Men in War | Page 2

front
was doing its work, discharging mangled human bodies like so much
offal and filling all the houses with its bloody refuse.
But the beautiful wrought-iron fountains continued to gurgle and
murmur complacently, prattling with soothing insistence of the days of
their youth, when men still had the time and the care for noble lines and
curves, and war was the affair of princes and adventurers. Legend
popped out of every corner and every gargoyle, and ran on padded
soles through all the narrow little streets, like an invisible gossip
whispering of peace and comfort. And the ancient chestnut trees
nodded assent, and with the shadows of their outspread fingers stroked
the frightened façades to calm them. The past grew so lavishly out of
the fissured walls that any one coming within their embrace heard the
plashing of the fountains above the thunder of the artillery; and the sick
and wounded men felt soothed and listened from their fevered couches
to the talkative night outside. Pale men, who had been carried through
the town on swinging stretchers, forgot the hell they had come from;
and even the heavily laden victims tramping through the place on a
forced march by night became softened for a space, as if they had
encountered Peace and their own unarmed selves in the shadow of the
columns and the flower- filled bay-windows.

The same thing took place with the war in this town as with the stream
that came down from out of the mountains in the north, foaming with
rage at each pebble it rolled over. At the other end of the town, on
passing the last houses, it took a tender leave, quite tamed and subdued,
murmuring very gently, as if treading on tiptoe, as if drowsy with all
the dreaminess it had reflected. Between wide banks, it stepped out into
the broad meadowland, and circled about the war hospital, making
almost an island of the ground it stood on. Thick-stemmed sycamores
cast their shadow on the hospital, and from three sides came the
murmur of the slothful stream mingled with the rustling of the leaves,
as if the garden, when twilight fell, was moved by compassion and sang
a slumber song for the lacerated men, who had to suffer in rank and file,
regimented up to their very death, up to the grave, into which they--
unfortunate cobblers, tinkers, peasants, and clerks--were shoved to the
accompaniment of salvos from big-mouthed cannon.
The sound of taps had just died away, and the watchmen were making
their rounds, when they discovered three men in the deep shadow of the
broad avenue, and drove them into the house.
"Are you officers, eh?" the head-watchman, a stocky corporal of the
landsturm, with grey on his temples, growled and blustered good-
naturedly. "Privates must be in bed by nine o'clock." To preserve a
show of authority he added with poorly simulated bearishness: "Well,
are you going or not?"
He was about to give his usual order, "Quick, take to your legs!" but
caught himself just in time, and made a face as though he had
swallowed something.
The three men now hobbling toward the entrance for inmates, would
have been only too glad to carry out such an order. However, they had
only two legs and six clattering crutches between them. It was like a
living picture posed by a stage manager who has an eye for symmetry.
On the right went the one whose right leg had been saved, on the left
went his counterpart, hopping on his left leg, and in the middle the
miserable left-over of a human body swung between two high crutches,
his empty trousers raised and pinned across his chest, so that the whole

man could have gone comfortably into a cradle.
The corporal followed the group with his eyes, his head bent and his
fists clenched, as if bowed down beneath the burden of the sight. He
muttered a not exactly patriotic oath and spat out a long curve of saliva
with a hiss from between his front teeth. As he was about to turn and go
on his round again, a burst of laughter came from the direction of the
officers' wing. He stood still and drew in his head as if from a blow on
the back of his neck, and a gleam of ungovernable hatred flitted over
his broad, good-natured peasant face. He spat out again, to soothe his
feelings, then took a fresh start and passed the merry company with a
stiff salute.
The gentlemen returned the salute carelessly. Infected by the coziness
that hung over the whole of the town like a light cloud, they were
sitting chatting in front of the hospital on benches moved together to
form a square. They spoke of the war and--laughed,