  The Principal hands the lists back. "No, I cannot agree to that. It would merely be to make a farce of the whole examination!"

  "Well, isn't it so, anyway!" retorts Westerholt, beaming.

  The Principal shrugs his shoulders, but eventually. accepts the lists.

  Willy unfortunately turns up two hours late for the essay, having got drunk with Karl the night before. Hollermann is greatly perturbed, and asks Willy if he thinks he can now finish in time. Willy nods confidently, sits down in his place, takes from the pocket of his cut-away the essay written already for him by Ludwig, spreads it out in front of him and then gratefully lays down his heavy head for a short nap. He is still so befuddled during the Divinity test that he nearly gives up his answers in Nature Study by mistake. He has brought the whole lot along all in one envelope. Albert just prevented it at the last moment.

  We profit by the intervals during the oral examinations to have a last game of skat. That is one of the few things we really did learn to some purpose in the army.

  Whenever one of the players is summoned for examination, he either puts down his cars for the moment and resumes the play afterwards, or else gives his hand to someone he can trust to get everything out of it that is in it.

  Willy has such incredible luck that he forgets everything else in the excitement of the play. Just as he is beginning to bid on a wonderful hand—a solo grand, without two, and with Schneider—he is called up for examination in Literature. He looks at the cards in despair. "I'd rather fail than not play out this hand!" he declares. But finally he puts his cards into his pocket, making the other two promise over a handshake to wait until he returns, and not to monkey with the hands in the meantime. The consequence is that he has forgotten the answer to one of his questions in Literature. "Literature is the crucial subject, you know," says Hollermann, full of concern—"if you get below three, you fail."

  Willy brightens up. "What will you bet I don't make it?" answers Willy, his head still full of the solo grand in his pocket, and persuaded that a Returned Man could not possibly fail. The form-master shakes his head. He is used to taking a lot from Willy. He waits patiently. Then all at once Willy pulls it off, and comes back in hot haste to take Reinersmann's and Westerholt's scalps. "Ninety-one!" says he triumphantly, and collects the money.

  We all pass, of course. The Principal, taking heart again a little now that he is about to get rid of the worst of the blackguards, cannot deny himself this opportunity of addressing to us yet a few golden words. He would like to make this leaving school a solemn sacrament, and begins to explain to us that having been so straightened by our arduous experience, we are now to pass out into life with high hope and good will. "'Pass out' is not good," interrupts Willy. "We've damned near passed out too often already in the other direction." The Principal draws in his horns. He sees that we are not amenable to soft soap. Even now reconciliation is not possible with such unprofitable, ungrateful material.

  We go our ways. The next draft take their examination in three months' time. Ludwig has to wait till then, though it was he who wrote the answers for at least four of our fellows. But it is the primary law of this world where the old rule the young, that one must serve one's time. It is no question of ability. Else what would become of the old dodderers who cling to their power?

  A few days after the examination we are sent out on probation to teach in the neighbouring villages. I am glad. I am fed up with this aimless loafing around. It has produced only brooding, and melancholy, and senseless noisy riot. Now I will work.

  I pack my trunk and set off with Willy. We have the good luck to be neighbours, our villages being barely an hour apart.

  I get lodgings in an old farmhouse. There are oak trees just outside the window and the mild bleating of sheepcomes in from the stalls. The farmer's wife at once settles me into a big armchair and begins to lay the table. She has a fixed idea that all townsmen are half starved, and indeed, she is not so far wrong. With suppressed emotion I watch things almost forgotten make their appearance on the table—an enormous ham, sausages as long as your arm, snow-white wheaten bread and those buckwheat cakes with big lumps of ham in the middle, so beloved by Tjaden. There is a supply enough to feed a whole company.

  I begin to hoe in. The farmer's wife stands by smiling broadly, hands on hips, obviously delighted. At the end of an hour I have to stop with a sigh, though Mother Schomaker still urges me on.

  At that moment Willy comes in to visit me. "Now you can have your wish," I say to my hostess. "Now you will see something! I'm not a patch on him."

  Willy does as a soldier should do. He wastes no time in ceremony, but gets on with the job. At the invitation of Mother Schomaker he begins with the buck-wheat cakes. By the time he has reached the cheese, the farmer's wife is leaning back against the cupboard and looking at Willy with admiration and astonishment, as if he were the eighth wonder of the world. Highly flattered she produces yet another great dish of pudding, and Willy puts that away too. "Well," says he taking a breather, but retaining his spoon when she clears away the dish, "that has given me a real appetite. What about a good square meal now?"

  With this remark he wins Mother Schomaker's heart for ever.

  Embarrassed and unsure of myself I perch at the Teacher's desk. Before me forty children are seated. These are the youngest. There they sit all in perfect alignmen
t, their fat little fists folded over their boxes of slate-pencils and pens, their slates and note-books before them. The school has only three classes, so that in each there are children of varying ages. The smallest are seven, the oldest ten years of age.

  The wooden shoes are scraping on the floor. There is a peat fire crackling in the stove. Some of the children with their woollen scarves and hairy, cow-hide satchels, have had to walk two hours to school. Their things have become wet and are now beginning to steam in the dry air of the room.

  The smallest ones with their round apple cheeks stare up at me. A couple of girls are giggling secretly. One fair-headed child is absorbed in picking his nose. Another, under cover of the back of the boy in front of him, is stuffing down a thick slice of bread and butter. But every one of them watches my least movement with closest attentiveness.

  I shift uncomfortably on my stool. It is only a week since I too was sitting on a form even as they, watching Hollermann's florid, hackneyed gestures while he talked about the poets of the Wars of Liberation. Now I am a Hollermann myself. At least to the youngsters down there. "Children, now we shall try to write a capital letter L," I say, and go to the blackboard. "Ten lines of L's, then five lines of Lina, and five lines of Larch."