The Use of Man

by Aleksandar Tisma

  That evening Mrs. Bernister, neatly dressed, her hair brushed, opened the door to Vera at the first ring. Then, placing a finger to her lips, she went out and reentered through the bathroom door with a tall, angular, gray-haired man in officer’s trousers and a worn officer’s jacket with no badges. He looked Vera over and then offered her a large, firm hand. Mrs. Bernister brought in two coffees, prepared beforehand, and left them alone. Vera volunteered her story: the camp, the invitation to visit from her mother, the application for a passport to which she had received no answer. The words came easily; the man did not frighten her. His eyes were dull, his lined face like bark on a dead tree. It was as if he were not there, though when she stopped talking, she heard his hoarse breathing. She clasped her hands and waited for his reply. He looked at her thoughtfully, wearily, but said nothing. Suddenly, she slipped her dress off her left shoulder, pulled down the strap of her bra, and leaned over the table, so he could see the tattoo on her breast. The man merely picked up his coffee cup and sipped it slowly. Then he got up to leave, straightening himself to his full, awkward height, and, giving her his hand again, murmured good-bye and some excuse for having to hurry off. Mrs. Bernister came in at once, not hiding that she had heard everything, but she asked no questions. Vera felt drained, sapped of all her strength. On her way home, her thoughts went back and forth like a pendulum between hope and humiliation.

  Five days later a messenger in a gray cap brought her a stapled letter containing a permit to travel to West Germany. At once she threw herself into a frenzy of preparation. She went to get her passport, to be photographed, she filled in the forms for her visa and sent them off through a travel agency to Belgrade. She bought shoes, a dress, and because the shops were temporarily out of suitcases, borrowed one from Mitzi, who, thrilled at the news, gave her her blessing. On a rainy afternoon in October, Vera boarded a train that carried her into the impenetrable night air of a foreign land.

  She had not taken a trip since she came back from the camp in a cattle car. Now she sat in a clean compartment with soft seats, sharing it with only one other person, a well-dressed older man, who occasionally went out into the corridor to smoke. At the frontier, the Customs officers saluted. Commands shouted in German (“Los! Los!” “Halt!”) drifted in through the window and made her flesh crawl. But the men who had shouted wished her “Good morning” when they entered the compartment and smiled as they looked at her passport: law, authority were now on her side. She took it as a kind of reward for her suffering. The rattle and clatter of the wheels lulled her to sleep.

  Daylight found her rushing across rich green countryside with neat houses here and there, passing towns with high, shining gables, which she remembered like a dream from the camp transport. In disbelief she read the familiar names of the stations, peered into the faces of the travelers—a stylish old lady, two young businessmen with briefcases—expecting to find some link to those uniforms and steel helmets. The tranquillity of the faces, the absence of guilt surprised her, all the more because she herself was so disconcerted. She didn’t feel like eating, put off going to the toilet, kept her suitcase locked and under her watchful eye until she got to Frankfurt.

  Her mother met her at the station, looking a little older, her hair still copper-colored, but she was half a head shorter than Vera remembered her (or Vera had grown), with an anxious expression on her smooth, round face. They kissed with less warmth than Vera had expected, and her mother pushed her toward a man with a nose like a duck’s beak and small deep-set eyes, in whom she found it impossible to recognize the former field policeman (she had seen him before, but only a few times and from a distance). He now touched her hand warily and said “Hermann” in a hoarse voice, then bent to pick up her suitcase. They left the station, mother and daughter arm in arm and the mother’s husband a step behind with the suitcase. In front of the station, ruins were being broken up by huge wrecking balls moved across the excavated ground by tractorlike machines. But at the very edge of that excavation was a wooden ramp with curving rails, and a group of people waiting. A streetcar came along, and they all climbed in. They rode through wide streets, between bombed-out houses and empty lots where the houses had been cleared away by noisy machines and men in overalls. They got off at a street corner and walked down a long avenue lined with single-story houses, passing small shops that sold furniture, woolens, vegetables. They stopped in front of a tavern whose shutters advertised beer in green Gothic letters. Inside, customers were sitting at a few tables; they paused in their conversation while Vera was introduced to them. Vera and her mother then proceeded up a spiral staircase of shining blond wood and entered a small, clean room with a bed and a wardrobe. “This is your room,” said Reza Arbeitsam, nodding with pride. “The bathroom is at the end of the hall. Go wash and then lie down and get some sleep. I have to go downstairs and work.”

