I stood there for a moment, astounded by such casualness.
“Well,” I said finally, becoming more German than the Germans, “I’d like to know when the train to the Fatherland will be coming through. I’m going home on leave.”
The other soldier smiled and slowly stood up. Then he walked toward me, bracing himself against the table, like a rheumatic.
“So you’re going home on leave, young fellow?” His voice sounded as though it might break into laughter at any movement, which irritated me.
“A fine time to take a vacation!”
“When will there be a train?”
I was hoping to cut short the conversation I knew was coming.
“You have a strange accent. Where are you from?” Unmasked again! I felt sure that I was blushing.
“I have French relatives,” I said, almost angry. “My father… in any case, I grew up in France. But I’ve been in the German army for nearly two years now.”
“Are you French?”
“No. My mother is German.”
“In cases of that kind it’s the father who counts, though.”
He was getting angry, too.
“Look at that,” he said to the Popovs, who apparently hadn’t understood a word. “They’re even taking French kids now.”
“What time will there be a train?”
“Don’t worry about trains. Hereabouts, they come when they can.”
“What do you mean?”
“There’s no timetable, you know. What do you expect? This is no Reichsbahndienst.”
“But after all…”
“Trains come through from time to time, naturally — but you can never predict them.”
He smiled and gestured vaguely.
“Have a seat here with us. You’ve got plenty of time.”
“No. I haven’t got plenty of time. I’ve got to get out of here. I’m not going to sit here gassing with you.”
“Suit yourself. If you’d rather walk around outside and get cold… Or you could hike over to Vinnitsa. Trains go through there more regularly. Only I warn you — it’s forty miles through thick woods, infested with the friends of these fellows here,” he nodded toward the railwaymen, “who aren’t exactly in agreement with Adolph, and who might very well put an end to your leave.”
He looked at the Russians and grinned. They smiled back, without any idea why.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Partisans, for God’s sake!”
“You mean those bastards are around here, too?”
This time, it was his turn to be astonished.
“Of course… and in Rumania too, and in Hungary, and Poland. Maybe even in Germany.” I was flabbergasted.
“So sit down, young fellow. It’s a big mess that really has nothing to do with you, and you shouldn’t be mixed up in it at all. It would be crazy to get killed just for the sake of a few hours. I managed to get hold of some real coffee, and it’s here in this kitchen, nice and hot. There’s a fellow at the commissary with a good heart, who’s just about fed up with this war himself.”
He came back carrying a big army coffeepot.
“We drink enough coffee here to send us right up the walls,” he said, looking at the Popovs, who were still smiling.
I felt somewhat disconcerted.
“Would you mind telling me what your job is?”
“Hell!” he said in irritation. “I’m supposed to be guarding that pile of boxes” — he nodded at the neatly stacked crates outside — “and these poor fellows here. Who the hell do they think I am? Nearly sixty years old, and they bring me here to play sentry. I spent thirty years of my life working for the railways in Prussia and Germany —and this is the thanks I get. Specialization — that’s what it is. No useless efforts. Everyone in his place. An efficient force. Sieg Heil! I can tell you — I’m fed up!” By the time he was finished, he was shouting. He slammed the coffeepot down on the table. We might have been in a Paris bistro. I felt as if the world had suddenly turned upside down.
“That coffeepot is army property, and you just took it,” I said, clinging to the thread of my first idea.
The fellow looked at me, and slowly put down a cup, which he filled with steaming liquid. Then he held it out to me.
“Here, young fellow. Drink this.”
There was a moment of silence, and then he began talking again in a calm, serious tone which one could interrupt only with difficulty.
“Now, you listen to me, my boy. I am fifty-seven years old. I fought in the cavalry in ’14–’18, and was a prisoner in Holland for two years. Now it’s been three and a half years since they put me back in the army again. I have three sons fighting on three of the fronts which our beloved country has decided to defend. I am an old man, and even if I once felt fiery about political principles which have long since been altered by time, the politics of today leave me cold, and I don’t give any more of a damn for them than I do for this coffeepot. So drink in a little of the heat it offers you, and take this chance to forget for a few minutes that you’re mixed up in all this mess.”
I looked at him, astounded.
“I’m not a spiess, or an officer, or the Führer, but only an old railway worker who was forced to change uniforms. Sit down and relax and drink your coffee.”
“But what you just said is outrageous. After all, every minute of the day soldiers are dying for our country, and…”
“If our country needs something from me, I’ll postpone my retirement for a couple of years.”
“But… but…”
I felt as if I were choking. I couldn’t find the words to express the intensity of emotion which German idealism created in me. I had already suffered a great deal from the war, but couldn’t conceive a life other than the one assigned to me. I felt that this man was somehow missing the point, and that I was unable to express it adequately. Perhaps I was too young to understand it.
“I don’t agree with you at all!” I shouted, beside myself with rage. “If everyone thought the way you did, nothing would be worth anything! Your way of thinking strips life of all its meaning!”
His gun was lying in the corner of the room.
“Your friends might pick that up,” I said, nodding at the gun, and then at the Popovs.
“Did that ever occur to you?”
I thought he was going to throw me out. But his attitude was inconsistent. Perhaps he was a little afraid of me.
“I’ll take the coffeepot back when we’re through with it,” he said with a bitter laugh.
“Would you like a little more?”
I held out my cup, feeling pleased with myself for putting a fellow soldier back on the right track.
I waited for more than nine hours, and had almost given up hope, when at last a train arrived and took me away.
11. CANCELLED LEAVE
On the train from Vinnitsa toward Lvov and Lublin, I was traveling with soldiers who’d been at Cherkassy and Kremenchug.
They told me about the hellish fighting which had taken place near those towns, now lost to us or slipping from our grasp. Everywhere, the crushing numerical superiority of the enemy was finally overwhelming our positions, which we defended with desperate determination, paying an appalling price in casualties. All the fellows on the train were going on leave too, but despite their joy, they seemed crushed by the experiences they had just lived through.
The train came into Lublin station at dawn on a winter morning. The ground was covered with snow, and the Polish cold felt much sharper than the cold in Russia. Even though we were used to sleeping outdoors, no one had been able to rest on the train, and we greeted the morning with turned-up collars and gray faces. Despite the early hour, the station platforms were crowded with soldiers walking up and down to keep warm, dressed and equipped for the front. There were many new recruits, easily distinguishable by their boyish, rosy faces. Military police had been stationed at intervals of ten yards down the length of the platform for incoming trains. I had overestimated my strength. As I obeyed the orders barked over the P.A. system, and jumped down onto the platform, I was shaking with sleeplessness and cold, and my legs were buckling under me.