A Time to Love and a Time to Die

  Graeber saw Elisabeth now. She was leaning against the wall. He tapped the sentry on the shoulder. "It's a new regulation, my son. You get that instead of a medal when you've been at the front for four years. All generals' daughters. Better hurry up and report for front-line service right away, you mooncalf. Don't you know you're not allowed to talk on duty?"

  He walked across to Elisabeth. "Mooncalf yourself," said the sentry lamely from behind.

  They found a bench on a rise behind the barracks. It stood between a pair of chestnut trees and from it one could look out over the whole city. No light showed anywhere. Only the river glinted in the moon.

  Graeber opened the bottle and filled the tumbler halfway. The armagnac shimmered in it like liquid amber. He offered it to Elisabeth. "Drink it down," he said.

  She took a' swallow and gave the glass back. "Drink it down," he said. "This is an evening for it. Drink to anything you want, to this damnable life of ours, or to the fact that we are still alive—but drink it. We need it, after the dead city. Today we seem to need it badly."

  "All right. To all of that together."

  He refilled the glass and drank himself. He felt thewarmth at once. He felt, too, how empty he was. He had not known that. It was an emptiness without pain.

  He filled the glass once more halfway and drank about half of it. Then he placed it between himself and Elisabeth. She was sitting on the bench with her legs drawn up and her arms around her knees. The young foliage of the chestnut trees above her shimmered almost white in the moon—as though a swarm of early butterflies had alighted there.

  "How black it is," she said, pointing toward the city. "Like a burned-out coal mine."

  "Don't look at it. Turn around. It's different there."

  The bench stood at the top of the rise and the hill sloped gradually down on the other side—to fields, moonlit roads, poplar-bordered lanes, the steeple of a village church and then to the forest and to the blue mountains on the horizon. "You see? There is all the peace in the world," Graeber said. "Simple, isn't it?"

  "Simple if you can do it—just turn around and not think of the other."

  "One learns that fast enough."

  "Have you learned it?"

  "Of course," Graeber said. "Otherwise I wouldn't be alive now."

  "I wish I could learn it too."

  He laughed. "You know it already. Life takes care of that. It draws its reserves from any source. And in danger it knows neither weakness nor sentimentality." He pushed the glass toward her.

  "Is this part of it too?" she asked.

  "Yes," he said. 'Tonight for sure."

  She drank and he watched her. "For a change," he said, "let's not talk about the war any more for a while."

  Elisabeth leaned back. "Let's sit quietly and not talk about anything at all."

  "All right."

  They sat in silence. It was very still and slowly the stillness became animated with the peaceful sounds of the night that did not disturb it but only made it deeper—the soft wind that was.Jike the breathing of the forests, the cry of an owl, the rustling of the grass—and the unending play of cloud and light. The stillness increased in strength, it rose and surrounded them and filtered into them more and more with each breath, and breath itself turned into stillness, it canceled and dissolved and became softer and more prolonged, and was no longer an enemy but a far-off beneficent sleep.

  Elisabeth moved. Graeber started up and looked around. "What do you think of that? I went to sleep."

  "So did I." She opened her eyes. The dispersed light was caught in them and made them very transparent. "I haven't slept like this in a long time," she said in astonishment. "Always only with the light on and in fear of the darkness and awakening with the shock of terror—"

  Graeber sat in silence. He did not question her. Curiosity dies in times of constant happenings. He only marveled vaguely that he himself was sitting there so calmly, hung with translucent sleep like an underwater rock with waving sea-weed. He felt relaxed for the first time since his journey out of Russia. A gentle calm had invaded him like a flood that had risen overnight, whose shining surface seemed suddenly to unite parched and arid regions into a single whole again.

  They walked down to the city. The streets engulfed them once more, the cold stench of old fires drew about them, and the blank, black windows accompanied them again like a procession of catafalques. Elisabeth shivered. "Once upon a time the houses .and streets were full of light. We were so used to it that we thought nothing of it. Today we're beginning to understand what we have lost—"

  Graeber looked up. The sky was clear and cloudless. It was a good night for fliers and so for his taste too bright. "They say it's this way almost everywhere in Europe," he said. "Only Switzerland is supposed to be still full of light at night. They keep the lights burning there so that fliers will see it's a neutral country. A man who was in France and Italy with his squadron told me that. He said Switzerland was like an island of light—of light and peace, for one means the other. Beyond it and around it as though covered by endless funeral palls lie the dark countries, Germany, France, Italy, the Balkans, Austria, and the rest that are at war."

  "Light was given to us and it made human beings of us," Elisabeth said vehemently. "But we have murdered it and become cave men again."

  Did it make human beings of us? Graeber wondered. That seemed to him exaggerated. But maybe Elisabeth was right. Animals had no light. No light and no fire. And no bombs.

