Pages 186-187

This Month's Installment

What's italicized is what I'm unsure about

But now when I am become old and tired and hoped to find well-earned rest on it and later on to see my body be bedded down in her bosom, now they come and force me abroad away from it!"

    His watery, dark eyes shimmered; even the other two were moved.

    "Those are the sacrifices that the Fatherland demands from us, Manny!" the privy councillor eventually said.

    "The Fatherland!" retorted the old man, "I know it well.  But then what is the Fatherland?  For all who sit here around us, for all country-born, it is the small piece of earth that they cultivate.  The soil is our home, and what you call love of the Fatherland arises out of the love for the soil.  My whole life long, I have known to treasure the produce of the spirit and of the culture; Hans there knows that the best.  But they are the artistic creations; they are not the original ones, the natives.  That is the piece of land that the man conquers anew every day with his strength and work; only through this does it become his property."

    Speaking became difficult for him.  But he pulled himself together and went on:  "Certainly, we sacrifice it, must sacrifice it so that the whole will be saved.  For in all of us, whoever we are, is and lives nothing else but the Fatherland.  But we people of the land give our last with it, and while we give it, we bleed to death, not much different from the soldier in the field.  But especially when we become old and already so united with our soil that

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we are no longer able to create a new home for ourselves."

Pages 184-186

This Month's Installment

    "But I am just used to her," the old man replied in that harmless selfishness, which had strongly developed through the infirmity of his body;

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it also appeared in such times as perfectly natural that everything had to turn around him.

    "The Hutemach has stayed in Bärwalde?" Hans askt.

    "She and Borowski.  Thanks be to God!  What would become of Bärwalde otherwise!?"

    "But it is a lot from her that she has done it."

    "She explained from the beginning that she wanted to stay.  She has often been in Russia, understands the language, and hopes to manage with the enemy if they should come."

    "But it is a lot," Hans repeated.

    Even from the poultry, which he otherwise preferred and which the privy councillor had again carefully prepared for him, the Bärwalder took hardly one bite.  The brother's patience gave out on him.

    "But you must pull yourself together a little, Manny!"

    The old man replied not a word.  But a vague resentment lay on his face, and his thick, white brows knit themselves together tightly and firmly.

    "It is a difficult time!" Hans sought to agree with the privy councillor and at the same time to placate him, "but we all suffer under it."

    Again no answer, and yet one saw how it was working behind the furrowed brow.  Finally, the old man lifted his head from his chest; searching for the word with difficulty, he said:  "A difficult time for us all, quite right, my son.  And you, who, although a city dweller and a scholar, cling to the country home like all the Warsows, must understand why food and drink has no taste for me anymore.  They have driven me from my soil!  I grew up on it; my parents grew up on it, and my grandparents.  I have cultivated and ploughed it from my

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earliest youth on.  I have put all my work and energy into it, seen it turn green and grow and bear fruit, every spring, every summer, every fall.

Grammatical Minutia/Commentary

Previously, I translated Scholle as clod, but that didn't really seem to fit the context here ("They have driven me from my clod!").  Soil is a better choice here (and probably in most instances so far, too).

Pages 183-184

This Month's Installment

The italicized parts are what I'm unsure about.

    The weak eyes of the Bärwalder had still not seen his nephew at all; only when his brother

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made him aware and Hans himself now approached his uncle to greet him, did a faint shimmer of joy pass over his tired features and for a few seconds gave them something stirring, grasping in the heart.

    "We will go for our regular walk in the sun in the afternoon - right, Manny?" the privy councillor said.  "And then you'll lie down upstairs in your room and sleep a little."

    "Yes, then I'll lie down and sleep a little."

    "You've had a bad trip?" Hans turned to the privy councillor.

    "A very bad.  We decided only at the last moment.  Indeed, he was not to be moved for the departure and wanted to stay under any circumstances.  Only when everyone around us fled did the Hutemach and I bring him to it with a bit of force.  Now, however, it had already become a little late.  We needed to take the railway trip here, which one otherwise does in two hours with the fast train, the whole night, from ten o'clock in the evening until seven o'clock in the morning, and rode in the most dreadful corner in a compartment in the fourth class."

    The waiter brought the lunch.  Hans was invited and gladly joined.  But the Bärwalder took next to nothing.  The fish, which the privy councillor prepared and gave to him, remained lying, barely touched.

    "You should have taken the Hutemach with," he said grumpily, "she knows best what gets me."

    "But I know it too and am standing in for her."