Life Goes On: A Novel

by Hans Keilson

  They agreed on half the amount Dalke had offered. That was enough.

  Herr Seldersen was about to stand up and say goodbye, but Herr Dalke had one more item to discuss. He saw further ahead.

  “Herr Seldersen,” he said, “I’d like to have some kind of security for the money I’m giving you.”

  Herr Seldersen looked up, but avoided looking at Herr Dalke.

  “Security?” he whispered.

  Herr Dalke nodded: “Yes, your furniture and whatever valuables needed to total the amount. It’s better that way. Bring me a list tomorrow.”

  Then he offered Herr Seldersen his hand. Herr Seldersen breathed easier.

  “Thank you very much,” he said, vigorously shaking Herr Dalke’s hand. “Thank you!” He had a friend in Herr Dalke too. In all the years they had known each other, there had never been any ill feeling between them, even if they were also competitors, and in truth they were more than competitors. Herr Dalke possessed what Father didn’t—others’ trust, a large business, savings, backers, reserves, and that was what mattered. He was one of the people standing together in a more and more impenetrable circle and drawing it closer around themselves, not letting anyone else in. An individual couldn’t do a thing against them. Yes, in fact Herr Dalke was responsible—not personally responsible, he didn’t mean any harm, but he was on the other side. He was a murderer: not in secret, not lying in wait to ambush anyone, but a firmly established force, secure in his position, murdering with his actions. That was Herr Dalke. And a friend too. Herr Seldersen went to Berlin the next day and bought wares with the money Herr Dalke had given him. He went to the firm where he had recently been humiliated—they had said they no longer trusted him, after twenty-five years … fine, but in he went, even though he didn’t need to, since with cash in hand he could buy goods anywhere. He didn’t want to miss out on the chance to feel his triumph.

  He spent a long time shopping around; a large delivery crate was packed for him. When the time came to total everything up, the salesman disappeared for a moment, to check with his supervisor. Those were the rules, they had to check about every buyer. When he came back, he wasn’t alone: the young director was with him, the same one Father had recently had his run-in with. It was too bad Herr Nelken wasn’t there, Herr Seldersen wanted to ask them to summon Herr Nelken too. He wanted everyone to see what was about to happen. The young director started to say, politely but firmly, that he was very sorry but Herr Seldersen must recall their recent discussion …

  “I’m paying up front,” Father interrupted him.

  “Excuse me?”

  “I’m paying up front, in cash,” Father repeated; apparently they had not understood him. “My train leaves in an hour and a half, the items need to be on the platform by then. I’ll take them with me. If that’s not possible then I’m sorry, but—”

  “But of course, at once.” So he wanted to pay up front, that’s fine, everything will be delivered promptly, he could depend on that.

  The young director stood there and didn’t know what else to say. In the end, it didn’t matter to him where Herr Seldersen had gotten the money from, maybe he had just come into a surprise inheritance, or won the lottery, or stolen it … what did he care? Herr Seldersen paid cash, received his goods, and was once again treated with respect: At your service, Herr Seldersen, at your service as always.…

  When he was back outside on the street, Father spit three times. He felt like kicking in the window. Anyway, he had what he’d come for, he could feel satisfied about that. But it was disgusting, unspeakably disgusting, he had had enough of all this playacting. He was almost ashamed of having played such a pitiful role in the drama. Still, he really did wish he could have seen Herr Nelken; he had planned a proper slap in the face for him.

  * * *

  In December, late on a Tuesday night in a small hotel in the city center, Fritz Fiedler shot himself. When they found him the next morning his body was cold and a thin red stream was smeared across his face from a small wound in his temple. Albrecht heard about his friend’s death the next day. When the maid woke him up in the early morning, it was still dark outside. He turned on the lamp on his nightstand and a cheering yellow glow spread through the room. He went over to the window—there was snow again on the courtyard outside, it had fallen overnight. Then he got dressed, sat down at his table, and ate with the sad ceremoniousness of anyone eating alone. The maid slowly came into the room; she was old and had worked there for more than ten years already. She leaned on the doorframe and suddenly asked: “Do you know someone named Fritz Fiedler, or Fiedeler?”

