Men in War. Andreas Latzko
it and twist it, until a piece of his brain came along—like roots pulled up—like a jellyfish—a dead one—sticking to the spur."
"Shut up!" the captain yelled furiously, and tore himself away and walked into the house cursing.
The other two looked after him longingly, but they could not let the unfortunate man stay there by himself. When the captain had withdrawn his arm, he had fallen down on the bench again and sat whimpering like a whipped child, with his head leaning on the back. The Philosopher touched his shoulder gently, and was about to speak to him kindly and induce him to go into the house when he started up again and broke out into an ugly, snarling laugh.
"But we tore her out of him, his dashing wife. Four of us had to tug and pull until she came out. I got him rid of her. Out with her! She's gone. All of them are gone. Mine is gone, too. Mine is torn out, too. All are being torn out. There's no wife any more! No wife any more, no—"
His head bobbed and fell forward. Tears slowly rolled down his sad, sad face.
The captain reappeared followed by the little assistant physician, who was on night duty.
"You must go to bed now, Lieutenant," the physician said with affected severity.
The sick man threw his head up and stared blankly at the strange face. When the physician repeated the order in a raised voice, his eyes suddenly gleamed, and he nodded approvingly.
"Must go, of course," he repeated eagerly, and drew a deep sigh. "We all must go. The man who doesn't go is a coward, and they have no use for a coward. That's the very thing. Don't you understand? Heroes are the style now. The chic Mrs. Dill wanted a hero to match her new hat. Ha-ha! That's why poor Dill had to go and lose his brains. I, too—you, too—we must go die. You must let yourself be trampled on—your brains trampled on, while the women look on—chic—because it's the style now."
He raised his emaciated body painfully, holding on to the back of the bench, and eyed each man in turn, waiting for assent.
"Isn't it sad?" he asked softly. Then his voice rose suddenly to a shriek again, and the sound of his fury rang out weirdly in the garden. "Weren't they deceiving us, eh? I'd like to know—weren't they cheats? Was I an assassin? Was I a ruffian? Didn't I suit her when I sat at the piano playing? We were expected to be gentle and considerate! Considerate! And all at once, because the fashion changed, they had to have murderers. Do you understand? Murderers!"
He broke away from the physician, and stood swaying again, and his voice gradually sank to a complaining sound like the thick strangulated utterance of a drunkard.
"My wife was in fashion too, you know. Not a tear! I kept waiting and waiting for her to begin to scream and beg me at last to get out of the train, and not go with the others—beg me to be a coward for her sake. Not one of them had the courage to. They just wanted to be in fashion. Mine, too! Mine, too! She waved her handkerchief just like all the rest."
His twitching arms writhed upwards, as though he were calling the heavens to witness.
"You want to know what was the most awful thing?" he groaned, turning to the Philosopher abruptly. "The disillusionment was the most awful thing—the going off. The war wasn't. The war is what it has to be. Did it surprise you to find out that war is horrible? The only surprising thing was the going off. To find out that the women are horrible—that was the surprising thing. That they can smile and throw roses, that they can give up their men, their children, the boys they have put to bed a thousand times and pulled the covers over a thousand times, and petted and brought up to be men. That was the surprise! That they gave us up—that they sent us—sent us! Because every one of them would have been ashamed to stand there without a hero. That was the great disillusionment. Do you think we should have gone if they had not sent us? Do you think so? Just ask the stupidest peasant out there why he'd like to have a medal before going back on furlough. Because if he has a medal his girl will like him better, and the other girls will run after him, and he can use his medal to hook other men's women away from under their noses. That's the reason, the only reason. The women sent us. No general could have made us go if the women hadn't allowed us to be stacked on the trains, if they had screamed out that they would never look at us again if we turned into murderers. Not a single man would have gone off if they had sworn never to give themselves to a man who has split open other men's skulls and shot and bayoneted human beings. Not one man, I tell you, would have gone. I didn't want to believe that they could stand it like that. 'They're only pretending,' I thought. 'They're just restraining themselves. But when the first whistle blows, they'll begin to scream and tear us out of the train, and rescue us.' Once they had the chance to protect us, but all they cared about was being in style—nothing else in the world but just being in style."
He sank down on the bench again and sat as though he were all broken up. His body was shaken by a low weeping, and his head rolled to and fro on his panting chest. A little circle of people had gathered behind his back. The old landsturm corporal was standing beside the physician with four sentries ready to intervene at a moment's notice. All the windows in the officers' wing had lighted up, and scantily clad figures leaned out, looking down into the garden curiously.
The sick man eagerly scrutinized the indifferent faces around him. He was exhausted.
His hoarse throat no longer gave forth a sound. His hand reached out for help to the Philosopher, who stood beside him, all upset.
The physician felt the right moment had come to lead him away.
"Come, Lieutenant, let's go to sleep," he said with a clumsy affectation of geniality. "That's the way women are once for all, and there's nothing to be done about it."
The physician wanted to go on talking and in conversing lure the sick man into the house unawares. But the very next sentence remained sticking in his throat, and he stopped short in amazement. The limp wobbling skeleton that only a moment before had sat there as in a faint and let himself be raised up by the physician and the Philosopher, suddenly jumped up with a jerk, and tore his arms away so violently that the two men who were about to assist him were sent tumbling up against the others. He bent over with crooked knees, staggering like a man carrying a heavy load on his back. His veins swelled, and he panted with fury:
"That's the way women are once for all, are they? Since when, eh? Have you never heard of the suffragettes who boxed the ears of prime ministers, and set fire to museums, and let themselves be chained to lamp-posts for the sake of the vote? For the sake of the vote, do you hear? But for the sake of their men? No. Not one sound. Not one single outcry!"
He stopped to take breath, overcome by a wild suffocating despair. Then he pulled himself together once more and with difficulty suppressing the sobs, which kept bringing a lump into his throat, he screamed in deepest misery like a hunted animal:
"Have you heard of one woman throwing herself in front of a train for the sake of her husband? Has a single one of them boxed the ears of a prime minister or tied herself to a railroad track for us? There wasn't one that had to be torn away. Not one fought for us or defended us. Not one moved a little finger for us in the whole wide world! They drove us out! They gagged us! They gave us the spur, like poor Dill. They sent us to murder, they sent us to die—for their vanity. Are you going to defend them? No! They must be pulled out! Pulled out like weeds, by the roots! Four of you together must pull the way we had to do with Dill. Four of you together! Then she'll have to come out. Are you the doctor? There! Do it to my head. I don't want a wife! Pull—pull her out!"
He flung out his arm and his fist came down like a hammer on his own skull, and his crooked fingers clutched pitilessly at the sparse growth of hair on the back of his head, until he held up a whole handful torn out by the roots, and howled with pain.
The doctor gave a sign, and the next moment the four sentries were on him, panting. He screamed, gnashed his teeth, beat about him, kicked himself free, shook off his assailants like burrs. It was not until the old corporal and the doctor came to their assistance that they succeeded in dragging him into the house.
As soon as he was gone the people left the garden. The last to go were the Mussulman and the Philosopher.