The Returning Soldier
(1946)
The sun warmed him on the bench in front of the house, the bench people sat on in the evenings after work, or on which the old people sat, who no longer worked anyway. And that’s how it was with him, even though he was just twenty-six years old: he wasn’t up to work any more, his father had chased him away!
How many times Erdmann Ziese had thought of the old house, the farm and the fields in the course of his long homecoming! He hadn’t given much thought to his arm; he had got used to it being stiff at the elbow; something like that wouldn’t keep him from working. Lots of men, lots and lots were a hundred times worse off than he was!
The doctors had examined his arm time and again; they saw no reason for the joint to be stiff. Every muscle and sinew seemed to be in good order. They had X-rayed it and irradiated it, they had strapped it to machines that were switched on and performed mechanical motions – he had screamed with pain. Yes, the arm would rather break than bend at the elbow; it was and remained stiff. The young assistant doctor had sent him away with the words: ‘You’ll be fine, Ziese, one day you’ll be able to move your arm again. It’ll happen just like that, and you won’t even notice it.’
But that was just talk, to show how smart the doctors were with their skills. Erdmann Ziese wasn’t impressed, and as I say, at that time he wasn’t giving much thought to his arm anyway. Every day he was surrounded by dozens of cripples who were all a hundred times worse off than he was. He could work, of course he could, and he wanted to work. Work was the best thing in life. Work was maybe even better than Maria. Love was fine, love was terrific, nothing against it, to hold a girl, Maria, to hold her in your arms, to feel her soft lips, her breathing; dart a look up at her eyes which she kept closed when she was kissing – ah, lovely! Happiness and thrills, the sun and the stars, warmth, light – all that was what love was.
But you couldn’t spend all day embracing and kissing. After a while you had enough, and you went and did your work, in which you took pleasure. Either you drew as straight a furrow as if someone had stood there with a ruler, or you chopped wood faster than anyone else. That was the way of it: life was work, or else it was nothing, and love came extra.
Out of some unclear feeling, perhaps simply because he was ashamed of it, Erdmann hadn’t said anything about his crippled arm when he returned home. He hid his frailty so effectively that for a day and a half no one noticed it. But this morning, while chopping wood, his father had suddenly called out: ‘What’s the matter with your arm? Are you crippled or something?’
His father had put down his axe to watch his son chop and stack wood, and with his sharp eyes under the bushy brows had kept staring at his son’s arm. Under such scrutiny, Erdmann worked clumsily. Finally, the father had jumped across to his son and had pulled and worked at the arm like a maniac. ‘What’s this?’ he screamed. ‘Can’t you bend your arm? Not at all? Bloody brood, first they start a war that plunges the entire world into misfortune, and then they send us our children home crippled, just when we’ve begun to think they might be useful for a bit of work!’
He let go of his son’s arm and glowered at him. Erdmann Ziese mumbled sheepishly: ‘Oh, Papa, I can still do a lot of work with it. Think of the others …’
But his father cut him off. All his rage was levelled now against his son. ‘Tell me what work you can do, cripple! You can eat soup and darn socks. Woman’s work! I need a man on this farm – not something like you! Why didn’t you tell me right away? Thought you could keep it hidden from your old man? Oh, get out of my sight! I don’t want to see you out here again! I’ve got another useless mouth to feed!’
Those had been Father’s words, hard, hurtful words, and unfair with it. Because Erdmann didn’t feel as useless as his father made him out to be. But he couldn’t hold it against him, Father was just like that. He had had to work too hard on the smallholding, surrounded by much larger farms that didn’t even look after their soil properly and still seemed to flourish, while Father worked himself to the bone. That was what had made him so angry, the fact that the world was so unfair. It had to be the poor man who got his son back from the war with a bad arm! It was always the poor that had to bear the most! To a man like Father, that was enough to embitter him and make him unjust. No, there was nothing the matter with Father, even though he was difficult just now. But the son had other possibilities …
Erdmann sat nodding at these possibilities on the bench, filled his pipe, lit it and set off. He didn’t want to sit around any longer on the lazy bench, playing the old-timer. Anyway, he needed to tell Maria how much his perspectives had worsened.
