The Trespassers

by Laura Z. Hobson

  She cried out so hard that he stopped.

  “You mean you won’t get married? Do you mean that? Is that what you are saying?”

  He stared at her. His mouth was bitter; his upper eyelids were low over the lifeless brown of his eyes. He nodded, and kept on nodding and nodding, six times, seven times, ten times, pausing in the gesture, and then resuming it.

  “Jas—no—it isn’t possible. This isn’t ‘being caught’—we went to doctors—we did it together—you wouldn’t, you couldn’t—” Her voice rose with hysteria. “It would be just yellow—cowardly—horrible—you wouldn’t, you’ll think it over and change back again into you.”

  He looked past her.

  “And my hope is that you’ll think it over, and do it my way. You have another six weeks to have it done without danger to you.”

  “Never. I’ll go ahead alone.”

  He began the slow nodding again, staring at her, his face jutting toward her, grotesque. She thought of primitive masks, savage paintings in caves, totem poles. This was nightmare—it would be over in a few seconds. In a moment he would speak and this would be over. He would, he would, in just one moment more, he would speak, and this would be over. You couldn’t count on somebody, trust somebody, build everything on another human being, and then have him let you down. Hurry, Jas, hurry, hurry and say something, my darling.

  “Go ahead alone, then.”

  He was gone.

  She felt she would never sleep again. This torture, this heartbreak, this end to her love, this wild need for oblivion—this she had. But to curl her hand under her cheek and sleep, calm and quiet? How could she ever again do that?

  It was avalanche, torrent, this pain roaring through her. “Jas, Jas, how could you do it? Oh, it’s not so—it’s not so.”

  The telephone would ring. He would call her and say again that he had gone mad, that he loathed himself for his words; he would beg her to let him come up at once and make it right again.

  The doorbell would ring. Now in the middle of the night, ten hours after he had left her smashed, crushed, gasping with the shock—he would ring the bell and come in and heal her again.

  The telephone did not ring. The doorbell was silent. The apartment was empty of sound. All afternoon, all evening, now at two in the morning, the only sound had been her own terrible bursts of crying, her hoarse, strident crying. Not even the ordinary small noises of a house had broken the stillness. She felt the silence like an active, continuing assault.

  She had had no food. Coffee—finally sometime during the hours she had gone into the kitchen and made herself strong coffee. It was Dora’s day off; that was good. No human being must see her this way, destroyed. Now she went back again, heated some milk, drank it slowly. That might make her sleep.

  Sleep would renew her. She needed to close this torture out of her mind and go to sleep. She lay down on her bed.

  The thing, twisting and searing at the cone of her ribs. It was there, physical, real. It pierced, it crushed at body and mind alike.

  If the telephone did ring, if the door did open—it was no good, anyway. Forever it would be no good. She could never trust him again, never rely on him, never believe his promise, his pledge.

  Promises, pledges, faith in another’s word—of those things life itself was made, happiness held or shattered. There was something here, something wildly familiar.

  In her mind, she saw Jasper’s head, bent slightly forward. His face wasn’t jutting at her now. It looked tired, a little listless. His eyes were closed, and he shielded them with one hand, the thumb pressed over one eyelid and the middle finger over the other, his other fingers flaring gracefully away.

  God, oh, God, it was a trick. Her mind had played her a trick. That was David’s gesture—that was her brother David’s gesture…

  She fell asleep at last, on top of the blankets. For two hours, she slept. When she woke to Dora’s knock at eight, she had one moment of numb forgetting. Then it leaped at her.

  Friday, Friday night. Saturday, Saturday night. Sunday, Sunday night. Hour upon hour of the pain, the inexhaustible pain.

  She ate almost nothing; she slept as she had that first night, only when in an exhaustion that refused denial. She telephoned the office that she was ill with influenza, told Dora and any telephoning friend the same, thing. Hour upon hour of the hot, smashing pain.

  “I must stop this suffering, I must do something to end it, this might hurt the baby, I must find out how you stand this.”

