Good evening folks!
To be honest, this chapter was damn hard and the moment I am writing this down it isn't even finished and in fact it is the third try.
No idea why, not that I don't know have ideas. But to structure, to order, to finally bring it on white computerpaper. Not easy, not easy.
By the way, I truly ask myself if anyone reads what I am writing in the beginning.
And to all you folks who favourite but don't comment. I appreciate your favourite very, very much. But I have no real idea what they really mean. Does it mean I should continue this story as it is? Shall I improve?
Comments are also for you guys. If you like something and you write it down or if you don't like something and you write it down. IN the end the story will be better, seriously.
Enough for now. Maybe I have also the problem that my stories are not the one you comment, for any reasons...
Ps: I translated Erwin's aftername into the German version → Schmitt
Actually not long after he had become Corporal Erwin and his company found a village. There was nothing left of it. Nothing than the smell of burnt flesh and wood.
Nothing than the smell of death.
He was glad the corpses were buried under a little hill.
Nervertheless he couldn't sleep for more than 9 days.
It is bitterly cold. He has followed Levi outside and though their shelter being nothing more than wood put together has given him a feeling of warmth. Then outside where the wind howls and giggles and tickles and cuts him with its burning hands: cold welcomes him again.
An almost grotesque picture appears in front of him. A group of skelettons in green uniforms, stand in a circle. They do not move. Still they stand like frozen figures, reminding the German of tall, thin memorials. He turns his head at Levi who is suddenly again emotionless, the bony face blank. Slowly he walks to the circle, Erwin watches him.
Crying.
There it is again.
Someone cries.
It seems it comes from the circle.
Pity sits on Erwin's tongue: it dries his mouth, dries his blood, stops his slow heart in beating. He hates this crying, oh god, he despises it. Not the men who weep, oh God forbid no.
But crying means fear.
Fear means being vulnerable.
Being vulnerable means death.
It means giving up.
And there is nothing Erwin hates more than giving up. To not fight, but to wait for inevitable to happen.
He watches Levi's skinny figure situating himself right next to one of the soldiers in the circle. Now he is also a memorial, still and cold.
Erwin feels numb. Like waking up and not to know where and when you are. This moment between awake and asleep where you don't know what to wish for: dreaming or follow the path of life.
It feels like eternity these soldiers stand there.
But then it breaks, like a flock of birds together in one picture suddenly blast on the sky. Only one memorial stays, but it is changed. Not tall anymore, but simply small and in the bitterly snow.
It is Levi, holding a young, crying man. For a second Erwin's eyes detect only this, this picture. And then his blue eyes move on, walking on the snow.
A body lays there on the cold, soft powder. Tiny this body is. So fragile reminding you of a snowflake melting in your holding hands.
It is the corpse of a child.
"Herr Korporal?," Armin asked softly. It was the seventh night after the village. He sat by a small fire, watching the dark sky. There was a slight sense of blue. The sun was rising. He did not respond to his soldier's question that wasn't much more than a salutation. Armin sat next to him, not close of course, but still...he sat next to him. The Corporal could smell the scent of burnt wood from the fire. It gave him a slight shudder.
"Fragen Sie sich nicht manchmal-"
(Don't you ask yourself-)
"Es gibt keine Fragen, Armin. Das weißt du."
(There are no questions, Armin. You know that.)
The two men watched the red ball slowly rising, listened to the whistling wind, the cracking of the fire.
As Armin spoke again, his voice was deeper, raspy. He sounded old.
"Fühlen Sie nichts, Korporal?"
(Don't you feel anything, Corporal?)
Again he did not answer. What should he respond to such a question? He felt numb and also...empty.
Armin chuckled softly.
"Ich weiß, dass Sie fühlen, Korporal."
(I know you feel, Corporal)
Erwin turned to the young boy, confused and reliefed at the same time. The young soldier smiled tired.
"Sie sind nicht der Einzige mit Schlafproblemen."
(You are not the only one who can't sleep.)
Levi lifts the crying comrade and the German sees the jew moving his lips. He asks himself what words the officer whispers to the weeping man. He has no idea what he would say.
As the officer wants to move backward, away from the corpse, the crying turns into desperate screaming, again. Levi struggles with his subordinate, pulling him back, but how should a skeletton try to pull or push when there is no muscle, no flesh?
He realises his action as he lays his left arm around the skinny waist and pulls slowly. Schocked by the sudden touch the soldier calms for a moment before he pushes and screams and yells, but Erwin stays.
Finally Levi grabs the soldier's face forcing him to look only into his officer's grey eyes.
"Sasha, schau mich an."
Erwin's stomach just makes a turn. Levi speaks German? And he recognizes the blond hair, the tall, tiny figure. The soldier is his interrogator. The Corporal detects Levi's tired face, trying to sooth his soldier. Maybe.
"Sasha" stares at his officer, the blue eyes frightened, scared.
And then Levi says something Erwin won't forget.
"Ich lass dich nicht los."
(I'll never let you go)
He met Levi in Gymnasium 1929. He was just 14 years old.
They had the same way home, well until the Alexanderplatz where Erwin lived nearby but Levi always took the subway then to his home that was Hakesche Höfe. At the beginning they ignored each other, but after a while they walked on the same pavement and at the end of the 8th grade they even started to talk to each other.
