The Train Was On Time Part 2

"Yes," was all he said. Then he stood up and cut the wire so they could get out right there. Andreas had the least luggage, just his pack, which was very light now that the heavy air-raid sandwiches had all been eaten. He had only a shirt and a pair of socks and some writing paper and his flask, which was always empty, and his steel helmet, since he had left his rifle behind in Paul's clothes closet where it stood propped up behind the raincoat.

The blond fellow had a Luftwaffe rucksack and a suitcase, and the bearded soldier had two cartons and a knapsack; both men also had pistols. Stepping out into the sunshine, they saw for the first time that the bearded soldier was a sergeant. The dull braid showed up now against his gray collar. The platform was deserted, the place looked like a freight yard. To the right lay army huts, hut after hut, delousing huts, cookhouse huts, recreation huts, dormitory huts, and no doubt a brothel hut where everything was guaranteed fully sanitary. Huts wherever you looked, but they walked to the left, way over to the left where there was a dead, overgrown track and an overgrown loading ramp by a fir tree. There they lay down, and in the sunshine behind the army huts they could see the old towers of Przemysl on the River San.

The bearded soldier did not sit down. He merely set his baggage on the ground and said: "I'll go and pick up our rations and find out when the train leaves for Lvov, eh? You fellows try and get some sleep." He took their leave pa.s.ses and disappeared very slowly down the platform. He ambled along at a terribly slow, maddeningly slow, pace, and they saw that his blue work pants were soiled, full of stains and torn places as if from barbed wire; he walked very slowly, with almost a rolling gait, and from a distance he might have been taken for a sailor.

It was noon, very hot, and the shade of the fir tree was already drenched with heat, a dry shade without gentleness. The blond fellow had spread out his blanket, and they lay with their heads on their packs, looking toward the city across the hot steaming roofs of all those army huts. At some point the bearded soldier vanished between two huts, walking as if he didn't care where he was going....

Alongside another platform stood a train about to leave for Germany. The locomotive already had steam up, and bareheaded soldiers were looking out of the windows. Why don't I get on, thought Andreas, it's really very odd. Why don't I find a seat in that train and go back to the Rhine? Why don't I buy myself a leave pa.s.s in this country where you can buy anything, and go back to Paris, the Gare Montparna.s.se, and comb the streets, one by one, hunt through every house and look for one little tender gesture from the hands that must belong to those eyes? Five million, that's one eighth, why shouldn't she be among them...why don't I go to Amiens, to the house with the pierced brick wall, and put a bullet through my head at the spot where her gaze, very close and tender, true and deep, rested in my soul for a quarter of a second? But these thoughts were as leaden as his legs. It felt great to stretch your legs, your legs got longer and longer, and he felt as though he could stretch them all the way to Przemysl.

They lay there smoking, sluggish and weary as only men can be who have been sleeping and sitting in a cramped railway car.

The sun had made a wide arc by the time Andreas awoke. The bearded soldier still was not back. The blond fellow was awake and smoking.

The train for Germany had left, but already there was another train for Germany standing there, and from the large delousing hut on the other side emerged gray figures with their parcels and knapsacks, rifles slung around their necks, bound for Germany. One of them started running, then three ran, then ten, then they were all running, b.u.mping into one another, knocking parcels out of hands...and the whole gray weary wretched column of men was running because one of them had begun to panic....

"Where did you put the map?" asked the blond fellow. These were the first words spoken by either of them in a long while.

Andreas pulled the map out of his tunic pocket, unfolded it, and sat up, spreading it out on his knees. His eyes went to where Galicia was, but the blond fellow's finger was lying much farther to the south and east, it was a long, shapely finger, with fine hair on it, a finger that not even the dirt had deprived of any of its good breeding.

"There," he said, "that's where I'm heading. With any luck it'll take me another ten days." His finger with its flat, still glossy, blue-sheened nail filled the whole bay between Odessa and the Crimea. The edge of the nail lay beside Nikolayev.

"Nikolayev?" Andreas asked.

"No," the blond fellow winced, and his nail slid lower down, and Andreas noticed that he was staring at the map but seeing nothing and thinking of something else. "No," said the blond fellow. "Ochakov. I'm with the antiaircraft; before that we were in Anapa, in the Kuban, you know, but we got out of there. And now it's Ochakov.

Suddenly the two men looked at one another. For the first time in the forty-eight hours they had been cooped up together, they looked at one another. They had played cards together by the hour, drunk and eaten and slept leaning against each other, but now for the first time they looked at one another. A strangely repellent, whitish-gray, slimy film coated the blond fellow's eyes. To Andreas it looked as though the man's gaze were piercing the faint first scab that closes over a festering wound. Now all at once he realized what that repulsive aura was which emanated from this man who at one time, when his eyes were still clear, must have been handsome, fair and slender with well-bred hands. So that's it, thought Andreas.

