The night in Lisbon

by Erich Maria Remarque

  "The stars were all out that night, and it was so still that I seemed to hear the plants growing. In times of danger a different form of sight sets in. It's not a special focusing of the eyes, but something that spreads all over the body, as if you could see with your skin, especially at night. Your hearing moves into your skin, too, and you seem to see the slightest sound. You open your mouth and listen, and your mouth, too, seems to see and to hear.

  "I shall never forget that night. I was alert in every fiber, all my senses were wide awake, I was prepared for anything, but utterly without fear. I felt as though I were crossing a high bridge from one side of my life to the other, and I knew that the bridge would fade away behind me like silvery smoke and that I'd never be able to return. I was passing from reason to feeling, from security to adventure, from rationality to dream. I was utterly alone, but this time my solitude was not a torment; there was something mystical about it.

  "I came to the Rhine, which is young at this spot and not very wide. I undressed and made a bundle of my clothes, so as to hold them over my head. It was a weird feeling when I slipped naked into the water. It was black and very cool and strange. I felt I was plunging into the River Lethe to drink forgetfulness. It struck me as symbolic that I had to pass through it naked, as though leaving everything behind me.

  "I dried myself, dressed, and continued on my way. Passing near a village, I heard a dog bark. I didn't know exactly how the border ran, so I kept to the edge of a road that skirted a forest. For a long while I met no one. I walked until dawn. A heavy dew was falling and there was a stag standing at the edge of a clearing. I went on until I heard peasants driving their wagons. Then I looked for a hiding place, not far from the road. I was afraid of arousing suspicion by being up so early and coming from the direction of the border. Later I saw two customs guards on bicycles. I recognized their uniforms. I was in Austria. Austria had belonged to Germany for just one year."

  The woman in evening dress left the terrace with her escort. Her shoulders were very tan, and she was taller than the man who was with her. A few other tourists sauntered slowly down the steps. They all walked like people who had never been hunted—without looking around.

  "I had some sandwiches," said Schwarz, "and there was a brook to drink from. At noon I went on. My goal was the town of Feldkirch, which I knew to be a resort, where a stranger would not attract attention. When I got there, I took the first train out of the dangerous border zone. I stepped into a compartment. Two uniformed SA men were sitting there.

  "My experience with the police forces of Europe stood me in good stead, or I might have retreated. As it was, I went in and sat down in a corner next to a man in a loden suit, with a gun propped up beside him.

  "It was my first encounter in five years with everything that to me was the essence of horror. In the preceding weeks I had often imagined this scene, but the reality was different. It was my body, not my head, that reacted; my stomach turned to stone, my mouth felt like a grater. The hunter and the SA men were talking about a widow Pfundner. She seemed to be the merry variety of widow, to judge by the love affairs they detailed. After a while they began to eat ham sandwiches. 'Where are you headed for, neighbor?' the hunter asked me.

  " 'Back to Bregenz,' I said.

  " 'You seem to be a stranger here?'

  " 'Yes, I'm on my vacation.'

  " 'And where have you come from?'

  "I hesitated for a moment. If I had said Vienna, as indicated in my passport, they might have noticed that I didn't speak the soft Viennese dialect. 'From Hannover,' I said. Tve been living there more than thirty years.'

  " 'Hannover! Whew! That's a long way!'

  " 'Yes, it's quite a way. But who wants to spend his vacation near home?'

  "The hunter laughed. 'That's a fact. You've been lucky with the weather.'

  "I felt my shirt sticking to my back. 'Yes, it's been marvelous, but it's as hot as midsummer.'

  "The three of them started in again on the widow Pfundner. A few stations later they got out and I was left alone in the compartment. The train was passing through one of the most beautiful countrysides in Europe, but I saw very little of it. I was overcome by an almost intolerable feeling of regret, fear, and despair. Why on earth had I crossed the border? It was beyond me. I sat motionless in my corner, staring out the window. I was a prisoner, and I myself had allowed the lock to snap shut. I kept thinking I'd leave the train and try to get back to Switzerland during the night.

  "But I didn't. My left hand clutched the late Schwarz's passport in my pocket, as though it might give me strength. I kept telling myself that by now it would do me no good to get out, and that the farther inland I went, the safer I'd be. I decided to travel through the night. In trains you're not so likely to be asked for your papers as in hotels.

  "When you're in a panic, you always feel that a spotlight is on you, that no one has anything else to do but search for you.

  "I closed my eyes. The temptation to give in to my panic was still greater because I was alone in the compartment. But I knew that every inch I gave now would become a yard

  when I should really be in danger. I told myself that no one was looking for me; that I was of no more interest to the regime than a shovelful of sand in the desert, and that there was nothing visibly suspicious about me. This was true, of course. I looked hardly any different from the people around me. The blond Aryan is a German legend. Take a look at Hitler, Goebbels, Hess, and the rest of the leaders—all of them living disproof of their own delusions.

