The Train Was on Time Read online

  “They’ll manage it somehow,” said a voice.…

  Willi sat down beside Andreas and said it was two o’clock. “Shit, we’ll miss the train at Lvov if we don’t get moving right away. It’s still another two hours. We’ll have to leave Sunday morning.…”

  “But we’ll be starting up any minute,” said the blond fellow, who was standing at the window again.

  “Maybe,” said Willi, “but then we won’t have any time in Lvov. Half an hour is the craps for Lvov. Lvov!” He laughed.

  “Me?” they suddenly heard the blond fellow call.

  “Yes, you!” shouted a voice outside. “Get ready to take up your post.” Grumbling, the blond fellow came back, and outside someone in a steel helmet stood on the step and stuck his face in through the train window. It was a heavy, thick skull, and they saw dark eyes and an official-looking forehead, the blond fellow having lit a match to find his belt and steel helmet.

  “Any noncoms in there?” shouted the voice under the steel helmet. It was a voice that could only shout. No one spoke up. “Are there any noncoms in there, I said!”

  No one spoke up. Willi gave Andreas a derisive nudge.

  “Don’t make me come and look for myself; if I find a noncom in there it’s going to be tough for him!”

  For a further second nobody spoke up, although Andreas could see that the place was swarming with noncoms. Suddenly someone quite near Andreas said: “Here!”

  “Fast asleep, eh?” shouted the voice under the steel helmet.

  “Yessir,” said the voice, and Andreas now saw it was the man with the Crimea badge.

  A few of the men laughed.

  “What’s your name?” shouted the voice under the steel helmet.

  “Corporal Schneider.”

  “You’ll be in charge for as long as we stop here, understand?”

  “Yessir!”

  “Good. You there—” he pointed to the blond fellow—“what’s your name?”

  “Private Siebental.”

  “Okay: Private Siebental will stand guard outside this car until four o’clock. If we’re still here by then, have him relieved. Also, place a sentry outside the car on the other side and have him relieved too if necessary. There may be partisans in the area.”

  “Yessir!”

  The face under the steel helmet vanished, muttering to itself: “Corporal Schneider.”

  Andreas was trembling. I hope to God I don’t have to stand guard, he thought. I’m sitting right next to him, and he’ll grab my sleeve and put me on duty. Corporal Schneider had switched on his flashlight and was shining it along the corridor. First he shone it on the collars of those who were lying down and pretending to be asleep, then he grabbed one of them by the collar, saying with a laugh: “Come on, take your gun and stand out there, and don’t blame me!”

  The one who had been picked swore as he got ready. I hope to God they don’t find out I’ve no rifle, no weapon at all, that my rifle’s standing propped up in Paul’s closet behind his raincoat. What’s Paul going to do with the rifle anyway? A chaplain with a rifle, the Gestapo’ll just love that. He can’t report it, because then he’d have to give my name and he would worry that they might write to my platoon. How awful that on top of everything else I had to leave my rifle behind at Paul’s.…

  “Come on, man, it’s only till we get going again,” said the corporal to the soldier who was cursing as he groped his way to the door and flung it open. It seemed strange that the train didn’t move on; a quarter of an hour passed, they were too tense to sleep. Maybe there really were partisans in the area, and it was no joke being attacked in a train. Maybe it would be the same tomorrow night. Strange … strange. Maybe that’s how it would be between Lvov and … no, not even Kolomyya. Twenty-four hours to go, twenty-four or at most twenty-six. It’s already Saturday, it’s actually Saturday. How utterly thoughtless I’ve been … I’ve known since Wednesday … and I’ve done nothing, I know it with absolute certainty, and I’ve hardly prayed any more than usual. I played cards. I drank. I ate and really enjoyed my food, and I slept. I slept too much, and time has leaped forward, time always leaps forward, and now here I am only twenty-four hours away from it. I’ve done nothing: after all, when you know you’re going to die you have all kinds of things to settle, to regret, prayers to say, many prayers to say, and I’ve prayed hardly any more than I usually do. And yet I know for sure. I know for sure. Saturday morning. Sunday morning. Literally one more day. I must pray, pray.…

  “Got a drink? It’s lousy cold out here.” The blond fellow stuck his head in through the window, and under the steel helmet his effete grayhound-head looked terrible. Willi held the bottle to the man’s mouth and let him have a long drink. He also held the bottle out to Andreas.

  “No,” said Andreas.