"Yes," said the blond fellow very quietly, "that's it," as if he realized what Andreas was thinking. He went on speaking, his voice quiet, uncannily quiet. "That's it. He seduced me, that sergeant major. I'm totally corrupted now, rotten to the core, life holds no more pleasure for me, not even eating, it just looked as if I enjoyed that, I eat automatically, I drink automatically, I sleep automatically. It's not my fault, they corrupted me!" he cried, then his voice subsided again.

"For six weeks we lay in a gun emplacement, way up along the Sivash River...not a house in sight...not even a broken wall. Marshes, water...willow shrubs...and the Russians flew over it when they wanted to attack our planes flying from Odessa to the Crimea. For six weeks we lay there. Words can't describe it. We were just one cannon with six men and the sergeant major. Not a living soul for miles. Our food supplies were trucked in as far as the edge of the marsh, and we had to pick them up from there and carry them across log-walks to our emplacement; the rations were always for two weeks, no shortage of grub. Eating was the only break in the monotony, that and catching fish and chasing mosquitoes...those fantastic swarms of mosquitoes, I don't know why we didn't go out of our minds. The sergeant major was like an animal. Filth poured from his mouth all day long, those first few days, and his eating habits were foul. Meat and fat, hardly any bread." A terrible sigh was wrenched from his breast: "Any man who doesn't eat bread is a hopeless case, I tell you. Yes...." Terrible silence, while the sun stood golden and warm and fair over Przemysl.

"My G.o.d," he groaned, "so he seduced us, what else is there to say? We were all like that...except one. He refused. He was an old fellow, married and with a family; in the evening he used often to show us snapshots of his kids, and weep...that was before. He refused, he would hit out, threaten us...he was stronger than the five of us put together; and one night when he was alone on sentry duty, the sergeant major shot him. He crept out and put a bullet through him-from behind. With the man's own pistol; then he yanked us out of our bunks and we had to help him throw the body into the marshes. Corpses are heavy...I'm telling you, the bodies of dead men weigh a ton. Corpses are heavier than the whole world, the six of us could scarcely carry him; it was dark and raining, and I thought: This is what h.e.l.l must be like. And the sergeant major sent in a report that the old fellow had mutinied and threatened him with his weapon, and he took along the old fellow's pistol as proof-there was one bullet missing from it, of course. And they sent his wife a letter saying he had fallen for Greater Germany in the Sivash marshes...yes; and a week later the first food truck arrived with a telegram for me saying our factory had been destroyed and I was to go on leave; and I didn't even go back to the emplacement, I just took off!" There was a fierce joy in his voice: "I just took off! He must have hit the roof! And they first interrogated me in the office about the old fellow, and I gave them exactly the same story as the sergeant major's. And then I was off...off! From the battery to the section in Ochakov, then Odessa and then I took off...." Terrible silence, while the sun still shone, fair and warm and gentle; Andreas felt an appalling nausea. That's the worst, he thought, that's the worst....

"After that I never enjoyed anything again, and I never will. I'm scared to look at a woman. The whole time I was home I just lay around in a kind of stupor, crying away like some idiot child, and my mother thought I had some awful disease. But how could I tell her about it, it was something you can't tell anyone...."

How crazy for the sun to shine like that, Andreas thought, and a dreadful nausea lay like poison in his blood. He reached for the blond fellow's hand, but the man shrank back in horror. "No," he cried, "don't!" He threw himself onto his stomach, hid his head in his arms, and sobbed. It sounded as if the ground would burst open, and above his sobbing the sky was smiling, above the army huts, above all those huts and above the towers of Przemysl on the River San....

"Let me die," he sobbed, "I just want to die, then it'll be all over. Let me die...." His words were stifled by a choking sound, and now Andreas could hear him crying, crying real tears, wet tears.

Andreas saw no more. A torrent of blood and dirt and slime had poured over him; he prayed, prayed desperately, as a drowning man shouts who is struggling all alone out in the middle of a lake and can see no sh.o.r.e and no rescuer....

That's wonderful, he thought, crying is wonderful, crying is good for you, crying, crying, what wretched creature has never cried? I should cry too, that's what I should do. The sergeant cried, and the blond fellow cried, and I haven't cried for three and a half years, not one tear since I walked back down that hill into Amiens and was too lazy to walk those extra three minutes as far as the field where I had been wounded.

The second train had left too, the station was empty now. Funny, thought Andreas, even if I wanted to I couldn't go back now. I could never leave these two fellows alone. Besides, I don't want to go back, I never want to go back....

The station with all its various tracks was deserted now. A heat haze danced between the rails, and somewhere back there by the entrance a group of Poles were working, shoveling ballast onto the tracks, and coming along the platform was an odd figure wearing the pants of the unshaven soldier. From way off you could see it was no longer the bearded, fierce, desperate fellow who had been cooped up in the train and drinking to drown his sorrows. This was a different person, only the pants were still those of the unshaven soldier. His face was all smooth and pink, his cap at a slight angle, and in his eyes, as he came closer, could be seen something of the real sergeant, a mixture of indifference, mockery, cynicism, and militarism. Those eyes seemed to have done with dreaming, the unshaven soldier was now shaved and washed, his hair was combed, his hands were clean, and it was just as well to know that his name was Willi, for it was impossible to think of him any more as the unshaven soldier, you had to think of him as Willi. The blond fellow was still lying on his blanket, his face on his folded arms, and from his heavy breathing you couldn't tell whether he was sleeping, groaning, or crying.

