I lay my head beside her body that slept on unawares, and took no part in all this. Then her bosom seemed to rise and fall more strenuously than before, and the walls of the room lapped up against this sleeping form like waves against a ship far out at sea. I would probably never have been able to bring myself to say goodbye; but if I were to slip away right now, I told myself, then I’d stay the little lost boat, past which a great sturdy ship would sail unnoticing. I kissed her sleeping form, she didn’t feel it. I whispered something in her ear, and maybe I did it so quietly that she wouldn’t hear it. Then I ridiculed myself and sneered at the very thought of the nightingale; but quietly nonetheless I got dressed. I think that I cried, but I really did leave. I felt giddy, lighthearted, even though I tried to tell myself that no decent human being would do such a thing; I remember that I was like a drunkard rebuking the sidewalk beneath his feet to reassure himself that he’s sober.
Of course, I often thought of returning; at times I would have liked to cross half the world to get back to her, but I never did. She had become untouchable to me; in short — I don’t know if you understand — he who has committed an injustice and feels it down to the bone, can no longer set it aright. I am not, by the way, asking for absolution. I just want to tell you my stories to find out if they ring true. For years I haven’t been able to tell them to anyone, and had I heard myself talking to myself, I would quite frankly have questioned my sanity.
Please be assured then that my reason is still the equal of your enlightened mind.
Then, two years later, I found myself in a tight fix, at the dead angle of a battle in the south Tyrol, a line that wound its way from the bloody trenches of the Cima di Vezzena all the way to Lake Caldonazzo. There, like a wave of sunshine, the battle line dove deep into the valley, skirting two hills with beautiful names, and surfaced again on the other side, only to lose itself in the stillness of the mountains. It was October; the thinly-manned trenches were covered with leaves, the lake shimmered a silent blue, the hills lay there like huge withered wreaths; like funeral wreaths, I often thought to myself without even a shudder of fear. Halting and divided, the valley spilled around them; but beyond the edge of our occupied zone, it fled such sweet diffusion and drove like the blast of a trombone: brown, broad and heroic out into the hostile distance.
At night, we pushed ahead to an advanced position, so prone now in the valley that they could have wiped us out with an avalanche of stones from above; but instead, they slowly roasted us on steady artillery fire. The morning after such a night all our faces had a strange expression that took hours to wear off: Our eyes were enlarged, and our heads tilted every which way on the multitude of shoulders, like a lawn that had just been trampled on. Yet on every one of those nights I poked my head up over the edge of the trench many times, and cautiously turned to look back over my shoulder like a lover: and I saw the Brenta Mountains light blue, as if formed out of stiff-pleated glass, silhouetted against the night sky. And on such nights the stars were like silver foil cutouts glimmering, fat as glazed cookies; and the sky stayed blue all night; and the thin virginal moon crescent lay on her back, now silvery, now golden, basking in the splendor. You must try to imagine just how beautiful it was: for such beauty exists only in the face of danger. And then sometimes I could stand it no longer, and giddy with joy and longing, I crept out for a little nightcrawl around, all the way to the golden-green blackness of the trees, so enchantingly colorful and black, the like of which you’ve never seen.
But things were different during the day; the atmosphere was so easygoing that you could have gone horseback riding around the main camp. It’s only when you have the time to sit back and think and to feel terror that you first learn the true meaning of danger. Every day claims its victims, a regular weekly average of so-and-so many out of a hundred, and already the divisional general staff officers are predicting the results as impersonally as an insurance company. You do it too, by the way. Instinctively you know the odds and feel insured, although not exactly under the best of terms. It is a function of the curious calm that you feel, living under constant crossfire. Let me add the following, though, so that you don’t paint a false picture of my circumstances. It does indeed happen that you suddenly feel driven to search for a particular familiar face, one that you remember seeing several days ago; but it’s not there anymore. A face like that can upset you more than it should, and hang for a long time in the air like a candle’s afterglow. And so your fear of death has diminished, though you are far more susceptible to all sorts of strange upsets. It is as if the fear of one’s demise, which evidently lies on top of man forever like a stone, were suddenly to have been rolled back, and in the uncertain proximity of death an unaccountable inner freedom blossoms forth.
Once during that time an enemy plane appeared in the sky over our quiet encampment. This did not happen often, for the mountains with their narrow gaps between fortified peaks could only be hazarded at high altitudes. We stood at that very moment on the summit of one of those funereal hills, and all of a sudden a machine-gun barrage spotted the sky with little white clouds of shrapnel, like a nimble powder puff. It was a cheerful sight, almost endearing. And to top it off, the sun shone through the tricolored wings of the plane as it flew high overhead, as though through a stained-glass church window, or through colored crepe paper. The only missing ingredient was some music by Mozart. I couldn’t help thinking, by the way, that we stood around like a crowd of spectators at the races, placing our bets. And one of us even said: Better take cover! But nobody it seems was in the mood to dive like a field mouse into a hole. At that instant I heard a distant ringing drawing closer to my ecstatically upturned face. Of course, it could also have happened the other way around, that I first heard the ringing and only then became conscious of the impending danger; but I knew immediately: It’s an aerial dart. These were pointed iron rods no thicker than a pencil lead that planes dropped from above in those days. And if they struck you in the skull, they came out through the soles of your feet, but they didn’t hit very often, and so were soon discarded. And though this was my first aerial dart — bombs and machine-gun fire sound altogether different — I knew right away what it was. I was excited, and a second later I already felt that strange, unlikely intuition: It’s going to hit!
And do you know what it was like? Not like a frightening foreboding, but rather like an unexpected stroke of good luck! I was surprised at first that I should be the only one to hear its ringing. Then I thought the sound would disappear again. But it didn’t disappear. It came ever closer, and though still far away, it grew proportionally louder. Cautiously I looked at the other faces, but no one else was aware of its approach. And at that moment when I became convinced that I alone heard that subtle singing, something rose up out of me to meet it: a ray of life, equally infinite to that death ray descending from above. I’m not making this up, I’m trying to put it as plainly as I can. I believe I’ve held to a sober physical description so far, though I know of course that to a certain extent it’s like in a dream where it seems as though you’re speaking clearly, while the words come out all garbled.