by Anna Seghers
So, almost against my will, I started to tell him about the load of copper wire, about the passage on the boat going to Oran that I had intended for an acquaintance of mine, but would rather pass along to him, to Heinz. He said he’d certainly give this some thought. He asked me to meet him that evening at an inn fairly far from here in Beaumont. As long as we were sitting together I was under his spell. But as soon he left, I realized that I didn’t matter to him, that he never considered me one of his own kind, never thought very much of me. That made me angry, and I began to wonder why I was suddenly so intent on helping him even though it thwarted my own plans.
II
That evening, at the little café in the Old Port they asked me if I had made up with my wife. I said I had. They asked whether she’d be coming to join me. I said no, not this evening. We had made up, our days of chasing each other were over, and she was calmly waiting for me at home.
Bombello was there again and asked me whether the ship’s passage was for myself. He said that as a matter of principle he filled such requests only for people he had seen and looked over in person. In spite of this laudable cautiousness of his, he had of course no inkling of the passenger swap that was taking place right under his nose, since he’d never laid eyes on the doctor. To be honest, he always treated people fairly within the limits of his profession. He never lied to anyone about facts, and once a price was arrived at he had never invented reasons to raise it. He now looked at me, blinking hard. It was a tic that had stayed with him from a time when something had gone wrong. With a taxi I took him and the Portuguese up to Beaumont. I saw right away that both of them were satisfied with their new customer. And I was amazed and envious that even these two men felt good to have Heinz speak with them so seriously and courteously. How much we all appreciate being taken seriously! Still, it’s just one of Heinz’s tricks, I thought, a stunt. He probably puts me on the same level as these two, maybe just a notch, or half a notch above them.
Later, after another meeting had been arranged, Heinz and I put the two men into a taxi and sent them back to their own café. Heinz invited me to stay for a supper of rice and Fioli sausage. They also served us wine. The place was almost empty in the winter. Situated on a remote road near the edge of the hills, it seemed forsaken despite being quite close to the big city. I found myself drinking a lot, and suddenly felt angry and exasperated. I sensed that Heinz was bored with me. Why had I done all this for him when he didn’t really care about me or even enjoy my company, and would never see me again? I kept drinking. Parts of my life seemed quite clear; other parts were obscured by a gentle reddish-black rosé fog.
“You’re leaving again, Heinz. I always thought, if we ever lived in the same city, we’d have so much to talk about and that I’d have all sorts of things to ask you. Now the evening’s almost over, and I don’t even remember what those urgent questions were that I wanted to ask. Our time in the same city is coming to an end and I haven’t asked you about anything.”
“But you helped me.”
“And that’s precisely why you’re leaving now. You’re lucky, you’re not like me; you have a goal, a purpose.”
“You could certainly find a way to leave, too.”
“That’s not the sort of goal I’m talking about. Sure, I can arrange that sort of goal for myself, a destination and passage on a ship; I can get myself visas for God knows what countries. Transit visas, exit visas—I’m your man for that. But what good is all that when it doesn’t matter to me where I go, that almost nothing matters to me?”
“Still, you helped me.”
“When I sit here with you, I can see you have something positive and definite in you and ahead of you, something firm that will never be broken, even if you yourself should be physically broken. I can see it in your eyes, Heinz, and it seems to me that I have a part in that, too. You probably don’t understand a word I’m saying... because you can’t imagine what it’s like to be so utterly empty.”
We listened to the wind, which sounded much the same up here as it used to back home in the mountains. Heinz said, “I can well imagine it. There is nothing I haven’t already lived through. I know what it is to feel empty. I used to be big and strong like you. The first time I got up on my crutches and tried to walk through a door—the sun was shining through that door at me, evil and glaring—I saw my shadow, my chopped off shadow, and I felt really empty. I’m probably the same age as you. I feel that I must still have a vast amount of time ahead of me, time enough to go back home and be there when everything changes. Deep down I ask myself: How can it all change without me, when I sacrificed everything—my bones, my blood, my youth—so that it could happen? But common sense tells me that I have only a few years left to live, maybe just a few months.” He looked at me, not the way he usually did, but indirectly, pensively, with the look of a man who needs help. It made me like him even more.
