BORCKBy BRUNO E. WERNER

However, the fact that he was scntone day in February to tho branch officein Frankfurt, provided with expensemoney and a. second-cl/188 ticket, revealedthat he had oc.oen so discreet about hisformer capacity of shock-troop leader ina German infantry regiment that hisfirm had some oonfidence in him by now.I t was strange: on this line, which he hadtraveled so often on the way to his regi­ment in France, his new life fell from himlike an artificial skin. Of course, he nolonger looked as he had done in the olddays, with his long gray coat, tilted cap,and turned-up red co1la.r, when thebrigade commander had come up to himand said: "You have a good head.Stay with us when this shindy is over."Nor did he still have that narrow, boyishface. But, muoh more than after officewhen he usually went home by subwayto the furnished room he rented from themajor's widow, he felt now in the trainthat he was again Lieutenant Borck, &

free man and his own master, who­although in the opposite direction-wasgoing home on leave from the westernfront.

Just before the train started, a womangot into the compartment. She wasclosely wrapped in a fur coat and spoketo a man on .the p1&tform whom Borckcould not see. Borck, who was en­gro8S6d in a book, did not pay any at­tention to her at first. But after thetrain had been moving a little while hewas agreeably surprised to discover thatshe was young, with big blue eyea, fairhair, and an upper lip that was a littletoo short and showed her teeth, as if her

In our .niu oj mode.m .1wrl 1Itoriu, 'oe tlO9O prue1al tlttl tro.ftlllatton oj a1/I0f1I written by a well.1rnOU'n Gtlt"fPlQn auJJwr 'cho i. also the tlt/ilor oJ the UNrarymagazine "Die Neue JAnie," The IItory uu. oj a time when the people oj Europe.ajter tJu eztraordillQry and indelible ezperimce oj the Oreal War, were trvi"f/ 10 findIAeir tDfI1I back 10 _rydny liJe.-K.M.

HERE was nothingremarkable aboutBorck as he stoodbehind the counter ofthe travel bureau,

explaining the shortest connection toRome or Bucharest to a would-be travelerwith the aiel of railway guides anda map mounted on cardboard, onwhich the word "Berlin" had becomeillegible through the touch of manyfingers. He looked no clliIerent fromany of the many young men who stoodat that time behind counters and grilles,bent over accounts, or pushed handcarts,and from the appearance of all of whomone could scarcely have told that, onlya few years previously, they had bornethe responsibility for the lives and deathsof dozens or hundreds of men. In thiseveryday life there was little room fortheir virtues and none for their faultswhich, out there, may perhaps have beenvirtues. In their new positions the bestamong them did not care to· be remindedof the fact that they had stormed thetrenches at the Somme, had lain in thewater of Flanders in an artillery barrage,had fought.in Palestine, had been nickedby a bullet on the banks of the Narev,or had spent a winter in an ice cave inthe Dolomites. Such memories did notfit into this life, when Mr. Knottek calledone into his office at five o'clock in theevening and, indicating a slip of paper,said: "Fourteen marks sixty, Mr. Borck,and not eleven marks sixty, as you cal­culated. We shall deduct it from yoursalary, but please don't let it happenagainl"

BORCK 439

mouth were always forming a surprisedquestion.

It waa at this moment that the girllooked at him thoughtfully and saidsuddenly with a smile: "Well, are yougoing to Switzerland tool"

His amazement vanished when hefound out that he had sold her a ticketto Lausanne the day before. Borck feltembarrassed at being reminded here,where he was free, of his workaday world,from which he could not get away. Itseemed aa if the girl had felt somethingof his displeasure and, at the same time,the reason for it, for she obviously triedto make amends. As 80metimes happenswith warmhearted, spontaneous people,in her effort she jumped,so to speak, an octave toohigh: "I am terribly gladto see you again here,Mr. -"

"Borck," Carl said witha laugh. "You have agood memory for the slavesof the workaday world,"and was annoyed with him­self for having used suchan affected expression.

Whether the stars overthe lives of these two peoplehad entered the same constellation atthis moment, or whether the uncurbedswiftness of their acquaintanceshipwas the cause - after a few hourseach knew as much about the otheras most people, and especially Borck,would have needed days to find out.He knew that she was called Ellen, thather mother was American, that she livedwith her parents and helped her fatherin his consulting room, that she hadbeen very ill and had now been sent offfor a four-weeks' skiing holiday in Switz­erland, that she was often very sad andsometimes, when she was alone in herroom in the evening, knelt in her arm­chair and cried with her face pressedagainst ita back, and finally that therewaa a man in her life.

