Flotsam

by Erich Maria Remarque

  Marill nodded. “You’re right.” He pointed to a young man who was sitting beside the window with a book in front of him. “That youngster over there has been a dishwasher in a night club for two years. He was a German student. Two weeks ago he took his doctor’s degree in French. While he was studying for it he found out that he couldn’t get an appointment here but that there was a chance in Capetown. Now he’s learning English in order to take his doctor’s degree in English and go to South Africa. That sort of thing goes on here too. Do you find it a comfort?”

  “Yes.”

  “You too, Kern?”

  “Everything’s a comfort to me. How are the police here?”

  “Fairly lax. You have to look out, of course, but they’re not as sharp as in Switzerland.”

  “I find that a comfort,” Kern said.

  Next morning Kern went with Klassmann to the Refugees’ Aid to have his name put on record. From there they went to the Prefecture. “There’s no use at all in reporting,” Klassmann said. “You’d just be deported. But it’s a good thing for you to see, once at least, what’s going on. It’s not dangerous. Police offices, next to churches and museums, are the least dangerous places for emigrees.”

  “That checks with my experience,” Kern replied. “To be sure I hadn’t thought of museums until now.”

  The Prefecture was a great mass of buildings situated around a large courtyard. Klassmann led Kern through several archways and doors into a large room which looked just about like a station ticket room. Along the walls were a row of windows behind which clerks were seated. In the middle of the room there were a number of backless benches. Several hundred people stood or sat in long queues.

  “This is the room of the elect,” Klassmann said. “It is pretty nearly paradise. Here you see the people who have residential permits and now only have to have them extended.”

  Kern felt the solemnity and crushing anxiety of the room. “You call this paradise?” he asked.

  “Yes. Look there!”

  Klassmann pointed to a woman who was leaving a window near by. She was staring with an expression of delirious joy at a permit which the girl behind the window had stamped and returned to her. She ran toward a group of those waiting. “Four weeks,” she cried with suppressed delight. “Extended for four weeks.”

  Klassmann exchanged glances with Kern. “Four weeks; nowadays that’s practically a lifetime, eh?”

  Kern nodded.

  An old man was now standing in front of the window. “But what am I to do?” he asked in bewilderment.

  The clerk made some reply in rapid French which Kern could not understand. The old man listened to him. “Yes, but what shall I do?” he asked a second time.

  The clerk repeated his explanation. “Next!” he said then and reached for the papers which the man behind was holding out over the old man.

  The old man turned his head. “But I’m not through yet,” he said. “I still don’t know what I am to do. Where do you want me to go?” he asked the clerk.

  The official made an inaudible reply and busied himself with the other man’s papers. The old man gripped the ledge of the window as though it were a raft in the ocean. “What do you want me to do then, if you won’t extend my permit?” he asked the clerk.

  The official paid no attention to him and the old man turned to the people standing behind him. “But now what can I do?” He gazed at the stony wall of careworn, hunted faces. No one replied; but neither did anyone push him away. Over his head they handed their papers in at the window, taking special care not to jostle him.

  He turned to the clerk again. “Really, someone must tell me what I’m to do,” he said softly again and again. He was only whispering now, with frightened eyes and head bowed under the arms that curled over his head toward the window like waves. His old hands with their twisted and protruding veins were clamped to the window ledge. Finally his lips stopped moving and suddenly, as though his strength were exhausted, he let his arms fall and left the window. His big useless hands swung from his body as though attached by ropes and with no vital connection and his bowed head seemed no longer capable of sight.

  But while the man still stood there completely lost, Kern saw the next face at the window grow rigid with horror. There followed hasty gestures and once more the dreadful inconsolable stare, the blind inward searching for some impossible rescue.

  “So this is paradise?” Kern asked.

  “Yes,” Klassmann replied. “This is paradise, at least by comparison. Many are refused; but there are many too who get extensions.”

