Every morsel choked him. Something bitter was stuck high up in his throat, it had to be swallowed with every mouthful, and it always came up again. Hunched there in silence, he realized that his wife was watching him. Suddenly he felt her hand softly placed on his own.
“What’s the matter, Ferdinand?” He did not reply. “Have you had bad news?”
He just nodded, and gulped.
“From the army?”
He nodded again. She said no more, and nor did he. The looming, oppressive idea of it was suddenly there in the room, pushing everything else aside. It weighed down, broad and sticky, on the food they had begun to eat. It crawled, a damp slug, over the backs of their necks and made them shudder. They dared not look at each other, but just sat there in silence with their shoulders bent, and the intolerable burden of that thought pressing down on them.
There was a faltering note in her voice when at last she asked, “Have they told you to go to the Consulate?”
“Yes.”
“And will you go?”
He was trembling. “I don’t know. But I have to.”
“Why do you have to? They can’t order you about here in Switzerland. You’re a free man here.”
“Free!” he said savagely, through gritted teeth. “Who’s still free today?”
“Anyone who wants to be. You most of all. What is this?” Contemptuously, she snatched away the sheet of paper that he had placed in front of him. “What power does this scrap of paper have over you, scribbled by some wretched clerk in an office—what power does it have over you? You’re a free, living man! What can it do to you?”
“In itself it can’t do anything, but the people who sent it can.”
“So who sent it? What human being does it come from? It’s from no one but a machine, a vast, murderous machine. But it can’t touch you.”
“It’s touched millions, so why not me?”
“Because you don’t want to go?”
“Nor did all the others.”
“But they weren’t free. They were caught between the guns, that’s why they went. Not of their own free will, not one of them. No one would willingly have left Switzerland to go back to that hell.”
But when she saw how he was tormenting himself, she checked her wildness. Pity welled up in her, as if for a child. “Ferdinand,” she said, leaning against him, “try to think perfectly clearly now. You’re afraid, and I understand how distressing it is to have this evil beast suddenly pouncing on you. But remember, we were expecting this letter. We’ve discussed what to do in this event hundreds of times, and I was proud of you because I knew you’d just tear it to pieces, you wouldn’t give yourself up to go and murder people. Don’t you remember?”
“I know, Paula, I know, but…”
“Don’t say any more now,” she urged him. “Somehow or other, this thing has got its teeth into you. But think of our conversations, of the statement you drew up—it’s there in the left-hand drawer of the desk—saying that you would never carry arms. You had firmly decided…”
He reacted to that. “No, I hadn’t firmly decided! I was never sure! All that was lies. I was hiding from my own fear. I intoxicated myself with those words. But it was all true only as long as I was free, and I always knew that if I was summoned I’d be weak. Do you think I trembled before them? They’re nothing as long as their ideas aren’t really in my heart, otherwise they’re just air, words, nothing. But I trembled before myself, because I always knew that as soon as they called me up I’d go.”
“Ferdinand, do you want to go?”
“No, no, no,” he cried, stamping his foot, “I don’t want to, I don’t, nothing in me wants to. But I shall go, against my own will. That’s the terrible part of these people’s power, you serve them against your will, against your own convictions. If you still had a will of your own—but the moment you have a letter like that in your hands, your free will is gone. You obey. You’re a schoolboy, the teacher’s calling to you, you stand up and tremble.”
“But Ferdinand, who’s calling you? The Fatherland? Some clerk in an office! Some bored bureaucrat! And what’s more, even the state has no right to force a man to commit murder, no right…”
“I know, I know. Why not quote Tolstoy too? I know all the arguments: don’t you understand, I myself don’t believe they have any right to call me up, I don’t believe it’s my duty to obey them. I acknowledge only one kind of duty: to act as a human being and to work. I have no Fatherland beyond mankind in general, no ambition to kill other people, I know all that, Paula, I see it as clearly as you do—except that they’ve caught me already, they’re summoning me and I know, in spite of everything, I shall go.”
“But why? Why? I ask you, why?”
He groaned. “I don’t know why. Perhaps because madness is stronger than reason in the world these days. Perhaps it’s just because I’m no hero and I daren’t run away… there’s no explaining it. It’s a kind of compulsion; I can’t break the chain that is throttling twenty million people. I can’t do it.”
He hid his face in his hands. The clock above them ticked on and on, a guard on duty outside the sentry-box of time. She was trembling slightly. “It’s calling to you, yes, I can understand that, although… well, I don’t really understand it. But can’t you hear anything here calling to you as well? Is there nothing to keep you here?”
He flared up. “My pictures? My work? No! I can’t paint any more. I realized that today. I’m already living over there, not here any more. It’s a crime to work for your own pleasure now while the world falls into ruin. You can’t feel and live for yourself alone!”
She stood up and turned away. “I never thought you lived for yourself alone. I thought… I thought I was part of your world too.” She couldn’t go on; her tears were forcing their way out along with her words. He tried to soothe her. But there was anger behind her tears, and he shrank from that. “Go, then,” she said, “you’d better go! What do I mean to you? Less than a scrap of paper. So go if you want to.”
