After a while one of the tanks stopped firing. No one had seen, an explosion. "We got him!" Immermann roared. He was no longer a Communist shooting at his fellow party members; he was a creature fighting for his life.
The tank was no longer firing. The machine guns concentrated on the second tank, which turned away and disappeared. "Six broke through," Rahe shouted. "They will come back. All machine guns crossfire. We must stop the infantry!"
"Where is Reinecke?" Immermann asked when they were able to think again. No one knew. Reinecke did not come back.
They held throughout the afternoon. The bunkers were being slowly pulverized; but both continued to fire. They fired more slowly. There was very little ammunition left. The men ate canned rations and drank the water out of the shell holes. Hirschland got a bullet through his hand.
The sun blazed. The sky was hung with great gleaming clouds. The bunker smelled of blood and powder. The dead outside swelled up. Whoever could, slept. They no longer knew whether they had already been cut off or still had communications.
In the evening the firing became heavier. Then suddenly it almost ceased. They rushed out in expectation of the attack. It did not come. For more than two hours it did not come. Those two quiet hours devoured more of their energy than a battle.
At three o'clock in the morning the bunker was nothing more than a mass of twisted steel and concrete. They had to leave it. There were six dead and three wounded. They had to withdraw. They were able to drag the man with the stomach wound for a couple of hundred yards; then he died.
The Russians attacked again. The company now had only two machine guns. From a shell hole they defended themselves with them. Then they fell back again. The Russians thought them stronger than they were and this saved them. During the second halt Sauer fell. He got a bullet in the head and died at once. A little farther on Hirschland fell as he was running crouched over. He twisted over slowly and lay still. Graeber dragged him into a shell hole. He slid into it and writhed on the bottom. Bullets had torn his breast open. Examining him Graeber found his blood-soaked wallet and put it in his pocket. There was now no longer.any need to write his mother that he was alive.
They reached the second line. Later, orders came to retire farther. The company was being disengaged. The reserve position became the front.
They assembled a few kilometers farther back. There were only thirty men of the company left. Next day it was restored to one hundred and twenty.
Graeber found Fresenburg in a field hospital. It was a shed that had been inadequately converted to that purpose. Fresenburg's left leg had been shattered. "They want to amputate it," he said, "Some lousy assistant surgeon. Only thing he can think of. I've managed to arrange transportation for tomorrow. Want to have an experienced man take a look at the leg first."
He lay on a field cot with a wire basket over his knee. The cot stood beside an open window. Outside there was a strip of flat land, a meadow abloom with red and yellow and blue wild flowers. The room stank. There were three other beds. "How's Rahe doing?" Fresenburg asked.
"Shot in the arm. Flesh wound."
"Hospital?"
"No, he stayed with the company,"
"That's what I'd expect." Fresenburg's face moved. One half of it smiled; the other with the scar stayed rigid. "A good many don't want to go back. Rahe doesn't."
"Why not?"
"He has given up. No more hope. And no belief."
Graeber looked at the parchment-colored face. "And you?"
"I don't know. This has to be attended to first." He pointed to the wire basket.
The warm wind blew in from the meadow. "Strange, isn't it?" Fresenburg said. "In the snow we thought it would never be summer in this land. Then suddenly it's here. And right away too much of it."
"Yes."
"How was it at home?"
"I don't know. I can't make any kind of connection between the two things, my furlough and this. I could do it before. But not now. They're too far apart. I no longer know what's real."
"Who knows that?"
"I thought I knew. Back there everything seemed right. Now I no longer know. It was too short. And too far away from all this. Back there I even thought I wouldn't do any more killing."
"Many have thought that."
"Yes. Are you in much pain?"
Fresenburg shook his head. "This hole has something you would hardly expect: morphine. They gave me a shot that's still working. The pains are there, but it's as though they belonged to somebody else. I still have one or two hours to think."
"Is a hospital train coming?"
"It's an ambulance from here. It will take us to the nearest station."
"Soon none of us will be here any more," Graeber said. "Now you're going too."
"Perhaps they'll patch me up just once more and I'll be back."
They looked at each other. Both knew it was not true. "I'll believe it," Fresenburg said. "At least for this hour or two of morphine. A section of life can sometimes be damned short, can't it? And then comes another one you know absolutely nothing about. This was my second war."
"What will you do afterward? Have you decided?"
"I don't even know yet what the others are going to do to me. I've got to find that out first. I never thought I would end up this way. I always believed it would catch me properly. Now I have to get used to the idea of having been half caught. I don't know if it's any better. The other seemed easier. There was an end of it; the bloody nonsense no longer mattered; you would pay the price and that was all. Now one's in the middle of it again. I had made a sort of pretense: that death canceled everything and so on. That's not how it is. I'm tired, Ernst. I'll try to sleep before I begin to realize that I'm a cripple. Take care of yourself."
