a shirt with a fleur-de-lis badge on the breast pocket, a peaked hat, a knapsack, and a jackknife, and I was sent off with marching groups into the countryside. In the evenings Abi, the leader, crept under the blanket with me at the hostel and asked me if I wanted to be his adjutant. He embraced me with his hairy arms and legs, his bristly chin roamed over my face and his thick, red lips tried to kiss my mouth. I turned away from him but the voluptuous nauseating dream continued. We climbed naked in the trees, not in free, animal-like nakedness, but in a frantic feverish nakedness, we emptied our semen into the rough bark of the trees, we whipped each other with switches and wrestled with one another in burning lasciviousness in the moist warm earth, we burrowed our way through the woods, built shelters, stayed overnight in barracks where we learned to handle machine guns, and in the realization of my old war games I took part in an attack on the camp of an enemy group, we rushed out of our ambush over to their tents, plundered and sacked them, then as quick as lightning disappeared again into the woods. Close in front of me I still see the frightened face of a boy from whom, despite his pleadings, I wrested a carved staff, and thenpossessed with the flush of victory rushed off with my loot. Like an evil omen this crying terror-stricken face now rose up in front of me, I felt that somewhere I was doing violence to myself, but I did not perceive it, I was caught up by a whirling hurricane. Everything was inflated and swollen. As I had myself been courted so now I courted another, moodily he let himself be kissed by me, then deceived me, looked from his embracing smilingly over to me, threw back his head with its long black hair and shut his eyes. Everything was filled with furtive enticements, advances, jealousies, and slanderings. Favorites were played off one against the other, and ingenious punishments devised for the scapegoats. All the destructiveness and lust for power in us was allowed to unfold. I became Friederle. I was there when a weak one was dragged to the stove and made to kiss the hot iron, I was there when we pushed a prisoner off on a raft on a flooded building site and pelted it with lumps of clay, I was filled with brief happiness to be able to be one of the strong ones, although I knew that my place was among the weaklings. As the sly and treacherous and sinister elements within us grew, we began to throw our weight about in the streets, fires were started, shop windows smashed, passersby were knocked down and flags were borne past to sarcastic cries of Hats off. Contorted in a cramp of reverence we sang the national anthem and heaven help him who did not bare his head. In the evenings in the blossoming avenues I swept out on my bicycle after the girls. But it seemed impossible ever to touch these shrinking figures with their darkly gigglingvoices. Unattainable, I saw the brightness of their dresses dissolve into the depths of the leaf-shaded streets, dazed by the heavy scent of the blossom I heard soft steps beside me, heard the whispering of a tender voice in my ear, and ever more deeply I gave myself up to the hallucinations of the night till a dream being rose at my side, until I saw a face next to me, a face without features, a face that was a conglomeration of my own feelings, and I caressed this face, this face of self-love, no other face existed, thus I had to invent one, I kissed this face, I kissed the air, I kissed myself reeling under my need for love, and everything sank from me, the pressure of school, the threats and warnings, and I heard the demands of the world now only as a distant eternal surge. And I changed even this surge to my own purposes. In the evenings, alone in my room, a wild sea surrounded the island on which I lived with my beloved, here the waves had tossed us up onto the beach, and here we dwelt between the cliffs in a tumbledown hut, entirely given up to our mad love. It was
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