  She would leave the house then, take a long walk. She watched people on the street, speculated about their errands, studied their faces. But she would have to return to the apartment when she grew tired.

  There it was, ready to leap at her. Friday, Friday night; Saturday, Saturday night; Sunday, Sunday night.

  Suddenly she knew she could no longer bear it. It was the silence of it, the voicelessness of it. Inside her, writhing, twisting, the betrayal, the treachery.

  She could not stand it any more. She walked uncertainly to the telephone, dialed a number. During the long, steady ringing, she glanced at her watch. It was past midnight.

  “Ann, it’s Vee.”

  “Vee, what’s the matter—what is it?”

  “Could you come over to me, Ann? Something bad has happened.”

  “I’ll get right over.”

  Fifteen minutes later Ann Willis came through the door.

  “Vee, you’re sick, you’re—what’s happened to you? You’re ill.”

  “I’ve—I’m thin, I’ve lost six pounds in the last four days and I mustn’t, Ann, I mustn’t—”

  It came in gasping, rushing pieces, then, the whole story. She heard her own voice thick, she felt her tears hot, she did not care, she could not hold anything back. She saw Ann’s face white with anger, tight with loathing. She saw it change to warmth, to understanding, and then go back, at the mention of Jasper’s name, to a cold, solid hatred.

  “I can’t, Ann, I can’t do anything but have the baby,” Vee ended. “I can’t make myself stop it. You’ll help me, I know I’ll need help, and you’ll help me.”

  Ann had her arms about her, rocking her a little, assuring her, praising her for her decision. There was solace in it for Vee, some curious, long-forgotten comfort in crying out her misery to an older woman and finding the haven of compassion and love.

  Through most of the night, they talked. When Vee looked too far ahead, Ann pulled her back to more immediate horizons; if Vee said passionately that she would not try a hole-and-corner existence, but would face the world unashamed of her pregnancy, Ann merely nodded and thought to herself there was plenty of time for such major decisions later. She knew that the first task was to get Vee over this appalling shock, to quiet her again into some more endurable state. The rest of it could come later—perhaps she herself could come to live with her, or perhaps Bronya would have that role to play. Perhaps, even, Jasper would feel remorse—

  “That swine,” she exploded, her gruff voice coarsened with anger. “That unspeakable, ruthless swine. Someday, somewhere, somebody is going to pay him back for the way he’s smashed around him all his life. It won’t be you, Vee, you don’t go in for smashing back. I could, but not you. But somehow or other—God, I hope it’s big when it strikes home at last.”

  “Nobody could ever touch him,” she answered in a small voice. “He always thinks he’s right, so he doesn’t even care what other people think. He calls them “his enemies” and forgets them. A long time ago, a man named Grosvenor, Timothy Grosvenor—”

  Ann gestured it away impatiently.

  “You wait. He’s laid up too much. I know things about his office you never hear. I know about his ten years at the other company. About his marriage. Things about this employee, that colleague, this stockholder. Always it comes out at the same place—he let somebody down, he double-crossed somebody who helped him or trusted him.” She clenched her hands and shook a fist in the air. “You watch, someday, somebody is going to
have the guts to hit back.”

  An unnamable thing screamed inside Vee’s mind, “I hope so, I hope so; maybe he’ll know then what this feels like.” She shrank away from it, from this new and terrible hate, this killing, murderer’s hate.

  The strident, ugly crying began again; she could not stop it. She was ashamed of it, but she could not halt its possession of her. Over it, Ann’s voice sought her attention, Ann’s loyal, insistent voice. “There, Vee. You’re all right, you’ll be all right, you’ll be all right.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  FRANZ VEDERLE LAUGHED ALOUD as he went up the steps. The idea was delightful.

  Inside the German Consulate, he banished the smile and strode importantly to the desk of the Vice-Consul with whom he had dealt the first time he had come to Lugano. The young Nazi was talking to a shabby man, seated before him.

