Flotsam (5 page)

He took out another cigarette. Kern lit it for him.

“How old are you?” Steiner asked.

“Twenty-one. Almost twenty-two.”

“Well, well, almost twenty-two. No laughing matter is it, Baby?”

Kern shook his head.

For a time Steiner was silent. Then he said: “At twenty-one I was in the war. In Flanders. That was no joke either. This sort of thing is a hundred times better. Can you understand that?”

“Yes.” Kern turned toward him. “It’s better than being dead, too. I know all that.”

“Then you know a lot. Before the war very few people knew that.”

“Before the war! That was a hundred years ago.”

“A thousand.” Steiner laughed. “When I was twenty-two I was in a field hospital. I learned something there. Do you want to know what?”

“Yes.”

“All right.” Steiner drew on his cigarette. “There was nothing much wrong with me. A flesh wound, not very painful. But beside me lay my friend. Not just any friend—my friend. A piece of shrapnel had torn open his belly. He lay there and screamed. No morphine, see? There wasn’t even enough for the officers. On the second day he was so hoarse he could only groan. He begged me to finish him off. I’d have done it, too, if I had known how. On the third day we had pea soup at noon. Thick soup with bacon, the kind we had before the war. Up to then all they had given us was a sort of dishwater. We ate it. We were frightfully hungry. And while I lapped up mine with delight, like a starving ox, I saw, over the rim of the dish, my friend’s face with its split, gaping lips and I saw that he was dying in agony; two hours later he was dead. And I had devoured a meal, and it had tasted better than anything in my life.”

He paused.

“You were dreadfully hungry,” Kern said.

“No, that’s not the point. It’s this: a man can gasp out his life beside you—and you feel none of it. Pity, sympathy, sure—but you don’t feel the pain. Your belly is whole and that’s what counts. A half-yard away someone’s world is snuffed out in roaring agony—and you feel nothing. That’s the misery of the
world. Make a note of it, Baby. That’s why progress is so slow, and things slip back so fast. Do you believe it?”

“No,” Kern said.

Steiner laughed. “All right. But think about it sometimes. Maybe it will be a help.”

He stood up. “I’m off. Back. The customs man isn’t expecting me now. He kept watch for the first half-hour. Early tomorrow he’ll be on the lookout again. It won’t occur to him that I might crawl back in the meantime. That’s the psychology of a customs man. Thank God the prey usually gets to be smarter than the hunter. Do you know why?”

“No.”

“Because he has more at stake.” He slapped Kern on the shoulder. “That’s why the Jews have become the slyest people in the world. It’s the first law of life: Danger sharpens the wits.”

He gave Kern his hand. It was big and dry and warm. “Good luck. Perhaps we’ll run into each other again. I’m often at the Café Sperler in the evenings. You can ask for me there.”

Kern nodded.

“Well, take care of yourself. And don’t forget the deck of cards. It’s a distraction and it doesn’t make you think. That’s important for people without a place to live. You’re not bad at jass and tarots. At poker you must take more chances. Bluff more.”

“All right,” Kern said. “I’ll learn to bluff. And thank you. For everything.”

“You’ll have to get over being thankful. No, don’t do that. Perhaps it will be a help. I don’t mean with others, that’s neither here nor there. I mean what it does for you yourself. Warms your heart when you can feel it. And remember this: Anything’s better than war.”

“And better than being dead.”

“I don’t know about being dead. But better than dying, anyhow. So long, Baby.”

“So long, Steiner.”

Kern sat where he was for a time. The sky had become clear and the landscape was peaceful; there were no people in it. Kern sat quietly in the shadow of the beech tree. The bright translucent green of the foliage above him was like a great sail attached to the earth and driving it before a gentle breeze through infinite blue space—past the beacon lights of the stars and the light-buoy of the moon.

Kern decided to try to get to Pressburg that night, and from there to Prague. It was always safest in a city. He opened his bag and took out a clean shirt and a pair of socks. He knew it was important to look neat, in case he met anyone on the road. Then, too, a change would help him shake off the prison atmosphere.

He felt strange standing naked in the moonlight. As though he were a lost child. Quickly he picked up the fresh shirt from the grass and pulled it over his head. It was a blue shirt—chosen because it showed the dirt less. In the moonlight it looked pale gray and violet. He resolved not to lose courage.

KERN ARRIVED
in Prague in the afternoon. He left his bag at the station and went at once to the police. He had not made up his mind to report; he simply wanted peace to consider what he should do next. The police station was the best place for that purpose. There were no policemen there wandering around asking for papers.

He sat down on a bench in the hall. Opposite him was the office in which aliens were interviewed.

“Is the official with the pointed beard still here?” he asked a man sitting beside him.

“I don’t know. The one I’ve seen has no beard.”

“Well, maybe he has been transferred. How are things here now?”

“Not bad,” the man said. “You can get a permit for a few days all right. But after that it gets tough. There are too many here.”

Kern thought it over. If he secured a permit to stay for a few days he could get, as he had learned from previous experience, cards entitling him to food and a place to sleep for about a
week, from the Committee for Refugees. But if they wouldn’t give it to him he ran the risk of being locked up and put back across the border.

“Your turn next,” said the man beside him.

Kern glanced up. “Don’t you want to go first? I’m in no hurry.”

“Fine.”

The man got up and went inside. Kern decided to see what luck the other would have before making up his mind whether to go in. He strolled restlessly up and down the corridor. Finally the man came out. Kern rushed up to him. “How did it go?” he asked.

“Ten days!” the man beamed. “What luck! And without even asking for it. He must be in a good humor. Or perhaps it was because there aren’t so many here today. Last time I only got five days.”

