The reception of these unequipped men on the other bank must have been sufficiently poor for our officers to forbid escape by reed float. But it was difficult for them to impose discipline on men simultaneously paralyzed by fear and prepared to affront the devil. Many men, in fact, drowned, or died of pneumonia, and many, after risking everything, were court-martialed.
I no longer had any clear idea of our situation, and set about trying to discover from the soldiers in my unit what had happened to my friends. Perhaps someone among these three thousand men waiting in the mud had run into Hals or Lensen or the veteran, stretched out on an armful of long, soaking stalks, dreaming of a distant utopia, indifferent to the rain running down his resigned features.
But my researches were in vain, and my questions remained unanswered. Once I thought I recognized a couple of faces from our disbanded company. I talked to the fellows, who answered evasively that they no longer remembered anything that had happened. They were absolutely exhausted, and my questions only seemed to annoy them. Their stunned minds seemed capable of only one idea: they had to cross the river.
There was only one person who might know a little more than the others — Herr Kapitan Wesreidau. But the respect and fear which officers required of us made it almost impossible to speak to them. A few of the older soldiers were bold enough to approach them, but for a boy like myself it was entirely different. However, I was so consumed by desire to speak to the captain that it must have showed on my face. Also, I was always lingering somewhere near him or his group. I was sitting on my bundle a short distance away from Wesreidau and two or three other officers, including a major, when Wesreidau began to walk toward me. I stared in confusion at the tall figure in the long leather coat shining with rain, ready to leap to my feet and snap to attention. But the captain gestured to me to stay as I was, so I remained on the ground, with my eyes glued to his face. He seemed even taller than usual, because I was so low down.
“What regiment do you belong to, young fellow?” he asked.
I stammered out my regimental number, as well as the number of the scratch company I was taken into for the retreat from Konotop. He took me for a Czech, so I explained my origins to him.
“Hm,” was all he said about that.
“Those scratch companies were the last ones out. I led several of them myself.”
“I know, Herr Hauptmann,” I said, blushing. “I saw you.”
I couldn’t get used to the idea that the captain really was talking to me.
“Ah,” said Wesreidau. “Then we have memories in common, of a difficult time.”
“Ja, Herr Hauptmann.”
He reached for a cigarette, but the packet was empty. Had he perhaps been going to offer me one?
“We’ll be crossing tomorrow, young fellow, and I expect you’ll be getting a long leave.”
The word “leave” was like a sudden sip of champagne. “Leave!”
“I think so. We won’t have stolen it from you.”
Sensations which I had thought I would never feel again immediately revived — all the emotions I had buried with so much difficulty. Could it be possible… ? But it had always been possible; how could I doubt it? I suddenly realized the full weight of my despair, how absolutely I had given up hope. Now I began to think again, timidly and gently, of Paula. Since we had been organized into the special assault group, there had been no mail. Although we had been moving continuously, this lack of news had weighed on me terribly. And then, in the face of such intense misery and disgust, words describing love and tenderness lost their meaning. Everything I had felt seemed to have been swept away in the dust and noise of crumbling houses, and in misery far more intense than the miseries of love. I had often thought that if I managed to live through the war I wouldn’t expect too much of life. How could one resent disappointment in love if life itself was constantly in doubt? Since Belgorod, terror had overturned all my preconceptions, and the pace of life had been so intense one no longer knew what elements of ordinary life to abandon in order to maintain some semblance of balance. I was still unresigned to the idea of death, but I had already sworn to myself during moments of intense fear that I would exchange anything — fortune, love, even a limb — if I could simply survive.
I sensed that Captain Wesreidau was about to leave, so I asked him if he knew anything of my usual companions. He was only able to remember the veteran, calling him by his proper name.
“August Wiener’s company was supporting a howitzer battery at the beginning of the offensive. The first troops had a hard time. It was very difficult. In any case, the men who got through were probably sent to Kiev. That’s where we would have regrouped if we’d had the trucks.”
I listened to him in silence. He nodded, and walked away.
“We’ll be crossing tomorrow.”
My head was spinning with the thought of a leave, and with the anguish of the possible loss of my special comrades. Perhaps I had already walked past their burnt bodies on the shattered pavement of the Konotop — Kiev road. Would I also have to renounce the friendships which had seen me through so much? I knew that they also were so close to being stripped of everything that the sentiment I had for them seemed permissible, it was so gratuitous and disinterested. Must I also obliterate, without remorse — for remorse is a dangerous luxury in battle — the memories of Hals, and Lensen, and even that bastard Lindberg?
However, if my friends had disappeared, the veteran had left me an inheritance, a special faculty. I would relive all my good memories, even in the worst moments, and lie on the ground, inert and almost insensible, oblivious of the rain which my saturated cap was no longer able to soak up, and which ran over my face and collar and down my neck. The rain streaming across my cheeks would take the place of the tears I should have shed.
The rain continued for a long time, through the night and the next day, until the end of the afternoon. The soil on which we waited had become a giant sponge. Each fresh bundle of rushes soaked up as much water from the ground as it received from the sky. We were so thoroughly soaked through that some of us stripped altogether, to wait naked. Most of the time, we stayed on our feet, with tent cloths over our shoulders, watching the endless back-and-forth of the rafts.
Toward noon, despite the terrible weather, a squadron of Ilyushins appeared. Once again, we cursed those birds of ill — omen, which forced us to lie with our noses in the gluey Dnieper mud. The planes made three passes, scattering bombs and bullets wherever they could see anything. Once again, we were filled with a panic which ended only when the list of killed and wounded had grown a little longer.
Finally, toward six in the evening, as the light was fading, our group was taken in charge by the transit services.
We were ordered to collect our things and proceed in good order to the three embarkation points which the incessant trampling had transformed into an astonishing quagmire.