by Papillon
It was a bitterly cold day when the war ended. I remember the harsh wind sneaking into my clothes and chilling me to the bone-not such a difficult task, after all; our clothes were nothing more than rags at the end. The cold froze my fingers and made them stiff and unwilling to yank the laces closed on my boots. Those same boots that have been passed along from friend to friend, comrade to comrade, as death claimed one and overlooked the other. They will never be passed along again. Now they sit at the bottom of a river, where I threw them in disgust before boarding the train home. I am not a soldier anymore.
I knew there was something different that chill November day. We stood in a line at the mess hall, waiting for breakfast, but none came. We did not talk amongst each other; all of us were too drained of all life and passion to care what befell us. Now Germany tries to call us the lucky ones, the survivors, the thwarted heroes. Those of us who are riding the train home now are not heroes. We are not lucky either. I think of all my friends now dead and call them the lucky ones. What has life left to offer me now? They can never return home, but neither can I, for the home I remember only dimly now is a dream and I can no more touch it than those dead can.
Our new Company Commander-whose name I never bothered to learn, for I would rather keep in my head a list of dead friends than crowd them out with strangers who might die tomorrow-came out and stood before us with a solemn expression on his face. He was new enough to think the news of defeat was shameful and sorrowful. For me it was only pointless. The end for me meant only that all those lives given so horribly had been given in vain, and that I would now be denied my chance to return to them and remain in peace with them forever.
I have toyed with the idea of suicide, but I cannot even muster up enough passion to plan for that. Life is dead to me now. I am only going through the motions because that is what is expected of me. I have kept my sanity through these long years of war by doing what I was told and it is no different now. We were given orders and told to return home and so that is what I do now, riding this jostling train thick with the stench of sorrow and bitter happiness and thinking of the past few days of my life.
I even have something approaching a goal right now, though it is a shallow one. Unlike the few grown men on this train who had lives before the war and are returning joyfully to them now, I am returning to death. I go to the hospital where my mother lies dying, to see her and hear her before I can do so no longer. The thought of her death does not evoke much sorrow in me; I have seen too many friends dearer than relatives die horribly and in agony to be stirred by one more pointless death. But my sister has written me and implored me to come and, truly, what else is there for me to do? Visit my comrades who lie in so many unmarked graves?
I see mist rising over the horizon, obscuring the sight I expect to see of cerulean mountains and unceasing lines of poplars standing dark and immovable against the crispness of the white snow. But I do not revere the pureness of the white snow any longer, as I used to do when I was younger. I used to welcome the first snowfall and gaze through the windowpane at the soft flakes falling with a religious concentration. Now I have seen too many snow-banks marred by blood and destruction to believe in such purity.
I feel the train shudder beneath my feet as it comes to a halt and the passengers start to slowly file out, some with an expression of rapture on their faces, but most with no expression at all. Their eyes are dead, reflecting none of the spark that marks the living from the corpses.
I see my eldest sister standing on the platform, with my father on one side and a man who I do not recognize but who is holding her hand on the other. Her eyes light up as she sees me and for a brief moment, I wish my eyes would do the same, but I know they do not. "Paul, Paul, darling Paul!" she cries, holding out her arms to greet me.
I mechanically return the gesture. "It is good to see you. I have missed you." I turn to the strange man by my sister's side. "And who is this?"
My sister clears her throat and flushes a little, and my father will not meet my gaze. The man speaks for himself then, with a strange accent that I cannot place. "I am Herr Brown. I am a university student, and I am writing a paper on Germany after the war. Your sister and I happened to meet and your father has been so good as to allow me to rent a room in your house. I am pleased to meet you-Paul, is it not?"
I nod dully. My sister finds her voice again and interrupts. "Well, mother wishes you to come and visit her, so I thought it best if we went straight to the hospital. Herr Brown has a car and he's offered to drive us. So, let us hurry before nightfall."
As we leave the train station and Herr Brown starts talking to my father about economic conditions, my sister says to me in an undertone, "Herr Brown is an American. But you mustn't hold that against him. He's very kind, and, you know, the war is over now. We are not enemies any longer."