  Vera began a new existence. Her room was assailed from below by loud, beer-soaked German voices (as Fräulein’s first hotel room in Novi Sad had been, but Vera did not know that). In the kitchen behind the counter, her mother, in a clean white apron, fried sausages, while a buxom girl by the name of Liese carried out tankards of beer. Hermann Arbeitsam brought the beer in kegs on his tricycle, or he went to the market or to the butcher’s, or sat with the customers and listened, smiling obsequiously, to their talk. When there were a lot of customers, her mother would climb up to the second step and call: “Veraaa!” Then put a knife into her hands and place her in front of a table scrubbed spotless to slice cabbage and peel potatoes. Or ask her to take the food to the customers. “This is for Johann at table three, this for Lenz at table one.” The tables were numbered even though there were only six. Vera carried out her orders obediently but reluctantly, for the customers were elderly people of little interest to her, and, feeling at home in the Beim vollen Tisch, they tried to start conversations, asked questions. The day after Vera arrived, her mother had warned her: “Don’t bring up your father and Gerd, these people wouldn’t understand. For them, you’re simply my daughter who had trouble getting a passport to join me. Not a word about the rest.”

  But they were all refugees, like the two tavern owners: from the Banat, from Slavonia, from Czechoslovakia, and from the Hungarian Danube region. A blue-eyed greengrocer spoke to Vera in Serbian, boasted of having attended a school run by Franciscans in Bosnia, and called her “my countrywoman.” “How did you get on under the Communists?” asked a tall, prematurely gray railroadman with no right hand, from Silesia, and everyone paused, beer mug in hand, to hear her reply. “So-so. Neither good nor bad,” said Vera, and their faces registered disappointment. Reza called her daughter to task that evening. “You don’t understand,” she hissed, turning red in the face. “These people are bitter, they’ve lost everything, house, land, members of their families. As far as they’re concerned, anyone who doesn’t curse the Communists is a swine. Just remember that!”

  This simple-minded warning from a tavern keeper’s wife echoed the prohibitions of Vera’s girlhood. Everything in her rejected such mindless intolerance. Suddenly she remembered her father, his forever doubtful, half-smiling shrug when confronted with intolerance of any kind, such as Gerhard’s in the last months he spent under their roof. After all the killing, that attitude seemed to her the only sane one. She noted with dismay how much her mother’s behavior had deteriorated since her father’s death; the vulgarity that as a child Vera had but sensed and occasionally glimpsed now was obvious in her mother’s every word and action. She saw how coarse and hard she had become, how carelessly she thrust out her legs when she walked, how she stood, letting her belly protrude, hands on hips, in front of the customers, how wide she opened her mouth, with its row of gold teeth, when she laughed raucously at their crude jokes. Vera felt a shiver of hostility toward her mother, and she withdrew to her room more and more often. But even there she was pursued by the crude voices, as if from an underground, invisible hell. On her bed with pillows over her ears, she tried not to lis
ten, but she couldn’t help but hear and picture, from the muffled snorting, what was going on downstairs: the drunken bragging of former policemen, SS men, camp guards.

  She went out into the street, walked to the center of town. She saw shops full of brightly colored goods, saw restaurants and cafés in whose windows waiters moved quickly and elegantly, saw huge machines demolishing ruins and driving into the ground iron piles for future buildings. Streetcars, trucks, buses whizzed by, everything shaking, everyone hurrying, working, or relaxing in taverns that had childishly cheerful names, such as Beim vollen Tisch. Vera recognized that cheerfulness, the same cheerfulness that had produced the signs in the camp, the names for blocks, compounds, houses of pleasure, and that accompanied the marching of the guards or the training of the dogs to tear the flesh of insubordinate prisoners. All Germany, she felt, was an enormous madhouse, where thousands upon thousands of people, in total agreement with one another, spoke words, performed actions, carried out ideas that were beyond comprehension, cold, inhuman; construction that was insane but logical, like a bare concrete wall that served no purpose. And there was no escape from that merciless wall.

  Despairing, she hurried home. Perhaps there she might find some voice of reason, some crack in the wall of madness. In the deserted tavern—Liese had lowered the blinds before leaving—Vera’s mother, her head resting on her arms, sat next to Hermann Arbeitsam, he with a fixed smile, the two forming a grotesque tribunal. They scolded Vera for coming home late, asking themselves (eyes raised to the ceiling) why they worked so hard if Vera was unappreciative of their toil. The tavern, her mother went on, was very successful, and she planned to open another one soon, under the same name, in another part of town, a cosy, intimate place with a small selection of good, homemade dishes and a homey atmosphere. She had even chosen the location, an iron-monger’s shop that was soon to close because of the competition from the big stores. All business in Germany was growing; the small shops were disappearing, crowded out. Tereza Arbeitsam warmed to her subject, pleased to be present in a revolution that was shaking the whole country, particularly since it spared the tavern business. In all other trades, she said, the trend was toward large-scale concerns and mass production, but here the consumer wanted something small and personal, where after the wearying crowd he could relax in the old, familiar way. She thought (here her blue eyes, made smaller by her fat cheeks, sparkled cunningly) that, with an increase in pay, Liese could take over the preparation of food in the old establishment, and the two of them, mother and daughter, provided Hermann kept them supplied, could work in the new premises. What did Vera think of that, she asked, but then exploded, because she could see, she said, that Vera was looking down her nose at the idea.

