Chapter Thirty-Two

What italicized is what I'm unsure about

    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.  In the wider course, the area is flat; at last greater mountain and hill formations thrust up again, in which bluish-black mists stretch themselves; in between, the wide valley stretches to all sides:  endless fields, farm land, meadows up to the dark garland of the forests that line the horizon without interruption; then villages with high church steeples and large estates - the real East Prussian countryside with its earthy-smelling fruitfulness.  But now filled by the stench of the war, crushed by the brazen step of the battle, which creeps up.

    It is the highest time; the refugees are safe,

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the citizens of Malkaynen have followed them and have rudden away with the incalculably great train, hitched with two engines.  Every compartment is filled up to the last place, even up to the ceiling; in the luggage racks lay screaming children.

    Only a few tolerated the deserted train station:  the commander; his aide-de-camp, who in civilian circumstances is a head forester in the Reckenstein area, whom the old man had known well for years; the stoker; and in addition, a few courageous men on whom one can rely.

    And only one locomotive has stayed for him in case of the last resort.  For among the military hospital wagons and railway carriages, which he held back for wounded, stand two with provisions on the platform.  The commander had ordered them to hold as long as possible.  Perhaps they can serve the fighting troops when they, exhausted, come out of the battle.  Only they may not fall into the hand of the enemy; the Reckenstein citizen knows this and will act accordingly.

    He stands on the platform and keeps a lookout in a moment of calm.  Not far from the station, the staff has its garrison; he believes he is able to recognize it with the sharp binoculars.  Otherwise, there is little to see; only now and then the landscape livens up through the rising smoke of a burning farm, and behind, near the river that cuts through the plain, a few dark, hardly perceptible lines more slowly here and there.  Sometimes a thin, fluffy, white cloud comes up over them, remains hanging a short while, and yields like a vapor.  There the fierce battle surges.

    The hours pass; morning

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became afternoon; the dark lines move seemingly closer; one minute, they are visible in indistinct outlines; the next they disappear, as if the earth had swallowed them; then it is as if they climbed up small hills and fortifications.

    The thundering of the cannons sounds closer, louder.  The rattling and clattering of the machine guns join it, beside the singing whirring and whistling of the shells.  Tacktack - rrrrr - rrrr - si - tsiiissst - hui hui - baffbaff - bumm!... so it goes without stopping.  The earth rumbles, sighs, screams.  As if a thousand invisible wings were spinning in the air, as if the ground were spitting fire that fizzes up in flashing tongues; spread over the fields, mixed with iron and soul...

    The slowly moving dark lines rise at a steady rate; soon they slacken, open themselves up widely and swarm apart; soon they pull themselves together into close formations; then again they are pushed erratically forwards and just as quickly pulled back again.  And now there is nothing to see.  Until they suddenly emerge a new; here and there whole rows duck; the one rises up, charges forward; the others remain lying.  And the bullets patter there like hailstones, and from all sides, it whistles bangs, whizzes.

    Calmly, the Reckensteiner stands at his post.  Only one grief is in him:  that he cannot be there below, fighting, attacking, dying!  It is something different at the front from up here as train station commander.  Yet he knows that he stands in a post full of responsibility.  That gives him courage and patience.

    The sun is already at midday.  Faster, harder followed the rattling, clattering,

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blow upon blow.  On the hilltops over there, it booms and thunders.  Out of the valley, the howling rises up and plants itself firmly at the face of the forest; ever more distinctly does it sing, whiz, flash over to him; in the clear air, numerous hazy white clouds of exploded shrapnel appear; the thunder of the cannons is become roaring.

    There - an-other direct hit!  Flickering, the flames leap out of the middle of a large farm; one hears already their crackling and roaring.  Houses, farms, villages disappear under blazing fires.

    Now it is time.  He has waited until the last.  It is all prepared; a sign, and the track is blown up!

    There is for him, as the noise diminishes a little, as the rattling and clattering let up.  Should the forces on one side be depleted, the ammunition in this endless back and forth be scarce?  Should a decision be made?  The lines shift; no longer do they move in a straight course towards the train station; more they glide sideways to the ridges that offer good fortifications.

