Schlump Page 5

  That afternoon Schlump stormed out to Mons-en-P. to get more detailed information. The days were short, and when he arrived at headquarters it was already pitch black outside. He went in and announced himself. The corporal let him stand there for a while. Then he stood before Schlump, legs apart, hands in his pockets, and started to laugh. ‘Well, well, whippersnapper,’ he sneered, ‘your mother’s going to be in floods of tears when she hears her little boy is off to the Front!’

  Schlump had just turned seventeen and still harboured something of a sense of honour. He felt as if what was most sacred to him had just been defiled. It was a similar emotion to the one he’d felt when hurling the plate in the cavalryman’s face. Seeing nothing but black and red patterns dancing before his eyes, he was seized by an indescribable rage. Schlump punched the corporal square in the face, sending him reeling, and was never quite sure what happened after that. He turned around and ran off, leaving a hell of a racket behind him. Chairs were overturned, and he heard a rattling and clanking like rifles clashing together. He thought the guard had been set on him. But he’d already vanished into the darkness.

  Schlump ran and ran, down to Deux Villes, without knowing where he was heading, until he came to an isolated little house whose friendly owners he knew. He entered and said good evening as softly as he could, then sat down by the stove. The occupants weren’t surprised, because he’d often popped by for a little chat.

  ‘Chauffez-vous, monsieur,’ the woman said, pushing a chair across. She gave him a cup of coffee with some sugar. She was sorry she couldn’t offer him any cognac, and began to complain about the miserable war. Schlump listened with one ear and essayed some absent-minded answers, but with the other ear he was listening to the night outside. Surely the guard sent to look for him would turn up at any moment. Each time he heard a noise outside, he froze and his heart started pounding. And when he heard footsteps outside, he leapt up from his chair in horror. Composing himself, he sat back down and started talking nonsense. The surprised woman asked him what was wrong. He tried to smile and said, ‘Nothing.’ All of a sudden he felt unsafe where he was, and bid a hasty goodbye. The woman stood there, shaking her head behind him, for he’d interrupted her mid-sentence and scarpered.

  Full of fear, Schlump listened out to hear if anyone was coming, then darted across the field to hide behind a bush. Holding the branches together, he squatted on the ground, trying to collect his thoughts.

  Now you’re a deserter, he told himself. When they get hold of you they’ll haul you up before a court martial and you’ll be found guilty of violent insubordination in the face of the enemy. And then you’ll be shot. And what about your mother? And father? Think of the distress you’re causing them! He pictured them distraught at home, giving a start every time the doorbell rang, for they’d be ashamed of seeing anyone; they’d be afraid. He started to concoct madcap plans to spare them the distress. He was going to confess everything and tell the army that they had to show sympathy and take into consideration the reason for his crime. But then he pictured those smug fellows sitting there, and him standing helplessly, unable to utter a word. No, that wasn’t going to work.

  But it was still night-time, and if he left now he could get far. He could flee to Holland. That would be a march of several days, and he’d have nothing to eat, but this was the least of his worries. He had no pass, and the gendarmes would apprehend him at once, for the authorities everywhere would have been notified of his flight. Well, he could creep back into his office and make himself a pass, using a different name and stamping it a few times. But surely his headquarters would already be occupied, as that was the first place they would have gone looking for him.

  He’d run out of ideas. He was squatting on the ground and time was passing. His teeth chattered as he started to freeze.

  He fell asleep, woke with a start, and fell asleep again. He dreamed, half asleep and half awake.

  The first cracks of light appeared in the east. Schlump made his way to Seclin. He looked around carefully, watchfully. But there was nothing to see. Everything was quiet. A dog barked in the distance. He had a friend in Seclin, a telephonist who’d been commandeered from the recruits at the same time as him. Schlump wanted to ask whether his flight had been reported.