  Franz cleared his throat impatiently. The Nazi looked up.

  “How long will you be with this—this business?” Franz asked. The wave of his hand included not only the papers spread on the desk but the shabby man as well. “I have very little time.”

  Automatically, the Vice-Consul rose. Deference was on his face.

  “Heil Hitler,” he said. “I will be only a moment, Herr—”

  “Dr. Vederle,” Franz replied with some annoyance. “You will remember. I have expected the new passports every day for three days. It has been too long by far, this simple matter.”

  “Yes, sir, I will be with you in a moment, sir.”

  Franz waved his hand again.

  “Well, finish what you’re about with this fellow,” he said graciously. “I shall wait here.”

  He seated himself in a chair near by, ignoring the usual waiting room. With the profile of his vision, he saw the flustered hands of the Vice-Consul busy themselves with the pages before him.

  Then he was right in his estimate of this creature. In his first interview, he had noted the respectful friendliness accorded him after the first glance at his good British clothes, and because his Arian-Nachweis showed that he was not one of the despised.

  He had been really clever to prepare for that first visit by wiring Christa’s family and his relatives for these “Aryan certificates,” the birth and baptism certificates of their grandparents on both sides. In a decent day, it might have been quite a task to find them, buried in some old trunk, or locked in a safe-deposit box. But now that one had to have these papers constantly to hand in Austria in order to get rationing cards, the return mail had brought him photostatic copies.

  Only when he had them did he take the train for Lugano for that first interview. Luck, pure luck, had ushered him to the desk of this clerkish, bespectacled Vice-Consul, who undoubtedly was as great a bully as any Nazi with the poor, the frightened, the “tainted,” but who, like all bullies, was obsequious to any man he thought his superior.

  Secretly, Franz laughed again. That first time, he had not thought of this ruse. Then it was only his own contempt for the swastika outside the Consulate, his own loathing for the very room he entered, with its flamboyant maps and posters of Gross Deutschland, its printed threats of “Death Penalty” for removing funds to a foreign country—all that had steeled his voice to the tone which the young Nazi had so misread. But recalling his first curt sentences, he could see how he must have sounded very impressive indeed. The constant “Yes, Herr Doktor,” “At once, Herr Doktor,” gave him all the clue he needed.

  He had quailed inside, when the Vice-Consul, full of alacrity and beneficent respect, had murmured something about “the routine letter to the Gestapo at Vienna.” But he had kept that momentary tremor a dark secret, and merely said crisply, “Wire them instead. I want this expedited in every way.”

  That had been a week ago. Back in Ascona, he had seen that there was safety only in speed, only in a cursory investigation. Ordinarily, a month or more might elapse before he would be summoned back to Lugano. He had waited seven days and here he was.

  “Yes, Herr Doktor Vederle,” the Vice-Consul said. “Now I am at your complete service.” He smiled and half bowed. “You see, I immediately sent the page boy for your file.”

  Franz seated himself in the chair at the desk. He tossed his gray suede gloves on the desk, placed his gray Homburg carefully over them, and lit a cigarette without offering one to the Vice-Consul. Only then did he speak.

  “I had to be here in Lugano today—on other business,” he stated. “So I came by to see why there is this infernal delay.”

  “Delay? Oh, no, Herr Doktor, sometimes this conversion of passport takes two to four months.”

  “Sometimes, sometimes. But not when it is important to have passports for instant departure from this confounded country. Did you wire Vienna? You should have had your reply overnight. I have given you six days more—still no word.”

  The pale-blue eyes behind the lenses blinked.

  “Oh, I am sorry, I misunderstood—I had no idea.” He thumbed rapidly through the forms in the file envelope. “The Herr Doktor did not tell me he might be leaving at once.”

  Franz’ laugh was cold and brief.

  “You’re quite right. I did not tell you.”

  “May I ask, sir, it is a routine question—may I inquire to which country you are going?”

