by Anna Seghers
IX
I watched the ambulance carry off my little conductor forever. My uneasiness passed; after all I was still young and strong. I went into the Café Saint Ferréol. It’s only three minutes’ walk from the American Consulate. I was now entitled to sit in the U.S.-transit applicants’ café. I heard footsteps behind me. The bald transit applicant entered behind me. We sat down at adjacent tables, thereby indicating to anyone watching that although we were drinking by ourselves we might at some point want to exchange a few words. We each ordered a Cinzano. Suddenly he leaned over to me and clinked glasses with me, saying, “Let’s drink to his memory! We may be the only ones even thinking of him.”
“I first met the man on his arrival in Marseille,” I said. “The poor guy. One visa or permit was always expiring just as he was granted the next one.”
“That’s what happens if you don’t start with the last one. The first thing I did when I got here was to find someone who would transfer his passage on a ship to me. Only then did I start with the visa process.”
I asked him whether there really were people who’d give up passage on a ship.
He said, “In my case it was a woman who lived not far from me. She was looking forward to the voyage, but then she suddenly got sick. So she gave up the race.”
I said, “Oh, what sort of woman was she, what kind of illness did she have?”
For the first time, he really looked at me closely. I detected no kindness in his gray eyes, but there was something more important than kindness in them. He answered me, smiling, “Your curiosity is really astonishing. You ask a man you barely know about the unknown illness of a woman you don’t know.” He looked at me even more closely, and then he asked, “Is it perhaps because you’re a writer? Asking all these questions only to have something to write about?”
I was taken aback. “Me?” I said. “No. That’s not it at all. Certainly not!” I’d been rash with my answer. Now I couldn’t take it back. Instead I added, “In any case, I made sure that I had a ship ticket.”
He said, “In any case! A ticket in any case! In any case a visa! In any case a transit permit! And what if all these preventive measures go against you? What if taking all these preventive measures takes more out of you than the dangers themselves? If you get entangled in a web of precautionary measures just because of your foresight?”
“Oh, come on,” I said, “you don’t think I’d put too much stock in all this nonsense. It’s a game just like any other. It’s a gamble you take by living in this world.”
He looked at me as if he didn’t quite know whom he was dealing with. He turned away, making it clear to everyone that he was sitting at a separate table, even though it touched mine. His face was stern; his posture stiff. I tried in vain to figure him out. When he left the café, he forgot to say good-bye.
X
The Café Saint Ferréol was full of people; some had completed their business at the American Consulate and some were about to apply for exit visas and fortifying themselves before going to the Prefecture. I would have preferred going to the Quai des Belges where you can at least watch the harbor. And yet I sat there as if paralyzed, debating whether I should go up to the Binnets or whether I was making a pest of myself there.
Suddenly my heart began to pound even before my eyes caught sight of her. It was Marie. She came in and walked among the tables. Her sadness was contagious; it made me feel anxious. I got up as she came closer. Joylessly, she shook my hand. I said, “Come sit down here at my table. I’ll order you a drink. You’ve got to listen to me now.”
Apathetically, she sat down next to me. She asked in a tired voice, “What do you want from me?”
“Me? Nothing. I just want to know what you’re looking for. You seem to be searching from morning to night, in all the streets, everywhere.”
She looked at me amazed; then she said, “Why do you ask? Do you want to help me?”
“Does that seem so strange to you, an offer of help? What or whom are you looking for?”
“I’m looking for a man. One time they say he’s sitting there in that café, another time they tell me he’s sitting in this one. And then by the time I get there, he’s already gone. But I have to find him. My life, my happiness depend on my finding him.”
I suppressed a smile. Her life, her happiness. I said, “Finding a man in Marseille can’t be difficult. Just a matter of hours, if it’s really that important.”
She said sadly, “I thought so too at first. But this man is bewitched.”
“A strange man. Do you know him well?”
Her face turned even paler. “Oh yes, I know him very well. He’s my husband.”
I took her hand. She looked at me gravely, frowning. “If I don’t find him, I can’t leave. He has everything I need. He has a visa. And he’s the only one who can get me a visa. He has to explain to them at the consulate that I’m his wife.”
“So that you can leave with the other one, the doctor, if I understand it all correctly?”
She drew her hand back. I had spoken a bit too harshly and I regretted it immediately. She hung her head and said, “Something like that; yes, that’s about it.”
I took her hand again. She absentmindedly let it rest in mine. I thought that was progress. Almost to herself she said, “The bad thing is that I can’t find him, and I’m keeping the other man from leaving. He’s been waiting for me for a long time, all in vain so far, I mean, the other one, the doctor. He’s already postponed his departure. But he can’t wait much longer. It’s only on my account that he’s still here.”
I said, “All right. You have to get the story clear first; take everything in turn. Who’s been telling you that the man, your husband, is here? Who’s actually seen him?”
She replied, “The staff at the consulate. He was there just a little while ago to pick up his visa. The official at the Mexican Consulate talked to him in person several times; there’s no doubt about it, and the Corsican at the travel bureau too.”
