VII

They take us back further behind the line than usual, back to an infantry base depot, so that they can get our company up to strength. We need more than a hundred men.

For the moment we just idle around when we are off duty. After a couple of days Himmelstoss comes over to talk to us. He has changed his high and mighty attitude since being in the trenches. He suggests a truce with us, and I am willing, because I saw how he carried Haie Westhus out of the fighting when his back had been ripped apart. Besides, now that he talks to us sensibly, we have no objections to him standing us a drink in the canteen. Only Tjaden is suspicious and keeps his distance.

But even he is won over when Himmelstoss tells us that he’s going to be standing in for the ginger-headed cook, who’s off on leave. To prove it he comes up with two pounds of sugar for us and half a pound of butter just for Tjaden. He even arranges for us to be detailed to the kitchens for the next three days to peel potatoes and turnips. The food he gives us there is one hundred per cent officers’ mess quality.

So at the moment we’ve got the two things any soldier needs to keep him happy: good food and rest. It isn’t much, when you think about it. A few years ago we would really have despised ourselves. Now we are pretty well content. You can get used to anything – even being in the trenches.

This habit of getting used to things is the reason that we seem to forget so quickly. The day before yesterday we were still under fire, today we are fooling about, seeing what we can scrounge around here, tomorrow we’ll be back in the trenches. In fact we don’t really forget anything. All the time we are out here the days at the front sink into us like stones the moment they are over, because they are too much for us to think about right away. If we even tried, they would kill us. Because one thing has become clear to me: you can cope with all the horror as long as you simply duck thinking about it – but it will kill you if you try to come to terms with it.

In the same way that we turn into animals when we go up the line, because it is the only way we can survive, when we are back behind the lines we become superficial jokers and idlers. We can’t do anything about it – it’s compulsive. We want to go on living at any price, and therefore we can’t burden ourselves with emotions that might be all very nice to have in peacetime, but are out of place here. Kemmerich is dead, Haie Westhus is dying, there’ll be a few problems with Hans Kramer’s body on Judgement Day when they try to resurrect what was left after the shell hit him, Martens lost both legs, Meyer is dead, Marks is dead, Beyer is dead, Hammerling is dead, a hundred and twenty men are lying out there somewhere with a bullet in them. It’s all a bloody business, but what’s that got to do with us – we’re alive. If it were possible to save them – well, then you should just watch us, we wouldn’t care if we got it ourselves, we’d just go at it, because we’ve got plenty of guts when we need them; we don’t have much in the way of ordinary fear – we’re afraid of death, of course, but that’s different, that’s physical.

But our mates are dead, and we can’t help them. They are at peace – who knows what we might still have to face? We want to chuck ourselves down and sleep, or stuff as much food into our bellies as we can, and booze and smoke, so that the passing hours aren’t so empty. Life is short.

The horror of the front fades away when you turn your back on it, so we can attack it with coarse or black humour. When someone is dead we say he’s ‘pushing up the daisies’, and we talk about everything the same way, to save ourselves from going mad; as long as we can take things like that we are actually fighting back.

But we do not forget. All that stuff in the war issues of the papers about the wonderful cheeriness of the troops, who start arranging little tea-dances the minute they get back from being under heavy fire in the line, is complete rubbish. It isn’t because we are naturally cheerful that we make jokes, it’s just that we keep cheerful because if we didn’t, we’d be done for. At the same, it can’t hold all that much longer – the jokes get more bitter with every month that passes.

One thing I do know: everything that is sinking into us like a stone now, while we are in the war, will rise up again when the war is over, and that’s when the real life-and-death struggle will start.

The days, the weeks, the years spent out here will come back to us again, and our dead comrades in arms will rise again and march with us, our heads will be clear and we will have an aim in life, and with our dead comrades beside us and the years we spent in the line behind us we shall march forward – but against whom, against whom?

A while ago there was a concert party for the troops near here. Coloured posters advertising the performance are still stuck up on a hoarding. Kropp and I stand and gaze wide-eyed at one of them. We can’t imagine that such things still exist. The picture is of a girl in a light summer frock with a shiny red belt around her waist. She is standing with one hand resting on a low balustrade, and she is holding a straw hat in the other. She is wearing white stockings and white shoes, elegant shoes with buckles and high heels. Behind her is the sea, bright blue and shining, dotted with white-crested waves, and over to one side of her you can make out the curve of a sunlit bay. The girl is beautiful, with a little nose, red lips and long legs, unbelievably clean and tidy – she must take two baths a day, and her fingernails surely never have any dirt under them – at the worst a bit of sand from the beach.

Next to her stands a man in white slacks with a blue jacket and a yachting cap, but he doesn’t interest us nearly as much.

For us, the girl on the poster is a miracle. We have forgotten completely that such things exist, and even now we can scarcely believe our eyes. At any rate, we haven’t seen anything like this for years, nothing remotely approaching this for light-heartedness, beauty and happiness. We get the churned-up feeling that this is it, this is what peace must be like.

‘Just look at those flimsy shoes – she wouldn’t be able to march for many miles in them!’ I say, and then at once I feel stupid, because it is ridiculous to think about marching when you are looking at a picture like that.

‘How old do you reckon she is?’ asks Kropp.

I have a guess: ‘Twenty-two at the most, Albert.’

‘She’d be older than us, then, wouldn’t she? I bet she’s no more than seventeen.’

Our flesh tingles. ‘Albert, that would be a bit of all right, wouldn’t it?’

He nods. ‘I’ve got a pair of white slacks at home, too.’

‘White slacks are one thing,’ I say, ‘but a girl like that…’

We look each other up and down. Not much of a picture there, two faded, darned and dirty uniforms. It is hopeless comparing ourselves with her.

The first thing we do is to tear the picture of the young man off the hoarding, taking great care not to damage the girl. At least that’s a start. Then Kropp suggests, ‘Why don’t we go and get deloused?’

I am a bit dubious about it, because it damages your stuff and the lice are back within a couple of hours anyway. But after we have gazed at the picture again, I agree. I even go a step further: ‘We might see if we could get our hands on a clean shirt from somewhere —’

For some reason Albert reckons, ‘Socks would be even better.’ ‘Maybe socks as well. We could scrounge around a bit.’

At that point Leer and Tjaden wander over; they see the poster and within seconds the conversation gets pretty lewd. Leer was the first one in our class at school to have a girlfriend and he used to tell us interesting details. His enthusiastic comments about the picture are quite specific and Tjaden joins in vigorously.

