STOLEN LOVE Bob had seen too much. First in the war. Then among the girls at the Café Internation- al, his "comrades" of the street. He moved among the lost and damned, living on borrowed dreams and stolen love. Lovely Patricia was just another refugee from boredom, more generous than most of the "soldiers of love." But when her terrible secret threatened their relationship, Bob knew he had to stay and help her fight back. Snatching warmth and pleasure on the run, their love became a burning protest against a corrupt and cynical world. "It is unlike any love story that you have read, written with a superb simplicity and a directness, in its background and in its characters, that stamp Remarque as a great novelist—more than a great narrator of the horrors of war." Boston HERALD A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR Recognized as one of the world's outstanding novel- ists, Erich Maria Remarque was born in Osnabruck, Ger- many, and is now a United States citizen dividing his time between New York and Switzerland. 3/529 He established himself in the world of letters with the writing of ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT and followed this great World War I novel with THREE COMRADES, ARCH OF TRIUMPH, SPARK OF LIFE, A TIME TO LOVEAND A TIME TO DIE and his very recent bestseller THE BLACK OBELISK. FROM THE REVIEWS "The author of ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT has written a very different, but hardly less memorable novel in THREE COMRADES. Erich Maria Remarque's new novel is less bitter, less intense, than his former one; it is long rather than short—and about the most readable work of Action pub- lished in a long while. It is a novel with a story so fascinating that it can't be laid aside; told through action and incident quickly and directly. It has the simplicity of greatness." —ST. LOUIS STAR-TIMES "The qualities which distinguish Remarque as a writer are abundantly displayed in THREE COMRADES. Simplicity and strength, humor and tenderness, a poet's sensitive reactions both to the things that are tangible and to those that are not—all these have been united in his work from the begin- ning, but to them there is added now, I think, a growing power of characterization . There is evident for the first time the power to build up the story of the unfolding of a hu- man relationship—for THREE COMRADES has for its focus one of the most poignant love stories that have been told in our time." —NEW YORK TIMES "As you read Remarque's kindly, lilting, sad-eyed novel, so in- formal an epilogue to an era, you cannot help placing it against the books in other countries that were written by men like him. You remember the Hemingway of THE SUN ALSO RISES . It is the bitter-sweet tang of youth, the slow ebb of an anxious conscience 'mixing memory and desire,' that one responds to in this book; a pleasure as warmly sad as 5/529 nostalgic, something caught out of turmoil and held against the presence of time." —NEW YORK HERALD TRIBUNE All POPULAR LIBRARY books are carefully selected by the POPULAR LIBRARY Editorial Board from the lists of the country's major book publishers, and represent fiction and non-fiction titles by the world's greatest authors. POPULAR LIBRARY EDITION Published in January, 1958 Copyright, 1936, 1937, by Erich Maria Remarque Published by arrangement with the author. Little, Brown edition published in April, 1937 Five printings British edition published by Hutchinson & Co., Ltd. Swedish edition published by Bonnier, Oyrdendal & Norsk French edition published by Gallimard Israeli edition published by Tversky Spanish edition published by Ercilla,Chile Additional editions published in Italian, Portuguese, Norwegian, Finnish, Danish, Polish, Dutch, Japanese, Czechoslovakian, Roumanian and German. PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA All Rights Reserved Chapter I The sky was yellow as brass, not yet hidden by the smoke from the chimney stacks. Behind the roofs of the factory the radiance was especially bright. The sun must be just rising. I looked at my watch; not eight o'clock. A quarter of an hour too early. Still I opened the gate, and put the petrol pump in readi- ness. There was always a car or two passing at that hour want- ing a fill. Suddenly I heard behind me a harsh, high-pitched squeaking—like the sound of a rusty hoist being turned some- where down under the earth. I stood still and