Hands in his pockets, cigarette in mouth, he sauntered in the gently drizzling midday toward that outlying part of the town where were the officers’ villas. When he considered the matter, it was utterly foolish to take on himself this further humiliation of finding out from the maid Frieda what her employers had been saying, since he would never convey to Herr Richter the results of his investigation. Let them see how they would manage their Putsch themselves; he was only going to bother about his own affairs now.
As, apparently carefree and unbound by time, the Lieutenant strolled through the streets in his shabby clothes, entering a shop once and buying fifty cigarettes of a very much better kind than usual, there was a deep crease between his eyebrows, just above the bridge of the nose—a crease of intense brooding. It was, for a young man who throughout his life had preferred action to reflection, not very easy to understand what was really the matter with him, what he wanted and what he did not want.
Very surprising indeed was the thought of how indifferent he had now become toward that Putsch for which he had worked so many months, almost without money, denying himself everything that young men otherwise desire. Equally surprising was it how indifferent he felt at leaving his comrades, to whom he no longer belonged, and whose society had always been more important for him than the love of any girl.
He had had to endure a lot that morning, things he would normally never have borne, things which would have rendered him frantic: the wine thrown at him by the Rittmeister, the apprehensive queries of the contemptible Friedrich, Herr Richter’s hardly-concealed disgust, and, to cap all, the shameful examination by the fat detective. But all this too had lapsed from the mind of one who otherwise could not forget an injury for years, but who now had to coerce himself if he wished to remember anything at all of these recent happenings.
It is strange, he thought; I feel as if I am quite out of things already, as if I have really nothing more to do with this world, like a dying man when all fades round him. Yes, now I remember again. When people die, there hands begin to move restlessly about their bedclothes. Some say the dying try to dig their own graves; others that they are trying to find something to hold on to in this world. Is that what’s happening to me? Is everything withdrawing from me, and can I find nothing more on earth to hold on to? But I am no dying man; I am not the least bit ill. Is it that the cells in my body already know they must perish? Can death not only be annihilation through illness, but also the destruction of the body through thought? In that case am I really a traitor?
He looked around as if waking from a bad dream. He was on a large dismal ground stamped hard by the boots of many hundreds of soldiers, a yellow expanse of cheerless clay where hardly a weed ventured to grow. At the far end were the crude yellow barracks, surrounded by a high yellow wall topped with broken glass. The great iron gate, painted a dull gray, was shut; the sentry in steel helmet and with slung carbine was marching up and down to warm himself a little.
The Lieutenant contemplated this picture. In him a sullen resolution was forming, something evil and very somber. He crossed the ground. Now I’ll see about it, he thought.
He stood right in the sentry’s way and looked at him challengingly. “Well, comrade?” he said. He knew the man and the man knew him; many times had the Lieutenant stood a round for him and his friends. Occasionally they had sat together, and once, when there had been a fight at a country dance, they had cleared the hall side by side. They were therefore very good acquaintances, but now the man was acting as if he did not know of any Lieutenant. In a low voice he said: “Be off with you.”
The Lieutenant did not move. He had become more sullen and addressed the sentry again, sneeringly. “Well, comrade, have you become so important that you don’t know me now?”
The man’s face did not change; he appeared not to have heard and marched past in silence. But after six paces he had to turn again and march back. “Listen, man,” said the Lieutenant this time, “I have nothing to smoke. Give me a cigarette and I’ll go away at once.”
The man gave a quick look to the left. The small door for pedestrians was open, showing part of a gravel path and the windows of the guardroom. Then he turned to the Lieutenant, whose face bore an expression of contempt, despair and anxiety hard to decipher. The sentry could make little of this face, but it held something threatening; otherwise he might possibly have dared to hand over a cigarette. As it was, he passed by without a word and about-turned at the sentry box. Some premonition led him to remove the carbine from his shoulder before approaching again.
The Lieutenant was possessed by a savage and reckless despair. It was now clear that the Reichswehr did not want to have anything more to do with them, that the sternest orders had been given not to associate with the outsiders. He was determined, however, that, whatever the circumstances, the man should enter into conversation. He wanted to quarrel with him and be taken into the barracks, if need be under arrest. Then he could ask the officer on guard what they had against them. And if he then heard something about an arms dump … Very well. All over. All—over!
It was a completely insane thought which was keeping him there in its power; as though the officer on guard would be inclined to give to an arrested person information which had been denied the comrades in liberty. But the Lieutenant was no longer rational. He had been quite right that his body’s cells could be infected by thought.… This time he let the sentry pass him unchallenged, but while his back was turned he lit a cigarette. Puffing away, he watched the man returning and enjoyed the astonished and slightly foolish expression on his face when he saw one who had just asked for a cigarette now smoking. The Lieutenant held out a second cigarette and said: “Here, comrade, a cigarette for you because you didn’t have one for me.”
The man came to a halt and said firmly: “Go away or I’ll call the guard.”
“I’ll go when you’ve taken it,” declared the Lieutenant.
The man looked at him, made no attempt to take the cigarette, but raised his carbine a little. “Do be sensible. Go away,” he said at last.
The Lieutenant also desired to win over the other. “Comrade,” he said, “take the cigarette. Oblige me and take it. So that I know you are still my comrade. There!” He held it toward him. “If you don’t take it, I’ll have to give you a punch in the mug,” he added threateningly.
The man scrutinized him, serious and watchful. He made no attempt to take the cigarette but waited to see what the other would do.
A sudden thought made the Lieutenant almost mad with rage. “Ah!” he shouted. “I can see you think I’m drunk.… I’ll show you how drunk I am!”
He dropped his cigarette and at the same moment hit out at the soldier’s face. But, Heaven only knew why, the Lieutenant, usually a very skillful boxer, had no luck today. With a dull sound his fist struck the wood of the carbine stock, and a burning pain shot through his hand and arm. Then the butt hit him on the chest with great force and he tumbled over backwards. He felt that he would never be able to breathe again.
And as he lay there, battling for breath, with the sentry’s watchful eye on him as if he were a savage beast, and considered that he had not been arrested or taken into the barracks or fired upon, and remembered in the hundredth of a second that in his pocket there was a pistol with which he could pay back the shameful blow—then he was pierced by the thought that he had not only deceived his comrades about the betrayal of the dump and made fresh difficulties for them quite unnecessarily, but that he was also nothing but a coward. He was doing all this only to delay the journey to the Black Dale, to postpone the discovery of the truth, to steal a few more hours of life. His outer varnish disintegrated, colour seemed to peel off him; his whole existence seemed like the rotten carcass of an old wooden shipwreck. This is what you are! said the voice within him.