by Anna Seghers
“Dear Marie, I’ve learned quite a few tricks in this city. By now I know pretty much how things work here. And I’m familiar with worldly affairs, even though they’re pretty confused these days. I have good connections here and I don’t know how anything works over there—I don’t know my way around over there.”
“My husband must have gotten there already. He must have thought that I left before him. Just like I thought he’d left before me. How can he know when I’ll follow? On which ship? Will he expect me? I really believe now that when we get there, he’ll be standing there, waiting for me.”
“Oh, I see. You mean over there. In the country that gave you the visa. I haven’t given that much thought so far. I think everything will be different over there. The air will be different, there’ll be different fruit, a different language. And in spite of that, everything will be the same. Those who are alive will continue to live as before. The dead will remain dead.”
She said slowly, contemptuously, “So you don’t really believe he’ll be standing there, waiting for me, meeting every ship that comes in.”
“Over there, Marie, I don’t think... “
All at once I saw Achselroth coming through the door with his girlfriend. Paul and his girlfriend were with him, as well as the couple going to Cuba. I grabbed Marie’s hand along with her transit visa and pulled her outside and into another café.
“There was someone I didn’t want to meet,” I explained. “I didn’t want him to see you either. I can’t stand him.”
She laughed and said, “Who was it? What did he do?”
“He’s a really unpleasant guy, the sort of person you can’t depend on, who’ll abandon you every time.”
“Abandon you?” Marie asked still smiling. “Did he run out on you once? A friend of yours? Who then?” Her smile vanished; she stared at me. “What’s the matter? Whom did he abandon? Where? Why?”
“Please stop asking all these questions,” I said. “Can’t you just go from one café to another for my sake without ten times asking me ‘why’?”
She hung her head and was silent. I waited, almost frantic for her to start asking again, to press me for information, to torment me into finally telling her the whole truth.
VII
I went to Nadine’s department at the Dames de Paris. She was startled to see me there. Her supervisor was standing only three steps away from us. Nadine gestured for me to wait. She was just helping a customer try on a hat.
I felt good about waiting in this place, which was so unlike any of the other places I usually frequented. The supervisor asked me if she could help me, but I insisted on waiting for Nadine; I said that she knew what I needed, that my wife was her regular client. Every time Nadine took a hat off a stand and put it on her own lovely head, the customer’s expression was one of hesitant hope, and then when Nadine put the same hat on the customer’s head, the hopeful expression turned to one of embarrassment and disappointment. And I must say, the hat did take on a grotesque appearance. After Nadine had demonstrated her triumph in a superficially polite way with a dozen hats, a sale was at last concluded. It was a rust-colored hat with a wide brim and pointed crown, which looked quite good with what the woman could see of herself in the mirror, but not with the rest of her body.
“I’d like to buy a hat too,” I said to Nadine since the supervisor made no move to leave. Nadine at once began to model several. As soon as the supervisor had moved away, I said, “You have to give up your lunch break for me. You have to go to the Prefecture right away. I hope your girlfriend is still there, the one you mentioned before.”
“Oh, yes, Rosalie. She’s actually my cousin. What do you need from her? Have you decided to leave?”
I didn’t answer.
“Or is it that woman who was giving you so much trouble?” There was a note of contempt in her voice. “Good then. Let’s do everything we can to see that she’ll leave!” She fiddled with the hat stands. She twirled a hat on her index finger, a round child’s hat that I think was very similar to the old crushed and crumpled hat that Marie never wore but always carried around with her.
“Please give me Rosalie’s home address. I have to talk with her right away.” Just then the supervisor came back. I took the hat and paid for it. Nadine wrote Rosalie’s address on the receipt.
I interrupted Rosalie while she was eating dinner. My mouth watered when I smelled the bouillabaisse. She was at the table with her mother, a drab, fat woman—a lifeless, snuffed-out version of Rosalie. Rosalie was pretty fat too. Her shiny black, bulging eyes looked huge because of blue-black eye makeup. She reminded me a lot of that dog with eyes like wagon wheels. Unfortunately she offered me only a glass of wine, no bouillabaisse. Rosalie ate quickly, with pleasure, attentively waited on by her mother. For dessert there were tiny cups of genuine coffee.
I brought up the matter at hand. I put all the documents on the table. She wiped her mouth, then flipped through the papers with her small, plump hands.
She said, “You may be Nadine’s friend ten times over, but I can’t risk my job for you.”
“But you can see that my papers are all in order; I have my visa and my transit visa. I need an exit visa by tomorrow. I’d be glad to pay you for your efforts.”
She said, “Please don’t mistake me for Nadine. For me there is only one reward, and that is being helpful to someone who’s in danger.”
