Life Goes On: A Novel

by Hans Keilson

  Little Kipfer shakes his head. “Not at the moment. But for the future, I think so, together with others.”

  So, thoughts for the future—and that’s enough to fill his belly?

  Little Kipfer said nothing. That took the wind from his sails; now he was out of words at last. He stood there and stared at the floor, but he smiled to himself, invisibly. He knew he was right, even if he was going hungry at the moment.

  Father felt sorry he had said the words almost as soon as they were out of his mouth. He truly regretted them, even felt ashamed of them, especially when he saw that little Kipfer couldn’t reply. He hadn’t meant to mock or hurt him; when it came right down to it, he admitted that little Kipfer was much better off because he had a vision that he shared with other people. Maybe that was what kept him above water, who knows? He, on the other hand, Seldersen the shopkeeper, was all alone. Yes. But now he had to go upstairs for lunch.

  “Potatoes and herring today.”

  “We get that only on Sundays,” little Kipfer called after him.

  * * *

  One night, when Father stood up from the table, Mother said:

  “Are you going out for a walk? I’ll come too.”

  “Yes,” Father answered, “but stay here, you’re tired, I want to go by myself.”

  “No,” Mother said, “I’m not tired, let me come with you.”

  But Father needed to be alone. He didn’t dare say out loud: Yes, you are tired, you’re exhausted, look in the mirror: you’ve got bags under your eyes. He just went out alone.

  The evening was warm and sweet, with a lively hustle and bustle on the streets. The day with its work and toil was over, and people made use of the quiet hours to catch their breath and stroll through the darkness. Everyone relaxed in the warm, bright night.

  Father ran into lots of people he knew. “Good evening, Herr Seldersen,” they said, in the mood to stop and chat; “Good evening,” Father said abruptly and without looking up. He had left Mother at home because he wanted to be alone. He hurried to get out of the city center, where it was brightly lit and everyone knew him.

  A deep silence reigned in the park. The trees with their thick trunks cast wide shadows over the grass and the paths. There was a lonely bench. Herr Seldersen sat down and leaned his head against the hard wooden back. Silence. A pair of lovers walked past, holding each other tight, and after three steps they stopped and gave each other a long, fairy-tale kiss. Every three steps. They have been walking together for two whole hours, saying not a word the whole time. They slowly disappear into the deep shadows, their hesitant footsteps sounding in the distance.

  Herr Seldersen sits on the bench for a long time, sunk in thoughts, then he suddenly rouses himself and everything is sharp and clear again the way it was before. He is an old man, life will soon be behind him; he has walked all but the last stretch of the road. But he casts a searching look back over the long path taken so far, and not a single tiny segment escapes his memory. That is my life, he thinks, and all at once the idea comes over him that he will soon have to think about death. But what does death have to do with him? Nothing for the time being, nothing yet.

  A light breeze makes the trees sway, the branches clatter against one another, the sky appears through a little gap. The old man sitting on the bench breathes the scent of the flowers and the trees, and closes his eyes. Silence.

  He has left the house not exactly morose but not in a totally happy mood either. His wife had wanted to come with him but tonight he wanted to be by himself for once, not saying a word. His head is pleasantly numb; a sluggish lethargy fills him, then sleep, and he nods off. When he wakes again, he startles and doesn’t know at first where he is, but he quickly remembers. He feels as though he has slept for several hours; he can’t say how many hours because he has left his watch at home, but it must be very late. There is not a sound in the park. He quickly walks home; he’ll have to be back on his feet again early tomorrow.

  Tomorrow … who knows what tomorrow will bring. He has no great hopes for it; over time he has learned not to expect much. Suddenly the conversation with little Kipfer comes to mind again.… The truth is, you’ve earned the right to call it a day, he’d said. Father clearly remembers the words and the whole conversation. Has he earned that, really? He groans softly and quickens his steps. Who asks after him, who is looking out for him, who? No, no, but now he has to think about it: how to gradually bring his life to a peaceful conclusion. He isn’t old yet, he still feels young and vigorous, but the thought comes over him like a soft wind: What if he cannot bring it to a peaceful conclusion? He has a faint premonition: the way he thought it would be, the way he started life and led it all these many years, might not be the way he finishes it—he feels it slipping away from him, more and more, he no longer has any power over it. Maybe it is in the grip of some other, uncanny power now. But there is nothing more he can know about it, not yet.

  Back in the city, he looked up at the clock on the church tower: two in the morning. He walked up to the apartment quietly, got undressed in the side room, and held his breath as he crept into bed.

  “Where were you so long?” Mother asked. She had lain awake the whole time. “I was so worried. How late is it?”

  “It’s late,” Father answered in a soothing voice. “We can still sleep for a few hours.”

  Soon he was fast asleep.

  * * *

  The days took their placid course, nothing important happened: everyone went about his business and it was more or less monotonous at school too. A new principal replaced the old one, there was a new wind blowing—you could tell from many little things that there was a new punctiliousness and precision in the whole institution.

