The Train Was On Time (11 page)

“I almost didn’t recognize you,” she said in welcoming tones. “Come in! And these,” she said, indicating Andreas and the other man, “these are two young friends of yours,” she shook her head disapprovingly, “two very, very young friends for our house.”

All three men went inside and set down their luggage in an alcove in the hall.

“We need our passes stamped for the train tomorrow morning at five, the courier train, you know the one I mean.”

The woman looked doubtfully at the two younger men. She was a bit nervous. Her graying hair was a wig, you could tell. Her narrow, sharp-featured face with the gray, indeterminate
eyes was made up, very discreetly made up. She was wearing a smart dress patterned in red and black, closed at the neck so as not to show her skin, that faded neck-skin, like the skin of a fowl She ought to wear a high closed collar, Andreas thought, a general’s collar.

“Very well,” said the woman, with some hesitation, “and … anything else?”

“Maybe a drink, and I’d like a girl, how about you fellows?”

“No,” said Andreas, “no girl.”

The blond fellow flushed and was sweating with fear. It must be terrible for him, Andreas thought, maybe it would help him to have a girl.

Suddenly Andreas heard music. It was a snatch of music, the merest shred. Somewhere a door had been opened to a room where there must be a radio, and in the half-second that the door was open he heard a few snatches of music, like someone searching along a radio panel for the right station … jazz … marching songs … a resounding voice and a bit of Schubert … Schubert … Schubert.… Now the door was shut again, but Andreas felt as if someone had thrust a knife into his heart and opened a secret floodgate: he turned pale, swayed, and leaned against the wall. Music … a snatch of Schubert … I’d give ten years of my life to hear a whole Schubert song again, but all I’ve got is twelve and three-quarter hours, it must be five o’clock by now.

“How about you,” asked the oldish woman, whose mouth was horrible. He could see that now, it was a narrow, cramped slot of a mouth, a mouth that was only interested in money, a moneybox mouth. “How about you,” asked the woman, alarmed, “don’t you want anything?”

“Music,” stammered Andreas, “do you sell music here too?” She looked at him in bewilderment, hesitated. No doubt there was nothing she had not sold. Rubber stamps and girls
and pistols—that mouth was a mouth that dealt in everything, but she didn’t know whether it was possible to sell music.

“I …” she said, embarrassed, “music … but of course.” It’s always a good idea to start with yes. You can always say no later. If you say no right off, your chances of doing business are nil.

Andreas had straightened up again. “Will you sell me some music?”

“Not without a girl,” smiled the woman.

Andreas threw Willi an agonized look. He didn’t know what it would cost. Music
and
a girl, and strangely enough Willi understood that look at once. “Remember the mortgage, my lad,” he cried, “long live the Lvov mortgage! It’s all ours!”

“All right,” Andreas said to the woman, “I’ll take some music and a girl.” The door was opened by three girls who stood laughing in the hall, they had been listening to the negotiations, two were brunettes and one was a redhead. The redhead, who had recognized Willi and flung her arms around his neck, called out to the oldish woman: “Why don’t you sell him the ‘opera singer’?” The two brunettes laughed, and one of them appropriated the blond fellow and laid a hand on his arm. He gave a sob at her touch, buckled at the knees like a straw, and the brunette had to grab him and hold on to him, whispering: “Don’t be scared, dearie, there’s no need to be scared!”

Actually it was a good thing the blond fellow was sobbing; Andreas wanted to weep too, the waters behind the floodgate were pressing forward to where the wall had been pierced. At last I’ll be able to cry, but I’m not going to cry in front of this slot of a mouth that’s only interested in money. Maybe I’ll cry when I’m with the “opera singer.”

“That’s right,” said the remaining brunette pertly. “If he wants music, send him the opera singer.” She turned away, and
Andreas, still leaning against the wall, could hear the door being opened again, and again his ear caught a snatch of music, but it wasn’t Schubert … it was something by Liszt … Liszt was beautiful too … and Liszt could make me cry, he thought, I haven’t cried for three and a half years.

The blond fellow was leaning against his brunette like a child, his head resting on her breast; he was weeping, and this weeping was good. No more Sivash marshes in these tears, no more terror, and yet much pain, much pain. And the redhead, who had a good-natured face, said to Willi, whose arm was clasped around her waist: “Buy him the opera singer, he’s a sweetie, I think he’s a real sweetie with his music.” She blew Andreas a kiss: “He’s young and a real sweetie, you old rascal, and you must buy him the opera singer and a piano.…”

“The mortgage, the whole Lvov mortgage is ours!” Willi shouted.