It doesn’t really bother us. You can’t have soldiers without a bit of dirty talk; it’s just that we aren’t really in the mood for it at the moment, so we clear off, and quick-march ourselves across to the delousing station, feeling as if we’re heading for some high-class and fashionable gents’ outfitters.

Our billets are in houses close to the canal. On the far side of the canal there are ponds with poplar trees around them – and on the far side of the canal there are women as well.

The houses on our side have been emptied. Sometimes you still see local people in the houses on the other side.

In the evenings we go for a swim. Three women come walking along the canal bank. They walk slowly and they don’t look away, even though we aren’t wearing any trunks.

Leer shouts across to them. They laugh, and stop to have a look at us. We shout across any broken French that comes into our heads, all mixed-up and hurried, just so that they don’t go away. The things we shout are not exactly drawing-room pleasantries, but where would we have picked up that sort of vocabulary anyway?

One of the women is slim and dark. You can see her teeth gleaming when she laughs. Her movements are quick, and her skirt blows loosely against her legs. Even though it is cold in the water we are very excited and do our best to keep them interested, so that they don’t go away. We try jokes on them, and they answer us, even though we don’t understand. We laugh and wave. Tjaden has more sense. He runs back to our quarters, grabs an army-ration loaf and holds it up.

This has a great effect. They nod and beckon us to come across the canal. But we are not allowed to do that. The far side of the canal is strictly out of bounds. There are sentries on all the bridges. You can’t do anything without a pass. We make them understand that they should come over to us; but they shake their heads and point to the bridges. The sentries won’t let them through either.

They turn round and start to walk slowly along the canal, still keeping to the towpath. We swim along with them. After a couple of hundred yards they turn off and point to a house that is a bit apart, with trees and bushes round it. Leer asks if that is where they live.

They laugh – yes, that is their house.

We shout across that we’ll come when the sentries can’t see us. At night. Tonight.

They put their hands together, rest them against their cheeks and shut their eyes. They understood. The slim dark one does a few dance steps. A blonde girl trills, ‘Bread… good…’

We reassure them hurriedly that we will bring some with us. And other nice things as well – we roll our eyes and try to show them in sign language. Leer nearly drowns trying to indicate ‘some sausage’. If we had to, we would promise them an entire supply depot. Then they go, although they turn back and look at us several times. We climb on to the bank on our side of the canal and make sure that they go into the house, just in case they were tricking us. Then we swim back up the canal.

No one is allowed across the bridge without a permit, so we shall just have to swim over after dark. We are in a state of great excitement and it doesn’t subside. We can’t sit still and wait in one place, so we go to the canteen. They have beer in, and there is also some kind of punch.

We drink the punch and tell each other fantastic lies about our experiences. Everyone is happy to believe everyone else, and we all wait impatiently for our chance to trump the last story with an even taller one. We can’t keep our hands still, we smoke cigarette after cigarette until Kropp says, ‘I suppose we could take them a few cigarettes as well.’ Then we put them into our caps to save them.

The sky turns pale green, like an unripe apple. There are four of us, but only three can go – we have to get rid of Tjaden, so we buy him so much of the punch and so much rum that he is staggering. When it gets dark we go back to our quarters, Tjaden in the middle. We are hot and more than ready for the adventure. I’m having the slim, dark girl – we’ve already sorted that out.

Tjaden collapses on to his palliasse and starts to snore. At one point he wakes up and grins at us so wickedly that we get quite a fright in case he was just shamming, and we bought him all that punch for nothing. Then he falls back and goes to sleep again.

The three of us take a whole loaf each, and we wrap them in newspaper. We put the cigarettes in as well, and three good portions of the sausage we were given this evening. It’s a very respectable present.

For the moment we put all the stuff into our boots; we have to take boots with us so that we don’t step on barbed-wire or glass over on the other side. Since we have to swim first, we can’t take any other clothes. Anyway, it is dark, and we aren’t going far.

We set off, boots in hand. We slip quickly into the water, turn on to our backs and swim that way, holding the boots and their contents up over our heads.

We climb out carefully when we get to the other side, take out the packages, and put on our boots. We stick the things we’ve brought under our arms. And off we trot, wet, naked, wearing nothing but our boots. We find the house at once. It stands dark in the bushes. Leer trips over a tree root and takes the skin off his elbow. ‘Doesn’t matter,’ he says cheerfully.

There are shutters on the windows. We creep around the house and try to look through the gaps. Then we get a bit impatient. Kropp is suddenly hesitant, ‘What if some major is in there with them?’

‘Then we’ll just have to bugger off’ says Leer with a grin. ‘He can always read off our rank and number down here,’ and he smacks himself on the bottom.

The main door of the house is open. Our boots make a bit of a noise. A door opens and there is light, a woman gives a frightened scream. ‘Sssh, sssh,’ we say, ‘camarade, bon ami…’ and we lift up the packages in supplication.

By now we can see the other two as well, the door opens wide and we have the light on us. They recognize us, and all three of them collapse into fits of laughter at our get-up. They double up and hold their sides for laughing there in the doorway. How supple their movements are.

‘Un moment —’ They disappear and then throw us various bits and pieces of clothing and we wrap them round ourselves as best we can. Then they let us in. There is a small lamp burning in the room, it is warm, and smells a little of perfume. We unpack our parcels and hand them over to the girls. Their eyes shine, and you can see that they are hungry.

Then we all become a bit embarrassed. Leer mimes eating and things liven up again – they fetch plates and knives and fall upon the food. They hold every single slice of the sausage up to admire it before they eat it, and we sit there proudly watching them.

They babble away at us in their own language – we don’t understand a great deal, but we can hear that the words are friendly ones. Perhaps we look very young to them. The slim dark one strokes my hair and says what all French women always say – ‘La guerre – grand malheur – pauvres garcons…’

I catch her arm and press my mouth to her palm. Her fingers hold my face. Her fascinating eyes are above me, the pale brown of her skin, her red lips. From her mouth come words that I can’t understand. I can’t fully understand her eyes, either – they are saying more than we expected when we came here.

There are rooms nearby. As we go out, I catch sight of Leer, who is having a fine old time with the blonde. He knows what he is about, of course. But me – I am lost in feelings of remoteness and quiet turmoil, and I give way to them. My wishes are a curious mixture of desire and abandonment. I become dizzy – there is nothing here that I can hold on to. We left our boots at the door, and they gave us slippers, so that there is nothing there any more that could give me back the soldier’s confidence and boldness; no rifle, no belt, no battledress, no cap. I let myself sink into the unknown, let whatever will happen, happen – because in spite of everything, I am afraid.