He had seen her go out with her people in the morning, the potato hoe over her shoulder, and accordingly he found her on her land above the lake, hoeing potatoes. Erdmann Ziese left himself time, first went across to his father’s own potato patch and looked at it long and hard. Yes, they would have to hoe here soon as well. Suddenly a grievous feeling overcame him: he thought of how Father would have to hoe the ground alone with Mother, a big piece of field, and he surely wouldn’t be finished till late at night. The son would be able to help, but he knew his father’s obstinacy: he wouldn’t allow him to touch a thing on the farm any more, his cripple of a son! With the Köllers, who had more potato land than the Zieses, there were five of them hoeing: father, mother, son and the two daughters, that was going some. Poor Father!
While Erdmann’s thoughts were running like this, he had approached the Köllers’ farm. He bade them the time of day, and quickly got into a conversation with the father about potatoes, and that it would soon be time for the hay harvest. They also discussed the rumour that the rich estate owners, who had all taken off into the West,* were now to have their land taken away from them, so that it might be distributed among the smaller farmers. But that was probably just talk; you could only hope that something so wonderful might come to pass, but it never would, not in this life!
‘Ah, Erdmann, a poor man has to slave away the livelong day. There’s never any joy for him. Poor he’s born and poor he stays, and the rich hang onto their money. Well, you see it with your father every day. Now that he’s got you back to help him, he could easily use another ten or twelve acres; as it is, he hardly has enough to feed his livestock through the winter. But it won’t happen. Mark my words, Erdmann!’
Erdmann nodded his agreement. He didn’t believe in land reform either, give or take the lame arm here and helping his father – no need for the Köllers to hear about that just yet, that only concerned his parents, and maybe Maria as well. But Maria, while the men were conversing, had stayed back with her hoe, and was now ten or twelve paces behind the others. Normally, old Köller might have given her a shout, but on this occasion he let her be. Nor was anything said when Erdmann didn’t say anything, but hung back as well.
When he was alongside Maria, he hurriedly greeted her: ‘Marie!’ She nodded and smiled and said: ‘It’s good you’re back, Erdmann, I’m pleased.’ And he, out of his bitterness: ‘Maybe it’s not good at all, Marie, and you’ve no reason to be pleased! But we can talk about that tonight. Can you meet me at the old place at nine?’ She just nodded and smiled, in spite of his grim reply. ‘All right, then: nine o’clock!’ he concluded and, more hurriedly: ‘Get hoeing, Maria, I saw your father looking our way twice already!’
They parted, and when Erdmann turned back after three or four minutes, he saw the Köllers back in a line again: Maria had caught up. He nodded in satisfaction: that was the way a girl ought to be. Maria. Solid at work and true in love. But he would have to give up such thoughts. There was his wretched lame arm, a ridiculous appendage, like a turkey wing, good for nothing. It was because of that that his father said no, and the Köllers would say no, and probably Maria would say no as well. A girl in the prime of health, and a husband who was a cripple!
Among the others he hadn’t been so conscious of it, but at home he felt it all the time, his father didn’t have to treat him as
contemptuously as he did the whole afternoon. He didn’t say a word to his son, however much his wife implored him to do so, and when he saw Erdmann smoothing the dung heap, he simply took the pitchfork out of his hands and said: ‘Stop that! I want no bodging on my farm!’
The afternoon was neverending, and Erdmann felt he was the most superfluous person in the world. Something had to happen, and he knew what: he would go to the city and find work there. Ideally with the post office, which was slowly up and running again. He would try and get a job as a rural postman; that would get him out of the city and into the fields, if he had to carry mail out to the villages. He could remember a postman with a bad arm, really with a withered arm. Muscular dystrophy, he said it was, but he had still been able to deliver letters! And there was nothing really wrong with his own arm, it was a healthy, strong man’s arm, only it was a little stiff at the elbow – surely they would give him a job at the post office with that. And if they didn’t, well, he was game for anything, he wasn’t going to idle around on the farm and see his father’s worried, angry face everywhere!
