Flotsam

by Erich Maria Remarque

  Ruth nodded. She was tired from the night trip. “Any hotel will do.”

  In a side street they found a red electric sign: Hotel Habana. Kern went inside and asked the price of a room.

  “For the whole night?” the porter asked.

  “Yes, of course,” Kern answered in surprise.

  “Twenty-five francs.”

  “For two persons?” Kern asked.

  “Yes, of course,” the porter replied, amazed in his turn.

  Kent went out and got Ruth. The porter glanced quickly at them and pushed a police form toward Kern. When he saw Kern hesitate, he smiled and said, “We don’t take those too seriously.”

  In relief Kern put down his name as Ludwig Oppenheim. “That’s all we need,” said the porter. “Twenty-five francs.”

  Kern paid and a boy took them upstairs. The room was small, clean, and even had a certain elegance. It contained a large, comfortable bed, two washstands and a chair, but no wardrobe. “I guess we can get along without a wardrobe,” Kern said, going to the window to look out. He turned around. “Now we’re in Paris, Ruth.”

  “Yes,” Ruth replied smiling at him, “and how fast it all happened.”

  “We don’t have to worry much about police forms here. Did you hear the way I talked French? I understood everything the porter said.”

  “You were marvelous,” Ruth replied. “I couldn’t have opened my mouth.”

  “The funny thing is you speak French much better than I do. I’m just bolder than you, that’s all. Come, now we’re going to get something to eat. A city seems unfriendly until you have eaten and drunk in it.”

  They went to a little brightly lighted bistro near by. It was ablaze with mirrors and smelled of sawdust and anis. For four francs they received a complete meal and a carafe of red wine as well. It was cheap and good. They had had hardly anything to eat all day, and the wine rose to their heads and made them sleepy. They soon returned to the hotel.

  In front of the porter’s desk in the lobby a girl, wearing a fur coat, was standing with a rather drunken man. They were bargaining with the porter. The girl was pretty and well-groomed. She looked contemptuously at Ruth. The man was smoking a cigar; he did not move out of the way when Kern went to get his key.

  As they climbed the stairs Kern said, “Pretty elegant here, isn’t it? Did you notice that fur coat?”

  “Yes,” Ruth smiled, “it was an imitation. Just cat fur. Something like that doesn’t cost much more than a good cloth coat.”

  “I would never have known that. I’d have thought it was mink.”

  Kern snapped on the light. Ruth let her pocketbook and coat slip to the floor, put her arms around his neck and pressed her face close to his. “I’m tired,” she said. “Tired, and happy and a little afraid, but mostly tired. Help me get to bed.”

  “Yes.”

  They lay beside each other in the darkness. Ruth put her head on Kern’s shoulder and with a deep sigh immediately fell asleep like a child. Kern lay awake for a while listening to her breathing. Then he too fell asleep.

  Something woke him. He sat up with a start and listened to the noise outside. His heart began to pound; he thought it was the police. Quickly he leaped out of bed, ran to the door, opened it a hand’s breadth and peered out. Someone was shouting downstairs and an angry, piercing woman’s voice replied in shrill French. After a while the porter came up.

  “What’s wrong?” Kern asked in excitement through the crack in the door.

  The porter looked at him in tired surprise. “Nothing, just a drunk who didn’t want to pay.”

  “Nothing more?”

  “What more should there be? Things like this happen occasionally. Haven’t you anything better to do?”

  He opened the door to the next room and admitted two people who had come up behind him, a man with a pitch-black mustache and a billowing blonde. Kern closed his door and felt his way back in the darkness. He bumped against the bed and as he steadied himself he suddenly felt Ruth’s soft breast under his hand. Prague, he thought—and a wave of love swept through him. At the same moment Ruth’s breast moved as she propped herself up on her elbows and an unfamiliar, frightened and constrained voice whispered: “What—what is it? For God’s sake—” and became still and there was only a gasping sound in the darkness.

  “It’s me, Ruth,” Kern said and got into bed. “It’s me and I have frightened you.”