The oldish woman led Andreas up the stairs and along a corridor, past many closed doors, into a room furnished with some easy chairs, a couch, and a piano.

“This is a little bar for special occasions,” she said. “The price is six hundred a night, and the opera singer—that’s a nickname, of course—the opera singer costs two hundred and fifty a night, not including refreshments.”

Andreas staggered over to one of the armchairs, nodded, waved her away, and was glad to see the woman go. He heard her call out in the corridor: “Olina … Olina.…”

I ought to have rented just the piano, thought Andreas, just the piano, but then he shuddered at the idea of being in this house at all. In despair he dashed to the window and flung back the curtain. Outside it was still light. Why this artificial darkness, it’s the last day I’ll ever see, why draw the curtains over it? The sun was still above a hill and shining with gentle warmth into gardens lying behind handsome villas, shining on the roofs of the villas. It’s time they harvested the apples,
Andreas thought, it’s the end of September, the apples must be ripe here too. And in Cherkassy another pocket has been closed, and the pickpockets will manage it somehow. Everything’s being managed, everything’s being managed, and here I sit by a window in a brothel, in the “rubber-stamp house,” with only twelve more hours to live, twelve and a half hours, and I ought to be praying, praying, on my knees, but I’m powerless against this floodgate that’s been opened, pierced open by the dagger that was thrust into me downstairs in the hall: music. And it’s just as well I’m not going to spend the whole night alone with this piano. I’d go crazy, a piano especially. A piano. It’s a good thing Olina is coming, the “opera singer.” The map! I forgot the map, he thought. I forgot to ask the blond fellow for it; I just have to know what lies thirty miles beyond Lvov … I just have to … it can’t be Stanislav, not even Stanislav, I won’t even get as far as Stanislav. Between Lvov and Cernauti … how certain I was at first about Cernauti! At first I would have been ready to bet I’d get to see Cernauti, a suburb of Cernauti … only another thirty miles now … another twelve hours.…

He swung round in alarm at a very soft sound, as of a cat slipping into the room. The opera singer was standing by the door, which she had closed softly behind her. She was small and very slight, with fine, delicate features, and her golden, very beautiful hair was tied loosely back on the crown of her head. There were red slippers on her feet, and she wore a pale-green dress. As soon as their eyes met her hand went to her shoulder, as though to undo her dress then and there.…

“No!” cried Andreas, and instantly regretted letting fly at her like that. I’ve already bawled out one of them, he thought, and I’ll never be able to wipe that out. The opera singer looked at him less offended than surprised. The strange note of anguish in his voice had caught her ear. “No,” said Andreas more gently, “don’t.”

He moved toward her, stepped back, sat down, stood up again, and added: “Is it all right to call you by your first name?”

“Yes,” she said, very low. “My name is Olina.”

“I know,” he said. “Mine’s Andreas.”

She sat down in the armchair he gestured toward and gave him a puzzled, almost apprehensive look. He walked to the door and turned the key in the lock. Sitting beside her he studied her profile. She had a finely drawn nose, neither round nor pointed, a Fragonard nose, he thought, and a Fragonard mouth too. She looked wanton in a way, but she could just as easily be innocent, as innocently wanton as those Fragonard shepherdesses, but she had a Polish face, the nape of her neck was Polish, supple, elemental.

He was glad he had brought cigarettes. But he was out of matches. She quickly got up, opened a closet that was crammed with bottles and boxes, and took out some matches. Before handing them to him she wrote something down on a sheet of paper lying in the closet. “I have to note down everything,” she said, her voice still low, “even these.”

They smoked and looked out into the golden countryside with the gardens of Lvov behind the villas.

“You used to be an opera singer?” asked Andreas.

“No,” she said, “they just call me that because I studied music. They think if you’ve studied music you must be an opera singer.”

“So you can’t sing?”

“Oh yes I can, but I didn’t study singing, I just sing … like that, you know.”

“And what did you study?”

“The piano,” she said quietly, “I wanted to be a pianist.”