"Is he asleep?" Willi asked.

"Yes." Willi unpacked the rations and arranged everything neatly in two piles. "Three days' supply," he said. For each man there was a whole loaf of bread and a large sausage, its wrapping paper wet with the moisture oozing from it. For each man there was slightly less than half a pound of b.u.t.ter, eighteen cigarettes, and three rolls of fruit drops.

"Nothing for you?" Andreas asked.

Willi looked at him in surprise, almost offended. "But I've still got my ration cards for sixteen days!" Strange to think that all that hadn't been a dream, all those things Willi had talked about during the night. It had been the truth, it had been the same person as this man facing him now, smoothly shaven, the quiet eyes holding no more than a modic.u.m of pain; the same person who was now standing in the shade of the fir tree and, very carefully, so as not to spoil the creases, pulling on the pants of his black Panzer uniform. Brand-new pants that suited him down to the ground. He now looked every inch a sergeant.

"There's some beer here too," said Willi. He unpacked three bottles of beer, and they set up Willi's carton between them as a table and began to eat. The blond fellow did not stir, he lay there on his face as many a dead man lies on the battlefield. Willi had some Polish bacon, white bread, and onions. The beer was excellent, it was even cool.

"These Polish barbers," said Willi, "they're tremendous. For six marks, everything included, they make a new man of you, they even shampoo your hair! Just tremendous, and can they ever cut hair!" He took off his peaked cap and pointed to the well-contoured back of his head. "That's what I call a haircut." Andreas was still looking at him in amazement. In Willi's eyes there was now something sentimental, some sergeant-like sentimentality. It was very pleasant eating like this as if at a proper table, well away from those army huts.

"You fellows," said Willi, chewing and clearly enjoying his beer, "you fellows should go and have a wash, or get yourselves washed, makes you feel like a new man. You get rid of everything, all that dirt. And then the shave! You could use one." He glanced at Andreas' chin. "You could certainly use one. I tell you, it's tremendous, you don't feel tired any more, you...you-" he was groping for the right word-"all I can say is, you feel like a new man. You've still got time, our train doesn't leave for two hours. We'll be in Lvov this evening. From Lvov we take the civilian express, the courier train, the one that goes direct from Warsaw to Bucharest. It's a terrific train, I always take it, all you need is to get your pa.s.s stamped, and we'll see to that," he guffawed, "we'll see to that, but I'm not letting on how!"

But surely we won't need twenty-four hours to get from Lvov to that place where it's going to happen, thought Andreas. Something's wrong there. We won't be leaving Lvov as early as five tomorrow morning. The sandwiches tasted marvelous. He spread the b.u.t.ter thickly on the bread and ate it with chunks of the juicy sausage. That's really strange, he thought, this is Sunday's b.u.t.ter and maybe even part of Monday's, I'm eating b.u.t.ter I'm no longer ent.i.tled to. I'm not even ent.i.tled to Sunday's b.u.t.ter. Rations are calculated from noon to noon, and starting Sunday noon I'm not ent.i.tled to any more b.u.t.ter. Perhaps they'll court-martial me...they'll lay my body on a desk before a tribunal and say: He ate Sunday's b.u.t.ter and even part of Monday's, he robbed the great-and-glorious German Wehrmacht. He knew he was going to die, but that didn't stop him from eating the b.u.t.ter and bread and sausage and candy and from smoking the cigarettes. We can't enter that anywhere, there's no place to enter rations for the dead. We're not heathens, after all, who place food in graves for their dead. We are positive Christians, and he has robbed the positive-Christian, glorious Greater German Wehrmacht. We must find him guilty....

"In Lvov," Willi laughed, "that's where I'll get that rubber stamp, in Lvov. You can get anything in Lvov, I know my way around there."

Andreas had only to say one word, only to ask, and he would have found out how and where one obtained the rubber stamp in Lvov. Willi was just itching to tell him. But Andreas didn't care about finding out. It was fine with him if they got the stamp. The civilian express was fine with him. It was wonderful to travel by civilian train. They weren't for soldiers only, for men only. It was terrible to be always among men, men were so womanish. But in that train there would be women...Polish women...Rumanian women...German women...women spies...diplomats' wives. It was nice to ride on a train with women...as far as...as...where he was going to die. What would happen? Partisans? There were partisans all over the place, but why would partisans attack a train carrying civilians? There were plenty of leave-trains carrying whole regiments of soldiers with weapons, luggage, food, clothing, money, and ammunition.

Willi was disappointed that Andreas did not ask where he could get hold of the stamp in Lvov. He wanted so badly to talk about Lvov. "Lvov," he cried with a laugh. And since Andreas still did not ask, he launched out anyway: "In Lvov, you know, we always flogged the cars."