  “Yes, Fritz Fiedler, I know him,” Albrecht answered. He went on eating. “What about him, how do you know him?”

  “Ach,” she said, “it’s in the paper today, I just read it. Someone named Fritz Fiedler shot himself.”

  Albrecht leapt up—all sleep and calm had vanished from the room. Fritz, dead! He ran out, picked up the newspaper lying on the desk, and it didn’t take long to find the report: ten lines, a short paragraph, the daily suicides. Fritz had shot himself, and not alone: he had killed a girl too—their love had been so strong, no one had known about it.

  The day was just beginning and Albrecht had to get through it. He took the streetcar into the city and went to the morgue; he had to see his friend one more time. When he opened the door to the waiting room, three figures in black turned toward him: Fritz’s parents and another member of the family. Albrecht went over to Fritz’s mother and held out his hand.

  “Don’t cry,” he said. “He is finally at peace now.”

  But that only made her cry more.

  Fritz’s father stood there the whole time and pointed at his own temple with his index finger: “Here’s where he put it in.” He repeated the same sentence five times, always the same words with the same gesture.

  Albrecht registered and asked to be allowed to see the body. Someone led him into the room. They crossed a spacious auditorium with a crucifix on the altar at the front, then went down long corridors to a staircase. Here they ran into four men, solemnly dressed in tails and top hats. One of them said: “I specifically told the driver to bring a coffin, he said he’d arrange it with the carpenter, he promised. Now there’s no coffin and people are coming from out of town. All he cares about is how he can make a little money. —Yes, yes.”

  They arrived at the basement, where large wooden compartments were stacked high on both sides like rabbit hutches. What could be in them? The man guiding Albrecht went over to one of them back in the corner, indicated to Albrecht to step back, and pulled out a long rolling platform.—On it lay the dead man. The guide stepped away and stood by the wall, clasped his hands behind his back, and lowered his gaze to the floor, his duty fulfilled.

  On the bier lay Fritz. He was naked and his magnificent body looked unblemished. With his eyes closed—no more eyeglasses—his face looked asleep, as though he were resting. A red stripe ran across his cheek, pale and dried-out. Dead. If that wasn’t there, Albrecht thought, he would not have been able to grasp that this was death. He still didn’t comprehend it. He saw his friend lying there as though asleep; all he had to do was gently take him by the hand and he would surely wake up. His hand was stiff and cold. And his body, his beautiful, athletic body, lay there utterly unresponsive. Life had run out from the small hole in his head, across his cheek, and vanished. Albrecht knew that body from when it was still warm and flinched slightly at the touch of his hand, knew how it used to bend and tense and release during track and field events. He knew, he saw. But now here was death. What is death? Or at least, the end of life? There was a compartment here and beyond that was nothing, there was no communication between the two sides.

  Albrecht stood by his dead friend’s bier for a long time. No tears came to him; an icy coldness rose up within him and he stayed hardened, restrained, self-controlled, but nonetheless moved, full of grief, alive. He said goodbye and it was an hour of death and birth in one, although he didn’t k
now that yet. He was saying goodbye to someone, his friend, who once had lived and whose life was nothing but an attempt to stay alive, as a human being, warm and vital and a part of his age, worth as much as anyone else—an attempt to find his way, undertaken in the full-blooded strength and faith of youth. Albrecht said goodbye to everything they had said to each other, all their arguments and the mistakes they had made together. Death was here and it was true, no longer a mistake, and it brought deliverance. It was only later, when Albrecht thought back to this time standing next to his dead friend, that he understood the full meaning of death. It claimed its victims and brought them release at the same time. It extinguished a life and was thus a symbol, a proof, or more: a warning. It was an act that lay inside everyone, in Albrecht too, more or less clearly, but by being there at all it was necessarily conscious, concrete, and comprehensible. And did this act not thereby bring about a kind of healing? Fritz had carried out what had lain darkly inside him, he had dared to commit the deed and had thus taken it upon himself, so now Albrecht’s path to a new life was free.

