Page:The Jail, Experiences in 1916.pdf/217

 uncork the bottles,—we drank each other's healths. Declich had tears in his eyes—

And the warder was already there to take me to the head staff-superintendent.

"Goodbye, goodbye. Papa Declich, addio. Papa Declich, coraggio." The door closed behind me, the key rattled.

In the office I received my things back. Watch, pocket-book, ring. And I signed accounts,—I drew more than 50 crowns. A grumpy sergeant-major stood up and introduced himself: (I did not catch his name). "On the editorial staff of the Zeit". "Pleased to meet you,—aversion to the trenches?" He nodded and smiled.

"Could your order a taxicab for me?"

The head staff-superintendent sent a defence-corps man.

In the next room my box was to be examined. "There's nothing in it, but in my head I have an unwritten book about everything that I have seen and experienced". The superintendent smiled.

I went out of that grey building. For the first time alone; I looked at it,—from the office they were looking back at me,—the head staff-superintendent, the grumpy sergeant-major and some others. My taxicab rattled round the corner.

A few weeks later, somebody rang at my door; it was Papa Declich in the defence-corps uniform.

"Papa Declich, have they discharged you?"

They had discharged him and put him into uniform. And why they had discharged him, he did not know, just as he had not known previously why they had imprisomed him.

"Would you like a cigar?"