The Passenger Read online

  He stood up and left the post office, found a newsstand, and bought four different newspapers. Then he walked to a small pub, ordered a glass of beer, and went to the toilet. There he unfolded the papers, took four thousand-mark bills out of his briefcase, and placed one inside each of the papers. Then he carefully folded them back together, put them in his briefcase, and returned to his seat. He called the waiter, paid for his beer, and went to a stationery shop, where he purchased some tape and packaged up the papers for mailing. He then addressed them to Eduard’s landlord, returned to the post office, and mailed the parcels at the counter.

  He had wanted to get at least some money out of the country and had concocted this scheme during his conversation with his son, and now that he had carried it out with great care and cunning, he hurried from the post office back to the train station. He decided to go to Dortmund and try his luck there with Dinkelberg, the human smuggler Lilienfeld had mentioned. This time he bought a second-class ticket, thinking he would be safer and less conspicuous there, because he was now practically obsessed with the thought that he might stand out. He also tried to identify which expressions and gestures were the most inconspicuous and innocent-looking, since he felt his inner unrest was somehow showing.

  His train left just minutes after he bought the ticket. A few officers were sitting in the same compartment. Silbermann didn’t pay any attention to them and didn’t listen to their conversation, and very quickly dozed off. But every time the train stopped he would give a start, ask for the name of the station, and go back to sleep.

  Ultimately the captain sitting next to him asked, “Where are you headed?”

  “Dortmund,” said Silbermann.

  “Then go ahead and get some sleep. We’ll wake you up once we’re there.”

  “That’s very kind of you,” Silbermann said by way of thanks.

  Very kind, he thought, as he fell asleep.

  When they woke him he cried out, clearly distressed: “My briefcase! Where is my briefcase?”

  The men laughed.

  “It’s right next to you,” said the captain, a well-nourished, contented-looking man. “You must be lugging around your entire fortune, eh?”

  “Not at all,” Silbermann replied hastily. “Just some papers. But important ones.”

  “The sleeping secret courier,” a lieutenant joked.

  “Ha ha.” Silbermann gave an enthusiastic laugh. “Then again, even a secret courier could sleep in peace surrounded by German officers. But I’m just a businessman. Thank you, gentlemen. Heil Hitler.”

  He left the compartment. When he was on the platform he heard a voice calling, “Hello, hello, Herr Courier!”

  Startled, he turned around.

  “You left your suitcase,” said the lieutenant, laughing, and passed it through the window.

  Silbermann thanked him as he took the suitcase. “I’m so absentminded,” he offered as an excuse.

  “Not a bad cover for a secret courier,” answered the lieutenant.

  A nice man, thought Silbermann, as he watched the train depart. So, they’re still out there: unbiased, normal, benign people. I had forgotten. One thing’s for sure: he probably didn’t think I was Jewish.

  He picked up his suitcase. I really have to pull myself together, he thought. He was gripping the handles of his bags so tightly it cramped his fingers. I feel so weak, so flabby. It’s enough to drive a person mad.

  He stepped into the third-class waiting room, and although he stood out enough to draw some attention, he went to the buffet and ordered a glass of beer. He drank it all in one swig, spilling a little on his coat. He took out his handkerchief and first wiped his mouth and then tried to dry the beer on his coat. Next he ordered a second glass, drank it, then slapped his hand on the counter and said, “It’s all going to work out,” loudly and confidently.

  “What will?” asked the barkeep.

  “Pour me another, young man,” Silbermann demanded energetically.

  He looked around, eager for action. He jutted his chin out a little bit and thought: I should have gone straight to that Dinkelberg. The man will be of use. No doubt about it. The beer was placed in front of him. He raised his glass, took a swallow, and then set it back down, with some aversion.

  “What do I owe you?” he asked.

  “One mark twenty.”

