Transit

by Anna Seghers

  “That’s ridiculous!!” Paul said, “He didn’t seem to have any difficulty making certain gestures in certain other directions.”

  I felt I had to make it up to him and invited him to have an aperitif with me. “You can’t turn me down now,” I said. “You’re the one who’s always treating. And to follow your suggestion...”

  He relented and we sat down for a drink together. But I sensed that he was bored with me. He kept turning his head in all directions, obviously restless. In the end, he excused himself and moved to another table occupied by a group of men and women who greeted him warmly.

  III

  I followed the kind advice of the official at the Mexican Consulate. After all, people had long since stopped trying to give me advice. I went to the travel bureau.

  The little agency was unprepossessing, lackluster, as if the administrative offices for the Last Judgment had been moved into a tobacco shop on some street corner. Yet it was big enough for anyone who’d made it this far. Dressed up or in rags, they stepped up to the counter and pleaded for a berth on a ship. Some had valid transit visas but hadn’t yet paid for their passage; others had paid-up passages but expired transit visas. All their begging and whining was directed at a broad-chested, brown-skinned man with oily slicked-down hair. I’d met him once before in a café in the Corsican quarter. He had been there with his fellow countrymen when I came in for a glass of wine with my friend, Binnet. Now he was trying to suppress a yawn, which when it finally did come, coincided with the sobbing of a young woman whose passage could not be rebooked. She pounded on the counter with her little fists, but he barely looked at her. Then he crossed out her booked passage once and for all and began poking around in his ear with his pencil.

  Again I ran into the little conductor. His eyes glinted feverishly as though a light had been turned on inside his skull. Quivering with joy, he informed me that he had the final summons to the American Consulate in his briefcase; his transit visa was at last ready to be picked up; his contract had just been renewed; his exit visa was assured; and his ship passage was properly booked.

  A police officer leading a prisoner had come through the door; he stopped and unlocked the handcuffs on the man’s wrist and pushed him inside. He was a short, stocky man. As he serenely massaged his wrist, I thought he looked familiar. When he greeted me I recognized him as the husband of my first neighbor in the hotel. He told me pretty calmly that his wife had already been transferred from Bompard to Gurs, the large concentration camp on the slopes of the Pyrenees. He had returned to his département where she intended to follow him. But she was prevented from doing this because of a new decree that applied only in his département, namely that all foreigners able to bear arms would be forcibly deported. The decree was eventually rescinded, but before that happened he had tried to escape, and hence his renewed arrest and the handcuffs. In the meantime, of course, all his papers, every last one, had expired. So he managed to persuade them to take him to Marseille so he could try to get a new booking. The Corsican, yawning and poking around in his ear, listened to the man’s story; then with another yawn he said it was impossible. Through all of this, the police officer had been listening attentively. The handcuffs clinked again, and he pushed his man back out the door.

  A well-dressed fellow entered next; I couldn’t guess either his age or where he was from. He was handed a wad of money that he quickly and casually counted. Then he peeled off a few bills and threw them down on the counter, asking, no, demanding that his passage be rebooked for the following month because of visa delays. Our eyes met as he brushed by me on his way out. I had an inkling of a connection between us, but couldn’t quite put my finger on it at that moment. I wanted to know who he was. Yet there was certainly no warmth in the cold look that he shot at me from an intentionally almost expressionless face.

  It was my turn next. I showed my visa confirmation. Yawning, the Corsican noted that Weidel was the same as Seidler. A man with this name had definitely been expected for quite a while, his dossier was prepared, his passage paid. The Corsican said there was nothing to prevent him from booking passage on a ship for this man once he added a transit visa to his other visas. And once he got an American transit visa, transits for Spain and Portugal would be child’s play. He looked at me briefly. The look felt like a drop of fluid, I even wiped my face. I stepped back and read the confirmation of my paid passage, which he had made out for me without argument. As I left I looked back at him—I was nonplussed to find his fat brown face had come alive, he was actually smiling at someone.

  Naturally it wasn’t one of us who’d been able to interrupt his constant yawning. The smile was directed at a shabby little man who had suddenly come to stand in the doorway. He was wearing a dirty coat. His ears were red from the cold. He spoke right over the pleading voices of the would-be travelers, who weren’t paying any attention to him. The Corsican, though, gave the little man his full attention, even as he held the point of his pencil suspended over the file lying before him. “Listen, José,” the little man said, “Bombello is coming along only as far as Oran. We’re still waiting for that shipment of copper wire.”

  The Corsican said pleasantly, “If you leave unexpectedly, give my regards to our friends in Oran. Above all, regards to Rosario.” He blew him a kiss. The little man laughed sadly, then scurried off like a mouse.

