by Anna Seghers
I spent my days quietly and pretty much alone in the midst of this multitude of poor devils all longing to leave. In the cafés I drank the bitter ersatz coffee and the sweet Banjuls wine on an empty stomach and listened in fascination to the harbor gossip, which had nothing to do with me. The weather had already turned cold. But I always sat outside, in a corner formed by a window, protected from the Mistral, which could attack you from all sides at once. The bit of blue water down at the end of Canebière marked the rim of our piece of earth, the edge of our world, which, if you wanted to see it that way, extended from the Pacific Ocean, from Vladivostock and from China, all the way here. There are reasons why it’s called the “Old World.” But here is where it ended.
I saw a short hunchbacked clerk come out of the shipping company office across the way and write the name of a ship and its departure time on the dry little blackboard outside the door. At once a queue of people formed behind the little hunchback, all hoping to sail on that same ship, forever leaving behind this chunk of earth, the life they had lived up to now, and possibly even death.
When the Mistral blew too hard, I would come to this pizzeria and sit at this same table. Back then I was surprised to find out that pizza wasn’t sweet but tasted of pepper, olives, or sardines. I was usually light-headed with hunger, weak and tired, and almost always a little drunk, for I had only enough money to buy a slice of pizza and a glass of rosé. Once inside the pizzeria I had only one difficult decision to make. Should I sit in the chair you’re sitting in now, facing the harbor, or in the chair I’m in, facing the open fire? Each had its advantages. I could look for hours at the row of white houses on the other side of the Old Harbor behind the masts of the fishing boats under the evening sky. Or I could watch for hours as the cook beat and kneaded his dough, his arms diving into the fire as he fed it with fresh wood.
Then I would go up to the Binnets’ apartment; they live just five minutes from here. Binnet’s girlfriend usually kept some spiced rice for me or maybe fish soup. Afterward, she’d bring us thimblefuls of genuine coffee. She used to pick the few real coffee beans out of the monthly coffee ration that consisted mostly of a lot of barley. I would carve something for the boy so that he would lean his head against me, watching me. I felt ordinary, everyday life being lived around me, yet at the same time I also sensed that it had become unattainable for me. Binnet meanwhile would be getting dressed for his night shift. We argued about the things one used to argue about back then—whether the German landing in Great Britain would succeed, whether the Pact with Russia would last, whether Vichy would hand Dakar over to the Germans as a base for their fleet.
Around that time I also met a girl. Her name was Nadine. She had once worked in the sugar factory with Binnet’s girlfriend, but had moved on because she was beautiful and clever. Now she was a salesperson in millinery at Les Dames department store. She was tall and walked very erect, holding her small blonde head proudly. She was always beautifully dressed in a dark blue coat. I told her at the outset that I was poor. She said that for the time being it didn’t matter; she had fallen in love with me and after all, this wasn’t a marriage till death would us part. I picked her up every evening at seven. How much I liked her beautiful, vividly painted lips back then, the strong smell of the fresh yellowish-pink powder that lay like butterfly-wing dust on her face and ears, the real, not painted, shadows of extreme tiredness under her light-colored, clear, hard eyes! I gladly starved myself during the day so that I could take her to the Regence in the evening. It was her favorite café, where the coffee unfortunately cost two francs. Then, each time, there’d be a little argument over whether we’d go to her room or to mine. The legionnaires always clicked their tongues as I passed them with Nadine. I had grown in stature in their eyes because of this girlfriend. We’d hardly gone to bed when they’d start their ugly singing, either to celebrate us or to make us angry or both at once. Nadine asked me who the poor devils were and what they were singing. How could I have explained to her something that I couldn’t understand myself, what it was that drew me to this group and away from the lovely girl I was holding in my arms.
Binnet and I enjoyed our women—one was as light as the other was dark. As for the women, they were jealous and couldn’t stand each other.
V
In the meantime the month allowed me by my residence permit had come to an end. By now I already felt part of the community. I had a room of my own, a friend, and a lover. But the official at the Office for Aliens on the Rue Louvois had a different view of things. He said, “You must leave tomorrow. We only allow foreigners to stay here in Marseille if they can bring us proof that they intend to leave. You have no visa, in fact not even the prospect of getting one. There is no reason for us to extend your residence permit.”
At that I began to tremble. Maybe I was trembling because in my innermost self I knew the official was right. I wasn’t part of the community at all. The roof over my head on the Rue de la Providence was questionable. My friendship with George Binnet was untested, my affection for the boy, a fragile connection that did not commit either of us to anything; and as far as Nadine was concerned, wasn’t I already beginning to tire of her? So that was the punishment for my lack of commitment during this brief stay here—I had to leave. I’d been given a probationary month, a trial period, and I’d made poor use of it.
The official looked up just then and saw that I had turned pale. He said, “If you absolutely have to stay longer, then you must immediately bring us written confirmation from a consulate that you are waiting here for your departure documents.”
I walked back to the Place d’Alma. It was bitterly cold. It was a southern cold that had nothing to do with the time of day; for sometimes the Mistral can turn the midday sun to ice. It attacked me from all sides, probing for my weakest spot.