listened. I walked back across the yard to the workshop and cautiously opened the door. A ghost—stumbling about in the gloom! It had a dirty white cloth wound about its head, its skirt was hitched up to give its knees clearance; it had a blue apron, a pair of thick slippers, and was wielding a broom; it weighed around four- teen stone, and was in fact our charwoman, Matilda Stoss. I stood watching her. With all the grace of a hippopot- amus, she made her way staggering among the radiators, singing in a hollow voice as she went "the Song of the Bold Hussar." On the bench by the window stood two cognac bottles, one of them almost empty. Last night they had been full. I had forgotten to lock them away. "But Frau Stoss!" I protested. 9/529 The singing stopped; the broom dropped to the floor. The beatific smile died away. Now it was my turn to be the ghost. "Holy Jesus!" exclaimed Matilda, staring at me with bleary eyes. "I wasn't expecting you yet." "That doesn't surprise me. Did it taste good?" "Sure and it did. But this is so awkward, Herr Lohkamp." She wiped her hand across her mouth. "I just can't understand—" "Come, Matilda, that's an exaggeration. You're only tight —full as a tick, eh?" She maintained her balance with difficulty and stood there blinking like an old owl. Gradually her mind be- came clear. Resolutely she took a step forward. "Man is human, Herr Lohkamp, after all. I only smelled it at first . and then I took just one little nip, be- cause well, you know, I always have had a weak stomach . and then . then I think the Devil must have got hold of me. Anyway, you have no right to lead an old woman into tempta- tion, leaving good bottles standing about like that. ." It was not the first time I had caught her so. She used to come to us for two hours every morning to clean up the work- shop; and though one might leave as much money lying around as one liked she would never disturb it—but schnapps she could smell out as far off as a rat a slice of bacon. I held up the bottles. "Naturally! You've left the custom- ers' cognac. But the good stuff, Herr Köster's own—you've polished it all off." A grin appeared on her weather-beaten face. "Trust me, Herr Lohkamp; I'm a connoisseur! But you won't tell, Herr Lohkamp—and me a poor widow?" 10/529 She unpinned her skirt. "Then I'd better be going. If Herr Köster should catch me . ." She threw up her hands. I went to the cupboard and opened it. "Matilda. ." She came waddling along. I held up a rectangular brown bottle. Protesting, she held up her hands. "It wasn't me," she said. "Honour bright, it wasn't, Herr Lohkamp. I didn't even smell it!" "You don't even know what it is, I suppose?" said I, filling a glass. "No?" she replied, licking her lips. "Rum. Stone Age Jamaica." "Excellent! Then how about a glass?" "Me?" She started back. "This is too much, Herr Lo- hkamp! This is heaping coals of fire on my head. Here's old Stoss goes and mops up all your cognac on the quiet and then you treat her to a rum on top of it! You're a saint, Herr Lo- hkamp, that's what you are! I'll see myself in my grave before I touch a drop of it." "You're quite sure, Matilda?" said I, making to drink it myself. "Well, all right, then," said she swiftly, seizing the glass. "One must take the good as it comes. Even though one doesn't understand. Good health! It's not your birthday, I suppose?" "More or less, Matilda. A good guess." "No, not really?" She seized my hand. "Many happy re- turns! And lots of dough, Herr Lohkamp. Why, I'm all of a quiver. I must have another to celebrate that. I'm as fond of you as if you were my own son!" "Very good." 11/529 I poured her another glass. She tipped it down, and, still singing my praises, she left the workshop. I put the bottle away and sat down at the table. The pallid sunlight through the window shone upon my hands. A queer feeling, a birthday—even though it means nothing. Thirty years. I remember the time when I thought I should never reach twenty—it seemed so far away. And then. I took a sheet of paper from the drawer and began to reckon. Childhood, school—an unresolvable complex of things and happenings—so remote, another world, not real any more. Real life began only in 1916. I had just joined the Army—eighteen years of age, thin and lanky. And a snotty sergeant-major who used to make me practise, on-the-hands- down, over and over again in the mud of the ploughed fields at the back of the barracks .