He remembers a dinner with Levi and his parents actually four years later. It was the year 1934 and God, he and Levi were nervous like little girls on their first date. But to be honest: it was really nice and quiet and not one word fell about that Levi was in fact a Jew.
But later when he was laying in his bed alone, almost asleep, his father came. And this was truly...strange, for Erwin could not remember one moment of his father standing at his door. They rarely even spoke to each other- well both were not talkative. He still sees his father standing in the door most awkwardly as if he had absolutely no idea why he was where he was.
Then the older Schmitt closed the door silently and came near. Still Erwin was not nervous. He detected his father curiously. He never had the time to watch him that intensively. He recognized some scars on his father's face, wrinkles, that the had the same form of the eyes and that he and Erwin had the same large hands. The older Schmitt took his pipe out and and holded it in his old hands. It was a nice pipe, small, made out of fir wood. Erwin liked it. Everytime he saw a similar pipe he thought of his father. Something that has never changed.
His father looked at the pipe rolling it from one hand to the other, careful, as if it was a porcelan doll. It seemed he wanted to say something but did not have the words yet. Erwin waited. He was patient, something Levi once said he really appreciated about him. And so he waited and watched.
There was a long while silence in which just the soft sound of rolling wood filled the room. It made Erwin sleepy.
"Weißt du eijentlich wo ick die herhab?"
(Do you know where I got this from?)
The young man blinked and shook honestly his head. His father sighed deeply, walked to Erwin's desk and sat down on the chair. It cracked under his father's weight as if it was about to break the very moment. They looked at each other.
His old man looked tired. Very tired.
Again a deep breath from the older Schmitt.
"Die hab ick im Kriej jekriejt."
(I got it in war)
Suddenly Erwin was awake as if someone had woke him up with a bucket of cold water pouring over his head. Never in his whole life his father had talked about his time in the Great war. Never. But there he sat, and he never had looked that old and tired for Erwin as there on this little chair. The blue eyes of his father detected again the pipe.
"Ick hab sie jeschenkt jekriejt."
(I got it as a present)
"Von wem?," Erwin asked.
(By whom?)
Oh, he thought. Why was I talking? He wanted to apologize as he saw his father's face.
He was smiling. Okay, now Erwin was ….not concerned, more...confused. His father did not smile, mostly. And his father also wasn't sitting on the chair of his son's room.
Why was the older Schmitt acting so...odd?
The smile grew.
"Von einem guten Freund, Erwin. Den besten den man sich nur wünschen kann."
(By a good friend, Erwin. The best friend you can have.)
Strangely the young man did not want to listen anymore, a nasty feeling sat in his chest and made it hard to breath. Something wasn't right, somehow.
"Was ist mit ihm passiert?"
(What happened to him?)
God! Erwin hated his curious tongue making him appear like a little child and not a 18 years old man.
The smile vanished.
"Er war Jude, Erwin."
(He was a Jew, Erwin)
Silence.
The nasty feeling grew, it bit him from the inside and a sudden chill made him shudder.
The eyes of his father became dark and dark wrinkles were digged in his face.
"Der Kaiser wollte wissen wie viele Juden für ihr Vaterland kämpften. Und in mitten der Nacht weckte man sie auf und sie mussten in der Kälte stehen und warten und ihre Toten aufzählen, die auch Juden waren. Nach dreitägigem Kämpfen. Gott sie waren müde."
(The Kaiser wanted to know how many of the Jews were actually fighting for their country. And in the middle of the night one woke them up and they had to stand in the cold and to wait and to say their names and the name of their dead jewish brothers. After three days of battling. God, they were tired.)
No, Erwin thought. I don't want to know...but he was frozen on his bed in this very position. He shivered slightly, imagining the tiredness of the soldiers, their yet dead faces from too many sleepless nights and too less days of joy. Standing thin in the cold, waiting to say their name, their grade and to recall the dead jewish brothers laying in the black earth. Even while defending their fatherland, giving their blood to the Kaiser and still...
There was no trust.
No acceptance.
His father shook his head.
"Am nächsten morgen stellte man sie in die erste Reihe."
(On the next morning they were put into the first line.)
Erwin stared at the older Schmitt with no expression on his old face.
"I prayed to God that he would survive. But on this morning the French were merciless."
A sudden sound of canon balls smashed Erwin's ear like the roar of a lion. His heart beated fast. He was afraid.
His father was silent now. The blue eyes fixed on the little pipe.
"Er ist erbärmlich gestorben Erwin. Nicht einmal das war ihm erspart geblieben. Es hat lange gedauert bis er gestorben ist. Bestimmt eine Stunde."
(He died a pitiful death, Erwin. Not even that he was pared from. It took a while till he was dead. At least an hour.)
And now Erwin realised that the old man looked now at his hands and he knew why. His father was again a soldier, staring at his fingers that were soaked in his comrade's blood.
"He begged me to kill him. I couldn't. I was a coward. I tried to sooth him. You know what I said? I will never let you go. Never."
His father laughed.
"As if this had helped in any way."
Erwin stared at his father.
"What was his name?"
Blue eyes looked at him.
"Levi. That was his name."
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Gute Nacht
Good Night
und schlaft gut
And sleep well