She says: "With the gas and all the rest of it."
She does not know what she is saying, she is merely anxious for me.
Should I tell her how we once found three enemy trenches with their garrison all stiff as though stricken with apoplexy? against the parapet, in the dug-outs, just where they were, the men stood and lay about, with blue faces, dead.
"No Mother, that's only talk," I answer, "there's not very much in what Bredemeyer says.
You see for instance, I'm well and fit–––"
Before my mother's tremulous anxiety I recover my composure.
Now I can walk about and talk and answer questions without fear of having suddenly to lean against the wall because the world turns soft as rubber and my veins become brimstone.
My mother wants to get up. So I go for a while to my sister in the kitchen.
"What is the matter with her?" I ask.
She shrugs her shoulders:
"She has been in bed some months now, but we did not want to write and tell you.
Several doctors have been to see her.
One of them said it is probably cancer again."
I go to the district commandant to report myself.
Slowly I wander through the streets.
Occasionally someone speaks to me.
I do not delay long for I have little inclination to talk.
On my way back from the barracks a loud voice calls out to me.
Still lost in thought I turn round and find myself confronted by a Major.
"Can't you salute?" he blusters.
"Sorry, Major," I say in embarrassment, "I didn't notice you."
"Don't you know how to speak properly?" he roars.
I would like to hit him in the face, but control myself, for my leave depends on it. I click my heels and say:
"I did not see you, Herr Major."
"Then keep your eyes open," he snorts.
"What is your name?"
I give it.
His fat red face is furious.
"What regiment?"
I give him full particulars.
Even yet he has not had enough.
"Where are you quartered?"
But I have had more than enough and say:
"Between Langemark and Bixschoote."
"Eh?" he asks, a bit stupefied.
I explain to him that I arrived on leave only an hour or two since, thinking that he would then trot along.
But not at all.
He gets even more furious:
"You think you can bring your front-line manners here, what?
Well, we don't stand for that sort of thing.
Thank God, we have discipline here!"
"Twenty paces backwards, double march!" he commands.
I am mad with rage.
But I cannot say anything to him; he could put me under arrest if he liked.
So I double back, and then march up to him. Six paces from him I spring to a stiff salute and maintain it until I am six paces beyond him.
He calls me back again and affably gives me to understand that for once he is pleased to put mercy before justice.
I pretend to be duly grateful.
"Now, dismiss!" he says.
I turn about smartly and march off.
That ruins the evening for me.