  “Oh, yes,” she murmured and lay back.

  Quickly she fell asleep again with her hot face on Kern’s shoulder. That’s what they’ve done to you, he thought bitterly. The other time in Prague you only asked, faintly disturbed: “Who’s there?” But now you tremble and are afraid.

  “Take everything off,” said an oily male voice from the next room. “I’m crazy about a fat bottom.”

  The woman laughed. “I can supply that all night.”

  Kern listened. He knew now where he was. In a house of assignation. Cautiously he peered over at Ruth. She appeared not to have heard. “Ruth,” he said almost inaudibly, “beloved tired little Ruth, go on sleeping and don’t wake up. What’s happening over there has nothing to do with us. I love you and you love me and we are alone—”

  “Damn me!” The sound of a slap came through the thin wall. “That’s what I call class. Damn me again! Hard as rock.”

  “Ough, you pig! You’re a regular crazy pig,” the woman cried happily.

  “Sure. Did you think I was made of cardboard?”

  “We’re not here at all,” Kern whispered. “Ruth, we’re not here at all. We are lying in a field in the sunshine and around us camellias and red poppies are blooming. A cuckoo is calling and bright butterflies are hovering around your face—”

  “The other way around! Leave that light on!” urged the oily voice from next door.

  “What are you trying to do anyway? Ah—” The woman crowed with laughter.

  “We’re in a little peasant cottage,” Kern whispered. “It’s evening and we’ve just had buttermilk and fresh bread. Twilight touches our faces; everything is silent and we are waiting for the night. We are at peace and know that we love each other—”

  A tumult came from next door with creakings and shouts.

  “I’m resting my head on your knees and I feel your hands in my hair. You are no longer afraid; you have a passport and all the policemen nod genially to us. You go to the university every day and the professors are proud of you. And I—I—”

  Footsteps came along the corridor. From the other side of the room where hitherto it had been quiet there was the rattling of a key. “Thanks,” said the porter. “Thanks very much.”

  “What are you going to give me, dearie?” asked a bored voice.

  “I haven’t very much,” a man answered. “How about fifty?”

  “You’re crazy. For less than a hundred I won’t undo a single button.”

  “But my child—” the voice diminished to a throaty plaint.

  “It’s vacation and we’re at the seashore,” Kern said softly and insistently. “You have been in swimming and have fallen asleep on the hot sand. The ocean is blue and there’s a white sail on the horizon. The wind is blowing and the sea gulls are screaming.”

  Something banged against the wall and Ruth trembled. “What’s that?” she asked, drunk with sleep.

  “Nothing, nothing. Go to sleep, Ruth.”

  “You’re still here, aren’t you?”

  “I’ll always be here and I love you.”

  “Yes, love me—”

  She went to sleep again. “You are with me and I with you and no filth can touch us, none of the filth through which they drive us,” Kern whispered amid the bawdy uproar of the short-time house. “We are alone and young and our sleep is clean, Ruth—beloved Ruth of the wide, flowery fields of love.…”

  * * *

  Kern came out of the office of the Refugees’ Aid. He had not expected anything better than the news he had received. A permit to stay was out of the question. Don
ations only in extreme cases. Work, with or without a residential permit, was of course forbidden.

  Kern was not especially depressed. It was the same in every country. And despite that, thousands of emigrees, who according to the laws should have starved to death long ago, were still alive. He stopped for a while in the anteroom of the office. It was full of people. Kern looked them over carefully one by one. Then he approached a man who was sitting a little to one side and who had a calm and collected appearance.

  “I beg your pardon,” he said, “there’s a question I’d like to ask you. Could you tell me where one can live without being reported to the police? I’ve only been in Paris since yesterday.”

  “Have you any money?” the man asked without the slightest sign of surprise.

  “A little.”

  “Can you pay six francs a day for a room?”

  “Yes. For the time being.”

  “Then go to the Hotel Verdun in the Rue de Turenne. Tell the landlady I sent you. My name is Klassmann. Dr. Klassmann,” he added in wry amusement.

