Four Soldiers

[This is the second story in my ongoing translation project of Wolfgang Borchert's On this Tuesday: Nineteen Stories.]

Four soldiers. And they were made of wood and hunger and earth. Of snowstorm and homesickness and whiskers. Four soldiers. And over them shells roared and bit into the snow with black poison yelps. The wood of their four lost faces stood stiffly chiseled in the flickering oil light. Only when the iron above them cried and shattered with frightful barking, one of the wooden heads laughed. And the others grinned gray afterwards. And the oil light bent despondently.
Four soldiers.
Then two blue-red streaks contorted themselves amid the whiskers: Good Lord. Here it won’t need to be plowed in the spring. And not fertilized either, hissed the earth.
One of them confidently rolled a cigarette: Hopefully this isn’t a turnip field. I couldn’t stand turnips in death. But for instance, how do you like radishes? Radishes for all eternity?
The blue-red lips contorted: If only there weren’t earthworms. That will be mighty hard to get used to.
The one in the corner said: But you won’t notice that anymore.
Who said that? asked the cigarette roller, why, who said that?
Then they were quiet. And above them screamed an angry death through the night. It tore black blue at the snow. Then they grinned again. And they looked at the beams above them. But the beams promised nothing.
Then one of them coughed out of his corner: Well, we will see. On that you can all count. And the “count” came so hoarse that the oil light flickered.
Four soldiers. But one who said nothing. He slid his thumbs up and down his rifle. Up and down. Up and down. And he pressed himself against his rifle. But he hated nothing so much as he hated this rifle. Only when it roared above them, then he held himself firmly to it. The oil light bent despondently in his eyes. Then the cigarette roller nudged him. The small one with the hated rifle nervously rubbed the stubble around his mouth. His face was made of hunger and homesickness.
Then the cigarette roller said: You, hand that oil lamp here. Sure, said the small one, and he put his rifle between his knees. And then he took his hand out of his coat and took the oil light and handed it toward him. But then the light fell from his hand. And went out. And went out.
Four soldiers. Their breath was too large and too lonely in the darkness. Then the small one laughed out loud and smacked his hand against his knee:
Boy do I have a shudder! Did you see that? The lamp fell right out of my hand. Such a shudder.
The small one laughed loudly. But in the dark he pressed himself tightly against the rifle that he hated so much.
And the one in the corner thought: No one is amongst us, no one, who does not shake.
The cigarette roller however said: Yes, one shakes all day long. It comes from the cold. This miserable cold.
Then the iron roared above them and shredded the night and the snow.
They are blowing up all the radishes, grinned the one with the blue-red lips.
And they held themselves firmly to their hated rifles. And laughed. Laughed at the dark dark valley.

The Bowling Alley

[This is the first story of On this Tuesday. It opens Part One: In the Snow, in the Clean Snow.]

We are the bowlers.
And we ourselves are the bowling balls.
But we are also the pins,
which topple.
The bowling alley, upon which they thunder,
is our heart.

The Bowling Alley

Two men had made a hole in the earth. It was quite roomy and almost cozy. Like a grave. You endured it.
In front of them they had a gun. Someone had invented it so that you could shoot it at people. Mostly you did not know the people at all. You did not understand their language. And they had done nothing to you. But you had to shoot at them with the gun. Someone had ordered it. And so you could really kill lots of them, someone had invented the gun so that it shot more than sixty times per minute. That’s what had been paid for.
Somewhat farther off from the two men was another hole. Out of it peeked out a head that belonged to a person. It had a nose that could smell perfume. Eyes that could see a town or a flower. It had a mouth, with which he could eat bread and say Inge or Mother. This head saw the two men, to whom someone had given the gun.
Shoot, said the one.
He shot.
So the head was broken. It could no longer smell perfume, no longer see any town and no longer say Inge. Never more.
The two men were in the hole many months. They broke many heads. And those always belonged to people whom they did not know at all. Who had done nothing to them and whom they could not understand. But someone had invented the gun that shot more than sixty times per minute. And someone had ordered it.
Gradually the two men had broken so many heads that you could have made a big mountain out of them. And when the two men slept, the heads began to roll. Like at a bowling alley. With quiet thunder. That woke the two men up.
But someone still ordered it, whispered the one.
But we have done it, cried the other.
But it was frightful, groaned the one.
But sometimes it was also fun, laughed the other.
No, cried the whisperer.
Yes, whispered the other, sometimes it was fun. That’s really it. Real fun.
For hours they sat there in the night. They did not sleep. Then the one said:
But God made us this way.
But God has an excuse, said the other, he doesn’t exist.
He doesn’t exist? Asked the first.
That is his only excuse, answered the second.
But we, we exist, whispered the first.
Yes, we exist, whispered the other.
The two men, whom someone had ordered to break a lot of heads, did not sleep at night. For the heads made quiet thunder.
Then the one said: And now here we sit.
Yes, said the other, now here we sit.
Then someone called: Make ready. It’s getting started again.
The two men stood up and took a hold of the gun.
And always, if they saw a man, they shot at him.
And always it was a man whom they did not know at all. And who had done nothing to them. But they shot at him. For that purpose someone had invented the gun. He had been paid for that.
And someone—someone had ordered it.

Translation Project: Borchert

At some point last semester Jared introduced me to Wolfgang Borchert (1921-1947). At the end of the Second World War and in the immediate postwar period, Borchert rapidly produced an impressive body of work before dying of sickness contracted while serving on the Eastern Front. His play, Draussen vor der Tür (Outside in Front of the Door), was first performed on stage the day after he died.

I started reading Borchert's collection of short stories, An diesem Dienstag (On this Tuesday), a month or so ago, and I thought it would be an interesting exercise to translate some of them and post them on this blog. The stories deal with soldiers' lives on the Eastern Front and with their challenges reintegrating into postwar society. They extremely short, usually only a few pages long, and written in a rhythmic, minimalist style that sometimes seems more like poetry than prose.

There are nineteen short stories in On this Tuesday. I will post the stories one at a time, as I translate them. Enjoy!