  They were standing in Marienstrasse. Suddenly Graeber saw that Elisabeth was weeping. "Don't look at me," she said. "I ought not to have anything to drink. I just can't drink. I'm not sad. It's only that all at once everything seems to come loose."

  "Let it be as loose as it likes and don't bother about it. I'm feeling that way too. It's all part of it."

  "Of what?"

  "Of what we were talking about before. Of turning around and looking in the other direction. But tomorrow evening we're not going to run about in the streets. We are going somewhere where there's as much light as this city has to offer. I'll find out about that."

  "You can find gayer company for that than mine."

  "I don't need gay company."

  "What then?"

  "No gay company. I couldn't stand it. Nor the other sort either—the compassionate kind. I get enough of that during the day. The false and the true. You must have known that yourself."

  Elisabeth was no longer weeping. "Yes," she said, "I've known that myself."

  "With us it's different. We don't have to make any pretenses. That's a lot in itself. And tomorrow evening we're going to the brightest spot in town and we're going to dine and drink wine and for one evening forget this whole damnable existence!"

  She looked at him. "Is that part of it?"

  "Yes, that's part of it. Put on the brightest dress you have."

  "All right. Come at eight."

  He suddenly felt her hair on his face and then her lips. It was swift as a breeze and she had disappeared into the house before he fully knew what it was.

  He felt for the bottle in his pocket. It was empty. He put it down in front of the house next door. One more day gone, he thought. It's a good thing Reuter and Feldmann can't see me nowl What wouldn't they say!

  CHAPTER XII

  ALL right, all right, comrades, I admit it," Boettcher said. "I slept with the proprietress. What else could I do? I had to do something! What's the use otherwise of having a furlough? After all, I don't want to go back to the front like a calf."

  He was sitting beside Feldmann's bed, in one hand his mess-kit cover full of coffee, his feet in a pail of cold water. He had raised blisters on them after wrecking the bicycle. "And you?" he asked Graeber. "What did you do today? Were you out this morning?"

  "No."

  "No?"

  "He was in the sack," Feldmann said. 'Till noon. No row could raise him. It's the first time he's shown some sense."

  Boettcher withdrew his feet from the water
and examined the soles. They were covered with large white blisters. "Just look at that! I'm a big, powerful fellow—but I have feet as sensitive as an infant's. It's been that way all my life. They won't harden, up. I've tried everything. And I've got to start off again on these."

  "Why? You can take it easy now," Feldmann said. "You've got the proprietress."

  "Oh, the proprietress, man! That hasn't anything to do with it. Besides, it was a big disappointment."

  "The first time is always a disappointment after you come back from the front. Everyone knows that."

  "That's not what I mean. It went off all right; but she was not the right one."

  "You can't expect everything all at once. The woman has to adjust herself."

  "You still don't understand me. She was very good, but our souls didn't meet. Just listen. There we are in bed, the affair is in progress and all at once I forget myself in the heat of the engagement and call her Alma. But her name is Luise. Alma is my wife's name, you see—"

  "I see."

  "It was a catastrophe, comrade."

  "It serves you right," one of the card players at the table said suddenly and sharply to Boettcher. "That's the proper punishment for adultery, you pig. I hope she threw you right out with drums and trumpets!"

  "Adultery?" Boettcher let go of his feet. "Who's talking about adultery?"

  "You! The whole time! Or are you an idiot as well?" The card player was a little egg-headed man. He stared at Boettcher with hatred. Boettcher was highly indignant. "Did anyone ever hear such drivel?" he asked, looking around. "The only one who has said anything about adultery is you! It would be adultery, you fool, if my wife had been here and then I had slept with somebody else. But she isn't here. That's exactly the whole trouble! How can it be adultery? After all, if she were here I wouldn't sleep with the proprietress!"

  "Don't pay any attention to Egghead," Feldmann said. "He's just envious. What did she do then, after you called her Luise?"

  "Luise? Not Luise! Luise is her right name. I called her Alma."

  "All right, Alma. And then?"

  "And then? You wouldn't think it possible, comrade. Instead of laughing or raising a row she began to howl. Tears like a crocodile, imagine that! Big women oughtn't to cry—"

  Reuter coughed, closed his book and looked at Boettcher with interest. "Why not?"

  "It isn't becoming to them. Doesn't go well with their bulk. Big women ought to laugh!"

  "Would your Alma have laughed if you had called her Luise?" the egg-headed card player asked poisonously.

  "If my Alma had been there," Boettcher announced calmly and with immense authority, "first of all I'd have got the nearest beer bottle in my mug. After that everything that wasn't bolted down. And finally when I came to again she would have taken care of me so that only my shoes were left. That's the way it would have been with my Alma-, you camel!"

  Egghead was silent for a while. The picture seemed to have overwhelmed him. "And you betrayed a woman like that?" he finally asked hoarsely.

  "But man, I didn't betray her at all! If she were here I wouldn't so much as look at the proprietress. Something like that isn't betrayal! It's simple self-preservation."

