Pages 200-201

This Month's Installment

I've been focusing on some other projects lately and got even further behind in translating than I was already, so this month's installment is a bit shorter.

    "Much longer, Pastor, as long as the war lasts!  Let the others

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be shot dead for the Fatherland!  Let the lame and the crippled limp out of here on their wooden legs or crawl on all fours into the firing line; as the doctor says, I'm sitting pretty here and let myself be taken care of and pampered... is it right like this!?"

    His patience was torn; he spoke with severe scorn.  "God knows, had I suspected that one would make me a prisoner here, I would never have come into this parish garden, harbored in peace; I would have rested in some army field hospital and then gone after the enemy again!"

    "I see, I see... are you so little satisfied with your hospital, Captain?  Have we done our business so poorly?"

    A young girl in a simple calico dress had come out of the house with a bowl full of pears and a plate of light cookies, had placed fruit and cake on the table, and, with eyes in the brownish, place face that wanted to appear naughty and yet were not able to, lookt at the one lying down.  "So, 'a prisoner'!  And 'some army field hospital' - that was indeed said very friendly.  Good that our other patients inside are more content with us."

Commentary

I translated "böse" as "naughty" ("eyes... that wanted to appear naughty"), but I'm not sure this is the best word choice.  Evil and wicked are other possibilities, but these seemed too strong for the context.

Pages 199-200

This Month's Installment

    "It was that bath given for her illness, but I would not have received her for the farther voyage if the clever Miss Hanna were not firmly at my side.

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    "She will be a good prop for the old man.  Of course, she has enough to do with her wounded, to whom I myself am now also joined."

    The physician was silent for a moment.  "Nevertheless I will speak with her to-morrow if it would not be more suitable to pass her wounded on, perhaps to Rodenburg."

    "Hm, hm!  Then you see the case here as so serious?"

    "An early prevention doesn't hurt."

    "But the red cross up there-"

    "Who tells us that the Russians will respect it?"

    The pastor was taken aback.  "Now, is our ward still so impatient?" he askt in his kind way.  "Or have you calmed him down a bit, Doctor?"

    "With these people there is nothing to start.  They all burn to let themselves be devoured by the fire.  They prefer to have limped on one leg or crawled back on all fours."

    The old man had listened with only little attention.  "Yet it is wonderful-" he said and then broke off.

    "What is wonderful, Pastor?" askt Fritz.

    "Oh, nothing - the man who was just with me has a brother here in our area, barely three miles away and stands his ground firmly and rigidly- but no, why should one repeat that!?  It is idle hogwash; this war has stampt out millions of brave warriors from the earth, but it has also mobilized a whole army of old wives.  Now then, you are sitting pretty with us, right, Captain, and not going before our good doctor allows it?"

Pages 198-199

This Month's Installment

I still haven't caught up from last month (in fact, I think I fell behind a bit more), so this may still be shorter than usual.

    "Not quite so quickly?  But more than that.  What do you think one goes through when one knows:  here in your nearest proximity your comrades fight in life and death, and you sun yourself on a deckchair on account of a little thing!

---198---

For becoming mad is much worse than the little inconvenience that the wound prepares for one!"

    The maid came and called the pastor to a visit in the house.  As if he had waited for this moment, Fritz turned quickly to the physician:  "The Russians are standing at the door.  You need not deceive me, Doctor; I know it as well as you."

    "My colleague in Metgetken told me to-day on the telephone that his entire circle has already fled and Russians squadrons would have invaded a few places."

    "It is very well possible," Fritz replied calmly, "it is a matter of a few units whose breakthrough we could not hinder with the vast superiority."

    "I have deliberately said nothing.  An imminent danger probably does not threaten us yet in Pronitten, and should it enter - in any case, I would not like to excite the old gentleman needlessly."

    "It would also have no point; he would, as far as I know him, never go, and you have already taken the pastor's wife to safety."

    "She also did not want to; she refused with such a tenacity that with her fear, I had been barely capable of making her leave her husband.  But as a result of her interior agitation, her suffering made such progress that her remaining here was no longer possible."

    "She had left just before my arrival, to Wiesbaden.  Right?"

Pages 197-198

This Month's Installment

I was sick for about a week and haven't caught up yet, so this is a bit shorter than normal.

    On the parsonage the white flag with the red cross waved widely visible.  For the few

---197---

wounded, who had arrived here until now and were willingly taken care of by Hanna and the district nurse, the large room was enough temporarily, along with a smaller one that had been set up on the first floor.  Only later, when the number increased, should the school house be taken for help, which was near the parsonage, separated only by the garden.

    Between the large garden veranda and the pipeleaf arbor, where the sun had the most free access, stood a comfortable deckchair, and on it rested a wounded officer in his field uniform, the large, gray coat spread over his feet.

    "The healing proceeds more quickly than I assumed.  Indeed, it happens more often with this sort of injury where no bone is affected; the arm is also coming along well."

    Doctor Robinson, resident district physician in Pronitten, a figure of Herculean physique, whose chief characteristics - energy and childlike goodnaturedness - one read immediately by sight, said it half to Fritz, half turning to the old pastor who stood on the head side of the wounded and read the words from the physician's lips.

    "That is good news that you bring me, Doctor!  Then I can go back to my unit on the quickest way and need not lie here on the bearskin."

    "Well, you will indeed not have it quite so quickly, Captain."

Pages 196-197

This Month's Installment

What's italicized is what I'm unsure about.

But I say to myself:  only while we at that time in the quiet of peacetime cared for the spiritual things, while we with earnest zeal planted moral and religious strengths in the souls, we made our people strong in order to lift ourselves now to such a unanimous magnificence that we give strength to the one staying behind to build the places of culture and of love in the midst of a destructive war."

---196---

    He remained standing, as if he expected that she would finally say something to him, only one word to break the ice that lay between them.  She raised her head from the ground; a faint wince ran over her lips.  But she stayed silent; the released word did not fall.

    They had continued on the way and reached their destination.  Edith disappeared into the interior of the large parish hall, and he trod the path to the city military hospital.  But his thoughts were with her and with that which they had just spoken with one an-other.

    There is something in her that is not to be broken, he said to himself, a pride or perhaps a reserve that will never concede that she is wrong.  Even all her suffering and the difficult time change nothing about it.  What actually changes a person!? - Thus we will probably disperse ourselves into all eternity!

    Full and warm lay the sun of the later summer over the Pronitter parish garden.  She spread her beaming hands over the paths and lawns; she broke through with attractive seeking in every thicket, on every patch; she played with golden lights on every tree trunk there, sat pleasantly on every full, dark leaf, took the weary ones gliding to earth in her soft arms, and sunned the dying yet with their brilliance; she filled everything with peace and with pleasure.  It was as if there in the great, wide world, there was nothing else but light and brightness, as if the heavy war, which played out here in the nearest vicinity, was only a pressing dream out of which one was now awakened to a new, beautiful day.

This is the end of chapter thirty-five and the beginning of chapter thirty-six.