IV

The third whistler, a boy of seventeen, was called Benjamin. He had been christened so in a field hospital close up to the line on the west front. One October morning, just as it was getting light, a so-called char-à-banc arrived there. It was a vehicle with two long benches opposite each other, the whole enclosed within a square covering of grey tent-cloth that came closely down on all sides. As could be seen, it belonged to a Westphalian battery which had been put out of action the day before.

For a moment nothing stirred. Then a man without a tunic, in mud-caked breeches, climbed down backwards and very circumspectly out of the caravan. Last came his left arm, bent up to the level of his chest in a superfluously large makeshift splint. “Vice-Quartermaster Joseph,” he reported to the doctor who at that moment came out of the entrance with sleeves rolled up and a brown rubber apron over his white overalls. “Vice-Quartermaster Joseph, of so-and-so regiment, with eleven severely wounded men of his battery.”

These eleven sat dazed and fevered, or hung rather, with sunken heads, since there was no room to lie, along both benches inside the char-à-banc. Some clung fast to each other, and none moved when the covering was thrown back and the bearers came up with stretchers. One after another they were carried out. The last was a boy who, as he was carried in, his blood-stained coat on the arms of an immense Army Medical Corps non-commissioned officer, suddenly cheered up and tried to say something. Mean-while he described wide circles with his hands across the sky which now began to show its cloudless blue, and raised his eyebrows and blew out his cheeks; he seemed, too, to wish to convey certain numbers. But not a sound proceeded from his throat. “To be sure,” said the doctor in a deep quiet voice, laying a finger gently under his chin, “to be sure, it is Joseph and his brethren, and you must certainly be Benjamin. I’ll put you all together in the best ward we have.”

None the less they were no sooner in their beds than they began dying. On the very same day five of Joseph’s brethren were wound in the sheets they could warm no longer and carried out. But the boy was called Benjamin from then onwards.

And next it seemed that he, too, would never get back to Germany. The doctor forbade him meat or drink. But during the night the house in which they were was set on fire by a shell from a long-range gun, and Benjamin, who lay under a blanket on his palliasse, was strapped on a stretcher and taken out naked—for the unexpected stream of wounded that day had exhausted the supply of nightshirts. In this manner he reached another house, but owing to the disorder that followed upon the sudden shelling and the outbreak of fire, the prohibition did not catch him up even on the next day. Thirst tortured him, and with raised hands he begged a cup of the soup that was being taken round to the rest of the room. He had scarcely attempted to swallow a sip of it before he felt as though someone gripped him by the throat with both hands. In horror he sprang right up out of bed and tore his mouth open as far as it would go. But do as he might—throwing his head about on all sides with his chest convulsively distended, and striking out at last with arms and shoulders as though swimming in the water, and turning wildly round and round where he stood—he could not succeed in inhaling the least breath of air. Finally, while his comrades shouted for help, he raged over and over on his bed without uttering a sound, and then rising once more to his feet fell forward senseless.

Often he told the whistlers in after days how he stormed death with all the strength of his soul and actually reached his goal. There, at a stroke, he had lost all desire for breath, and, hovering without weight in the void, had felt light and airy as he never felt before in his whole life. At the same time music rang out in a melody that he could never convey; but certainly no musician in the world could ever hit on notes like those. After that, he would conclude, he might well say it was good to die. The whistlers listened with earnest faces and nodded their heads; they did not doubt it. To anyone else Benjamin never said a word of all this; nor of all that he still had to go through in that hospital.

He was awoken by sudden merciless pain. At once the music ceased and his agony returned; but just as he tried to renew his struggles the cool air streamed like water into his lungs. He began to breathe once more, and once more felt that he had weight and was lying on his back; and this, too, he felt as a happiness.

Later he was told that the doctor happened to be on his way to visit other cases nearby, and hurrying in at the cries for help, arrived in the nick of time to catch Benjamin in his arms. As he had not his case of instruments with him he had pierced Benjamin’s throat with his pocket knife.

After this Benjamin began to recover very quickly. But it seemed that his being still had a hankering after the experience that had already cost so dear. One morning, not long afterwards, just as the doctor attended by his orderlies was carefully cleaning the wound, the artery on the left side of the throat burst, as though it had been too long dammed, and shot the blood in a crimson arch out of his mouth. The vein had been severed by the bullet, but a piece of sinewy flesh which had likewise been shot through had clapped itself like a piece of plaster over the torn artery and for the time arrested the flow of blood.

Benjamin was beyond all terror as the hot torrent surged over his hands that he put up in astonishment to catch it. He looked into the doctor’s face. Then he felt himself bent down backwards, and while his head hung down over the edge of the table the knife began burrowing after the vein in his extended throat. Meanwhile, at every beat of the heart, the blood was forced up like a pulsing fountain and fell back on his face, blinding his eyes with a gleaming scarlet veil. But the effect was to make him feel more and more light-headed, and the faint click of the needle, as he was stitched up, made an almost cheerful impression on him. It sounded like the clicking of knitting needles and caused him no pain. Then it ceased and the blood, too, came to a stop. A sponge was passed lightly over his eyes; he was slowly raised up and saw before him the doctor’s white face, bespattered with blood right to the roots of his beard. He held an instrument of shining steel in his hand, and playfully pinched Benjamin’s nose with it. “Well,” he said quietly, “there you are again, my son.”

Towards midday, however, Benjamin began to be very much afraid. He opened his eyes wide, yet he was unable to read the name-plate at the head of the bed opposite, though it was quite near and inscribed with large white letters on a black ground. He took this as a warning of death. Pulling his sheet over his head he prayed with hands together. After that for a long while he wept. Towards evening he felt slightly better; he wrote on a piece of paper asking if he would ever get better, and gave it to the orderly when he came with a drink for him. But the orderly made no answer; he only put his hand silently behind his back and the cup to his lips. It was a mixture of champagne, red wine, sugar and beaten egg.