Three Comrades

"He smiled. "You don't need to thank me. We are every one of us in God's hands." He looked at me a moment, his head bowed a little to one side, and it seemed as if something passed over his face. "Only trust," said he. "The Heavenly Father helps. He always helps, even when sometimes we do not understand." Then he nodded to me and went. I followed him with my eyes until I heard the door shut behind him. Yes, thought I, if it were so simple. He helps, He always helps—but did He help Bernhard Wiese when he lay wounded in the stomach, yelling in Houthoulst Wood? Did He help Katczinsky, who fell at Handzaeme, leaving a sick wife and a child he had never seen? Did He help Müller and Leer and Kemmerich? Did He help little Friedmann and Jurgens and Berger, and millions more? No, damn it, too much blood had flowed in the world for that sort of belief in the Heavenly Father."

"So long as a man doesn't give in, he is still more than his fate. That's an old Army rule."

"You keep quiet, Gottfried." Ferdinand turned his great head on Lenz. "A romantic like you is only a grasshopper on the verge of life. He understands it all wrong and manufactures his sensations out of that. You lightweight, what do you know about Nothing?" "Enough to be content to remain a lightweight," declared Lenz. "Decent people show a proper respect for Nothing. They don't go rooting about in it like moles."

"Only the unhappy man appreciates happiness. The happy man is a mannequin for the life-feeling. He displays it merely; he doesn't possess it. Light doesn't shine in the light; it shines in the dark. A health to the dark. The man who has once been in the storm can't handle delicate electric apparatus any more. To hell with the storm. Blessed be our bit of life. And because we do love it we're not prepared to invest it in five per cents; we prefer to burn it. Drink, my boys. There are stars still shining that blew up ten thousand light-years ago. Drink while there is yet time. Long live unhappiness. Long live the dark."

"Pity is the most useless article in the world. [...] It's the reverse side of gloating, you ought to know that."

"Otto," said I to Köster, who was walking in front of me, "I know now what those people are wanting. They don't want politics at all. They want substitute religion." He looked around. "Of course. They want to believe in something again—in what, it doesn't matter. That's why they are so fanatical, too, of course."

"Mortality is man's invention; not in the logic of life."

"It is easier to be alone without love."

"I looked out the window at the grey satin-hung mountain. It just isn't true all this, thought I; just isn't real, it doesn't go like this. This is only a stage where they act a bit at death. When men die it's in grim earnest—I should have liked to follow these young folk and shake them by the shoulders and say to them "It is so, isn't it? This is just a charade of death, and you mere facetious amateurs acting at dying? You'll get up again after and bow, won't you? People just don't die this way, from a bit of fever and noisy breathing—it takes bullets and wounds, I know that."

"She took the cigarette but soon laid it aside. "I don't like the taste, Robby. I just don't like it any more." I laughed. "It's always so when you've been deprived of anything for a long time." "You were deprived of me for a long time," said she. "It's so only with poisons," I replied: "Schnapps and tobacco." "Human beings are a much worse poison than schnapps or tobacco, darling." I laughed. "You are a clever child, Pat.""

"If you want to live still, then there must be something you love. It's harder, but it's easier too. You see, I had to die; and now I'm just thankful I have had you. I might easily have been alone and unhappy. Then I would have been glad to die. Now it is hard; but to make up, I'm quite full of love, as a bee is full of honey when it comes back to the hive in the evening. If I had to choose, of the two I would still choose the same."

"About the only thing I can think of now—about living and dying. Then when I am sad and understand nothing any more, I say to myself that it's better to die while you still want to live, than to die and want to die."

"What is it, Pat?" I asked. "It ticks so loud," she whispered. "What? The watch?" She nodded. "It's so threatening—" I took the watch off my wrist. She looked anxiously at the second hand. "Throw it away." I took the watch and flung it against the wall. "There, it's not ticking any more now. Now time is standing still. We've torn it in two. Now only we two are here; we two, you and me and no one else." She looked at me. Her eyes were very big. "Darling—" she whispered. I could not bear her glance. It came from far away and passed through me to some place beyond. "Old lad," I murmured, "dear, brave, old lad."

""Pat," said I. "Pat." And for the first time she did not answer me."

"The morning came and it was she no longer."