I stared at her. So her face was only a mask—this mask of a fat, eye-rolling young woman, effectively hid the true but invisible face. Her real one was probably tough, kind, and brave. I was ashamed because I’d tried to get around her, to bribe her.
She said, “Why by tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow is the last day they’re selling berths on the ship. And I can book a passage only if I have my exit visa.”
“You haven’t paid a security deposit yet.”
“For the time being it would be enough to have proof that an exit visa will be issued to me as soon as I pay the security deposit.”
By now she’d obviously stopped puzzling about some shipping company’s trick. She asked only, “Are you absolutely set on leaving with this particular ship?”
“I am.”
She put her head on her plump little fists and mulled over my file. She looked like a fortune-teller brooding over her cards.
“You have a refugee certificate—you migrated from the Saar to a French village. So you need the permission of our government to leave France. According to the birthplace listed in these papers you are German, so you need permission from the German Commission. Just a minute, please, don’t interrupt me.
“I’m familiar enough with all sorts of documents to know whether they’re in order or not. Yours don’t seem to be... Just wait a moment. Don’t get upset! They’re all right as far as they go, but as a whole they don’t add up. I can’t say exactly why they don’t. I’d have to study them some more, which I don’t feel like doing right now. There’s also one question you have to answer me—after all, you’re asking me to take a risk on your behalf, so in return I can expect a little trust from you. Would you tell me the truth about one thing, just to satisfy my curiosity? What do the Germans have against you?”
I was surprised. It had been quite a while since anyone had wanted to hear that old story, so far outclassed and outranked by everyone else’s stories. Only this woman who in her official position must have heard hundreds of such tales every day was still willing to listen to mine attentively, with a kind of deference.
“I once escaped from a camp,” I said. “I swam across the Rhine.”
She looked at me, showing her honest, stern face. “All right. I’ll see what can be done.”
I was ashamed. For the first time in my life someone was helping me because of the person I was, and still this help was going to the wrong man. I took her small plump hand. I said, “I have one more request. If anyone in your department asks about me, today or tomorrow, wanting to know whether I’m leaving, please don’t gi
ve them any information. And please keep what happened here today a secret. You must understand that it’s important for me to leave without being recognized.”
VIII
For the first time I was gripped by a powerful fear of being left behind. Many people I’d been fond of had already left. My advantage over them had once seemed enormous to me, but this was deceptive. Suddenly they had overtaken me. I saw Marie’s face as if she were floating away, getting smaller and paler, like a snowflake. What if I really had to choose between taking the last ship and irrevocably staying here? I imagined myself no longer surrounded by the houses of those who were living here permanently, full of things, with smoke coming from innumerable chimneys, all the workers in the factories and mills, the fishermen, barbers, and pizza bakers. Instead I saw myself alone on an island in the middle of the ocean, or on a little star out in space. And I was alone with that black, four-armed giant crab, the swastika.
I rushed to the American travel bureau as if it were a sacred temple that would provide refuge to a human being hounded by the furies, facing an infinite desolation within himself. As soon as he saw me the Corsican turned to me even though there were many other frantic people waiting behind the barrier. He said, “He’s in the Arab café over at the Quai du Port.”
“I don’t need the Portuguese anymore,” I cried. “I need you. I’ve decided to leave too.”
He looked at me, disappointed and amused, and said, “Then you’ll have to get in line.”
I took a place at the end of the line and listened for hours to the pleas, the threats, to the bribery, to the knuckle cracking of clenched hands. But that day everything seemed to come from my own heart. Finally it was my turn. The Corsican reached for my file, yawning and poking in his ear with his pencil.
He said, “You have lots of time. In three or four months there’ll be a berth available on the American Export Liner from Lisbon.”
I cried, “I want to leave this week, on the boat to Martinique.”
“With what? Don’t forget, your travel money is in Lisbon. Even if they forwarded it to us here, the boat would be long gone by then. And you wouldn’t have dollars anymore, but idiotic francs. Your money would be worth a lot less and wouldn’t be enough anymore for Lisbon—why all this nonsense?”
I said, “You’ve got to lend me money on the basis of the money that will arrive after I’m gone. I need only a small part of that money, and what’s left will belong to you.” I felt as if I had to wipe the look he gave me from my face. I drummed with my fist on the railing. He shrugged, gave a short, silent laugh.
He said, “No. I did that once, and it turned out quite badly. I love money, but in that case the harbor commission refused to let the people board the boat; the entire family was dispersed; there was no travel money left; they were all sent to camps, to Gurs, to Rieucros, to Argèles. They’re still writing me nasty letters from three different concentration camps, as if I were the one who’d given them the infernal advice. I’ll never do this sort of thing again.”
I was beside myself. I said, “Please listen to me. I have to sail on that ship! It might be the last one.”
