‘I gradually came to recognize my old anger against authority,’ Friedrich wrote to me later in the field. ‘I was rebelling against authority as it is at the present time. For it is not based on legal assumptions. The book-keeper who goes off singing to the war is no more a hero than the policeman is a policeman, the minister a minister, or the Kaiser a Kaiser. One does not see this in times of peace. But now the hundred thousand lawyers and headmasters who have suddenly turned into officers, expose this illegality which applies even to the regular officers. There is no doubt that society reveals its identity, however it disguises itself.
‘I was in the Union of Young Workers, which you know. The Thursday evening meetings still take place. I read the programme in the entrance-hall. These were the titles of the lectures: “The Central Powers and the War”, “Socialism and Germany”, “Tsarism and the Proletariat”, “The Middle European idea and Freedom of the Peoples”. I sought the chairman, a young metal worker. Despite his youth, he was currently exempted from military service because he worked in a munitions factory and on account of his expert knowledge. “Oh, Comrade!” said the young man, overjoyed. He wore a badge in his buttonhole whose design I could not quite make out and which combined a cross, a star and a hammer. A draughtsman in the munitions factory had designed it and it had become officially adopted as the insignia of the heroes of the home front as the metal workers are known. “How marvellous, that you’ve escaped!” said the young man. “When do you enlist? Will you give us a talk beforehand? There aren’t many of us now, most have joined up!” While he was speaking he had the cheerfulness of the president of a festival committee. On his table lay piles of pink field postcards, there was an ashtray he had made himself out of the grenades he helped to produce. On the wall hung one of the familiar prints showing Karl Marx, and a red flag wrapped up with string leaned in a corner. It was rather like a rolled-up sunshade, the ones the flower-sellers spread over their stalls on hot summer days. And because it was snowing outside, it seemed to me in a fit of strange confusion that the flag was really an umbrella.’
He remembered Grünhut as one remembers a medicine one has already used a few times with success. Grünhut was a lost individual, even a war could not relieve him of his excommunication. And as society was waging war, Friedrich concluded with the consistency of a man who has not yet experienced a war, that the previously convicted must be normal.
Grünhut jumped up. ‘Come in, come in,’ he said, and drew Friedrich to the table and lit the gas-lamp which began to diffuse a humming green chill. However, he endeavoured to warm his frozen hands at the flame.
Friedrich told of his escape. Grünhut walked around in the room and rubbed his hands. ‘What heroism!’ he said. ‘You’ve earned a decoration even before going into the field! It ought to be published in the papers! What a hero! What a hero!’
And he began to talk of the imminent siege of the city of Paris, of Hindenburg’s march towards Petersburg, of a regiment that had passed under his window that very day on its way to the station, and of his hopes of being rehabilitated at last. He now referred to his old unhappy story as ‘a tragic case’. He had put in a request to the regiment in which he had served as a one-year volunteer years ago; he had been a sergeant and been considered for a commission. He had kept a copy, which he took from his pocket and began to read aloud. In it he talked about the exceptional times, about the Fatherland and the Kaiser, about his ‘youthful misdemeanour’ and his yearning to die as a soldier and a gentleman, to make up for a wasted life with a splendid death. Despite his age, he wanted to go to the front.
He wiped the sweat from his forehead although his red hands betrayed that he was freezing. He was hot and cold at the same time. His head was in quite another climate than his body. At the moment, so Grünhut said, there were no addresses to write. A large tailoring firm, which had a contract for uniforms, gave him so-called home work. He fetched twenty pairs of military trousers and a hundred and fifty buttons from the workshop every third day and delivered the trousers with the buttons sewn on three days later. He delivered only good work. Others were satisfied with drawing one thread through each hole in the button. Then, the first time a soldier fastened his braces, the button tore off. People had no conscience. But Grünhut sewed the buttons on so carefully that they were as firm as iron. Although spot-checks were made on all the other home workers, he was taken on trust. Also he received a higher wage. Only now things weren’t too good. Frau Tarka was gradually losing her clientèle. The men were enlisting, the women becoming nurses. They gradually learned to be careful and to avoid becoming pregnant. It was practice. Sexual matters could no longer remain secret. And the girls’ fear of their fathers also grew less with the times. So Frau Tarka pestered him. She demanded more money for his room. Letting to refugees from the east was so profitable now. He put her off with his prospects of rehabilitation.
‘Shall we go and eat?’
Yes, they went to the canteen.
The weather had suddenly changed, a warm wind blew and turned the snow into rain. The slightly wounded and convalescents walked with sticks, with black and white bandages, many on the arms of dark-blue nurses. The street-lamps had been turned down, the lights in the shop-windows were put out early, many shops had closed because their proprietors had been called up. The lowered iron doors were reminiscent of graves, and the bills that gave the reason for the absence of the shopkeepers were like the inscriptions on tombstones. In many streets it was so dark that the stars were visible between the ragged clouds. It was an invasion of nature among the houses and street-lamps. The rows of windows were blind. Sky and clouds were mirrored in the windowpanes.
The feebly lit room of the canteen seemed brighter and friendlier than in peacetime. More women than men now sat at the long tables. They talked of sons and husbands, took crumpled field postcards and old newspapers from hidden pockets. A few grey-haired men, who greeted Grünhut with a brief silence, spoke of politics. Grünhut, whom the old men called Doctor, explained to them the strategic position of the Allied armies and comforted them over the advance of the Russians into Galicia with an allusion to Napoleon, who in 1812 had to thank his very advance for his misfortunes. ‘I reported to the military authorities yesterday of my own free will!’ he said, as a final and conclusive proof that the victory of the Central Powers was certain. The old men shook their heads. ‘How old are you?’ they asked. ‘Fifty-two!’ said Grünhut, with the same emphasis with which he had previously said ‘thirty thousand prisoners.’