The Rebirth of Melchior Dronte by Paul Busson and translated by Joe E Bandel
Ronde came.
Kregel had been missing for a week, and no one knew
more than that he had received a letter from home, about which
he was visibly offended and upset. He was one of the
abandoned Germans who lived in the stolen land of the area of
Kolmar.
One day a royal forester came to the Colonel and
reported that children had found a soldier hanging in a tree.
They had however, immediately ran away in fright and now no
longer knew where the place was. And so he thought one or
two companies should search the forest so that the dead man
could be buried in the ground.
So we went in search of Kregel and roamed through the
large pine forest. As we slipped through the thickets and sticks
it happened to me that I got completely lost from the others and
when I shouted for the others as commanded in such cases
received no answer.
When I was so alone with myself, I had to think about
Kregel, who was now freed from all torture and torment. How,
was it not most clever, to put this dog’s life behind him? I
thought how yesterday an eighteen-year-old boy, the Squire
von Denwitz, had stabbed me with a rapier, the tip of which
had lead embedded in it, because there was a chalk stain on my
coat from cleaning the white stuff; how the corporals beat us to
their hearts’ content, how miserable the food was that was served
to us like sows in large tin buckets; how the bread crunched
with sand when it was cut. All this would have been bearable.
But that no hope showed itself, how and when it could ever get
better, that one day after another was filled with curses and
sorrow, to allow another, just as gruesome, to rise, that was the
bad thing. For man must have some hope, if he is not to wither
and wilt.
In this hard school, which God’s hand had thrust me into,
I learned to force myself. I didn’t make a face when my breast
ached from burning pity for the unjustly mistreated, and I kept
silent about the most severe insults which I received by anyone
who was elevated by a braid or finer cloth. Perhaps it was a
punishment that had come to me. But then it could also be an
eternal justice, but how was that possible when far worse than I
could live in joy and glory until the end of their lives. So why
did this burden of suffering fall on me? What purpose could
higher powers, if there were any, have pursued with me by
placing on me burdens of my own and other people’s torment,
to endow me with the finest sensibility for every injustice that
happened to others and gave me more sensitive feelings than
probably all my comrades? They cracked their jokes even when
the worst and most unbearable of arbitrariness had happened to
them, and found full consolation with a glass of schnapps and
in the arms of their soldier’s wives.
I was mad at everything that had hitherto been upright
and consoling of my being and I could not believe what was
happening in front of me day in and day out, I could not
believe in a divine meaning of all these events. What does a
person do who lives in a chamber with hostile, crude, violent,
bad, cowardly, false, and evil people and sees no one in the
whole circle, who wants to create order and justice and has the
ability to do so? One leaves such a chamber. He closes the door
behind him and rejoices, to have escaped the abominable
existence in such a room.
So I now thought to act. Kregel, the poor lad from Alsace,
had shown me the way. And there were enough trees all around;
I wanted to attach my trouser belt to some branch.
I prepared to walk across the small sunlit clearing to
finish my last deed in the deciduous wood when I had to stop,
because in the middle of the open space sat someone, and I was
not alone.
It was the man in the robe with the black turban. He was
resting on a tree stump and his walking stick lay beside him in
the forest moss. His noble hands held the string with amber
beads. It was Ewli.
Once again the strange man, whose small image was
under the high glass dome in my children’s room, stepped in
my path in an intangible way. How did the stranger in his
unusual dress get everywhere? Unmolested, and not even
noticed by the children, he had been sitting at the wayside
shrine, when the Prussian recruiters came for me and my
companions of fate, until the recruiters took me and my
comrades away on their wagon.
At that time I could not connect him with myself any
more than I could about his mysterious interest with my person
in the prayer-filled church. And just as I did not find him in
front of the church anymore, he had disappeared from my view
at the lime trees of Distelsbruck. This time, however, he was to
speak to me before I started the work of self-destruction.
Nevertheless, I could not put one foot in front of the other.
