Flotsam

by Erich Maria Remarque

  “As for that, sir,” the waiter said, “they say that it’s even dangerous to pick your nose.”

  “Yes; but you don’t get put in the penitentiary for that.”

  The waiter began cautiously rubbing his nose—but he didn’t pick it. “I mean it all for the best, sir,” he said. “And I’ve had a lot of experience here. A dead Austrian is much the best buy.”

  It was about ten o’clock when the two dealers in passports arrived. The conversation was carried on by one of them, a lively birdlike fellow. The other sat there, large and bloated, saying nothing.

  The spokesman brought out a German passport. “We have talked this over with our associates. You can have your own name put on it. The personal description will be washed out and your own substituted. Except, of course, the place of birth. You will have to accept Augsburg for that because that’s where the seal is from. All this will come to two hundred schillings more, naturally enough. It’s precision work, you understand.”

  “I haven’t that much money,” Steiner said. “And I don’t attach any importance to my name.”

  “Then take it the way it is. We’ll just change the photograph and we’ll make you a present of the raised lettering that runs along the edge of the picture.”

  “No good. I want to work, and with this passport I won’t be able to get a permit.”

  The spokesman shrugged his shoulders. “In that case there’s only the Austrian. With that you can work.”

  “And suppose someone makes inquiries at the office where it was issued?”

  “Who’s going to? Unless you get into trouble.”

  “Three hundred schillings,” Steiner said.

  The spokesman started. “We have fixed prices,” he said in an injured tone. “Five hundred, not a groschen less.”

  Steiner was silent.

  “Now if it had been the German passport, we might have made a deal. They’re common enough. But an Austrian passport is very rare. When does an Austrian need a passport? Not when he’s at home, and when does he ever go abroad? Especially now, with the embargo on currency! It’s a gift at five hundred.”

  “Three hundred and fifty.”

  The spokesman became excited. “Three hundred and fifty is what I myself paid the bereaved family. You have no idea how much work this sort of thing requires. Commissions and expenses, too. Conscience comes very high, my friend. To snatch something like this, fresh from the grave, you have to lay down cold cash and lots of it. Money’s the only thing that dries tears and assuages grief. You can have it for four hundred and fifty. We’re losing money, but we like you.”

  They agreed at four hundred. Steiner brought out a photograph which he had had made for a schilling at an automat. The two took it away and came back in an hour with the passport in order. Steiner paid them and put it in his pocket.

  “Good luck,” said the spokesman. “And now let me give you a tip. When it runs out there is one way of extending it. Wash out the date and change it. The only trouble is with the visas. The longer you can get along without them, the better—you can extend the date correspondingly.”

  “Why, we could have done that now,” Steiner said.

  The spokesman shook his head. “It’s better for you as it is. You have a genuine passport which you might have found. Changing a photograph isn’t as serious as forgery. And you have a year’s time. A lot can happen in a year.”

  “Let’s hope so.”

  “You’ll be discreet about all this, won’t you? It’s to everyone’s advantage. Of course if you have a customer who means business—you know how to reach us. Till then, good night.”

  “Good night.”

  “Strszecz miecze,” said the silent man.

  “He doesn’t speak German,” said the spokesman, grinning at Steiner’s expression. “But he has a wonderful touch with seals. Only strictly serious customers, remember.”

  Steiner went to the station. He had left his knapsack in the checkroom there. On the previous evening he had left the rooming house and had spent the night on a bench in the park. In the morning he shaved off his mustache in the station washroom, and after that he had his picture taken. He was filled with exuberant satisfaction. Now he was the workman Johann Huber from Graz.

  On the way he stopped suddenly. There was still one score to be settled from the time when his name had been Steiner. He went to a telephone and looked for a number. “Leopold Schaefer,” he murmured to himself. “Number 27, Trautenau Alley.” The name was branded in his memory.

  He found the number and called up. A woman answered.

  “Is Officer Schaefer at home?” he asked.

  “Yes. I’ll call him right away.”