  “There’s a train coming.” It was the blond fellow’s voice again. Everyone dashed to the window. It was half an hour behind the first train, and it was another of those, another troop-train, with more songs, more Jolly Huntsman … Jolly Huntsman and Heidemarie in that dark sorrowful Polish night.… Jolly Huntsman. A train like that took a long time to pass … with baggage car and cookhouse car and the cars for the soldiers, and all the time Jolly Huntsman and “Today it’s Germany that’s ours, tomorrow all the world … all the world … all the world.…”

  “More S. S. troops,” said Willi, “and all going to Cherkassy. The crap there seems to be collapsing too.” He said this in an undertone, since eager and optimistic voices next to him were saying they would manage it somehow.

  Softly the Jolly Huntsman died away in the night, the song growing dim in the direction of Lvov, like a subdued, very soft whimpering, and once again there was the dark sorrowful Polish night.…

  “Let’s hope there won’t be another seventeen of these trains,” muttered Willi. He offered Andreas the bottle again, but again Andreas refused. It’s high time for me to say my prayers, he thought. This is the last night of my life but one, and I’m not going to spend it sleeping or napping. I’m not going to defile it with drink or waste it. I must say my prayers now, and above all repent. There’s always so much to repent; even in an unhappy life like mine there are a lot of things to repent. That time in France when I drank a whole bottle of cherry brandy on a broiling hot day, like an animal; I keeled over like an animal, it nearly finished me. A whole bottle of cherry brandy when it was ninety in the shade, on a treeless street in some French hamlet. Because I was almost passing out with thirst and had nothing else to drink. It was ghastly, and it took me a week to get rid of my headache. And I had a row with Paul, I always insulted him by calling him a bloody parson, I was always talking about bloody parsons. It’s terrible, when you’ve got to die, to think you’ve insulted someone. I used to talk back to my teachers at school too, and I wrote Shit on the bust of Cicero; it was stupid, I was just a kid, but I knew it was wrong and silly, I did it anyway because I knew the other kids would laugh, that was the only reason I did it, because I wanted the others to laugh at a joke of mine. Out of vanity. Not because I really thought Cicero was shit; if I had done it for that reason it wouldn’t have been as bad, but I did it for a joke. One should never do anything for a joke. And I used to make fun of Lieutenant Schreckmüller, of that sad, pale little fellow; the lieutenant’s shoulder patches lay so heavily on his shoulders, so heavily, and you could tell he was marked for death. I used to make fun of him too, because I couldn’t resist being known as a wit, as a sarcastic old trooper. That was worse than anything, maybe, and I don’t know if God can forgive that. I made fun of him, of the way he looked like a Hitler Youth kid, and he was marked for death, I could tell from his face, and he was killed; he was shot down during the first attack in the Carpathians, and his body rolled down a slope, it was horrible the way it rolled down, and as the body rolled over it got covered with dirt; it was horrible, and to tell the truth it looked kind of ridiculous, that body rolling down, faster and faster, faster and faster, till it bounced onto the floor of t
he valley.…

  And in Paris I abused a whore. In the middle of the night, that was awful. It was cold, and she accosted me … she practically assaulted me, and I could see from her fingers and the tip of her nose that she was chilled to the marrow, shivering with hunger. I felt quite sick when she said: “Come on, dearie,” and I pushed her away, although she was shivering and ugly and all alone on that great wide street, and she might have been glad if I had lain beside her in her pitiful bed and just warmed her up a bit. And I actually pushed her away into the gutter and spat out abuse after her. If I only knew what became of her that night. Perhaps she drowned herself in the Seine because she was too ugly to get a nibble from anyone that night, and the terrible part is that I wouldn’t have treated her so badly if she had been pretty.… If she had been pretty I might not have been so disgusted by her profession and she wouldn’t have been pushed into the gutter and I might have been quite glad to warm up beside her and do some other things too. God knows what would have happened if she had been pretty. It’s a terrible thing to maltreat a person because that person seems ugly to you. There are no ugly people. That poor soul. God forgive me twenty-four hours before my death for having pushed away that poor, ugly, shivering whore, at night, on that wide empty Paris street where there wasn’t one single customer left for her, no one but me. God forgive me for everything, you can’t undo what’s done, nothing can ever be undone, and the pathetic whimpering of that poor girl will haunt that Paris street for ever and ever and accuse me, and the wretched doglike eyes of that Lieutenant Schreckmuller whose childish shoulders were not nearly strong enough for the weight of his shoulder patches.…

  If I could only cry. I can’t even cry over all these things. I feel heartsick and contrite and terrible, but I can’t cry over them. Everyone else can cry, even the blond fellow, everyone but me. God grant me the power to cry.…

  There must be a lot of other things I can’t think of right now. That can’t be all by a long way. There were the people I despised and loathed and mentally abused, for instance, like the man who said: Practically speaking, practically speaking we’ve already won the war; I hated that man too, but I forced myself to pray for him because he was such a fool. I still have to pray for the one who just said: They’ll manage it somehow, and for all the ones who sang the Jolly Huntsman with such gusto.