  “If I knew, I should be glad to tell you,” he answered, with elaborate politeness. “Though that can, of course, have no conceivable bearing on this conversion of passport. I am not asking for visas, after all. Still—if I knew, I would answer your question. All I can—may reply now is: perhaps my destination will be France, perhaps England, perhaps the United States—perhaps, even, back to Vienna.” Again he paused. “Or I may even stay in Switzerland for some time before I know where I am to go next.”

  “I see. I—I assure you, I am not trying to pry. I—no, there has been no reply from Vienna. They often—they are so pressed there.”

  Franz made a gesture of impatience. He stood up.

  “Let us discuss this with the Consul General,” he said coldly. “I must tell him that the Reich seems to be poorly represented in Lugano, when such inaction is permitted for days on end.”

  “I—that is, it is my fault, Herr Doktor. If I had realized, I should have wired again to Vienna. I—”

  “Well, go see the Consul General yourself, then. I shall wait here. I do not wish it to seem like a report of your—your…” He cleared his throat. “You might tell him that I know Klotzmann extremely well.”

  The next moment he was alone. He lit another cigarette. This was precisely like a third-rate cinema. Yet it would work. He was sure of it. Or was he? If he were as sure as all that, why was his heart now so obvious in his breast? No, it would work. This frightened little toad—not good enough for the army—was reacting precisely to pattern. Put him in the brown shirt, give him a holster and a gun, yes, then he would be brave. But his face had actually twitched at the mention of Klotzmann’s name. The head of the entire German Consular Service.

  And the odd part was that it was true. He had known Klotzmann years ago, before he had turned into the Nazi. Klotzmann would know nothing of him now, but he would remember the name. If they did telephone Berlin, he was still on the safe side of the odds.

  He glanced at his watch. Five minutes had gone by.

  Perhaps this decision to speed it along was a needless risk to take. But if, by some miracle, the American Consulate should suddenly notify them to come to Zurich for their final examination for the visas, they would have to show valid passports in order to receive them. Not to have them then, to have to wait “from two to four months” after being notified—God, what new complications would ensue, what new dangers.

  No, his instinct was the right one. The risk was commensurate with the need for taking it.

  He extended his left wrist once more, and again looked at the time. Ten minutes had gone by.

  He wanted to turn his head, toward the door through which the Vice-Consul had vanished. He forced himself not to. Instead he
rose, and walked to one of the windows and looked out at the city. The busy streets filled with bundle-laden shoppers told him again what his heart had told him a hundred times in the past week: soon it would be Christmas. In two days, on every simple or elegant hearth of the Western world, the undying, homely festival would begin. Even in the houses of the Nazi and Fascist maniacs and their millions of duped followers, even there in the houses of the dark-shirted, dark-venomed troopers, the old habits of worshiping that Great, Lonely Jew would creep out and come to brief life again.

  And for those millions of the homeless, the travelers, the migrants—for them, this time of Christmas could only be a time of more poignant thorns, the thorns of wondering, of longing for home.

  His mind clicked back to his errand. He looked once more at his watch. Twenty minutes had gone by. Fear thumped through him.

  A door closed sharply. He wheeled around, then immediately schooled himself back into the role he was playing.

  The Vice-Consul was coming rapidly toward him. Behind him was a solid, squat man with pale jowls and a stiff gray brush of hair.

  Both faces were smiling.

  Franz wished he were leaning against something. Then he too was expectantly smiling. He saw the grayish-brown cardboard book lets in the Vice-Consul’s hand. “The color of cow dung,” he thought.

  Greetings and introductions were rapid. The Consul General had come out himself to explain to Herr Doktor Vederle. Everything was cleared now; two long-distance telephone calls had had to be made, and thus this twenty-minute delay.

  “You called Klotzmann himself?”

  “Oh, it was not necessary. I simply called Vienna for the report—merely the routine report, you understand. The top official was not there, I could only get an underling.” His voice dipped in apology.

  “And the second call?” Franz sounded faintly amused. His eyes strayed to the cardboard booklets. There were two of them.