Why was her cool hand turning cold in my warm ones? She slid her chair closer to mine. And for a second I wished her image would vanish, would blow away in the Marseille Mistral. She would probably have let me put my arm around her at that moment, like a child moving closer to a grownup because she’s afraid. But her childish, unfathomable fear was infecting me. Speaking softly, as if we were talking about forbidden things, I asked her, “When he came to Marseille, where was he coming from? Was it from the fighting? From a concentration camp?”
Just as softly she said, “No, from Paris. We were separated when the Germans came. He got stuck there. As soon as I arrived here, I sent him a letter. I met a woman I knew, the sister of a man we had known. His name was Paul Strobel. And this woman had a friend who was engaged to a French silk merchant. From time to time he went into the occupied territory on business. I begged him to deliver the letter to my husband in Paris. And he did. I know he did...
“What’s the matter with you?” she suddenly cried. “What’s wrong?”
I let go of her hand—no, that’s not true. I actually flung her hand down on the table.
“Nothing’s wrong with me!” I said. “What could be wrong with me? At most maybe having to wait for my Spanish transit visa. But that won’t take much longer. Well, tell me more, don’t stop now.”
“There’s nothing more to tell. That’s all there is.”
Without looking at her, I said, “The consuls see hundreds of faces every day. A name doesn’t mean anything to them. Maybe he isn’t here at all. Maybe he’s still in Paris. Maybe...”
She raised her hand abruptly in an almost wild warning. Looking directly at me and in a changed, rough voice she said, “There is no maybe. People have seen him in many places. He was seen four times at the Mont Vertoux. The official at the Mexican Consulate saw him in the Café Roma, not just at the consulate. The Corsican saw him at the travel bureau and later in a café near the Quai du Port. It’s just that I always get there too late.”
&nb
sp; “You probably put pressure on the Mexican Consulate, pestered the staff with your questions? Maybe asked them to investigate the man?”
“Oh, no. Not at all. I didn’t do that. Because I realized on my very first visit there, when I saw that the address he’d left with the Mexican Consulate wasn’t correct, that he’d probably come here with false papers, maybe even under a different name. And so there was no way that I could have them check on him, or ask sensitive questions, because that might spoil everything for him and consequently for me, too. Do you understand?”
I certainly did understand. The sadness that came over me at that point will never leave me. That was the dead man’s legacy for me. I was the one to suffer.
I said, “You wanted to get a visa. But you couldn’t get a visa without a husband. So you persuaded him to come here, in the hope of a new life together.”
She looked at me with clear, wide-open eyes, the eyes of a child that shies away from lying, no matter what other mischief she’s done.
I continued with my questioning, “And now you’re in love with the doctor?”
After a moment’s hesitation that I grasped at eagerly, she said, “He’s a very kind person.”
“Good God, Marie, I never asked you about his kindness.”
For a while we said nothing. “Doesn’t it seem odd to you that your husband, if he really came here, hasn’t tried to look for you, hasn’t moved heaven and earth to find you again?”
She clasped her hands. Softly she said, “It certainly does seem odd. More than odd. But even so, he’s got to be here. There are people who’ve seen him. Maybe he knows that I’m here with another man. And doesn’t want to see me again, doesn’t care about me anymore.”
I took her hand again. I tried to overcome the sadness I felt, a premonition of disaster. Once we were alone, I’d straighten it all out. But first, I had to quickly get the second man, the doctor, as far away from here as possible. And I knew better than anyone else the nature of the other man’s demands on her. At least I thought so back then.
I said, “You’re probably afraid of seeing him again?”
She seemed to withdraw. “Of course I’m afraid after all that’s happened. Seeing each other again after such a long time is almost as difficult as saying good-bye.”
“And so it would be best for you,” I said, “if it could all be done on paper. In the file that’s at the consulate. They would put your name on his visa. You would get a confirmation of the exit visa. I have some connections. Shall I see what can be done?”
“And what if I run into him aboard the ship—While I’m with the other man?”
“The other one has to sail by way of Oran. I’ll help him arrange that.”
“It will end up with my being all alone here.”
“Alone? Oh, I see. Why are you afraid of being alone? Are you afraid of being sent to Bompard? Don’t forget that I’ll be here. I will take good care of you.”
She said quite calmly, “I’m not afraid. Because if I have to stay behind by myself, I won’t care whether I’ll be free or imprisoned in the camp at Bompard or in some other camp. On the earth or beneath it.”
As I listened to her, I pictured an utterly deserted continent devoid of human beings, the last ship having sailed, leaving her totally alone in a wilderness that would rapidly overgrow everything.
6
I
BACK THEN they were all consumed by one wish: to leave. And they were all afraid of one thing: being left behind.
They wanted to get away, to get away from this broken-down country, away from this continent! They were consumed by waiting. And to make the time fly, they resorted to gossip. As long as you were talking about departures, people would listen eagerly. They loved to talk about visas bought and sold or letters of transit and new transit countries. But more than anything else they liked to hear about ships that were seized or never reached their destinations, especially when they were ships that, for whatever reason, had left without them.