  Fritz Fiedler was dead. Albrecht walked on, through the streets of his hometown—by the next day he had already gone back home. His parents were not surprised to see him suddenly appear in the shop unannounced, and didn’t ask much or say much: they felt what had happened too deeply themselves. Now he was back home, in the city that had meant so much to them both—here was where they had begun, and they would always bear a trace of these bygone things within them.

  Albrecht was alone. What could he do for his dead friend? He went to the stand on the corner and bought the newspaper that had puffed up the two deaths into a giant love tragedy.

  “I’d like every copy of this paper you have.”

  “No, you can’t have more than three,” the newspaper seller answered. “Other people want to read it too.” He could no doubt see what Albrecht had planned. There was everything in the article: Fritz’s running away from school, America, and much more that had happened—a sad little masterpiece of explanation and interpretation. He had shot himself, with a girl, a love tragedy. The public took pleasure in that.

  This was all Albrecht could do: buy the newspapers and burn them. His friend was buried the Sunday before Christmas. The snow still covered the city, well trodden and gray, but it lay white and undisturbed over the graves in the churchyard.

  Then Albrecht took the train back to Berlin and life went on, with all its incessant stress and excitement. The winter was cold, the poverty and misery were great—it was the third such winter that people had had to live through. How everyone had feared it, complained, the third winter already … and now they were right in the middle of it. At first they thought they would never survive it.

  * * *

  Late one winter evening, Albrecht left his apartment and went out into the street, driven out by a mysterious disquiet and his infinite loneliness. It was cold outside and the snow, stamped down hard and smooth as a mirror, covered the roads. Albrecht ran through the busy streets with his hands buried deep in his coat pockets, ears tucked under a cap, without a goal in mind or a thought in his head. There were a lot of people out—there always were, day and night, as though they all had a cozy destination they were wending their leisurely way toward. But anyone in a hurry, trying to move fast, had to be careful. Albrecht zigzagged through the gaps in the crowd, stumbling and skidding. Oof, what would that woman have said if he hadn’t turned aside at the last second and had hurtled into her? Ha, nice one. I can’t let her think that I was trying to land in her pretty lap, sorry, a thousand pardons! Why am I in such a hurry…? It’s too cold in my room today, do you understand what I’m saying? What I mean is that when I got home, my room was very hot. I took off my jacket, loosened my collar, it felt nice. But after a half hour it was almost unbearably hot in there, and stuffy too—I couldn’t stand it. Fresh air, deep breaths … I carefully swung the window open a little bit and lay down in bed, feeling treacherously tired. I usually never feel tired, never get to relax at all … but that’s another story. When I woke up again, it was dark and cold. I stuck my hand out the window, but it was just as icy outside. A gust of wind must have opened the window all the way, and the cold air was blowing in. The mirror was steamed up, the stove was dripping with moisture in the corner. I did exercises to warm up; pumped my arms and legs; sang; tried to play the violin, but that only warmed up my fingers. My head was burning hot but everything else was as cold as before. I had forgotten to close the window. What was I supposed to do in a freezing-cold room?

  At the intersection, the rails had frozen over with slippery ice: whoever stepped on them and didn’t keep control of himself would fall, right in front of the streetcar. The driver rang the bell, scattered sand, put on the brakes, but the glaring eye on the front of the car came closer and closer. Quick—stand up again, keep going, careful! A car whizzed out from behind the streetcar, he didn’t see it and he jumped back, and the wheels of the streetcar screeched with rage as the brakes dug in and brought them to a stop. Startled back and hemmed in between the streetcar and an automobile, a pale young man stood erect, his breath racing.

  The constable’s cap is green, with soft earflaps. The lights on the newspaper office are big and yellow, the line underneath them blue, the windows lined with yellow, the newspapers printed in black on gray paper … colors, colors everywhere, everyone on the street a different color, but only one color is beautiful: red. And if there’s blood as well, just a little, a thin stripe of it across the cheek. When my father is happy he cries, not tears of joy but because that’s when he feels his misery the most. Someone leaning against the wall of a building because it’s too cold for him to sit on the floor anymore isn’t doing it out of pleasure in the new opportunity life has offered him. If he has a wooden leg, he doesn’t have to worry about it freezing and falling off someday. But still, that’s something to see: a man leaning against the wall with one healthy leg while the other leg is lying in Russia or France somewhere … that’s something, all right. In a case like that you don’t have to wonder where it all started.

