Read Online The Road Back by Erich Maria Remarque - Free Book Online

a great paw on his shoulder. "Sort of thing might happen to anyone, old boy. If it hadn't been for the wound you'd have made mincemeat of them."
    Ludwig nods to us and goes indoors. We watch to see that he manages the stairs all right. He is already halfway up when another point suddenly occurs to Willy. "Kick, next time, Ludwig," he shouts after him, "just kick, that's all! Don't let 'em get near you, understand me?" Then, well content, he slams to the door.
    "I'd like to know what's been up with him the last few weeks," say I.
    Willy scratches his head. "It'll be the dysentery," he suggests. "Why otherwise—well, you remember how he cleaned up that tank at Bixchoote! On his own too. That was no child's play, eh?"
    He settles his pack. "Well, good luck, Ernst! Now I'll be after seeing what the Homeyer family's been doing the last six months. One hour of sentiment, I expect, and then full steam ahead with the lectures. My mother—Oh boy, but what a sergeant-major she would have made! A heart of gold the old lady has—in a casing of granite."
    I go on alone, and all at once the world seems to have altered. There is a noise in my ears as if a river ran under the pavement, and I neither see nor hear anything till I am standing outside our house. I go slowly up the stairs. Over the door hangs a banner: Welcome Home , and beside it a bunch of flowers. They have seen me coming already and are all standing there, my mother in front on the stairs, my father, my sisters. I can see beyond them into the dining-room, there is food on the table, everything is gay and jubilant. "What's all this nonsense you've been up to?" I say. "Flowers and everything—what's that for? it's not so important as all that—But, Mother I what are you crying for? I'm back again—and the war's ended—surely there is nothing to cry about——" then I feel the salt tears trickling down my own nose.

    2.
    We have had potato-cakes with eggs and sausage—a wonderful meal. It is two years since I last saw an egg; and potato-cakes, God only knows.
    Comfortable and full, we now sit around the big table in the living-room drinking coffee with saccharine. The lamp is burning, the canary singing, the stove is warm, and under the table Wolf lies asleep. It is as lovely as can be.
    "Now tell us all about your experiences, Ernst," says my father.
    "Experiences——" I repeat, and think to myself, I haven't experienced anything—It was just war all the time —how should a man have experiences there?
    No matter how I rack my brains, nothing suitable occurs to me. A man cannot talk about the things out there with civilians, and I know nothing else. "You folk here have experienced much more, I'm sure," I say by way of excusing myself.
    That they have, indeed! My sisters tell how they had to scrounge to get the supper together. Twice the gendarmes  took everything from them at the station. The third time  they sewed the eggs inside their cloaks, put the sausages  into their blouses and hid the potatoes in pockets inside  their skirts. That time they got through  I listen to them rather absently. They have grown up since last I saw them. Or perhaps I did not notice such things then, so that I find it the more remarkable now.  Use must be over seventeen already. How the time goes.
    "Did you know Councillor Pleister was dead?" asks my father.
    I shake my head. "When was that?"
    "In July—about the twentieth, I think. . . ."
    The water is singing in the kettle. I toy with the tassels along the fringe of the tablecloth. So—July, I think to myself—July—we lost thirty-six men during the last five days of July. And I hardly remember the names of three of them now, there were so many more joined them as time went on—"What was it?" I ask, feeling sleepy from the unaccustomed warmth of the room, "H.E. or machine-gun?"
    "But he wasn't a soldier, Ernst," protests my father, rather mystified. "He had inflammation of the lung."
    "Oh, yes, of course," I say, setting