The slim dark girl moves her eyebrows when she is thinking, but they are still when she talks. Even then, the sounds are sometimes not quite words and they die away or pass half-formed over me in an arc, a path, a comet. What have I ever known about all this – what do I know now? The words of this foreign tongue which I can barely understand lull me to sleep, down into a quietness in which the room dissolves, brown and dimly lit, and only her face above me is alive and clear.

There are so many different things you can see in a face, when only an hour ago it was still that of a stranger, but it now has taken on a tenderness that comes not from inside it, but from the night, the world and the blood – they seem to come together and shine out from it. The objects in the room are touched and transformed by it, they become special, and I can almost respect my own pale skin when the lamp shines on it and it is caressed by that cool, brown hand.

How different all this is from the business in the other-ranks’ brothels, the ones we have permission to visit and where you have to stand in long queues. I don’t want to think about them; but they come into my head anyway, and it gives me a jolt, because it’s possible that you can never get that sort of thing out of your mind.

But then I feel the lips of the slim, dark girl, and push myself against them, close my eyes and try as I do so to wipe it all out, the war and the horror and the pettiness, so that I can wake up young and happy. I think of the girl on the poster and I believe for a moment that my life depends on getting her – and so I press myself deeper into the arms that close around me, hoping that a miracle will happen.

Somehow or other we find ourselves all together again. Leer is very lively. We say our passionate goodbyes and slip on our boots. The night air cools our heated bodies. The poplars loom up huge in the darkness and make a rustling noise. The moon is in the sky and in the waters of the canal. We don’t run, we stride along side by side.

‘That was worth a loaf of bread,’ says Leer.

I can’t bring myself to speak. I don’t even feel happy.

Then we hear footsteps, and duck down behind a bush.

The steps come closer, right past us. We see a naked soldier wearing boots, just like us, galloping along with a parcel under his arm. It is Tjaden, going full steam ahead. He is already out of sight.

We laugh. He’ll curse us tomorrow.

We make it unnoticed back to our straw mattresses.

I’m called to the orderly room. The company commander gives me a leave pass and a travel pass and tells me to have a good journey. I have a look to see how much leave I’ve been given. Seventeen days – fourteen days’ leave and three for travelling. It isn’t enough, and I ask whether I can have five days’ travel time. Bertinck points to the leave pass and only then do I notice that I don’t have to come straight back to the front. When my leave period is up I have to report to a camp on the moors for a training course.

The others are envious. Kat gives me the sound advice that I ought to try and get a cushy job. ‘Play your cards right and you could stay there for the duration.’

As far as I’m concerned it would have been better to get leave in a week’s time, because that’s how long we are staying here, and it is good here —

Of course I have to stand drinks all round in the canteen. We are all a bit drunk and I get melancholy; I’ll be away for six weeks, and of course it is a great stroke of luck for me, but what will it be like when I come back? Will they all still be here? Haie and Kemmerich have gone already – who’s going to be next?

We have our drinks and I look at them all one after the other. Albert is sitting next to me and smoking, he is cheerful, we have always been together; Kat is perched opposite him, Kat with his rounded shoulders, broad fingers and calm voice; Muller with his buck teeth and braying laugh; Tjaden with his mousey eyes; Leer, who has grown a beard and looks as if he’s forty.

Thick smoke hovers over our heads. Where would the soldier be without tobacco? The canteen is a place of refuge, and beer is more than a drink, it is a sign that here you can stretch your limbs out without danger. And we do – our legs are stretched out before us, and we spit, companionably and vigorously. What an impression all this makes on you when you know you are going on leave the next day!

That night we go over to the other side of the canal again. I am almost afraid to tell the slim dark girl that I am going on leave and that, when I come back, we shall certainly be somewhere further on – so that we shan’t see each other again. But she just nods and doesn’t seem to react too much. I don’t understand properly at first, but then I get it. Leer is right. If I’d been sent to the front, then it would have been pauvre garcon again, but going on leave – they don’t want to know about that, it isn’t as interesting. Well, she can go to hell with her whispering and her words. You believe in a miracle, but really it just comes down to loaves of bread.

After I’ve been deloused the following morning I march off to the field rail-head. Albert and Kat come with me. When we get to the train stop we hear that it will be a few hours before I can leave. The other two have to go back because they are on duty. We say goodbye.

‘Look after yourself, Kat; look after yourself, Albert.’

They leave, waving a couple of times. Their figures get smaller. I know every step, every move they make, I would be able to recognize them miles away. Then they have gone.

I sit down on my pack and wait.

Suddenly I am full of a raging impatience to get away from here.

I bed down on any number of stations; I queue up at any number of canteens; I squat on any number of wooden train seats – but then the scenery outside becomes disturbing, mysterious and familiar. It sails past the window as evening falls, with villages in which thatched roofs have been pulled down like caps over whitewashed, half-timbered buildings, with wheatfields shimmering like mother-of-pearl in the slanting rays of the sun, with orchards and barns and old lime trees.

The names of the stations take on a familiarity which makes my heart beat faster. The train puffs and puffs, I stand by the window and hold on to the wooden frame. These names mark out the boundaries of my youth.

Level meadows, fields, farmyards; a lonely team of horses moves against the sky along a path parallel to the horizon. A level-crossing barrier with farm labourers waiting in front of it, girls waving, children playing on the embankment, tracks that lead off into the countryside, smooth pathways and no guns.

It is evening now, and if the train were not still puffing onwards, I should scream. The plain spreads out broadly, and in the distance the pale blue silhouette of the hills comes into sight. I can make out the lines of Dolbenberg Hill, it’s easy to recognize the jagged hilltop, which breaks off abruptly behind the crest of the trees. Behind that we’ll get to the town.

But now the red-gold sunlight floods across the world and blurs it all, the train rattles round one bend and then another; and in that light stands the long row of poplars, unreal, distorted and dark, one behind the other and far away, made out of shadow, light and longing.

Slowly the field rolls away past us, and the poplars with it. The train swings round them, narrowing the spaces between them until they become a block, and for a moment I can only see one single tree. Then the others emerge again from behind the first one, and they stay there for a long time, silhouetted and lonely against the sky, until they are hidden from sight by the first houses.

A level-crossing. I am standing at the window, unable to tear myself away. The others are already gathering their things together, ready to get off. I say the name of the street to myself as we cross it – Bremen Street – Bremen Street —

There are cyclists, cars, people down there, a grey street and a grey underpass – it embraces me as if it were my mother.

Then the train stops and we are in the station, with all its noise, shouts and signboards. I heave my pack on to my shoulders and do up the strap, get hold of my rifle and stumble down the steps of the train.

