The parson was an elderly, shortsighted chap.
As he approached the grave side he tripped over a clod of earth and would have fallen in had not Koster and Valentin caught him.
As it was the Bible and his spectacles which he was about to put on slipped from his hand. They fell into the grave.
Dismayed he stared after them.
"Never mind, Herr Pastor," said Valentin, "we'll make good the things for you."
"It's not the book so much," replied the parson gently, "but I need the glasses."
Valentin broke a twig from the cemetery hedge.
Then he knelt down by the grave and contrived to hook the spectacles by one of the arms and lift them out from among the wreaths.
They were gold-rimmed.
The Bible had slipped sideways in between the coffin and the earth; to get it one would have to lift out the coffin again and go in after it.
Not even the parson wanted that.
He stood there bewildered.
"Should I say a few words instead?"
"Don't worry, Herr Pastor," said Ferdinand. "He's got the whole Testament down there now."
The upturned earth smelt strong.
In one of the clods a white May-bug larva was crawling.
When the earth was thrown in again he would still go on living down there, hatch out, and next year break through and come into the light.
But Gottfried Lenz was dead.
He was extinguished.
We were standing by his grave, we knew that his body, his hair, his eyes were still there, changed already, but there still, and yet for all that, he was gone and would never return.
It was past comprehending.
Our skin was warm, our thoughts were busy, our hearts pumping blood through the arteries; we were there as before, as we were yesterday; we were not suddenly wanting an arm, we hadn't become blind or dumb, everything was as usual, soon we should go away—and Gottfried Lenz would stay behind and never come again.
It was past comprehending.
The clods fell hollow on the coffin.
The gravedigger had given us spades, and now we buried him—Valentin, Koster, Alfons, and I—as we had buried many a comrade before.
Droning, an old Army song beat through my brain, an old, melancholy soldiers' song that he had often sung—
"Argonnerwald, Argonnerwald, a quiet graveyard art thou now . . ."
Alfons had brought a simple, black wooden cross, a cross such as those that stand by the hundred'thousand on the endless rows of graves in France.
We placed it at the head of the grave and hung Gottfried's old steel helmet on top.
"Come on," said Valentin at last in a hoarse voice.
"Yes," said Koster.
But he still stayed.
We all stayed.
Valentin looked down the line of us.
"And what for?" said he slowly. "What for?
Damn it."
No one answered.
Valentin made a weary gesture.
"Come on."
We walked along the gravel path to the exit.
At the gate Fred, Georg and the rest were waiting for us.
"He could laugh so wonderfully," said Stefan Grigoleit, and the tears flowed down his helpless angry face.
I looked round.
No one was following us.
Chapter XXV
In February I was sitting in our workshop with Koster for the last time.
We had had to sell it, and now were waiting for the auctioneer who was to put up for sale the fittings and the taxicab.
Koster had prospects of a job in the spring as racing motorist with a small firm of car manufacturers.
I was staying on at the International, and meant to try to get some additional work during the day in order to earn a bit more.
A few people gradually assembled in the yard.