“You mean when the war’s over?”
“Exactly. You’ve said it.”
“Well, there’d be women of course, eh?”—Haie licks his lips.
“Sure.”
“By Jove, yes,” says Haie, his face melting, “then I’d grab some good buxom dame, some real kitchen wench with plenty to get hold of, you know, and jump straight into bed. Just you think, boys, a real featherbed with a spring mattress; I wouldn’t put trousers on again for a week.”
Everyone is silent. The picture is too good. Our flesh creeps. At last Müller pulls himself together and says:
“And then what?”
A pause. Then Haie explains rather awkwardly: “If I were a noncom I’d stay with the Prussians and serve out my time.”
“Haie, you’ve got a screw loose, surely!” I say.
“Have you ever dug peat?” he retorts good-naturedly. “You try it.”
Then he pulls a spoon out of the top of his boot and reaches over into Kropp’s mess-tin.
“It can’t be worse than digging trenches,” I ventured.
Haie chews and grins: “It lasts longer though. And there’s no getting out of it either.”
“But, man, surely it’s better at home.”
“Some ways,” says he, and with open mouth sinks into a daydream.
You can see what he is thinking. There is the mean little hut on the moors, the hard work on the heath from morning till night in the heat, the miserable pay, the dirty labourer’s clothes.
“In the army in peacetime you’ve nothing to trouble about,” he goes on, “your food’s found every day, or else you kick up a row; you’ve a bed, every week clean underwear like a perfect gent, you do your noncom’s duty, you have a good suit of clothes; in the evening you’re a free man and go off to the pub.”
Haie is extraordinarily set on his idea. He’s in love with it.
“And when your twelve years are up you get your pension and become the village bobby, and you can walk about the whole day.”
He’s already sweating on it. “And just you think how you’d be treated. Here a dram, there a pint. Everybody wants to be well in with a bobby.”
“You’ll never be a noncom though, Haie,” interrupts Kat.
Haie looks at him sadly and is silent. His thoughts still linger over the clear evenings in autumn, the Sundays in the heather, the village bells, the afternoons and evenings with the servant girls, the fried bacon and barley, the carefree hours in the alehouse—
He can’t part with all these dreams so abruptly; he merely growls: “What silly questions you do ask.”
He pulls his shirt over his head and buttons up his tunic.
“What would you do, Tjaden!” asks Kropp.
Tjaden thinks of one thing only. “See to it that Himmelstoss didn’t get past me.”
Apparently he would like most to have him in a cage and sail into him with a club every morning. To Kropp he says warmly: “If I were in your place I’d see to it that I became a lieutenant. Then you could grind him till the water in his backside boils.”
“And you, Detering!” asks Müller like an inquisitor. He’s a born schoolmaster with all his questions.
Detering is sparing with his words. But on this subject he speaks. He looks at the sky and says only the one sentence: “I would go straight on with the harvesting.”
Then he gets up and walks off.
He is worried. His wife has to look after the farm. They’ve already taken away two more of his horses. Every day he reads the papers that come, to see whether it is raining in his little corner of Oldenburg. They haven’t brought in the hay yet.
At this moment Himmelstoss appears. He comes straight up to our group. Tjaden’s face turns red. He stretches his length on the grass and shuts his eyes in excitement.
Himmelstoss is a little hesitant, his gait becomes slower. Then he marches up to us. No one makes any motion to stand up. Kropp looks up at him with interest.
He continues to stand in front of us and wait. As no one says anything he launches a “Well!”
A couple of seconds go by. Apparently Himmelstoss doesn’t quite know what to do. He would like most to set us all on the run again. But he seems to have learned already that the front-line isn’t a parade ground. He tries it on though, and by addressing himself to one instead of to all of us hopes to get some response. Kropp is nearest, so he favours him.
“Well, you here too?”
But Albert’s no friend of his. “A bit longer than you, I fancy,” he retorts.
The red moustache twitches: “You don’t recognize me any more, what?”
Tjaden now opens his eyes. “I do though.”
Himmelstoss turns to him: “Tjaden, isn’t it?”
Tjaden lifts his head. “And do you know what you are?”
Himmelstoss is disconcerted. “Since when have we become so familiar? I don’t remember that we ever slept in the gutter together?”
He has no idea what to make of the situation. He didn’t expect this open hostility. But he is on his guard: he has already had some rot dinned into him about getting a shot in the back.
The question about the gutter makes Tjaden so mad that he becomes almost witty: “No you slept there by yourself.”
Himmelstoss begins to boil. But Tjaden gets in ahead of him. He must bring off his insult: “Wouldn’t you like to know what you are? A dirty hound, that’s what you are. I’ve been wanting to tell you that for a long time.”
The satisfaction of months shines in his dull pig’s eyes as he spits out: “Dirty hound!”
Himmelstoss lets fly too, now. “What’s that, you muckrake, you dirty peat-stealer? Stand up there, bring your heels together when your superior officer speaks to you.”
Tjaden waves him off. “You take a run and jump at yourself, Himmelstoss.”
Himmelstoss is a raging book of army regulations. The Kaiser couldn’t be more insulted. “Tjaden, I command you, as your superior officer: Stand up!”
“Anything else you would like?” asks Tjaden.
“Will you obey my order or not?”
Tjaden replies, without knowing it,