III
I saw the doctor again at Binnet’s apartment. When I told him that his passage to Oran wouldn’t work out after all, he took the news pretty calmly. He said, “At the Transports Maritimes they assured me that there’d be another ship leaving for Martinique next month. I had them book me on it. That’s a lot safer than sailing via Oran, and in any case the difference in the time of departure isn’t that much.”
So, I thought, here I’ve been running around on your behalf, and all the time you had your own backup plan.
He continued, “Marie told me that you wanted to help her. Maybe you’ll be able to do better for her.”
“I doubt that her visa will come through before you leave,” I said. “And even if it does, just think of all the things that would still have to be arranged: posting a bond, the exit visa, the transit permit.”
He suddenly gave me such a piercing look that I had no chance to change my expression. Calmly he said, “I’d like to explain something to you, once and for all. I drove Marie in my trusty, shabby, little car through the fighting and out of the war. What’s left of my car is probably still lying in the same roadside ditch where I left it five hours this side of the Loire. We got here safely. We could have gone farther. We could have escaped to Africa; there were still ships sailing to Casablanca back then. One could still book a passage. Everybody could still escape. But Marie began to waver. Up to that point she had followed me, then suddenly she began to hang back. The ships all left, one after another. I couldn’t get her to board one. Even though she’d followed me from Paris all through France to this city, I couldn’t get her to board one of the ships. And back then you didn’t need a visa yet, or a transit permit; you just jumped on a ship and sailed. Marie kept making excuses; and meanwhile the ships all left. I threatened to leave without her. I wanted to force her to make a decision. But she refused, continued to hesitate. And it’s Marie’s fault entirely that I can’t wait any longer now. I’d like you to understand the situation.”
“You don’t owe me an explanation about your feelings.”
“Not about mine, certainly. But I want to warn you that Marie will continue to hesitate. Even if she suddenly decided to stay, even then she would secretly be wavering. And she’ll never be able to make the decision to stay. She’ll never make any definite decision before she sees her husband again—and he may already be dead.”
I said, “Who told you he’s dead?”
“Me? Nobody! I said, may be dead.”
I became quite upset. “Don’t count on it! The man could come back. He may already be in town. Anything is possible in wartime.”
Looking at me calmly, his long face expressionless, he said, “You’re forgetting one small detail. Marie, after all, chose to come with me while her husband was still alive.”
Yes, it was true. I had to admit it was true. And it couldn’t have hurt the dead man more than it hurt me. War had spread across the land; death had also touched her, and she had been gripped by fear. Perhaps only for one day, but by then it was already too late. That one day had separated her for eternity from her husba
nd.
But what did I care about her husband? I was rid of him; that was all. And even if he were to come back to life, I still would have wanted nothing more than to be rid of him. Compared to him, I thought, this fellow sitting in front of me is just a pale shadow. Why does she want to follow him? Why is she leaving me in the lurch?
In a changed tone of voice, as if he wanted to distract or to reassure me, the doctor said, “From what you’ve said, I can tell what you think about this transit existence, this visa dance, all this consulate hocus-pocus. I’m afraid, my friend, you’re taking this all too lightly. In any case I take it more seriously. If there is a higher order governing this world—it doesn’t necessarily have to be a divine order, just a higher order, a higher law—then it would surely exert some influence on this stupid system of dossiers. You’d be sure of your goal, whether you go by way of Cuba, Oran, or Martinique; it wouldn’t make any difference. You’d be certain of the brevity and uniqueness of life, whether it’s measured in lunar years, in solar years, or by transit deadlines.”
“Given all these lofty ideas of yours, I wonder why you flounder around so much, and what you’re afraid of.”
“That’s quite simple. I’m afraid of death. A mean, senseless death under the boots of the SA.”
