Comedy in a Minor Key

by Hans Keilson

  She had to laugh to herself, and something inside her made her want to keep going and finish the conversation with the milkman in a natural, genuine way.

  “At six-thirty,” he went on, “Melker saw it, biking in from the fields.”

  “So—what kind of man was it?” She held her breath, waiting for the answer.

  “That I don’t know,” the milkman said, sticking both hands contemplatively into his pants pockets. His face grew serious, his lower lip protruding a little. “Some poor devil—sometimes you read it in the paper, too, that they found someone, on the road or wherever . . .” And then, in a soft voice, cautiously, “It’ll probably turn out to have been a Jew . . .”

  Pause.

  “Oh, I see,” Marie responded slowly, as though a light were dawning on her. “You mean . . . yes, it could be.” She held the bottles tight against her body with her left arm, and the milk pot stood on the floor in the doorway to the house. She was still waiting. And . . . ?

  A few houses down, a woman came out the door and through the front garden, milk pot in her hand. “Milkman!” she cried in a trilling falsetto voice, before she caught sight of him standing and talking with Marie in front of the house. With little nervous steps she hurried up to the cart he had left standing on the edge of the sidewalk. She held her milk pot up in the air and waved.

  “Coming,” the milkman called back, and he stayed, hands in his pockets, without moving from his place. And, turned to Marie: “She’s in quite a hurry.”

  “Maybe,” Marie replied. She had learned what she wanted to know—and another customer was already waiting at the milk cart. She could make it quick now, then disappear.

  “Well . . . he couldn’t have been with her, in any case,” the milkman said, very softly, so that Marie could barely hear it.

  She understood right away. Nevertheless she asked, innocently: “Who?”

  “Well—” He waggled a big thumb quickly a few times back in the direction of the park.

  “Why not?” Marie said, and a significant smile ended the sentence, as though she knew all sorts of secrets . . .

  “Her?” the man whispered, and he took his left hand out of his pocket and bent closer to Marie. “She’s much too scared.” And his soft voice said everything he felt in that moment, his little contempt and mockery. And a laugh too, as though he knew still other secrets . . .

  But he didn’t really know them, he couldn’t know them, Marie decided when she was alone in the house again. He was only trying to get across that he knew his clients. Of course it was easy to tell whether someone you sold milk to was acting scared, or more scared than usual. But still, it was eerie. She felt a little strange about it.

  But Nico wasn’t lying under the bench anymore! She could have screamed out loud when she heard the news, screamed for joy. This feeling of satisfaction suddenly rising within her—that he wasn’t lying in the park anymore, under the sky, like a dead bird—it had given her the courage to conduct this conversation with the milkman to the end, in a rather daring and dangerous way. Eventually every house near the park would come under suspicion. Of course. She hadn’t thought of that before.

  When she stood in the kitchen again and put the bottles of milk and yogurt on the cold stone ledge, she knew at last that Nico had stopped living in her house. In her grief at his death, which broke through fully for the first time now that her fear was gone, there was mixed in a feeling of happiness, of satisfaction, that someone had found him and that nothing more could happen to him now. They would be alone again within the four walls of their house, just like before. Maybe a new guest would come but he, Nico, would never be standing at the top of the stairs again, waiting for someone to bring him his newspaper. He would never have to wait for anything again. He had defended himself against death from without, and then it had carried him off from within. It was like a comedy where you expect the hero to emerge onstage, bringing resolution, from the right. And out he comes from the left. Later, though, the audience members go home surprised, delighted, and a little bit wiser for the experience. They feel that the play did turn out a bit sad after all, at the very end. We thought he would enter from the right . . .

  And then there was also a little embarrassment, a little disappointment. Why did he of all people have to die? Why did precisely the one who was hiding in their house have to die a perfectly ordinary, normal death, the same way people die all the time, whether in wartime or peacetime? It was practically a trick he had played on them with this death, on the people who had kept him hidden for an entirely different purpose. He didn’t need to go into hiding in order to die, he could have just simply . . . , like all the countless others . . .

  And then, too, there was a small, all too human disappointment left over: that he had died on them. You don’t get the chance to save someone every day. This unacknowledged thought had often helped them carry on when, a little depressed and full of doubt, they thought they couldn’t bear this complicated situation any longer and their courage failed them. Always a stranger in your house, someone who never does anything, always someone’s fate in your hands, always danger, never free to say and do what you want, never, never, never!

  She had secretly imagined what it would be like on liberation day, the three of them arm in arm walking out of their house. Everyone would see right away what he was from his pale face, the color of a shut-in, which his appearance only emphasized even more. How the neighbors and everyone on the street would look when he suddenly walked out of their house and strolled up and down the street with them. It would give them a little sense of satisfaction, and everyone who makes a sacrifice needs a little sense of satisfaction. And then you’d feel that you, you personally, even if only just a little bit, had won the war.

  It all had gone up in smoke. It wasn’t even a dream anymore. None of the three of them had any luck. But really, him least of all.

  Poor Nico!