  He paid and left. His confidence was gone. He had a sour taste in his mouth, and he felt nauseated. He remembered that he hadn’t eaten lunch and chided himself for being so foolish as to drink beer on an empty stomach. In the station hall he automatically went to the baggage check to deposit his suitcase.

  If I could only go to a hotel and get a good ten hours’ sleep, he wished as he left the station. I could stay in bed for days if they’d let me. He was convinced of that.

  He stopped in front of a hotel and considered going inside. No, he thought, that won’t work! I can’t weaken, not when I’m this close to the goal, because not only am I trying to escape, I’m also running a race against despair.

  A little while later he was standing in front of the address on Bismarckstraße where Dinkelberg lived, according to Lilienfeld’s information. He rang the bell.

  It would have been smarter to come here together with that little Lilienfeld, he thought.

  The door opened.

  “Does Herr Dinkelberg live here?” he asked the old lady who opened the door.

  She shook her head.

  “He used to live here!” she said. “Yesterday he was arrested.” She scrutinized him as if she thought he were an accomplice.

  Silbermann felt very uneasy.

  “Ahh,” he said, “well, well! Arrested! Who would have thought?”

  Silbermann was distraught. How should I behave in a case like this? he wondered. I might end up making myself look suspicious.

  “I knew something was going on,” said the old lady. “It couldn’t end well the way he carried on. Every day taking a different woman up to his den, and all that drinking. Four officials were here, four of them! I always wondered where the man got his money, because he doesn’t have a job. Such a young man. He was probably stealing!”

  “You don’t know why he was arrested?” asked Silbermann, and thought: a young man, I had imagined someone around fifty, how strange.

  She eyed him distrustfully. “How should I know that? Go to the police and ask there!” She slammed the door.

  Embarrassed, Silbermann doffed his hat and then hastened away, turned three or four corners, and finally stopped. And for this I came to Dortmund, he thought. It seems that everything is jinxed. No sooner is there a bit of hope, and … I wonder what happened to Lilienfeld? The poor man must be desperate. Now he’s no better off than I am.

  Silbermann felt dizzy and sensed a slight buzzing in his ears. I’ve been walking too fast, he thought. I need to catch my breath.

  He went into a restaurant, sat down at a table, ordered something to eat, and, succumbing to a mad hope, placed another call to Paris. Perhaps there’s been some development in the meantime, he told himself.

  When the soup arrived he literally dove into it, but after a few spoonfuls he felt he couldn’t get any more down. He lit a cigarette, then let it go out in the ashtray and forced himself to finish eating.

  When the waiter informed him that the call to Paris had gone through, he jumped up and hurried to the telephone, rubbing his hands and busily wrinkling his forehead.

  I’ll call him three times every day if I have to, he decided. Once he has as little rest as I’m getting, he’ll start really making an effort. It’s a well-known fact that people who live in times of peace have no idea about war. I’ll see he gets moving!

  “Hello,” he called out. “What’s new?”

  “How could anything have happened since we last talked? It’s only been a few hours! Although I did just speak with someone who’s very influential, who said he would sponsor your application, and I went back to the ministry of foreign affairs, but we have to be pati
ent. You have to bear in mind that they’re dealing with thousands of applications. Everyone else has to wait as well. There’s simply nothing more that can be done.”

  Silbermann didn’t say anything else and hung up.

  “Of course,” he said to himself, “all talk and no action.” He shrugged his shoulders, tired and resigned.

  After he finished eating, Silbermann set off to look for a room. He’d gotten it into his head that it would be easier to lie low in a private room than in a hotel. He believed he could put off the official registration longer with some lady who takes roomers.

  He stopped in front of an apartment building that had a notice in front saying FURNISHED ROOMS TO LET. He went inside, where the woman at the door directed him to the fourth floor, and with some difficulty he climbed up the stairs. The name on the door read SUSIG. Silbermann rang, and an old man wearing felt slippers and a robe with braid trim answered.

  He eyed Silbermann closely, then took his pipe out of his mouth and asked, “Well now, what are you looking for?”