On the platform I glance around, but I don’t recognize any of the people as they hurry about. A Red Cross nurse offers me something to drink. I turn away, because she smiles at me so inanely, so full of her own importance: Look at me, everybody, I’m giving a soldier a cup of coffee. She even addresses me as her ‘comrade’ – and that really is the limit.

Outside the station the river is rushing along beside the street, hissing white over the weir by the mill bridge. The old square watch-tower is just there, with the huge, richly coloured lime tree in front of it, and the evening behind it.

We often used to sit here – how long ago that was – and we would walk across the bridge and breathe in the cool, stagnant smell of the water as it backed up; we leaned out over the calm water of the river on this side of the weir, where green weeds and algae clung to the buttresses; and on hot days we enjoyed the spray on the far side of the weir as we chatted about our teachers.

I cross the bridge, and look to the left and to the right; the water is still full of algae, and it still arches over the weir in bright spurts. In the tower itself, the laundry-women are still standing as they always did, with bare arms over the white washing, and the heat from their irons streams out through the open windows. Dogs trot along the narrow street, people are standing by their front doors, and they look at me as I go past, dirty and weighed down with my pack.

In that cafe we ate ice-creams and smoked our first cigarettes. I recognize every building in this street as I put them behind me – the grocer’s, the chemist’s, the baker’s. And then I am standing in front of the brown door with the worn-down handle, and my hand feels heavy. I open the door; the amazing coolness greets me, and my eyes can’t see clearly any more.

The stairs creak under my boots. Above me a door clicks open, someone looks over the banisters. It was the kitchen door that opened, they are in the middle of cooking potato pancakes, and you can smell them all through the house – of course, it’s Saturday evening, and that must be my sister bending over the stair-well. For a moment I feel ashamed and hang my head; then I take off my helmet and look up. Yes, it is my eldest sister.

‘Paul —’ she shouts, ‘Paul —’

I nod, my pack bangs against the banisters, my rifle is so heavy.

She throws the door open and shouts, ‘Mother, Mother, it’s Paul —’

I can’t go on. Mother, Mother, it’s Paul.

I lean against the wall and grip my helmet and my rifle. I grip them as hard as I can, but I can’t move another step, the staircase blurs before my eyes, I thump my rifle-butt against my foot and grit my teeth in anger, but I am powerless against that one word that my sister has just spoken, nothing has any power against it. I try with all my might to force myself to laugh and to speak, but I can’t manage a single word, and so I stand there on the stairs, wretched and helpless, horribly paralysed and I can’t help it, and tears and more tears are running down my face.

My sister comes back and asks, ‘What’s the matter?’

This makes me pull myself together, and I stumble up to our landing. I lean my rifle in a corner, put my pack down against the wall and prop my steel helmet on top of it. The webbing and the bits and pieces have to go, too. Then I say furiously, ‘Well give me a handkerchief then, can’t you?’

She gets one from the cupboard for me and I wipe my face. On the wall above me hangs the glass case with the butterflies I used to collect.

Now I hear my mother’s voice coming from the bedroom.

‘Isn’t she up?’ I ask my sister.

‘She’s ill —’ she answers.

I go in to see her, give her my hand and say as calmly as I can, ‘Here I am, Mother.’

She is lying still in the semi-darkness. Then she asks me anxiously – and I can feel how her eyes are searching over me – ‘Have you been wounded?’

‘No, I’m on leave.’

My mother is very pale. I don’t dare put on the light. ‘And there I am lying here crying,’ she says, ‘instead of being pleased.’

‘Are you ill, Mother?’ I ask.

‘I shall get up for a little while today,’ she says, and turns to my sister, who is constantly ready to pop into the kitchen so that the food doesn’t burn. ‘Open the jar of cranberry sauce – you like that, don’t you?’ she asks me.

‘Yes, Mother. I haven’t had that for a long time.’

‘It’s as if we guessed you would be coming,’ laughs my sister, ‘just when it’s your favourite food, potato pancakes, and now we’ll even have cranberries with them.’

‘Well, it is Saturday,’ I answer.

‘Sit down by me,’ says my mother.

She looks at me. Her hands are white and sickly looking, and thin, compared to mine. We speak little, and I am grateful that she doesn’t enquire about anything. What would I be able to say, anyway? That everything that could happen has happened? I am out of it, I’m in one piece and I’m sitting beside her. And in the kitchen my sister is getting supper ready and singing while she does so.

‘My dear son,’ says my mother softly.

We have never been a very demonstrative family – poor people who have to work hard and cope with problems very rarely are. They can’t really understand that sort of thing either, and they don’t like constantly going on about things that are perfectly obvious. If my mother says ‘my dear son’ to me, that is just as valid as somebody else making heaven knows what kind of flowery speech. I know for sure that the jar of cranberries is the only one they have been able to find for months, and that they have kept it specially for me, just like the slightly stale biscuits that she gives me now. I’m sure that she will have got hold of them by chance at some time, and put them aside for me straightaway.

I sit beside her bed and through the window the chestnut trees in the garden of the inn opposite flash gold and brown. I breathe slowly in and out and say to myself, ‘You are home, you are home.’ But there is an awkwardness that will not leave me, I can’t get used to everything yet. There is my mother, there is my sister, there is the glass case with my butterflies, there is the mahogany piano – but I am not quite there myself yet. There is a veil and a few steps between me and them.

And so I go out and fetch my pack, bring it to the bed and get out the things I have brought back for them: a whole Edam cheese that Kat conjured up for me, two army-issue loaves, three-quarters of a pound of butter, two cans of liver sausage, a pound of lard and a bag of rice.

‘I’m sure you can do with these —’

They nod.

‘Things are pretty bad here?’ I ask.

‘Yes, there isn’t much to be had. Do you get enough out there?’

I smile and point to the things I’ve brought. ‘It isn’t always as much as that, but we still manage.’

Erna takes the food away. Suddenly my mother grips my hand and asks hesitantly, ‘Was it very bad out there, Paul?’

Mother, what kind of an answer can I give you? You won’t understand and never will. And I don’t want you to. Was it bad, you ask – you, Mother. I shake my head and say, ‘No, Mother, not really. After all, there are lots of us together, and that means that it isn’t so bad.’

‘Yes, but a little while ago Heinrich Bredemeyer was here, and he told us stories of how terrible it is out there now, with the gas and all the rest of it.’