  I hated the lot of them, all those fellows who just went by in the train singing the Jolly Huntsman … and Heidemarie … and … A Soldier’s Life is a Splendid Life … and … Today it’s Germany that’s ours, tomorrow all the world. I hated the lot of them, the whole lot, all those fellows who lay squashed up against me in the train and in barracks. God, those barracks.…

  “That’s it!” shouted a voice outside. “Everyone back on the train!” The blond fellow got on and the man from the other side, and the train whistled and moved off. “Thank God for that,” said Willi. But it was too late anyway. It was three-thirty, and it would take them at least another two hours to get to Lvov, and the courier train, the civilian express from Warsaw to Bucharest, left at five.

  “So much the better,” said Willi. “That gives us a whole day in Lvov.” He laughed again. He wanted so badly to tell them some more about Lvov. You could hear it in his voice, but nobody reacted, nobody asked him to go on. They were tired, it was three-thirty and cold, and the dark Polish sky hung over them, and those two battalions or regiments that were being thrown into the Cherkassy pocket had set them thinking. No one spoke, although none of them were asleep. Only the rattle of the train lulled them to sleep, killed their thoughts, sucked the thinking out of their heads, that regular clickety-clack, clickety-clack, it put them to sleep. They were all poor, gray, hungry, misguided, and deluded children, and their cradle was the trains, the leave-trains that went clickety-clack and lulled them to sleep.

  The blond fellow seemed to be genuinely asleep now. He had got very cold outside, and the fug here in the corridor must have actually seemed quite warm and put him to sleep. Only Willi was awake, Willi who had once been the soldier in need of a shave. From time to time he could be heard reaching for his bottle of vodka and gulping the stuff down, swearing at intervals under his breath, and from time to time he would strike a match and smoke, and then he would light up Andreas’ face and see that he was wide awake. But he said nothing. And it was odd that he should say nothing.…

  Andreas wanted to pray, he wanted desperately to pray; first, all the prayers he had always said, and then a few more of his own, and then he wanted to say over the names, to begin to say over the names, of all the people he had to pray for, but then he thought that was crazy, to say all those names. You would have to include everybody, the whole world. You would have to say two billion names … forty million, he thought … no, two billion names it would have to be. You’d simply have to say: Everyone. But that wasn’t enough, he had at least to begin to say the names of the people he had to pray for. First the ones you had hurt, the ones you were indebted to. He began with his school, then with the labor service, then the barracks and the war and all the people whose names occurred to him along the way. His uncle, he had hated him too because he had always spoken so glowingly of the army, of the happiest days of his life. He thought about his parents, whom he had never known. Paul. Paul would be getting up soon and saying mass. It will be the third he’s said since I left, thought Andreas, perhaps he understood when I called out: I’m going to die … soon. Perhaps Paul understood and will say a mass for me Sunday morning, an hour before or after I’ve died. I hope Paul thinks about the others, about the soldiers who are like the blond fellow, and the ones who are like Willi, and the ones who say: Practically speaking, practically speaking we’ve already won the war, and the ones who day and night sing Jolly Huntsman and Heidemarie, and A Soldier’s Life is a Splendid Life, and Oh, the Sun of Mexico. On this cold, miserable morning under the dark sorrowful Galician sky, he didn’t think of the eyes at all. Now we must be in Galicia, he thought, quite close to Lvov, since Lvov is the capital of Galicia. Now I must be just about in the center of the net where I’m going to be caught. There’s only one more province: Galicia, and I’m in Galicia. As long as I live I shall never see anything but Galicia. It has narrowed down very much, that Soon. To twenty-four hours and a few miles. Not many miles now to Lvov, maybe forty, and beyond Lvov at most another forty. My life’s already been narrowed down to eighty miles in Galicia, in Galicia … like a knife on invisible snake’s feet, a knife creeping along, softly creeping along, a softly creeping knife. Galicia. How will it happen, I wonder? Will I be shot or stabbed … or trampled to death … or will I be simply crushed to death in a crushed railway car? There are such an infinite number of ways to die. You can also be shot by a sergeant major for refusing to do what the blond fellow did; you can die any way you like, and the letter will always say: He fell for Greater Germany. And I must be sure and pray for the men with the cannon down there in the Sivash marshes … must be sure … must be sure … clickety-clack … must be sure … clickety-clack … must be sure men with cannon … in the Sivash marshes … clickety-clack.…

