Page:The Best continental short stories of and the yearbook of the continental short story 1924-25.pdf/77

 —a faithful and loyal friendship for that comrade, and I don’t hesitate to pronounce and recognize his name. But you must hear me pronounce it. I shall not utter it from the hollow of my tongue, nor with honeyed lips, but with my teeth, my throat and with contracted palate, so that it may seem the name of a good, rough hand who makes everything ring around him wherever he goes. Here it is—listen: “War-r-ming up, my fine fellows!” What a pity you didn’t hear! My palate is still numb, and the swelling there goes clear to my throat!

Rough times have happened. You were aroused right after midnight, you opened your eyes with a groan, the shadows jostled around you as a black ram might do, punching you in the eye with heavy blows, as soon as you came out of the dugout. In the night shadows, the rain crackled as if thousands of porcupines were devouring millions of cockroaches. You force your jaws open in a painful yawn, and a shiver runs over your bones, which shake like gravel in a bag. God and the world were great, there in the far-away land, and, somewhere in the vast world dogs were asleep in their kennels, the cattle were drowsing near the manger in the warm stable, and the forest guard was sheltering himself from the rain below some gable end, his hands buried in his great sleeves. Or, if he was a man of dire destiny, a doer of shady deeds—if he had killed his father that night, for example—that man was fleeing beneath the flood of rain, through little obscure lanes, or across the fields. Whatever the man, he was soothed by a feverish satisfaction, and warmed by whatever he had done, was out on this rainy night on his own affairs. We poor chaps were not at all out on our own affairs. We were merely like chalk-marks, quickly erased by one stroke of the sponge. We were signed and sealed to others, we were at the mercy of other wills, we were destroyed by other wills.

We have just been awakened so that we may fully understand our nullity, and just when we wanted to sleep to forget everything. This day, whose sorrow exists in us, has begun too soon. The thing which was awaiting us was a four hours’ escalade of the rude sides of the moun-