  He called in at his friend’s lodging – the man lived with an elderly couple – and found out that he had night duty until eight the following morning. That was useful. With the utmost caution he sneaked into the telephone office and woke his friend, who was sleeping on a camp bed. The friend knew nothing; no notification had been sent through. Schlump breathed a sigh of relief and became perfectly calm. The corporal must have a bad conscience, he thought. He never passed on the deliveries of butter to the military hospitals in full. I know he sent some home and gave some to the sergeants, who he’s in cahoots with. I also know there are a few women in Mons-en-P. he slips all manner of things to. Schlump used to have to supply him with pigeons for the women. ‘He’s got a bad conscience and so he’s not reporting me. But then it struck him that there’d also been someone else present, a lieutenant from the Hussars he didn’t know, and who had heard everything. Schlump was seized by fear once more. The lieutenant wouldn’t be able to let an incident like that pass. He was an older man – they probably assigned him to the corporal in order to sign documents. Perhaps he was a decent sort.

  Schlump decided to wait till eight o’clock and then call the corporal, who he knew would be on his own in the office at that time. He resolved not to tell him where he was telephoning from.

  He rang just after eight.

  ‘Now listen here,’ the corporal said gruffly and angrily. ‘You know damn well what you did and what’s in store for you!’

  Schlump didn’t reply. The corporal continued: ‘In view of your age I’ve decided against filing an official statement. Report at once to the lieutenant, who saw the whole thing. And then come and apologise to me!’

  Schlump was ecstatic. He knew he’d won. He ran back, still circumspectly, as he didn’t trust the corporal. He reported to the lieutenant, who proved to be a reasonable man. He invited Schlump to sit down, then interrogated him, asking about his parents, his age – everything. Then he chastised him for his behaviour, pointing out his offence and the potential consequences, and urged him to offer his apologies to the corporal.

  Schlump thanked the lieutenant and went to the headquarters. The corporal flew into a rage when he saw him. He screamed and swore, calling Schlump a rascal, a villain, a tramp – he served up all the pet names that were popular in the German army at the time. Throughout the entire tirade Schlump stood rigidly to attention, his hands alongside the seams of his trousers. Then the corporal spat at him, ‘Now get the hell out of here!’

  Schlump went home like a condemned man who’s been pardoned on the scaffold. He thought of his mother and breathed a massive sigh of relief.

  •

  The billeting officer for the service corps walked through the village with Schlump, making a detailed examination of all the lodgings, and noting everything down.

  The following day the service corps detachment arrived on their wagons. They wore lederhosen and brand-new sheepskins, and their feet were clad in new boots. Schlump marvelled at how smart they looked, and asked one of them where they’d got their new things from. He laughed and said, ‘There are plenty of new clothes around; we’re not going to put on any old rags, we’re not that stupid!’

  They had jangling spurs and long swords dangled from their waists. They’d also slung a carbine over their wagon, as decoration. The soldiers stabled their horses, moved into their quarters, and had a good night’s sleep. The following morning – they were off duty all day – one of them came to see Schlump in his office. Irate and agitated, the soldier berated him, ‘What the devil do you think you’re playing at giving me a billet like that? What on earth do you imagine we’ve been through? We need sleep and rest! I can’t sleep on a straw mattress; I must have a proper bed!’ Schlum
p shifted the blame on to the billeting officer, but promised to find him something better.

  Behind him, the service corps lieutenant hobbled in with a stick for support and a stern face. He was a young man studying agriculture back in civilian life. He’d brought with him a sergeant, a corporal, and two clerks. The lieutenant took occupation of Schlump’s headquarters by sitting on a chair in the middle of the office, resting his hands on the stick and enquiring loudly and pompously about everything: the tasks and duties of the headquarters, the number of people under its command, the senior authorities, and the attitude of the French. Then he groaned and limped out, gritting his teeth. From the door he ordered Schlump to give the sergeant, the corporal, and the two clerks thorough instruction to enable internal business to continue as normal when Schlump was relieved of his duty. The lieutenant intended to look after the external work himself together with the men from his unit.