"Always?" Andreas was listening now. "You always flogged them?"

"I mean, when we had one to flog. We're a repair depot, see, and often there's a wreck left over, often it's a wreck that's not really a wreck at all. You just have to say it's sc.r.a.p, that's all. And the superintendent has to close both eyes because he's been going to bed all the time with that Jewish girl from Cernauti. But it isn't sc.r.a.p at all, that car, see? You can take two or three and make a terrific car out of them, the Russians are terrific at that. And in Lvov they'll give you forty thousand marks for it. Divided by four. Me and three men from my column. It's d.a.m.n dangerous, of course, you're taking a h.e.l.l of a risk." He sighed heavily. "You sweat blood, I can tell you. You never know whether the fellow you're dealing with mightn't be from the Gestapo, you can never tell, not till it's all over. For two whole weeks you sweat blood. If after two weeks there's been no report and none of the bunch have been arrested, that means you've come out on top again. Forty thousand marks." He took a drink of beer with obvious enjoyment.

"When I think of all that stuff lying in the mud around Nikopol. It's worth millions, I tell you, millions! And not a b.l.o.o.d.y soul gets a thing out of it, only the Russians. You know," he lit a cigarette, savoring it, "now and again we could flog something that wasn't so dangerous. One day a spare part, another day a motor or some tires. Clothing too. They're keen as h.e.l.l to get hold of clothing. Coats, now...they'll fetch a thousand marks, a good coat will. Back home, you know, I've built myself a little house, a nice little house with a workshop...for...for...what did you say?" he asked abruptly. But Andreas had said nothing, he shot him a quick glance and saw that his eye had darkened, he was frowning, and that he hurriedly finished his beer. Even without the beard, the old face was there again...the sun was still shining golden above the towers of Przemysl on the River San, and the blond fellow was stirring. It was obvious he had only been pretending to be asleep. Now he was pretending to wake up. He stretched his limbs very deliberately, turned over, and opened his eyes, but he didn't know that the traces of tears in his grimy face were still plainly visible. There were proper furrows, furrows in the grime as on the face of a very little girl who has had her sandwich pinched on the playground. He didn't know this, maybe he had even forgotten that he had been crying. His eyes were red-rimmed and unsightly; he really did look as if he might have venereal disease....

"Aaah," he yawned, "I'm glad there's some grub." His beer had got a bit tepid, but he gulped it down thirstily and began to eat while the other two smoked and very slowly, without the least hurry, drank vodka, crystal-clear, wonderful vodka unpacked by Willi.

"Yes," laughed Willi, but he broke off so abruptly that the other two looked at him in alarm; Willi blushed, looked at the ground, and took a big gulp of vodka.

"What was that?" Andreas asked quietly. "What were you going to say?"

Willi spoke in a very low voice. "I was going to say that I'm now drinking up our mortgage, literally our mortgage. You see, there was a mortgage on the house my wife owned when we got married, a small one of four thousand, and I had been meaning to pay it off now...but come on, let's drink, prost!"

The blond fellow also didn't feel like going into town to some barber, or to a washroom in one of those army huts. They tucked towels and soap under their arms, and off they went.

"And make sure your boots are nice and clean too, boys!" Willi called after them. His own boots were indeed shining with fresh polish.

Somewhere down at the end of a track there was a big water pump for the locomotives. It dripped constantly, slowly; a steady trickle of water flowed from it, and the sand all around was one large puddle. It was true, it did feel good to have a wash. If only the soap would lather properly. Andreas took his shaving soap. I shan't be needing it any more, he thought. Although it's enough for three months, of course, and it was only "issued" to me a month ago, but I shan't be needing it any more, and the partisans can have what's left. The partisans need soap too, Poles love shaving. Shaving and shoeshining are their specialties. But just as they were about to start shaving, they saw Willi in the distance calling and waving, and his gestures were so emphatic, so dramatic you might say, that they packed up their things and dried themselves off as they ran back.

"Boys!" called Willi. "There's a leave-train for Kovel just come in, it's running late, we'll be in Lvov in four hours, you can get a shave in Lvov...." They slipped their tunics and coats back on again, put on their caps, and carried their luggage over to the platform where the delayed train for Kovel was standing. Not many got out at Przemysl, but Willi found a compartment from which a whole group of Panzer soldiers emerged, young fellows, boys in new uniforms that filled the air with the smell of army stores. A whole corridor became empty, and they quickly boarded the train before the ones who had stayed on it had a chance to spread themselves out with their luggage.

"Four o'clock!" cried Willi triumphantly. "That means we'll be in Lvov by ten at the very latest. That's great. Couldn't have made better time, this glorious delayed train! A whole night to ourselves, a whole night!"

They quickly installed themselves in such a way that they could at least sit back to back.