  They went along several corridors and came to a room that no longer looked like a ticket room but like a fourth-class waiting room. It was filled with a mixture of nationalities. There were not enough benches, and people were standing or sitting on the floor. Kern saw a heavy dark woman sitting on the floor in one corner like a broad-beamed nesting hen. She had impassive regular features. Her black hair was parted in the middle and done up in braids. Around her a number of children were at play. She had the smallest child at her bared breast. She sat there unembarrassed amid the confusion with the striking nobility of a healthy animal and the rights of every mother, paying attention only to her brood who played around her knees and back as though around a statue.

  Beside her stood a group of Jews, with quivering gray beards, wearing caftans and ear-locks. They stood waiting with an expression of imperturbable resignation as though they had already been waiting for centuries and knew they would have to wait for centuries more. On one bench sat a pregnant woman, beside her a man who kept up a constant rubbing of his hands. Beside him a man with white hair was softly comforting a weeping woman. On the other side a pimply young fellow was smoking cigarettes and furtively, like a thief, staring at a beautiful and elegant woman opposite him who was putting on and taking off her gloves. A hunchback was writing in a notebook. A number of Rumanians were hissing like steaming kettles. A man was looking at some photographs, putting them in his pocket, immediately getting them out again, to stare at them again and once more put them away. A fat woman was reading an Italian newspaper. A young girl sat there completely sunk in sorrow, taking no notice.

  “These are all people who have applied for permits,” Klassmann said, “or are about to apply for them.”

  “What sort of papers do you need to do that?”

  “Most of them have valid passports, or passports that have expired and not been renewed—or in some way or other have got into the country legally, with a visa.”

  “Then this is not the worst department?”

  “No,” said Klassmann.

  Kern saw that in addition to the male clerks there were some girls sitting behind the windows. They were pretty and smartly dressed; most of them wore bright blouses and half-length black-satin sleeve protectors. For an instant it seemed strange to him that behind the windows there should be human beings to whom it was a matter of consequence to protect the sleeves of their blouses from getting dirty, while in front there was a crowd of people whose whole lives were sunk in dirt.

  “In the last few weeks it has been especially bad in the Prefecture,” Klassmann said. “Whenever anything happens in Germany to make the neighboring countries nervous, the emigrees are the first to suffer. They are the scapegoats for one and all.”

  Kern saw a man with a thin, intelligent face, standing at one of the windows. His papers appeared to be in order; after a few questions the young girl behind the window took them and began to write. But Kern saw that the man had begun to sweat just standing there at the window waiting. The big room was cold and the man was wearing a thin summer suit, but the sweat streamed out of every pore. His face gleamed with moisture and bright drops ran over his forehead and cheeks. He stood motionless, with his arms resting on the window ledge, in a polite but not subservient attitude, prepared to answer questions—and his wish was being fulfilled; nevertheless he was nothing but a death sweat, as though he were being roasted on invisible fires of heartle
ssness. If he had screamed, lamented or begged it would not have struck Kern as so horrible. But that he should stand there in polite composure, courageously ready to accept his fate, and that only his sweat glands were traitors to his will—that was as if the man were drowning in himself. It was animal distress itself that was trickling through all the dams of conventional conduct.

  The girl returned his paper with a friendly word. The man thanked her smoothly in excellent French and moved quickly away. Not until he reached the door of the hall did he open the paper to see what was in it. There was a bluish stamp with a couple of dates, but all at once it seemed to the man as if it were the month of May and the nightingales of freedom were singing in the barren room.

  “Shall we go?” Kern asked.

  “Have you seen enough?”

  “Yes.”

  They went toward the exit but they were stopped by a crowd of miserable Jews who circled round them like a flock of disheveled and hungry jackdaws.

  “Pleece—help—” The eldest stepped forward with a sweeping gesture of obeisance. “We not speak French—pleece—help—man—man.”

  “Man—man—” the others joined in the chorus flapping their loose sleeves. “Man—man—”

  It seemed to be the single word of German they knew, for they repeated it unceasingly, pointing with their worn yellowish hands to themselves, to their foreheads, their eyes, their hearts—over and over in a softly urgent, ingratiating singsong: “Man—man—” And only the eldest added “Fellow man …” He knew a few more words.