  Schlump was now catered for by the service corps. As the wagon drivers fed themselves in their quarters, their rations came in the form of ingredients. Schlump took advantage of this perk, obtaining so much meat, salami, coffee, sugar and other lovely things that he felt quite proud. Every day he would fetch his rations and then sit with the drivers for a while. To begin with they were terribly nervy. They told him of their experiences. They’d just come from Notre Dame de Lorette, where things had gone disastrously. The French had sent forth their blacks; those devils came skipping down with flashing eyes and knives in their mouths. They would have slit our throats if the artillery hadn’t started firing. But at night you couldn’t see their black faces. They slunk up like snakes, knives still between their teeth, and silently strangled our poor chaps to death. Schlump listened attentively and in awe. The enemy fire had been horrendous; the Guards managed to break away, but not a single one of the green Chasseurs returned. The dead lay in piles in roadside ditches; if you touched the corpses they fell apart. These men had been shot dead in the advance. And still the French hadn’t made any headway.

  The soldiers looked Schlump up and down, then straight through him as if he weren’t there. They nodded their heads, took their pipes out of their mouths, and said, ‘Oh yes.’ Schlump gently asked them how many losses they’d suffered.

  ‘They shot the lieutenant’s horse in the leg. He fell from the horse and ripped his bottom on the barbed wire.’

  Schlump laughed, but the soldiers cast him angry glances and spat. They said this was bad enough; the lieutenant could have died.

  Schlump returned home deep in thought. He didn’t believe them, even though they hadn’t lied.

  •

  Schlump hadn’t believed a thing the soldiers had said. But their stories made him think. He knew that the trenches lay in wait for him, and that he’d have to move on from Loffrande soon. He felt as if he were having to bid goodbye to home a second time.

  It was Christmas. Outside it was raining and the wind was clattering the bare branches against one another. His mother had sent him a package, which he unwrapped delicately, carefully laying out the contents before him. On top she had put a small green fir twig; its aroma, together with the smell of the stollen, which he now unpacked, enveloped his soul lovingly and carried him back home. He peered through the keyhole, saw his mother beaming as she lit the candles on the Christmas tree, and his impatience grew. His father was working next door as he still had a suit to deliver that evening, and the sweaty vapour of the iron wafted over to him. They had just returned from Midnight Mass, trudging through the narrow lanes and between the gables whose brows huddled close together as if they were trying to whisper to each other. The snow fell gently and with a soft, delicate rustle.

  Schlump looked up. It was getting dark outside and a fine rain was falling. His mother had sent him a cake, a pair of woollen stockings, and everything else a concerned mother could conceive of. She’d included a book, too, containing short poems about spring, love, autumn, and longing – exactly what he might have wished for. He spent ages at his Christmas table. Then he went over to see the French, who didn’t have a clue about Christmas. Little Hélène was sitting at a table in the corner, reading an old dog-eared picture book. He sat down beside her, and she immediately asked him for a fairy tale, because he’d once told her one. He was alone with her in the room, the only other presence being the ancient clock that snored out the time.

  But Schlump was thinking of his mother. In the evenings he used to sit in her lap while she told him fairy tales, which he firmly believed and knew so well, as if he’d actually lived through them himself. ‘Now listen, I’m going to tell you the tale of poor Gil:

  ‘Once upon a time there lived a poor tailor’s apprentice by the name of Gil. He had a wicked master who would beat him with his measuring stick if the stitches were too far apart, and poke him with the scissors if he didn’t put the needle close enough to the edge, and jab him with the needle when he stared dreamily out of the window. And as for the tailor’s wife! She couldn’t bear the boy, for on occasion he wanted to eat until his belly was full. When he ladled a spoonful of soup from the dish, she would throw him a dirty look. Once he helped himself to a piece of dry bread to eat with the soup, because it was too thin. And when he cut into the bread a touch too deeply with his knife, the old woman snarled at him, “Eat the whole lot of it then!” For that he had to sew long into the night, attaching buttons, and when the first cockerel crowed the following morning, the woman made him mop the floors, carry out the ashes and fetch up the coal.