I make some motion to show I understand and retreat into my own thoughts. How little my sister understands. I never thought of any of them as the enemy, not the French or the Russians or the Americans or any of the others. Our enemy was death itself, the pointless random death that circled around us like a slinking serpent and every so often struck with a hiss and devoured one more of us. I do not hold anyone accountable for the war. The only one I blame for my friend's deaths is myself, when I wake up sweating and shaking in the night and think of how if I had just done this, or just been in the right place at the precise moment, things would have been different. But such thoughts are useless. What difference would it have made, if I had saved one of them only to lose them the next day?
Towards the end I quit fighting death as much as I was able. The mindless animal instinct bent on survival through any means tried to take over, but I fought with it and did not accept it as a necessary evil. What reason had I to live? But chance, which had betrayed so many of my friends, refused to abandon me and I could not seem to die. And so here I am, with faces of fallen comrades swimming before my eyes. With countless deaths on my conscience. With no reason to live but too much apathy to commit to suicide.
My sister's hand is on my arm. "Paul, Paul, are you all right? We are here, this is the hospital."
I get out of the car and look at the hospital where my mother lies wasting away. I am surprised to see that it is not the one she previously occupied, but a higher quality one, with large windows and brightly colored paint on the roof. Herr Brown must be paying quite a lot to lodge in our house for our family to be able to afford such a place.
The nurse who leads us to my mother's room is young and beautiful, and flirts with me unabashedly. I am dirty and worn from traveling, and I wonder why I have caught her eye. But suddenly I understand. So few young men have survived that the women my age, eager to get married, must by necessity be less picky about who they chose. I could have any beautiful girl I want now. But I do not return her winks, and shy away from her little touches. I suddenly think of the three French girls, of the little brunette and her soft lips.
Suddenly the nurse seems repulsive and clingy. I turn to her and say sharply, "Please do not touch me or come near me." She looks hurt, and moves away deliberately. I feel my sister's disapproving gaze boring into my back, but it does not matter, for now we are at my mother's room.
She lies wasted away on the small bed, her eyes the only part of her still feverishly hanging onto life and darting here and there, while the rest of her frail body seems already a skeleton, paler even than the pristine sheets she lies upon. One bony hand raises feebly off the bed and beckons to me, and she speaks pleadingly in a cracked and withered voice. "Paul, oh, Paul!"
Tears seep out of her too-large eyes, I feel a twinge of emotion-happiness, sorrow, desire, and regret all jumbled together. I walk over to her bedside and take her hand.
"Yes, Mother, I am here. I am here," I say soothingly. I am appalled at how thin she has become, but only dimly, for life's horrors do not impress me greatly anymore.
"We were so worried," she says so quietly that I must bend down close to hear. "Was it very bad? I heard such terrible things…"
"No," I respond, "it was not so bad as you hear. The rumors are always worse, you know."
To my surprise, she suddenly raises herself up to a sitting position, using more strength that I thought she had. She raises her voice and it is painful to see what the effort costs her. "All of you but Paul, please leave me. I want to be alone with Paul."
"But mother, we came all this way and-" my sister tries to protest, but my mother cuts her off. "Please, I want to be alone with Paul."
They leave, unhappily, and my mother seems content just to be with me for a while. The silence stretches out, and I think I hear a bird singing outside. How odd that there should be a bird making lullabies in the dead of winter; perhaps I am imagining it.
My mother breaks the silence with her wearied voice. "Paul, do not lie to me. I know it was horrible. I know all your friends are dead and you think you might as well be dead too. Don't tell me more lies to reassure me, Paul. I am staring death in the eye and I am sick of people trying to soothe me."