So now I needed proof of my intended departure so that they would let me stay. I walked down the Rue St. Ferréol. I debated whether I should sit down in the café opposite the Prefecture, but I didn’t belong there. It’s the café frequented by those who are ready to leave but still have some business to finish at the exit-visa department or at the American Consulate. Besides, tonight might be my good-bye party with Nadine, and I needed every sou for that. By then I was already on the Canebière. For some reason, I didn’t go down to the Old Harbor, walking instead in the opposite direction up toward the Protestant church. Maybe that was how I got the idea of turning into the Boulevard de la Madeleine. Or did I go in that direction because it was really where I wanted to go?
A crowd had gathered outside the gloomy building that housed the Mexican Consulate. The coat of arms over the door was almost completely worn away, the eagle unrecognizable. The porter picked me out of the crowd at once with his dry, intelligent eyes as if by a secret sign of extreme and urgent need on my forehead put there by some superior authority at one of the world’s consulates.
“No, I’m sorry,” said the short official with the flashing eyes, “I’m sincerely sorry. We still haven’t received confirmation from our government that you are the same individual as Mr. Weidel. It has nothing to do with any personal doubt or lack of trust on my part. Unfortunately, I can’t do anything for you yet.”
I said, “I came only—” His eyes challenged mine. I wanted more than ever to be cleverer than he, more cunning, to get my own way, no matter what.
I said, “But I only came to—”
He interrupted me, “Please be sensible. I can’t do anything for you until I have my government’s notification. I need—”
“Please, let me finish,” I said softly; I felt that my gaze was a trace more firm, a trace more urgent than his. “The sole reason for my coming here today is to request written confirmation that there has been a delay in my identification so that I can get an extension of my residence permit.”
He thought about this for a moment. Then he said, “That I can certainly give you. Please forgive me.”
I walked back to Rue Louvois with my
confirmation. They gave me a month’s extension. My heart was pounding. How was I going to use this month? I ought to be wiser about it this time around.
Yet I didn’t have a clue as to how I could change my life. I could at least act differently toward Nadine—the realization came to me quite unexpectedly. If I’d been forced to leave at that point, I’m sure I would have remembered her as a great passion. But now, at the end of that week, I was suddenly revolted by the smell of her powder, by the fact that even in my arms she never made a single spontaneous gesture, I detested the one-sided smile with which she rolled up her beautiful hair at night. I wanted to find some pretext to skip an evening with her, but I didn’t quite know what to do next; I didn’t want to hurt her feelings, after all she’d always been good to me. Then she herself came to my aid.
“Don’t be angry with me, love,” she said, “but from now on I have to work on Sundays and do overtime because of the Christmas season.” We knew that we were lying to each other and also that such lies were a lot better, less hurtful that the truth would have been.
VI
By now the last of my money was used up. That still didn’t worry me.
When I was very hungry I went to the Binnets. If I was just a little bit hungry I smoked. After not having eaten lunch I would sit down outside the cheapest café I could find. The ersatz coffee there was terribly bitter and the saccharine dreadfully sweet, but back then I was content: I was free; my room had been paid ahead for the month; I was still alive—a threefold stroke of good luck that few people shared with me.
I watched them streaming into Marseille with their tattered banners representing all nations and faiths, the advance guard of refugees. They had fled across all of Europe, but now, confronting the glimpses of blue water sparkling innocently between the houses, they were at their wits’ end. For the names of ships written in chalk didn’t mean that there really were ships but only a faint hope that there might be some—the names were constantly being wiped off because some strait was mined or a new coastal port had been fired on. Death was moving ever closer with his swastika banner as yet unscathed. But to me it seemed—perhaps because I had met him once before and overtaken him—that Death was also fleeing. But who was at his heels? It seemed all I needed was some time to wait it out, and I would be able to survive him, too.
I was startled by a touch on my shoulder; it was the conductor of the Caracas Spa Orchestra. In the daytime he wore dark sunglasses that made his death’s-head eye sockets seem bottomless. “You’re still here,” he said.
“You too,” I replied.
“They gave me my exit visa yesterday. Half a week too late.”
“Too late?”
“Because my visa expired at the beginning of the week. The consul will extend it only if the orchestra renews my contract.”
“And they won’t do that now?”
He said, quite taken aback, “Why shouldn’t they? Of course they will. The committees sent me a telegram. If I can just get it done in a month. Otherwise my exit visa will have expired again. You’ll experience all that for yourself.”
“Me? Why should I?”
He laughed and walked on. His pace was that of an old man, and I thought he would never make it across the Canebière, not to mention other countries and other seas. I dozed in the sun. How long would the café proprietor let me sit there with my one little coffee? Why did I feel so exhausted? I’m still young, after all. Maybe those people boarding the ships are right. I was sure I’d be able to cope with those demon consuls. Then I got a jolt.
Paul was leaving the Café Mont Vertoux across the way. He looked good, wearing new clothes. I dashed across the Canebière and dragged him back to my table. Although he’d never really been my friend, we’d been in the camp together; and he’d also been with me in Paris when the Germans were in control. At that moment I almost kissed him. But he just looked at me—impersonal, detached. And he was in a hurry. “The Committee shuts at twelve,” he said. “What is it now? What do you want?”
