Anarchistbanjo's World

The Rebirth of Melchior Dronte by Paul Busson and translated by Joe E Bandel

He fell silent, exhausted, breathing heavily.
“Not everything he says is a lie,” murmured Repke.
“You too?” roared Zulkov, spitting on the ground. “Oh,
about you Germans! You misjudge what alone is necessary for
the salvation of the German nation, the army and the wise hand
to guide it.”
“Germans are over here and over there. Have always
been a poor, betrayed people,” said Repke.
“It’s a pity that I’ve shot my powder outside, Fritze
Zulkow,” sneered Wetzlaff. “Otherwise maybe you would like
a warm plaster glued to your mouth with all the strength of
your body, you foot stinker, you are the miserable archetype
and symbol of the subservient subject. Decomposing even in a
living body and still singing the praises of the one whose furies
flay us and torment us until death. But you just wait until they
put me on outposts again. I’ll cross over; I’ll cross over, so help
me God… O hell, filth and Satan — it overcomes me again –!”
With a staggering leap he was up, and again we heard his
blood gurgling outside.
“He has a bad fever!” waved Repke at the enraged
Zulkov angrily. “He doesn’t know what he’s talking about
in his pain.”
Then Kühlemiek raised his nasally trembling voice and
began to sing from his book, so that we all shuddered:
“The abomination in the darkness,
The stigma in the conscience
The hand that is full of blood
The eye full of adulteries,
The naughty mouth full of curses,
The heart of the scoundrel is revealed.”
“Oh my God -!”
It was I who cried out thus.
Then a loud trumpet blared. – “Alarm!”
Zulkov shouted, squeezing his sore feet into his frozen
shoes. “Alarm!”
At the glow of the extinguishing fire, we gathered
everything together.
Distant shots.
The trumpets began to scream all around.
Wetzlaff stumbled in.
“Up, brothers, up! We want to light up the royal bastard’s
home. Vivat Fridericus!”
That was Wetzlaff.
Bent with body ache, he took up his rifle. Zulkov moaned
softly with every step. All around there was noise, horses
neighing, clanking. But in all the raving, running, shouting
orders and muffled noise of the shooting in front swung
mewling and horrible the merciless voice of the pietist, who
sang his song to the end.
Dreadful fear descended from the tones. The fear of what
would happen after death. The drums were beating.
Heavy smoke rolled in thick clouds, dissipated, came in
new blue-white balls, and dissipated again. Fog and stink lay
over everything. Dull roaring thuds, crashes, whipping bang,
chirping of bullets. I stood with the others in lines and ranks,
bit off the bullet twisted in rancid paper, kept it in my mouth,
poured the black powder into the hot barrel, ran my fingers
between my teeth and pushed the cobbled lump of lead down
with the ramrod until it rested firmly and the iron rod jumped.
Just as it had been drilled into me. Then powder on the pan,
with the thumb on the cock, aimed it horizontally, and into the
wall of fog in front of me, in which shadows were moving.
The stone gave off sparks and it flared up before my eyes, and
then came the rough recoil against my sore shoulder.
The lieutenant on the wing waved the halberd and
shouted.
“Geg – geg – geg,” was heard, not understanding a word.
A big iron ball rolled and danced across the frozen snow,
then a second one. A third bounced along beneath us and
smashed Kühlemiek’s feet out from under him.
“O Jesus Christ!” he cried out, crawling a little on his
hands in his own blood. Then he fell with his face in the snow,
became silent.
“Flü – flü – flüdeldideldi,” lured the pipes.
“Plum – plum – plum.” The drummers worked with
sweaty faces. The legs lifted and lowered in time with the beat,
one was sitting there, with his head between his spread legs.
The blister on my heel was burning, the lice were
crawling restlessly on my scratched skin, and there was a
rumbling in my guts. I looked around… rows, rows of blue
coats, skinny faces with small mustaches, white bandoliers, and
bare barrels.
“Kühlemiek – Kühlemiek – miekeliekeliek”, trilled from
the lips of the pipers.
In front of us a row of red lights flashed. A cloud of gray
smoke rose behind it.
Repke roared and grasped with both hands between his
thighs. A tall soldier leaped like a carp and drove with his head
into a snowdrift, his feet stretched upwards. Next to me, one
screamed like a frog. I could still see the blood pouring out of
his ear, before he collapsed to his knees. Zulkov suddenly had
no head anymore, walked next to me and sprayed me with hot
blood. Then he fell down. The squire was knocked backwards
as if he had been hit by an axe.
Wetzlaff sat down first, screamed, “I can’t,” and then lay
down.
In front of me crawled a man who was blind-shot, and
Ramler had his right hand twisted and hanging out of his sleeve.
He looked at it in amazement and stayed behind. His rifle fell
to the ground.
Large shapes came swaying out of the haze, and quickly
became clear.
White coats, black cuirasses. Broad blades stabbed at us,
horses’ heads snorted, fled to the side startled. A horse stood on
its hind legs in front of me. I saw the rider, who was holding
the hand with the broadsword hilt in front of his face, with his
left hand clasping the saddle horn. I saw the whiteness of his
coat under the edge of the dark armor and hastily thrust with
the bayonet. It was soft. He fell forward onto the horse’s neck,
glared in my face, and cried out.
“You-!”
It was Phoebus Merentheim…
He rattled down. I no longer saw him. But another one
came, lifted himself in the stirrups and hit me on the head with
lightning speed, so that I staggered around. The edge of the tin
hood cut my forehead, warm and thick water flowed into my
eyes. My feet went on. My arms pushed the barrel forward
with the bayonet. I tore it from the neck of a brown man. The
horsemen were gone all at once, vanished.
“No rest – no rest – no rest,” the drums murmured.
I slept while walking.
We were suddenly among houses.
A woman cried out in fear; fell on her face with her arms
outstretched. A pig ran between us. Then there was a small
forest in front of us. People stepped on bodies, on guns. A dog,
skinny and with its tail between its legs, crept past. A peasant
lay there with his body open – without intestines. The dog came
from him.
There were bushes, white-ripe, dense, and impenetrable.
I crawled into them. Moss lay there on a pile as if
someone had gathered it together. A bed, a bed. I burrowed into
it. No one saw me. Wonderful, warm, soft moss.
Somewhere in the snowy forest lay the rifle with the
bayonet, with Phoebus’ blood on it, the tin hood and the
bandolier with the sidearm.