It is my mother saying these things. She says ‘with the gas and all the rest of it’. She doesn’t know what she is saying, she is just afraid for me. Should I tell her how we once found three enemy trenches, where everyone was fixed and rigid as they stood, as if they’d been struck like it? On the parapets, in the dugouts, wherever they happened to be, they were standing or lying with their faces blue, dead.

‘Oh, Mother, they say all sorts of things,’ I reply, ‘Bredemeyer was just spinning a yarn. You can see, I’m in one piece and I’ve put on weight.’

Faced with my mother’s anxious concern for me, I manage to get a grip on my own emotions. I’m able to walk about again, and talk, and answer questions without being afraid of suddenly having to support myself against the wall because the whole world has turned as soft as rubber and my veins as fragile as tinder.

My mother wants to get up, so while she does so I go out into the kitchen to talk to my sister. ‘What’s wrong with her?’

She shrugs. ‘She’s already been in bed for a couple of months now, but we weren’t to write and tell you. She’s seen a few doctors. One of them told us that it’s probably cancer.’

I go along to district HQ to report. I wander slowly through the streets. Occasionally people stop and have a word with me. I don’t stay for long, because I don’t feel like talking too much.

When I come out of the barracks a loud voice shouts at me. Still lost in thought I turn round and find myself free to face with a major. He bawls me out: ‘Forgotten how to salute?’

‘I’m sorry, Major,’ I say, still confused, ‘I didn’t see you.’

His voice gets even louder. ‘Can’t you even address an officer properly?’

What I’d really like to do is hit him in the face, but I control myself or else my leave will be done for, put my heels together and say, ‘My apologies, sir, I am afraid I did not see you, sir.’

‘Then be so good as to keep your eyes open,’ he snaps. ‘What’s your name?’

I tell him.

His fat red face still has outrage written all over it. ‘Regiment?’

I respond in the prescribed military manner. He still isn’t satisfied. ‘Where are you stationed?’

But now I’ve had enough, and say, ‘Somewhere between Langemarck and Bixschoote.’

‘What do you mean?’ he asks, bewildered.

I explain to him that I have just arrived on leave an hour ago, and I imagine that now he will push off, but I am mistaken. He gets even angrier. ‘I suppose you think that’s acceptable, bringing your front-line manners back here! Never! Good discipline is still the order of the day here, thank God!’

Then he gives me the order: ‘Twenty paces back, at the double!’ A dull rage is seething inside me. But I can’t do anything against him – he could have me arrested on the spot if he wanted. So I double back, march forward and half a dozen yards from him I give him a parade-ground salute, and don’t take my hand away until I am another six yards past him.

He calls me back and informs me generously that on this occasion he has decided to temper justice with mercy. Still standing at attention, I indicate gratitude. ‘Dismiss,’ he orders. I do a smart about face and leave.

This spoils the evening for me. I get off home and throw my uniform into a corner – I was going to do that anyway. Then I get my civilian suit out of the wardrobe and put it on.

I’ve got out of the habit of wearing it. The suit is a bit short and a bit tight – I’ve put on some weight in the army. I have trouble fixing the collar and tying the tie. In the end my sister knots it for me. And how lightweight this suit feels. You think you are only wearing your shirt and underpants.

I look at myself in the mirror. It’s a strange sight. Looking back in bewilderment at me is a tanned and overgrown sixteen-year-old on his way to church for his confirmation.

My mother is pleased that I am wearing civvies; it makes me look more like my old self to her. My father would have preferred me to wear my uniform, though, because he would like to take me to see his friends dressed like that.

But I refuse.

It is good to be able to sit somewhere quietly, as we can in the garden of the inn opposite, under the chestnut trees, next to the skittle alley. The leaves are falling, on to the table and on to the ground, but only a few, the first. I’ve a glass of beer in front of me – we learned to drink in the army. The glass is half empty, so that I have a few good, cool pulls yet, and besides, I can order a second or a third if I like. There’s no roll call and no heavy fire, the owner’s children are playing in the skittle alley and the dog comes and rests its head on my lap. The sky is blue and the green spire of St Margaret’s church rises up between the leaves of the chestnut trees.

All this is good, and I love it. But I can’t get on with the people. The only one who doesn’t ask me questions is my mother. With my father it is different. He’d like me to tell him a bit about what it is like out there: what he wants is both touching and silly, and I have no real relationship with him any more. What he would really like best is a constant flow of stories. I can see that he has no idea that these things can’t be put into words, although I’d like to do something to please him. But it would be dangerous for me to try and put it all into words, and I’m worried that it might get out of hand and I couldn’t control it any more. Where would we be if everybody knew exactly what was going on out there at the front?

And so I limit myself to telling him a few funny bits. Then he asks me whether I’ve ever been in hand-to-hand fighting. I say that I haven’t, and get up to leave.

That doesn’t help matters, though. In the street, after I’ve had a couple of shocks because the screeching of the trams sounds like a shell coming towards me, someone taps me on the shoulder. It is my German master, who lets fire with all the usual questions: ‘Now, what’s it like out there? Rough, I’ll be bound, rough? Yes, it’s terrible, but we have to stand firm. And after all, at least you’re all fed well out there, I hear. You look good, Paul, fit. Naturally, things are worse here, of course they are, goes without saying, our soldiers always come first.’

He drags me off to his local bar. I am greeted with great enthusiasm and one of the assistant headmasters shakes my hand and says, ‘Well, you’re just back from the front? How’s morale out there? Pretty good, pretty good, eh?’ I explain that everyone would like to come home. He gives a great roar of laughter. ‘I bet they do! But first of all you’ve got to wallop those Froggies. Do you smoke? Here, have one of these, my dear fellow. Waiter, a beer for our young warrior.’

Unfortunately I have accepted the cigar, so I have to stay. Every one of them oozes goodwill, and there’s nothing to be done. All the same I’m irritated, and puff away as fast as I can. Just for something to do I toss down a glass of beer in one gulp. Another is ordered for me immediately; everyone knows what they owe to the soldiers. They are arguing about what we ought to annex. The assistant headmaster, who has sacrificed his gold watch-chain to the war effort and is wearing an iron one, wants the most: all of Belgium, the French coalfields and great tracts of Russia. He gives very precise reasons why we need them, and insists on his point of view until the others eventually give way and agree with him. And then he starts to explain where the breakthrough has to be made in France; in the middle of it he turns to me and says, ‘You lads out there should hurry up a bit with your eternal trench fighting. Just chuck ’em out, and the war will be over.’

I tell him that the soldiers think a breakthrough is impossible. The other side simply has too much in the way of reserves. Besides, the war is really not like people imagine it.

