The Passenger

by Ulrich Alexander Boschwitz

  “That’s horrible,” she said, and her eyes lit up more than ever. “How can you possibly stand it?”

  She leaned forward a little and observed him with great interest. It seemed to Silbermann that her facial expressions alternated between compassion and curiosity, sympathy and a tension that verged on excitement.

  “That’s a question to ask someone who’s decided to be a hunger artist by choice,” he retorted, somewhat gruffly.

  Now that he had aired all his troubles he felt overwhelmed by them, and his situation appeared more hopeless than ever. He struggled to regain his equilibrium.

  “I beg your pardon,” she said. “I didn’t mean to offend you with my question.”

  “I know I’m being impolite, just that it’s been three days…”

  “I understand,” she replied quietly, and he detected a flash of warmth in her eyes.

  A hope began to grow in him. Don’t let go, he thought, hold on to this woman, escape with her, break away. The only way to be rid of all the besetting circumstances is to ignore them.

  He observed her searchingly and solicitously at the same time, without having any specific intentions.

  “Isn’t anybody helping you?” she asked. “Don’t you have some contacts who could offer protection? Connections can still do quite a lot.”

  “My so-called friends didn’t leave me with the kind of money I’d need to acquire new ones,” he said, immediately ashamed of how that sounded. I’m still trying to impress, he thought.

  “Did they extort money from you?”

  “They fleeced me! But that hardly matters anymore. Corpses get eaten by worms, that’s the rule.” He laughed harshly.

  “My husband’s a lawyer,” she said eagerly. “He’s also a member of the party and well regarded, but unfortunately we’re not on speaking terms. Otherwise he would do something for you right away.”

  “Unfortunately,” Silbermann interrupted, having recovered his calm, “I have to confess that I know the reasons better than I ought to. Without intending to, I overheard your conversation.”

  This unsettled her, and for a moment she was silent. “I see,” she said. “Well … my friend has the worthy habit of lecturing me every time we part, which winds up benefiting others more than it does me.”

  “In any case I am sorry I had to learn I’m not the only person with worries,” he hastened to counter.

  “You feel sorry?”

  “In your case, madam, I truly do. Although presumably I owe the privilege of your presence to those same worries.”

  “If at least I could help you.” She steered the conversation back from her affairs to his.

  “Please believe me that being able to speak with you is already a great help.”

  “Do you mean that?” She seemed prepared to believe him.

  “Absolutely,” he assured her.

  “I don’t understand why the members of your faith are being attacked like that,” she said, and her words showed a measure of kindness toward him. “Earlier I used to have a Jewish friend. If I’m not mistaken she emigrated to Palestine. But that’s not at all what I wanted to say. You look so Aryan. Doesn’t that help?”

  “My last name is Silbermann!”

  “I see. These days that’s not a very fortunate name to have, is it?”

  “No. Incidentally even if I were named Meier it wouldn’t help. My passport is stamped with a big red J.”

  “That can’t be!” she said, indignant. “I don’t understand why. It may sound strange, and people don’t usually say things like this, but I find you quite likeable.”

  He bowed slightly in her direction, then laughed. “Unfortunately the government doesn’t share your opinion. It does not find me at all—likeable. It simply says: You, Silbermann, are a Jew! And with that it’s declaring that my character and my qualities are entirely unimportant. It all boils down to either you are a Jew or you’re not a Jew, not whether you’re likeable or not likeable. The headline decides. The content doesn’t matter.”

  “That’s terrible.” She sighed, and Silbermann thought she was growing somewhat tired of the topic.

  He was surprised and annoyed at himself for having been so open. How is it, he wondered, that I’m telling so much about myself to a woman I have nothing to do with, who has nothing to do with me, and who at best might have a passing interest in the peculiar fate of a chance travel companion? Does it help me in any way to bemoan my situation to her? And even if I considered her curiosity a sign of genuine interest, what good does it do me? A woman will say “That’s terrible” to everything. She’d say the same thing if she heard about a train wreck, or if an acquaintance sprained his ankle, or if she didn’t make the streetcar on time. “That’s terrible!”

  My fate is turning into a figure of speech, that’s all.

  He felt an immediate urge to tell her that he could happily forgo her pity and that he had only said as much as he had because he wanted to talk, to hear his own voice, to gain some clarity, but certainly not to elicit from her a “that’s terrible.” He had no interest in that and could very well do without it.

  “Why such a fierce look?” she asked, smiling.

  “What’s that?”

  “You looked irritated. I can easily understand why you might be, but surely you realize I don’t have anything to do with all that. I mean personally. I am not an anti-Semite.”

  “And if you were?” he asked sharply. “What difference would that make?”

  She shot him an angry glance. “You may be on edge,” she answered, offended, “but I have to insist…” She didn’t know how she ought to continue and was silent for a moment. Then she said, no longer angry, but with a smile that seemed oddly naive, “If I were an anti-Semite, I could make things pretty difficult for you, couldn’t I?”

  “I’m not afraid,” Silbermann declared, almost scornfully. “I’m really not. I am no longer afraid!” he repeated, as if he wanted to convince himself.