Borck caught himself following theOODtours of her face which stood out

against the light background of thewindow and thinking that her head lookedlike a note of incredibly sweet muaicdancing between the rising and fallingparallel lines of the telegraph wires. Hethought of his year with Elizabeth andthat there had never been such a strange,vibrating thrill between them as betweenhim and this utterly unknown creaturewho waa now pressing the tip of her noeeagainst the windowpane 80 that thebreath of her half-open mouth appearedon the window like a little flower.

When they were sitting in the diningcar, he caught himself out once againand waa alarmed at himself. She waswriting a postcard, and in his mind's eye

he saw the man for whom itwas intended. To counter­act his ill-humor, he wastrying to imagine him asa corpulent, middle-agedofficial.

''My people have askedme to send a card fromFrankfurt to say whether Ihave had a good journeyso far," said the girl

/ thoughUUlly, ~king thenarrow bridge of her nose

with the little finger of her left hand.She raised her glass: "I think we arehaving a good journey!"

Borck understood, and the glassestinkled aa they touched, while the trainrattled along in a steady, reassuringrhythm. Frankfurt, thought Borck, thebranch office, Scheppken the manager,the new turnover quota, the creditingsystem of the government railway, theBerlin office, the sandwiches wrapped byhis landlady, the major's widow ("Mr.Borck, I know you like liver sausage'''),the subway, the cash slips and the cus­tomers, Mise Rost from the shippingdepartment who waa 80 fond of chattingwith him, the restless queue of trave1erain front of the counter, the domineeringtone of the bank manager's wife whowanta to go to the seaaide with her fourchildren, the ring of the telephone, thegray maSHes on the street, the drab

uo THE XXth CENTURY

i

melancholy on yellow-lit, winter Sundayafternoons, the whole repulsiveness ofthis life which he had sworn hundreds oftimes every year to give up but to dowhich he had always lacked the courage- for in war he knew where he stood,but only othel'8 could swim in this kindof a life.

"I am going as far as Basel," Borcksuddenly said out loud, and he was gladthat he had not told the girl his destina­tion before.

SHORTLY after Frankfurt the lighthad been turned on in the compart­ment. The girl drew up her legs on

the seat and leaned against the windowcomer. Borck lit a cigarette for her.Outside, lights flew past, red and green,and sometimes a signalman's house hissedby.

"I shall be afraid when you get out,"said the girl, "I'm always like that whenI am alone at night." He noticed howshe turned her head away.

In an hour we shall be in Basel, hethought, and said aloud: "Shall I gowith you as far as Lausanne1" Her headspun round, and he saw with alarm thatthere were teaI'8 in her eyes.

"Of course I shall go on to Lausanne.We get free trips through the travelbureau." He was lying, but she lookedgrateful, like a schoolgirl, and held outher hand to him. Borck was consciousof her slonder wrist and, as he bent overit, of a delicate perfume. Orange blos­som, Borck thought, inwardly smiling athis disquiet. The train rattled on, calum­drumdrum, calumdrumdrum.

In Lausanne the early morning sunwas shining from a cloudless sky. Borckwent in to the telegraph office and re­ported to Berlin: "IU. Requut fortnigltlkat:e." He imagined the faces in thetravel bureau. Knottek would pointwith his fat little finger at the place ofdespatch, Lausanne, and shake his headand sav with affected sarcasm: "Seemsto hav;' gone slightly out of his mind,our Mr. Borck!" Here we go, thoughtBorck, in future someone else will have,

to llell their tickets; I can last out threemonths, to hell with this dog's lifel

When he came out, he saw the girlstanding among the trunks. He waswhistling his old regimental march be"tween his teeth and felt gloriously youngand silly.

"Everything is fixed up," he calledout to her, "I'm coming with you, if Imay." The girl said nothing, linked herarm in his and, for a moment, pressedhis arm against her side.

THOSE were the sixteen hours inwhich Carl Botck lost his civilianjob. What followed, took place as

real love stories U8Ually take place, thatis to say, it was not in the least extraor­dinary but wonderful and grand; andBorck knew that these were hoU1'8 suchas he had not known since the crossingof the Marne, with the only differencethat now there was not that disagreeablefeeling in his stomach: instead there was aglorious floating sensation, like being nearthe heaven of the gods, a new existence­from now on everything would be dif­ferent.

ONE morning during the third weekof their stay in the little winterresort, Ellen had appeared at break­

fast with a white face, holding a telegramin her hand. "He is coming this eve­ning," she had said, in a low, small voice,sadly, as if something inevitable wascoming.