He dismisses this in a superior manner and makes quite clear to me that I don’t know what is going on. ‘Yes, of course, the individual soldier thinks that, but you have to look at the whole thing,’ he says, ‘and there you just can’t make a judgement. You can only see your own small sector, and therefore you have no overview. You are doing your duty, you are risking your life, and that deserves every honour – every one of you should get the Iron Cross – but first and foremost the enemy front in Flanders has to be broken through and then rolled up from the top downwards.’

He snorts and wipes his beard. ‘Rolled up completely, that’s what’s got to happen, from the top down to the bottom. And then on to Paris.’

I’d like to know how he thinks it can be done, and I toss back the third glass of beer. He orders another one for me immediately.

But I leave. He tucks a few more cigars into my pocket and sends me off with a friendly slap on the shoulder. ‘All the best! And let’s hope that we soon get some proper news from you lads.’

I really imagined that leave would be different. A year ago it actually was different. I suppose I’m the one who has changed in the meantime. A great gulf has opened up between then and now. I didn’t know then what the war was really like – we had only been in quiet sectors. Now I can see that I have become more brittle without realizing it. I can’t come to terms with things here any more, it’s another world. Some people ask questions, others don’t, and you can see that they are pleased with themselves for not asking; quite often they even say with an understanding look on their faces that it’s impossible to talk about it all. They make a big thing of it.

I like being alone best, with no one to disturb me. Because everyone always comes round to the same topic of conversation, how badly things are going, how well they are going, one thinks this way, the next person the other way – and they quickly get on to the things that make up their own worlds. I’m sure that I was just like them myself, before; but now I can’t find any real point of contact.

They just talk too much. They have problems, goals, desires that I can’t see in the same way as they do. Sometimes I sit with one of them in the little garden of the pub and try to get the point across that this is everything – just sitting in the quiet. Of course they understand, they agree, they think the same way, but it’s only talk, only talk, that’s the point – they do feel it, but always only with half of their being, a part of them is always thinking of something else. They are so fragmented, no one feels it with his whole life; anyway, it is impossible for me to put what I mean into proper words.

When I take a look at them, in their rooms, in their offices, in their jobs, then I find it all irresistibly attractive, and I want to be part of it too, and forget the war. But at the same time it repulses me, it is so restricted, how can that fill a whole life, it deserves to be smashed to bits, how can things be like that when shrapnel is whizzing over the trenches out there and the Verey lights are going up, the wounded are being dragged back on tarpaulins and the lads are taking cover in the trenches? These people here are different, a kind I can’t really understand, that I envy and despise. I keep thinking of Kat and Albert and Muller and Tjaden – what are they up to? Perhaps they are sitting in the canteen, or swimming – and soon they’ll have to go up the line again.

In my room there is a brown leather sofa behind the table. That is where I sit.

There are lots of pictures pinned to the walls, pictures I once cut out of magazines. Postcards and drawings that took my fancy, too. In the corner there is a small iron stove. On the wall facing me are the shelves with my books.

I lived in this room before I became a soldier. I bought the books one at a time with money I earned by tutoring, lots of them second-hand, all the classics, for example, and each volume cost me a decent amount, hardbacks, in stiff blue cloth. I bought complete works, because I was thorough, and I didn’t trust the editors of selections to have chosen the best. So I only bought ‘Complete Works’. I read them with zeal and honesty, but most of them did not really appeal to me. I got so much more from the other books, from modem literature, and those books were much dearer, too. I came by a few of them in a less than honourable fashion – I borrowed them and never returned them because I couldn’t bear to part with them.

One shelf is frill of school books. I didn’t take care of them and they are very dog-eared. Pages have also been torn out – for various reasons. And below them are stacked exercise books, paper and letters, drawings and essays.

I try to think myself back into that time. It is still there in the room, I can feel it at once, the walls have preserved it. My hands are lying on the back of the sofa; now I make myself comfortable, tuck my legs in and sit easily, cradled in the sofa’s arms. The little window is open, and shows me the familiar view of the street with the church spire looming up at the end. There are a few flowers on the table. Pens, pencils, a shell for a paperweight, the inkwell – nothing here has changed.

It will be just like this, if I am lucky, when the war is over and I come home for good. I shall sit here, the same as before, and look at my room, and wait.

I feel agitated; but I don’t want to be, because it isn’t right. I want to get that quiet rapture back, feel again, just as before, that fierce and unnamed passion I used to feel when I looked at my books. Please let the wind of desire that rose from the multi-coloured spines of those books catch me up again, let it melt the heavy, lifeless lead weight that is there somewhere inside me, and awaken in me once again the impatience of the future, the soaring delight in the world of the intellect – let it carry me back into the ready-for-anything lost world of my youth.

I sit and I wait.

I remember that I have to go and see Kemmerich’s mother; I could visit Mittelstaedt as well, he must be at the barracks. I look out of the window. Behind the sunny street scene you can see the line of the hills, indistinct and pale, and it merges into a bright autumn day and I’m sitting with Kat and Albert by a fire eating baked potatoes in their jackets.

But I don’t want to think about that, and I push the thought away. Let the room speak, let it take me up and carry me along, I want to feel that I belong here and I want to listen, so that when I have to go back to the front I shall know this: the war will sink and drown when the wave of our homecoming sweeps across it, the war will be over, it will not devour us, it has no real power over us, its hold on us is only a superficial one.

The spines of the books stand side by side. I know them all, and I remember putting them in order. With my eyes I implore them: speak to me – take me up – take me up again, you old life – you carefree, wonderful life – take me up again —

I wait, wait.

Pictures flash past, they don’t fix themselves, they are just shadows and memories.

Nothing – nothing.

My impatience grows.

Suddenly a terrible feeling of isolation wells up inside me. I can’t get back, I’m locked out; however much I might plead, however much I try, nothing moves, and I sit there as wretched as a condemned man and the past turns away from me. At the same time I am frightened of conjuring it up too much because I don’t know what would happen then. I am a soldier. I have to cling to that.

I get up wearily and look out of the window. Then I take one of the books and flick through it to try and read. I put it aside and take up another one. There are passages in it that I have marked. I look through it, flick through the pages, take out more books. There is already a pile beside me. Others join it, more quickly now – single sheets of paper, exercise books, letters.

I stand silent in front of them, as if I were on trial.

Dispirited.

Words, words, words – they can’t reach me.

Slowly I put the books back in their places on the shelves.

It’s over.

I leave the room quietly.