How strange, thought Andreas, I wanted to be a pianist too. A stab of pain constricted his heart. I wanted to be a pianist, it was the dream of my life. I could play quite nicely, really, quite well, but school hung around my neck like a leaden weight. School prevented me. First I had to finish school. Everyone in Germany first has to finish school. You can’t do a thing
without a high-school diploma. First I had to finish school, and by the time I’d done that it was 1939, and I had to join the labor service, and by the time I was through with that the war had started; that was four and a half years ago and I haven’t touched a piano since. I wanted to be a pianist. I dreamed about it, just as much as other people dream of becoming school principals. But I wanted to be a pianist, and I loved the piano more than anything else in the world, but nothing came of it. First school, then labor service, and by that time they’d started a war, the bastards.… The pain was suffocating him, and he had never felt as wretched in his life. It’ll do me good to suffer. Perhaps that’ll help me to be forgiven for sitting here in a brothel in Lvov beside the opera singer who costs two hundred and fifty for a whole night without matches and without piano, the piano that costs six hundred. Perhaps I’ll be forgiven for all that because this pain is numbing me, paralyzing me, because she said the words “pianist” and “piano.” It’s excruciating, this pain, it’s like an acrid poison in my throat and it’s sliding farther and farther down, through my gullet and into my stomach and spreading all through my body. Half an hour ago I was still happy because I’d drunk Sauternes, because I remembered the terrace above Le Treport where the eyes had been very close to me, and where I played the piano to them, to those eyes, in my imagination, and now I’m consumed with agony, sitting in this brothel beside this lovely girl whom the entire great-and-glorious German Wehrmacht would envy me. And I’m glad I’m suffering, I’m glad I’m almost passing out with pain, I’m happy to be suffering, suffering so excruciatingly, because then I may hope to be forgiven everything, forgiven for not praying, praying, praying, not spending my last twelve hours on my knees praying. But where could I kneel? Nowhere on earth could I kneel in peace. I’ll tell Olina to keep watch at the door, and I’ll get Willi to pay six hundred marks for the piano, and two hundred and fifty marks for the beautiful opera singer without
matches, and I’ll buy Olina a bottle of wine so she won’t get bored.…

“What’s the matter?” Olina asked. There was surprise in her gentle voice since he had cried no.

He looked at her, and it was wonderful to see her eyes. Gray, very gentle, sad eyes. He must give her an answer.

“Nothing,” he said; and then suddenly he asked, and it was a tremendous effort to force the few words out of his mouth through the poison of his pain: “Did you finish your music studies?”

“No,” she said shortly, and he saw it would be cruel to question her. She tossed her cigarette into the large metal ashtray that she had placed on the floor between their two armchairs, and asked, her voice low and gentle again: “Shall I tell you about it?”

“Yes,” he said, not daring to look at her, for those gray eyes, that were perfectly calm, scared him.

“All right.” But she did not begin. She was looking at the floor; he was aware when she raised her head, then she asked suddenly: “How old are you?”

“In February I would be twenty-four,” he said quietly.

“In February you would be twenty-four. Would be … won’t you be?”

He looked at her, astonished. What a sensitive ear she had! And all at once he knew he would tell her about it, her alone. She was the only person who was to know everything, that he was going to die, tomorrow morning, just before six, or just after six, in.…

“Oh well,” he said, “it’s just a manner of speaking. What’s the place called,” he asked suddenly, “that lies thirty miles beyond Lvov toward … toward Cernauti?”

Her astonishment was growing. “Stryy,” she said.

Stryy? What a strange name, Andreas thought, I must have overlooked it on the map. For God’s sake, I must pray
for the Jews of Stryy too. Let’s hope there are still some Jews in Stryy … Stryy … so that’s where it will be, he would die just this side of Stryy … not even Stanislav, not even Kolomyya, and a long long way this side of Cernauti. Stryy! That was it! Maybe it wasn’t even on that map of Willi’s.…

“So you’ll be twenty-four in February,” said Olina. “Funny, so will I.” He looked at her. She smiled. “So will I,” she repeated. “I was born February 12, 1920.”

They looked at each other for a long time, a very long time, and their eyes sank into one another’s, and then Olina leaned toward him, and because the chairs were too far apart she rose, moved toward him, and made as if to put her arms around him, but he turned aside. “No,” he said quietly, “not that, don’t be angry with me, later … I’ll explain.… My … my birthday’s February 15.”