  Hadn’t he, on that first night, when Wim said, “Everyone in your situation,” answered: “And it’s not just Jews . . .”?

  It had made them happy to hear those words; he didn’t demand any special pity for himself. He stepped modestly back, so to speak, into the circle, the brotherhood of all those who suffer—the same as everyone else, one among many. It was a sympathetic gesture for him to make—a gesture, but not the full truth.

  “Actually they’re all unlucky.”

  “Who?”

  “The Jews.”

  They were not in the habit of talking about “the” Jews. If someone was Jewish, that wasn’t a problem for them.

  “They have it hard,” Wim said. “They’re like rabbits, hunted. And now it seems like the off-season, when they’re safe, is over.”

  “Why do they let themselves be hunted?”

  “What else should they do?” Wim asked. “Run away or let themselves be caught . . . ?”

  “And yet they want to keep on being rabbits,” Marie said. “Can you understand that?”

  “It’s their religion,” Wim explained.

  But Marie protested. She had never been able to tell from Nico that he had anything to do with religion. In truth, even though they were helping to hide one, neither of them understood what it truly meant: a Jew. A human being like everyone else. But . . . But what? It was hard to be so close to someone, to spend so much time in the same house with him, without finally, eventually, asking about his background, about who he was. They didn’t want to cause problems and draw boundaries where there hadn’t been any before, in their naïve interactions. But both of them would have really liked to know why their Nico was still a Jew. Surely not because other people said so?

  “Do you think I could ask him sometime, Wim?”

  “If you put it carefully. You never know whether it might be embarrassing for him. Anyway, even normally, it’s kind of a difficult business, asking someone why he’s like this and not like that. And kind of a funny question too.”

  And so Marie, when the occasion arose, while wash
ing dishes in the kitchen, asked him once if he would tell her why he still . . .

  “You can tell by looking at me,” was his first answer.

  Marie shook her head. “In France or in Spain, or even here, in the south near Belgium, no one would notice you.”

  “Yes, maybe you’re right.”

  “And why didn’t you just change countries?”

  She’d meant to say “change religions.” It was a slip of the tongue. But when she noticed it herself, she didn’t correct it.

  “First of all, it wouldn’t be much help now,” he had said calmly, drying a soup plate with big circular motions. “They’re taking everyone, even the converts.”

  Pause.

  “And secondly, Nico?” It was almost an interrogation. Except that Marie, the interrogator, was trembling inwardly more than the interrogated.

  “And then—ach, Marie, to tell you the truth I’ve thought about it very, very often. You know, I don’t observe any of the customs anymore.”

  “And why not, Nico. Why didn’t you do it?” She imperceptibly turned a little toward him without taking her hands out of the basin.

  “And what did he answer then?” Wim asked when Marie told him about the conversation.

  “Something very strange. Actually, I don’t understand it very well. I almost think it’s a little preposterous. He said, ‘I always imagined what my father would say about it.’ ”

  “He said that?”

  “Yes . . . what his father would say about it.”

  Wim was silent.

  “What do you think of that?”

  “I don’t think it’s as senseless as all that,” Wim said after a while.

  Marie hesitated.

  “To understand it, I would either have to be a son—or have one. Don’t you think?” She laughed and stood up a little on her tiptoes.

  “Maybe,” Wim replied, and he lightly tapped his forehead against hers.

  After Marie had finished the usual housework, she came across the laundry bag in the hall on the second floor, clothes still inside as if it had just come from the laundry. With everything else that had been going on in the last few days, she hadn’t got around to putting it away. It was a quarter past eleven, and she was thinking that before making lunch she would quickly take out the laundry and put it away in the closet, when Coba appeared.

  “Coba?” Marie almost shouted, and all at once she felt pain again about everything she thought she had put behind her. Her face looked so serious and sad that right away Coba knew everything.

  “My God!” —Coba put her hand on her mouth with fright. Five days ago, the last time she was here, he was still alive. So fast! “Tell me,” she said, and sat down on the second-to-top step. “Where is he?”

  When Marie had finished, Coba fell silent too for a long time. She stared dully into space, and Marie had more than enough time to marvel that someone who was so lively and full of ideas could be so quiet.

  “Maybe it’s for the best,” Coba said at last, and stood up—“best for the two of you and for him . . . poor man.” She took off her coat.

  “I’ll brew up some coffee,” Marie said, “but I was just about to put away the laundry. It’ll only take a minute. Wim’s coming home for lunch.”

  “I’ll help,” Coba announced, and slowly climbed the last steps.

  She took the laundry out of the bag and gave it to Marie, who put it in the closet.

  “What did he have on?” Coba asked, grabbing a tall stack of well-folded shirts of Wim’s.

  “Pajamas—a pair of Wim’s,” Marie added, taking the stack of shirts out of Coba’s hands and going to the closet.

  “I see.” Coba bent down again and took hold of a pile of brightly colored terry-cloth towels from the very bottom of the bag. The towels were marked.

  “. . . I hope you cut off the number from the laundry first.” She stood up and waited for Marie, who was still busy at the closet.