  “Is the Verdun safe from the police?”

  “No place is safe. They get you to fill out an undated registration slip. But they do not send it to the police. If there should be a check-up their story is always that you came that day and the slip was going to be sent to the police next morning. The chief thing is you’re not arrested right away. To escape that there is an excellent underground passage. You’ll see when you get there. The Verdun is no hotel—it’s something that God in his wise providence created for emigrees fifty years ago. Have you read your newspaper yet?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then give it to me. We’ll be quits.”

  “All right and many thanks.”

  Kern rejoined Ruth, who had been waiting for him in a café on the next corner. She had a map of the city and a French grammar in front of her. “Here,” she said, “see what I bought in a bookstore while you were away. Cheap. Secondhand. I think they’re the two weapons we need to conquer Paris.”

  “You’re right. We’ll make use of them immediately. Let’s find out where the Rue de Turenne is.”

  The Hotel Verdun was an ancient dilapidated building from which the plaster had fallen in large pieces. It had a narrow entrance behind which there was a lodge and in the lodge sat the proprietress, a bony woman in a black dress.

  In faltering French Kern explained his needs. The proprietress examined them from head to toe with gleaming, black, birdlike eyes. “With meals or without?” she asked curtly.

  “What does it cost with meals?”

  “Twenty francs per person. Three meals. Breakfast in your room, the other meals in the dining room.”

  “I think we’ll take it for the first day with meals,” Kern said to Ruth in German. “We can always change the arrangement. The main thing is to get in here.”

  Ruth nodded.

  “All right then, with meals,” Kern said. “Is there a difference in price if we take one room?”

  The proprietress shook her head. “There are no double rooms free. You have one hundred forty-one and forty-two.” She threw two keys on the counter. “Payment every day. In advance.”

  “All right,” Kern said. Then he paid and took the keys. They were attached to huge wooden blocks on which the numbers had been burned. The two rooms were next to each other. They were narrow single bedrooms overlooking the court. The room in the Hotel Habana had been palatial by comparison.

  Kern looked around. “These are regular emigrees’ holes,” he said. “Uncomfortable but familiar. They don’t promise more than they can deliver. How do you like them?”

  “I think they’re fine,” Ruth replied. “Each of us has a room and a bed. Just think how it was in Prague! Three and four in one room!”

  “You’re right. I’d forgotten all about that. I was thinking at the moment of the Neumanns’ home in Zürich.”

  Ruth laughed. “And I of the haystack in which we got soaked in the rain.”

  “Your thoughts are better than mine. But you know why I think as I do?”

  “Yes,” Ruth said. “But it’s wrong and it’s insulting to me. We’ll buy some tissue paper and make fine lampshades. We’ll learn French right here at this table, and look out there over the roof at that piece of the sky. We’ll sleep in these beds which will be the best in the world, and when we wake up and stand at the window this dirty courtyard will be full of romance, for it is a courtyard in Paris.”

  “Good,” Kern said. “And right now we’ll go to the dining room. The food there is French. And it too will be the best in the world.”

  The dining room of the Hotel Verdun was in the cellar. It was known to the guests as “the catacombs.” To reach it you had to follow a long and twisting path up steps through passageways and strange rooms that had been moldering for decades and in which the air stood as still as water in a marshy pond. It was fairly large, for it also served the Hotel International which was situated next door and belonged to the sister of the proprietress.

  This common dining room was the attraction of both ramshackle hotels. To the emigrees it was what the catacombs had been to the early Christians. If there was a check-up in the International everyone was whisked over through the dining room to the Verdun, and vice versa. The common cellar was the life line.

  Kern and Ruth stood uncertainly in the doorway for a moment. It was midday, but since the dining room had no windows it was lighted. The artificial light at this hour had a strangely inappropriate and sickly look—as though a slice of time from the evening before had been left over and forgotten.

  “Why, there’s Marill!” Kern said.

  “Where?”

  “Over there beside the lamp. What luck! Right away we see someone we know.”

