All Quiet on the Western Front - Erich Maria Remarque [51]
"Excellent," I say, "but hasn't he reported you yet?"
"He did try. Our C.O. laughed like the deuce when he heard the story. He hasn't any time for schoolmasters. Besides, I'm sweet with his daughter."
"He'll mess up the examination for you."
"I don't care," says Mittelstaedt calmly. "Besides, his complaint came to nothing because I could show that he had had hardly anything but light duty."
"Couldn't you polish him up a bit?" I ask.
"He's too stupid, I couldn't be bothered," answers Mittelstaedt contemptuously.
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What is leave? - A pause that only makes everything after it so much worse. Already the sense of parting begins to intrude itself. My mother watches me silently; - I know she counts the days; - every morning she is sad. It is one day less. She has put away my pack, she does not want to be reminded by it.
The hours pass quickly if a man broods. I pull myself together, and go with my sister to the slaughter-house to get a pound or two of bones. That is a great favour and people line up early in the morning and stand waiting. Many of them faint.
We have no luck. After waiting by turns for three hours the queue disperses. The bones have not lasted out.
It is a good thing that I get my rations. I bring them to my mother and in that way we all get something decent to eat.
The days grow ever more strained and my mother's eyes more sorrowful. Four days left now. I must go and see Kemmerich's mother.
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I cannot write that down. This quaking, sobbing woman who shakes me and cries out on me: "Why are you living then, when he is dead?" - who drowns me in tears and calls out: "What are you there for at all, child, when you -- " - who drops into a chair and wails: "Did you see him? Did you see him then? How did he die?"
I tell her he was shot through the heart and died instantaneously. She looks at me, she doubts me: "You lie. I know better. I have felt how terribly he died. I have heard his voice at night, I have felt his anguish - tell the truth, I want to know it, I must know it."
"No," I say, "I was beside him. He died at once."
She pleads with me gently: "Tell me. You must tell me. I know you want to comfort me, but don't you see, you torment me far more than if you told me the truth? I cannot bear the uncertainty. Tell me how it was and even though it will be terrible, it will be far better than what I have to think if you don't."
I will never tell her, she can make mincemeat out of me first. I pity her, but she strikes me as rather stupid all the same. Why doesn't she stop worrying? Kemmerich will stay dead whether she knows about it or not. When a man has seen so many dead he cannot understand any longer why there should be so much anguish over a single individual. So I say rather impatiently: "He died immediately. He felt absolutely nothing at all. His face was quite calm."
She is silent. Then she says slowly: "Will you swear it?"
"Yes."
"By everything that is sacred to you?"
Good God, what is there that is sacred to me? -such things change pretty quickly with us.
"Yes, he died at once."
"Are you willing never to come back yourself, if it isn't true?"
"May I never come back if he wasn't killed instantaneously."
I would swear to anything. But she seems to believe me. She moans and weeps steadily. I have to tell how it happened, so I invent a story and I almost believe it myself.
As I leave she kisses me and gives me a picture of him. In his recruit's uniform he leans on a round rustic table with legs made of birch branches. Behind him a wood is painted on a curtain, and on the table stands a mug of beer.
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It is the last evening at home. Everyone is silent. I go to bed early, I seize the pillow, press it against myself and bury my head in it. Who knows if I will ever lie in a feather bed again?
Late in the night my mother comes into my room.
She thinks I am asleep, and I pretend to be so. To talk, to stay awake with one another, it is too hard.
She sits long into the night although she is in pain and often writhes. At last I can bear