I had been wandering about the border for many days. I
had found the torn coat in a shot-up house, the pants on a
hanged man. The right leg had received a weeping wound from
frost and vermin, which bit and hurt me, my nose and lips were
etched from the running sniffles. I had slept in barns and
haystacks, teeth chattering, and the previous years frozen and
woody rotten beets had to fill my stomach.
In this inn on the country road it was the first time that
the landlady gave for God’s sake a bowl of warm food to me
and allowed me to sit at the back by the warm stove. If,
however, distinguished guests came, I should generally trot
myself out and not be begging for something around the tables,
she said.
The barmaid also took pity on me and secretly slipped
me a large wedge of bread, and just as stealthily she poured my
empty glass full of thin beer.
I, the baron Melchior von Dronte, had lived the life of the
despised and the poor, the outcast and the lawless. And with the
most miserable of them, I had sometimes found more Christian
charity than among those who were sitting in their own chair in
the church.
But how hard people had been against me in the last days!
Of course, these were the times that no one should open the
door to a stranger in bad clothes without necessity. War and
terror all around, victory and parley, robbing, plundering,
desecrating and burning without end. So it was like a miracle to
me that the landlady said:
“Come and eat and warm yourself. You look like the
death of Basel.”
Not far from me at a small table sat a merchant or
cattleman in a light, thick fleece, a large Hessian peasant hat
next to him on the bench and a satchel over his shoulder, the
leather flap of which was inlaid with all kinds of brass figures.
The face of this skinny person was the most disgusting, that I
had ever encountered in my life. Soon he pulled his wide
mouth into a gap that reached from one of his pointed ears to
the other, and then he stretched it out like a pig’s trunk to drink
from the glass. His vulture nose lowered against the upwardly
curved chin, and his yellow wolf’s eyes, in which the black was
transverse and elongated like those of a goat, squinted
pathetically.