    He does not give the order... perhaps he can yet still save and risk, and would it be but half of the poor wounded, who had to languish and go to ruin, he now tore up the rails and forced open the provision wagon.  It had lasted perhaps an hour; he didn't know.  What is the time now, their coming and their escaping!  But the development on the battlefields has clearly gone southwards to the small ridges that lay farther away from the train station.

    Empty is the field, a desolate, ghastly

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chaos.  Trenches and entanglements shot to pieces, destroyed; paper, tins in them; now and then a weapon or a shattered part of it; even leather goods here and there.  Stones, boards, remnants of walls in a confused jumble; among the sideways, fallen ruins, very many broken carts.  Churned up, torn up earth, shell splinters over it, in it - a place of debris that showed the work of human hands in all its patheticness and fragility.

    Countless wounded and dying cover the blood-soaked ground.  Masterless, slightly wounded horses walk over the field, neighing, shrieking; others lay dead and motionless.  Under the gray-glimmering, cloud-covered sky, the ravens caw and hold dialogue with Death, whose triumphing foot strides over the rich harvest field.  Medical soldiers search for his prey, as many as they can, to rescue them.  They are diligent at their work, but their number is insignificant compared to the vast field.

    The Reckensteiner signals to his few people; he leaves behind the stoker and the aide-de-camp; the others must participate there below.  So the rescue work proceeds, and the best helpers are the wounded, one to an-other.  He whose right arm is shot to pieces helps up his heavily wounded neighbor with his left; not ignoring his own wound, one seeks to ease that of the other.

    The small military hospital at the train station goes into action.  A good number of the wounded have already been brought here for the first dressing.  Even here the Reckensteiner is not idle.  The wounded are loaded into the empty carriage with the greatest possible rush for it is necessary.  He himself

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helps out powerfully; a quiet joy is in him that the old poor and ranks can still accomplish that.

    "Let me lie; I'm done for... take him who can still do something!" stammers a simple musketeer and refuses to come with so that he does not dispute the place for his comrade.

    "Come on!" says the old man.  "And we're taking the others right away; come here, Rudolf; two such strict blokes are indeed a bit much!"

    The Reckensteiner has been tough and hard his whole life long.  But the comradeship up until death that shows itself to him here forces tears into his eyes; he is not ashamed of them.  "And yet there writes one, who does not understand it, that men become beasts when self-preservation comes into question!" he mutters in the ice-gray moustache.  "Absolutely wrong, like so much that I have learned out of books.  After this war, I'll read no more books at all."

    "Mr. von Barrnhoff!" it sounds up to him.  The voice is known to him; he has often heard it in his life.  And not only known, but loved and trusted for many years.  He looks around himself and sees a wounded officer with whom a young doctor is occupied.

    "Fritz, my dear boy... it's really you!  And look... the confounded gang!  You had a cursed, difficult position.  The dogs lay near you eight hundred meters.  But you will even manage it... even manage!"

    Never in his life had he called him by his first name, never "dear boy," but rather always quite formally with his title or surname.  But in a moment like this what are title and

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formality!  On this bloody border wall of time and eternity, where hands reached out to him and death and life in an unending alternating dance!

    "A small graze, Major - or no, Commander, I must say now," replies the other, and his face shines with joy over this unexpected reunion with the Reckensteiner -, "here on my left arm, just as I wanted to put the binoculars up to my eyes.  They are bandaging me, and I will go right back into the field, right, doctor?"

    "By no means, Captain; the wound, which indeed is negligible now, would get worse, and you could become unfit for service for a long time.  For a few days you must, under all circumstances, wait for the healing."

    The doctor says it with a certainty that cancels any protest.

    "We'll take you to Rodenburg," the Reckensteiner butts in; "Your brother is there, and my daughter can look after you."

    "No, if it must be and does not go otherwise, then bring me to Pronitten; I have promised it and can just see that everything is in order in Bärwalde."

    "Good, we are going past there, and you can stop by."

    The doctor has turned to other wounded.  He has hard work.  The injuries are partly of a difficult sort; it takes effort to make the people merely fit to be moved.  Even the Reckensteiner contributes.  There is not much time to lose because the train must leave.  It will not at all be able to take along everyone.  It holds troops.

