by Anna Seghers
I went back down to the Corsican Quarter. It had become quieter in the meantime. The market stalls had been cleared away. I found the house on the Rue du Chevalier Roux. I let the bronze, hand-shaped knocker fall on the great, carved door. A black man asked me what I wanted. I told him I was looking for the Binnets.
From the knobs on the banister, the remnants of colored tiles, and the worn stone crests, you could tell that this house had once belonged to a man of means—a merchant, or a sea captain. Now immigrants from Madagascar, a few Corsicans, and the Binnets were living here.
Binnet’s mistress opened the apartment door, and I stared at her. She was extraordinarily beautiful, if somewhat strange in appearance. She had the head of a wild, black bird, a sharp nose, glittering eyes, and a delicate neck. Her long hips, long-fingered, loose-jointed hands, even her toes in her espadrilles—everything about her seemed slightly in motion, the way peoples’ faces usually are—as if anger, joy, and sadness were like the wind.
In answer to my question she said curtly that George was on night duty at the mill and she herself had just come home from the sugar factory. She turned away from me and yawned. It brought me back down to earth.
On the stairs, as I was leaving, I bumped into a slender, dark boy who was coming up two steps at a time. He turned around, just as I turned to look at him. I wanted to see whether my arrival fever had also invested the boy with some magic, but he just wanted to see if I was a stranger, a surprise intruder. Right after that I heard Binnet’s girlfriend, still standing in the open doorway—undecided, as she later confessed to me, about whether she should call me back and ask me to wait—scolding her son for coming home so late. You’ll understand later why I’m telling you all this in such detail. Back then I thought my visit had been a mistake, and that the rest of the evening lay empty ahead of me. I had deluded myself into thinking that the city had opened its heart to me, just as I had opened mine to it, that Marseille would take me in on my first night and its people would shelter me. In contrast to my joy on arrival, I now felt a severe disillusionment. I figured that Yvonne probably hadn’t written to her cousin about me, that she’d only wanted to get rid of me. I was also mortified to learn that George was working the night shift. It meant that there were still people who were leading normal lives.
IV
I had to find another place to stay the night. The first dozen hotels I tried were full. By now I was exhausted. I sat down at the first table I found in front of a seedy café in a small, quiet square. The city was dark because of the fear of air raids; yet there were feeble lights in many windows. I thought about the many thousands of people who called this city their own and quietly lived their lives as I had once done in mine. I gazed up at the stars and felt, I don’t know why, some consolation at the thought that these stars were probably there more for me and people like me than for those who could switch on their own lights.
I ordered a beer. I would have preferred just to sit there by myself. But a little old man sat down at my table. He was wearing a jacket that, on anyone else, would have been in tatters long ago, but which had found an owner who with dignity and care would not let it go to ruin. And the man was much like his jacket. He might long ago have been lying in his grave, but his face was firm and serious. What remained of his hair was neatly parted; his nails were carefully trimmed. With a glance at my little suitcase, he immediately asked me what country I had a visa for. I told him I had no visa and didn’t intend to get one; I wanted to stay here.
He cried out, “You can’t stay here without a visa!”
I didn’t know what he meant. To be polite I asked him what his plans were. He said he had been an orchestra conductor in Prague and was recently offered a position with a well-known orchestra in Caracas. I asked where that was. He said scornfully that it was the capital of Venezuela. I asked whether he had any sons. He said yes and no—his oldest son was missing in Poland, his second son was in England, and the third was still in Prague. He felt he could no longer wait for signs of life from his sons, or it might be too late for him. I thought he meant death, but he was referring to the conductor’s position; he had to start the new position in Caracas before the end of the year. He had already had a work contract before and because of the contract, a visa, and because of the visa, a transit visa, but it took so long for the exit visa to be issued that the transit visa expired in the meantime, and after that the visa and after that the contract. Last week he was issued an exit visa, and he was now anxiously waiting for an extension of his contract, which would mean he could then get an extension of his visa. And that would be a prerequisite for his being awarded a new transit visa.
Confused, I asked what he meant by exit visa. He stared at me in delight. I was an ignorant newcomer, he said. But by giving him the opportunity for a long explanation I would be filling up many lonely minutes for him. He said, “It’s permission to leave France. Didn’t anybody tell you anything, my poor young man?”
