Chapter XXIV
It was a cold night in January, three weeks later, and I was sitting in the International playing vingt-et-un with the proprietor. The place was deserted, not even the pros'titutes had come. There was unrest in the city. Every few minutes columns marched past outside, some with crashing military marches, others to the tune of the Internationale, and then again silent, long processions with placards carried in advance demanding work and bread. The beat of the many footsteps on the pavement was like the inexorable ticking of some gigantic clock. During the afternoon there had already been a clash between strikers and the police; twelve people had been hurt, and for hours the entire force had been standing to. The whistle of motor ambulances shrilled through the streets.
"There's no rest," said the proprietor, showing a sixteen. "Ever since the war there's been no rest. And yet we all wanted nothing else then, but rest. Crazy world."
I showed seventeen and raked in the pot.
"It's not the world that's crazy," said I. "It's the people in it."
Alois, who was standing behind the proprietor, rocking backwards and forwards on his toes, interjected: "They aren't crazy, merely covetous. One grudges the other. And because there's too much of everything, most have nothing at all. It's only a matter of distribution."
"True," said I and passed with two cards. "But that's been the trouble for a few thousand years."
The proprietor laid down his cards. He had fifteen and eyed me doubtfully. Then he bought one, an ace, and was cooked. I showed my cards. They were only twelve pips and he might have won already with his fifteen.
"Damn, I'm stopping now," he cursed, "that was a low-down bluff. I thought you had eighteen at least."
Alois chuckled. "That's the way they play in the infantry."
I raked in the money. The proprietor yawned and looked at his watch. 'Nearly eleven. I think we'll shut down. Nobody else is coming."
"Here comes someone now," said Alois.
The door opened. It was Köster. "Anything fresh outside, Otto?"
He nodded. "A hall fight at the Borussia rooms. Two badly hurt, a few dozen slightly injured and about a hundred arrests. Two shootings in the north. One bobby dead. Don't know how many hurt. But the fun will probably only start when the mass meetings finish. Are you through here?"
"Yes," said I. "We were just about to close down."
"Then come along."
I looked across at the proprietor. He nodded. "So long, then," said I.
"So long," replied the proprietor indolently. "Look after yourselves."
We went. Outside it smelt like snow. Broadsheets were lying on the street like big, white, dead butterflies.
"Gottfried's missing," said Köster. "He's in one of these mass meetings. I hear they're going to be broken up, and imagine anything might happen. It would be good if we could nab him before the finish. He's not exactly the coolest of people."
"Do you know where he is then?" I asked.
"Not exactly. But almost certainly at one of the three main meetings. We must do the round. Gottfried's pretty easy to spot with his yellow top."
"Good." We got in and set off with the car for the first meeting place.
On the street was a lorry with police. The straps of their helmets were lowered. Carbine barrels glimmered dully in the lamplight. Coloured banners were hanging from the windows. Crowded in the entrance were a number of people in uniform. Nearly all were very young.
We bought two tickets, declined pamphlets, collecting boxes and membership cards, and went into the hall. It was crowded and well lighted in order that interrupters could be spotted immediately. We stayed near the entrance and Köster ran his keen eyes over the rows.
On the platform was a powerful, stocky fellow, talking. He had a full chesty voice that could be understood without difficulty in the remotest corner. It was a voice that carried conviction without one's heeding, much what it. said. And what it did say was easy to understand. The man walked about the stage, casually, with little movements of his arms, off and on drank a mouthful of water and cracked a joke. But then suddenly he stood still, turned full on the audience, and in a changed, shrill voice, whipped out sentence after sentence, truths that everybody knew of misery, starvation, unemployment, climbing all the time higher and higher, sweeping his hearers along with him till in a furioso he smashed out, "This cannot go on I This must be changed!"
The audience roared applause, it clapped and yelled, as if that had already changed everything. The man above waited. His face shone. And then it came—broad, persuasive, irresistible—promise after promise; it simply rained promises; a paradise was built up over the assembled heads; domes majestically coloured—it was a lottery where every loser was a winner, and in which every man found his private happiness, his private right and his private revenge.