He held out his hand to Graeber. "You, too, Ludwig," Graeber said.
"Of course. Since I'm swimming with the current. The primitive impulse of life. Before it was different. But perhaps that was just a deception. Always a last secret hope hidden in it. Means nothing. One always forgets one can make an end of it oneself. We got that gift along with our so-called mind."
Graeber shook his head.
Fresenburg smiled his half-smile. "You're right," he said. "We don't do that sort of thing. Instead, we'll try to see to it that all this can never happen again. To accomplish that, I'd take up a gun again, if I had to."
He laid his head back. Suddenly he looked completely exhausted. When Graeber got to the door his eyes were already closed.
Graeber went back to his village. A pale, evening red colored the sky. It had not rained again. The mud was drying. In the neglected fields flowers and weeds had sprung up. The front was rumbling. Suddenly everything seemed very strange and all connections dissolved. Graeber knew the feeling; he had often had it when he woke up at night not knowing where he was. It was as if he had fallen out of the world and floated in complete loneliness in the dark. It never lasted long. One always found one's way back; but each time a strange small feeling persisted that some day one would not find the way back.
It was not fear that one felt; one simply shrank into oneself, like a tiny child set down in the midst of a gigantic steppe where every road of escape was a hundred times too long. Graeber stuck his hands intoTiis pockets and looked around. There was the old picture: ruins, unplowed fields, a Russian sunset, and, opposite, the pale, beginning heat-lightning of the front. It was there as always and with it the hopeless chill that went straight through the heart.
He felt Elisabeth's letters in his pocket. Warmth was in them, tenderness and the sweet excitement of love. But they were no quiet lamp to light a well-ordered house; they were will-o'-the-wisps above a swamp, and the farther he tried to follow them the more treacherous the swamp seemed to become. He had wanted to put up a light in order to find his way back, but he had put it up before the house was built. He had placed it in a ruin; it did not adorn it, it only made it more desolate. Back there he had not known. He had followed the light without question,
wanting to believe that to follow it was enough. It was not enough.
He had fought against this realization as long as he could. It had not been easy to see that what he had hoped would hold him and support him had only isolated him. It could not extend far enough. It touched his heart but it did not hold him. It was swallowed up; it was a small, private happiness that could not support itself in the limitless morass of general misery and despair. He took out Elisabeth's letters and read them, and the red afterglow of sunset lay on the pages. He knew them by heart; he read them once more, and again they made him more lonesome than before. It had been too short and the other was too long. It had been a furlough; but a soldier's life is reckoned by his time at the front and not by furloughs.
He put the letters back in his pocket. He put them with the letters from his parents which he had found waiting for him at the company office. There was no sense in brooding. Fresenburg was right; one step after another was enough. One ought not to try to solve the riddles of existence when one was in danger. Elisabeth, he thought. Why do I think of her as of someone lost? I have her letters here! She is alive!
The village came closer. It lay there dismal and abandoned. All these villages looked as though they would never be rebuilt. An avenue of birch trees led up to the ruins of a white house. A garden had once been there; flowers bloomed, and at the edge of a dirty pond stood a statue. It was a faun, blowing on his pipes; but no one came to his festive noon. Only a couple of recruits were there searching the fruit trees for green cherries.
CHAPTER XXVII
"GUERRILLAS." Steinbrenner licked his lips and looked at the Russians. They stood in the village square. There were two men and two women. One of the women was young. She had a round face and high cheekbones. All four had been brought in by a patrol earlier that morning. "They don't look like guerrillas," Graeber said.
"They are, though. What makes you think they aren't?"
"They don't look it. They look like poor farmers!"
Steinbrenner laughed. "If that were a test there wouldn't be any criminals."
That's true, Graeber thought. You yourself are the best proof. He saw Rahe coming. "What are we to do with them?" asked the company commander.
"They were captured here," the sergeant major said. "We have to lock them up and wait for orders to come through."
"God knows we have enough trouble on our hands. Why don't we send them to the regiment?"
Rahe did not expect an answer. The regiment no longer had a fixed position. At best the staff would sometime send someone to give the Russians a hearing and then direct what was to be done with them. "Outside the village there's what used to be a manor house," Steinbrenner announced. "It has a shed with bars and an iron door and a lock."
Rahe surveyed him critically. He knew what Steinbrenner was thinking. In his charge the Russians would make the usual attempt to escape and that would be the end of them. Outside the village it could be easily arranged.
Rahe looked around. "Graeber," he said, "take charge of these people. Steinbrenner can show you where the shed is. Examine it to see that it's safe. After that report to me and leave a guard there. Take men from your own squad. It's your responsibility. Yours alone," he added.
