The Road Back (28 page)

We ring the bell. A sister in a white overall opens to us. We are both terribly embarrassed and with faces like beetroots go into the waiting-room. There, God be thanked! we are alone. On the table is a litter of numbers of the magazine,
Die Wocke
. We turn the pages. They are rather ancient. They have only just reached the Peace of Brest-Litowsk, here.

The doctor comes in, spectacles flashing. The door into the consulting-room stands half open behind him, and one can see a chair there made of nickel piping and leather, dreadfully practical and painful looking.

It's queer that so many doctors should have a preference for treating their patients as if they were children! With dentists of course it is part of the regular training; it would appear to be so with this sort here, too.

"Well, Mr. Breyer," says the bespectacled cobra playfully, "so we are to become a little better acquainted shortly!"

Ludwig stands there, like a ghost and swallows hard.
"Is it——"

The doctor nods encouragingly. "Yes, the blood test is back. Positive. Now we must really begin to talk to the old rascal severely."

"Postive," stammers Ludwig, "then that means——"

"Yes," answers the doctor, "we must make a little cure."

"Then that means, I've got syphilis?"

"Yes."

A blow-fly buzzes through the room and bumps against the window. Time has stopped. The soggy air sticks fast between the walls. The world has changed. An awful fear has turned to an awful certainty.

"Can there not be a mistake?" asks Ludwig. "Couldn't they make a second blood test?"

The doctor shakes his head. "It is better we should start the cure soon. The stage is secondary."

Ludwig gulps. "Is it curable?"

The doctor becomes animated. His face is almost jovial with reassurance.

"Absolutely! These little tubes here, all we do is to in-

ject them to start with, say, for a period of, let us say, six months to begin with. Then we shall see. Perhaps hardly anything more will be necessary. Oh yes, syphilis is quite curable these days."

Syphilis—revolting word!—sounds as if it were a thin black snake.

"Did you get it out at the Front?" asks the doctor. Ludwig nods.

"Why didn't you have it treated at once?"

"I didn't know what it was. No one ever told us about these things before. And it only showed itself a long time after, and seemed harmless enough. Then it went away again of itself."

The doctor shakes his head. "Yes, that is the reverse side of the medal," he says glibly.

I would like to bash him one over the head with a chair. A lot he knows what it means to get three days' leave to Brussels, to come by the night train straight from shell-holes and slush and filth and blood into a city with streets, lamps, lights, shops and women; where there are fine hotel-rooms and white bath-tubs, and a man can soak himself and scour off all the dirt; where is soft music, and terraces and cool, rich wine! A lot he knows of the enchantment that is in the blue, misty twilight of such a little moment between horror and horror—a rift in the clouds it is, a wild outcry of life in the brief interval between death and death! Who knows but that in a few days he may be hanging on the barbed-wire, with torn limbs, bellowing, thirsting, perishing? Yet one more swig of this heavy wine, yet one more breath, one glimpse more into this insubstantial world of moving colour, dreams, women, inflaming whispers, words, under whose spell the blood becomes like a black fountain; under whose touch the years of filth and madness and hopelessness resolve and change to sweet, singing eddies of memory and hope. To-morrow death will rush in again with his guns, hand-grenades, flame-throwers, blood and annihilation—but today, this soft skin, fragrant and calling as life itself. What intoxicating shadows upon the shoulders, what soft arms! It crackles and flashes and bursts and pours down, the sky burns. Who will think then that in such whispering charm, in such fragrance, such skin, that other thing, syphilis, may be in ambush, watching, hidden, crouching, waiting? Who knows, and who wants to know, who thinks then of anything but of today? tomorrow? why tomorrow it may all be over. Bloody war! that taught us to recognise only the moment and to have it. 

"And now?" asks Ludwig. "Let us begin as soon as we can."

"At once then," says Ludwig quietly. He goes with the doctor to the consulting-room.

I remain in the waiting-room, where I occupy myself tearing up a few numbers of
Die Woche
, in which is figured nothing but parades, and victories and pithy sayings of war-intoxicated clergymen.

Ludwig comes back. "Go and see another doctor, Ludwig," I whisper to him. "I'm sure this fellow doesn't know his job. He hasn't any brain." Ludwig makes a tired gesture and we go down the stairs in silence. At the bottom, with averted face he says suddenly: "Well, good-bye "

I look up. He is leaning against the railing and his fists are clenched in his pockets. "What's wrong?" I ask, rather startled. "I am going now," he answers.

"Well, give us your paw, can't you?" I say mystified. With trembling lips he protests: "But you mustn't touch me now, now I've——"

Shy and slim there he stands by the railing—just as he would lean against the parados, with sad face and lowered eyes. "Ach, Ludwig! Ludwig! what rot will you say next? Not touch you! you old fathead, you silly ass! touch you? there, I touch you, a hundred times I touch you"—it has so hurt me, blast it! now I am blubbing, damned fooll and I put my arm about his shoulder and press him to me, and I feel how he is trembling—"Ach, Ludwig, that's all bunk, and anyway, I may have it myself, for all I know. You just keep calm now, and that goggle-eyed old snake up there will soon put you right again." But he trembles and trembles, and I hold him fast.

Demonstrations in the streets have been called for this afternoon. Prices have been soaring everywhere for months past, and the poverty is greater even than it was during the war. Wages are insufficient to buy the bare necessities of life, and even though one may have the money it is often impossible to buy anything with it. But ever more and more gin-palaces and dance-halls go up, and ever more and more blatant is the profiteering and swindling.

Scattered groups of workers out on strike trail through the streets. Now and again there is a disturbance. A rumour is going about that troops have been concentrated at the barracks. But there is no sign of it as yet.