So this is the man who wants to takeher away from me and whom she lovedtill now, Borck had thought.

But now the three of them had alreadybeen skiing together for three days, andthe man was none other than LanceCorporal SchliefJen from his platoon, astudent of law and a crazy fellow. Borckhad nicknamed him 'General' 8chliefJensince the time when, on patrol, he hadwiped out a Tommy who was aiming atLieutenant Borck.

'General' Schlieffen, of a well-to-dofamily, now an assistant professor at auni,-el'8ity in north Germany, turned up,

BORCK

with ruddy cheeks, healthy, athletic,and a little naive, a characteristic whichin the old days had prevented his beingsent to an officers' training camp. Foronce during the visit of a division com­mander to the trenches, this front-linesoldier had held out a pair of field glassesand wed: "Wouldn't you like to 800

some Frenchmen too, GeneraH" As thedivision commander was a very loftypersonage who should have been addressedas "His Excellency," he had looked thelance corporal over from head to footbut, when he discovered his Iron Cr088,had turned away with a smile. His aide­de-eamp, however, had taken Borck asideand remarked: "Excellent platoon, mydear fellow, butslightly laoking inmanners for suchan occasion." So'General' Sohlieffenwith his Iron Crossand three other deo­orations gaily re­D1ained a lanceoorporal and, afterall, it was quite agood thing, for inthis way the twoof them had stayedtogether. .

In the hall of thehotel, Schlieffen hadloudly clioked his heels and shouted:"Good evening, Lieutenant!" and the twoof them would have got drunk that sameevening if Ellen had not sat betweenthem, Ellen with her blue eyes, hernarrow little nose, and her slightly tooshort upper lip. Sohlieffen had not no­ticed what had happened, and he over­whelmed her with such a flood of affec­tionate warmth and sparkling wit thatshe beamed at him with big eyes, andit seemed for a moment as if the threehappiest people in the world were sittinghere.

On the morning of the third day Ellenand Borck had climbed up alone ontheir skis toward Mont Lachaux. SinceBohlieffen's arrival, Borck had treatedher· simply. 88 a. winter-sports companion.

When they took off their skiing clothesat the summit, however, and lay downtogether in the SUD in bathing suits ontheir skis, Borck thought of Sohlieffenand had a vwon of a duel between twofriends. He turned his head and triedto kiss the girl's ear, that tiny pink spotthat was not covered by sunburn crea.m.He sensed that the little ear was drawingaway from under his lips and, with ajerk, he turned his head back.

Through his green glasses he looked atthe sun, whioh hit his eyes as a painfl:l1black spot, and said: "You love him?"

Instead of answering, the girl began tosob. so that, with the helplessness men

feel toward weepingwomen and chil­dren, he tried tocomfort her, with­out being verysuccessful.

Then they speddown into the valleyon their skis, Borckahead. Just beforethey reached tbeho~l, she calledout to him: "Carll"Borck waited tillshe had oaughtup with him. .Shetook his hand and

pressed it Yer,Y hard against her side.It was like that time at the station atLausanne.

In the evening sbe did not appear inthe dining room. She sent a Illessage tosay she was tired and that the two ofthem should eat alone.

Borck and Sohlieffen had dinner at around table. Between them there wasthe empty place.

"Borck, you old war horse, what's thematter with you1" said Schlieffen.

"Sunburn," replied Borck, "damn it!"lie noticed that. Schljeffen was lookingat him out of the oorner of his eye.

After dinner they drank a bottle ofNeuchAtel in the small paneled bar.

44J THE XXtb CENTURY

"You're fond of Ellen," obeervedSchlieffen. "I don't know what there isbetween you. I just want to tell you Ihaven't called officiaUy on her parentayet to ask for her hand."

"I am not at all interested how voutwo have arranged things," said &rckand was immediately ashamed of thisremark and his unfriendly tone.

"I think we are going to get marriedin the spring," Schlieffen went on. "Shewill be the wife of a 'general' and, what'smore, of a professor. For two years 1have been working only for her andnow I'm going to be offered a profee80r­ship at Kiel. Let's drink to her healthl"

He lifted up his glass. Borck followedhis example, but when he set down theglass the 8tem broke, and a red streamshot out over the table top.

"What on earth-?" said Schlieffen.

Borck replied: "I know I'm being aswine, moo bra,ve, but I'm in love withher!"