I tiredly give in. What is the point of lying anymore? "Yes, Mother, everything you have said is true. I am lost and hopeless and I wonder why everyone I cared about was luckier than me and why they now rest in peace while I must continue on with this dull business of living-"
I break off abruptly and look down at my mother's face. Perhaps I have said too much, perhaps she did not truly want to hear the truth and I should have left her to enjoy her last moments in peace. But strangely, she does not seem to be looking at me at all. Her bright eyes are fixated on the ceiling, as if she sees someone or something there, though to me it is a blank wall. I stare into those dark, vivid eyes that seem to possess the whole of her being and soul within them. It as if, were she to close them, the only part of her that lives would be cut off and she would be just another emaciated corpse. The eyelashes are too long and there are dark smudges and bruises around them, but the eyes seem to have more life than they did when she was healthy, if indeed she ever was. They are almost feverish; they shine eerily and the pupils have dilated beyond any normal size. Her eyes are compelling, though they do not look at me, and they seem to hold some strange power, pulling me in so that for a moment all I see is the darkness and luminosity of her eyes, and I am surrounded by them.
Then she turns those eyes on me, pulling me out of my reverie, and she speaks, though her voice is uneven and she seems hardly to know whom she is talking to.
"I am tired," she whispers, "tired of fighting it. Death. It pulls at me, it gnaws at me, it wants to take me away. " She swallows loudly, and her voice seems to gain a little strength. "But I have been fighting it. For you. You fought your battles, and I fought mine. We fought together." Here she pauses, and her eyes seem to lose focus for a minute, then they return to rest on mine.
"Don't die, Paul. Your life does not have to be ruined. Look at your sister. Her beau was killed, but she is to marry Herr Brown. Life moves on, if you want it to. Go away, far away, Paul. Live there. You are my son, Paul."
She starts to close her eyes and I am experienced enough in such matters to know death is setting in. Those eyes contained all of her, and without them, she is lost. I call for the doctor, and he comes in, along with my sister, my father, and Herr Brown.
My sister looks disbelieving. "What is this? What have you done to her, Paul? Doctor, please help her!" She pushes her way to my mother's side, and grasps her hand tightly, as if to prevent her from leaving. But I know better. You cannot fight death. You may try, and weary yourself to exhaustion, but if it is meant to claim a person, than it shall, and perhaps you would do better to reassure the person how lucky they are.
As I said, it is useless. The doctor merely smoothes my mother's hair back, and murmurs soothing words to her, and then it is over. The eyes that had struggled to stay open for so long finally succumb to the fight, and close, and she has attained the remote and untouchable peace that I so desire.
I do not know if there is a heaven or a hell. I wonder that, if there is a God, he allows humans to commit such atrocities to each other. Perhaps we were all such good people that he needed us to be killed swiftly and immediately, and created the war to do it for him. But that is a comforting belief that pious people invented, and I have seen war claim the bad as well as the good, and know that is not true. Instead, I think maybe that this world is hell, and without knowing it we are all playing a game of dice. Those who win are allowed to leave this world and go elsewhere, and whether that be heaven or another hell, I do not know. But those who lose must remain in this hell for as long as the dice decry. I have always been a horrible gambler.
* * *
Spring is here again. I look outside my window at the trees on the street, blinking at the brightness of the morning sun. They are starting to blossom, little tight buds slowly unfurling with heavy flowers that weigh down the branches with their vibrant colours and their powerful perfume. There are rolling hills in the distance coloured with spring's fresh green, and the sky is tinted a deep azure while fluffy clouds drift lazily by.
I went on a picnic alone yesterday, and hiked far enough so that I was sure not to see another soul. There was a little brook and I dipped my feet in it, wincing a little at the winter chill it still had, and squishing my toes deep into the cool mud by the banks. I lay back in the soft grass and smelled the warmth of the sun-soaked earth and listened to the wind whistle through the newborn leaves of the trees. I cast my thoughts away like a suit of clothing, and simply lay in peace, listening to the grass rustling and birds chirping. I dozed off. When I awoke, the shadows had moved and there was a squirrel sitting by my feet, looking directly at me. I did not want to move lest I scare him away, so I simply watched him, and he watched me back. Suddenly another squirrel scampered up and began chittering at the first squirrel, almost as if the second one was scolding him. Then they both ran off and up into the high branches of a nearby tree.