  “Really?” she asked, and her smile didn’t strike him as completely harmless.

  “Are you trying to make me afraid?” he asked, also smiling.

  “No,” she said quietly. Her glistening eyes seemed almost moist.

  “It doesn’t take much these days,” he added ironically, “to play the beast of prey when it comes to Jews.”

  Beast of prey? He had the feeling she was trying to appear harmless in the most dangerous way she was capable of.

  “I see I have to apologize once again,” he said, while at the same time thinking: and yet you’re actually feeling somewhat flattered.

  “But no—why? How come? Was your remark meant for me?”

  He shook his head.

  “It would never occur to me!” he assured her. “That is to say, the beauty of the predator, the dangerous elegance, which…” He sighed. “I can’t even make a proper compliment anymore!” he said, and he sounded so pathetic she couldn’t help laughing.

  “But tell me, why do the Jews put up with all of this?” she asked in earnest. “I mean, why don’t they defend themselves? Why don’t they do something other than run away?”

  “If we were such romantics,” he answered, proud of his reasoning, “we would have hardly survived the last two thousand years.”

  “Is survival so important?”

  “Absolutely! To survive is to overcome. It doesn’t take a lot of skill to fall into the first crevasse, but it takes quite a bit to cross the mountains. It takes courage to live. For suicide all that’s needed is despair.” He paused and looked for other analogies. “It’s a lot harder to push the cart than simply leave it sitting there,” he then finished.

  “And should one only live to push some cart? Isn’t that a little too little? I for one am far more impressed by people who make their lives a shooting match. Who do what they feel like, and not what other people expect of them.”

  He laughed in a tone that was both condescending and benign. “Charming,” he said, “that’s absolutely charming! Wh
at would you do if you were in my place? Imagine you were Jewish, and that you still had a bit of wealth, but were trying to escape. What would you do?”

  “Honestly I would enjoy myself enormously,” she asserted, beaming. “I would simply start living as though each day were my last, and I would get more out of a single day than everyone else gets out of a whole year. I would—but you’re laughing at me. Why are you laughing?” She wrinkled her brow, annoyed.

  “How do you picture that exactly?” he asked, once again serious. “Do you think you could enjoy yourself if they’d stormed into your apartment three days earlier? If you knew where your relatives were staying but couldn’t visit them? If you had to be afraid of every SA man because he could arrest you on a whim?”

  “Are you married?” she asked, without countering his objections.

  “I am…” He was silent. Perhaps that’s no longer true, he thought. Perhaps I only used to be married. Certainly I’m on my own right now. Now I am completely alone!

  “And your wife?”

  “She escaped to her brother’s. He’s Aryan,” he answered mechanically.

  “That’s terrible,” she said, taking a small bar of chocolate from her purse. She peeled off the silver paper, studied the chocolate thoughtfully, offered him some, then broke off a little piece, which she put in her mouth and began to chew slowly.

  “But isn’t there any way to defend yourself?” she asked again, after chewing awhile in silence.

  “Yes, I could throw myself in front of the train. Then it would stop for two minutes while they shoved my corpse off to the side. Do you really think that I, Otto Silbermann, could intervene in world history? You really are a romantic.”

  Now the conversation really was beginning to tire her.

  “You ought to look at the humorous side of the matter,” she suggested.

  He looked at her bewildered. “No,” he then said decisively. “That’s too deep for me. Which humorous side? Who could expect me to laugh at my own misfortune? Do you laugh when you break a leg? Is your own sense of humor that big?”

  “Maybe,” she replied, and his excitement made a greater impression on her than his words.

  “I don’t believe that entirely,” he contradicted. “In any case, I can’t imagine that you’d think being spit on is a good practical joke.”

  “No, I would not!” She sounded indignant. “What kind of preposterous idea is that?”

  “It’s not my idea, but let’s leave it be.”

  They looked at each other in silence. “I see that there is a certain resemblance,” she then said quietly. “He also has this dry earnestness.”

  “Who? Ah … your lawyer?”

  She didn’t answer. Then she took out a cigarette, which he lit for her. That brought them closer together, and their eyes met once more. He sat back in his seat.

  “If I weren’t Jewish,” he said almost casually, “and naturally if I weren’t married, I would tell you how appealing I find you.”

  “Really?” she asked, and smiled. “And why do you say it when you really don’t intend to?”

  “I don’t know,” he replied. “The words just spoke themselves.”

  “Why don’t you simply get a different passport?” She changed the subject. “If your passport was in the name of Gottlieb Müller, everything would be very easy for you. I saw that once in a film, a man changed his identity, I think that’s what they called it. So isn’t it really just a—technical issue? No one would think you’re Jewish if you weren’t named Silbermann. It’s actually quite simple.”

  “I don’t have any experience with that kind of fraud,” he explained, annoyed at her playful way of treating his most serious worries, matters of life and death. He scrutinized her with a look that was both insulted and insulting.

  “But why? It would be self-defense. With a name like that you could live and work. You’d be rid of your worries.”

  “It’s a good thing your friend the lawyer can’t hear you. His hair would be standing on end!”

