I used to live in this room before I was a soldier.
The books I bought gradually with the money I earned by coaching.
Many of them are secondhand, all the classics for example, one volume in blue cloth boards cost one mark twenty pfennig.
I bought them complete because it was thoroughgoing, I did not trust the editors of selections to choose all the best.
So I purchased only "collected works."
I read most of them with laudible zeal, but few of them really appealed to me.
I preferred the other books, the moderns, which were of course much dearer.
A few I came by not quite honestly, I borrowed and did not return them because I did not want to part with them.
One shelf is filled with school books.
They are not so well cared for, they are badly thumbed, and pages have been torn out for certain purposes.
Then below are periodicals, papers, and letters all jammed in together with drawings and rough sketches.
I want to think myself back into that time.
It is still in the room, I feel it at once, the walls have preserved it.
My hands rest on the arms of the sofa; now I make myself at home and draw up my legs so that I sit comfortably in the corner, in the arms of the sofa.
The little window is open, through it I see the familiar picture of the street with the rising spire of the church at the end.
There are a couple of flowers on the table.
Pen-holders, a shell as a paper-weight, the ink-well—here nothing is changed.
It will be like this too, if I am lucky, when the war is over and I come back here for good.
I will sit here just like this and look at my room and wait.
I feel excited; but I do not want to be, for that is not right.
I want that quiet rapture again. I want to feel the same powerful, nameless urge that I used to feel when I turned to my books.
The breath of desire that then arose from the coloured backs of the books, shall fill me again, melt the heavy, dead lump of lead that lies somewhere in me and waken again the impatience of the future, the quick joy in the world of thought, it shall bring back again the lost eagerness of my youth.
I sit and wait.
It occurs to me that I must go and see Kemmerich's mother;—I might visit Mittelstaedt too, he should be at the barracks.
I look out of the window;—beyond the picture of the sunlit street appears a range of hills, distant and light; it changes to a clear day in autumn, and I sit by the fire with Kat and Albert and eat potatoes baked in their skins.
But I do not want to think of that, I sweep it away.
The room shall speak, it must catch me up and hold me, I want to feel that I belong here, I want to hearken and know when I go back to the front that the war will sink down, be drowned utterly in the great home-coming tide, know that it will then be past for ever, and not gnaw us continually, that it will have none but an outward power over us.
The backs of the books stand in rows.
I know them all still, I remember arranging them in order.
I implore them with my eyes: Speak to me—take me up—take me, Life of my Youth—you who are care-free, beautiful—receive me again—
I wait, I wait.
Images float through my mind, but they do not grip me, they are mere shadows and memories.
Nothing—nothing— My disquietude grows.
A terrible feeling of foreignness suddenly rises up in me.
I cannot find my way back, I am shut out though I entreat earnestly and put forth all my strength. Nothing stirs; listless and wretched, like a condemned man, I sit there and the past withdraws itself.
And at the same time I fear to importune it too much, because I do not know what might happen then.
I am a soldier, I must cling to that.
Wearily I stand up and look out of the window.
Then I take one of the books, intending to read, and turn over the leaves.
But I put it away and take out another. There are passages in it that have been marked.
I look, turn over the pages, take up fresh books.
Already they are piled up beside me.
Speedily more join the heap, papers, magazines, letters.
I stand there dumb.
As before a judge.
Dejected.
Words, Words, Words — they do not reach me.
Slowly I place the books back in the shelves.
Nevermore.
Quietly, I go out of the room.