  Why, then, did Vera think, was she feeding and keeping her? For the fun of it? When she was Vera’s age, she worked and earned her living, she pulled herself out of poverty, acquired a family, a fortune. The war destroyed all that, it took her only son, her Gerd, who, had he lived—here she could no longer hold back two large tears, but wiped them away with the back of her hand and continued—would certainly have been worthy of her sacrifice. Yes, she was unhappy, in spite of everything. She dropped her head on her folded arms, her shoulders heaved; Hermann awkwardly moved a mug of beer toward her, pulled her head up, and urged her to take a few sips. “Don’t let yourself go, Mamma! Think of your health!” he said to her, which may have been what he hoped Vera would say. But Vera had no thought of consoling her mother, of making promises; she had not even heard her mother’s words, but merely watched the mouth as it opened, closed, twisted, making words and tears, tears and words, like a machine out of control. Vera was overcome by fear, gasped for air, felt the blood rushing to her head, swayed and almost fell. Hermann leaped toward her, attempted to help her to a chair opposite her mother, who looked surprised, but Vera, in a panic, asked to be allowed to go to her room.

  Following this scene, Tereza and Hermann, evidently by mutual agreement, no longer spoke to Vera about working. They left her alone and when she came down for meals, discussed other, more remote, projects. Tereza began to question Vera about her expenses back home: how much lunch cost, how much an evening meal, how much dresses and shoes—in her mind converting the prices to marks. She was amazed to learn how cheap everything was there. She examined Vera’s clothes closely, fingering the material, scraping the sole of a shoe with a fingernail, asking her daughter again if she had indeed bought it in Novi Sad and at the price quoted. She was interested in Vera’s housing arrangement and was pleased to hear that she paid no rent. Couldn’t Vera get the whole house back, or receive compensation for it? Vera knew nothing of such matters and shrugged the question off, but her mother threw a look at Hermann and suggested Jacob Bernister as a source of more reliable information. Bernister was an important factor in her calculations, anyway; through him, Vera could receive financial help, which could be paid back to his brother in Hannover. Five hundred dinars a month, for example, when reckoned in marks, would still be a lot less than her expenses in Germany. In any case, Vera didn’t like it in Germany—wasn’t that true, she asked, with no reproach in her voice, taking Vera’s answer for granted. All that was left was to agree on the date for her departure; the middle of May would be just right, for the purchase of the new tavern would be completed by the first of June, at which time she and Hermann would have so much to do that it would be difficult for them to take care of her. Suddenly Tereza was generous; she left the tavern in Liese’s and Hermann’s charge for a morning and went out shopping with Vera. In a department store she bought her a coat, an umbrella, underwear, and as they were leaving, in the basement, at the last moment, a gold ring with a coral inset, to remind her now and then of her mother, she said. The packing was done. In addition to the suitcase she had brought with her, Vera was given a soft travel bag of waxed tartan canvas in which to put her newly acquired belongings. “Look, I dirtied it a little around the edges,” her mother pointed out. “You mustn’t tell Customs that you have anything new, otherwise they’ll skin you alive.”

  The three of them took the streetcar to the station, the same one they took when she arrived half a year earlier. The tall buildings with shops on the ground floor and the empty lots between them went by. At the station Hermann carried her luggage into the train and placed it in an empty compartment; they now waited for the train to leave. “Do you ever see any of Gerhard’s friends?” Tereza Arbeitsam asked unexpectedly as her lips twisted tearfully. Vera thought for a moment, mentioned two or three names, but there was no more time to talk; the conductor told the passengers to board the train, mother and daughter kissed quickly, and Hermann shook Vera’s hand and bowed abruptly. Vera went into the compartment, stood by the window waving to her mother and Hermann as they walked along the platform, until the train picked up speed and they disappeared from sight.

  Alone at last, Vera threw herself on the seat with a sigh of relief. As the train rolled on, she felt as if she were withdrawing backstage after an exhausting performance, which she felt her stay with her mother had been. Towns with tightly packed buildings passed, factories, orderly farms, everything spick-and-span, but, to her, impersonal. And unfamiliar, as if she had not traveled along that same route in the opposite direction with her heart thumping. She dozed off while it was still light, and was awakened by the conductor, a red-faced, rotund man who, businesslike and polite, asked for her ticket. Then she closed her eyes, shading them with the curtain, and went back to sleep. The train stopped from time to time at deserted stations. Occasionally someone peeked into the compartment, only to continue along the corridor looking for one that was empty. The Customs officers knocked on the door, checked her passport, whispered something to each other, asked what she had in her luggage, but did not search it. The night was cool; she wrapped herself in her new coat. They were now riding through tall mountains, the trees swaying nervously in the wind. The train stopped at a station with a large, brightly lit yellow building; railroadmen ran around w
aving little flags and blowing whistles. New Customs officers came on board, Austrians, quieter, slower. They greeted her pleasantly, left, came back again, this time with several Yugoslavs, all of them tall, hardy men who moved like people unaccustomed to being indoors. They called her Comrade and all but clapped her on the back. “Have a good time in Germany?” asked one, showing healthy white teeth. He wished her a pleasant journey, as if congratulating her on going home.