  “That’s not necessary,” Steiner replied quickly. “This is the police station at Elisabeth Promenade. There will be a riot at twelve o’clock. Policeman Schaefer is to report here at a quarter of twelve. Have you got that?”

  “Yes. At quarter of twelve.”

  “Good.” Steiner hung up.

  Trautenau Alley was a narrow, silent street of bleak, cheap houses. Steiner examined Number 27 carefully. There was nothing to distinguish it from the others; but it seemed to him especially repulsive. Then he went on a way and waited.

  Officer Schaefer came blustering importantly out of the house. Steiner approached him so that they would meet at a dark spot. Then he lurched against him with his shoulder.

  Schaefer reeled. “Are you drunk, fellow?” he roared. “Can’t you see that you have before you an officer on duty?”

  “No,” Steiner replied. “I only see a God-damn’ son of a bitch! A son of a bitch, understand?”

  Schaefer was speechless for a moment. “Man,” he said then in a low voice, “you must be crazy. I’ll make you pay for this. Come on, off to the station-house!”

  He tried to draw his revolver. Steiner kicked him in the arm, moved in suddenly and did the most insulting thing one man can do to another; he struck Schaefer with his open hand on both sides of the face.

  The policeman emitted a gurgle and leaped at him. Steiner ducked to the side and landed a left hook on Schaefer’s nose which immediately began to bleed. “Son of a bitch!” he growled. “Miserable turd! Cowardly carcass!”

  He chopped his lips with a sharp right and felt the teeth break under his knuckles. Schaefer reeled. “Help!” he shouted in a high thick voice.

  “Shut your trap,” Steiner snarled, and placed a sharp right to the chin followed by a short left straight to the solar plexus. Schaefer gave a gulp like a bullfrog and pitched to the ground like a pillar.

  Lights went on in a few windows. “What’s the matter this time?” a voice cried.

  “Nothing,” Steiner replied from the darkness, “only a drunk.”

  “Devil take these rumpots!” the voice shouted angrily. “Cart him off to the police!”

  “That’s just where he’s going!”

  “Smack him a couple of times on his drunken snout.”

  The window was slammed shut. Steiner grinned and disappeared around the nearest corner. He was sure that Schaefer had not recognized him with his altered face. He crossed a few more streets until he came to a populated district. Then he walked more slowly.

  Magnificent and yet enough to make you puke, he thought. Such a laughable little bit of revenge! But it makes up for years of flight and submission. You have to take your opportunities as they come. He stopped under a street light and took out his passport. Johann Huber! Workman! You are dead and moldering somewhere in the soil of Graz, but your passport is still alive and valid in the eyes of the authorities. I, Josef Steiner, am alive; but without a passport I am dead in the eyes of the authorities. He laughed aloud. Let’s exchange, Johann Huber! Give me your paper life and take my paperless death. If the living won’t help us, it’s up to the dead!

  Chapter Six

  SUNDAY EVENING Kern returned to the hotel. In his room he found Marill in a state of great excitement. “Someone at last!” he shouted. “Damn this roost! Not a
living soul in it, today of all days! Everyone gone out! Everyone away! Even the damned proprietor!”

  “What’s the matter?” Kern asked.

  “Do you know where to find a midwife? Or any kind of woman’s doctor?”

  “No.”

  “No, of course you don’t!” Marill stared at him. “You’re a sensible fellow. Come along with me. Someone has to stay with the woman. Then I can go out and look for a midwife. Can you do that?”

  “Do what?”

  “See that she doesn’t thrash around. Reason with her. Do anything.”

  He dragged Kern, who had no idea what was happening, along the hall to the floor below and opened the door of a small room in which there was not much but a bed. On the bed a woman lay groaning.

  “The seventh month. Miscarriage or something of the sort. Calm her if you can. I’ll get a doctor.”

  He was out of the room before Kern could reply.

  The woman on the bed groaned. Kern approached on tiptoe.

  “Can I get you anything?” he whispered.

  The woman continued to groan. Her faded, blond hair was soaked with sweat and dark patches of freckles stood out on her gray face. Her eyes were rolled up under half-closed lids; only the whites could be seen. Her thin lips were drawn back and her teeth tightly clenched. They gleamed a clear white in the half-darkness.

