The Road Back

  I watch them at their games. With vigorous, supple movements they are led on by the curly-headed Dammholt, ruling the whole playground with his energy. His eyes are flashing with courage and eagerness for the assault, all his muscles, his sinews tense, his glance keen, and the rest follow him unhesitatingly. Yet in ten minutes' time, when he is sitting here on the form again, from this same boy will emerge an obdurate, pig-headed little devil who never can do his tasks, and who will surely be left behind again at the next Easter promotions. He will put on a pious face when I look at him, and as soon as my back is turned he will be making grimaces. He will he like a knave when I ask him if he did his own homework; and if he gets half a chance he will spit on my breeches or put a drawing-pin on my chair. But the Top Boy, who now cuts such a sorry figure out there on the playground, will swell visibly here in the classroom. Full of conceit and knowledgeableness he will shoot up his hand at every question, while Dammholt sits there and knows nothing, hopeless and furious, awaiting his plucking. The Top Boy knows everything, and even knows that. Yet Dammholt, whom I really should punish, is a thousand times more to my liking than this pale-faced, model boy.

  I shrug my shoulders. Haven't I seen something like it before? At that regimental reunion at Konersmann's? There also did not the man suddenly count for nothing and his occupation for everything, though before, out at the Front, it had been the other way? I shake my head. What a world to come back to!

  Dammholt's voice goes yelling through the playground. I wonder to myself whether a more comradely attitude on the part of the teacher towards the pupil might not help matters. It might possibly improve the relationship a little and get over a few of the difficulties—but at bottom it would merely be an illusion. Youth is sharp-sighted and incorruptible. It hangs together, and presents an impenetrable front against the grown-ups. It is not sentimental; one may approach to it, but one cannot enter in to it. Who has once been evicted from that paradise can never get back. There is a law of the years. Dammholt with his sharp eyes would cold-bloodedly turn any such cameraderie to his own advantage. He might show even a certain affection, yet that would not prevent him looking to his own interest. Educationalists who think they can understand the young are enthusiasts. Youth does not want to be understood; it wants only to be let alone. It preserves itself immune against the insidious bacillus of being understood. The grown-up who would approach it too importunately, is as ridiculous in its eyes as if he had put on children's clothes. We may feel with youth, but youth does not feel with us. That is its salvation.

  The bell rings. The break is over. Reluctantly Dammholt falls into line before the, door.

  I stroll out through the village on my way to the moors. Wolf is running ahead of me. A bulldog suddenly rushes out from a neighbouring farm-yard and goes for him. Wolf has not seen it, so that in the first onset the dog manages to get him down. The next instant all is lost in a wild mêlée of dust, threshing bodies and fearsome growls.

  The farmer, armed with a cudgel, comes running out of the house. "For God's sake, teacher," he shouts out of the distance, "call your dog off! Pluto will tear him to pieces."

  I take no notice. "Pluto! Pluto! You butcher, damn you! come here!" he yells excitedly and dashes up all out of breath to beat them apart. But the whirlwind now sweeps off with wild yelpings for another hundred yards, and there the coil begins again.

  "He's lost," gasps the farmer lowering his cudgel. "But I tell you right now, I don't pay a farthing. You ought to have called him off!"

  "Who is lost?" I ask.

  "Your dog," returns the farmer respectfully. "That rapscallion of a bulldog has already made cold meat of a dozen of them."

  "Well, I don't think we need worry about Wolf," I say. "That's no ordinary sheep dog, I tell you, old timer. He's a war-dog, an old soldier, you know!"

  The dust clears. The dogs have shifted to a grassy patch. I see the bulldog trying to drag Wolf down, so as to get its teeth into the nape of his neck. If he succeeds Wolf is certainly lost, for then it will be a simple matter for the bulldog to break his neck. But now like an eel the sheep dog glides swiftly over the ground, clears the fangs by half an inch, whips round and immediately attacks again. The bulldog is growling and yelping—but Wolf fights without a sound.

  "Damn!" exclaims the farmer.

  The bulldog shakes itself, makes a spring, but snaps the empty air—it turns again furiously, springs again, and again shoots by, wide of the mark—one might almost think it was alone, so little is the sheep dog visible. He flies like a cat close over the ground—he learned that as a messenger dog—he slips between the bulldog's legs and goes for It from below. He encircles it, spins round; then suddenly has his teeth into its belly and holds fast.

  The bulldog howls like mad and throws itself on the ground to get him that way. But quick as lightning, with a sudden jerk Wolf lets go and takes his chance to go for its throat. Now for the first time I hear him growl, muffled and dangerous. Now he has his opponent, and holds fast, indifferent to the way the bulldog struggles and rolls about on the ground.

  "For God's sake, teacher," shouts the farmer, "call your dog off! He will tear Pluto to pieces!"

  "I might call till the cows came home, but he wouldn't listen now," I tell him. "And a good thing too! It's high time your bloody Pluto was shown something."