  It was terrible to find he had finally fallen asleep after all. And now they were in Lvov. It was a big station, black iron girders and grimy white signboards, and there it was, in black and white, between the platforms: Lvov. This was the springboard. It was almost incredible how quickly you could get from the Rhine to Lvov. Lvov, there it was in black and white, irrevocably: Lvov. Capital of Galicia. Another forty miles less. The net was quite small now. Forty miles, maybe even less, maybe only five. Beyond Lvov, between Lvov and Cernauti, that could mean a mile beyond Lvov. Again this was as elastic as the Soon that he thought he had managed to narrow down.…

  “Boy, can you ever sleep!” said Willi, now cheerfully collecting his belongings. “Can you ever sleep! I never saw anything like it. The train stopped twice. You nearly had to do sentry duty, but I told the corporal you were sick and he let you go on sleeping. Time to get up!” The car was empty, and t
he blond fellow was already standing outside with his Luftwaffe rucksack and his suitcase.

  It felt very odd to be walking along a platform in the main station of Lvov.…

  It was eleven o’clock, almost midday, and Andreas felt famished. But the thought of the sausage disgusted him. Butter and bread and something hot! It’s ages since I had a hot meal, I’d like something hot to eat. Funny, he thought, as he followed Willi and the blond fellow, my first thought in Lvov is that I’d like a hot meal. Fourteen or fifteen hours before your death you feel you’ve got to have a hot meal. He laughed, and this made the other two turn around and look at him in surprise, but he avoided their eyes and blushed. There was the barrier, there stood a sentry in a steel helmet, as at every station in Europe, and the sentry said to Andreas, because he was the last of the three: “Waiting-room to the left, for the use of enlisted men too.”

  Once past the barrier Willi became almost aggressive. There he stood, in the middle of the station, lighted a cigarette, and mimicked in a loud voice: “Waiting-room for the use of enlisted men to the left! That’s what they’d like, to herd us cattle into the barn they’ve fixed up for us.” They looked at him in alarm, but he laughed. “Just leave it to me, boys. Lvov’s right up my alley. Waiting-room for the use of enlisted men! There are bars in this place, restaurants,” he clicked his tongue, “as good as any in Europe,” and he repeated sarcastically, “as any in Europe.”

  His face was already beginning to look somewhat unshaven again, he seemed to have a tremendously strong growth of beard. It was the same face as before, very sad and desperate.

  Without a word he preceded the others through the exit, crossed, still without a word, a big crowded square, and very quickly they found themselves in a dark narrow side street; a car was standing at the corner, a ramshackle old taxi, and, as in a dream, it turned out Willi knew the driver. “Stani,” he shouted, and again as in a dream a sleepy-eyed, grubby old Pole hoisted himself in the driver’s seat and recognized Willi with a grin. Willi mentioned some Polish name, and the next moment they were sitting in the taxi with their luggage, driving through Lvov. The streets were the same as in any big city anywhere in the world. Wide, elegant streets, streets that had seen better days, sad streets with faded yellow facades and looking dead and deserted. People, people, and Stani drove very fast … as in a dream: all Lvov seemed to belong to Willi. They drove along a very wide avenue, an avenue like anywhere else in the world yet definitely a Polish avenue, and Stani came to a stop. He was given a bill, fifty marks as Andreas saw, and with a grin Stani helped them set their luggage on the sidewalk; it was all done in a few seconds, and in another few seconds they found themselves striding through a neglected front garden and entering a very long, musty hallway of a house whose facade seemed to be crumbling away. A house dating from the days of the old Hapsburg Empire. Andreas instantly recognized its aura of former Austrian Imperial grandeur; perhaps a high-ranking officer had lived here, long ago in the days of the waltz, or a senior civil servant. This was an old Austrian mansion, they could be found everywhere, all through the Balkans, in Hungary and Yugoslavia, and of course in Galicia too. All this flashed through his mind in the brief second it took to enter the long, dark, musty hallway.