I looked at the audience. They were people of every calling—clerks, little business people, civil servants, a sprinkling of workers and lots of women. They sat there in the hot hall, leaning back or looking forward, row upon row, cheek by jowl, the torrent of words pouring over them, and it was curious—different as they all were, the faces had all the same absent expression, a sleepy yearning look into the remoteness of some misty Fata Morgana; there was vacancy in it, and at the same time a supreme expectancy that obliterated everything—criticism, doubt, contradictions and questions, the obvious, the present, reality. He, up there, knew everything—had an answer for every question, a help for every need. It was good to trust oneself to him. It was good to have someone to think for one. It was good to believe.
Köster gave me a prod. Lenz wasn't there. He signed with his head toward the exit. I nodded and we went. The ushers followed us with suspicious, evil looks. In the anteroom was a band ready to march into the hall, behind them a forest of banners and symbols.
"Well done, eh?" asked Köster when we were outside.
"First rate. As an old propaganda merchant I'm a judge of that."
We drove on a few streets farther. Here was the'second political meeting. Other banners, other uniforms, another hall; but for the rest identical. On the faces the same expression of undefined hope and credulous vacancy. The white-covered committee table faced the rows of chairs; at it the party secretaries, the committee, a few zealous old spinsters. The speaker, an official type, was feebler than the last. He talked paper German, adduced statistics, proofs; all that he said was true, but for all that he was not so convincing as the other, who proved nothing but merely made statements. Wearily the party secretaries at the committee table gazed sleepily ahead; they had hundreds of such meetings behind them.
"Come on," said Köster after a while. "He's not here either. I hardly expected it anyway."
We drove on. The air was cold and fresh after the used-up atmosphere of the over-full halls. The car shot through the streets. We came along by the canal. The street lamps cast only oily yellow reflections on the dark water that lapped softly on the concrete bank. A barge moved, black and slow, across. The tug had red and green signal lights out. A dog barked, then a man passed in front of the light and disappeared into a hatchway which shone out golden for an instant. On the far side of the canal the houses of the West End lay brilliantly lighted. The arch of a bridge swung from them to the other side. Unceasingly cars, buses and electric trains passed back and forth across it. It looked like a shining, coloured snake over the sluggish black water.
"I think we'll leave the car here and go the last bit on foot," said Köster after a while. "It will be less conspicuous."
We halted Karl under a lamp outside a pub. A white cat moved silently off as we got out. A bit farther along some pros'titutes with aprons were standing in an archway and ceased talking as we passed. Against a house corner an organ-grinder was leaning asleep. An old woman was rummaging in the garbage on the edge of the street.
We came to a gigantic, grimy apartment house with numerous blocks behind and courtyards and passages. On the lower floor were shops, a bakery, and a receiving depot for old clothes and iron. On the street in front of the first passage were two lorries with police.
In a corner of the first courtyard was a stand built of planks of wood, and from it hung several large star charts. In front of a table with papers stood a chap in a turban on a little platform. Above his head there hung a signboard:
Astrology, Palmistry, Fortunetelling—Your Horoscope for 50 Pfennigs. A swarm of people surrounded him. The harsh light of the carbide lamp fell on his yellow, wrinkled face. He was addressing the spectators, who were looking up at him in silence—with the same lost, absent, miracle-desiring look as, a while ago, that of the audiences of the various mass-meetings with their banners and bands.
"Otto," said I to Köster, who was walking in front of me, "I know now what those people are wanting. They don't want politics at all. They want substitute religion."
He looked around. "Of course. They want to believe in something again—in what, it doesn't matter. That's why they are so fanatical, too, of course."
We entered the second courtyard, near the place of the third meeting. All windows were lighted. Suddenly we heard a row from inside. The same moment, as at an agreed signal, several young people in wind-jackets dashed out of a dark side-entrance, across the yard, along close under the windows, to the door of the meeting place. The foremost tore it open and they charged in.
"A stormtroop," said Köster. "Come here against the wall behind the beer barrels."
A raging and yelling began in the hall. The next second a window splintered and someone came flying through. Immediately the door burst open, a heap of human beings came hurtling out, those in front stumbled and the rest fell over them. A woman screamed, yelling for help, and ran out through the archway. A second thrust followed, with chair legs and beer glasses, an inextricable fury. One gigantic carpenter sprang out, took up a position more or less on the outskirts; whenever he saw in front of him the head of an opponent, his long arm would swing and knock him back into the melee. He did it perfectly calmly, as if he were chopping wood.