“What purpose is there in holding on to people who want nothing more than to leave a country where they would be imprisoned if they stayed?”
He laughed so hard I could hear his jaw creaking. It seemed to me as if his entire skeleton was creaking. He rapped the table with a knuckle. I found him pretty repulsive, and yet I was willing to put up with him. There are moments in the life of even the most prodigal of sons when they go over to the side of the fathers, I mean the fathers of other sons.
He said, “At least you know this much, my son. The Germans are now the real masters here. And since you presumably are a member of that nation, you must know what German “order” means, Nazi order, which they’re now all boasting about here. It has nothing to do with World Order, the old one. It is a kind of control. The Germans are not going to miss the chance to thoroughly control and check all people leaving Europe. In the process they might find some troublemaker for whom they’ve been hunting for decades.”
“All right. All right. But after you’re checked out, after you have a visa, what significance is the transit visa? Why does it expire? What is it actually? Why aren’t people allowed to travel through countries on their way to their new homes in other countries?”
He said, “My son, it’s all because each country is afraid that instead of just traveling through, we’ll want to stay. A transit visa—that gives you permission to travel through a country with the stipulation that you don’t plan to stay.”
Suddenly he changed his approach. He addressed me in a different, very solemn, tone of voice that fathers use only when they’re finally sending their sons out into the world. “Young man,” he said, “you came here with scarcely any baggage, alone and without a destination. You don’t even have a visa. You’re not the least concerned that the Marseille Prefect will not let you stay here if you don’t have a visa. Now, let’s assume that by some stroke of luck, or by your own efforts, something happens, though it rarely does, or maybe because when you least expect it, a friend reaches out a hand from the dark, that is, from across the ocean, or maybe through Providence itself, or maybe with the help of a committee, anyway, let’s assume you get a visa. For one brief moment you’re happy. But you soon realize that the problem isn’t solved so easily. You have a destination—no big deal, everybody has that. But you can’t just get to that country by sheer force of will, through the stratosphere. You have to travel on oceans, through the countries between. You need a transit visa. For that you need your wits. And time. You have no idea how much time it takes. For me time is of the essence. But when I look at you, I think time is even more precious for you. Time is youth itself. But you must not fly off in too many directions. You must think only of the transit visa. If I may say so, you have to forget your destination for a while, for at this moment only the countries in between are what matter, otherwise you won’t be able to leave. What matters now is to make the consul see that you’re serious, that you’re not one of those fellows who want to stay in a place that is only a transit country. And there are ways
to prove this. Any consul will ask for such proof. Let’s assume you’re lucky and have a berth on a ship and the trip as such is a certainty, which is really a miracle when you consider how many want to leave and how few available ships there are. If you’re a Jew, which you’re not, then you might be able to secure a berth on board a ship with the help of Jewish aid groups. If you’re Aryan, then maybe Christian groups can help. If you’re nothing, or godless, or a Red, then for God’s sake, or with the help of your Party, or others like you, you might be able to get a berth. But don’t think, my son, that your transit visa will be assured, and even if it were! In the meantime so much time has passed that the main goal, your primary one, has disappeared. Your visa has expired, and as vital as the transit visa is, it isn’t worth anything without a visa, and so on and so forth.
“Now, son, imagine that you’ve managed to do it. Good, let’s both dream that you’ve done it. You have them all—your visa, your transit visa, your exit visa. You’re ready to start your journey. You’ve said good-bye to your loved ones and tossed your life over your shoulder. You’re thinking only of your goal, your destination. You finally want to board the ship.—For example: Yesterday, I was talking with a young man your age. He had everything. But then when he was ready to board his ship, the harbor authorities refused to give him the last stamp he needed.”
“Why?”
“He had escaped from a camp when the Germans were coming.”
The old man said this in the weary tone of voice he had been using before. He seemed to sink into himself. Yet his posture was too erect—it was more that he sagged. “The fellow didn’t have a certificate of release from the camp—so it was all for nothing.”
