The Road Back by Erich Maria Remarque Read Free Book Online Page B

couple of land-girls. No one thinks of it as indecent—it has nothing to do with the war, so we listen readily.
    A sapper, who has lost two fingers, is boasting that his wife has given birth to a seven months' child and yet in spite of that it weighs eight pounds. Ledderhose jeers at him: "Things don't happen that way!" The sapper does not follow him, and begins to count on his fingers the months between his last leave and the birth of the child. "Seven," says he, "that's right."
    Ledderhose coughs and his lemon-yellow face draws to a wry, mocking smile. "Somebody's been doing a little job for you there."
    The sapper looks at him. "What—what do you mean, eh?" he stutters.
    "Why, it's obvious enough, surely!" says Arthur, sniffling and scratching himself.
    Sweat breaks out on the man's lips. He counts over and over again. His mouth twitches. A fat A.S.C. driver with a beard, sitting by the window, is convulsed with laughter. "You poor fool! you poor, bloody fool! "
    Bethke stiffens. "Shut your mug, fat guts!"
    "Why?" asks the fellow with the beard.
    "Because you ought to shut your mug!" says Bethke. "You too, Arthur."
    The sapper has turned pale. "What does one do about it?" he asks helplessly, holding fast to the window-frame.
    "One shouldn't get married," says Jupp deliberately, "until one's children are already out earning. Then that sort of thing wouldn't happen."
    Outside the evening draws on. Woods lie along the skyline like black cows, fields show faintly in the dim light that shines from the carriage windows. It now wants but two hours for home. Bethke is getting his baggage ready. He lives in a village a few stations this side of the town and so has to get out sooner.
    The train stops. Adolf shakes hands with us all. He tumbles out on to the little siding and looks about him with a sweeping glance that drinks in the whole landscape in a second, as a parched field the rain. Then he turns to us again. But he hears nothing any more. Ludwig Breyer is standing at the window, indifferent to his pain. "Trot along, Adolf," he says, "your wife will be waiting."
    Bethke looks up at us and shakes his head: "No such hurry as all that, Ludwig." It is evident with what power home is drawing him away; but Adolf is Adolf—he continues to stand there beside us until the train leaves. Then he turns swiftly about and goes off with long strides.
    "We'll be coming to see you soon!" I call after him hastily.
    We watch him go out across the fields. For a long time he continues to wave. Then smoke from the engine drifts between. In the distance gleam a few red lights.
    The train makes a big sweeping curve. Adolf has now become very small, a mere point, a tiny little man, quite alone on the wide, dark plain, above which, vast and electrically bright, ringing the horizon in sulphur yellow, towers the night sky. I do not know why—it has nothing to do with Adolf—but the sight fascinates me—A solitary man going out over the wide stretch of fields against the mighty sky, in the evening and alone.
    Then the trees close up in massive darkness and soon nothing is left but swift motion, and woods and the sky.
    It grows noisy in the compartment. Here inside there are corners, edges, odours, warmth, space and boundaries; here are brown, weathered faces and eyes, bright flecks in them; there is a smell of earth, sweat, blood, uniforms— but outside the world is rushing obscurely past to the steady stamping of the train; we are leaving it behind us, ever farther and farther, all that world of trenches and shell-holes, of darkness and terror; now a mere whirlwind seen through a window—it concerns us no more.
    Somebody starts singing. Others join in. Soon everyone is singing, the whole compartment, the next compartment, the entire carriage, the whole train. We sing ever more lustily, with more and more power; our brows are flushed, the veins swell out; we sing every soldiers' song that we know. We stand up, glaring at each other. Our eyes