A fresh scrum burst out and suddenly, not three yards in front of us, we saw Gottfried's yellow thatch in the hands of an old regular.
Köster took one dive and disappeared into the heap. A few seconds later the regular let Gottfried go, and with an air of utter astonishment flung up his arm and like an uprooted tree fell back into the crowd. Immediately after I discovered KSster dragging Lenz behind him by the collar.
Lenz was resisting. "Let me go, Otto, just a moment," he choked.
"Nonsense," called Köster, "the cops'll be here in a minute. Quick, out, at the back there."
We ran across the courtyard to the dark side-entrance. It was not a moment too soon. Immediately a sudden whistle shrilled through the yard, the black helmets of the police flashed up, a cordon was thrown round the courtyard. We ran up the staircase in order not to be caught by the patrol. From a landing window we watched how it went below. The police worked superbly. They cut off the retreat, drove a wedge into the scrum, tore the heaps asunder, arrested and immediately began transporting them—first the indignant carpenter, who tried in vain to explain something.
Behind us a door clicked. A woman in a nightshirt, with white, thin legs, a candle in her hand, poked her head out. "Is that you?" she asked ill-humouredly.
"No," said Lenz, who had recovered himself. The woman banged the door to. Lenz examined the door with his pocket torch. It was Gerhard Peschke, head bricklayer who was being waited for here.
Below it became quiet. The police retired and the courtyard emptied. We waited a while longer, then went down the stairs again. Behind one door a child was crying, crying softly and plaintively in the dark. "He's right too," said Gottfried. "He's crying beforehand."
We walked through the outer courtyard. The astrologer was standing deserted before his star charts. "A horoscope, gentlemen?" he called. "Or the future from the hand?"
"Fire away," said Gottfried, offering him his hand.
The fellow studied it. "You have a weak heart," said he then, categorically. "Your emotions are well developed, your headline very short; to make up for it you are gifted musically. You dream a lot, but you will be no good as a husband. Still I see here three children. You. have a diplomatic disposition, are inclined to be taciturn, and will live to be eighty."
"That's right," declared Gottfried. "Just what my mother used to tell me before she was married—the bad live to be old. Mortality is man's invention; not in the logic of life."
He gave the chap his money and we went on. The street was empty. A black cat darted away in front of us. Lenz pointed to it. "We ought to turn back now, really."
"Don't worry," said I, "we saw a white one a while ago; that cancels out."
We walked along the street. Some people were approaching on the other side. They were four young lads. One was wearing bright yellow, new leather-leggings, the others sort of military boots. They halted and looked across at us. "There he is!" suddenly called the one with the leggings, running across the street toward us. The next moment there were two shots, the young fellow sprang away and all four made off as fast as they could. I saw Köster about to set off in pursuit, but then with an extraordinary twist he swung back, stretched out his arms, uttered a stifled, wild cry and tried to catch Gottfried Lenz, who crashed heavily to the pavement.
For one second I thought he had merely fallen; then I saw the blood. Köster ripped his coat open, tore away the shirt—the blood welled out thickly. I pressed my handkerchief against it.
"Stay here, I'll get the car," called Köster and ran off.
"Gottfried," said I, "can you hear me?"
His face turned grey. His eyes were half-shut. The lids did not move. With one hand I supported his head, with the other I pressed my handkerchief on the bleeding place. I knelt beside him, I listened for his gurgling, his breathing, but there was nothing, no sound anywhere—the endless street, endless houses, endless night—I heard only the light dripping of the blood on the pavement and knew that that must have been another time and that it could not be true.
Köster raced up. He pulled away the back rest of the left-hand seat. Carefully we lifted Gottfried up and laid him on the two seats. I jumped into the car and Köster shot off. We drove to the nearest casualty station. Köster braked cautiously.
"See if there's a doctor there. Else we must go on."
I ran in. An orderly came towards me. "Is there a doctor?"
"Yes. Have you got someone?"
"Yes. Come with me. A stretcher."
We lifted Gottfried on to the stretcher and carried him in. The doctor was already standing in his shirt-sleeves. "Over here."