I perked up. The last point he’d made in his somber jumble of completely irrelevant admonitions did affect me. I had never before heard of a harbor stamp. That poor young man! Guilty by lack of foresight. I was not going to fail because of that final stamp. I’d been forewarned. But then, I wasn’t going to leave. I said, “Luckily, all this doesn’t apply to me. I have only one wish, and that is, to stay here for a while in peace.”
He cried, “You’re making a mistake! For the third time, let me tell you, they’ll let you stay here in peace for a certain length of time only if you can prove that you intend to leave. Don’t you understand?”
I said, “No.”
I got to my feet. I’d had enough of him. He called out after me, “Your suitcase!” That made me remember something I hadn’t thought about for weeks: the letters of the man who’d taken his life on the Rue de Vaugirard when the Germans marched into Paris. I’d become accustomed to thinking of the suitcase as mine. The few things the dead man had left behind took up very little space under my own stuff, and I had completely forgotten them. I could take them to the Mexican consul now. The dead man’s wife would surely ask at the consulate for mail. I wondered why something that had so obsessed me in Paris could have evaporated so completely from my mind once I got to Marseille. So that’s the stuff the dead man’s magic was made of! But maybe it was my own mind that made stuff evaporate so easily.
I resumed my search for a room. I came to a huge, shapeless square, three sides of which were nearly dark, while the fourth was punctuated by lights that made it look like a seacoast. This was the Cours Belsunce. I headed for the lights, getting lost in a network of narrow alleys. I entered the first hotel door I came to, climbed up a steep flight of stairs to the lighted window of the hotel proprietor. I was prepared for, “Everything’s taken,” but the landlady shoved the registry book toward me. She watched attentively as I copied the name on my refugee certificate. When she asked for my safe conduct pass I hesitated. She laughed and said, “If there’s a raid it’ll be your bad luck not mine! You’ll pay me now for a week in advance. After all, you’re here without official permission. You should have applied first at the Prefecture for a permit to come to Marseille. To which country do you want to go?”
I said I had no intention of going anywhere else. I had finally landed here after having escaped from the Germans and being hounded from one city to another. I didn’t have a visa, nor did I have a ticket for a ship’s passage, and I couldn’t walk across the ocean. She’d seemed quite calm, almost listless at first, but now she looked stunned by what I’d said.
“Surely you don’t want to stay here?” she cried.
I said, “Why not? You’re staying too, after all.” She laughed at my wisecrack.
She handed me a key with a metal number tag. The corridor was blocked by dozens of pieces of luggage and I had a hard time pushing my way through to the room I’d been assigned. The baggage belonged to a group of Spaniards, I discovered. Men and women, who were all planning to leave that night, via Casablanca to Cuba, and from there to Mexico.
I felt reassured. So he was right after all, I thought, that boy on Rue Longuin in Paris by the fence of the Mexican Consulate. Ships were leaving. They were in the harbor ready to sail.
As I was falling asleep that night I felt as if I were on board a ship, not because I had heard so much about ships or wanted to be on one, but because I felt dizzy and miserable, overwhelmed by a surging mass of impressions and sensations I was no longer able to understand. In addition, a racket intruded on my consciousness from all sides as if I were sleeping on a slippery wooden plank in the midst of a drunken crew. I heard pieces of luggage roll and bang in the hold of the ship as the seas grew heavy. I heard French curses and Spanish farewells, and finally I heard, from a great distance, but more penetrating than all the rest, a simple little song that I had last heard in my homeland at a time when none of us yet knew who Hitler was, not even the man himself. I told myself that I was only dreaming. And then I actually did fall asleep.
I dreamed I had left the little suitcase somewhere. I was searching for it in the most ridiculous places: back home in the boys’ school I attended, at the Binnets’ apartment in Marseille, in the farmyard at Yvonne’s, and on the Normandy docks. And that’s where it was, the little suitcase, upright on a gangplank, planes diving down, I ran over to get it, deathly afraid.
3
I
I WOKE with a start. It was still dark outside and the hotel was quiet. By now the Spaniards might already be sailing on the high seas. Since I couldn’t get back to sleep, I decided to write a letter to Yvonne explaining my situation. I told her I needed a safe conduct for Marseille even though I’d already arrived here safely, that I had to arrive all over again, this time with proper papers and all the legal documentation. As soon as I’d written it, I went out to mail it. As I passed the hotel office, the unattractive, unkempt girl who had the night shift stopped me and asked if I’d paid for my room. I said I had.