As he sat there Andreas finally managed to dry his wet ears properly; then he took everything out of his pack and neatly rearranged all the things he had hastily stuffed into it. Now there were a soiled shirt and soiled underpants and a pair of clean socks, the remains of the sausage, the remains of the b.u.t.ter in its container. Monday's sausage and half Monday's b.u.t.ter and Sunday's and Monday's candy, and cigarettes, to which he was even ent.i.tled, and even some bread left over from Sunday noon; and his prayer book, he had lugged his prayer book around all through the war and never used it. He always said his prayers just as they came to him, but he could never go on a trip without it. How strange, he thought, how strange it all is, and he lit a cigarette, one to which he was still ent.i.tled, a Sat.u.r.day's cigarette, for the ration period from Friday noon to Sat.u.r.day noon....

The blond fellow was playing his mouth organ, and the two of them smoked in silence while the train got under way. The blond fellow was playing properly now, improvising, it seemed; soft, moving, amorphous forms that made you think of swampland.

That's it, thought Andreas, the Sivash marshes, I wonder what they're doing there now beside their cannon. He shuddered. Maybe they've killed each other off, maybe they've finished off the sergeant major, maybe they've been relieved. Let's hope they've been relieved. Tonight I'll say a prayer for the men beside the cannon in the Sivash marshes, and also for the man who fell for Greater Germany because he didn't want, because he didn't want...to get that way; that's truly a hero's death. His bones are lying somewhere up there in a marsh in the Crimea, no one knows where his grave is, no one's going to dig him up and take him to a heroes' cemetery, no one's ever going to think of it again, and one day he'll rise again, way up there out of the Sivash marshes, the father of two kids with a wife living in Germany, and the local n.a.z.i leader, with a terribly sad expression, took her the letter, in Bremen or in Cologne, or in Leverkusen, maybe his wife lives in Leverkusen. He will rise again, way up there out of the Sivash marshes, and it will be revealed that he did not fall for Greater Germany at all, nor because he mutinied and attacked the sergeant major, but because he didn't want to get that way.

They were both startled when the blond fellow abruptly broke off playing; they had been swathed, wreathed about, in those soft gentle misty melodies, and now the web was torn. "Look," said the blond fellow, pointing to the arm of a soldier standing by the window and smoking a pipe, "that's what we used to make back home. Funny thing, you see so few of them, yet we used to make thousands." They didn't know what he was talking about. The blond fellow looked confused, and he blushed as he faced their puzzled eyes. "Crimea badges," he said impatiently. "We used to make lots of Crimea badges. Now they're making Kuban badges, they'll soon be handing those out. We used to make the medals for blowing up tanks too, and years ago the Sudeten medals with the tiny shield showing Hradshin Castle. In 'thirty-eight." They continued to look at him as if he were talking Greek, their eyes were still puzzled, and he reddened still further.

"For G.o.d's sake," he almost shouted, "we had a factory back home!"

"Oh," said the two others.

"Yes, a patriotic-flag factory."

"A flag factory?" Willi asked.

"Yes, that's what they called it, of course we made flags too. Truckloads of flags, I'm telling you, years ago...let's see...in 'thirty-three, I think it was. Of course, that's when it must have been. But mostly we made medals and trophies and badges for clubs, you know the sort of thing, little shields saying: 'Club Champion 1934,' or some such thing. And badges for athletic clubs and swastika pins and those little enamel flags to pin on. Red-white-and-blue, or the French vertical blue-white-and-red. We exported a lot. But since the war we've only made for ourselves. Wound badges too, huge quant.i.ties of those. Black, silver, and gold. But black, huge quant.i.ties of black. We made a lot of money. And old medals from World War I, we made those too, and combat badges, and the little ribbons you wear with civilian dress. Yes..." he sighed, broke off, glanced once more at the Crimea badge of the soldier who was leaning on the window and still smoking his pipe, and then he started to play again. Slowly, slowly the light bgean to fade...and suddenly, without transition, twilight was there, welling up stronger and darker until evening swiftly came, and you could sense the cool night on the threshold. The blond fellow went on playing his swampy melodies that wafted dreamily into them like drugs...Sivash, Andreas thought, I must pray for the men beside the cannon in the Sivash marshes before I go to sleep. He realized he was beginning to doze off again, his last night but one. He prayed...prayed...but the words got mixed up, everything became blurred.... Willie's wife in her red pajamas...the eyes...the smug little Frenchman...the blond fellow, and the one who had said: Practically speaking, practically speaking we've already won the war.

This time he woke up because the train stopped for a long time. At a railway station it was different, you turned over with a yawn and could feel the impatience in the wheels, and you knew the train would soon be under way. But this time the train stopped for so long that the wheels seemed frozen to the rails. The train was at a standstill. Not at a station, not on a siding. Half-asleep, Andreas groped his way to his feet and saw everyone crowding around the windows. He felt rather forlorn, all by himself like that in the dark corridor, especially since he couldn't spot Willi and the blond fellow right away. They must be up front by the windows. It was dark outside and cold, and he guessed it was at least one or two in the morning. He heard railroad cars rumbling past outside, and he heard soldiers singing in them...their stale, stupid, fatuous songs that were so deeply buried in their guts that they had worn a groove like a tune in a record, and as soon as they opened their mouths they sang, sang those songs: Heidemarie and Jolly Huntsman.... He had sung them too sometimes, without knowing or wanting to, those songs that had been sunk into them, buried in them, drilled into them so as to kill their thoughts. These were the songs they were now shouting into the dark, somber, sorrowful Polish night, and it seemed to Andreas that far off, somewhere far away he would be able to hear an echo, beyond the somber invisible horizon, a mocking, diminutive, and very distinct echo...Jolly Huntsman...Jolly Huntsman...Heidemarie. A lot of cars must have pa.s.sed, then no more, and everyone left the windows and went back to their places. Including Willi and the blond fellow.