  “Yes, my husband is also so horribly upstanding and upright. Always everything by the book. Only capable of doing what other people have done before. But at the moment isn’t it a bit difficult for you to live your life according to some grand guiding principle?”

  “In any case they’ve stolen whatever chance I had to live according to mine. But the fact that crimes are committed against me doesn’t entitle me to take such steps.”

  She looked at him mockingly. “Yes I know, I know,” she said. “‘Noble be man, helpful and good.’ Of course when a man is just plain scared of everybody else, then being a virtuous citizen is all he can do, right?”

  “It’s not a question of being scared, or even of morality, it’s a question of intelligence and a sense of responsibility. Addicts usually end up in the sanatorium, swindlers in jail, while respectable or reasonable people…”

  “On the run.” She helped him and looked at him.

  He had to laugh. “I’ve only been running for three days,” he said, “don’t forget that. A criminal is on the run his entire life, even if he’s just rushing to his next crime. The normal person strives for stability in life. He tries to overcome exceptional circumstances, but not by making his life one enormous exceptional circumstance. No one is up to that for the long haul.”

  “But an outsider can also manage to…”

  “Perhaps,” he interrupted. “But that’s not who I am at all. I cannot and will not change who I am. I was born a middle-class citizen and will die a middle-class citizen. Perhaps as one on the run, but a proper citizen nonetheless, that is certain.”

  “Following your high morals, I’m sure you managed to save a large part of your fortune,” she suggested.

  He didn’t know immediately how to answer that. “That doesn’t have anything to do with it,” he said at last.

  “It has everything to do with it,” she maintained. “After all, sooner or later you’ll have to risk it and take a chance. You won’t have any choice.”

  “Yes I will,” he replied decisively. Then he added, “I like you very, very much, madam. I don’t think you can imagine how much. But when it comes to life, I think you understand about as much as I do about novels. Don’t be cross with me.”

  She shook her head. “None of you have any inner zing,” she said, without indicating that she had been somehow offended by his attitude or his words.

  “Zing? I was brought up to live in normal circumstances. I need order! Clarity! A system, if you will. You have to have grown up with mess and muddle to know how to deal with it.”

  “Be glad for once that you’re forced to shed your old skin,” she said with thoughtful cheerfulness. “Of course it’s a terrible misfortune, but in my mind it’s also a boost for your vitality.”

  Silbermann laughed so hard he started to cough. “You’re very touching,” he then said. “A person can be on the brink of death and you manage to congratulate him on his sensations.”

  He bent over and placed his hand on hers, which was resting lightly on her knee. She let it happen, although her smile disappeared, and she now looked at him through eyes that were almost languid, unmoving, waiting. He stroked her hand several times, then kissed it.

  “How interesting you have made yourself,” he said, suddenly switching to the familiar Du—and his voice was a mixture of genuine admiration, gentle irony, and authentic warmth.

  EIGHT

  I shouldn’t have done that, Silbermann thought. I have no right. After all, I love my wife! It’s just the fault of the circumstances, no question about it. But precisely the circumstances should make me more disciplined. By now I could already be in Küstrin, I should have been there a long time ago!

  He looked at his watch. It was 3:40.

  A rendezvous, he thought, how long has it been since I had a rendezvous? And now of all times … He had proposed to meet her in the Café am Zoo at 3:30.

  He slowed his pace.

  I’ll simply show up too
late, he decided. Then everything will be over before anything ever began, and there won’t even be the bad feeling of having missed out on something. Besides, it’s perfectly possible that she won’t have come. This way I won’t know if she did or didn’t.

  Anyway, what can this Ursula Angelhof mean for me? An affair? As if I needed that. I have plenty of problems already.

  He slowed his pace even more, and stopped when he caught sight of the Gedächtniskirche.

  I have to gather my wits, he resolved, and focus on the circumstances. Surely that will convince me to stop and turn around.

  He kept going.

  This woman really doesn’t mean anything to me at all, he thought. I already know her better than I ought to.

  He picked up his pace. It was already 3:50.

  She’s bound to have left by now, he thought, and didn’t know whether he was bothered or reassured by the idea. I’m actually counting on her not being there!

  He stopped once again.

  Even I realize how ridiculous I’m being, he decided. She’s nothing but a little sensation seeker. And is that what I really want? A chance to be her sensation? Does a man risk the fate of his family for a pair of will-o’-the-wisp eyes?

  He stepped into the café.

  “Hopefully,” he mumbled to himself, not knowing exactly what he meant. He strolled through the large room, scanning the tables, but there was no sign of her. She won’t even have come, he told himself. An insignificant incident on the express train, that’s all it was. But that notion didn’t suit him, either, nor did he want to have come in vain. I could have spared myself the trip, he thought, annoyed, then sat down at a table and ordered a coffee.

  He found the orchestra very irritating.

  When all is said and done I feel like such a clown, he mused. On the one hand, I’m hoping she’ll come and at the same time I’m persuading myself I no longer expect her, and the truth is I believe both things at once.

  He placed a coin on the table and stood up.