Flotsam Read online

  “Here at the right,” said the official, “first and last name.”

  Kern got possession of himself and signed.

  “To which border do you wish to be taken?” asked the official.

  “The Czech border.”

  “All right. You will leave in an hour. You will be escorted there.”

  “I have a few things at the place I was staying. Can I get them?”

  “What are they?”

  “A bag with shirts and that kind of thing.”

  “All right. Tell the officer who is to take you to the border. You can stop on the way.”

  The sergeant led Kern downstairs again and took Steiner back with him.

  “What happened?” asked the Chicken, eagerly.

  “We’re going to get out in an hour.”

  “Jesus Christ!” said the Pole. “Then that crap start again.”

  “Would you rather stay here?” asked the Chicken.

  “If eating better—and me with little guard job—I very glad staying.”

  Kern took out his handkerchief and cleaned up his suit as best he could. His shirt was very dirty after two weeks’ wear. He reversed the cuffs which he had been carefully protecting. The Pole looked at him. “In one, two years all that—all the same,” he predicted.

  “Where are you going?” asked the Chicken.

  “Czecho. And you? To Hungary?”

  “Switzerland. I’ve thought it over. Come along. From there we’ll get them to push us into France.”

  Kern shook his head. “No, I’m going to try to get to Prague.”

  A few minutes later Steiner was brought in. “Do you know the name of the policeman who hit me in the face when we were arrested?” he asked Kern. “Leopold Schaefer. He lives at Number 27, Trautenau Alley. They read it to me as part of the record. Of course it didn’t say that he hit me. Just that I had threatened him.” He looked at Kern. “Do you think I am going to forget that name and address?”

  “No,” Kern said. “Certainly not.”

  “Neither do I.”

  A plain-clothes man from the Criminal Bureau took Steiner and Kern away. Kern was excited. Once out of the building, he stopped involuntarily. The scene that met his eyes was as soothing as a soft breeze from the south. The sky was blue with a first hint of dusk over the houses, the gables caught the last red light of the sun, the Danube shimmered, and shiny busses pushed their way through the streams of people hurrying home or strolling about the streets. A group of girls in bright dresses hurried by laughing. Kern thought he had never seen anything so beautiful.

  “Let’s go,” said the official.

  Kern winced. He noticed that a passer-by was staring hard at him and he looked down at himself in shame.

  They walked along the streets with the official between them. Tables and chairs had been set out in front of the cafés, and everywhere people were sitting and talking cheerfully. Kern lowered his head and began to walk faster. Steiner looked at him in good-natured derision: “Well, kid, that’s not for us, eh? That sort of thing?”

  “No,” Kern answered and pressed his lips together.

  At the boardinghouse the landlady received them with a mixture of annoyance and sympathy. She gave them their things at once; nothing had been stolen. While he was still in the cell Kern had made up his mind to put on a clean shirt, but now after walking through the streets he decided not to. He took the shabby valise under his arm and thanked the landlady.

  “I’m sorry you’ve had so much trouble,” he said.

  The landlady dismissed the matter. “Take care of yourself,” she said, “and you too, Herr Steiner. Where are you off to?”

  Steiner made an aimless gesture. “The usual way of the border-bugs, from bush to bush.”

  The landlady stood hesitating a moment, then walked briskly to a walnut cupboard carved in the form of a medieval castle. “Here’s a drink to start you on your way—”

  She brought out three glasses and a bottle.

  “Plum brandy?” Steiner asked. She nodded and offered the official a glass too. The latter smoothed his mustache. “After all, we fellows are only doing our duty,” he explained.

  “Of course.” The landlady refilled his glass. “Why aren’t you drinking?” she asked Kern.

  “I can’t,” Kern said. “Not on an empty stomach.”

  “So that’s it.” The landlady looked him over carefully. She had a cold, pudgy face which now unexpectedly softened. “Heavens, he’s still growing,” she murmured. “Franzi,” she shouted, “a sandwich.”

  “Thanks, that’s not necessary.” Kern blushed. “I’m really not hungry.”

  The waitress brought in a thick ham sandwich. “Don’t put on airs,” said the landlady, “go to it.”

  “Don’t you want half?” Kern asked Steiner. “It’s too much for me.”

  “Don’t talk—eat,” Steiner said.