  IV

  Out of sheer boredom I decided to follow him. The wind was so strong, it was raising whitecaps on the water of the Old Harbor. He turned up his coat collar, but it wasn’t enough to protect his ears. Neither one of us was properly prepared for such a winter. But since he came from the South, I was better able to withstand it. I followed him along on the right side of the harbor. He stopped in front of a tiny, miserable-looking café. The remnants of a painted sign, a pathetic squiggle, informed passersby that this house had served African customers in bygone times of summer and peace. The little man darted through the beaded curtain covering the doorway. I waited two minutes before following him in—again because I had nothing better to do. The little man was already sitting with some others—four or five fellow mice as well as a sad-faced mulatto and the old barber from the shop next door, whose shaving brush had probably turned to ice. They were all busy doing nothing. The proprietor had come out from behind the counter and was sitting with two streetwalkers, both blue with cold. They all stared at me. The café was in the grip of cold and ennui. The stone floor was too cold even for fleas to be hopping around on it. And the damned strings of beads clacking softly in the wind did little or nothing to keep the cold out. I’m sure it was the bleakest place in Marseille, maybe along the entire Mediterranean. The worst sin ever committed here was probably having an aperitif on an alcohol-free, icy Wednesday.

  A little glass was placed before me; they were all still doggedly watching me. I decided I’d wait till someone spoke to me first. My silence seemed to be driving them crazy; after about twenty minutes, the little man held a whispered conference with his neighbors. Then he hustled over to my table and asked whether I was waiting for someone. I said, “Yes.”

  But he wasn’t the sort of person who’d be satisfied with a one-word answer. “Are you waiting for Bombello?”

  I gave him a quick look. His mousy eyes became uneasy. “It’s no use waiting, sir,” he said. “Something happened to him. He can’t come before tomorrow.”

  “Gentlemen,” I said, “will you allow me to finish my drink with you?”

  I joined them at their table. After a while, I cautiously asked about the boat to Oran.

  It was a Portuguese freighter, they told me. They were still waiting for a load of copper wire. It had to be released by the German commission. From Oran the boat would sail to Lisbon, probably with a cargo of leather. They asked me whether I had the necessary documents.

  “If I did,” I said, “I wouldn’t be waiting for Bombello, but could go direct to the Transports Maritimes.”

  The little man now started complaining. The affa
ir was much too risky, their work permit was at stake, and they might lose their license. I wondered if they’d ever had a proper license. And so gradually we began to talk about how much a passage would cost. I wrung my hands.

  All I’d wanted was to wile away some time in the middle of the day. I didn’t have the slightest use for a passage from Oran to Lisbon. They were just on the verge of offering me a new and far more reasonable price when someone awkwardly parted the bead curtain with both hands. It was the young woman. She’d probably been running against the wind trying to catch up with someone. She held on to the nearest chair for support. I got up, took a step toward her. She looked at me. But if she recognized me, it was only as one of the many transit applicants everyone keeps running into in this city. Maybe my face had changed too much. As I looked at her, I felt more than bewilderment. I was afraid. It was as if something were clinging more and more tenaciously to my heels... something no coincidence or fate could explain. She ran out again and all at once the foolish fear left me. I was only dismayed because she was gone. I hesitated only a moment before running after her, but the street was already deserted. Perhaps she’d hopped on a streetcar passing by on its way to the center of the city.

  I went back to my seat at the table. They were all smiling a little; they’d warmed up a bit. As for me, I needed some warmth now, and would accept it wherever I found it. The barber asked whether I’d quarreled with her. The words coincided amazingly with my own feeling that I had known her for a long time, that a long life together lay behind us, and that we’d had a falling-out. The incident won the men in the café over to my side. People tend to see you in a more favorable light when you reveal something about yourself that they can understand. They advised me to try for an immediate reconciliation. You never know what might happen, they said; don’t wait till it’s too late. As I was leaving, they invited me to come again the next day; Bombello would be there in the evening around nine.

  V

  From there I went to another café—what else was I to do? This one was called Brûleurs des Loups. As I walked by the Café Kongo, I saw the Corsican sitting in the heated glass terrace. He recognized me and smiled. I thought it was probably because I was closer to his heart than his customary prestataire clients.

  Sometimes you find real Frenchmen sitting in the Brûleurs des Loups. Instead of talking about visas, they talk about sensible things like the shady deals that go on. I even heard them mention a certain boat that was sailing for Oran. While the Mont Vertoux customers prattle on about all the details of booking a passage on a ship, these people were discussing the particulars of the cargo of copper wire.

  The Old Port was blue. You know that bright afternoon light that shines its cold light into all the corners of the world, yet leaves them bleak and dreary. A fat woman with a fancy hairdo was sitting at the long communal table. She was devouring countless oysters, stuffing herself out of grief. She had been refused a visa, rejected once and for all, so she was eating up her travel funds. And there wasn’t much else you could buy besides wine and oysters.

  The afternoon was passing. The consulates were closing. The transit seekers, tormented by fear, streamed into the Brûleurs des Loups and every other conceivable place. Their wild talk filled the air, a senseless mixture of intricate advice and sheer helplessness. The thin light on the various piers was already being reflected in the darker surface of the Old Harbor.

  I was just putting some money on the table with the intention of going across to the Mont Vertoux, when the young woman stepped into the Brûleurs des Loups. She still had the sad, gloomy expression of a child being made fun of in a game. Carefully she searched all the tables with the same sorrowful, devoted care that childlike women in fairy tales take when they perform a useless task assigned to them for no reason all. For again, her search proved futile. She shrugged and left. I thought of the advice I’d been given that noon: Don’t wait till it’s too late!