  Marill saw them now. He gave an incredulous jerk at his eyeglasses. Then he got up, came over and shook hands with them.

  “The babes in Paris! What do you think of that? How did you discover the old Verdun?”

  “Dr. Klassmann told us about it.”

  “Klassmann? Really? Well, you’re in the right place. The Verdun is first-rate. Are you taking your meals here?”

  “Yes, but only for today.”

  “Good. Change that tomorrow. Pay only for the room and buy the rest yourself. Much cheaper! Now and then you can take a meal here to keep the proprietress in a good humor. You were right to clear out of Vienna. It’s getting very hot down there now.”

  “How is it here?”

  “Here? My boy, Austria, Czechoslovakia and Switzerland represent a war of movement for us exiles, but Paris is a war of position. The front line of the trenches. Each successive wave of exiles has rolled this far. Do you see the man over there with the bushy black hair? An Italian. The bearded one beside him? A Russian. Two places farther? A Spaniard. Two beyond? A Pole and two Americans. Next? Four Germans. Paris represents the last hope and the final fate of all of them.” He looked at the clock. “Come on, children. It’s almost two o’clock. If you want to get anything to eat it’s high time. The French are an exact people about meals. After two you can’t get anything.”

  They sat down at Marill’s table. “If you eat here let me recommend that fat waitress,” he said. “Her name’s Yvonne and she comes from Alsace. I don’t know how she does it, but there’s always more in her dishes than in the others.”

  Yvonne put the soup on the table and grinned. “Have you any money, children?” Marill asked.

  “About enough for two weeks,” Kern replied.

  Marill nodded. “That’s good. Have you given any thought yet to what you’re going to do?”

  “No. We only got here yesterday. How do the others here make a living?”

  “That’s a good question, Kern. Let’s begin with me. I live by writing articles for some of the emigree papers. The editors buy them because I used to be a delegate to the Reichstag. All the Russians have Nansen passports and work permits. They were the first wave of immigration—twenty years ago. They are waite
rs, cooks, masseurs, doormen, shoemakers and what not. The Italians too for the most part have found places for themselves. They were the second wave. Some of the Germans still have valid passports. Very few of them have work permits. Some still have money which they are doling out with great care. But most of them haven’t any left. They work illegally for food and a few francs. They sell whatever they still own. That lawyer over there does translating and typing work. The young man beside him takes wealthy Germans into night clubs and gets a percentage. The actress opposite him makes her living by palmistry and astrology. Some of them give language lessons. Some of them have become athletic instructors. A few go to the public markets and carry baskets. A number live on payments from the Refugees’ Aid. Some peddle; some beg—and some drop swiftly out of sight. Have you been to the Refugees’ Aid yet?”

  “I was there,” Kern said, “this morning.”

  “Didn’t get anything?”

  “No.”

  “That doesn’t matter. You must go again. Ruth must go to the Jewish one; you to the mixed; I belong to the Aryan.” Marill laughed. “Misery has its own bureaucracy, as you see. Have you had your name put down?”

  “No, not yet.”

  “Do it tomorrow. Klassmann can help you. He’s an expert at it. In Ruth’s case he can even try to get a residential permit. After all she has a passport.”

  “She has a passport,” Kern said, “but it has expired and she had to cross the border illegally.”

  “That doesn’t matter. A passport is a passport. Worth its weight in gold. Klassmann will tell you about it.”

  Yvonne put the potatoes on the table and a plate with three pieces of meat. Kern smiled at her. She gave him a broad grin.

  “You see!” Marill said. “That’s Yvonne. The regular portion is one piece of meat. She brings an extra one.”

  “Thank you very much, Yvonne,” Ruth said.

  Yvonne’s grin broadened and she waddled out.

  “Good heavens,” Kern said, “a residential permit for Ruth. She seems to be lucky there. In Switzerland she got one too. To be sure it was only for three days.”

  “Have you given up chemistry, Ruth?” Marill asked.

  “Yes. Yes and no. For the time being yes.”