  Kern ate the sandwich and drank a glass of the brandy, then they took their leave. They rode out of the city by trolley. Kern suddenly felt very tired. The rattling of the car lulled him. As though in a dream he saw the houses glide past, factories, streets, inns with tall walnut trees, meadows, fields in the soft blue dusk of the evening. He was full of food and that affected him like drunkenness. His thoughts became vague and shrouded in dreams—dreams of a white house among blooming chestnut trees; of a deputation of solemn men in morning coats, come to hand him a scroll of honorary citizenship, and of a dictator in uniform who got down on his knees and weepingly implored his forgiveness.

  It was almost dark when they reached the customs house. The official from the Criminal Bureau turned them over to the customs men and then plodded back through the lilac-colored dusk.

  “It’s still too early,” said an officer who was stopping and searching cars. “About nine-thirty is the best time.”

  Kern and Steiner sat down on a bench in front of the door and watched the cars coming up. After a while a second customs man came out. He led them to the right from the customs house along a path. They went through fields that smelled strongly of dew-wet earth, past a few houses with lighted windows, and a patch of woods. Presently the official stopped. “You go on from here. Keep to the left so that you’ll be hidden by the bushes, until you come to the Morava. It’s not deep now. You can easily wade across.”

  The two started. It was very quiet. After a while Kern looked around. The figure of the customs man was a black silhouette against the sky. He was watching them. They went on.

  On the bank of the Morava, they undressed and made bundles of their clothes and belongings. The river was marshy and had a brown-and-silver look. There were stars in the sky and some clouds through which the moon occasionally broke.

  “I’ll go first,” Steiner said. “I’m taller than you.”

  They waded through the river. Kern felt the cool water rising stealthily about his body as though it would never release him. In front of him, Steiner was slowly and cautiously feeling his way forward. He held his knapsack and clothes above his head. The moon glistened on his broad shoulders. In the middle of the river he stopped and looked around. Kern was close behind him. He smiled and nodded to him.

  They climbed out on the opposite bank and dried themselves hastily with their handkerchiefs. Then they dressed and went on. After a while Steiner stopped. “Now we’re across the border,” he said. His eyes were bright, almost glassy, in the light that filtered through the trees. He looked at Kern. “Is there anything different about the trees here? Or the smell of the wind? Aren’t these the same stars? Do men die differently here?”

  “No,” Kern said. “All that’s the same. But I feel different.”

  They found a place under an old beech tree where they were hidden from sight. In front of them lay a gently sloping meadow. In the distance gleamed the lights of a Slovakian village. Steiner opened his knapsack and looked for cigarettes. He glanced at Kern’s valise. “I’ve found a knapsack more practical than a bag. It isn’t so conspicuous. People t
ake you for a harmless hiker.”

  “They check up on hikers too,” Kern said. “Everyone who looks poor gets checked up on. A car would be the best thing.”

  They lit cigarettes. “I’m going back in an hour,” Steiner said. “And you?”

  “I’ll try to make Prague. The police aren’t so bad there. It’s easy to get a permit to stay for a few days. After that we’ll see. Perhaps I’ll find my father and he can help me. I’ve heard that he’s there.”

  “Do you know where he’s living?”

  “No.”

  “How much money have you?”

  “Twelve schillings.”

  Steiner searched his pockets. “Here’s some more. It ought to get you to Prague.”

  Kern looked up quickly. “Go ahead, take it,” Steiner said. “I still have enough for myself.”

  He showed a couple of bills. In the shadow of the trees Kern couldn’t see what they were. He hesitated for an instant, then he took the money.

  “Thanks,” he said.

  Steiner did not reply. He was smoking and the recurrent glow of his cigarette etched his face in light and shadow. “Why are you on the road, anyway?” Kern asked hesitantly. “You’re not a Jew.”

  Steiner was silent for a while. “No, I’m not a Jew,” he said finally.

  There was a rustling in the woods behind them. Kern leaped to his feet. “A rabbit or a squirrel,” Steiner said. Then he turned to Kern. “Here’s something you can think about, kid, when you’re feeling low: You are out of the country, your father is out, your mother is out. I’m out too—but my wife is in Germany. I don’t know what’s happening to her.”

  The rustling behind them came again. Steiner pressed out his cigarette and leaned back against the bole of the beech tree. A breeze was blowing. The moon hung above the horizon, chalk-white and pitiless, as it had been on that last night …

  * * *

  After his escape from the concentration camp, Steiner had hidden for a week at a friend’s house. He had sat in a locked attic room, ready to flee over the roof at the first suspicious sound. When it got dark, his friend brought him bread, preserves, and a couple of bottles of water. On the second night he brought a few books. Steiner read them feverishly, all day long, over and over, trying not to think. He dared not strike a light or smoke. He had to satisfy the needs of nature in a pot hidden in a cardboard box. His friend took it away after dark and brought it back again. They had to be so careful that they barely whispered to each other. The maids who slept near by might have heard and given them away.