Over such thoughts, it did finally get to be evening, and Erdmann set off for the old beech tree on the lake, which was where they had met from the earliest times they were in love. They had met up there and only there during the brief furloughs he got in wartime, and even before the war, when they were still kids practically, and felt the first stirrings of love in their hearts. Back then they just sat quietly side by side, neither of them saying a word, and if one happened to brush against the other’s hand, they would both tremble with a sudden blissful alarm. Later on in the war, he had taken her firmly in his arms, as though he meant never to let her go, never leave her, and he had never had enough of her kisses.
This time it was his resolve to talk to her seriously: it would be tantamount to theft if he accepted her tenderness without putting her in the picture. But she was there before him, and slipped easily into his arms, and when he felt her searching lips at his mouth, there was no hanging back possible, and he kissed her more hungrily than ever. ‘Marie, my sweet Marie!’ And: ‘Erdmann! I can’t believe you’re back with me! I want to keep you for ever and ever!’ And silence and more kisses.
Finally, however, once their immediate need was satisfied, they had sat down at the foot of the beech, the protectress of their love, and he had told her everything, about his arm and his angry father, and then of his decision to go into the city to try and become a postman.
She listened to it all practically in silence, only she had asked to see his arm, and how it really was stiff, and she couldn’t bend it. But when he said: ‘You can see for yourself, Marie, we have to break up. Your parents won’t have it, and you’re not made for a life in the city!’ then she replied quickly and almost angrily: how could he talk like that! That showed he didn’t love her properly, if he could give her up as easily as that. He just needed to show a bit of patience, his father would see sense eventually, and see that even with a lame arm he could do useful work. And if he still wanted to move to the city, that didn’t bother her either. They would surely be able to rent a bit of land for a garden, and she would grow potatoes, so that she wouldn’t be without her familiar work.
To this he objected that a marriage contracted against the wishes of both sets of parents would always oppress them, that she really wasn’t cut out for city life – and so they got into an ever more heated quarrel. She was adamant that she didn’t want to let him go, and he kept repeating that he was leaving this very night, and she shouldn’t stand in his way. In between, they kept kissing – almost in spite of themselves – and probably they would have gone on like that all night if he hadn’t put his foot down and said: ‘All right, Marie, that’s enough. I’m sticking to what I told you. I’m going to go the city, and we won’t see each other again.’
With those words he slipped out of her arms, and stood apart from her, breathing hard, looking for her face in the dark, and waiting apprehensively for whatever she would say back to him.
In the end all she said was: ‘Well, then kiss me goodbye, Erdmann!’
Happily he drew her powerfully into his arms and kissed her as he had never kissed her before, slowly and tenderly, as the sweetest and loveliest thing he had in all the world. Then – in the middle of kissing – he suddenly let her go, so that she almost fell over. In fright she uttered a little cry, but he ignored it, and just stood there, flexing his arm. He remembered the young assistant doctor who had told him: ‘You won’t even notice, but all at once you’ll be able to move your arm!’
So that had been more than cheap words of comfort. Because when he was holding his sweetheart, he had suddenly noticed that she was in his arms, and he could move both his arms, perhaps had done for some time, without even noticing! He had held Maria tight, and his arm hadn’t been stiff, and she hadn’t noticed it either!
He stood there in bewilderment, flexing his arm this way and that, almost oblivious of Maria. He pulled down a beech twig, bent it and snapped it off, then he swished it through the air, and his arm behaved itself. His arm was all right again, he was no longer a cripple!
In the deep feeling of relief with which Erdmann Ziese made his discovery, there was mingled a sense of shame that he had been chosen by good fortune. He thought of his many comrades, the amputees, who would never mend as he had. What had he done to earn such luck? But then he thought that he had been prepared to go to the city, and leave his father’s farm, and leave Maria, without a complaint. And it seemed to him that there must be some sort of solution for everyone, some sort of outcome, maybe not always a Maria, who insisted on staying with him, but some sort of contentment that lay in the tolerance of fate.