  The bulldog yelps and howls. The farmer raises his cudgel to go to his help. I wrench the thing from him, seize him by the front of his jacket, and shout angrily: "What the hell! Your damned mongrel started it!" It would not need much and I should be going for the farmer myself.

  But from where I stand I see that Wolf has suddenly let go the bulldog and is rushing toward us, imagining that I am being attacked. So I am luckily able to intercept him, else the farmer would soon be needing a new coat, to say the least of it.

  Pluto in the meantime has made off. I pat Wolf on the neck and soothe him down. "He's a devil, no mistake!" stammers the farmer, quite crestfallen.

  "Too right he is," I say with pride, "that's the old soldier in him. It doesn't do to make trouble with that breed."

  We go on our way. Beyond the village are a few meadows, then begins the moor with its junipers and ancient burial mounds. Near the birch wood a flock of sheep is grazing, and their woolly backs glow golden under the light of the descending sun.

  Suddenly I see Wolf make off at full tilt toward the flock. Imagining that the fight with the bulldog has made him wild, I dash after him to prevent a massacre among the sheep. "Hey! Look out for the dog!" I shout to the shepherd.

  He laughs. "He's only a sheep dog, he won't do anything!"

  "Won't he though!" I shout back. "You don't know him. He's a war-dog!"

  "What's it matter?" says the shepherd. "War-dog or no war-dog, he's all right."

  "There, see!—just look at him! Good! good dog! go for 'em. Fetch 'em in!"

  I can hardly believe my eyes. Wolf—Wolf, who has never seen a sheep in his life before, is now driving the flock as if he had never done anything else! With long bounds he sweeps off barking after two straggling lambs and drives them back. Every time they want to stand still or to go off at a tangent, he bars their way and snaps at their heels so that they run on again straight ahead.

  "Tip top!" says the shepherd, "he's only nipping them, couldn't be better!"

  The dog seems transfigured. His eyes sparkle, his tattered ear flaps as he circles watchfully round the flock, and I can see he is immensely excited.

  "I'll buy him from you right now," says the shepherd. "My own can't do it better than that. Just look now, how he is heading them home to the village! He hasn't a thing to learn."

  I am quite beside myself. "Wolf," I cry, "Wolf," and could shout for joy to see him. He grew up out there, among the shells and yet now, without anyone ever having shown him a thing, he knows what his job is!

  "I'll give you five pounds down for him, and a sheep ready killed into the bargain," says the shepherd.

  I shake my head. "Yo
u couldn't have him for a million, man," I retort.

  Now it is the shepherd who is shaking his head.

  The harsh spikes of the heather tickle my face. I bend them aside and rest my head on my arm. The dog is breathing quietly beside me and out of the distance sounds faintly the tinkle of sheep bells. Otherwise all is still.

  Clouds float slowly over the evening sky. The sun goes down. The dark green of the juniper bushes turns to a deep brown and I perceive the night wind rise up lightly out of the distant woods. Within the hour it will be playing here among the birches. Soldiers are as famliar with the country as farmers and foresters; they have not lived in rooms. They know the times of the wind and the yellow-brown, cinnamon haze, of the gathering evening; they know the shadows that ride over the ground when clouds hide the sun, and the ways of the moon.

  Once in Flanders after a fierce bombardment, it was long before help could come up for one of our men who had been wounded. We put all our field-dressings on him and bandaged him up as best we could, but it was no use, he still bled on, just bled away to death. And behind him all the while stood an immense cloud in the evening sky—a solitary cloud—but it was a great mountain of white, golden and red splendour. Unsubstantial and lofty it towered up over the shattered brown of the landscape. It was quite still and it glowed, and the dying man was quite still and he bled, as if the two belonged together; and yet to me it was incomprehensible that the cloud should stand there so lovely and^ unconcerned in the sky while a man died.

  The last light of the sun has tinged the heather to a dusky red. Plovers rise complaining on unstable wing. The cry of a bittern sounds up from the lake. I still gaze out over the wide, purple-brown plain. There was a place near Houthoulet where so many poppies grew in the fields that they were entirely red with them. We called them the Fields of Blood, because whenever there was a thunderstorm they would take on the pale colour of fresh, newly spilled blood. It was there Köhler went mad one clear night as we marched by, utterly wasted and weary. In the uncertain light of the moon he thought he saw whole lakes of blood and wanted to plunge in——

  I shiver and look up. But what does it mean? Why do these memories come so often now? And so strangely, and so differently from out there; at the Front? Am I too much alone?

  Wolf stirs and barks quite loudly, though gently, in his sleep. Is he dreaming of his flock, I wonder? I look at him a long time. Then I wake him and we go back.

  It is Saturday. I go over to Willy and ask him if he will come into town with me over Sunday. But he dismisses the idea altogether. "We're having stuffed goose tomorrow," says he. "I can't possibly leave that in the lurch. What do you want to go away for?"

  "I can't stick Sundays here," I say.

  "I don't understand that," he objects, "not considering the grub!"

