they headed for the Kommandantur building.
They groped their way through the night, bent double. Their pockets bulged, for they were loaded down with bottles, and one of them cupped a burning cigarette in the hollow of his hand.
“Steady, men," said Cadet Rednitz, not bothering to lower his voice particularly. “We mustn't overdo it; let's have something to keep our strength up first."
“We’ve lost too much time already," objected Mösler. “We shouldn't have bothered about Hochbauer. Why did you have to go and tell him what we were doing! You know he's against this sort of thing."
“One needs to keep in with Hochbauer," said Weber approvingly. “He’s bound to be our next section senior and he'll be twisting Captain Ratshelm round his little finger in no time."
“Man," said Mösler thoughtfully, “when that day comes we're for it."
“Hochbauer’s all right," Egon Weber insisted.
“And you, Weber, are a damned fool," said Rednitz amiably. “As you'll find out for yourself one of these days. Want a bet?"
They paused when they reached the cookhouse. Standing in the shadow of a supply shed they looked across at the Kommandantur. The moon obligingly hid itself behind a bank of clouds.
Cadet Egon Weber uncorked a bottle and took a mighty swig. Then like a good comrade he passed the bottle on, while Rednitz kept a look-out for the enemy—a patrolling sentry or an officer.
“What are we going to do if we're caught?" asked Cadet Egon Weber.
“Look silly," said Rednitz.
“And what are we going to say?"
“Anything that comes into our heads—anything but the truth, that is." Rednitz liked to turn everything that happened into a joke. Mösler on the other hand was a person who spent his time systematically in pursuit of pleasure and wasn't particularly choosy where he found it. Cadet Weber simply did everything he was called upon to do from attending church parade to visiting a brothel. All that was needed was to appeal to his sense of comradeship and his physical strength, and then there was nothing he wouldn't do. As a result he was remarkably popular with everyone and his commission was a virtual certainty.
For instance what if we run into the duty office?" asked Egon Weber.
“Then," said Rednitz, reaching for the bottle, “the best man among us confronts him and sacrifices himself for the others. I imagine that will be you, Weber, because I don't expect you'll want to let anyone else deprive you of the honor."
“All right," said Egon Weber, quite undismayed, " let's suppose that happens. Then the duty officer will want to know what I'm doing here."
“You’re sleep-walking of course, Egon."
“With a bottle?"
“But that's the whole point!" insisted Rednitz. “Without a bottle there wouldn't be anything odd about you."
“What’s all the nattering about?" said Mösler impatiently. “Why are we hanging about like this? Let's get on to the girls."
“Steady now," warned Rednitz. “If we don't think things out carefully and watch what we're doing we'll be in trouble. I'll go ahead and see how the land lies."
“You just want the best girl for yourself," said Mösler suspiciously. “That’s not playing fair."
“And anyone who doesn't play fair," said Egon Weber, Section H's champion wrestler and always spoiling for a fight,” will have me to reckon with."
Rednitz found himself powerless against such arguments. He had no alternative but to act in accordance with the principles taught him by Captain Feders: every operation once set in motion is to be carried through to the bitter end, provided no decisive alteration of strategic considerations demands a change of plan.
Alteration of strategic considerations “hardly came into it, for there wasn't an officer in sight and the sentries were all dozing in their various corners. But down in the basement of the Kommandantur sat the poor little love-sick maidens of the communications center.
The events of the night before had been all round the barracks by the late afternoon. Cadet Weber had learnt certain details from the man in charge of the sports equipment. This man had received his information from a corporal in the kitchen. He in turn was a close friend of the clerk in the orderly room, and the latter was himself a close friend of the raped corporal in person. In short, first-classes addresses, relatively accessible. To the rescue then!
“Right, come on," said Cadet Rednitz, sounding the advance.
Mösler and Egon Weber followed him excitedly, holding their bottles by their necks and swinging them like hand-grenades. They crouched low as they hopped across the concrete road of the barracks and disappeared into the Kommandantur, determined to take the communications center and the girls by storm.
When they got there, however, they found others there before them.
Captain Feders, Section H's tactics instructor, sat enveloped in thick clouds of cigarette smoke, thinking, writing and smoking, in a state of complete exhaustion. He tried to concentrate on his class's subject for the following day: transport of an infantry battalion by rail. But utterly without success. And sleep wouldn't come to him.
The night seemed to be filled with a dull roaring, as if of distant aircrafts, or trains running continuously on the other side of the hill. But he knew this was an illusion. The darkness all about him was empty save for the wreathing cigarette smoke, the bare walls of the room and the floor-boards which let in the cold. No sound reached his ears—none of the sounds of the life around him: the breathing of a thousand sleeping men, their groans and muffled heart-beats under the bed-clothes, the gurgling of water-pipes, the scraping of the sentries' boots, the panting somewhere or other of a couple of lovers. He knew that all this was there, but heard none of it.
Captain Feders, the tactics instructor, was one of the cleverest brains in the training school, the sort of man who could never help trying to tie people up in knots, and who was always being tempted into sarcasm, being a great scoffer and fond of debunking for its own sake. Whenever he sensed that he had any sort of audience he wore a permanent, cold, ironical smile on his face. But when he was alone, as now, he was a tired man with a haggard face, whose eyes showed him to be tortured and desperate.
He listened anxiously, wanting to hear something only in order to prove to himself that what his reason told him was there really existed. He drew at a cigarette—he heard that. He blew smoke out of his mouth—he heard that too. His wife lay in the bedroom. She must have been tossing about restlessly, pushing the blankets away, breathing noisily—but however hard he listened he heard nothing.
“It’s as if everything were dead," said Feders to himself” Everything seems to be decaying."
Marion, his wife, had been called up for military service like all the other women in the barracks. The previous officer in command of the training school had arranged for her posting to Wildlingen-am-Main, simply as an act of generosity. He saw to it that
