Below there are cyclists, lorries, men; it is a grey street and a grey subway;—it embraces me as though it were my mother.
Then the train stops, and there is the station with noise and cries and sentries. I pick up my pack and fasten the straps, I take my rifle in my hand and stumble down the steps.
On the platform I look round; I know no one among the people hurrying to and fro. A Red Cross sister offers me something to drink. I turn away, she smiles at me too foolishly, so obsessed with her own importance: “Just look, I am giving a soldier coffee!”—She calls me “Comrade,” but I will have none of it.
Outside in front of the station the stream roars alongside the street, it rushes foaming from the sluices of the mill bridge. There stands the old, square watch-tower, in front of it the great mottled lime tree and behind it the evening.
Here we have often sat—how long ago it is—we have passed over this bridge and breathed the cool, acid smell of the stagnant water; we have leaned over the still water on this side of the lock, where the green creepers and weeds hang from the piles of the bridge;—and on hot days we rejoiced in the spouting foam on the other side of the lock and told tales about our school-teachers.
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