That thought diminished his sense of shame. Suddenly he saw Maria, standing in front of him in bewilderment, and he cried: ‘My arm, see my arm! When I hugged you close, my arm was cured! Oh, Marie, how happy I am now that I can work on the farm, never to leave your side.’
And he threw down his beech twig, and pulled her to him again.
It was almost getting light when Erdmann finally returned to his parents’ house. But it was a completely new Erdmann who came home: this was the first real homecoming! He knocked loudly on his parents’ bedroom door, walked in without hesitating, switched the light on and went over to their bed. There he stood, while they – the one angry again, the other fearful – eyed him, and he called out: ‘I won’t be chased off the farm! I don’t want to lead a scrounger’s life! I want to work, just as Father does, but even harder, that’s what I want!’ And with each sentence he smashed his fist against the frame of the bed, so that it creaked and groaned.
The father supposed his son must be drunk, and was about to shout at him in renewed fury, when Erdmann went on: ‘Yes, when there’s something wrong, you see that right away, Father! But you haven’t noticed that my arm’s well again! And who made it well? It was Maria Köller! And we’re getting married as soon as ever we can, whether you like it or not!’
With that he hit their bedframe once more, hard, and stalked out of the bedroom laughing happily, to lie down for a short nap before morning. In spite of the disturbance to their rest, the two oldsters were no less happy than their son, and all morning they tiptoed around their house, smiled to each other and said: ‘Let him sleep, Erdmann! He’ll sleep himself well! Thanks be to God that he came home in one piece! We’ve been lucky this once!’
That they would shortly be lucky again, when it came to the redistribution of the big estates, that was something they admittedly didn’t yet know.
The Old Flame
(1946)
You ask me why I’m sitting here, an old lonely and embittered bachelor? Couldn’t I have got myself a wife, like other men? And why is there no gossip about me?
Of course I could have married, and I was once the subject of gossip too. It’s so long ago now that it’s almost not true any more; the only one who knows about it still is me, and maybe Ria. But I don’t think she remembers; I think she’ll
have forgotten long ago.
I called her Ria, that was my pet name for her. Her real name was Erika von Schütz, and her father owned a large estate in the east. They were both haughty characters, I often saw father and daughter riding past me, but they never returned the greeting of their poor inspector, who was fed on groats and skim milk in the officials’ house, while they got through menus of God knows how many courses. I didn’t mind them being haughty and seeing through me; at that time you took it for granted that people came in two kinds, rich and poor, and that being poor was actually a disgrace.
It’s even possible I revered Erika von Schütz doubly on account of her haughtiness, she whom I thought of as Ria, and who made my heart skip a beat when I saw her from a distance. She seemed so utterly beyond me. Later on, after I’d been working on the estate for some time, she would sometimes use me as an errand boy: I had to walk her horse up and down, or deliver a note to a certain gentleman on another estate, and once I even had to stand guard outside the gazebo when she was in there with a gentleman, in case her father surprised them.
When she was forced to talk to me on such occasions, her face took on such a disdainful, almost nauseated expression it was as though she was looking at a spider or some other foul creature. And for all that, I loved her – loved her with the whole force of my hot young heart, and each one of her contemptuously uttered words sounded like exquisite music in my ears. Once, on one such occasion, she surprisingly said to me: ‘Do you know you’re actually quite a presentable fellow, considering, Wrede?’ And straight after that: ‘But the maids will have told you that often enough! Now scram, get lost, stop staring at me! And I want a reply by four o’clock, have you got that?!’
And she swung her horse around so abruptly that its hindquarters almost knocked me over, and cantered off down a narrow path through the undergrowth, with the twigs whistling about her ears, but still scorning to bend her neck! This, by the way, was the only time she addressed me in any personal way, gave me to understand she had ever seen my face before. Otherwise she always acted as though she couldn’t quite place me or remember my name. In anyone else such a pretence would have seemed foolish, but in her it seemed charming – mind you, I was helplessly in love with her. Often I would go to the stables late at night and bring her horse a piece of bread or some sugar, so as to do something for her every day.