  A man came up and said something to him, snatching at his hat and murmuring a few words. Albrecht shook his head: No, I don’t have any to spare, I can’t give you anything. But he didn’t move and he looked at the man more closely. He was old and seriously down and out.… A few matches? the man repeated, holding the box in his hand. Albrecht answered: “No thanks, I don’t smoke.” But still he stayed where he was and looked the man up and down. “Are you a father?” he suddenly asked. “Do you have children?” The man nodded sadly, squinted his eyes, and moved off.

  Albrecht ran through the streets.… Father, he thought, Father.… His head was about to burst, his thoughts were rushing around in his head, it was as though he were only half conscious. And then the feeling, the same savage feeling he’d had more and more often recently, that it’s horrible to be running around tormenting himself with his personal emotions and his punishing self-analysis while back at home Father.… But enough, no more.

  He jumped on a streetcar coming his way, without looking at the number or destination. He stood in the front next to the driver in his thick fur coat; he paid and he rode, until they stopped for a long time and he started to feel cold. “Hey, won’t you get out?” the conductor asked. “Last stop.” —“Oh, I see, I’ll ride back with you.” “Can’t do that,” came the reply. “We’re taking the car to the depot.”

  It was late. How would he get home from here? He was somewhere or another very far on the outskirts of the city. The driver pointed the way to the nearest night bus and Albrecht rode home, tired and worn-out. At no point in the evening had he felt any happier than he was when he started.

  * * *

  The holidays arrived and Albrecht went home. He had left Berlin without telling his parents beforehand and they were shocked to see him walk into the shop so unexpectedly. They almost didn’t recognize him. He was pale, a bit run-down, and his face looked more tired and frai
l than ever. Albrecht was very happy to see them again, he was home! But when he reached out to shake his father’s hand, he knew right then that he was back, being drawn into the cramped little sphere of their cares and worries, which were his too. These were his parents—Father an old man, though not so much old as utterly broken and helpless; Mother’s hair glittered gray, her tiny body was like a child’s, but she still remained the stronger and firmer of the two; heaven knew what secret soil she drew her strength from. It was all exactly the way Albrecht had pictured it.… He stayed at home for the time being, intending to rest a little. His parents tended him with all the love they were capable of, and he repaid them with childlike loyalty and affection.

  Life was miserable in his hometown—wherever Albrecht looked he saw only tired faces with poverty and hard times written all over them. Nowhere was there any carefree happiness and enjoyment of life—even Herr Wiesel went around with a hangdog look; he didn’t have anything to worry about, but the life he saw all around him, more wretched and desperate every day, made him suffer: he did have a sympathetic heart. Albrecht walked up and down the streets and went to visit the remote, secret places he knew so well in the forest, where he had once played as a child, excited, with such grand dreams. But even there he felt strangely cold and unmoved. Had he forgotten? Had he been untrue to the forest after all? A dull fatigue filled his head; he was wearing a heavy suit of armor; he gasped and groaned under his load but couldn’t get free of it.

  Once again, his parents’ life was at the threshold of a great change, perhaps the last one they would have to face before the end. It didn’t come as a surprise, they had expected it for years now; it was only a question of time, there was no way it could turn out any differently. The bankruptcy had gone deep enough now that Herr Seldersen gave up his shop—he didn’t go on. He was firmly convinced. He had put off the decision long enough, kept it to himself almost as though he had a powerful weapon in his hands that he could use to exact a terrible revenge. He had endured the situation—a slow death, unstoppable, like an epidemic, spreading everywhere—for long enough. Was he supposed to go back to Herr Dalke again and ask for more money? Or maybe Herr Wiesel this time? No, he didn’t go, not to either one, he’d rather go to the judge and declare bankruptcy. Period.