He pointed to a flat table. We lifted Gottfried off the stretcher. The doctor pulled down a light close over the body. "What is it?"
"Revolver shot."
He took a swab of cotton wool, wiped away the blood, felt Gottfried's pulse, listened to him and straightened up. "Nothing to be done."
Köster stared at him. "But the shot is well to the side. It can't be so bad."
"There are two shots," said the doctor.
He wiped the blood away again. We bent forward. Then we saw that obliquely under the heavily bleeding wound there was a second—a little black holein the region of the heart.
"He must have died instantly," said the doctor.
Köster straightened up. He looked at Gottfried. The doctor plugged the wounds and stuck strips of sticking plaster across.
"Would you like a wash?" he asked.
"No," said I.
Gottfried's face was now yellow and fallen in. The mouth was drawn a little awry, the eyes were half-closed, one a bit more than the other. He looked at us. He kept on looking at us.
"How did it happen?" asked the doctor.
No one answered. Gottfried looked at us. He looked at us. fixedly.
"He can stay here," said the doctor.
Köster moved. "No," he replied. "We're taking him with us." .
"Can't be done," said the doctor. "We must telephone the police. The criminal police as well. Everything must be done immediately to find the culprit."
"Culprit?" Köster looked at the doctor as if he did not understand him. "Good," said he then, "I'll drive along and fetch the police."
"You can telephone. They'll be here quicker then."
Köster slowly shook his head. "No. I'll fetch them."
He went out and I heard Karl leap away. The doctor pushed a chair toward me. "Won't you sit down in the meantime?"
"Thanks," said I and continued to stand. The bright light still lay on Gottfried's bloody chest.
The doctor pushed the lamp a bit higher. "How did it happen?" he asked once more.
"I don't know. Must have been a mistake for somebody else."
"Was he in the war?" asked the doctor.
I nodded.
"You can see that by the scars," said he. "And the withered arm. He's been wounded several times."
"Yes. Four times."
"A skunk's trick," said the stretcher-bearer. "And all young bastards who were still in their cradles then."
I made no reply. Gottfired looked at me steadily.
It was a long time before Köster returned. He was alone. The doctor put aside the newspaper in which he had been reading. "Are the officers there?" he asked.
Köster stood still. He had not heard what the doctor said.
"Are the police there?" asked the doctor once again.
"Yes," replied Köster. "The police. We must telephone them to come."
The doctor looked at him, but said nothing and went to the telephone.
A few minutes later two officers arrived. They sat at a table and took down Gottfried's personal description. I don't know, but somehow it seemed to me silly to state what his name was, and when he was born and where he lived, now, when he was dead. I stared at the black stump of pencil which the officer moistened from time to time with his lips, and replied mechanically.
The other officer began to prepare a statement, Köster gave the necessary information. "Can you say roughly what the culprit looked like?" asked the officer.
"No," replied Köster. "I didn't notice."
I looked across at him. I thought of the yellow leggings and the uniforms.
"You don't know to which political party he belonged? You didn't see the badges or the uniform?"
"No," said Köster. "I didnt see anything before the shots. And then I only thought—" he balked an instant— "of my comrade."
"You belong to a political party?"
"No."
"I mean, because you said he was your comrade—"
"He is my comrade from the war," replied Köster.
The officer turned to me: "Can you describe the culprit?"
Köster looked at me hard.
"No," said I. "I saw nothing either."
"Extraordinary," said the officer.
"We were talking at the time, and not noticing anything. Then it all happened very quick."
The officer sighed. "Then there's not much chance of catching the blighter." He finished the statement.
"Can we take him with us?" asked Köster.
"Actually—" The officer looked at the doctor. "The cause of death is established beyond all doubt?"
The doctor nodded. "I've already written the certificate."
"And where is the bullet? I must take the bullet."
"The bullets are still in. I should have—" The doctor hesitated.
"I must have them both," said the officer. "I must see if they are both from the same weapon."
"Yes," replied Köster, at a look from the doctor.