“And you see, I’m convinced that I’m one of those who’ll survive it all.”
“Oh yes, I realize you’re completely lacking in imagination when it comes to your own death. If I’m not mistaken, my friend, you’d like to have two lives; and since you can’t have them one after the other, then two lives side-by-side, running on parallel tracks. It can’t be done.”
I was appalled. “Wherever did you get that notion?”
He replied casually, “Good Lord, you show all the symptoms. Your exaggerated absorption in strangers’ lives, your amazing desire to step in and help, which certainly deserves our gratitude. But I tell you, it can’t be done. You cannot do it. Moreover, if there really is no higher order, if it’s all a matter of fate, blind fate, then it really doesn’t matter whether your fate is pronounced by some consul, by the oracle at Delphi, by the stars, or whether you read it in the countless coincidences of your life, mostly incorrectly, mostly with bias.”
I was about to ask him to stop his chatter, when he stood up of his own accord, bowed to Claudine, and left. All during this conversation we’d been sitting in Claudine’s kitchen at her tiny kitchen table covered by a blue-checkered oilcloth. She had followed our words closely, even though we were speaking German. It was as if our incomprehensible words were being communicated to her in some other way. She was knitting, and her long-fingered hands, dark on the outside and pink inside, moving with the needles, reminded me of slender leaves fluttering in a breeze.
I must have sat there silently for a long time after the doctor left. Claudine asked, “What’s the matter with you? You’ve changed in the last few weeks. You’re not the same man you were when you first came here. Do you still remember that time? I threw you out. I was so very tired, and I needed to cook dinner for the next day. Something’s wrong...I can tell...don’t deny it. What is it? Why do you keep following the doctor around, getting involved in his asinine departure plans? That man is not the right kind of friend for you. He’s a stranger, a foreigner.”
“I’m a stranger, too.”
“But not to us. To us you’re no stranger. This doctor may be a good man. He cured my son. But he’s still a stranger to us.”
“Aren’t you yourself a stranger here, Claudine?”
“You’re forgetting that I came to Marseille intending to stay. For you this city is just a place of departure; for me it was a place of arrival. It was my destination, just as those other cities over there, across the ocean, are for you people. And now I am here.”
“Why did you leave home?”
“That’s something you wouldn’t understand. What do you know about a woman who boards a ship with her child in a shawl because there’s no room for her at home? Because they’re hiring all sorts of people for the farms, the factories, for things she doesn’t know anything about. And then you people come along with your cold eyes! You who take so long to do something that for us is settled in an instant. And who arrange in the blink of an eye something that takes us a lifetime. Besides, you’re only asking me questions now to keep me from asking you about yourself. Have you stopped seeing Nadine? Do you have another girlfriend? Is she causing you grief?”
“Let’s not talk about me. Tell me, Claudine, don’t you ever feel like going home again?”
“Maybe, once my son is a teacher, or a doctor. Not now, not by myself. A leaf blowing in the wind would have an easier time finding its old twig again. I want to stay with George and with my boy as long as I can.”
She wasn’t fooling herself about the fragility of these four walls of hers. And maybe for that very reason they might turn out to be that much more stable and long lasting. In any case, I felt more strongly than ever that this was a real home. It probably all began with George’s desire to touch her stranger’s hand. George, who’d been transplanted to this city in the south by the stupid evacuation of his factory. Why is it that men like George always seem to find themselves surrounded by four walls, whereas nothing ever has any effect on me—neither happy nor painful? In the end I’m always left behind, alone. Unhurt, it’s true, but nevertheless alone.
IV
I went to the Brûleurs des Loups and sat down. The people around me were all terribly agitated because a car marked with swastikas had been seen racing down the Canebière around noon. It was probably carrying members of a commission negotiating with the Spanish, Italian, and Vichy representatives in one of the big hotels. The people in the café were acting as if the devil himself had come rattling down the avenue bent on corralling his lost flock inside a barbed-wire enclosure. I think they were almost ready to walk into the sea because no more ships were scheduled to leave for the time being.