    When his glance falls on Fritz's neighbor, a Russian captain with a slender, wiry body,

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his face motionless and waxen, his eyes lifeless, dead almost, his uniform disheveled and bloody, he sees a dead man similar to a living one.

    But the old man knows no sympathy; fury wins the upper hand and smothers the human feeling.  "He whom you leave behind has time!  And not much pomp at all is to be made with the bloke!"

    Not the slightest movement goes over the parchment face; coldly and calmly, the dead eyes stare at the commander.  But Fritz, who just wants to get into the train, turns around again.

    "Nothing there, Commander, the man must come with!  He has fought bravely and moreover passed his bottle to a wounded German soldier who lay near him and was crying for water."

    "I recommend what the Captain says," adds the doctor, who has just bandaged the wounded Russian, "he has three different wounds, one of which looks nasty.  Let someone put him here, so he is taken care of."

    "A great misfortune," rants the commander, "yet for the captain's sake - it's alright with me!  But now forward!  Otherwise, we will drive straight into the enemy's arms."

    An endless train.  Close behind the engine, the two ration carriages, then the hospital carriage and a number of others with wounded laid side-by-side, on top of each other, the doctors and medical soldiers among them, and where the narrowness of the space possibly allowed it, helping them.

    The locomotive did not have it easy:  groaning and puffing, it tows forward the boa constrictor connected to it.  But suddenly, a halt; it has arrived at a narrow pass; the stretch goes uphill; the locomotive stalls.  The

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commander has feared it.  Therefore, he has guided the train up to here.

    The spot is critical; it lies between the high ridges, against which the troops have drawn back, to use them as backing and defense positions against the rushing enemy.

    In fact, on the other hand, one sees little of men, only small groups on the other side of the angularly undulating line, behind which houses and farms anxiously duck.  But in the air, the same sound:  like whirring wings and the whistling of a storm and jets of water whizzing up.  Even out of the treetops, the rain of bullets rattles down, beside the rumbling and thundering and roaring of the cannons.  The battle is in full swing, and he with his train is caught in the middle of the fire!  What will he do?

    He does not consider long.  First, it was a matter of bringing the ration carriages to safety; they must not fall into the hands of the enemy.  He gives an order to go backwards a little to a spot that lies deeper and is protected by the hills.  Then he lets the carriages be uncoupled by the soldiers and sends the locomotive with the rations ahead, to Gumbinnen, when it goes.  But as quickly as possible, it should come back and fetch the wounded; he himself will stay with them!

    Thus stands the long row of carriages below in the ravine between the two mountain ridges, and above them, the grenades sing through the air and often explode not very far from them and, bursting, whistle their splinters on the rails.

    The wounded lay on their seats and cushions; many hardly know what is happening; the seriously injured are indifferent; the others also have gradually become used to these noises; they no longer bring them out of their rest.

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    On his bed on the coal car, the Russian captain sits upright.  Or rather he crouches, half sitting, half lying; because his wounds burn.  But he does not grimace; his face remains pallid, waxen, iron; now and then his healthy left arm reaches for the gray field coat and draws it up quite close.  That is the only movement of his body, which is otherwise motionless like a stump.  No one is allowed to leave the train.  The old Reckensteiner alone remains outside, shouting to the carriages here and there.

    Out of the farmstead over there, fire blazes up; straight as an arrow, columns of smoke and flame rise in the motionless air.  And from the heights all around, the guns crackle; black clouds of dust and dirt roll over the raging earth; uprooted plants fly about, as if it were a world in turmoil and the entire universe were burning.

    The old man thinks about Fritz, about his other wounded.  Whether he will lead them out of this wild confusion well, whether the locomotive will come back on time.  But also that without excitement.  Only with compassionate care for the good, brave blokes who lay there in their wounds.  "God may grant it!" he says to himself.  Nothing further.

    Suddenly, his thoughts are in Reckenstein.  It was actually a nice time that he spent there, despite some bereavements and sorrows.  Now it lies behind him like something that once was and can never return again, not even in changed form, something that never really was, a dream that he dreamt once in some night of joy.