  At home, over lunch, Albrecht faithfully reported on events at the school; his parents asked questions and he eagerly answered. Every so often, he would notice that his father was not paying attention—he let Albrecht talk, even asked a question now and then, but barely paid attention to the answer. He held his spoon in his soup, bent forward over the bowl, and stared fixedly at the tablecloth; he forgot to eat, lost in thought. Albrecht stared at him and laughed. His father was not in a laughing mood—on the contrary, he seemed not to like being laughed at here at the table. Who would have thought he would be so sensitive? Sometimes at night he would leave the apartment, jumping up at the slightest difference of opinion and taking the key to shut himself up in the cold store for hours, even though there was nothing he needed to do downstairs. He locked the door behind him. Mother crept anxiously downstairs and listened at the door, leaving only when she heard him walking around or working. At first it would be completely quiet—he would sit on a chair and stare into space in the dark. Then he would stand up and turn on a single light, enough for his sad work. He took the fabric samples off the shelves, rolled them out, measured each piece, and piled them on the counter. Then he started to reorganize everything, putting the cambric next to the linens, the aprons next to the corduroy, switching the woolens with the notions. No one could find anything the next day. It gave him pleasure, a strange, bitter, stubborn pleasure, suited only to him: first to make a huge mess and confusion, strewing his goods over the tables, chairs, even the floor after he had spread out big white strips of paper to put them on, and then to create order once more, straighten up, smooth out. The work let him put things to rights—there was no other point to it, it was useless, just extra work. For hours he drove his rage and God knows what thoughts out of his head. It was late when he went back upstairs to the apartment. When he shut the door downstairs, the sound echoed through the nighttime quiet of the house. The next day, everything was back to normal. It was impossible to get anything out of Mother—she said not a word, just fanned herself when it got too terrible. Then she walked around the apartment as though in a church; she talked and acted like she was preparing a sacred offering. That exaggerated the whole situation and made it worse than it actually was.

  “You shouldn’t laugh when Father’s sit
ting there thinking,” she told her son. “He’s worried about things. Try to cheer him up, not make fun of him.”

  “You’re right,” the boy answered, and his child’s face grew serious; “tonight I’ll play something for him on the violin, I know he likes that.” Mother nodded and looked at him for a long time. He was still a little boy, even if they no longer called him by his first name at school. He played the violin, he was very musical; he was delicate but not mollycoddled, and held his own in games with boys his own age, and deep into the fall he went swimming in the lakes that ringed his hometown. In winter too he didn’t hang around the house.

  Fritz came by one night. Albrecht’s friend was a year and a half older, with a much stronger build. They were classmates. His father owned a building on the main street, where he had a plumbing business.

  Fritz invited Albrecht out for a walk and his parents had no objection—it was late summer, the night was warm and bright. It was just a little way up a steep street and a long, steep stairway before they were up in the forest. They walked farther, to a clearing with a bricked-in stone wall around it. There they lay on the stone wall and looked down.

  Silence.

  Night rose up softly from far behind the chain of mountains, with the wide and mighty river wending its way at their feet; it settled down into the basin of the valley and slowly crept toward the city. The little villages, scattered far and wide across the plains, nestled into the delicate white haze rising up from the ground. Everything was still; only the blinking lights on the church towers kept turning, showing the airplanes in the sky the way. Peace and quiet gradually came over the city.

  The two friends lay there in silence for a long time, until it started to get too dark to see, but even then they were filled with the landscape and unspeakably grateful for their happiness. They knew how it looked in the morning too, when the sun rises through the mist and the workers walk to the brickworks down lonesome streets; or at noon, when the country lasses carry meals out into the fields and the apprentices sit on doorsteps in the blazing midday sun; or in the evening, when the automobile lights race through the quarry and the smoke from the chimneys blends into the darkness of night. They knew it in every season, and even though they often found themselves slinking around with everyone else down below, doing their part in the little city’s important little life, they much preferred to spend their time up by the wall. That was when everything felt like it belonged to them, like they were all-powerful masters of the world. Life would take them away soon enough, and who knew where—they would live in other cities, meet new people, see new places, so many images and impressions—but this one image would stay fixed in place, reaching all the way down to the bottom.

  On the way back, they stopped by Fritz’s house. Fritz’s parents were still awake, sitting in front of the door and talking to the neighbors.

  Frau Fiedler said, “Where were you, getting back so late?”

  “You know where we were,” Fritz countered.

  “We were just out for a walk,” Albrecht added. Why was she acting so suspicious?

  “Oh, today of all days. Right after you left, the von Arnims sent word that the lights were out in their stables. Erich had to ride out, there was no one else here.”

  Erich, Fritz’s brother, had to go even though he worked hard all day and should have his peace and quiet in the evening at least. Fritz could hear the criticism in her voice.

  “I see.” He stayed standing there for a moment, as though he had something else to say, but not a word came out. Then they both went inside in silence. The radio was on a table in the corner. Fritz pulled up a chair and sat down in front of it. The lights blinked, he turned the knobs, and a soft hissing and whistling started up from the loudspeaker, then a clear voice. “Berlin,” Fritz said, and he turned the dial farther; the voice disappeared. Albrecht sat down and listened eagerly. A mysterious music sounded, quiet and delicate, from a great distance; it swelled and filled the room. “Vienna,” Fritz said. He looked at a chart and tuned the dial again.