  “Oh, Coba—” Marie said in a monotone. She felt like she was falling against the closet. She turned around and Coba looked into two wide-open eyes that were filling with fear from one corner to the other, from one second to the next, fear overflowing the eyelids over her whole face and down her neck and running down into her arms and her whole body.

  Coba let the towels drop unheeded onto the laundry bag and hurried to the closet. She grabbed Marie’s upper arms and stepped right in front of her. All the melancholy memories had vanished, now that there was a new danger.

  “Think hard,” she whispered, her voice tense; maybe it was a false alarm . . . “Beforehand, did you . . . ?”

  Marie closed her eyes and shook her head. In the grip of Coba’s two strong, decisive hands, in which she felt all the energy of the other young woman, it was as if every bit of Marie’s energy left her. She felt it flowing out of her. “No,” she whispered.

  “Come here,” Coba said, and pulled her onto a chair. “Calm down . . . What a thing to find out!”

  When Marie sat down she felt better, but the shock still drained all the strength from her limbs. It came so fast, with no transition, especially after all the weeks and months in which she had had to play the helpful role. Now she felt helpless, utterly ashamed of this new part she so unexpectedly found herself playing, which she had not even started to learn.

  On the floor, a little distance away from her, lay the towels, scattered and no longer folded. She could see the laundry numbers in the middle of the top edge, red on white.

  “What now?” she asked.

  “When does Wim get back?” Coba asked.

  “Around noon, quarter past. Do we have that long?”

  “I hope so,” Coba replied. “I don’t know how your police are anyway, are they ‘good’?”

  “I think so. Wim said something like that.”

  “Pack up the things you need, I’ll tell Wim when he gets home,” Coba announced.

  Marie let her have her way.

  “Hi, Coba, you’re here? Where’s Marie?” Wim said when he walked into the house a little later. “Did she tell you . . . ?”

  “That and something else—” his sister answered. “Listen to this!”

  “Dam— . . . is it true?” Wim cried, and turned deathly pale. He began to pace heavily around the room.

  “There’s no time to lose,” Coba said. “I assume your pajamas have not just the laundry number but your monogram embroidered on, as is only proper in any house with a good housewife.”

  “Of course. I—”

  “Never mind. You have to disappear . . . you have to go into hiding.”

  A short, sharp laugh, like a cough. In the middle of the room he jerked to a complete stop. “Do you have an address for us?” So it had come to this. Now it was their turn. Yesterday still the hosts, giving comfort; today the guests themselves, asking for others’ pity . . . !

  “There’s always a safe house for urgent cases.”

  “Surely it’s . . .” His voice was still bitter. He started wandering around the room again. Suddenly he stopped in front of her. “You’re right.” He sounded calmer; he had come to his decision. “We have to leave right away. Right away . . . Neither of us thought of the number, it was nighttime, the room was so dark. I didn’t either, and I helped her dress him too . . . Well, it doesn’t matter. But still, you’re careful for a whole year, stay alert like a policeman in your own house, everything goes fine, and then, right at the end . . . It’s almost enough to make you laugh!”

  “You’ll come to my house first,” Coba began. “I’ll pass you along later.”

  “Good, Coba, we’ll go with you.” He had fully regained his old calm and collected attitude.

  It was just such a shock! “The whole thing could turn out to be nothing. Our police are almost all good, they’re on our side. Who knows?” he concluded. Yes, there was still a chance. Wait and see. “It’s just the chief, he’s on the other side. Well, we’ll see. We’ll go with you.”

  “You can go by bike; Marie a
nd I will take the streetcar.”

  “Where’s Marie?”

  “She’s upstairs, packing.”

  When he walked into the bedroom, Marie was just picking up the towels from the floor and putting them away. She was crying.

  “I didn’t think of it either,” Wim said even before she said anything. He wanted to make it clear that it was a problem for both of them together. “Not to mention the doctor. I mean, he doesn’t leave his business card in someone’s stomach when he operates on him . . .”

  Marie had to smile at that last comparison. “What now?” she said timidly. “Did Coba tell you? I’ve packed everything.”

  “We’ll leave the house right now. I’ll bike, you take the streetcar.”

  “Don’t you need to go to the factory?”

  “I’ll take care of that.”

  “I’m done.”

  “Let’s go,” Wim said.

  “I cut out the other laundry numbers, as many as I could—”

  Wim interrupted her. “Don’t bother. They have a list at the laundry anyway, and some of our other clothes are still there too. Come on, let’s go.”

  While the two women put on their coats in the front hall, Wim walked through the rooms of the house again, to quickly make sure there was nothing else lying around that could compromise them. That was pointless too, in truth, because if the one thing came out it was more than enough to snare them.

  When he walked by the little table in the front room, where the vase stood, the thought flashed through his head how quickly, when it’s necessary, people can leave behind all the things they possessed in happier times. Exactly as fast as a settled person becomes a refugee. And he heard Nico’s voice in his head, telling him how he had left his own apartment.

  “. . . it was just a two-room sublet, with morning light. I didn’t own much furniture that was worth saving. I gave a picture and a few books to a colleague.”