The orderly pulled the stretcher into position and pulled down the light. The doctor took his instruments and with a probe explored the wounds. The first ball he found quickly; it was not very deep. For the other he had to cut. He pulled his rubber gloves right up and reached for the forceps and the knife. Köster stepped up quickly to the table and closed Gottfried's eyes that still stood half-open. I turned away as I heard the light hiss of the knife. For an instant I wanted to jump in and thrust the doctor aside, for it suddenly came over me that Gottfried was merely unconscious and that the doctor was now really killing him—but then I knew again. We had seen enough dead men to know.
"There she is," said the doctor and straightened up. He wiped the bullet and gave it to the officer.
"It is the same. From the same weapon, isn't it?"
Köster bent down and looked closely at the little, dull shining bullets that rolled to and fro in the officer's hand.
"Yes," said he.
The officer wrapped them in paper and put them in his pocket.
"It is not allowed really," said he, then, "but if you want to take him home . . . The facts are clear, aren't they, doctor?" The doctor nodded. "You are coroner's doctor as well, of course," went on the officer; "in that case—if you like—only you must . . . It may be that a commission will come to-morrow—"
"I understand," said Köster. "We will leave everything just as it is."
The officers went.
The doctor had covered and stuck down Gottfried's wounds again. "How will you do it?" he asked. "You can take the stretcher. You only need send it back sometime during the day to-morrow."
"Yes, thank you," said Köster. "Come on, Bob."
"I'll help you," said the orderly.
I shook my head. "We can manage."
We took up the stretcher, carried it out and laid it on the two left-hand seats, which with the lowered backs made a flat place. The orderly and the doctor came out and watched us. We put Gottfried's coat over him and drove off. After a while Köster turned to me.
"We'll drive through the street again. I've done it once already. But it was too soon then. Perhaps they'll be about again now."
It began slowly to snow. Köster drove the car almost noiselessly. He declutched, and often even shut off the en gine. He did not want to be heard, though the four we were looking for didn't know, of course, that we had a car. We glided along soundlessly like a white ghost through the ever more thickly falling snow. I took a hammer out of the tool box and laid it beside me to be ready to spring out of the car and strike at once.
We passed along the street in which it had happened. Under the street lamp was still a black patch of blood. Köster switched off the lights. We ran along close by the kerb and surveyed the street. Not a soul was to be seen. Only from a lighted pub we heard voices.
Köster pulled up at the crossing. "Stay here," said he; "I want to have a look in the pub."
"I'll come with you," I replied.
He gave me a look that I recognised from the times when he would go on patrol by himself. "I won't settle anything in the pub," said he. "He might get away from me still. I only want to see if he is there. Then we'll wait for him. You stay here with Gottfried."
I nodded and he disappeared in the scurry of snow. The flakes flew in my face and melted on my skin. I suddenly couldn't bear Gottfried's being covered up, as if he didn't belong to us any more, and I pushed the coat from his head. The snow now fell on his face also, on his eyes and his lips, but it did not melt. I took a handkerchief and wiped it away, and put the coat over him again.
Köster came back. "Nothing doing?"
"No," said he.
He got in. "Now we'll just drive round the other streets. I've got a feeling we must be going to meet them any minute."
The car bellowed and was immediately throttled down again. Softly we stole through the white, eddying night, from street to street; at corners I held Gottfried tight, so that he should not slip off; and every now and then we would pull up a hundred yards beyond a pub and Köster would run back with long strides to look in. He was obsessed with grim, cold hate; he did not think first of taking Gottfried home; then twice he started to do so, but turned again because he fancied that just at that moment the four might be under way.
Suddenly, in a long bare street, we saw a dark group of people far ahead. Köster at once switched off the ignition; and soundlessly, without lights we came up. The people did not hear us. They were talking together. "There are four," I whispered to Köster.
At the same moment the car bellowed, raced the last two hundred metres, rode up on to the pavement and with a grinding skid stopped not a yard from the shouting people. Köster hung half out of the car, his body a steel bow ready to spring, and his face unrelenting as death.
It was four harmless old people. One of them was drunk. They started to curse. Köster did not reply. We drove on.
"Otto," said I, "we won't get him to-night. I don't believe he'd trust himself on the streets."
"Yes, perhaps," he replied after a while, and turned the car.
We drove to Köster's. His room had its own entrance, so we did not need to wake anybody. As we were getting out I said: "Why didn't you want to tell the police what he looked like? We would have had help then in the search. And we did see him well enough."