I am not sure why, but this display touched me. It was almost as if it was saying to me, "Look, Paul, life goes on. There is always life."
I have taken to going on long hikes nearly every day. The peacefulness of the surroundings and the busy everyday doings of the animals soothe me and I can almost forget everything and even that I am a person at all, and not just a pair of eyes observing the world without judgement. When I am not away in the woods, I do whatever work I can find around town, especially that which allows me to be alone. I do not very much care for people these days, for no one seems able to avoid bringing up the subject of the war at every moment, and I do not like being reminded. I have found a temporary peace and retreated into solitude. I know forgetfulness and avoiding of everything cannot last, and soon I must do something or all the faces I have known will rush into my head and crowd me out.
My father does not approve of my working like a common laborer. He had paid for my education so that I could become something more, but I will not go back to school. Besides, money is dear these days, even though Herr Brown helps us greatly. Without him, we would surely have starved long ago, as many people are beginning to do in these hard times, but with him, we live comfortably and securely enough.
He and my sister are to be married in one month, and they bustle around the house full of excitement. I wonder if my sister truly loves him, or if she will marry him for his money and security alone. It does not matter, however; in these days when men of marriageable age are few and far between, many women must take advantage of whatever they can get, and she has ended up far better than many.
However, Germany these days is a depressing place, if one spends much time around people, which I try to avoid doing. No one can move beyond the war, and everyone is poor. My sister intends to go with Herr Brown back to America after they are married. She knows but little English, though I have learned enough in school, but Herr Brown will teach her and he assures her that America is a wonderful place.
My father is old and at the end of his days. The war and my mother's sickness have taken all his strength away, and he merely wants to live out his end in peace. He has a cousin who lives near Munich, who is quite wealthy and also quite fond of my father, though he did not get along with my mother when she was alive. He has offered generously to take my father in and my father has agreed to go to live with him when my sister leaves.
As for me, I do not know what I shall do. I do not make enough money to support myself, though Herr Brown has agreed to send me money indefinitely, until I no longer need it. He is really quite a generous man. But he has also offered to take me with them to America, and help me set up a life there, if I so desire. I do not know if I shall accept his offer, though I must decide soon.
The only things that do not haunt me here are the trees and the woods, though even those sometimes call up memories unbidden, of simpler days. The people I cannot endure. The few men my age who also came back from the war avoid me, and I them. When we see each other, we adopt stiff formality, and underneath lies an unspoken agreement to never speak of the war. But just seeing one of them is enough to flood my heart with memories. They are too similar to men I have known, and even the slightest mannerism or gesture is enough to remind me of Kat's laugh, or Tjaden's boyish glee. The boys who were too young for the war pester me with constant questions and requests to tell them stories. But if I told them anything I am sure they would run crying in horror back to their mothers and wake shaking in the night from horrible nightmares. The men too old for the war slap me on the back, congratulate me for my bravery against superior forces, and ask for tales of the heroism they are sure we displayed. And some of them give me condemning looks, as if to say, "How could you lose? I am sure that had I fought in your place, we would never have lost." And the women all coo over me, and ask obligingly if it was really so horrible, even though they do not want the answer. And each day they and the men come up with a new reason for why we lost the war, a new person or thing to blame. It was the Kaiser's fault, it was because the Americans entered so late, it was because they had more men, it was this and that and that and this and they talk and talk so much that I wish I could scream at them, "No! It was death that fought us! Death that made us lose! Death and foolishness and fate's wicked games."
So I should like to leave these people behind and never see them again. And I should miss the land of my home, so dear to my heart, but I have been assured by Herr Brown that America is beautiful as well, and I could return someday to Germany, and the land would be as I left it, unlike the people. But I feel as if by leaving Germany behind, I am a traitor. Not to my country, for what does that matter to me anymore? No country could be worth so many deaths. No, I feel I am a traitor to Kat, Tjaden, Muller, Leer, and Kropp, to Bertinck, Detering, and Haie, and all the others I have known. They lie somewhere near here, they fell so that I could go home, and now I leave them far behind. Perhaps I could start a new life in America, and I feel guilty as that thought crosses my mind, for they will never return to their lives or start new ones. Ought I not to suffer for their sake?