  I followed her out onto the Canebière. By now I knew that this determined rushing about would not lead her to her goal. The Mistral had stopped quite a while ago. And without its icy blasts the night was quite bearable, a Mediterranean night. She crossed the Canebière just before the Cours d’Assas. I could see that she was suddenly too tired to go another step. She sat down on the nearest bench.

  The bench was right across from the Mexican Consulate. In the dark I recognized the large oval shield with the eagle perched on the cactus. To the young woman, I assumed, it was nothing more than a dully gleaming surface, and the door merely one of the thousands of doors in a city locked up for the night. Yet I had the persistent feeling that this emblem had come to play a role in my life. That it had found me and become attached to me a little like some other emblem might have become attached to a Crusader in bygone times. I didn’t know exactly why or how, but from now on it would decorate my shield, my visa, and my transit permit—if I were ever to acquire one. And now there it was once more.

  I sat down at the other end of the bench. The woman turned to face me. Her eyes, her face, her entire being pleaded to be left alone, to be left in peace, and I immediately got up.

  VI

  I walked to the Binnets’ place. Claudine was busy picking the genuine coffee beans out of the ersatz coffee, which this time consisted of dried peas instead of barley. She’d used up the entire month’s coffee ration so that she could brew a single cup of genuine coffee for her guest, the doctor. The doctor was despondent today.

  He had allowed the Martinique ship to sail without him and booked passage on a ship sailing from Lisbon the coming month. But he had been refused a Spanish transit visa. Something he certainly had not foreseen. When he investigated, he discovered that the consulate had mixed him up with another doctor who had the same name and had headed the medical corps of the International Brigades during the Civil War. I asked him if he’d ever been in Spain.

  “Me?” he said. “No, never. Although in those days there probably wasn’t anyone who didn’t ask himself at least once whether he was needed there. At the time I had the prospect of being taken on at the Saint Evrian hospital. That would have made use of my knowledge for the foreseeable future.”

  “And did the hospital take you on?”

  “The situation dragged on like everything else in this country,” he said wearily. “It dragged on endlessly. Then the war came.”

  “But your namesake must surely have come back from Spain long before that.”

  “I made inquiries about the man. He arrived in Marseille even before I did. And that’s what turned out to be unlucky for me, for the fact is that he didn’t apply for a transit permit. If he had, he would have been refused right away. Then the whole mix-up would never have happened, and they would have let me cross Spain. But the man didn’t even apply for a transit permit. People who knew him told me he crossed the mountains with forged papers and almost reached Portugal. An adventurous fellow, this namesake of mine! So I was rejected for a transit visa because a doctor with the same name had been flagged at the Spanish Consulate.”

  While the doctor told his story, I was watching the boy. His eyes were fixed on the doctor’s lips. I would have given anything to know what he was thinking, listening so intently to the man’s tale of paper-jungle adventures and mistaken identity woes.

  Claudine brought the coffee. It hit us like strong wine, for we hadn’t had the real stuff in a long time. We were wide awake. Suddenly, I wanted to help the doctor. I told him I knew of a way to get to Lisbon via Oran. Did he have any money? The boy, who’d been watching us, seemed even more interested in my offer to help than the doctor. But then he abruptly turned his face to the wall and pulled the covers over his ears.

  At that point the doctor got up—too soon, it seemed to me, after he’d been served such a precious cup of coffee. All he wanted now was “to hear any advice I had, in detail and alone.” With his arm in mine he dragged me through the streets. I had to explain all the details, even though they weren’t quite clear to me yet
. I wondered whether he’d really make use of these tips I was passing along to him. He listened eagerly to all the possibilities, even the most absurd. At the corner of the Rue de la République he invited me to have supper with him. I accepted, even though I knew that he wasn’t asking me because he liked me but only because I had a tip for him. The next day he’d probably tell them in the café that he’d had supper with a man who had given him a tip. In spite of that, I accepted. After all, I was alone and afraid of facing the rest of the long evening stretching before me in my cold room with a pack of Gaulois Bleu and the tormenting vision of that same face.

  We entered the pizzeria. I took a seat facing the open fire. The doctor had them set the table for three. He looked at the clock and ordered a pizza for twelve francs. They brought the usual rosé. The first two glasses of rosé always go down like water. I like watching the open fire, you know, and the way the man hits the dough with his bent wrist. Yes, things like that are the only things in the world I really like. That is to say, I like things that have been and will always be there. You see, there’s always been an open fire here, and for centuries they’ve beaten the dough like that. And if you were to reproach me because I’m forever changing and going to different places, then I’d reply, that it’s only because I’m doing a thorough search for something that is going to last forever.

  After the second glass the doctor said, “Please tell me again everything you know about the passage on the boat to Oran.”

  So, for the third time I told him about discovering the sad-looking little mousy man at the Corsican’s and following him so that I could find out more about getting a passage, in much the same way the doctor was pursuing me to get information about getting a passage on a boat. The doctor was facing the door this time, not I. And suddenly the expression on his face changed. He said, “Please repeat it all for Marie.”