  “You have furnished rooms to let?” Silbermann asked.

  “Not me,” said the old man in a dignified voice. “My wife handles all that.”

  He put his pipe back in his mouth, turned around, and left Silbermann standing in the open door, as if he wanted to leave it up to the visitor whether to stay outside or step in. Silbermann chose the first option. He watched the old man shuffle across the hall and disappear into a room. Silbermann waited. But one minute after another passed and nobody came. Finally he rang once again.

  The door to the room where the old man had disappeared opened, and the old man came shuffling back up.

  “Is your wife not in?” asked Silbermann, annoyed. “Or has the room already been rented out?”

  The old man cleared his throat. “Honestly I have no idea,” he retorted in a melodious bass voice.

  “Can’t you call her?” asked Silbermann, more forcefully.

  “We don’t speak to each other,” the old man confided. “All the same … maybe she’ll come herself if you ring one more time. Assuming she’s here, of course!”

  He turned around and walked calmly back into the room.

  “Herr Susig,” Silbermann called out. He was beginning to question the old man’s mental state.

  The man turned around. “All the same…” he said.

  Silbermann shook his head. He was now convinced he was dealing with a mentally disturbed individual. “I’m going,” he said. “Perhaps I’ll come back.”

  “However I do think it’s possible,” Herr Susig explained, now more willingly, “that my wife will be back soon. She may have just gone to do the shopping. Still … if you’d like to come back?”

  “Can’t you just show me the room?”

  “I don’t deal with that kind of thing,” the man answered tentatively. “All the same … if you’d like to accompany me?”

  Silbermann followed the man inside. They passed through a large dining room, which Silbermann felt looked very bare, as it had no buffet or sideboard. Then they came to a back hall and finally stopped in front of a small room.

  “It’s not a big room,” warned Herr Susig. “No matter…” He opened the door.

  “But this is a maid’s room,” Silbermann declared somewhat indignantly.

  Although he was clearly familiar with the room, the old man examined it carefully. “Yes, well,” he pronounced. “All the same…”

  “I’ll take the room,” Silbermann replied.

  The old man nodded in agreement. “That’s something you’d have to discuss with my wife,” he said. “If you want to stay here right away it will be forty marks a month. You could pay in advance. That’s how she usually does it.”

  Given the size of the room, Silbermann thought that was disproportionally expensive, but he didn’t object and picked up his briefcase. “Can you change a hundred marks?” he asked.

  The old man took the bill, scrutinized it, and then answered, “Not now.” He slid the bill into a pocket of his robe and left the room.

  Silbermann lay down on the hard, narrow bed that took up half the space.

  Well he’s an odd coot, Silbermann thought. All the same … He laughed. Will I ever see those sixty marks again? he wondered. He wasn’t so interested in the money, which no longer had nearly as much value for him as it had had before, as he was curious about the old man. After a few minutes he fell asleep.

  He dreamed that an old man was sitting across from him in a train compartment and observing him so fixedly that he eventually feared the man might know something bad about him. Then the old man grew bigger and bigger until he suddenly transformed into Becker, who made threatening gestures in his direction.

  There was a knock on the door. Dazed from sleep and fright, Silbermann stayed in bed.

  “Who’s there?” he finally asked in a quiet voice.

  “Frau Susig.”

  He got up and opened the door. A very plainly dressed old woman apologized profusely for having evidently disturbed him, and then stepped inside.

  “I wanted to return your sixty marks,” she said. “And then I wanted to ask you to fill out the registration form. You can do it later, whenever it’s convenient. I hope you like it here. The neighborhood is very quiet, and so are all our renters.”

  “It’s just too bad,” said Silbermann, “that you don’t have a larger room available. This one’s actually a little too cramped for me.”

  “If you’d come the day before yesterday, you could have had a nice room in front, with a balcony. But now that’s been rented to a gentleman from the party.”