I am plagued by doubts up until the day of my sister's wedding. I am rummaging in my wardrobe for something suitable to wear to the festivities, when a scrap of paper falls out. It is a letter from Kat that I received while on leave. It seems an eternity ago, and I had forgotten about it. It reads:
Paul,
I hope you are enjoying your leave. All of us here are very envious. Tjaden says you should be taking advantage of your prestige as a soldier with the women. You know Tjaden. But I say you should be spending time with your old woman, or eating. I do my best to provide food for us all, but I am sure you can get better back home.
It continues in the same vein and talks about the news at the front, how Kat suspected we might be going to Russia, and how Leer won ten games of skat in a row. But it is the last section that catches my eye.
But it must be tiresome to think of such things on leave. Let us worry about the battles-you, you should enjoy yourself. I must tell you about a time I was on leave, a while ago, before I had even met you. Before all this craziness really began. A good friend of mine had just died from a leg wound, and I felt guilty because I had not gotten him to the ambulance workers sooner. The whole time I was on leave I would not let myself have a good time, out of respect to my friend's memory. But my uncle, who was a very wise man and who is now dead, took me aside and started berating me. He had seen how I was deliberately restraining myself, and it appalled him. He was shocked by the lack of respect I was giving to my dead friend. I did not understand what he was telling me, and told him so. He sighed and said, "Stanislaus, you are being a fool. Your friend is dead and you think to remember him by dying too? Live, you fool, live! A part of him has touched you, a part of him lives in you, and the only way you can keep him alive in you is by living too, by living the most you can. When you die you will pass along a part of yourself to someone else, and in that part will be a part of him, and so he shall never die. But only if you live shall you give this part of yourself to other people. So live."
I thought you would appreciate this memory, though perhaps you will not see what I saw in it, and will only think it is Kat being strange again. But I am older than you, and maybe you should listen to what I tell you, from one friend to another. So enjoy yourself, and when you come back no one will be the worse for it.
-Katczinsky
At the time, I did not really understand what Kat was talking about, and thought the stench of battle had gotten to his brain and made him sentimental over strange things, as occasionally happened to all of us. But now I see what he was trying to tell me, and I make up my mind: I am going to America.
* * *
The land is flat here; not like my home, with its high mountains and its rolling hills. Here one can look off into the distance and the empty land seems to stretch off into eternity. I miss Germany, but I feel free here, here in this state they call North Dakota. I used to love to stare into the endlessly blue sky at home, but here I can do the same with the farmland and the prairie. Here I shiver in the chill air but revel in the vast emptiness that soothes my heart. I feel I can forget all that has happened to me in the past. Here I am a new person. I am not Paul the soldier, but Paul the hardworking immigrant who is making a new life for himself.
America is a place to forget. Some people talk about the war here, but most do not, and there are many people who came from Germany long before the war who do not care to talk about it at all. They are Americans now, as I am. Who we were before we came does not matter here, it is only what we can do now and how we can survive in this rugged land that matters.
My sister and Herr Brown are quite comfortable here; he continues in his university studies and she has become a seamstress. I live in a spare room in the attic, which is temporary but which suits me perfectly. It has a window that looks out on the empty grasslands-we live on the edge of this small town, which has welcomed us readily and warmly.
I have begun working as a bookkeeper for Mr. Goetz, who runs a grocery store in town. His parents came from Germany before he was born, but he speaks some German, and is helping me with my English. I am working hard and he says he is quite pleased with my skills in mathematics. And besides, the job leaves me plenty of time to go off on my own into the vast untamed land and lose myself in endless stretches of dusty cracked earth and deep blue sky. Soon I will have enough to buy a house of my own.
