Georg, it was obvious, was already fairly drunk. He sat strangely hunched over, staring intently at the tabletop. His posture and the ferocious concentration of his gaze clearly put people off, as the three other seats around his table remained unoccupied. I told a waiter to bring a half-liter of Heuniger Wein to the table and then sat down opposite him.
Georg was wearing the uniform of an officer, a lieutenant, in the Medical Corps. He looked at me candidly and without resentment, and, of course, without any sign of recognition. He seemed much the same as the last time I had seen him, at once ill-looking and possessed of a sinewy energy. I introduced myself and told him I was pleased to see a fellow soldier as I myself had just enlisted.
“It’s your civic duty,” he said, his voice strong and unslurred. “Have a cigar.”
He offered me a trabuco, those ones that have a straw mouthpiece because they are so strong. I declined — at that time I did not smoke. When the wine arrived he insisted on paying for it.
“I’m a rich man,” he said as he filled our glasses. “Where’re you posted?”
“Galicia.”
“Ah, the Russians are coming.” He paused. “I want to go somewhere cold and dark. I detest this sun, and this city. Why aren’t we fighting the Eskimos? I hate daylight. Maybe I could declare war on the Lapps. One-man army.”
“Bit lonely, no?”
“I want to be lonely. All I do is pollute my mind talking to people … I want a dark cold lonely war. Please.”
“People will think you’re mad.”
He raised his glass. “God preserve me from sanity.”
I thought of something Nietzsche had said: “Our life, our happiness, is beyond the north, beyond ice, beyond death.” I looked into Georg’s ugly face, his thin eyes and glossy lips, and felt a kind of love for him and his honesty. I clinked my glass against his and asked God to preserve me from sanity as well.
Tagebuch: 15 August. Cracow.
… If your wife, for example, continually puts too much sugar in your tea it is not because she has too much sugar in her cupboard, it is because she is not educated in the ways of handling sweetness. Similarly, the problem of how to live a good life cannot ever be solved by continually assaulting it with the intellect. Certain things can only be shown, not stated …
THE SEARCHLIGHT
I enlisted in the artillery to fire howitzers but instead found myself manning a searchlight on a small, heavily armed paddle steamer called the Goplana. We cruised up and down the Vistula, ostensibly looking for Russians but also to provide support for any river crossings by our own forces.
I enjoyed my role in charge of the searchlight. I took its mounting apart and oiled and greased its bearings. Reassembled, it moved effortlessly under the touch of my fingers. Its strong beam shone straight and true in the blurry semidarkness of those late summer nights. However, I soon found the living conditions on the Goplana intolerable because of the stink, the proximity and the vulgarity of my fellow soldiers. And because we were constantly in motion, life belowdecks was dominated by the thrum and grind of the Goplana’s churning paddles. I spent long hours in my corner of the bridge house needlessly overhauling the mechanism of the searchlight — anything to escape the torrent of filth and viciousness that poured from the men. But despite these periods of solitude and isolation I found that my old despair began to creep through me again, like a stain.
One day we disembarked at Sandomierz and were sent to a bathhouse. As we washed I looked at my naked companions, their brown faces and forearms, their gray-white bodies and dark, dripping genitals as they soaped and sluiced themselves with garrulous ostentation. I felt only loathing for them, my fellow men. It was impossible both to work with them and to have nothing to do with them. I was glad that I felt no stirrings of sensuality as I contemplated their naked bodies. I saw that they were men but I could not see they were human beings.
Tagebuch: 8 September. Sawichost.
… The news is worse. All the talk is of Cracow being besieged. Last night there was an alarm. I ran up on deck to man the searchlight. It was raining and I wore only a shirt and trousers. I played the beam of the searchlight to and fro on the opposite bank of the river for hours, my feet and hands slowly becoming numb. Then we heard the sound of gunfire and I at once became convinced I was going to die that night. The beam of the searchlight was a lucent arrow pointing directly at me. And for the first time I felt, being face-to-face with my own death, with possibly only an hour or two of life remaining to me, that I had in those few hours the chance to be a good man, if only because of this uniquely potent consciousness of myself. And, as ever, my attempts to articulate my experience as I understood and felt it, and to seize intellectually its profound implications, slipped beyond the power of language. “I did my duty and stayed at my post.” That is all I can say about that tremendous night.
THE AMPUTEE
Of course I did not die and of course I fell back into more abject moods of self-disgust and loathing. Perhaps the only consolation was that my enormous fatigue made it impossible for me to think about my work.
It was about this time — in September or October — that I heard the news about my brother Paul. He was a quite different personality from me — fierce and somewhat dominating — and he had tackled his vocation as concert pianist with uncompromising dedication. Since his debut his future seemed assured, an avenue of bright tomorrows. To receive the news, then, that he had been captured by the Russians and had had his right arm amputated at the elbow, as the result of wounds he had sustained, was devastating. For days my thoughts were of Paul and of what I would do in his situation. Poor Paul, I thought, if only there were some solution other than suicide. What philosophy it will take to get over this!
Tagebuch: 13 October. Nadbrzesze.
… We have sailed here, waited for twelve hours and have now been ordered to return to Sawichost. All day we can hear the mumble of artillery in the east. I find myself drawn down into dark depression again, remorselessly. Why? What is the real basis of this malaise?… I see one of my fellow soldiers pissing over the side of the boat in full view of the few citizens of Nadbrzesze who have gathered on the quayside to stare at us. The long pale arc of his urine sparkles in the thin autumn sunshine. Another soldier leans on his elbows staring candidly at the man’s flaccid white penis, held daintily between two fingers like a titbit. This is shaken, its tip squeezed and then tucked away in the coarse serge of his trousers. I think if I were standing at a machine gun rather than at a searchlight I could kill them both without a qualm … Why do I detest these simple foolish men so? Why can I not be impassive? I despise my own weakness, my inability to distance myself from the commonplace.
THE BATTLE OF GRÓDEK
On our return from Sawichost I received mail. A long letter from David — I wonder if he thinks of me half as much as I think of him? — and a most distressing communication from Ficker, to whom I had written asking for some books to be sent to me. I quote:
… I see from your letter that you are not far from Cracow. I wonder if you get the opportunity you could attempt to find and visit [Georg]. You may have heard of the heavy fighting at Gródek some two weeks ago. Georg was there and, owing to the chaos and disorganization that prevailed at the time, was mistakenly placed in charge of a field hospital not far behind our lines. Apparently he protested vigorously that he was merely a dispensing chemist and not a doctor, but resources were so stretched he was told to do the best he could.