“I don’t want to!” He struck the table with his fists in helpless rage. “I don’t want to. But they want me to. They are strong and I’m weak. They’ve forged their iron will over thousands of years, they’re well-organized and subtle, they’ve made preparations and now it breaks over us like a thunderstorm. Their will is strong and my nerves are weak. It’s an unequal battle. You can’t fight back against a machine. You could resist men, yes, but this is a machine, a slaughtering machine, a soulless tool without a heart or mind. There’s nothing you can do to oppose it.”
“Yes, you can if you must.” She was shouting like a madwoman now. “I can do it if you can’t. If you’re weak I’m not, I don’t knuckle under to a piece of paper, I don’t give up any living creature for a word. You won’t go as long as I have any power over you. You’re sick, I can swear it. You’re highly strung. If a plate so much as clinks you jump nervously. Any doctor must see that. Get yourself examined here, I’ll go with you, I’ll tell the doctor everything. He’s sure to say you’re unfit. You just have to defend yourself, take the bit between your teeth—the bit of your own will. Remember your friend Jeannot in Paris, who had himself put under observation in the psychiatric hospital for three months—and how they tormented him with their investigations, but he held out until they discharged him. You just have to show that you’re not going along with them. You can’t give up. This means everything; don’t forget, they want your life, your liberty, everything. You have to fight back.”
“Fight back! How can I fight back? They’re stronger than anyone, they’re stronger than anything in the whole world.”
“That’s not true! They’re only strong as long as the world allows it. The individual is always stronger than any idea, he just has to be true to himself and his own will. He just has to know that he’s a human being and wants to stay human, and then those words they use to anaesthetize people these days—the Fatherland, duty, heroism—then they’re simply phrases stinking of blood, w
arm, living human blood. Be honest, is your Fatherland as important to you as your life? Is a province that will switch overnight from one Serene Highness to another as dear to you as the hand you paint with? Do you believe in some kind of justice beyond the invisible knowledge of what’s just and right that we build into ourselves with our thoughts, our blood? No, I know you don’t, no! You’re lying to yourself if you say you want to go…”
“I don’t want to.”
“But you don’t feel that strongly enough! You don’t want to stay any more. You’re letting yourself want to do this thing, that’s your crime. You’re giving yourself up to something you hate and staking your life on it. Why not on something you really believe in? Shedding blood for your own ideas is one thing, but why do it for someone else’s? Ferdinand, don’t forget, if you really want strongly enough to stay free, what are those people over the border but wicked fools? If you don’t want it enough, and they get hold of you, then you’re the fool. You always said…”
“Yes, I said, I said it all, I talked and talked just to give myself courage. I was boasting, the way children sing in a dark wood because they’re afraid of their own fears. It was all a lie, that’s cruelly clear to me now. Because I always knew that if they sent for me I’d go…”
“You’re really going? Oh, Ferdinand, Ferdinand!”
“Not me! Not me! It’s something else in me that’s going—has gone already. Something or other stands up in me like the schoolboy obediently standing up for the teacher, I told you so. It trembles and obeys! Yet at the same time I hear all you say, and I know it’s right and true and human and necessary—it’s the one thing I ought to do, I must do—I know that, I know it, that’s why it’s so despicable of me to go. But I am going, something compels me. Despise me! I despise myself. But there’s nothing else I can do, nothing!”
He hammered on the table with both fists. There was a dull, animal, captive expression in his eyes. She couldn’t bear to look at him. In her love, she was afraid that she might indeed despise him. The table was still laid, the meat standing on it was cold now and looked like carrion, the bread was black and crumbling; it might have been slag. The heavy smell of food filled the room. Nausea rose to her throat in her disgust at all this. She pushed the window open to let in some fresh air. Her shoulders were shaking slightly, and above them rose the blue March sky, with its white clouds caressing her hair.
“Look,” she said more quietly, “look out there! Just once, I beg you. Perhaps all I’m saying isn’t entirely true. Words always miss the mark. But what I can see is true all the same. That doesn’t lie. There’s a farmer down there following the plough. He’s young and strong. Why doesn’t he go off to be murdered? Because his country isn’t at war, because his fields lie a little way beyond the border, so the law doesn’t apply to him. And now that you’re in this country it doesn’t apply to you either. Can an invisible law that’s in force only as far as a few milestones and then not beyond them be true? Don’t you feel how senseless it is when you look at the peace here? Look, Ferdinand, look, see how clear the sky is above the lake, see how the colours wait for us to enjoy them, come here to the window and then tell me just once more that you want to go…”
“I don’t want to go! I don’t want to! You know I don’t! Why should I look out at this scene? I know all about it, everything, everything! You’re just tormenting me! Every word you say hurts. And nothing, nothing, nothing can help me!”
She felt weak in the face of his pain. Pity broke her strength. She quietly turned around.
“So when… oh, Ferdinand… when do you have to go to the Consulate?”
“Tomorrow. Well, it ought to have been yesterday, but the letter didn’t reach me in time. They didn’t track me down until today. So I’ll have to go tomorrow.”