Köster looked at me. "Because we're going to settle that by ourselves, without any police. Do you think—" His tone was quite soft, restrained and terrible— "Do you think I'd hand him over to the police, anyway? So he'll get a few years' gaol? You know very weU how all these cases end. These chaps know they'll find easy judges. We're having none of that. And what's more if the police did find him, I'd swear it wasn't he, so I could get him after. Gottfried dead and he alive . . . We're having none of that."
We lifted the stretcher from the seats and carried it in through the whirling snow and the wind, and it was as if we were back in Flanders carrying to the rear a dead comrade from the front line.
We bought a coffin and a grave in the parish cemetery. Gottfried had often said, when we had discussed it, that crematoriums were not for soldiers. He meant to lie in the earth on which he had lived so long.
It was a clear sunny day when we buried him. We put Km in his old service uniform with the sleeve torn by shell splinters and still stained with blood. We shut the coffin ourselves and carried him down the stairs. There were not many who came with us: Ferdinand, Valentin, Alfons, Fred the bartender, Georg, Jupp, Frau Stoss, Gustav, Stefan Grigoleit, and Rosa.
At the gate of the cemetery we had to wait some time. There were two other funerals there before us, one with a black motor hearse, the other with black-and-silver-draped horses and an endless procession of mourners who seemed to keep themselves well amused.
We lifted the coffin from the car and lowered it with ropes ourselves. The gravedigger was satisfied, as he had enough to do at the other graves. We had got a parson too. We didn't know what Gottfried would have said to that, but Valentin had been for it. We had at least asked him not to make any speeches. He was only to read a passage from Scripture.
The parson was an elderly, shortsighted chap. As he approached the grave side he tripped over a clod of earth and would have fallen in had not Köster and Valentin caught him. As it was the Bible and his spectacles which he was about to put on slipped from his hand. They fell into the grave. Dismayed he stared after them.
"Never mind, Herr Pastor," said Valentin, "we'll make good the things for you."
"It's not the book so much," replied the parson gently, "but I need the glasses."
Valentin broke a twig from the cemetery hedge. Then he knelt down by the grave and contrived to hook the spectacles by one of the arms and lift them out from among the wreaths. They were gold-rimmed. The Bible had slipped sideways in between the coffin and the earth; to get it one would have to lift out the coffin again and go in after it. Not even the parson wanted that. He stood there bewildered. "Should I say a few words instead?"
"Don't worry, Herr Pastor," said Ferdinand. "He's got the whole Testament down there now."
The upturned earth smelt strong. In one of the clods a white May-bug larva was crawling. When the earth was thrown in again he would still go on living down there, hatch out, and next year break through and come into the light. But Gottfried Lenz was dead. He was extinguished. We were standing by his grave, we knew that his body, his hair, his eyes were still there, changed already, but there still, and yet for all that, he was gone and would never return. It was past comprehending. Our skin was warm, our thoughts were busy, our hearts pumping blood through the arteries; we were there as before, as we were yesterday; we were not suddenly wanting an arm, we hadn't become blind or dumb, everything was as usual, soon we should go away—and Gottfried Lenz would stay behind and never come again. It was past comprehending.
The clods fell hollow on the coffin. The gravedigger had given us spades, and now we buried him—Valentin, Köster, Alfons, and I—as we had buried many a comrade before. Droning, an old Army song beat through my brain, an old, melancholy soldiers' song that he had often sung— "Argonnerwald, Argonnerwald, a quiet graveyard art thou now . . ."
Alfons had brought a simple, black wooden cross, a cross such as those that stand by the hundred'thousand on the endless rows of graves in France. We placed it at the head of the grave and hung Gottfried's old steel helmet on top.
"Come on," said Valentin at last in a hoarse voice.
"Yes," said Köster. But he still stayed. We all stayed.
Valentin looked down the line of us. "And what for?" said he slowly. "What for? Damn it."
No one answered.
Valentin made a weary gesture. "Come on."
We walked along the gravel path to the exit. At the gate Fred, Georg and the rest were waiting for us. "He could laugh so wonderfully," said Stefan Grigoleit, and the tears flowed down his helpless angry face.
I looked round. No one was following us.