  "In Munich I left the shelter of the railroad stations for the first time and forced myself to take an hour's walk. Not knowing the city, I felt sure that no one would know me. I stopped to eat at the Franziskanerbraü. The place was full. I sat down alone and listened. A few minutes later a stout perspiring man took a seat at my table. He ordered beer and boiled beef and unfolded a newspaper. So far it hadn't occurred to me to read the German papers. Now I bought two of them. I hadn't read German for years, and it still seemed strange to hear everyone talking it around me.

  "The editorials were abominable, packed with bloodthirsty, arrogant lies. The whole outside world was represented as degenerate, treacherous, stupid, and good for nothing else but to be taken over by Germany. These were not small local papers; they had formerly enjoyed a good reputation.

  "I studied the man at my table. He ate, drank, and read with pleasure. I looked around. Many of the diners were reading papers, and in none of them did I detect any sign of distaste. This had become their daily fare; it seemed just as natural to them as their beer.

  "I continued to read until, among the short news items, I found one about Osnabrück. A house on Lotterstrasse had burned down. I could see the street clearly. It began outside the ramparts at Heger Gate and led away from the city. I suddenly felt lonelier than I ever had in a foreign country.

  "My state of mind fluctuated between shock and fatalistic apathy, but soon I got used to it. I even began to feel safe.

  The danger would increase as I approached Osnabrück; that I knew. There would be people who remembered me from the old days.

  "To avoid attracting attention at hotels, I bought a cheap suitcase and the usual articles required for a short trip. Then I took the train. I still didn't know how I was going to get in touch with my wife, and changed my plans every few minutes. I would have to trust to chance; I didn't even know whether she had given in to her family—staunch supporters of the regime—and married someone else. After reading the papers, I wasn't so sure that it would take an average mortal very long before believing what he read, especially when there was no possibility of comparison. Foreign papers were strictly censored in Germany.

  "In Münster I went to an average hotel. I couldn't go on staying up at night and sleeping here and there in the daytime. I had to take the risk of staying in a hotel, where my arrival would be reported to the police. Do you know Münster?"

  "A little," I said. "Isn't it an old city with a lot of churc
hes, where the Treaty of Westphalia was signed?"

  Schwarz nodded. "In Münster and Osnabrück in 1648. After thirty years of war. Who knows how long this one will last?"

  "Not very long if it goes on like this. It took the Germans only four weeks to conquer France."

  The waiter came and said the place was closing, that everyone else had left. "Isn't there some other place that's still open?" Schwarz asked.

  There wasn't much night life in Lisbon, the waiter told us. But when Schwarz gave him a tip, he knew of a place, very secret, he said, a Russian night club. "Very chic."

  "Will they let us in?" I asked.

  "Of course they will, sir. I just meant that the ladies who go there are chic. All nationalities. Germans, too."

  "How long does it stay open?"

  "As long as there are customers. At this time of night there are always customers. Lots of Germans right now."

  "What kind of Germans?"

  "Germans."

  "With money?"

  "Of course." The waiter laughed. "The place isn't cheap. But very entertaining. Just say that Manuel sent you. Then you won't have to tell them anything else."

  "Do you usually have to tell them something?"

  "No. The doorman makes out a membership card for you with an imaginary name. Just a formality."

  "Sounds all right."

  Schwarz paid the check. We went slowly down the street with the stairs. As though leaning on each other's shoulders, the pale houses slept. Through the windows you could hear the moaning, snoring, and breathing of people without passport troubles. Our footfalls sounded louder than in the daytime.

  "The lights," said Schwarz. "Do they startle you, too?"

  "Yes. We're still used to blacked-out Europe. I keep thinking somebody has forgotten to turn them off and the planes will attack any minute."

  Schwarz stopped. "Light was given to us as a gift from God," he said with emotion, "because there is something of God in us. And now we hide it because we are murdering the bit of God in us."

  "As I remember the story," I said, "the gods didn't make man a gift of fire. Prometheus stole it. In return the gods gave him chronic cirrhosis of the liver."

  Schwarz looked at me. "I stopped joking long ago. As long as people joke, they belittle the proportions of things."

  "Perhaps," I said. "But isn't that better if it lets in a ray of hope?"

  "You're right. I forgot that you are trying to get away.

  How can a man who's trying to get away have time to think of proportions?"

  "Aren't you trying to get away, too?"

  Schwarz shook his head. "Not any more. I'm going back."

  "Where?" I asked in amazement. I couldn't believe that he meant to go back to Germany a second time.

  CHAPTER 3

  The night club was typical of the places that White Russians have been operating all over Europe since the Revolution of 1917. They all have the same waiters, who all used to be aristocrats, the same choirs all made up of former officers of the guard, the same high prices, and the same melancholy atmosphere.

  In addition, they all have the same dim lighting, and I was counting on that. Just as the waiter had said, there were Germans, and they were definitely not refugees. They were probably spies, members of the German legation, or employees of German firms.