Because the man from the Orient was not alone. In front of him
stood a deer, which rubbed its narrow head flatteringly against
Ewli’s knees. In his hand, which held a birdcage, perched a jay
with a pinkish-grey head and blue wing feathers, and in the
bramble bush to his right chirped uncounted colorful balls of
feathers. Two squirrels, chasing each other, a reddish-brown
one and a black one, went up onto his body, hiding themselves
in the folds of his robe, rolling and chattering, and to my horror
the reddish brown one suddenly disappeared into his robe, as if
it had melted into the same color of the coarse fabric, while the
second one crawled onto the black turban, lost its outline and
did not appear again. I looked at the face of Ewli, overcome by
the radiance of his eyes. Was he looking at me? Were the dark
stars directed into the far distance? I did not know, I just felt
how warm, divine love enveloped me.
Slowly, however, he stood up, walked across the clearing
and disappeared between the tall trees.
Then I came to and was able to move. I ran. Where were
the animals? Not a bird, not a deer was to be seen. Where was
Ewli? I ran into the middle of the high wood and suddenly
stood among my comrades. They had just found Kregel and cut
him down. Horrible to look at, black-blue and green spots on
his face, the swollen ink-colored tongue stretched out, with
open, complaining eyes, he lay on the ground, the rope in the
furrow of his neck. Nobody paid any attention to me.
They had spades with them and dug in the deep, soft
forest soil, where the mouse tunnels ran crisscross and root
snakes crawled.
It was late when we were finished.
In the evening-red sky an endless train of crows flew
silently.
“That means war!” said Wetzlaff and looked at me.
How long had we been in the field? Nobody reckoned
anymore, nobody knew.
I was camped with four comrades in bitter winter. We
had found makeshift quarters in a burned-down farmhouse. All
we had were two piles of rotten, damp straw and a blanket
singed by campfires. And this miserable property we had to
protect and guard, so that not even more miserable ones stole it.
The rifles had to be constantly cleaned without stopping.
After a day they were red again with rust. Zulkov had frozen
the toes of both feet. They were black and stank like the plague.
I had to treat Repke with gun powder and a residue of brandy
to wash out a graze on his back because no one else would do it,
and he screamed so loudly that I took pity on him. Wetzlaff had
gotten severe diarrhea and every five minutes he walked on
wobbly legs in front of the house. Where he had squatted the
snow was bloody all around from his stool. In the night he
moaned so much, that no one could sleep. And although we all
endured, they threw everything at him in the dark that they
could grab with their hands. Then he limped out again to
relieve himself with convulsions. The quietest of us all, a
gloomy person named Kühlemiek, read in a small, tattered
hymnal next to the fire and sometimes murmured:
“O Lord, have mercy on me a sinner!”
Repke was happy when I had bandaged his back again
with old rags, and put dry nut leaves in his pipe.
“The king has said -” he wanted to begin.
But Wetzlaff interrupted him snorting:
“He has said! He has said! If the King lets one go, you
miserable wretches are blissful with doglike awe. Oh, you
starving ribs, you cannon fodder! What is it then that makes
such a king so great?”
“Fridericus Rex is the greatest war hero of all time, you
poisonous toad!” roared Zulkov. “Dare not to insult His
Majesty!”
“Dear brothers in Christ,” pleaded Kühlemiek, “turn your
thoughts to the One who has entrusted all of our lives in His
grace-giving hands!”
“Shut up, old pietist!” Repke shouted at him, “Let
Wetzlaff speak!”
“Oooh!” he groaned, and hurriedly ran out again. We
heard the sound of his discharges and his groaning all the way
into the house. Then he came back again, white as lime, and let
himself fall on the straw.
“As I say, a man must edify and revive himself in the
Lord and King,” Zulkov said after a while. “But there are some
who forget the oath…”
“Do you mean me?” asked Wetzlaff, straightening up
with difficulty. “Refresh yourself, as much as you can with that
cold fire that you have on your hind claws. Yes, you sheep’s
head, so that Friederich can be a great war hero, you must keep
your toes in your shoes, my intestines have to bleed out, a
thousand have to be shoveled into the pits. I ask one, when all
around, with the Austrians over there and us over there, if there
were such guys as me, there would be no more king and
empress, but also no war and no people-beating. But you are in
general too stupid to understand such things. And from this
stupidity of yours all kings and generals, princes and counts
and barons down to our squire with the ass face live equally in
glory and joy and sit enthroned like peacocks in all majesty,
while we are kept as cattle and are driven to the slaughter with
the trilling of pipes and the beating of drums. O you damned,
thick-skinned fool, you horse-apple brains…”
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