Albert expresses it: “The war has ruined us for everything.”
He is right. We are not youth any longer. We don’t want to take the world by storm. We are fleeing. We fly from ourselves. From our life. We were eighteen and had begun to love life and the world; and we had to shoot it to pieces. The first bomb, the first explosion, burst in our hearts. We are cut off from activity, from striving, from progress. We believe in such things no longer, we believe in the war.
★★
The Orderly Room shows signs of life. Himmelstoss seems to have stirred them up. At the head of the column trots the fat sergeant-major. It is queer that almost all pay-sergeant-majors are fat.
Himmelstoss follows him, thirsting for vengeance. His boots gleam in the sun.
We get up.
“Where’s Tjaden?” the sergeant puffs.
No one knows, of course. Himmelstoss glowers at us wrathfully. “You know very well. You won’t say, that’s the fact of the matter. Out with it!”
Fatty looks round enquiringly; but Tjaden is not to be seen. He tries another way.
88