  “Can I get you anything?” Kern repeated.

  He looked around. A thin, cheap coat lay tossed over a chair. By the bed stood a pair of worn shoes. The woman lay there, completely dressed, as though she had dropped suddenly on the bed. There was a water bottle on the table and beside the washstand stood a suitcase.

  The woman groaned. Kern did not know what to do. The woman began to toss. He remembered what Marill had told him and the little he had learned during his year at the University, and tried to hold down the woman’s shoulders. But it was as if he were trying to hold a snake.

  While he was still struggling and she was slipping away from him and pushing him off, she suddenly raised her arms and in an instant had driven her fingers with all her strength, clawlike, into his arm.

  He stood as though riveted to the spot. He would never have guessed she had such strength. She twisted her head slowly as though it were on a pivot and groaned so hideously that it seemed her breath must be coming out of the earth.

  Her body jerked and suddenly from beneath the blanket, which she had pushed aside, Kern saw a dark red stain creep, spread out on the sheet and grow larger and larger. He tried to pull himself free, but the woman held him in a grip of iron. As though bewitched he stared at the stain, which became a broad ribbon, reached the edge of the sheet and began, drop by drop, to form a dark pool on the floor.

  “Let me go! Let me go!” Kern dared not pull his arm away for fear of jarring her. “Let me go,” he groaned. “Let me go.”

  Suddenly the woman’s body grew slack. She released her grip and fell back among the pillows. Kern seized the blanket and lifted it. A wave of blood welled out and splashed on the floor. He leaped up, horrified, and ran instinctively to the room where Ruth Holland lived.

  She was there, sitting alone among her open books. “Come!” Kern gasped. “A woman is bleeding to death downstairs.”

  They ran down together. The room had become darker. In the window sunset flamed, throwing a dismal light over the floor and table. A reflection, caught in the water bottle, sparkled like a ruby. The woman lay quite still. She seemed to have stopped breathing.

  Ruth Holland threw back the blanket. The woman was swimming in blood. “Turn on the light,” the girl called.

  Kern rushed to the switch. The light of the weak bulb blended with the red of sunset in a somber glow. Bathed in this reddish-yellow haze lay the woman on the bed. She appeared to be nothing but a formless belly with disheveled, bloody clothes, from which protruded spraddled, white legs, smeared with blood. Her black stockings had worked down and her legs themselves had a strangely twisted and lifeless look.

  “Give me the towel! We must stop the bleeding! Perhaps you can find something.”

  Kern saw that Ruth had rolled up her sleeves and was loosening the woman’s clothes. He gave her the towel from the washstand. “The doctor must be here soon. Marill has gone for him.”

  Searching for bandage material, he hastily emptied out the contents of the suitcase.

  “Give me anything you can find!” Ruth called.

  On the floor lay a heap of baby clothes—little shirts, belly bands, diapers, and among them a few knitted sweaters of pink and light-blue wool, trimmed with silk bows. One of them was unfinished; a pair of knitting needles was still sticking in it. A ball of soft blue yarn fell and rolled noiselessly across the floor.

  “Get me something!” Ruth threw away the blood-soaked towel. Kern gave Ruth the belly bands and diapers. Then he heard steps on the stair and immediately after the door flew open to admit Marill and the doctor.

  “Damn it, what’s this?” The doctor took one long stride, pushed Ruth Holland aside and bent over the woman. After a while he turned to Marill. “Call number 2167. Braun is to come at once with everything necessary for anesthesia, Braxton-Hicks operation. Have you got it? In addition, everything for severe hemorrhage.”

  “Right.”

  The doctor looked around. “You can go,” he said to Kern. “The young lady will remain. Get hot water. Give me my bag.”

  Ten minutes later the second doctor came. With the help of Kern and a few people who had arrived in the meantime, the room next to the one where the woman lay was transformed into an operating room. The beds were pushed aside, tables placed close together, and the instruments laid out. The proprietor brought the strongest bulbs he had and screwed them into the lamps.