  Reuter turned to Graeber. "And you? What did you achieve last night with your bottle of armagnac?"

  "Nothing."

  "Nothing?" Feldmann asked. "And that's why you slept till noon like a dead man?"

  "Yes. The devil only knows why I'm suddenly so tired. I could go right to sleep again. It's as if I hadn't shut my eyes for a week."

  "Then lie down and go to sleep again."

  "Wise advice," Reuter said. "The advice of the master sleeper Feldmann."

  "Feldmann is a donkey," the egghead declared. "He's sleeping away his whole leave. Then it will be exactly as though he hadn't had one at all. He could just as well have gone to sleep at the front and only dreamed his leave."

  "That's what you think, brother. Just the opposite is true. I sleep here, and when I am dreaming I dream that I'm at the front."

  "And where are you actually?" Reuter asked.

  "What? Here, of course."

  "Are you sure?"

  The egghead bleated. "That's what I mean," he said. "It makes no difference where he is if he's always in the sack. The ox just doesn't know that."

  "It does make a difference if I wake up, you wiseacre," Feldmann declared, suddenly irritated, and lay back.

  Reuter turned back to Graeber. "And you, what do you intend to do for your immortal soul today?"

  "Tell me where to go if you want a good dinner."

  "Alone?"

  "No."

  "Then go to the Germania. It's the only place. The only trouble is that they may not let you in. Not in your front-line outfit. It's a hotel for officers. The restaurant too. However, the waiter may respect your hardware."

  Graeber looked down at himself. His uniform was patched and very shabby. "Couldn't you lend me your tunic?"

  "Glad to. You're only thirty pounds lighter than I am. They wouldn't let you get past the door. But I can borrow a corporal's dress uniform in your size, trousers too. If you put your coat on over it no one here in the barracks will notice. By the way, why are you still a doughfoot? You should have been a lieutenant long ago."

  "I was a corporal once. Then I beat up a lieutenant and was broken for it. Luckily they didn't send me to a disciplinary company. But after that it was all up with promotion."

  "Good. Then you even have a moral right to the corporal's uniform. If you take your lady to the Germania the wine to order is Johannisberger Kochsberg 1937, from the cellars of G. H. von Mumm. It's a wine that can raise the dead."

  "Good. That's what I need."

  It had grown foggy. Graeber was standing on the bridge over the river. The water was full of refuse, and crawled black and sluggish among 'the rafters and kitchenware. Opposite, the silhouette of the school rose darkly out of the white mist. He stared over at it for a while; then he went on across the bridge and along a little alley that led to the schoolyard. The big iron gate, dripping with moisture, stood wide open. He went in. The schoolyard was empty. There was no one there; it was too late for classes. He walked across the yard to the edge of the river. The trunks of the chestnut trees stood in the fog as dark as though made of coal. Under them were the, damp benches. Graeber remembered sitting there often. None of the things he had dreamed of at that time had come true. He had gone from school to the war.

  For a time he stared at the river. A broken bedstead had been swept ashore. On it the white pillows lay like fat sponges. He shivered. Then he went back and stopped in front of the school building. He tried the front door. It was unlocked. He opened it and went in hesitantly. In the entrance hall he stopped and looked around. There was an oppressive school smell and he saw the half-darkened stairway and the dark painted doors that led to the assembly hall and the classrooms. He felt nothing. Not even contempt or irony. He thought of Wellmann. "One must not go back," he had said. He had been right. Graeber felt nothing but emptiness. All the experience he had gained since his school years contradicted what he had learned here. Nothing had remained. It was bankruptcy.

  He turned around and went out. At either side of the en-, trance he saw memorial plaques for the dead. He remembered the one on the right; it was for those who had fallen in the First World War. It had always been decorated with spruce greens and oak leaves for Party celebrations, and Schimmel, the principal, had made glowing orations in front of it about revenge, Greater Germany, and the retribution to come. Schimmel had had a fat, soft belly and always sweated a great deal. The plaque on the left was new. Graeber had never seen it. It was for those fallen in the present war. He read the names. There were many of them; but the plaque was large, and next to it there was space for another one.

  Outside in the schoolyard he met the beadle. "Are you looking for something?" the old man asked.

  "No. I'm not looking for anything."

  Graeber walked on. Then an idea oc
curred to him. He went back. "Do you know where Pohlmann lives?" he asked. "Herr Pohlmann who used to teach here."

  "Herr Pohlmann is no longer employed here."

  "I know that. Where does he live?"

  The beadle glanced around. "There's no one around to overhear us," Graeber said. "Where does he live?"

  "He used to live at Jahnplatz Six. I don't know whether he still lives there. Were you a pupil here?"

  "Yes. Is Schimmel still here, the principal?"

  "Of course," the beadle replied in astonishment. "Of course, he's still here. Why shouldn't he still be here?"