  "The Russians," said Schwarz, "have been more successful than we have in making a place for themselves. It's true they had a fifteen-year head start. Fifteen years of exile is a long time, a lifetime of experience."

  "They were the first wave of refugees," I replied. "People were still sorry for them. They were given work permits and papers. Nansen passports. When we came, the world's supply of pity had long been used up. We were nuisances, termites; hardly anyone had a good word for us. We have no right to work, no right to exist, and we still have no papers."

  I had been feeling nervous ever since we set foot in this place. It was probably a reaction to the closed-in, heavily curtained room, my awareness that there were Germans about, and the fact that I was sitting too far from the door for an easy getaway. I had long been in the habit of sitting near the exit wherever I went. It also made me nervous that from here I couldn't see the ship. Maybe some message had come and it would sail, ahead of time, that very night.

  Schwarz seemed to read my thoughts. He reached into his pocket and put the tickets down in front of me. "Take them; I'm not a slave driver. Take them and go if you want to."

  I was ashamed. "You've got me wrong," I said. "I have time. All the time in the world."

  Schwarz did not reply. He waited. I took the two booklets and put them in my pocket.

  "I arranged to take a train," he went on, as though nothing had happened, "that would reach Osnabrück early in the evening. I felt that I was crossing the border only now. Up until then, the people and things, even in my native land, had been strangers to me; but now every tree began to speak. I knew the villages we rode through; as a schoolboy I had gone there on excursions, or I had been there with Helen in the first weeks of our acquaintance. I had loved this countryside, as I had loved the city with its houses and gardens.

  "Up until then, my horror had been abstract and all of a piece. What had happened had paralyzed me, turned me to stone. I had never felt the need to analyze it, to consider it in detail; actually, I had been afraid to do so. Now, suddenly, the little things began to speak, things that had nothing to do with the horror, and yet were part of it.

  "The countryside hadn't changed. It was still the same.

  The steeples still had the same soft green patina in the setting sun; the river still reflected the sky. It reminded me of the days when I had gone fishing and dreamed of adventures in strange lands—well, I had had plenty of those, but they weren't exactly what I had imagined. The meadows with their butterflies and dragonflies hadn't changed, nor had the hillsides with their trees and wild flowers; they were exactly as in the days of my youth, and in them lay my youth—buried, if I wanted to look at it that way, or ready to be rediscovered, if I tried to be more optimistic.

  "And there was nothing to mar the scene. From the train I saw few people and no uniforms, only the countryside, gradually sinking into the dusk. There were roses and dahlias and lilies in the tiny gardens of the stationmasters. They were just as they had always been; the leprosy hadn't corroded them; they grew on wooden trellises, just as they did in France, and in the meadows stood cows just as in the meadows of Switzerland, brown and black and white—without swastikas—with the same old patient eyes. I saw a stork clattering on a farmhouse, and the swallows flew as they fly everywhere and always. Only the people had changed; I knew it, but that evening I couldn't see it, and I couldn't understand it either.

  "Besides, they were not as uniformly different as I had foolishly imagined. The compartment filled up and emptied and filled up again. At that time of day there were few uniforms; nearly all the people were plain people, and their conversation was pretty much what I was accustomed to in France and Switzerland—about the weather, the harvest, the events of the day and the fear of war. They, too, were afraid of war; the only difference was that outside of Germany everyone knew that Germany had wanted it, whereas here I heard that other countries were forcing it on Germany. Almost everyone was for peace, as people always are just before a war breaks out.

  "The train stopped. I squeezed through the gate with the crowd. The inside of the station hadn't changed since I had last seen it; it only seemed smaller and dustier than I remembered.

  "When I stepped out into the Bahnhofsplatz, everything I had been thinking fell away from me. Night was falling and the air was damp, as after a rain; I no longer saw my surroundings; everything trembled within me, and I knew that from then on I would be in great danger. At the same time I had the feeling that nothing could happen to me. It was as though I were standing under a glass bell that protected me but might shatter into bits at any moment.

  "I went back in to the ticket window and bought a retu
rn ticket to Münster. I couldn't live in Osnabrück. It was too dangerous. 'When is the last train?' I asked the ticket seller, who sat in the yellow light behind his window, his bald head glistening, like a small-town Buddha utterly secure and immune to all vicissitudes.

  " There's one at nine-twenty and another at eleven-twelve.'

  "I went to a slot machine and bought a platform ticket. I wanted to have it handy in case I had to disappear in a hurry before train time. As a rule, station platforms are poor hiding places, but usually you have several to choose from— three in Osnabrück—you can jump into a train that's about to leave, explain to the conductor that you've made a mistake, pay the difference, and get out at the next stop.

  "I had decided to call up a friend of former years, whom I knew to be no supporter of the regime. His tone on the telephone would tell me whether he could help me. I was afraid to call my wife directly, because I didn't know whether she lived alone.