"The S.S.," said Willi. "They're being thrown in around Cherka.s.sy. There's another pocket there or something. Pickpockets!"

"They'll manage it somehow," said a voice....

Willi sat down beside Andreas and said it was two o'clock. "s.h.i.t, we'll miss the train at Lvov if we don't get moving right away. It's still another two hours. We'll have to leave Sunday morning...."

"But we'll be starting up any minute," said the blond fellow, who was standing at the window again.

"Maybe," said Willi, "but then we won't have any time in Lvov. Half an hour is the c.r.a.ps for Lvov. Lvov!" He laughed.

"Me?" they suddenly heard the blond fellow call.

"Yes, you!" shouted a voice outside. "Get ready to take up your post." Grumbling, the blond fellow came back, and outside someone in a steel helmet stood on the step and stuck his face in through the train window. It was a heavy, thick skull, and they saw dark eyes and an official-looking forehead, the blond fellow having lit a match to find his belt and steel helmet.

"Any noncoms in there?" shouted the voice under the steel helmet. It was a voice that could only shout. No one spoke up. "Are there any noncoms in there, I said!"

No one spoke up. Willi gave Andreas a derisive nudge.

"Don't make me come and look for myself; if I find a noncom in there it's going to be tough for him!"

For a further second n.o.body spoke up, although Andreas could see that the place was swarming with noncoms. Suddenly someone quite near Andreas said: "Here!"

"Fast asleep, eh?" shouted the voice under the steel helmet.

"Yessir," said the voice, and Andreas now saw it was the man with the Crimea badge.

A few of the men laughed.

"What's your name?" shouted the voice under the steel helmet.

"Corporal Schneider."

"You'll be in charge for as long as we stop here, understand?"

"Yessir!"

"Good. You there-" he pointed to the blond fellow-"what's your name?"

"Private Siebental."

"Okay: Private Siebental will stand guard outside this car until four o'clock. If we're still here by then, have him relieved. Also, place a sentry outside the car on the other side and have him relieved too if necessary. There may be partisans in the area."

"Yessir!"

The face under the steel helmet vanished, muttering to itself: "Corporal Schneider."

Andreas was trembling. I hope to G.o.d I don't have to stand guard, he thought. I'm sitting right next to him, and he'll grab my sleeve and put me on duty. Corporal Schneider had switched on his flashlight and was shining it along the corridor. First he shone it on the collars of those who were lying down and pretending to be asleep, then he grabbed one of them by the collar, saying with a laugh: "Come on, take your gun and stand out there, and don't blame me!"

The one who had been picked swore as he got ready. I hope to G.o.d they don't find out I've no rifle, no weapon at all, that my rifle's standing propped up in Paul's closet behind his raincoat. What's Paul going to do with the rifle anyway? A chaplain with a rifle, the Gestapo'll just love that. He can't report it, because then he'd have to give my name and he would worry that they might write to my platoon. How awful that on top of everything else I had to leave my rifle behind at Paul's....

"Come on, man, it's only till we get going again," said the corporal to the soldier who was cursing as he groped his way to the door and flung it open. It seemed strange that the train didn't move on; a quarter of an hour pa.s.sed, they were too tense to sleep. Maybe there really were partisans in the area, and it was no joke being attacked in a train. Maybe it would be the same tomorrow night. Strange...strange. Maybe that's how it would be between Lvov and...no, not even Kolomyya. Twenty-four hours to go, twenty-four or at most twenty-six. It's already Sat.u.r.day, it's actually Sat.u.r.day. How utterly thoughtless I've been...I've known since Wednesday...and I've done nothing, I know it with absolute certainty, and I've hardly prayed any more than usual. I played cards. I drank. I ate and really enjoyed my food, and I slept. I slept too much, and time has leaped forward, time always leaps forward, and now here I am only twenty-four hours away from it. I've done nothing: after all, when you know you're going to die you have all kinds of things to settle, to regret, prayers to say, many prayers to say, and I've prayed hardly any more than I usually do. And yet I know for sure. I know for sure. Sat.u.r.day morning. Sunday morning. Literally one more day. I must pray, pray....

"Got a drink? It's lousy cold out here." The blond fellow stuck his head in through the window, and under the steel helmet his effete grayhound-head looked terrible. Willi held the bottle to the man's mouth and let him have a long drink. He also held the bottle out to Andreas.

"No," said Andreas.