    How might it look in Reckenstein now?  Whether they will also

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set the marauding feet there one day, will throw firebrands in the peaceful fields, the full barns, as in that farm over there, from which smoke and flames go up, always more, always closer?  Could it be that everything is become so indifferent!  To him who has seen it, what do personal possessions, personal happiness mean!?  Also that on which one has set his whole life, that one built and added to with stubborn diligence, with never-resting effort - that the fire may devour it!

    He thinks about Edith.  She has always been a dear daughter to him.  Now she has chosen the occupation of the Samaritan and cares for the wounded.  It is indeed also so natural.  What else should she do in this time?  Since his separation he has received no news of her.  But even that gives him no qualms.  And yet, otherwise, he was the most affectionate father and always in worry and fear for his child when once he was separated from her.  But now?  Who has time now to send letters!?  And Edith is a brave kid and will know how to help herself.  And if not - she has never feared death.  Just as little as he.

    He looks at the clock.  He has already done it several times, thoughtlessly, mechanically.  He doesn't even know now which hour the hand pointed to; time itself is become meaningless.  Only the wounded there inside and their rescue are worth thinking about.

    The sun sinks deeper and colors the tops of the trees purple-red; long blue shadows fall ghostly on the valley below him; now and then it flashes through fire that is flaring up; it already burns in all places; but the roaring of the cannons is no longer so deafening.

    In the train everything is quiet; only here and there a groaning tone pierces,

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a fervent groaning out of the opened windows.  Like a specter, bathed in the blazing evening- and fireglow, the Russian sits on his coal car; more often and faster the left arm grabs the field coat.  Are prayers rising out of the shot-up breast to Heaven for the victory of his own?  Will he then gladly die?  Life appears as unimportant as death to him too.  Why did he take the bloke with?  Why didn't he leave him there on the field below, so that he died like an animal?  Oh, yes - for Fritz's sake; that is something else.  Otherwise... ugh, Reckensteiner, how hard and unfeeling you are become!

    It was only a short rest; the bullets hail more heavily.  Here a dull, there a stronger flash of fire.  Like silver flares that explode in the air, then again like fountains that rise out of the black depths - one can hardly see anything; everything is smoke, dust, darkness; only the section where the stretch of track runs is dully lit by the last light of the sun, which sinks under a thick bank of clouds.

    Now the restlessness grips the old man.  The locomotive ought to have done its work a long time ago and been back.  Could something have happened to it; could it even have fallen into the hands of the enemy?  Then they would all be lost, whom he with greatest effort had sought to turn away even from death.

    It holds him no more; he climbs up the ravine that leads upwards before him and has a look along the railway.  But even here he can see little, although he is standing high up.

    But there... no, he is not mistaken, a sound like that of quickly moving wheels, a puffing, and quiet chugging... there it turns around the bend

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at the end of a long gorge; there it comes closer... victory!  That's it, the eagerly awaited locomotive; his brave warriors, all of the wounded are saved!  "Victory!" his lips stammer, cheer once again.  And automatically, he folds his hands.

    There - a whistling through the air, a single whirring, howling sound close above him, a harsh, piercing noise.  Funnel-shaped, the ground bursts in front of him; the dark brown earth flies up several meters, sprays on all sides; the branches of a mighty fir tree splinter, whirl around... now he sees and hears nothing more; black flickers, swims before his eyes...

    One minute later, the locomotive goes slowly, carefully over the uninjured stretch of track.  "Halt!" calls the assistant, who rides on the machine with the stoker, to him.  He stops; the assistant gets out; for a moment, he stands motionless, lost in thought.

    "It is really he... our commander!" he says then to the stoker, "it was the grenade that we just saw explode."

    "We are taking him with," he replies, "maybe something can still be done.  But quickly, there is no time to lose."

    Now he also climbs down; both grab his still warm body with their strong arms, lift him up gently, lay him on the machine, as well as it goes.  Then down to the carriage.

    The coupling has happened lightning fast; the train moves away slowly, heavily through raining bullets and howling grenades with its wounded soldiers and its fallen commander, up the elevation over which, just permeating a cloud veil, the bloody moon rises.

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