  Silbermann said nothing.

  “Are you from Berlin?” she asked.

  “Yes,” he answered.

  “That’s clear from your accent. Incidentally my husband can fetch your suitcase from the station, I see…”

  “I really wouldn’t want to impose on him,” Silbermann said quickly.

  “It’s no imposition.”

  “Thank you anyway. I’ll go myself.”

  She looked around the room. “I’ll bring you some fresh hand towels,” she promised. “When would you prefer to have breakfast? The other gentlemen have theirs at seven thirty.”

  “I’ll do the same. How much does breakfast cost?” he then asked, to seem like a normal lodger.

  “It’s included. Didn’t my husband tell you?”

  “I can’t remember. Perhaps I just didn’t catch that. In any case, I’ll take my breakfast at seven thirty with the others.”

  She left the room. Silbermann plopped onto the bed. At least just once I’d like to get some decent sleep for my money, he thought. And also: a gentleman from the party. Of course!

  He got up again and took the registration form, scanned the individual line items, and started to tear up the paper, but then stopped himself and placed it back on the little table. He lay back down on the bed, closed his eyes, and tried to fall asleep, but now he couldn’t. He had a headache and was unable to shake his thoughts.

  Then he heard chairs scraping across the dining room floor, where there was no rug, as he had noticed earlier. Someone turned on the radio and he could hear dance music. He tossed back and forth, then tried counting, but stopped after reaching two hundred. Eventually, however, he did fall asleep, though only to wake up half an hour later. He had dreamt of his mother.

  How strange, he thought, puzzled. I’ve been thinking about her a lot lately. Am I already so old I’m starting to unreel all these ancient memories?

  He stepped up to the little mirror and studied his face, slowly running his hand across his unshaved cheeks.

  I look absolutely horrid, he sighed, and sat down on the bed. How long has it been? he wondered. Father died in 1932—and she died in 1926, 1926! That’s twelve years ago. She was an odd woman, he now thought. Without deep emotions. I don’t think she was able to truly laugh or cry.

  In the meantime someone had evidently turned off the radio, since he no longer heard any
noise coming from the dining room. He lay back down on the bed and closed his eyes.

  What had Mother really been like? he strained to recollect, partly to distract from his worries, but also to connect to his earlier life. He sifted through his memories, which were unusually lucid and took him further and further into the past.

  Eventually he saw himself as a child of about seven years old, lying in bed and counting the tall brass rails designed to keep him from rolling out. After counting eight or nine he would stop and count them again, and then he would sit up and stare at the floral pattern in the wallpaper, which was dissolving in the half-dark but still visible. Insects were buzzing outside his window, and Otto tried to imitate their sounds as they flew into his room where they darted about for a while before disappearing once again. It was too hot to stay asleep, so he hitched his nightshirt up under his arms and lay down on the pillows. Then, half-speaking and half-dreaming, he began telling himself a story.

  It was a story about cake and gooseberries, about Philipp the dachshund that belonged to his older brother, and about the spanking his father had given him that morning, which he hadn’t deserved and which his father would come to feel sorry about. It was about Hilde, who kept bursting into tears and who was still very little and with whom he didn’t want to speak anymore, and about Senta the cook, who always had compote on hand for him but whom he didn’t like all that much because she kept telling him he was still just a little boy. Then he drifted into sleep.

  Still half-asleep, he felt someone bending over and covering him up and watching him. Without moving, he blinked a little at the light coming from the lit candle and opened his eyes just a tiny bit. He was sure no one would notice, and the thought made him smile, but he pretended he was smiling in his sleep. That’s how clever he was.

  You ought to go to sleep, his mother said, also smiling.

  Since he could no longer hide the fact that he was awake, he tried to sit up and hug her. But she pushed him gently back into the pillows and kissed his forehead so lightly that her kiss faded before he could really feel it. At the door she turned around and said, “It’s time to sleep.”