"There's a train coming." It was the blond fellow's voice again. Everyone dashed to the window. It was half an hour behind the first train, and it was another of those, another troop-train, with more songs, more Jolly Huntsman...Jolly Huntsman and Heidemarie in that dark sorrowful Polish night.... Jolly Huntsman. A train like that took a long time to pa.s.s...with baggage car and cookhouse car and the cars for the soldiers, and all the time Jolly Huntsman and "Today it's Germany that's ours, tomorrow all the world...all the world...all the world...."

"More S. S. troops," said Willi, "and all going to Cherka.s.sy. The c.r.a.p there seems to be collapsing too." He said this in an undertone, since eager and optimistic voices next to him were saying they would manage it somehow.

Softly the Jolly Huntsman died away in the night, the song growing dim in the direction of Lvov, like a subdued, very soft whimpering, and once again there was the dark sorrowful Polish night....

"Let's hope there won't be another seventeen of these trains," muttered Willi. He offered Andreas the bottle again, but again Andreas refused. It's high time for me to say my prayers, he thought. This is the last night of my life but one, and I'm not going to spend it sleeping or napping. I'm not going to defile it with drink or waste it. I must say my prayers now, and above all repent. There's always so much to repent; even in an unhappy life like mine there are a lot of things to repent. That time in France when I drank a whole bottle of cherry brandy on a broiling hot day, like an animal; I keeled over like an animal, it nearly finished me. A whole bottle of cherry brandy when it was ninety in the shade, on a treeless street in some French hamlet. Because I was almost pa.s.sing out with thirst and had nothing else to drink. It was ghastly, and it took me a week to get rid of my headache. And I had a row with Paul, I always insulted him by calling him a b.l.o.o.d.y parson, I was always talking about b.l.o.o.d.y parsons. It's terrible, when you've got to die, to think you've insulted someone. I used to talk back to my teachers at school too, and I wrote s.h.i.t on the bust of Cicero; it was stupid, I was just a kid, but I knew it was wrong and silly, I did it anyway because I knew the other kids would laugh, that was the only reason I did it, because I wanted the others to laugh at a joke of mine. Out of vanity. Not because I really thought Cicero was s.h.i.t; if I had done it for that reason it wouldn't have been as bad, but I did it for a joke. One should never do anything for a joke. And I used to make fun of Lieutenant Schreckmuller, of that sad, pale little fellow; the lieutenant's shoulder patches lay so heavily on his shoulders, so heavily, and you could tell he was marked for death. I used to make fun of him too, because I couldn't resist being known as a wit, as a sarcastic old trooper. That was worse than anything, maybe, and I don't know if G.o.d can forgive that. I made fun of him, of the way he looked like a Hitler Youth kid, and he was marked for death, I could tell from his face, and he was killed; he was shot down during the first attack in the Carpathians, and his body rolled down a slope, it was horrible the way it rolled down, and as the body rolled over it got covered with dirt; it was horrible, and to tell the truth it looked kind of ridiculous, that body rolling down, faster and faster, faster and faster, till it bounced onto the floor of the valley....

And in Paris I abused a wh.o.r.e. In the middle of the night, that was awful. It was cold, and she accosted me...she practically a.s.saulted me, and I could see from her fingers and the tip of her nose that she was chilled to the marrow, shivering with hunger. I felt quite sick when she said: "Come on, dearie," and I pushed her away, although she was shivering and ugly and all alone on that great wide street, and she might have been glad if I had lain beside her in her pitiful bed and just warmed her up a bit. And I actually pushed her away into the gutter and spat out abuse after her. If I only knew what became of her that night. Perhaps she drowned herself in the Seine because she was too ugly to get a nibble from anyone that night, and the terrible part is that I wouldn't have treated her so badly if she had been pretty.... If she had been pretty I might not have been so disgusted by her profession and she wouldn't have been pushed into the gutter and I might have been quite glad to warm up beside her and do some other things too. G.o.d knows what would have happened if she had been pretty. It's a terrible thing to maltreat a person because that person seems ugly to you. There are no ugly people. That poor soul. G.o.d forgive me twenty-four hours before my death for having pushed away that poor, ugly, shivering wh.o.r.e, at night, on that wide empty Paris street where there wasn't one single customer left for her, no one but me. G.o.d forgive me for everything, you can't undo what's done, nothing can ever be undone, and the pathetic whimpering of that poor girl will haunt that Paris street for ever and ever and accuse me, and the wretched doglike eyes of that Lieutenant Schreckmuller whose childish shoulders were not nearly strong enough for the weight of his shoulder patches....

If I could only cry. I can't even cry over all these things. I feel heartsick and contrite and terrible, but I can't cry over them. Everyone else can cry, even the blond fellow, everyone but me. G.o.d grant me the power to cry....

There must be a lot of other things I can't think of right now. That can't be all by a long way. There were the people I despised and loathed and mentally abused, for instance, like the man who said: Practically speaking, practically speaking we've already won the war; I hated that man too, but I forced myself to pray for him because he was such a fool. I still have to pray for the one who just said: They'll manage it somehow, and for all the ones who sang the Jolly Huntsman with such gusto.