  So I set off alone. In the evening, vaguely hoping for something, I go out to Waldman's. Here is immense activity. I stand about and look on for a while. A mob of young fellows who missed the war by a hair, is swilling about and about on the dance-floor. These are sure of themselves, they know what they want. Their world has had a clear beginning, it has a definite, goal—success. And though younger than we, they are much more accomplished.

  I discover among the dancers the dainty little seamstress with whom I won the prize for the one-step. I ask her to dance and after that we remain together. I had my pay only a few days ago, and on the strength of it I now order a couple of bottles of a sweet, red wine. We drink it slowly, but the more I drink the more I sink into a strange moodiness—What was it Albert said about having somebody all to oneself?—I listen pensively to the chatter of the girl, as she twitters like a swallow of the other seamstresses, about the pay for making underclothing, about new dances and a thousand other nothings. If only the pay would go up by a couple of pence a piece, she would be able to lunch in a restaurant and then she would be happy. I envy her her simple existence and ask her more and more questions. I should like to ask everyone who is here so laughing and gay, how he lives. Perhaps among them is one who could tell me something that would help me.

  Afterwards I go home with the Swallow. She lives in agrey block of tenements, high up under the roof. We standa while at the door. I feel the warmth of her hand in mine. Her face glimmers uncertain in the darkness. A humanface, a hand, wherein is warmth and life. "Let me go with you!" I say hastily. "Let me come in——"

  Cautiously we steal up the creaking stairs. I strike a match but she blows it out immediately, and taking me by the hand, leads me after her.

  A little narrow room. A table, a brown sofa, a bed, a few pictures on the wall; in the corner a sewing-machine, a lay-figure of bamboo, and a basket of white linen to be sewn.

  The little girl promptly produces a primus and brewstea of apple-peelings and tea-leaves that have been tentimes boiled and dried out again. Two cups, a laughing, slightly mischievous face, a disturbing little blue dress, the friendly poverty of lodgings, and a little Swallow, its youth its only possession—I sit down on the sofa. Is this how love begins? So light and playfully? Is that all it needs, just tojump over oneself and away?——

  The little Swallow is fond. It belongs, of course, to her life that someone should come here, take her in his arms, and then go away again. Then the sewing-machine drones, another comes, the Swallow laughs, the Swallow weeps, and sews away for ever—She casts a gay coverlet over the sewing-machine, thereby transforming it from a nickel and steel creature of toil into a hillock of red and blue silk flowers. She does not want to be reminded now of the day. In her light, soft dress she nestles down in my arms, she chatters, she whispers and murmurs and sings. So slender and pale—half-starved she is, too—and so light that one can easily carry her to the bed, the iron camp-bed. Such a sweet air of surrender as she clings about one's neck! She sighs and she smiles—a child with closed eyes, sighs and trembles and stammers a little bit. She breathes deep and she utters small cries. I look at her. I look again and again. I too would be so. Silently I ask: Is this it? Is this it?— And the Swallow names me with all kinds of fair names, and is embarrassed and tender and nestles close to me. And as I leave her I ask: "Are you happy, little Swallow?" Then she kisses me many times and makes faces and waves and nods and nods——

  But I go down the stairs and am full of wonder. She is happy!—How easily! I cannot understand. For is she not still another being, a life unto herself, to whom I can never come? Would she not still be so, though I came with all the fires of love? Ach, love—it is a torch falling into an abyss, revealing nothing but only how deep it is!

  I set off down the street to the station. This is not it; no,this is not it either. One is only more alone there than ever——

  3.

  The lamp casts a circle of light upon the table. Before me is a pile of blue exercise books, and alongside a bottle of red ink. I look through the note-books, mark the mistakes, lay the blotting-papers inside and clap them to.

  I stand up. Is this life, then? This dreary uniformity of days and lessons? But how empty it leaves all the background! There is still left much too much time to think. I hoped the routine would quiet me, but it only makes me more restless. How long the evenings are here!

  I go across to the barn. The cows snuff and stamp in the gloom. Beside them on low stools squat the milkmaids, each in a little room to herself, the walls formed by the black and white bodies of the animals. Small lanterns are flickering over them in the warm air of the stall, the milk spurts in thin streams into the bucket and the breasts of the girls joggle beneath their blue cotton blouses. They lift their heads and smile and breathe and show sound, white teeth. Their eyes shine in the darkness, and there is a smell of cattle and hay.

  I stand a while at the door, then go back to my room. The blue note-books still lie under the lamp. Will they always lie so? And I? Shall I always sit there, till little by little I grow old and at last die? I decide to go to bed.

  The red moon climbs slowly up over the roof of the barn and casts an image of
the window on the floor, a diamond and a cross within it, that becomes gradually more and more askew the higher the moon rises. In an hour it has crept on to my bed, and the shadowed cross is moving over my breast.

  I lie in the big, peasant bed with its cover of red and blue squares, and cannot sleep. Sometimes my eyes close, and I sink down whizzing through limitless space—but at the last moment a sudden, bounding fear jolts me back into wakefulness, and again I am listening to the church clock as it strikes the hours. I listen and wait and toss to and fro.