So long as I do not know his name perhaps I may still forget him, time will obliterate it, this picture.
But his name, it is a nail that will be hammered into me and never come out again.
It has the power to recall this for ever, it will always come back and stand before me.
Irresolutely I take the wallet in my hand.
It slips out of my hand and falls open.
Some pictures and letters drop out.
I gather them up and want to put them back again, but the strain I am under, the uncertainty, the hunger, the danger, these hours with the dead man have made me desperate, I want to hasten the relief, to intensify and to end the torture, as one strikes an unendurably painful hand against the trunk of a tree, regardless of everything.
There are portraits of a woman and a little girl, small amateur photographs taken against an ivy-clad wall.
Along with them are letters.
I take them out and try to read them.
Most of it I do not understand, it is so hard to decipher and I scarcely know any French.
But each word I translate pierces me like a shot in the chest;—like a stab in the chest.
My brain is taxed beyond endurance.
But I realize this much, that I will never dare to write to these people as I intended.
Impossible.
I look at the portraits once more; they are clearly not rich people.
I might send them money anonymously if I earn anything later on.
I seize upon that, it is at least something to hold on to.
This dead man is bound up with my life, therefore I must do everything, promise everything in order to save myself; I swear blindly that I mean to live only for his sake and his family, with wet lips I try to placate him — and deep down in me lies the hope that I may buy myself off in this way and perhaps even get out of this; it is a little stratagem: if only I am allowed to escape, then I will see to it.
So I open the book and read slowly: — Gerard Duval, compositor.
With the dead man's pencil I write the address on an envelope, then swiftly thrust everything back into his tunic.
I have killed the printer, Gerard Duval.
I must be a printer, I think confusedly, be a printer, printer ––
By afternoon I am calmer.
My fear was groundless.
The name troubles me no more. The madness passes.
"Comrade," I say to the dead man, but I say it calmly, "to-day you, to-morrow me.
But if I come out of it, comrade, I will fight against this, that has struck us both down; from you, taken life — and from me — ?
Life also.
I promise you, comrade. It shall never happen again."
The sun strikes low, I am stupefied with exhaustion and hunger.
Yesterday is like a fog to me, there is no hope of ever getting out of this.
I fall into a doze and do not at first realize that evening is approaching.
The twilight comes.
It seems to me to come quickly now.
One hour more.
If it were summer, it would be three hours more.
One hour more.
Now suddenly I begin to tremble; something might happen in the interval.
I think no more of the dead man, he is of no consequence to me now.
With one bound the lust to live flares up again and everything that has filled my thoughts goes down before it.
Now, merely to avert any ill-luck, I babble mechanically:
"I will fulfil everything, fulfil everything I have promised you–––" but already I know that I shall not do so.
Suddenly it occurs to me that my own comrades may fire on me as I creep up; they do not know I am coming.
I will call out as soon as I can so that they will recognize me.
I will stay lying in front of the trench until they answer me.
The first star.
The front remains quiet.
I breathe deeply and talk to myself in my excitement:
"No foolishness now, Paul—Quiet, Paul, quiet— then you will be saved, Paul."