  “Does Marie know I’m out?” Steiner had asked, on the first night.

  “No. The house is being watched.”

  “Has anything happened to her?”

  His friend shook his head and went away.

  Steiner always asked the same question. Every night. On the fourth night his friend finally brought him the news that he had seen her. Now she knew where he was. He had had a chance to whisper the news to her. Tomorrow he would see her again—in the market-day crowd. Steiner spent the whole following day writing a letter, which the friend was to give her secretly. In the evening he tore it up. Perhaps she was being watched. For the same reason, he asked his friend not to meet her again. He spent three more nights in the room. Finally his friend came with money, a ticket, and some clothes. Steiner cut his hair and bleached it with peroxide. Then he shaved off his mustache. In the morning he left the house, wearing a laborer’s jacket and carrying a box of tools. He had intended to leave the city immediately, but he weakened. It was two years since he had seen his wife. He walked to the market place. An hour later his wife came. He began to shake. She walked past him, however, without seeing him. He followed her and, when he was close behind her, he said: “Don’t look around. It’s me. Go on! Go on!”

  Her shoulders quivered and she threw back her head. Then she went on. She seemed to be listening with every fiber of her body.

  “Have they done anything to you?” asked the voice behind her.

  She shook her head.

  “Are you being watched?”

  She nodded.

  “Now?”

  She hesitated, then shook her head.

  “I’m going to leave immediately. I’ll try to get across the border. I won’t be able to write you. It’s too dangerous for you.”

  She nodded.

  “You must get a divorce from me.”

  The woman paused in her stride for an instant. Then she went on.

  “You must get a divorce from me. You must go tomorrow and say that you want to divorce me because of my political views. You must say that you hadn’t realized before what they were. Do you understand?”

  His wife did not move her head. She walked straight on, holding herself rigidly erect.

  “You must understand me,” Steiner whispered. “It’s only to make you safe. I would lose my mind if they did anything to you. You must divorce me, then they’ll leave you alone.”

  His wife made no reply.

  “I love you, Marie,” Steiner said softly through his teeth, and his eyes swam with emotion. “I love you and I won’t go unless you promise. I’ll go back unless you promise. Do you understand me?”

  After an eternity, it seemed to him that his wife nodded.

  “You promise?”

  His wife nodded slowly. Her shoulders sagged.

  “I’m going to turn now and come back along the walk to the right. You turn left and come around to meet me. Don’t say anything, don’t make a sign—I just want to see you—once. Then I’ll go. If you hear nothing, it will mean I got across.”

  His wife nodded and walked faster.

  Steiner turned and went along the alley to the right. It was lined with butchers’ stalls. Women with market baskets were bargaining in front of the booths. The meat glistened bloody-white in the sun. The smell was intolerable. The butchers were shouting. But suddenly all that was gone. The hacking of the cleavers on the wooden blocks became the distant whetting of scythes. The step and face of his beloved brought with them familiar scenes—a meadow, a cornfield, birch trees, freedom, and the wind. Their eyes sought each other’s and would not part, and in them were pain and happiness and love and separation—the essence of life itself, full and sweet and wild—and renunciation like a barrier of a thousand flashing knives.

  They moved and stopped in unison and they went on without being aware of it. Then suddenly Steiner’s eyes were empty of sight and it was a while before he could even distinguish the kaleidoscopic colors that unrolled meaninglessly before him without penetrating to his mind.

  He blundered on, began to walk faster, as fast as he could without attracting attention. He knocked a side of slaughtered pig off a butcher’s table and heard the curses of the butcher like the rumbling of a drum. He ran around the corner of an alley and stopped.

  He saw her walking away from the market place. She moved very slowly. At the corner of the street she halted and turned around. For a long time she stood with face upraised and eyes very wide. The wind tugged at her clothes and pressed them against her body. Steiner did not know she saw him. He dared not signal to her, for he felt she might run back to him. After a long time she lifted her hands and pressed them against her breasts. She held herself toward him—she held herself toward him in an agonized, empty and blind embrace, with open mouth and eyes tight closed. Then she turned slowly away, and the shadowy ravine of the street swallowed her up.

  Three days later Steiner crossed the border. The night was bright and windy and a chalk-white moon hung in the sky. Steiner was hard, but once he had the border behind him, he turned, still dripping with cold sweat, and, like a man possessed, whispered back the name of his wife.

  * * *

  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.”