“But suppose you don’t go tomorrow? Keep them waiting. They can’t do anything to you here. And there’s no hurry. Let them wait a week. I’ll write and tell them you were ill, you were in bed. My brother did that and gained two weeks’ grace. At the worst they won’t believe you and they’ll send the doctor from the Consulate up here. Perhaps we could talk to him. People are still human beings if they don’t wear a uniform. Maybe he’ll look at your pictures and see that someone like you is right out of place at the front. And even if that doesn’t work we’ll have gained a week.”
He said nothing, and she felt that his silence was opposing her.
“Ferdinand, promise me not to go tomorrow! Let them wait. You need to be well prepared in your mind. At the moment you’re upset, and they’re doing what they like with you. They’d be stronger than you tomorrow, but in a week’s time you’ll be stronger than them. Think of the happy days we’ll enjoy then. Oh, Ferdinand, Ferdinand, are you listening to me?”
She shook him. He looked at her, empty-eyed. That apathetic, lost gaze showed no response to her words, only horror and fear from a depth that she could not plumb. He pulled himself together only slowly.
“You’re right,” he said at last. “You’re right, there’s no hurry. What can they do to me? Has the letter necessarily reached me? Couldn’t I have gone away for a little while? Or I could have been ill. No—I signed a receipt for the postman. But that makes no difference. We have to think things over. You’re right, you’re right.”
He had risen to his feet and began pacing up and down the room. “You’re right, you’re right,” he mechanically repeated, but there was no conviction in his voice. “You’re right, you’re right”—it sounded abstracted, he was repeating the words vacantly. She felt that his thoughts were somewhere else, far away, still with the people over the border, still heading for disaster. She couldn’t bear to hear his constant “You’re right, you’re right” any more. Quietly, she went out of the room, and then heard him walking up and down it for hours on end, like a prisoner in his dungeon.
He did not touch dinner that evening either. There was something far away and frozen in him. It was only that night that she felt her living husband’s fear as he lay beside her, clasping her soft, warm body as if taking refuge in it, embracing her passionately, convulsively. But this, she knew, was not love but escape. It was a spasmodic reaction, and under his kisses she sensed bitter, salty tears. Then he lay in silence again. Sometimes she heard him groan. Then she held her hand out to him, and he took it as if he could cling to it. They did not talk. Only once, when she heard him sob, did she try to comfort him. “You still have a week. Don’t think about it.” But then she was ashamed of herself for advising him to think of something else, for she felt from the chill of his hand, the pulsing of his heart, that this one idea possessed and commanded him. And there was no miracle to release him from it.
Never before had silence and the dark weighed so heavily in this house. The horror of the whole world stood there within its walls, cold and chilly. Only the clock, undeterred, ticked on, an iron sentry marching up, marching down, and she knew that with every marching step of that clock the living man at her side, the man she loved, was moving further away from her. She couldn’t bear it any more; she jumped out of bed and stopped the pendulum. Now there was no time any more, only terror and silence. And they both lay mute and wakeful, side by side, until the new day dawned, with the idea of what was to come marching up and down in their hearts.
It was still wintry twilight. Hoarfrost was hovering over the lake in heavy drifts of mist when he got up, quickly threw on his clothes, hurried hesitantly and uncertainly from room to room and back again, until he suddenly took his hat and coat and quietly opened the front door. Later, he often remembered how his hand had trembled when it touched the bolt, which was cold with frost, and he turned furtively to see if anyone was watching him. Sure enough, the dog rushed at him as if he were a thief stealing in, but on recognizing him got down, responded affectionately to his patting, and then raced around wagging his tail, eager to go for a walk with him. However, he shooed the dog away with his hand—he dared not speak. Then, not sure himself why he was in such hast
e, he suddenly hurried down the bridle path. Sometimes he stopped and looked back at his house as it slowly disappeared from sight in the mist, but then the urge to go on came over him once more and he ran downhill to the station, stumbling over stones as if someone were after him. Only when he arrived did he stop, warm vapour rising from his moist clothes, sweat on his forehead.
A few farmers and other folk who knew him were standing there. They wished him good morning, and one or two seemed inclined to strike up a conversation with him, but he turned away from them. He felt a bashful fear of having to talk to other people at this moment, and yet waiting idly beside the wet rails was painful. Without attending to what he was doing he stood on the scales, put a coin in the slot, stared into his pale, sweating face in the little mirror above the dial that showed his weight, and only when he got off and his coin clinked down inside the machine did he notice that he had failed to register what the pointers said. “I’m going out of my mind, right out of my mind,” he murmured quietly, and felt a chill of horror at himself. He sat down on a bench and tried to force himself to think everything over clearly. But then the signal bell rang, very close to him, a harsh, jangling sound, and he jumped, startled. The locomotive was already whistling in the distance. The train raced in, and he sat down in a compartment. A dirty newspaper lay on the floor. He picked the newspaper up and stared at it without taking in what he was reading, seeing only his own hands holding it and shaking more and more all the time.