He turns away. After a pause he says slowly: “I wanted to become a head-forester once.”
“So you may still,” I assure him. “There are splendid artificial limbs now, you’d hardly know there was anything missing. They are fixed on to the muscles. You can move the fingers and work and even write with an artificial hand. And besides, they will always be making new improvements.”
For a while he lies still. Then he says: “You can take my lace-up boots with you for Müller.”
I nod and wonder what to say to encourage him. His lips have fallen away, his mouth has become larger, his teeth stick out and look as though they were made of chalk. The flesh melts, the forehead bulges more prominently, the cheekbones protrude. The skeleton is working itself through. The eyes are already sunken in. In a couple of hours it will be over.
He is not the first that I have seen thus; but we grew up together and that always makes it a bit different. I have copied his essays. At school he used to wear a brown coat with a belt and shiny sleeves. He was the only one of us, too, who could do the giant’s turn on the horizontal bar. His hair flew in his face like silk when he did it. Kantorek was proud of him. But he couldn’t stand cigarettes. His skin was very white; he had something of the girl about him.
I glance at my boots. They are big and clumsy, the breeches are tucked into them, and standing up one looks well-built and powerful in these great drainpipes. But when we go bathing and strip, suddenly we have slender legs again and slight shoulders. We are no longer soldiers but little more than boys; no one would believe that we could carry packs. It is a strange moment when we stand naked; then we become civilians, and almost feel ourselves to be so. When bathing Franz Kemmerich looked as slight and frail as a child. There he lies now—but why? The whole world ought to pass by this bed and say: “That is Franz Kemmerich, nineteen and a half years old, he doesn’t want to die. Let him not die!”
My thoughts become confused. This atmosphere of carbolic and gangrene clogs the lungs, it is a thick gruel, it suffocates.
It grows dark. Kemmerich’s face changes colour, it lifts from the pillow and is so pale that it gleams. The mouth moves slightly. I draw near to him. He whispers: “If you find my watch, send it home—”
I do not reply. It is no use any more. No one can console him. I am wretched with helplessness. This forehead with its hollow temples, this mouth that now seems all teeth, this sharp nose! And the fat, weeping woman at home to whom I must write. If only the letter were sent off already!
Hospital-orderlies go to and fro with bottles and pails. One of them comes up, casts a glance at Kemmerich and goes away again. You can see he is waiting, apparently he wants the bed.
I bend over Franz and talk to him as though that could save him: “Perhaps you will go to the convalescent home at Klosterberg, among the villas, Franz. Then you can look out from the window across the fields to the two trees on the horizon. It is the loveliest time of the year now, when the corn ripens; at evening the fields in the sunlight look like mother-of-pearl. And the lane of poplars by the Klosterbach, where we used to catch sticklebacks! You can build an aquarium again and keep fish in it, and you can go without asking anyone, you can even play the piano if you want to.”
I lean down over his face which lies in the shadow. He still breathes, lightly. His face is wet, he is crying. What a fine mess I have made of it with my foolish talk!
“But Franz”—I put my arm round his shoulder and put my face against his. “Will you sleep now?”
He does not answer. The tears run down his cheeks. I would like to wipe them away but my handkerchief is too dirty.
An hour passes. I sit tensely and watch his every movement in case he may perhaps say something. What if he were to open his mouth and cry out! But he only weeps, his head turned aside. He does not speak of his mother or his brothers and sisters. He says nothing; all that lies behind him; he is entirely alone now with his little life of nineteen years, and cries because it leaves him. This is the most disturbing and hardest parting that I ever have seen, although it was pretty bad too with Tiedjen, who called for his mother—a big bear of a fellow who, with wild eyes full of terror, held off the doctor from his bed with a dagger until he collapsed.
Suddenly Kemmerich groans and begins to gurgle.
I jump up, stumble outside and demand: “Where is the doctor? Where is the doctor?”
As I catch sight of the white apron I seize hold of it: “Come quick, Franz Kemmerich is dying.”
He frees himself and asks an orderly standing by: “Which will that be?”
He says: “Bed 26, amputated thigh.”
He sniffs: “How should I know anything about it, I’ve amputated five legs today”; he shoves me away, says to the hospital-orderly, “You see to it,” and hurries off to the operating room.
I tremble with rage as I go along with the orderly. The man looks at me and says: “One operation after another since five o’clock this morning. You know, today alone there have been sixteen deaths—yours is the seventeenth. There will probably be twenty altogether—”
I become faint, all at once I cannot do any more. I won’t revile any more, it is senseless, I could drop down and never rise up again.
We