Kern pulled himself together. “Then I’ll try it too.”

The official did not have a pointed beard. Nevertheless Kern thought he had seen him before. Perhaps he had had the beard shaved off in the interval. He was toying with a handsome mother-of-pearl pocketknife. “Immigrant?” he asked, glancing at Kern with weary fishlike eyes.

“Yes.”

“From Germany?”

“Yes. I got here today.”

“Any papers?”

“No.”

The official nodded. He snapped shut the blade of his knife and opened the corkscrew. Kern noticed that in the mother-of-pearl handle there was also a nailfile. The official began carefully smoothing his thumb nail with it. Kern waited. It seemed to him that the nail of this weary man before him was
the most important thing in the world. He hardly dared breathe for fear of disturbing him and making him angry. He just locked his hands unobserved behind his back.

Finally the nail was finished. The official inspected it with satisfaction and looked up. “Ten days,” he said. “You may stay here ten days. Then you must get out.”

Kern felt the tension snap. He thought he was falling but he was just taking a deep breath. Then he quickly got control of himself. He had learned to exploit his opportunities. “I’d be grateful to you,” he said, “if I could have two weeks.”

“Can’t be done. Why?”

“I’m waiting for my papers to be sent to me and I need a permanent address. Then I want to go to Austria.”

Kern was afraid he had ruined everything at the last instant; but once started he could not stop himself. He lied fluently and fast. He would just as gladly have told the truth, but he knew he had to lie. The official, on the other hand, knew he had to believe those lies, for there was no possibility of checking up on them. So it came about that both were almost convinced that they were talking about the truth.

The official shut the corkscrew of his knife with a snap. “All right,” he said. “As an exception, two weeks. But after that there will be no extension.”

He took out a form and began to fill it in. Kern looked at him as though it were an archangel writing. He could hardly conceive that everything had worked out this way. Up to the last instant he expected the official to look in the card index and find out that he had already been in Prague twice. And so to avoid this he gave a different first name and a false birth date. Then he could always maintain that it had been his brother.

But the official was much too weary to look up anything.
He pushed the form toward Kern. “Here! Are there more outside?”

“No, I don’t think so. At least when I came in there was no one else there.”

“Fine.”

The man took out his handkerchief and began lovingly to polish the mother-of-pearl handle of his knife. He hardly noticed when Kern said thanks and then rushed out as if his permit might even now be taken away from him.

Not until Kern was outside in front of the gate of the building did he pause and look around him. Sweet heaven, he thought, overcome with emotion. Sweet blue heaven! I’m back again. I have not been locked up; I don’t have to be afraid for fourteen days—fourteen whole days and fourteen nights, an eternity! God bless the man with the mother-of-pearl knife. I hope before long he finds one with a disappearing watch and a pair of gold scissors in it.

Beside him at the entrance stood a policeman. Kern touched the permit in his pocket, then with sudden decision approached the policeman. “What time is it, officer?” he asked.

He had a watch of his own but it was a rare experience for him to be able to approach a policeman without being afraid.

“Seven,” growled the policeman.

“Thanks.” Kern walked slowly down the steps. He would have liked to run. Now for the first time he believed all this was true.

The big waiting room of the Committee for the Aid of Refugees was overcrowded with people. But strangely enough it gave the impression of being empty. The people stood and sat in the half-darkness like shadows. Almost no one spoke. Each
of them had told and repeated a hundred times all the facts that concerned him. Now there was only one thing left to do—wait. This was the last barrier against despair.

More than half of those present were Jews. Beside Kern sat a pale man with a pear-shaped head holding a violin case on his knees. On the other side crouched an old man with a scar running across his bulging forehead. He was restlessly opening and closing his hands. Beside him, pressed close together, sat a blond young man and a dark girl. They were holding hands tightly as though they feared that if their attention wandered for so much as an instant they might even here be torn away from each other. They were not looking at each other; they were looking somewhere in space or into their past, and their eyes were empty of emotion. Behind them sat a fat woman who was silently weeping. The tears ran out of her eyes over her cheeks and chin and onto her dress; she paid no attention to them and made no attempt to stop them. Her hands lay limp in her lap.

In this atmosphere of silent resignation and sorrow a child was unheedingly at play. It was a girl of about six with black hair and sparkling eyes. Impatiently and quickly she skipped around the room.

Finally she stopped in front of the man with the pear-shaped head. She looked at him for a while and then pointed to the case he was holding on his knee. “Is there a violin in there?” she asked boldly in a piping voice.

The man looked at the child a moment as though he did not understand, then he nodded.

“Show it to me,” the girl said.

“Why?”

“I want to see it.”

The violinist hesitated an instant, then opened his case and
took out an instrument wrapped in a violet silk cloth. With loving hands he unwrapped it.

The child stared at the violin for a long time, then she cautiously raised one hand and touched the strings.

“Why don’t you play?” she asked.

The violinist made no reply.

“Go ahead, play something,” the girl repeated.

“Miriam!” A woman with an infant at her breast was calling from the other side of the room in a low, vehement voice. “Come here to me, Miriam.”

The girl paid no attention to her. She was looking at the violinist. “Don’t you know how to play?”

“Yes, I know how.”

“Then why don’t you play?”

The violinist looked around in embarrassment. His big, finely sculptured hand lay around the throat of the violin. The attention of some of those near by had been attracted and they were staring at him. He did not know which way to look.

“After all, I can’t play here,” he said finally.

“But why can’t you?” the girl asked. “Do play, it’s so tiresome here.”