Here and there one hears cries, and counter cries. Somebody is haranguing at a street corner. Then suddenly everywhere is silence.

A procession of men in the faded uniforms of the frontline trenches is moving slowly toward us.

It is formed up by sections, marching in fours. Big white placards are carried before:
Where is the Fatherland's gratitude?
The War Cripples are starving
.

The men with one arm are carrying the placards, and they look round continually to see if the procession is still coming along properly behind them, for they are the fastest.

These are followed by men with sheep dogs on short, leather leads. The animals have the red cross of the blind at their collars. Watchfully they walk along beside their masters. If the procession halts they sit down, and then the blind men stop. Sometimes dogs off the street will rush in among the column, barking and wagging their tails, wanting to romp and play with them. But these merely turn their heads and take no notice of all the sniffing and yapping. Yet their ears are erect, pricked and alert, and their eyes are alive; but they walk as if they no longer wished to run and to jump, as if they understood for what they are there. They have separated themselves from their fellows, as Sisters of Mercy separate themselves from jolly shop girls. Nor do the other dogs persist long: after a few minutes they give up, and make off in such haste that it looks almost as if they were flying from something. Only a powerful mastiff stands still, and with front legs widely straddling, barks slowly, deep and hollow, till the procession is past.

It is strange how a face without eyes alters—how in the upper half it becomes extinct, smooth and dead, and how odd the mouth is in comparison, when it speaks: only the lower half of the face lives. All these have been shot blind; and so they behave differently from men born blind. They are more violent, and at the same time more cautious, in their gestures that have not yet gained the sureness of many years of darkness. The memory of colours, of sky, earth and twilight still lives with them. They move still as if they had eyes, involuntarily they lift and turn their heads to see who it is that speaks to them. Some have black patches or bandages over their eyes, but most go without them, as if by that means they would stand nearer to colours and the light. Their eyelids are withered and closed—only the narrow strip of the lower lid still protrudes a little, blotched, wet and red like a dim, cheerless dawn. Many of them are healthy, powerful fellows with strong limbs that would like well to move freely and have play. The pale sunset of the March sky gleams behind their bowed heads. In shop windows the first lamps are being lighted. But they hardly feel the mild, sweet air of evening on their brow. In their heavy boots they move slowly through the everlasting darkness that stretches about them like a cloud; and troubled and persistent, their thoughts clamber up and down the meagre scale of figures that would mean bread and comfort and life to them, and yet cannot be. Hunger and penury stir idly in the darkened rooms of their mind. Helpless and full of dull fear they sense their nearness; yet they cannot see them nor do aught against them but to walk slowly in their numbers through the streets, lifting up their dead faces from the darkness toward the light, in dumb appeal to others, who can still see, that they should see.

Behind the blind come the men with one eye, the tattered faces of men with head-wounds, wry, bulbous mouths, faces without noses and without lower jaws, entire faces one great red scar with a couple of holes in it where formerly were a mouth and a nose. But above this desolation quiet, questioning, sad human eyes.

On these follow the long lines of men with legs amputated. Some already have artificial limbs that spring forward obliquely as they walk and strike clanking on the pavement, as if the whole man were artificial, made up of iron and hinges. Others have their trouser-legs looped up and made fast with safety-pins. These go on crutches or sticks with black rubber pads.

Then come the shakers, the shell-shocked. Their hands, their heads, their clothes, their bodies quake, as though they still shuddered with horror. They no longer have control of themselves, the will has been extinguished, the muscles and nerves have revolted against the brain, the eyes become void and impotent.

One-eyed and one-armed men are pushing along wicker carriages with oilcloth covers, wherein are other men, so badly wounded that they can now only live in wheeled-chairs. Among them a few men come trailing a flat handcart, such as carpenters use to transport bedsteads or coffins. On it there sits a torso. The legs are gone from the hips. It is the upper half of a powerful man, nothing more. He has broad, stalwart shoulders, and a big, brave face with a heavy moustache. On his head he wears a peaked cap. It may be that he was formerly a furniture remover. Beside him is a placard with wobbly lettering that he has, no doubt, painted himself:
I should like to walk too, mate.
With solemn face he sits there; now and then, supporting himself on his arms, he will swing a little farther up the wagon so as to change his seat.

A young, pale fellow without arms, and legs amputated at the knees, follows after him. The knees stand in thick, leather wrappings like great hooves. It appears so odd that one involuntarily looks under the wagon, as if the legs must surely carry on there beneath it. In bis arm-stumps he carries a placard:
Many thousands of us are still lying in the hospitals.

The procession drags slowly along the streets. Wherever it passes all is still. Once, at the corner of Hook Street, it has to wait a long time. A new dance palace is being erected there, and the street is blocked with heaps of sand, cement-mixers and girders. Between the streets over the entrance is the name in illuminated letters:
Astoria Dance-Palace
and Wine Saloon.
The trolley with the torso stands directly beneath it, waiting until some iron girders have been shifted. The dull glow of the lighted sign floods over him, colouring the silent face to an awful red, as if it were swelling with some terrible fury and must suddenly burst into a hideous cry.

But then the column moves on, and again it is just the face of the furniture remover, pallid from the hospital in the pale evening, and smiling gratefully as a comrade puts a cigarette between his lips. Quietly the groups pass on through the streets, without cries, without indignation, resigned—a complaint, not an accusation. They know that those who can shoot no more need not expect over-much help. They will go on to the Town Hall and stand there a while; some secretary or other will say something to them, then they will break up and return singly to their rooms, their narrow dwellings, their pale children and their awful misery, without much hope, prisoners of the destiny that others made for them.