“Was I leaving?”
“Good lord, no!”
The stars were fading but it was still pitch dark and cold in the streets. I was impatient for the day to dawn; to light up the city, and at the same time, enlighten me about everything I still didn’t know. But nothing and nobody woke up any earlier on my account; the cafés were still closed; I had to go back to my hotel.
The way to my room was again blocked by the luggage of the Spaniards who had intended to sail during the night. But the men were not with them; only the women and children had come back from the harbor, and they were now sitting on the suitcases, complaining and cursing. They had arrived at the pier with all their things, ready to leave. Through the pier gate they’d seen the ship lying at anchor. Then the French police arrived and arrested all the men able to bear arms, citing a treaty agreement with the Franco government. The Spanish women weren’t crying now; they were cursing the situation, sometimes softly, while rocking their children, sometimes out loud, arms outspread. Then, abruptly, they decided they would all go to the Mexican Consulate. Since they had Mexican visas, they were under Mexican protection. They would ask for justice there.
Off they marched. They were led by a young woman who had once been quite cheerful, but was now somber. She held the hand of a little cherry-eyed gi
rl wearing a traveling cape. I joined them, taking along the dead man’s bundle of papers. Their mention of the Mexican Consulate had reminded me of the bundle. After all, I had plenty of time! I might as well go with them now. Day had dawned meanwhile, the morning almost too bright for my sleep-deprived eyes. We walked up the Canebière. I was the sole man in the flock of Spanish women and children. They were used to me by now.
It seemed to me that I was the only person on that street who didn’t want to leave. On the other hand, I didn’t feel I absolutely had to stay. No matter how hard it might be to leave, I thought, I could manage to do it. After all, I’d managed to make it this far, and no visible harm had come to me so far except that the miserable state of the world happened to coincide with my youth. I must admit this was depressing. I thought about Paris, where the trees must already be bare. The Parisians were probably freezing in the cold, thanks to the Nazis, who had stolen their coal and bread.
At the ugly big Protestant church we turned onto the Boulevard de la Madeleine. The women stopped talking. Was this the Mexican Consulate? It occupied one floor in an apartment building that differed in no respect from all the other apartment houses on the block. The front door was the same as the other doors with the exception of a shield bearing a coat of arms, almost invisible to a casual passerby but not to us, anxiously searching for it. The shield had become much darker since I’d tried to decipher it in Paris. I could scarcely make out the eagle perched on the thicket of cacti. Looking at it, I felt my heart constrict with a painful yet joyful wanderlust, a kind of hope, but I didn’t know for what. Maybe for the world at large, for some unknown blessed country.
The doorman, certainly no cyclops, but a leathery-skinned little man with small, humorless, intelligent eyes, picked me out of the waiting crowd, I don’t know why. He asked me to write my name and why I had come on a piece of paper. I wrote: “With regard to the matter of the author Weidel.” I don’t know why he thought he had to lead me immediately through the waiting crowd and up the stairs to the narrow little waiting room where there were already about a dozen presumably privileged people. Four Spaniards, three lean ones and one fat one, were arguing vehemently and seemed on the verge of drawing their daggers, yet it was probably some commonplace matter that provoked this huge expenditure of passion. A ragged, bearded prestataire was leaning wearily against a garish poster of two colorfully dressed children wearing huge hats. It was a tourist poster and dated back to the days when sluggish homebodies were enticed to travel by brightly colored pictures of foreign countries. An old man, breathing heavily, was sitting on the only available chair. There were also some men and women who, judging from the nature and condition of their clothes, their hair, and the way they smelled, must have come from a concentration or detention camp. Then a beautiful, well-dressed, golden-haired girl entered the room, and suddenly everyone was talking at the same time; I wasn’t even aware what language they were speaking; it was a kind of choral singing: No foreigners were being admitted to Oran anymore. —Spain wasn’t allowing people like us to cross its territory.—Portugal wasn’t letting anyone enter.—There was supposed to be a ship sailing via Martinique.—From there you could go to Cuba.—You’d still be under French sovereignty.—But at least, you wouldn’t be here anymore; you’d be gone from this place.