  “There’s another one,” Albrecht said.

  Fritz just nodded: “Oslo. Next is Moscow.” He knew what he wanted and he flipped switches, turned knobs, fine-tuned, producing a muddle of weird squealing and whistling.

  “There,” Albrecht said; he vaguely heard a hoarse voice. Fritz shook his head. “No, that’s Warsaw or something,” he said self-importantly, “it’s a real art to get Moscow.” Albrecht leaned back and waited patiently. He watched Fritz get tense: his face became rigid and the poise he always seemed to have disappeared.

  Meanwhile, Erich had come home. It was only a little repair, not really worth the long trip out. He brought his bicycle into the room and when he saw the two friends sitting there, he said, “There you are! You could have saved me a trip, Fritz. I’m on my feet all day.”

  “We are too,” Albrecht answered, laughing.

  “Really? What have you two been doing?”

  “Greek homework.”

  “That’s not work,” Erich said good-naturedly. “School is just lazing around. I went to school once too.” He was only three years older than Fritz and had graduated from secondary school. He had already spent five years working in his father’s business: working hard, saving up his money, doing a good job. His parents didn’t know how lucky they were. This errand tonight hadn’t come at a great time—he had had better things planned for his evening—but since there was no other choice he rode out, fixed the problem, and calmly turned around and rode back. He put his bike in the back of the room, washed up, made himself a sandwich, and sat down.

  Fritz was still sitting in front of his machine: looking, turning, flipping switches, listening into the loudspeaker—nothing, nothing. He shook his head.

  “This is getting boring,” Albrecht said. “Put on some music or something, enough of this hunting around.”

  Fritz was in the grip of an obsession, but finally agreed and gave up on Moscow. Instead he went through all the other stations, rummaging through all of Germany and the rest of Europe, and every time he picked up another station he whispered its name like a magic formula. He luxuriated in the distances and didn’t stay anywhere for long, always searching, ever farther—restless, foolhardy, like he was trying to get the whole world into this one room. Albrecht had long since walked over to Erich and sat down with him on the sofa. It was just too boring, sitting quietly next to Fritz and waiting for him to come to his senses.

  “What does he see in it?” he said. “At least if he would listen to one piece of music straight through to the end, but all this endless twiddling.…” There was no pleasure to be gotten from that. Erich agreed: “I don’t understand it either. All that squeaking and whistling would kill me, I don’t know how he stands it—he’s crazy about the radio.” Erich said he knew a thing or two about circuits himself, of course, but he couldn’t relate to Fritz’s obsession.

  Eventually most of the stations stopped broadcasting. Only some English stations were still there, ruling the airwaves. But Fritz had had enough. He stood up. “Yes, Moscow,” he said, “that’s a hard one.” He was still not over it. Albrecht said goodbye, he was tired, but Fritz was still fresh and energetic—he seemed to have just then woken up. He could stay on the radio for hours, he bragged. Meanwhile, his brother’s eyes closed; he was tired too.

  The next day, in school, Mother’s words came to Albrecht’s mind: Father was worried about things. In the middle of his exercise he stopped writing and stared at his teacher for two minutes. When he got out of school he went straight to the store and asked Father:

  “Why were you so absentminded yesterday?”

  The question surprised and embarrassed Father. “Oh, it’s nothing, really, just a couple of things I’m worried about. Things aren’t as easy today as they used to be.”

  That must be it, even if Albrecht didn’t know from personal experience how easy it had been for his father before. He asked, “Did someone not pay again?” He knew that lots of
people bought things and then let weeks go by before paying. —“Yes, that too. It’s just hard.”

  Excuses, obviously—he was avoiding a direct answer. But Albrecht didn’t give up. He kept asking, and he knew how to keep after him until Father finally lost patience.

  “What do you care?” he said angrily. “Go upstairs and mind your own business.”

  Oh, really? What did he care? Quite a lot, obviously, otherwise he wouldn’t ask. He was curious and wanted to hear the real reason. “Do you think I don’t have eyes or ears? I can tell that something’s going on, it’s obvious just by looking at you, and Mother’s already caught it from you, whatever it is. But whenever anyone asks you, you just say it’s nothing, leave me alone, and so on. All right, so if there’s no reason, why all this fuss and waste of energy? You’re always taking it out on me, so either tell me what’s going on or cut the drama—hanging your head, always being in a bad mood, puttering around downstairs at night until it scares us. Pull yourself together. You’re not a woman.”

  A brave speech, by God! The words themselves gave him the courage to keep going. But it would be easy to misunderstand him: he almost seemed bold out of stupidity, foolishly trying to get clear about everything in one go.

  Father stood there crushed. His face was white as chalk and he trembled. So accusations and reproaches on top of everything, he deserves that now?

  Albrecht: “No one’s accusing you of anything, you should just finally say something so I know where I stand.”

  “I’d like to know that too,” Father answered. Now he had the upper hand. “To know where you stand, that’s the whole point! But you’re too dumb, you don’t understand. Go upstairs.”