Marie came in quietly. I saw her reflection in one of the mirrors that covered the café walls as if to multiply the chaotic confusion of distorted faces. I watched tensely as she searched, going from one table to another, looking at all the faces. I waited breathlessly for her to come over to my table, the only person who knew that her search was futile. Suddenly I felt I had to put an end to this search of hers, once and for all. I sensed beforehand the devastation that I would cause with those four words of the cursed truth.
Just then she saw me; her pale face flushed red and her gray eyes glowed with a warm, gentle light. She said, “I’ve been looking for you for days.”
I promptly forgot my resolution. I took her hands. Her small face represented the only place on earth where there was still some peace for me. And yes, peace and quiet at once descended on my hounded heart; it was as though we were sitting together in a meadow in our homeland and not in this crazy harbor café whose walls mirrored the floundering and dread of the refugees sitting there.
“Where did you disappear to?” she asked. “Don’t tell me you still haven’t had an answer from your friends at the consulates.”
My joy evaporated. So that’s why she’s been looking for me! I thought. The same reason that lay behind her search for the dead man. I said, “No. I won’t get an answer that quickly.”
She sighed. I couldn’t read the expression on her face. It almost looked like relief. She said, “Let’s just sit here together quietly for a while. Let’s pretend there aren’t any more departures, no ships, no good-byes.”
I was a pushover for a game like that. We sat there together for perhaps an hour, silent and peaceful, as if later on we’d still have an endless amount of time to talk, as if nothing could ever separate us. At least that’s how I felt. I wasn’t even surprised at how submissively she let me hold her hand, as if it were the most natural thing in the world—or, that it was utterly irrelevant to her who was holding it. Suddenly she jumped up. It startled me. Her expression was that strange, vague, and somewhat scornful one she alwa
ys had when she thought of the doctor. I could already sense the wild chase, the turmoil that would overwhelm me once she left.
Yet I remained pretty calm even after that. We’re both still in the same city, I thought, still sleeping under the same bit of sky; anything is still possible.
V
As I was walking home on the Cours Belsunce, someone in the glassed-in terrace of the Café Rotonde called out my old name.
It gave me a start, as it does every time someone uses my real name. But this time I felt reassured because most of the people here run around using all sorts of names, even if sometimes it’s just their old name translated into another language. At first the group of people waving to me looked like strangers. Then I saw that they were waving because Paul was waving. I hadn’t seen him at first. His head peered out from behind the shoulder of a girl sitting on his lap. It may have been this improbable and amazing sight—Paul with a girl on his knees—that made me speechless. Paul had taken advantage of it’s being an alcohol day, and his heavy brown eyes sparkled. He kept pushing his thin bespectacled nose into the girl’s neck. She had long, lovely legs and a pretty little face, and she seemed quite content with his display of affection. With each peck of his beak she probably thought that Paul was a powerful man, persecuted, yes, but powerful. Paul waved to me with his free hand, the one not holding the pretty girl. I hesitated. But the others at the table kept waving to me just because Paul was waving. “My old fellow prestataire,” Paul called out, “now he’s Francesco Weidel’s pistolero.” The others had gotten tired of waving and were staring at me. I went over and sat down with them even though I felt like a stranger at their table.
In addition to Paul and the girl on his lap, there were five others. A short, stout man with a double chin and his equally short and plump wife who wore a feather in her hat. There was a young woman of such beauty I had to look twice to make sure she was real—soft neck, golden hair, and long eyelashes. I even had a strange sensation that she wasn’t actually there, but a vapor in the air. She sat completely motionless. Then there was a pencil-thin but tough-looking girl with a large insolent mouth. She was most certainly there and not a vapor. She continued to look me up and down out of the corners of her eyes, her head leaning against the arm of her boyfriend. He was an exceptionally handsome, tall, and erect fellow with a thin-lipped arrogant smile who paid no attention to me. He was a total stranger to me, yet he seemed familiar, though I had no idea why he should.