Lewandowski
Lewandowski is a forty-year-old Polish soldier who has lain ten months in the Catholic Hospital with a severe abdominal wound. He is the oldest man in the room, and his long convalescence has made him a familiar, anxious presence among the younger wounded. His wife, Marja, has written from their little home in Poland that she has saved enough for the fare and is coming to see him. The letter becomes his obsession: he carries it everywhere, shows it to everyone, and the postmarks are examined countless times until the address is nearly illegible from grease and thumb-marks. He loses his appetite, even giving away red cabbage and sausage after a few mouthfuls. Then, inevitably, he develops a fever and must return to bed.
The Arrival of Marja and the Ward's Conspiracy
Marja arrives the next afternoon, a tousled little woman with anxious, quick eyes like a bird, wearing a black crinkly mantilla with ribbons. She is shy and terrified at the sight of six men in the room. Lewandowski, gulping dangerously with his Adam's apple, reassures her: "you can come in all right, they won't hurt you." She goes round and proffers each man her hand, then produces the child, who has soiled its napkin. From a large embroidered handbag she takes out a clean one and makes the child fresh, which dispels her first embarrassment. The two begin to talk, but Lewandowski is fidgety, squinting unhappily at his comrades with his round goggle eyes. The time is favourable—the doctor's visit is over, and at most a sister might come in. One of the men goes out to prospect and returns with a nod: "Not a soul to be seen. Now's your chance, Johann, set to." The woman turns red and looks embarrassed, but the men grin good-naturedly and wave away her hesitation. Two men stand guard at the door to forestall the sisters. They agree to hold the post for a quarter of an hour.
The Act and Its Aftermath
Lewandowski can only lie on his side, so one of the men props pillows against him. Albert Kropp takes the child to hold. Everyone turns away, the black mantilla disappears under the bedclothes, and the men make a great clatter, playing skat noisily. All goes well. After a while the child begins to squall, though Albert rocks it desperately. There is a bit of creaking and rustling, and then the child is back with its mother, bottle in mouth. The business is over. The ward now feels like one big family. Marja is happy, and Lewandowski lies there sweating and beaming. He unpacks the embroidered handbag, produces good sausages, and with a flourish saws them into slices. With a handsome gesture he waves toward the men, and Marja goes from one to another, smiling and handing round the sausage. She now looks quite handsome. They call her Mother, and she is pleased, shaking up their pillows for them.
Thematic Significance
Lewandowski's story is a brief, almost comic interlude in a hospital filled with groans, amputations, and the constant threat of the Dying Room. Yet it crystallizes the novel's deepest argument about what remains human in the dehumanizing machinery of war. The men do not merely tolerate Lewandowski's need; they actively conspire to fulfill it, turning a private act into a communal ritual of solidarity. The scene is stripped of sentimentality—the men play skat, the child squalls, the guard is posted—and the result is a raw, unsentimental affirmation of life. Lewandowski himself, a middle-aged Pole with a severe abdominal wound, becomes a symbol of the ordinary man's stubborn, physical claim on existence. His wife's visit, and the ward's complicity, are a small victory against the vast apparatus of death that surrounds them. The moment passes, and the hospital's routine of pain and death resumes, but for that quarter of an hour, the men have reclaimed something the war has tried to take: the right to live, to love, and to be foolishly, desperately human.