I was afraid of running into someone at the Mexican Consulate who might know me. But my heart jumped with joy when I saw Heinz among the people waiting there. I even forgot my guilty conscience. I embraced him the way Spaniards embrace each other, pressing all his shot-up, brittle bones close to me. The Spaniards waiting there gathered around us, watching our reunion and smiling with the indomitable hearts of passionate people not yet hardened by war, detention camps, or the horror of thousands of deaths.
“Oh, Heinz, I was afraid you’d gone and left me forever. I’m sorry I couldn’t keep our appointment back then. Something came up, something that happens just once in a lifetime. I wouldn’t have stood you up for anything less.”
He looked at me as he used to do in the camp when I tried to get his attention by doing something silly. Rather coldly, he asked, “What in the world are you doing here?”
“I’m on an errand for someone. I’ve been looking everywhere for you the last few days—or has it been weeks. I was afraid you’d already left.”
His face had grown even smaller since our first reunion. The thinner and more emaciated he got physically, the stronger and firmer his gaze, as is so often the case with people who are ill and deathly tired. Since my childhood, no one had ever looked at me so attentively. Then it occurred to me that he looked at everything and everyone with the same attentiveness, whether it was the leathery-skinned consulate doorman or the old Spaniard who had decided to get a visa even though his entire family had been killed, as if he thought of that faraway country as a realm of the blessed where one could find one’s family again. Heinz gave the same attention to them as he did the round-eyed child whose father, as long as I’ve been here, has been incarcerated after he had already seen his ship through the pier gate, or to the prestataire whose beard was even longer now giving him an owlish appearance.
“You’ve got to leave this country, Heinz, before the trap snaps shut. Or in the end you’ll be swallowed up by the Germans. Do you have a transit permit?”
“They got me a Portuguese transit. From there I go on—via Cuba.”
“But how are you going to get to Portugal? You can’t go through Spain!”
“I don’t know yet,” he said. “We’ll see.”
Suddenly I knew just what it was that gave him his strength. We’ve all been taught that God helps those who help themselves, but this man lived every moment of his existence, even the darkest, convinced that he was never alone, that wherever he was and no matter for how long, he would always find people who were like him. People who’d be there for him and that there was no poor devil, no pathetic coward, no corpse so dead that they couldn’t be persuaded to listen when a human voice asked them for help.
“Please meet me at the Triads, Heinz. It’s three minutes from here on the Cours d’Assas. Trust me, I can give you some good advice. And this time I promise to come. Didn’t you yourself say that I’d never leave you in the lurch? Please wait there for me.”
He said dryly, “You can look around the place and see if I’m sitting there.”
Then it was my turn. The official looked at me with his gimlet eyes, “What?!” he said.“You want your wife included on the visa? Without special permission from my government? You think you can just take that for granted? I certainly cannot do that. Your wife doesn’t use your name. Why didn’t you enter her name at the proper time on the line that asks for: ‘Persons accompanying visa applicant’? Your wife is certainly quite lovely; I had the pleasure of meeting her. But nothing can be taken for granted. Sometimes one has to be parted even from the loveliest of women. Indeed, the Pope has annulled some marriages. I’m not pleased about this new complication, my friend. You will have to wait.”
“Do you know how long I’ll have to wait for the new visa confirmation?”
“Remember how long the first one took, and make arrangements accordingly.” He gazed at me with a new craftiness. And yet precisely because he was trying so hard to penetrate my motives, I felt a renewed confid
ence in my own cleverness.
I said, “Please, I beg you, even though it’s late, enter my wife’s name where it asks for ‘Persons accompanying the visa applicant.’”
It wouldn’t hurt anyone, I thought as I was crossing the Cours d’Assas. Nobody would care whether the two of us escaped from this place or whether we stayed. The delay would actually be good for me, a grace period in which I could straighten things out. I was already reckoning in consulate time, a kind of planetary time in which you equate earthly days with millions of years because worlds can burn in the time it takes a transit visa to expire. I also found myself starting to take my dreams seriously—hadn’t they been casting shadows on the white pages of my file, my dossier? Whatever seriousness I had before—and it wasn’t much—had almost vanished in the face of all the sleight-of-hand and the countless tricks you had to use in this world just to stay alive, to retain your freedom.
Heinz was sitting at the same table where I’d sat with the Binnet boy the day I first went to the newly opened Mexican Consulate. I joined him. From where I sat I could see the people waiting outside the consulate. They were struggling with two policemen who wanted to push them out of a narrow rectangle of wintry sunshine into the shade.
Heinz asked me what advice I was selling. Apparently, he’d already seen through everything. If he looked at me just a little bit longer, a little more carefully, he’d manage to decipher all of it.—What all my visits to the Mexican Consulate were about, why I wanted to see Marie’s friend the doctor as far away from here as possible, and how much I hated having the doctor hanging around. And he’d also see why I wanted to help him, Heinz, more than any other person, more even than myself. Yet I knew only too well that to him I was only one of the many people to whom he had to turn if his journey were to succeed. Still I wanted to be helpful, and would always be proud of having been one of those who had helped in his rescue.