But I don’t give up yet. Although I don’t go and sit in my room again I tell myself by way of comfort that a couple of days aren’t the be-all and the end-all. I’ll have time afterwards – later on, years of it – for all this. Meanwhile I go and visit Mittelstaedt at the barracks and we sit in his room, which has an atmosphere I don’t like, but which I am used to.

Mittelstaedt has a bit of news for me which galvanizes me at once. He tells me that Kantorek has been called up for the Home Guard. ‘Just think of it,’ he says, and fetches a couple of good cigars, ‘I come straight out of the military hospital and walk right into him. He sticks out his hand and squeaks, “Well, if it isn’t Mittelstaedt, how’s it going, my boy?” I give him a stare and I tell him, “Home Guardsman Kantorek, duty is duty and pleasure is pleasure, you of all people should know that, guardsman! Stand up straight when you speak to a superior.” You should have seen his face! A cross between a pickled gherkin and a dud shell! He had another little go at being familiar. This time I bawled him out even harder. Then he brought up his big guns and asked me confidentially, “Would you like me to arrange for you to take the school-leaving exam under the special regulations?” He wanted to remind me, see? Then I got really angry and thought I’d do a bit of reminding too. “Home Guardsman Kantorek,” I said, “two years ago your sermonizing drove us all to enlist; Josef Behm as well, and he didn’t really want to go. He was killed three months before he would have been conscripted. Without you, he would have waited until then. Now: dismiss! I shall be speaking to you again.” It was no problem getting myself assigned to his company, and the first thing I did was take him down to the stores and make sure his kit is really special. You’ll soon see.’

We go out on to the parade-ground. The company has fallen in. Mittelstaedt has them stand at ease, and inspects them.

Then I spot Kantorek and have to bite my lip to stop myself laughing. He is wearing a kind of faded blue battle-dress tunic. There are great dark patches sewn on to the back and the sleeves. That battledress must have belonged to a giant. The frayed black trousers make up for it, though; they only reach halfway down his calf. Then again, his boots are more than big enough, ancient beetle-crushers with tumed-up toecaps, still laced at the side. By way of compensation his cap is too small, a dreadful, grubby, miserable little scrap of cloth. The whole picture is pitiful.

Mittelstaedt stops in front of him. ‘Home Guardsman Kantorek, do you call those buttons polished? You never seem to learn. Far from satisfactory, Kantorek, far from satisfactory —’

Inwardly I am roaring with delight. At school Kantorek used to criticize Mittelstaedt in exactly the same tone of voice: ‘Far from satisfactory, Mittelstaedt —’

Mittelstaedt continues his disapproving comments. ‘You ought to take a lesson from Boettcher, his turn-out is an example, you might learn something from him.’

I can scarcely believe my eyes. Yes, Boettcher is there as well, Boettcher, the school janitor. And he really is exemplary. Kantorek shoots me a look as if he would like to eat me alive. But I just grin harmlessly right at him, as if I haven’t recognized him at all.

How stupid he looks with his little cap and his uniform. And once upon a time we used to be terrified of a creature like that, when he was perched on the teacher’s chair and prodding us with his pencil while we were learning the French irregular verbs that were not of the slightest use to us later on in France. It’s still barely two years ago – and now here is Home Guardsman Kantorek, with all the mystique rudely stripped away, bow-legged, with arms like pot-handles, his buttons badly polished and looking ridiculous, a quite impossible soldier. I can’t reconcile him with that threatening figure at the front of the class, and I would really like to know how I would react if this miserable scarecrow were ever allowed suddenly to ask me, an old soldier, ‘Baumer, give me the imperfect of aller…’

For the moment, Mittelstaedt has them practise skirmishing. For this he graciously appoints Kantorek platoon leader.

Thereby hangs a tale. In skirmishing, you see, the platoon leader always has to be twenty paces ahead of his men; so if the order comes ‘At the double, about turn!’ the skirmishing line just has to about face, but the platoon leader, who is now suddenly twenty paces behind the line has to rush forward so that he gets twenty paces in front of the men. That makes forty paces altogether at the double. But hardly has he got there when the order comes ‘At the double, about turn!’ and he has to belt forty paces across to the other side as quickly as he can. In all this the group merely carries out a few steps and a leisurely about face, while the platoon leader is rushing about like a fart in a colander. The whole manoeuvre is one of Himmelstoss’s tried and tested recipes.

Kantorek can’t expect anything else from Mittelstaedt, because he once made sure that he failed the end-of-year exams and was kept back a year, and Mittelstaedt would be daft not to make the most of this opportunity before he is sent back to the front. Perhaps you really do die a bit more easily if the army gives you a chance like that just once in a while.

Meanwhile Kantorek is scurrying backwards and forwards like a stuck pig. After a while Mittelstaedt tells them to stop, and he begins the terribly important exercise of crawling. Holding his rifle in the regulation manner, Kantorek drags his incredible shape on his elbows and knees through the sand right in front of us. He is panting heavily, and that panting is music to our ears.

Mittelstaedt encourages him by offering Kantorek-the-Home-Guardsman comforting quotations from Kantorek-the-School-master. ‘Home Guardsman Kantorek, we are fortunate to be living in a time of greatness, and so we need to pull ourselves together and learn to overcome misfortunes.’

Kantorek spits out a dirty scrap of wood that has managed to get in between his teeth and sweats.

Mittelstaedt leans down to him and assures him with great fervour, ‘And in the face of trivialities we must never lose sight of the greater experience, Home Guardsman Kantorek!’

I’m only surprised that Kantorek doesn’t explode with a great bang, especially since they now move on to PE, during which Mittelstaedt does a wonderful Kantorek imitation by grabbing hold of the seat of his trousers during an exercise on the horizontal bar, so that he can lift his chin up straight over the bar itself, all accompanied by a constant flow of pearls of wisdom. That’s exactly what Kantorek used to do to him in the old days.

After this they are detailed for further duties. ‘Kantorek and Boettcher – fetching the bread supply! Take the handcart!’

A couple of minutes later the pair of them set off with the handcart. Kantorek, who is furious, keeps his head well down. The janitor is quite happy, because he’s only got light duty.

The bakery is at the other end of town. They have to cross the whole town twice.

‘They’ve been doing it for a few days now,’ grins Mittelstaedt. ‘People are already starting to wait specially, so that they can see them.’

‘Fantastic,’ I say, ‘but hasn’t he put in a complaint?’

‘He tried. Our commanding officer laughed like a drain when he heard the story. He can’t stand schoolmasters. Besides, I’m going out with his daughter.’

‘He’ll mess up the exam for you.’

‘Who cares?’ says Mittelstaedt calmly. ‘And in any case the complaint he made couldn’t be upheld because I was able to show that he mostly had light duties.’

