He felt it his duty to go up to him. “Come, father,” he said, leading him away. At the door his father looked into his face and said: “He died for honour,” as if he wished to learn the words by heart, and wished Joachim also to do so.

Then a great number of people arrived. The village fire brigade were standing in the yard. The neighbouring military associations also put in an appearance, making an orderly show of top-hats and frock-coats on which not infrequently an Iron Cross was to be seen. Carriages from the houses in the vicinity drove up, and while the vehicles were being directed to a place where they could remain in the shade, Joachim had to greet the visitors and do the honours beside his brother’s coffin. Baron von Baddensen arrived alone, for his wife and daughter were still in Berlin, and as Joachim greeted him he was seized by the thought, angrily dismissed at once, that this gentleman might well now regard the only remaining son at Stolpin as a desirable son-in-law, and he felt ashamed for Elisabeth. From the gable of the house a black flag hung motionlessly, almost reaching down to the terrace.

His mother descended the stairs on his father’s arm. The visitors were astonished at her calmness, indeed admired her. But her calmness was probably due simply to the slowness of feeling that characterized her. The funeral procession formed up, and as the carriages turned into the village street, and the house of God lay before them, everyone was heartily glad that they could now step out of the dust and heat of the afternoon sun, which had burned fiercely on their thick mourning-suits and uniforms, into the cool white church. The pastor gave an address in which the quality of honour was much stressed and by adroit turns linked with the honour that is due to God: to the pealing of the organ their voices rose, acknowledging that from our loved ones we must part … with pain and smart, and Joachim kept waiting for the rhyme to see that it came. Then on foot they proceeded to the cemetery, over whose portal glittered in golden letters: “Rest in Peace,” and the equipages followed slowly in a long-stretching cloud of dust. The sunny sky arched, a violet-blue, over the dry, crumbling earth that was waiting for them to give Helmuth’s body into its keeping; though indeed it was not the earth, but only the family vault, a little open cellar, that was yawning as if in boredom for the newcomer. When Joachim had three times emptied the little spade into the hole he looked down, saw the ends of his grandfather’s and his uncle’s coffins, and thought that it was because they had to keep a place for his father that they had not buried Uncle Bernhard here. But then as the shovelled earth fell on the lid of Helmuth’s coffin and the stony sides of the tomb, standing there with the toy shovel in his hand he could not help thinking of days spent as a child in the soft river-sand, and he saw his brother again as a boy, saw himself lying on the bier, and it seemed to him that the dryness of this summer day was cheating Helmuth not only out of his parents, but out of death itself. For Joachim thought of a soft rainy day for his own death, a day in which the heavens themselves would sink to receive his soul, so that it might flow away as in Ruzena’s arms. Unchaste thoughts, out of place here, but it was not he alone who was responsible for them, but all the others to whom now he gave place at the graveside, yes, even his father shared in the blame for them: for all their religion was a sham, was brittle and dusty and at the mercy of the sun and the rain. Could one not almost wish for the negro host, so that they might sweep all this away, and the Saviour might arise in new glory and lead men back to His kingdom? A Christ hung on the marble cross over the tomb, clothed only with the rag that covered His loins and the crown of thorns from which the bronze blood-drops fell, and Joachim too felt drops on his cheeks; perhaps they were tears that he had not noticed, perhaps however it was only the oppressive heat; he did not know, and went on shaking the hands that were held out to him.

The military associations and the fire brigade had accorded the dead man the last honour of a march past and a sharp leftward turn of their heads; their boots rang sharply on the gravel of the path, and four abreast they marched stiffly out through the cemetery gates to the curt, military commands of their officer. Standing on the steps of the family vault, Herr von Pasenow with his hat in his hand, Joachim with his hand to his cap, Frau von Pasenow between them, they acknowledged the march past. The other soldiers present stood at attention with their hands raised in salute. Thereupon the equipages advanced, and Joachim and his parents stepped into their carriage, whose door-handle and other silver furnishings, no less than the silver of the harness, had been carefully covered with crêpe by the coachman; Joachim assured himself that the very whip had been decorated with a crêpe rosette. Now his mother was crying, and Joachim, who could think of nothing to say to comfort her, once more could not comprehend why it should have been Helmuth, and not himself, who had been hit by the fatal bullet. But his father sat stiffly on the black-leather seat, which was not hard and tattered like the seats of the Berlin droshkies, but flexible and well quilted with leather buttons. Several times his father seemed on the point of saying something, something to sum up the line of thought that obviously occupied and completely absorbed him, for he made as if to speak, but then fell into blank silence again, only moving his lips soundlessly; at last he said sharply: “They have accorded him the last honours,” lifted one finger as if he were waiting for something more, or wished to add something, then laid his hand back palm downwards on his knee again. Between the end of his black glove and his cuff with its great black cuff-link a strip of reddish-haired skin was visible.

The next few days passed in silence. Frau von Pasenow went about her business; she was in the byre at milking time, in the hen-house when the eggs were collected, in the laundry. Joachim rode out a few times into the fields; it was the horse that he had given to Helmuth, and to take it out now was like a service of love to the dead. At evening the yard was swept and the servants sat on the benches before their wing enjoying the soft, cool breeze. Once during the night there was a thunderstorm, and Joachim realized with alarm that he had almost forgotten Ruzena.