She moans and weeps steadily.
I have to tell how it happened, so I invent a story and I almost believe it myself.
As I leave she kisses me and gives me a picture of him.
In his recruit's uniform he leans on a round rustic table with legs made of birch branches.
Behind him a wood is painted on a curtain, and on the table stands a mug of beer.
It is the last evening at home.
Everyone is silent.
I go to bed early, I seize the pillow, press it against myself and bury my head in it.
Who knows if I will ever lie in a feather bed again?
Late in the night my mother comes into my room.
She thinks I am asleep, and I pretend to be so.
To talk, to stay awake with one another, it is too hard.
She sits long into the night although she is in pain and often writhes.
At last I can bear it no longer, and pretend I have just wakened up.
"Go and sleep, Mother, you will catch cold here."
"I can sleep enough later," she says.
I sit up.
"I don't go straight back to the front, mother.
I have to do four weeks at the training camp.
I may come over from there one Sunday, perhaps."
She is silent.
Then she asks gently:
"Are you very much afraid?"
"No Mother."
"I would like to tell you to be on your guard against the women out in France.
They are no good."
Ah! Mother, Mother!
You still think I am a child —why can I not put my head in your lap and weep?
Why have I always to be strong and self-controlled? I would like to weep and be comforted too, indeed I am little more than a child; in the wardrobe still hang short, boy's trousers—it is such a little time ago, why is it over?
"Where we are there aren't any women, Mother," I say as calmly as I can.
"And be very careful at the front, Paul."
Ah, Mother, Mother!
Why do I not take you in my arms and die with you.
What poor wretches we are!
"Yes Mother, I will." "I will pray for you every day, Paul."
Ah! Mother, Mother!
Let us rise up and go out, back through the years, where the burden of all this misery lies on us no more, back to you and me alone, mother!
"Perhaps you can get a job that is not so dangerous."
"Yes, Mother, perhaps I can get into the cookhouse, that can easily be done."
"You do it then, and if the others say anything–––"
"That won't worry me, mother–––" She sighs.
Her face is a white gleam in the darkness.
"Now you must go to sleep, Mother."
She does not reply.
I get up and wrap my cover round her shoulders.
She supports herself on my arm, she is in pain.
And so I take her to her room.
I stay with her a little while.
"And you must get well again, Mother, before I come back."
"Yes, yes, my child."