Borck was obviously drunk, and youngSchlieffen stared into his gl&88. Borcksaw his big blue eyes begin to 8Wim.The waiter came and wiped up'the winewith a napkin, They had to stop talk­ing. When he had gone, Borck said:

"Dear old chap, let me still call you'General.' 1 can't 8imply leave the fieldhere; there is more to it now than alittle winter-sports affair. A damn sightmore, and perhaps everything! It's some­thing like at the Ferme Rochelle. Thereyou either got into the English trenches,or you were finished. You oouldn't goback. There was nothing but waterthere."

After a while Schlieffen raised hishead and said tonelessly: "And whatabout her?"

During this eecond, as he said himselflater, a great deal passed through Borck'smind, his whole life and perhaps even

.more, before he answered: "She lovesus both."

The men sitting at the table weresilent then, perhaps for an hour, till

Schlieffen said: "One of us leaves to­night!"

"A duel, my dear Schlieften, is a 8tupidthing," was ijorck's weary response.

"I agree," said Schlieffen. "In theold days we shot at corks, and, apartfrom Lieutenant Borck, 1 was the onlyone who could hit five in a row." Hesmiled and added: "To shoot each otherwould be ridiculous and in bad taste.You can't fight your way for three yearsthrough the mud, shoulder to shoulder,to end up afterwards in a movie."

"The gods must decide," Borck an­swered, "the same gods who decided thattime when we two took cover togetherin the ammunition dump during thatnasty artillery barrage. We said to eachother that an ammunition dump blowsup less often than a man gets killed, andwe came through it, while half of theplatoon was gone."

"Dice!" said Schlieffen. "Waiter, thedice box!" called Borck and counted outmatches on the table. Then he inter­rupted his counting and shook out thewhole box. There were forty-five match­es, more, far more than they had everstaked during the war when they dioodfor a risky patrol.

The dice rattled. The ash trayfilled up with smoking cigarettes, andboth men emptied one glass after another.Schlieffen jumped up once and opened awindow. Outside a fine rain was driz­zling on the BIlOW. They played vingt-et­un, razzle-dazzle, quinze, multiplication,Plietzsohke. Plietzschke was a crazygame they had invented at Peronne.You had to toss the dice in the air andquickly catch it after turning around thedice box. Plietzschke was a bugler whohad falIen at Warneton. He alwayscarried a dice box with him, and 80 theyhad buried him back there at Comineewith the leather box in his pocket.

"Plietzechke was a real man," saidBorck, "worth more than both of ustogether and the whole damn aet-uptoday. Let'. drink to Bugler Plietzaohke

BORCK U3

of the second company!" For an instantBorck saw before him the little buglerwho was never without his polishedinstrument and his dice box. He was a.farm boy from Silesia, teased and lovedby all because of his curious dialect.

By now the room was empty. Thewaiter, who had gone to bed, had thought­fully placed a row of bottles on the table.The empty ones were rolling around onthe floor. The clock stood. at five.Schlieffen had a pile of matches andslowly drew a circle around it with hisfinger. Borck had been successful andhad only six matches left. But now helost and suddenly had eighteen. Thehand of the clock was moving onto thesix.

Suddenly Schlieffen placed eighteenmatches in the middle. Borck followedhis example. "Let's get it over. Sud­den death," said Schlieffen, and Borcknoticed that he clenched his jaw. Atthat moment the clock wheezed as itstarted to strike. Borck picked up thedice box. On the sixth stroke he tiltedit on the table. The dice showed ninespots-what they had called a 'grandslam' at the front.

Borck stared at his victory. When theclock struck again, he got up. Theshort hand was pointing at Beven. Thechair opposite was empty. A charwomanlooked curiously into the smoke-filledroom. Borck was no longer drunk. Hefelt miserable. He went to Schlieffen'sroom. It was empty, the luggage gone.Borck ran down the three floors. Down­stairs he found the night porter.

''Mr. Schlieffen has paid his bill andleft for the station in the hotel sleigh."

The 'general' had left without sayinganother word to Borck. "Good-night,"Borck said to himself and went to hisroom.

In his sleep he heard a drop falling atregular intervals onto the tin of thewindow ledge. The drop tortured him,and the night seemed to last for ever, asif a big, damp, black dog were sitting onhis chest and would not release him.

THREE hours later, when he enteredthe breakfast room, the girl wassitting at the table and called out:

"Hallo, you lazybones!"

She seemed to have forgotten the daybefore, and her red jersey radiated ashining glow over her young face, likean open fireplace. Borck wanted to lifthis cup, but put it down again and said,with &8 quiet a tone as he could manage:"He had to leave suddenly. He'll writeto you."

