Friday, April 14, 2023

Pages 158-159

This Month's Installment

As always, the italicized parts are what I'm unsure about.
    "Then we must just bear it, too.  And must rebuild what is destroyed where there is peace."
    "We must bear it, too, quite certainly," he replied, having become calmer, "it cuts out every material casualty that we personally lose.  But the thought that one could surrender this wonderful country like loot-"
    "Do you see," she interrupted him, "out there at the border at this moment our soldiers are standing and defending their home until the last drop of blood.  Your brother Fritz is also among them; do you mean that his East Prussia, even only a span of its soil, will be surrendered?  He'd rather cover it with his body; I know that.  And if they must yield to brutal force, and the enemy still sets his foot on the beloved earth - for whom would it be more difficult to see, for us or for them?  No, nothing remains for us except silently to endure what is imposed upon us.  You are right; he who now still wanted to talk to us about a surrender assaulted these brave men and the good things."
    She had talked herself into a growing heat,

---158---

and each of her words resounded deep in his soul.
    Time had advanced.  She wished him good night; but he still stayed up late; yet he would have found no rest.

    At the train station in Malkaynen there is difficult work to-day.  It got pretty lively here every day, but never like on this day.  Incessantly, the trains come and go; the great battle, which raged since yester-day, casts its waves ever closer.  Not far from the train station, a war-time hospital was set up.  The people flee out of the whole surrounding area; the moving of the wounded becomes greater and more difficult.  Clearly, one hears the thundering of the cannon.  Yester-day, it still sounded dull and sluggish, like the distant rumble of a storm; to-day more intense, quicker, blow after blow.  And one hears each one.  And the earth sways and rumbles underfoot.
    Malkaynen lies a good mile on the other side of a high ridge of the East Prussian land, the plain stretches far under it; hard and angular edges cut through it.

Grammatical Minutia/Commentary

Not many comments to make this month.  This is the end of chapter thirty-one, which I believe is the longest chapter so far.  Oddly, chapter thirty-one switches to present tense.