  “Do you speak Yiddish?” Klassmann asked.

  “No,” Kern replied, “not a word.”

  “These are Jews who speak only Hebrew. They sit here day after day and cannot make themselves understood. They are looking for someone to translate for them.”

  “Yiddish, Yiddish,” the eldest nodded eagerly.

  “Man—man,” buzzed the flapping chorus with excited and expressive faces.

  “Help—help.” The eldest pointed to the windows. “Not speak, only ‘Man—man.’ ”

  Klassmann made a regretful gesture, “No Yiddish.”

  The jackdaws surrounded Kern. “Yiddish—Yiddish—man.”

  Kern shook his head. The flapping died away. The eldest asked once more, in horrified attitude with bent head: “Not …?”

  Kern shook his head again. “Ah—” The old Jew raised his hands to his breast; his finger tips touched and his hands formed a little roof over his heart. Thus he stood, inclined a little forward as though he were listening for a voice from afar. Then he bowed and slowly let his hands sink.

  Kern and Klassmann left the room. When they reached the outer corridor they heard martial music pouring from above, down the stone stairway. It was a rousing march with fanfare and peal of trumpets.

  “What under the sun is that?” Kern asked.

  “It’s the radio. The police recreation rooms are up there. Midday concert.”

  The music surged down the stairs like a flashing stream—it gathered in the corridor and burst like a waterfall through the wide entry doors. It splashed over a small, lonely figure crouching on the lowest step, dark and colorless like an un-moving lump of black, a little hillock with mad, unresting eyes. It was the old man who had freed himself with such difficulty from the unrelenting window. He crouched in the corner, lost and done for, with bowed shoulders and knees drawn high, as though he would never rise again—and over him, and away in gay and flashing cascades, the music splashed and danced, strong, pitiless, unceasing as life itself.

  “Come along,” Klassmann said when they were outside, “we’ll have a cup of coffee.” They sat down at a wicker table in front of a small bistro. Kern felt better when he had drunk the bitter black coffee.

  “What’s the last stop?” he asked.

  “The last stop for many is to sit alone somewhere and starve to death. Prisons. Subway stations at night. Under the bridges of the Seine.”

  Kern looked at the stream of people ceaselessly pushing past the tables of the bistro. A girl with a big hatbox on her arm smiled at him as she went by. She turned around again and threw him a quick glance over her shoulder.

  “How old are you?” Klassmann asked.

  “Twenty-one. Twenty-two soon.”

  “That’s about what I thought.” Klassmann stirred his coffee. “I have a son just your age.”

  “Is he here too?”

  “No,” Klassmann said. “He’s in Germany.”

  Kern glanced up. “That’s bad, I know.”

  “Not for him.”

  “So much the better.”

  “It would be worse for him if he were here,” Klassmann said.

  “Would it?” Kern glanced at him in surprise.

  “Yes. I’d beat him until he was crippled.”

  “What?”

  “He denounced me. It was because of him I had to leave.”

  “What the hell!” Kern said.

  “I’m a Catholic, a good Catholic. But my youngster has belonged for years to one of the Party’s youth organizations. They’re called ‘veterans’ now. You can understand I wasn’t too pleased, and there were words between us. The boy became more and more impudent. One day, just as if he were a non-com talking to a recruit, he told me to shut my mouth or something would happen to me. Threatened me, see? I gave him a good cuff on the ear. He rushed out in a rage and denounced me to the state police. Repeated word for word in a declaration the insulting things I had said about the Party. Luckily I had a friend there who warned me by telephone. I had to clear out right away. An hour later a squad came to get me—with my son in command.”

  “No joke,” Kern said.

  Klassmann nodded. “It’ll be no joke for him when I get back again.”

  “Perhaps by then he’ll have a son of his own who will denounce him. Perhaps by that time it will be the Communists to whom he denounces him.”