  ‘But the master tailor became ever crueller, and his wife ever more miserly, until the boy could no longer cope with his hunger and he ran away. As poor Gil’s parents were both dead, he didn’t know where to go. He wanted to make his way to the city; surely there he would find food. One last time he wandered through the narrow streets with their pointed roofs and said goodbye to the tall gables, whose brows huddled close together, as if they were discussing the unfortunate young lad’s fate. Then he left, heading across the fields to the city.

  ‘He could see it from far away, for a large black cloud of smoke hung above the countless tall chimneys. He first came to magnificent wide streets, on either side of which stood splendid gardens full of wonderful flowers. Behind these gardens, between the trees, lay fine houses with huge windows. Gil couldn’t believe his eyes. Then he came to another area, where the houses were black and extremely long and tall, but with nothing in bloom. A mass of children with snotty noses played on the street corners, and lorries raced past, disappearing through the wide gates, behind which he could see more tall black houses. With a degree of apprehension, Gil walked through one of these gates.

  ‘From the sooty windows of one of the rear houses he heard the din of machines pounding and rattling, and the drive belts smacking against the broad rims of the busy wheels. He asked for work and was given a job immediately. All day long he had to sit by a gigantic machine in front of a clock face with a single hand that continually flipped up and down. On the dial was a red line, and if the hand went beyond this he had to push the button of a bell, which let the stoker know that the machine was approaching dangerous levels. But the hand never flipped beyond the line, and Gil sat there the whole day staring gormlessly at the jittering hand. He’d been given a key and a number. Every morning he had to insert the key into a large iron box, above which sat a proper clock. Many numbers were on this box, one for each worker, where they had to insert their individual keys. This meant the clock knew whether anybody had arrived for work late. On pay day there was an envelope by each number containing the worker’s wages. Gil felt as if he had turned into a number, or a component of the machine he had to sit in front of all day long.

  ‘As his earnings were meagre, he looked for other work. He became an assistant stoker. He was given another number, but this time he spent all day at a furnace. His job was to fetch coal and take away the glowing ashes. Sometimes the stoker would open the huge furnace door, and Gil had to help him with the unbelievably long rake to remove th
e burning slag from the grate. They had to take care not to burn themselves. Once the stoker tripped and fell, and the red-hot slag toppled on to his chest and legs. The man screamed blue murder. Gil dragged him out, but he was already very badly burned. An ambulance took him away. Now Gil became the stoker, but he thought about his predecessor, who had died in hospital, and looked for another job.

  ‘He went to a mine, but conditions were even worse there. First he had to push the cars, taking great care not to bang his head in the low passageways, as well as to avoid being run down. Then he was promoted to the position of cutter and had to work tremendously hard. Bare-chested, for it was infernally hot down there, and on his knees, he had to cut out the coal. He thought he’d suffocate in the poor air. And if he hadn’t cut a sufficient quantity of coal, the overseer would jump down his throat. In the morning the miners would return above ground and sit silently in a train that took them home. Gil slept in a miserable room with another man he didn’t know, and when they were working in the mine at night, two other men slept in their beds.

  ‘One night, when Gil was at work, he heard an ominous cracking and rustling beside him, then his lamp went out and all he heard was a single thunderclap. When he regained consciousness, he was lying in hospital next to several of his fellow miners. The spotless nurses attended to him, and spoke softly and kindly. He didn’t know what had happened to him, but the sister said he’d lain unconscious in bed for three days. Whenever he breathed, Gil felt a terrible pain in his chest, and he was so exhausted that he couldn’t even lift his arm. But he was young and he got better by the day.

  ‘Eventually they released him from hospital. He received a further month of financial assistance and didn’t need to work. He took walks in the big parks and thought about his future. When the month was up and he had his last six-groschen piece in his pocket, he decided to pay a visit to a card reader and ask what lay in store for him. If things weren’t going to get any better, well . . . but he didn’t want to follow this thought to its logical conclusion. He gave the card reader his last six-groschen piece. With her hands, which looked like two giant spiders, she picked up a dirty pack of cards. Gil had to cut, then she shuffled, and wiggled her fingers back and forth, mumbling to herself. Finally she said, “Your fortune is on its way. You’ll come across it when you step out of the house. Hold on tight so it doesn’t escape.”