He heard his voice sounding quitehoarse. The girl slowly put her cigaretteon a saucer, and he could see the bloodleaving her face as she said softly:"What happened between you?"

Later, when Borck wanted to tell oneof his mends about this and the followingday, he did not go on. For severalminutes he drummed with his fingers onthe arm of the chair, and he only saidthat it had been the worst forty-eighthours of his life. They had tried overand over again to forget the other man.Borck had gone out with her into theforest, but the rain had dripped downfrom the branches and had left countlesslittle gray holes in the snow, as if eventhe elements were conspiring againstthem.

In the afternoon he went to the cafewith her. They were alone there, andhe had kissed her, but she suddenlyjumped up and ran out. He looked forher all over the village, on the ski slope,in the hotel lounge where the music wasplaying, ghostly with its chatteringguests, its clattering spoons and cups.Nor was she in her room. She finallyappeared for a silent dinner, and afterthe meal she said good-night to him witha sad smile.

The following morning he came downto breakfast with a hollow feeling ofuneasiness, but she suddenly behavedagain as if nothing had happened. Shelaughed and talked a lot and avoidedanything that might have reminded herof Schlieffen. In this way the daypassed, almost like the days beforeSchlieffen's arrival, and between them

THE XXth CENTURY

there was once again that sensation offloating, of vibratton, that wonderfulhannony he had never known till then.But on the way home in the evening shesuddenly ran ahead into the hotel, andhe had dinner alone. Still, he believedthat everything would perhaps turn outall right after all.

During the night, however, he wasawakened by the flapping of his curtainwhen his door opened slowly. She camein and quickly hung her fur coat over thechair. He did not stir. She lay downin her pajamas beside him on top of thecovers, took his head, kissed him, andsuddenly burst into tears, SO that he hadto hold her little body very tightly inhis arms, so wildly was it racked bysobs. To his repeated questions, shefinally said that she was in love withSchlietJen and that she could not go onliving. It was only now that he felt,and gradually with growing certainty,that his viotory at dice, of whioh he hadtold her nothing-for how was a womanto understand suoh thingst-had been adefeat, and that he had really andtruly lost her through SchlietJen'sdeparture.

We do not know what Borck and thegirl said to each other during this night.He only said later that he consoled Ellenand said to her that she should go aheadand join the 'general,' because he neededher, that she should take the first trainin the morning, and that he would leaveat noon. And then the girl had some­times laughed through her tears at thefunny things he had told her about andhad asked him for his short Eng­lish pipe as a memento. Shehad put her slender nose to thebrown, smokey wood and had

said that this was he, Carl, and that hewould now always be with her.

In the morning they packed her trunksin Ellen's room. Outside a tinkling sleighwas waiting in the frost. The sun wasshining brightly. They drove to thestation on the gently twisting road. Itall went very fast. Ellen got into thetrain. The conduotor whiatled, the car­riages started to move. Borck trottedalong beside them. When he saw thatthe girl, as she leaned out of the window,suddenly opened her mouth in fear-justlike the little Frenchman who had lain inhis dugout with gas poisoning-he ab­ruptly turned on his heel and went backslowly to the hotel. The sun was hot.In his room he cloeed the shutters andturned on the electrio light. In the bigarmchair, where a few hours before hercoat had lain, he found his pipe.

EIGHT years later, Ellen SchlietJen wasvisited by a university colleague ofher husband's, who had just returned

from a botanical expedition to the UpperAmazon. He told her about a Germansettler, a sunburnt, muscular pioneer,whom he had found deep in the heart ofBrazil, clearing the forest with someother Germans and a group of natives.He had spent the night in the settler'shouse, and when he had mentioned thathe was from Kiel, the settler, whose namehe could not remember, asked him todeliver a package to Mrs. ScWiefIen.Unfortunately, the professor had lateron lost part of his baggage, including thisparcel, in a mishap on the rapids. Buthe hoped Mrs. SohliefIen would not mind

the 1088 of the package toomuch, ainceithad probably onlybeen intended as a joke: it hadcontained an old pipe.

~be things Lhat are reaDy I«w t.bM gravitate to thee. You are nJIUlina ~_k your Iriend. Let your leet run. but your mind need DOt. U you do

not find him. will you not -equieece that it ia a-t. 70U Mould Dot find him!For there ia • power, whiob .. it ia In you, ia in him &180, and oould th_lore very well brine you toptber, if it ..... lor &be ....