"Paul, we are leaving now! Aren't you coming?" my sister calls from downstairs. There is a town dance at the school tonight, and she and Herr Brown are very excited about it. I am going because she implored me to, though I do not much care for social situations, so I pick up my scarf and hurry downstairs.
Fall is coming and the air is growing delightfully crisp. I do not mind the cold, which is not so much different from cold back in Germany. I welcome all the seasons with their different tales to tell and songs to be heard. Nevertheless, I wrap the scarf tightly around my face as I hurry to catch up with my sister, who is big with pregnancy. She and Herr Brown are very excited about the child, and he constantly pats her stomach fondly.
The schoolhouse is a flurry of activity, with people clustered around the entrance greeting one another and more constantly arriving. I can hear unfamiliar American music playing on the phonograph inside as we near the door. Mr. Goetz and his wife wave to me, and many people greet Herr Brown and my sister, for they have been very sociable and eager to meet people, much more so than I.
Inside, I feel strangely awkward and wonder why I have come. I do not like people, especially in large groups. And the comradeship and friendliness they seem to share makes me uncomfortable. I once share that same sense of being part of a group, but since the war I have distanced myself from other people and live a very solitary life. It suits me, to live within nature, but sometimes I catch myself longing to belong and I wonder if I shall lead my whole life alone.
Kat would not approve of this loneliness, I am sure. He knew that the root of insanity lay in solitariness, and he made sure we always had a companion at our side to reassure us. And truly, living the way I am is just another way of forgetting the past and trying to escape my memories. As much as I tell myself that on the long voyage to America I left my troubles and my friend's deaths behind, they are still with me, only more cleverly hidden. I have not yet defeated them, I have not yet truly created my own life, as I always dreamed I would do when I had grown up. I am still the aimless soldier who has had everything he ever aspired to stolen from him by the brutality of war. Though the plains calm me, I know that I cannot continue this way, a bookkeeper who has no aim in life, not even that of surviving. The thought of suicide does not occur to me any longer, but neither do I rejoice in life. I merely live, and try to get through each day, only because I feel I must and there is no other option. Life or death, they are still the same to me, and perhaps death is even preferable. After all, what I desire most now is peace, and would I not find the ultimate peace in death?
My reverie is interrupted by a soft voice asking timidly, "Would you like to dance?" I look up and see a beautiful girl standing with a bashful look on her face. Her blonde hair falls softly into her eyes in waves, and her eyes are clearer and more blue than a frosty winter day's sky. I nod and take her hand, leading her out to the dance floor, hardly realizing what I am doing. It must be a dream.
As we whirl between the other couples, the music blends together and I do not see her face anymore. I see the little brunette with her gently coaxing hands, I see the immaculate, perfect girl with a wide red patent leather belt, I see my mother, I see the hurt nurse at the hospital, I see Lewandowski's girlishly embarrassed wife, I see the softly reprimanding nuns, I see all of them together, and yet I do not see any of them at all. They were but detours, not meant for me in the end, and now it seems I have finally arrived where I belong. Instead, I see myself on that summer evening an eternity ago, in the dark quiet cool of a church, wondering whether I shall ever fall in love. Then and now, they are so far removed, and yet I feel I can reach out and touch my self of then, and tell myself, "Yes, you shall."
I ask the girl in my accented English, "What is your name?" She laughs, a pure sound like church bells in the early morning, and answers shyly, "Louise." I bend down and kiss her on the cheek and whisper into her ear, "I am Paul, and I love you, Louise."
Kat would be proud.
Finis
A/N: I originally wrote this as an assignment for school a while ago, actually, but I ended up liking it more than I expected to, and decided to post it up just for kicks. The original ending was fine, of course, but so very sad, so I decided to go for something hopeful instead. Well, mostly. Don't you love those sappy endings? I tried to keep it mostly in the original tone, and let me tell you, making myself write in present tense was a chore! It's not what I'm used to at all. But anyway, reviews and creative criticism are very much appreciated, of course! Even if it's just to tell me you read it, I'd like to know. Anyone else get assigned All Quiet on the Western Front for English in high school?