No one makes any motion to stand up.
Kropp looks up at him with interest.
He continues to stand in front of us and wait.
As no one says anything he launches a
"Well!"
A couple of seconds go by. Apparently Himmelstoss doesn't quite know what to do.
He would like most to set us all on the run again.
But he seems to have learned already that the front-line isn't a parade ground.
He tries it on though, and by addressing himself to one instead of to all of us hopes to get some response.
Kropp is nearest, so he favours him.
"Well, you here too?"
But Albert's no friend of his.
"A bit longer than you, I fancy," he retorts.
The red moustache twitches:
"You don't recognize me any more, what?"
Tjaden now opens his eyes.
"I do though."
Himmelstoss turns to him:
'Tjaden, isn't it?"
Tjaden lifts his head.
"And do you know what you are?"
Himmelstoss is disconcerted.
"Since when have we become so familiar?
I don't remember that we ever slept in the gutter together?"
He has no idea what to make of the situation.
He didn't expect this open hostility.
But he is on his guard: he has already had some rot dinned into him about getting a shot in the back.
The question about the gutter makes Tjaden so mad that he becomes almost witty:
"No you slept there by yourself."
Himmelstoss begins to boil.
But Tjaden gets in ahead of him. He must bring off his insult:
"Wouldn't you like to know what you are?
A dirty hound, that's what you are.
I've been wanting to tell you that for a long time."
The satisfaction of months shines in his dull pig's eyes as he spits out: "Dirty hound!"
Himmelstoss lets fly too, now.
"What's that, you muck-rake, you dirty peat-stealer?
Stand up there, bring your heels together when your superior officer speaks to you."
Tjaden waves him off.
"You take a run and jump at yourself, Himmelstoss."
Himmelstoss is a raging book of army regulations.
The Kaiser couldn't be more insulted.
"Tjaden, I command you, as your superior officer: Stand up!"
"Anything else you would like?" asks Tjaden.
"Will you obey my order or not?"
Tjaden replies, without knowing it, in the well-known classical phrase. At the same time he ventilates his backside.
"I'll have you court-martialled," storms Himmelstoss.
We watch him disappear in the direction of the Orderly Room.
Haie and Tjaden burst into a regular peat-digger's bellow.
Haie laughs so much that he dislocates his jaw, and suddenly stands there helpless with his mouth wide open.