One of the prisoners limped. The older woman had varicose veins. The younger was barefoot. Outside the village Steinbrenner gave the younger man a shove. "Hey there! You! Run!"
The man turned around. Steinbrenner laughed and gestured. "Run! Run! Hurry up! Free!"
The older man said something in Russian. The other did not run. Steinbrenner kicked him in the ankle with his boot. "Run, you ass!"
"Stop that," Graeber said. "You heard Rahe's orders."
"We can let them run here," Steinbrenner whispered. "The men, I mean. Ten yards and then we shoot. We'll lock the women up. When it's dark we'll get the young one out."
"Leave them alone. And disappear. I'm in command here."
Steinbrenner looked at the young woman's calves. She was wearing a short dress and her legs were brown and muscular. "They'll be shot anyway," he remarked, "either by us or by the Security Service. We can have some fun with the young one. It's all very well for you to talk. You've just been on furlough."
"Shut up and think about your promised bride! The daughter of the S.S. commandant," Graeber said. "Rahe ordered you to show us the shed, that's all.
They walked along the avenue that led to the white house. "Here," Steinbrenner announced morosely, pointing to a small building tha was in a good state of repair. It was built of stone and was strong and the iron-barred door could be secured from outside with a padlock
Graeber examined the building. It seemed to have been a kind of stall or shed. The floor was cement. The prisoners could not get out without tools; and they had already been searched to make sure they had none.
He opened the door and let them in. Two recruits who had come along as guards stood with guns ready. The prisoners went in one after the other. Graeber shut the door and tested the lock. It held.
"Like monkeys in a cage." Steinbrenner grinned. "Banana! Banana! Do you want a banana, you apes?"
Graeber turned to the recruits. "You stay here as guards. It's your responsibility to see that nothing happens. You'll be relieved later on. Do any of you speak German?" he asked the Russians.
No one answered. "Later on we'll see if we can find some straw for you. Come," Graeber said to Steinbrenner.
"Do get them a couple of feather beds, too."
"Come along! And you there, keep an eye out!"
He reported to Rahe that the jail was safe. "Pick out a couple of men and take charge of the guard," Rahe said. "In a few days, when the situation has quieted down, we'll get rid of these people, I hope."
"Yes, sir."
"Do you need more than two men?"
"No. The shed is safe. I could almost do it alone if I slept out there at night. No one can get out."
"All right. Let's do it that way. We need the recruits here to teach them a little combat technique as fast as possible. The reports—" Rahe broke off. He looked ill. "You know yourself what's up. Well, go along."
Graeber got his things. There were only a few men he knew left in his platoon. "Have they made a jailer out of you?" Immermann asked.
"Yes. I can get a good sleep out there. It's better than drilling these young sprouts."
"You won't have much time for it. Do you know what's happening at the front?"
"It sounds like a mess."
"It's another rear-guard action. The Russians are breaking through everywhere. A lot of scuttlebutt has been coming in during the last hour. Big offensive. There's only flat ground around here. No place to make a stand. This time we'll have to go a long way back."
"Do you think we'll quit if we have to retreat across the German frontier?"
"Do you think so?"
"No."
"Neither do I. Who on our side could put an end to it? Certainly not the general staff. They'd never take the responsibility." Immermann grinned crookedly. "In the last war they could always put up a new provisional government slapped together for that purpose. The poor fools would hold out their necks, sign the armistice, and a week later be accused of betraying their fatherland. Today there's nothing like that. Total government, total defeat. There is no second party to negotiate with."
"Except yours, of course," Graeber said bitterly. "You've explained it to me often enough. Another totalitarian government. The same methods. I'm going to sleep. AH I want in life is to think what I like, say what I like, and do what I like. But since we have messiahs of the right and left that's a much worse crime than murder."
He was angry at himself for getting involved with Immermann; it was as pointless as with Steinbrenner. He took his knapsack and went to the field kitchen. There he got his dipperful of bean soup, his bread, and his ration of sausage for the evening meal; thus he would not have to come back to the village.
It was a strangely quiet afternoon. The recruits had left after
getting the straw. The front was rumbling, but nevertheless the day seemed to remain still. In front of the shed extended a lawn that had run wild; it had been trodden down and there were shell holes in it, but nevertheless it had turned green and a few flowering shrubs were growing at the edge of what once had been a walk.
In the garden beyond the avenue of birch trees Graeber found a small, half-preserved pavilion from which he could keep an eye on the shed. He even found a few books. They were bound in leather and bore tarnished gold lettering. Rain and snow had damaged them so much that only one was still legible. It was a volume with romantic etchings of ideal landscapes. The text was French. He leafed slowly through it. Gradually the pictures captivated him. They aroused a painful and hopeless yearning that continued long after he had closed the book.