— it seems that, in general, the reason for the postal delay from here to back home is that the letters are no longer censored, but simply held back until events make them redundant.
I am resorting to every conceivable way to make these trying and terrible times easier to bear — all to no avail. If I think of you a lot, I only get sadder, and if I try to take my mind off things, I only feel sadder afterwards. It’s best just to live for the moment, then time goes quicker. For every day that passes brings us closer together, we mustn’t forget that!
I’m still totally dejected, worrying about you today, but I intend to shake it off and cling only to the hope of receiving good news from you tomorrow. To think that I could be with you right now, see your beloved face, talk to you about the days ahead, which will surely put the finishing touch to our happiness — yet here I am, far away, and you all alone! Truly, it is so cruel, this war, so unnatural, and we are not the only ones to suffer, so many others, an innumerable number, are made unhappy by the arbitrary actions of the unscrupulous few. But what do I care about others, my heart is breaking when I think of what we two now have to go through. It’s too terrible, hardly endurable! And I still have to carry out my difficult, responsible, dangerous duties, and set an example of bravery, devotion to duty, and all the rest of these virtues which I hate, while every step I take fills me with disgust and revulsion and goes against my innermost conviction. They demand that you lose all your better feelings, and whoever is too good to do that suffers unspeakably, and does whatever is demanded of him with disgust. And we were so happy, so bound up in each other, we are so united that one is quite lost without the other. Without you I am so diminished, so impoverished, there are times you would not recognize me. Often, when I give free rein to my thoughts, even when they don’t instantly take wing to you, time and again I want to ask you something, to know what you think, to hear your opinion, but I’m alone! I don’t need anyone else’s advice, it’s you I want to hear, all my thoughts and feelings are for you, whatever they are, and without you I’m not me, only half of me, diminished. Your love, even from a distance, sheds light on my gloom, it alone sustains the joy of living. Why say more, why keep twisting the knife in wounds already throbbing?! You know that you are all in all to me — or rather, you are the cause of my pain, for without you it would none of it feel so terrible! Sometimes I think of the future. The two of us lying in each other’s arms, drained of life to the point of utter exhaustion — from love, from love!
Oh why can I not be there! I would not have stirred from your side throughout the difficult hours that lie before you, and all would have been made so very much easier for you.
Don’t worry about me. If I could transport you here by magic, I would quite naturally take you into the trenches with me.
Oh, why can I not be there with you! I belong there, after all, yet cannot be there! God grant that you did not suffer too much, that nothing happened to you, that you’re in good health and you will recover and get stronger day by day. Grant God that I may receive a handwritten card from you today. By the time you get these lines — God willing — you will be well again. Did you feel my presence, that I suffered everything you suffered? Oh, the time will come, the time must come, when we shall make up for all the suffering we have gone through.
So far away, so far from you at this time! Oh why, why can I not sit with you, warm you and strengthen you with my infinite love! I can’t help it, I can hardly see what I’m writing for the tears constantly in my eyes.
Oh God, that I cannot be with you! And no hope! They no longer send you home or to a base unit, but to some hospital or other.
I’ve got so many grey hairs, I can no longer count how many. But I love you, whether far away or by your side, I love you, love you, love you, beyond words, insanely.—
OPTIMIST So what’s the fuss? He goes home, and finds wife and child well.
GRUMBLER No, his country needed him! At home, a human being comes into the world, at the front another departs. I’ve never read anything sadder, anything truer, than this letter by a soldier who becomes a father at the moment of his death. I’d give the whole of our country, bag and General Staff baggage, for a single one of these millions of martyrs for love!
(Change of scene.)
Scene 34
In the Bohemian village Postabitz.
A WOMAN (sitting at a table, writing)
Derest husband,
This is to inform you I have gone astray. I couldnt help it, dere husband. I know youll forgive everything I tell you. Im in the family way by another. I know your a good man and that youll forgive me everything. He talked me into it and said you wouldn’t be coming back from the war anyway and thats when I had my weak moment. You know how weak women are, and its best you forgive me, its already happened. I was already thinking something must have happened to you for you hadnt written for three months. I was quite shocked to get your letter and you were still alive. Im glad for you but forgive me dere Franz, maybe the child will die and then all will be well again. I dont like this bloke any more for I know your still alive. Everything here costs the earth, its good you are away, at least you don’t have to pay for food in the field. The money you sent me will be very useful. Your unforgettable wife sends you her love once more
Anna
(Change of scene.)
Scene 35
Hospital in Leitmeritz in northern Bohemia.
DISABLED PRISONER OF WAR ON RED CROSS EXCHANGE (to neighbour in next bed, breathing heavily) You must never — lose — patience. There’s only — one more stop to go. First they’ll send us to Prague — or Vienna — but then soon — I’ll be in Postabitz. (Letters are distributed.) It may be — from my Anna — (He stretches out his left hand towards the letter.) Oh God — yes, it is! (He tries to raise himself. He holds the letter clenched between his teeth, opens it with his left hand and reads. He sinks back, thunderstruck.)
(Change of scene.)
Scene 36
Transit camp in Galicia for repatriated prisoners of war.
THE FRIEND (writing a letter) — Especially since they died in the field, it no longer seemed fitting to complain in the least about one’s own relatively tolerable fate. But I’m nearing 40, with wife and children and one or two other troubles that threaten to engulf me, and now it’s the fourth year (and who knows how many more to come!) that I have to stand impotently to attention, as it were, at the mercy of this most desperate of wars, in the ludicrous reflected glory of feats of arms which render you the most defenceless creature on God’s earth. My nerves are frayed, my spirits dejected. I ask you to make allowances for that and to forgive me if, even now that fortune has undoubtedly turned somewhat in my favour, I cannot pass mutely over all my little troubles, although my respect for the silence of those to whom your moving lament was addressed is profound, and my recognition of all that you have done for me — for me, who is still alive! — deep and indelible.