  Klassmann looked at him in dismay. “Do you think it will last that long?”

  “I don’t know. I can’t picture myself ever getting back.”

  * * *

  Steiner was fastening a badge of the National Socialist Party under the left lapel of his coat. “Magnificent, Beer,” he said. “Where in the world did you get it?”

  Dr. Beer grinned. “From a patient. Automobile accident just outside Murten. I set his arm. At first he was cautious and pretended he thought everything was wonderful over there; then we had a couple of cognacs together and he began to curse their whole economic set-up and gave me his Party badge as a souvenir. Unfortunately he had to go back to Germany.”

  “Blessings on the man!” Steiner picked up a blue portfolio from the table and opened it. There was a list with a swastika and a few propaganda releases in it. “I’m sure this will do. He’ll fall for it ten times over.”

  He had received the list and the releases from Beer, to whom such things had been sent for years, for reasons that were not clear, from a Party organization in Stuttgart. Steiner had made a selection and was now going on the warpath against Ammers. Beer had told him what had happened to Kern.

  “When are you moving on?” Beer asked.

  “At eleven o’clock. Before that I’ll bring back your badge.”

  “Fine. I’ll be waiting for you with a bottle of brandy.”

  Steiner went off. He rang at Ammers’ door. The maid opened it. “I’d like to speak to Herr Ammers,” he said shortly. “My name is Huber.” The maid disappeared and came back. “What did you want to see him about?”

  Aha, Steiner thought, that’s because Kern was here. He knew that Kern had not been asked. “A Party matter,” he explained shortly.

  This time Ammers himself appeared and stared at Steiner eagerly. Steiner raised his hand casually. “Party Member Ammers?”

  “Yes.”

  Steiner turned over the lapel of his coat and showed the badge. “Huber,” he explained. “I represent the Foreign Division and I want to ask a few questions.”

  Ammers stood i
n a stiff, bowed position. “Please come in, Herr—Herr—”

  “Huber. Simply Huber. You know—the enemy have ears everywhere.”

  “I know! This is a great honor, Herr Huber.”

  Steiner had calculated correctly. It never occurred to Ammers to distrust him. Obedience and fear of the Gestapo were much too deep in his bones. And even if he had been distrustful, he could have done nothing to Steiner in Switzerland. Steiner had an Austrian passport in the name of Huber. To what extent he was connected with the German organization no one could find out. Not even the German Embassy, which had long ago lost track of all the secret propaganda measures.

  Ammers led Steiner into the living room. “Take a seat, Ammers,” Steiner said, and himself sat down in Ammers’ chair.

  He leafed through the contents of the portfolio. “You know, Party Member Ammers, that we have one general principle in our foreign activities—silence.”

  Ammers nodded.

  “We expected that in your case too. Silent activity. Now we hear you have made an unnecessary disturbance in the case of a young emigree!”

  Ammers leaped from his chair. “That criminal! He made me absolutely sick, sick and ridiculous. The scoundrel—”

  “Ridiculous?” Steiner interrupted him cuttingly. “Publicly ridiculous? Friend Ammers—”

  “Not publicly, not publicly!” Ammers saw he had made a mistake. He almost fell over himself with excitement. “Only in my own eyes, I mean—”

  Steiner looked at him piercingly. “Ammers!” he then said slowly. “A true member of the Party is never ridiculous, even in his own eyes! What’s the matter with you, man? Have the Democratic moles been gnawing away at the roots of your principles? Ridiculous—there is no such word in our vocabulary! It’s the others who are thoroughly ridiculous, do you understand?”

  “Yes, of course, of course!” Ammers wiped his forehead. He already half saw himself in a concentration camp to freshen up his principles. “It was just this one case! Otherwise I’m strong as steel. My loyalty is unshakable—”

  Steiner let him go on talking for a while. Then he cut him short. “All right, Party Member. I hope nothing of this sort will happen again. Pay no more attention to emigrees, understand? We’re glad to be rid of them.”