I hated the lot of them, all those fellows who just went by in the train singing the Jolly Huntsman...and Heidemarie...and...A Soldier's Life is a Splendid Life...and...Today it's Germany that's ours, tomorrow all the world. I hated the lot of them, the whole lot, all those fellows who lay squashed up against me in the train and in barracks. G.o.d, those barracks....

"That's it!" shouted a voice outside. "Everyone back on the train!" The blond fellow got on and the man from the other side, and the train whistled and moved off. "Thank G.o.d for that," said Willi. But it was too late anyway. It was three-thirty, and it would take them at least another two hours to get to Lvov, and the courier train, the civilian express from Warsaw to Bucharest, left at five.

"So much the better," said Willi. "That gives us a whole day in Lvov." He laughed again. He wanted so badly to tell them some more about Lvov. You could hear it in his voice, but n.o.body reacted, n.o.body asked him to go on. They were tired, it was three-thirty and cold, and the dark Polish sky hung over them, and those two battalions or regiments that were being thrown into the Cherka.s.sy pocket had set them thinking. No one spoke, although none of them were asleep. Only the rattle of the train lulled them to sleep, killed their thoughts, sucked the thinking out of their heads, that regular clickety-clack, clickety-clack, it put them to sleep. They were all poor, gray, hungry, misguided, and deluded children, and their cradle was the trains, the leave-trains that went clickety-clack and lulled them to sleep.

The blond fellow seemed to be genuinely asleep now. He had got very cold outside, and the fug here in the corridor must have actually seemed quite warm and put him to sleep. Only Willi was awake, Willi who had once been the soldier in need of a shave. From time to time he could be heard reaching for his bottle of vodka and gulping the stuff down, swearing at intervals under his breath, and from time to time he would strike a match and smoke, and then he would light up Andreas' face and see that he was wide awake. But he said nothing. And it was odd that he should say nothing....

Andreas wanted to pray, he wanted desperately to pray; first, all the prayers he had always said, and then a few more of his own, and then he wanted to say over the names, to begin to say over the names, of all the people he had to pray for, but then he thought that was crazy, to say all those names. You would have to include everybody, the whole world. You would have to say two billion names...forty million, he thought...no, two billion names it would have to be. You'd simply have to say: Everyone. But that wasn't enough, he had at least to begin to say the names of the people he had to pray for. First the ones you had hurt, the ones you were indebted to. He began with his school, then with the labor service, then the barracks and the war and all the people whose names occurred to him along the way. His uncle, he had hated him too because he had always spoken so glowingly of the army, of the happiest days of his life. He thought about his parents, whom he had never known. Paul. Paul would be getting up soon and saying ma.s.s. It will be the third he's said since I left, thought Andreas, perhaps he understood when I called out: I'm going to die...soon. Perhaps Paul understood and will say a ma.s.s for me Sunday morning, an hour before or after I've died. I hope Paul thinks about the others, about the soldiers who are like the blond fellow, and the ones who are like Willi, and the ones who say: Practically speaking, practically speaking we've already won the war, and the ones who day and night sing Jolly Huntsman and Heidemarie, and A Soldier's Life is a Splendid Life, and Oh, the Sun of Mexico. On this cold, miserable morning under the dark sorrowful Galician sky, he didn't think of the eyes at all. Now we must be in Galicia, he thought, quite close to Lvov, since Lvov is the capital of Galicia. Now I must be just about in the center of the net where I'm going to be caught. There's only one more province: Galicia, and I'm in Galicia. As long as I live I shall never see anything but Galicia. It has narrowed down very much, that Soon. To twenty-four hours and a few miles. Not many miles now to Lvov, maybe forty, and beyond Lvov at most another forty. My life's already been narrowed down to eighty miles in Galicia, in Galicia...like a knife on invisible snake's feet, a knife creeping along, softly creeping along, a softly creeping knife. Galicia. How will it happen, I wonder? Will I be shot or stabbed...or trampled to death...or will I be simply crushed to death in a crushed railway car? There are such an infinite number of ways to die. You can also be shot by a sergeant major for refusing to do what the blond fellow did; you can die any way you like, and the letter will always say: He fell for Greater Germany. And I must be sure and pray for the men with the cannon down there in the Sivash marshes...must be sure...must be sure...clickety-clack...must be sure...clickety-clack...must be sure men with cannon...in the Sivash marshes...clickety-clack....

It was terrible to find he had finally fallen asleep after all. And now they were in Lvov. It was a big station, black iron girders and grimy white signboards, and there it was, in black and white, between the platforms: Lvov. This was the springboard. It was almost incredible how quickly you could get from the Rhine to Lvov. Lvov, there it was in black and white, irrevocably: Lvov. Capital of Galicia. Another forty miles less. The net was quite small now. Forty miles, maybe even less, maybe only five. Beyond Lvov, between Lvov and Cernauti, that could mean a mile beyond Lvov. Again this was as elastic as the Soon that he thought he had managed to narrow down....