‘Couldn’t you really hammer him for once?’ I ask.

‘No, he’s too much of a weed for that,’ replies Mittelstaedt in a spirit of chivalry and generosity.

What is leave? Just a deviation that makes everything afterwards that much harder to take. Already the idea of saying goodbye is creeping in. My mother looks at me without saying anything. I know she is counting the days – every morning she is unhappy. It’s already a day less. She has tidied my pack away somewhere because she doesn’t want to be reminded by it.

The hours pass quickly when you are brooding. I try to shake it off and go out with my sister. She’s going to the slaughterhouse to get a few pounds of bones. These are highly prized, and early in the morning people are already queueing to get some. A good few of them faint.

We are out of luck. After we have taken it in turns to stand there for three hours, the queue disperses. The supply of bones has run out.

It’s a good job that I can draw my rations. I take some of my stuff to my mother, and that way we all get food that is a bit more nourishing.

The days get harder and harder, my mother’s eyes get sadder and sadder. Four days left. I have to go and see Kemmerich’s mother.

It would be impossible to put it down on paper. That trembling, sobbing woman shaking me and screaming, ‘Why are you still alive when he’s dead?’ and then weeping all over me and shouting, ‘Why are you out there at all – you’re just children —’ until she sinks down into a chair, still crying, and asks, ‘Did you see him? Did you see him then? How did he die?’

I tell her that he was shot through the heart and killed instantaneously. She looks at me doubtfully: ‘You’re lying. I know better. I know what a hard death he had. I heard his voice, I felt his terror in the night – tell me the truth, I want to know, I have to know.’

‘No,’ I say, ‘I was right next to him. He was killed outright.’

She begs me, softly now, ‘Tell me. You must. I know you just want to make me feel better, but can’t you see that you are hurting me more than if you told the truth? I can’t stand the uncertainty, tell me how it was, no matter how horrible. It will still be better than what I shall have to think otherwise.’

I shall never tell her, she’d have to make mincemeat out of me first. I’m sorry for her, but it also strikes me that she’s being a bit stupid. Why can’t she just accept it, Kemmerich is still dead whether she knows or not. When you have seen so many dead men you can’t really see the point of so much grief about a single one of them any more. So I tell her rather impatiently, ‘He died instantly. He didn’t feel a thing. His face was quite calm.’

She doesn’t say anything. Then she says, slowly, ‘Do you swear to that?’

‘Yes.’

‘By everything you hold sacred?’

God, is there anything I hold sacred? You soon change your views on that sort of thing where we are.

‘Yes, he died instantly.’

‘And may you not come back yourself if you haven’t told the truth?’

‘May I not come back myself if he didn’t die instantly.’

I would swear by anything in the world. But she seems to believe me. She sighs heavily, and cries for a long time. She wants me to tell her how it was, so I invent a story that by now I almost believe myself.

When I leave, she kisses me and gives me a photograph of him. He’s in his recruit’s uniform, leaning against a round table, the legs of which are rustic birch branches, and there is a painted forest as a background. The table has a beer tankard on it.

It’s the last evening at home. Nobody is much inclined to talk. I go to bed early, get hold of my pillow, hold tight to it and put my head into it. Who knows when I shall be lying in a feather bed again?

My mother comes into my room, very late. She thinks I am asleep and I pretend that I am. It would be just too hard to talk, to be awake together.

She sits there until it is nearly morning, although she is in pain and is often bent double with it. In the end I can’t take it any longer and pretend to wake up.

‘Go to bed, Mother, you’ll catch cold sitting here.’

‘I’ll have plenty of time to sleep later,’ she replies.

I sit up. ‘I don’t have to go straight back to the front, Mother. I’ve got four weeks in camp first. When I’m there I might be able to come over one Sunday.’

She says nothing. Then she asks softly, ‘Are you very frightened?’

‘No, Mother.’

‘I wanted to say something else to you. Be careful of those French women. They’re no good, those women out there.’

Oh Mother, Mother, to you I’m still a child – why can’t I just put my head in your lap and cry? Why do I always have to be the stronger and calmer one? I’d like to be able to weep for once and be comforted, and anyway I’m really not much more than a child – the short trousers I wore as a boy are still hanging in the wardrobe. It was such a little while ago, why did it pass?

I say, as calmly as I can, ‘There aren’t any women where we are stationed, Mother.’

‘And make sure you take good care when you are at the front, Paul.’

Oh Mother, Mother! Why don’t I take you in my arms and die with you? What wretched creatures we are!

‘Yes, Mother, I’ll take care.’

‘I shall pray for you every day, Paul.’

Oh Mother, Mother! Why can’t we get up and go away from here, back through the years, until all this misery has vanished from us, back to when it was just you and me, Mother?

‘Maybe you can get a posting that won’t be so dangerous.’

‘Yes, Mother. It’s quite possible they will put me in the kitchens.’

‘You take a job like that, whatever the others say —’

‘I’m not worried about what people say, Mother —’

She sighs. Her face is a pale glow in the darkness.

‘You really must go to bed now, Mother.’

She doesn’t answer. I get up and put my bedspread around her shoulders. She holds on to my arm and she is in pain. I take her across and stay with her for a little while. ‘You have to get better by the time I come back, Mother.’

‘Yes, son, yes.’

‘You really mustn’t send me your rations, Mother. We get enough to eat out there. You need it more here.’

How wretched she looks, lying there in bed, this woman who loves me more than anything in the world. When I’m just about to go she says quickly, ‘I got hold of two pairs of underpants for you. They are good quality wool. They’ll keep you warm. You mustn’t forget to pack them.’

Oh Mother, I know what these two pairs of underpants have cost you in queueing and running around and begging! Oh Mother, Mother, it is quite incomprehensible that I have to leave you! Who has more right to have me here than you? I’m still sitting here and you are still lying there, and there are so many things we should say to each other, but we shall never be able to. ‘Goodnight, Mother.’

‘Goodnight, Son.’

The room is dark. My mother’s breathing is uneven. Meanwhile the clock ticks. There is a breeze outside the windows. The chestnut trees are rustling.

In the vestibule I stumble over my pack, which they have got ready for me, because I have to leave very early in the morning.

I bury my head in my pillow, I clench my fists round the iron uprights on my bedstead. I should never have come home. Out there I was indifferent, and a lot of the time I was completely without hope – I can never be like that again. I was a soldier, and now it is all suffering, for myself, for my mother, for everything, because it is all so hopeless and never-ending.

I should never have come home on leave.