  “Hurry, hurry!” The first doctor was raging with impatience. He pulled on his white gown and had Ruth Holland button it. “Put one on too.” He threw her a gown. “Perhaps we’ll need you here. Can you stand the sight of blood? Will it make you sick?”

  “No,” Ruth said.

  “Good girl, fine.”

  “Perhaps I can help too,” Kern said. “I’ve had two semesters of medicine.”

  “Not just now.” The doctor glanced over his instruments. “Can we begin?”

  The light glistened on his bald spot. The door to the room was taken off its hinges. Four men carried the bed with the softly moaning woman through the corridor and into the room. Her eyes were wide open; her white lips quivered.

  “Come on, steady it there!” barked the doctor. “Lift it higher! Careful now, damn it, careful!”

  The woman was heavy. Drops of perspiration stood on Kern’s forehead. His eyes met Ruth’s. She was pale but calm and so changed that he hardly recognized her. She belonged now to the bleeding woman.

  “There! Everyone out who isn’t needed!” snapped the doctor with the bald spot. He took the woman’s hand. “It won’t hurt. It’s very easy.” His voice had suddenly become like a mother’s.

  “My child must live,” whispered the woman.

  “Both of you will—both,” the doctor answered softly.

  “My child—”

  “We’ll just turn it around a little to avoid the shoulder presentation. Then it will come like lightning. Just be calm, quite calm. Anesthesia!”

  Kern was standing with Marill and a few others in the room the woman had left. They were waiting for a chance to be useful. From next door came the subdued murmurs of the doctors. Scattered on the floor lay the pink and blue sweaters.

  “A birth,” Marill said to Kern. “That’s how it is when someone comes into the world. Blood, blood and screams! Do you understand, Kern?”

  “Yes.”

  “No,” Marill said. “You don’t and I don’t. A woman, only a woman, can understand. Don’t you feel like a swine?”

  “No,” Kern replied.

  “You don’t? Well, I do.” Marill polished his eyeglasses and looked at Kern. “Ever slept with a woman? No! Otherwise you’d feel like a swine t
oo. Is there any chance of getting a drink here?”

  The waiter appeared from the back of the room. “Bring me a half-bottle of cognac,” Marill said. “Yes, yes, I have money to pay for it. Just go ahead and bring it.”

  The waiter disappeared and with him went the proprietor and two other people. Kern and Marill remained alone. “Let’s sit here by the window,” said the latter. He pointed toward the sunset. “Pretty, isn’t it?”

  Kern nodded.

  “Yes,” Marill said. “All sorts of things side by side. Those are lilacs down there in the garden, aren’t they?”

  “Yes.”

  “Lilacs and ether. Blood and cognac. Well, prost!”

  “I brought four glasses, Herr Marill,” said the waiter, placing a tray on the table. “I thought perhaps—” he motioned with his head toward the next room.

  “Good.”

  Marill filled two glasses. “Do you drink, Kern?”

  “Not often.”

  “That’s a Jewish sin—abstinence. On the other hand you know more about women. But that’s the last thing women want. Prost!”

  “Prost!”

  Kern emptied his glass. It made him feel better. “Is that only a miscarriage,” he asked, “or something else?”

  “Yes. Four weeks too soon. Overexertion, that’s the cause. Traveling, changing trains, excitement, hurrying around, and all that sort of thing, see? Just what a woman in her condition ought not to do.”

  “And why—”

  Marill refilled the glasses. “Why—” he said. “Because she wanted her child to be a Czech. Because she did not want him to be spit at in school and called a stinking Jew.”

  “I understand,” Kern said. “Didn’t her husband come with her?”

  “Her husband was locked up a couple of weeks ago. Why? Because he was in business and was more enterprising and industrious than his competitor on the next corner. So what do you do if you’re the competitor? You go and denounce the industrious fellow; you accuse him of treasonable speeches, of having cursed the government or of holding communistic theories. Anything at all. Then he gets locked up and you take over his customers. See?”