What is it now? I thought. I realized that he had no idea that this was the first time we’d seen each other since those days in Paris, probably because he met so many people again for the first time every day. “How are you doing, Paul?”
That brought him to life and set him talking. “Terrible! I’m in the most terrible predicament.” He sat down at my table, realizing he’d found someone he could tell everything to all over again. “When I first got here, I applied for a residence permit. I wanted to do it all very correctly. I wanted to be absolutely proper and legal. I handed my application in at the Office for Aliens. And because an official advised me to, I personally handed in a second application to the Prefect. You couldn’t do more than that, I thought. And I got replies to both my applications. But what replies they were! The Office for Aliens issued me a new ID card—here, take a look—it says: ‘Enforced Stay in Marseille.’ The Prefecture summoned me and on my old card they’d stamped: ‘Must return to his Département of Origin.’”
I couldn’t help laughing.
Paul was almost in tears; he said, “Go on, laugh. But I’ve got to leave the country. Even though I’m on the endangered list, they won’t issue me an exit visa. Because at the Prefecture they said I’ve been expelled from the city.”
“Then go back to your last département and arrive here all over again!”
“But I can’t do that,” he complained, “on the ID card that I need for traveling it says: ‘Enforced Stay in Marseille.’ Oh, stop laughing! Fortunately I have some friends and they’re straightening things out for me, highly respected people they are. After all, I have a Danger Visa.”
Those last words were my cue. I remembered the two of us sitting together in Paris on the Carrefour de l’Odéon. That seemed ages ago. I had been going around with the dead man’s documents and using his name. It might just as well have been some other name that might have turned out to be useful for my purpose. For the first time I thought again with respect and sadness of the dead man.
“Why didn’t you come back that time to the Capoulade, Paul? That was a terrible situation with your friend, you know, with Weidel.”
“Yes,” Paul said, “it’s a sad world.”
“It is pretty sad. And yet this man has a visa, a good visa waiting for him at the Mexican Consulate.”
“Really? That’s odd. Doesn’t he have a visa for the States? After all, the kind of people who go to Mexico...”
“You know, Paul, I think you were right; I don’t understand anything about art. But I think your friend Weidel, he knew quite a lot about it.”
Paul looked at me strangely. “You’ve expressed that quite well. He did once know something about it. But his last works are—what should I call them—a bit lacking in color.”
“I don’t know anything about it, Paul. It’s only that I read something by this Weidel, the last thing he wrote. I don’t know anything about these things, but I liked it.”
“What’s it called?”
“I don’t know.”
Paul said, “I doubt very much that a man like Weidel would ever be able to write in Mexico.”
I was so surprised to hear him say this that I didn’t reply. It seemed there was no reason for me to be ashamed that our reunion should turn out somewhat lame. Paul didn’t even know that Weidel was dead. Maybe it was because of all the wartime upheaval that he didn’t know. Or should he have known? He ought to have been making inquiries, investigating, and not given up. After all the dead man was one of his own kind. I now had a better understanding of why this man Weidel had gotten fed up with it all. They’d probably left him to his own devices long before that.
Paul said, “The main thing is that he has a visa.”
We were silent then and in the silence my mind whirled. I said, “The visa won’t work. It’s made out to his pen name.”
“That happens often. So Weidel isn’t his real name? I didn’t know that.”
“There are a lot of things you
don’t know, Paul.”
I looked him in the eye. And I thought, You’re really stupid, Paul. That’s what’s wrong with you. It’s that simple. It’s your hidden weakness. Amazing that I didn’t see it sooner! You make an intelligent impression because you talk as if you’re clever. But I can see the stupidity in your brown eyes.
“What’s his real name?” Paul asked.
I thought, You didn’t care whether your friend was alive or dead. But this name nonsense has really sparked your curiosity.
I said, “His name is Seidler.”
“Very odd that someone would call himself Weidel if his name is Seidler,” Paul said. “I’ll arrange for my Committee to take on this case, since I’m in a position of trust there.”
“If you could manage to do that, Paul, since you have so much power, so much influence over so many people... “
“I do have some degree of influence in certain circles. Have Weidel come by to see us.”
I figured Paul had installed himself somewhere, entrenched himself behind a desk. Before that I’d always met him in pretty hopeless situations. In Paris. In Normandy. He’s stupid, that’s for sure. But precisely because of that he’s consistent. He uses the meager bit of power he has, the modest amount of common sense he’s endowed with to attach himself to someone or something, and this always helps him out. In Paris, if I remember correctly, it was a silk merchant, the husband of his best friend.
I said, “It’s not so easy for Weidel to go out among people. He’s shy, you know. Why don’t you, who can do everything and are so clever, why don’t you arrange things for him. It just takes one telegram...”
“I’ll ask my Committee. Even though I must say that I don’t give a damn about his shyness, as you call it. I think it’s an affectation. You seem to have become his coolie in the meantime.”