He switched his pencil to the other ear and laughed, “The last one? Maybe! But so what? Why do you of all people have to be on it? If you didn’t go, you’d be one of a huge number of people staying behind, the masses in this part of Europe. I’m just an ordinary employee of an ordinary travel bureau. Your reservation would be no guarantee that you’d survive events.” Seeing the fury in my face, he took a step back. “And then, this particular ship to Martinique! You’re mad! That’s no ship for you. An awful, substandard wreck of a boat. It’ll never get you where you’re going.” He put away my file, and turned away, ignoring me.
I was so angry when I got home that I banged my head against the wall. I felt like robbing someone just to get the money for the ticket. I had never quite believed that Marie would leave. Now the time had come. Maybe I could show someone proof of my treasure in Portugal. Maybe someone would lend me the money. But it was getting dark, and all office doors were already closed.
10
I
I WENT to the Brûleurs des Loups. This was a tough day for me. Too bad it was also one of the days they didn’t serve alcohol. I smoked cigarettes and brooded. One moment I felt an overwhelming fear that Marie’s ship might be the very last one; the next, I was calm again, filled with a vaguely optimistic confidence. But confidence in whom? In what? I didn’t know.
Suddenly someone touched my shoulder. It was the doctor. He looked at me thoughtfully for a moment before sitting down at my table without my having asked him to. “I’ve been looking for you everywhere,” he said.
“For me? Why?”
“No special reason,” he said, but something in his eyes told me there was something special. “Marie went to the Prefecture. She’s started packing. Three times she sent me to the Transports Maritimes to make sure the ship was really leaving, that nothing would interfere with its departure, and to make certain that our passages were booked. As reluctant as she was before, she’s now eager to leave. She got her exit visa, but I have a feeling that something happened to her at the Office for Aliens.”
I hid my dismay and said, “What could have happened to her there? She got what she wanted, and got it quickly.”
“That’s just the point. Her husband’s exit visa had already been issued. I’m sure Marie tried to get the official to tell her more about it. They probably didn’t give her any clear answers—otherwise she would have told me. Maybe they gave her new hope, maybe an ambiguous smile, some vague allusion. Maybe it was all just her imagination, or some mistake, but whatever it was, it was enough to make her rush home to pursue her departure preparations. It was as if she expected him to be there waiting for her on the other side of the ocean at some prearranged time.”
“So, your wish has been fulfilled,” I said. “She’s leaving. You may not be overjoyed about her reason, but you should be able to find some solace in the thought that it will be very hard to find a man in a foreign country who couldn’t be found in Marseille.”
He looked at me a bit too intensely. For a brief time he said nothing. Then he said, “You’re wrong. You can’t help it, being who you are. But whatever the reason that made Marie decide to leave now, I’m glad with all my heart that she is leaving. I’m firmly convinced that she’ll find peace, yes, real peace and healing as soon as the ship leaves the dock at La Joliette. Once on the high seas, once she’s finally left this country and the past behind her, she’ll be healed one way or another. Regardless of the reason that drove her to leave, she’ll stop searching then for this man who doesn’t want to be found. She’ll stop trying to track down a man who obviously doesn’t want to be tracked down, whose only wish is to be left alone, never to be tracked down.”
He was saying exactly what I was thinking. And it suddenly made me angry. Contrary to all expectations, he’d almost won the game—he had the money; he had the documents. And I, who was a lot more nimble and clever, I wasn’t ready to leave. I said, “You can’t possibly know that for sure. The man might be quite happy if she could ferret him out.”
He said, “Stop worrying about a man you’ve never seen! His silence seems quite tenacious, his decision final.”
We left the café together. We walked across the deserted Belsunce in silence. We had to watch our step so as not to get tangled in the fishing nets stretched out to dry in the huge square. They were weighted down with rocks and belonged to men who had fished all their lives and would go on fishing. The doctor turned at the Rue du Relais; I went on through the maze of alleys to the Rue de la Providence.
II
At dawn I was already standing on the Rue de la République. I wasn’t alone, as others had arrived while the stars were still out to wait for the shutters to be pulled up at Transports Maritimes. The talk among these poor souls shivering in the predawn cold was all about the imminence of a new war, about the Lisbon harbor being closed, that
Gibraltar would soon be closed, and this would be the last boat to leave.
When I got to the counter, my voice sounded false to my own ears—it had this note of entreaty in it. And sure enough, the man behind the counter said, “We don’t accept such changes in bookings. Your reservation is valid till noon, after that all advance bookings expire.”
I hadn’t quite left the counter when, listening to the pleading of all these other men and women, I was overwhelmed by a sort of shame at my own obsessive departure mania, ashamed that I’d got caught up in it.
Just then someone grabbed my wrist and said to me, “So you want to leave after all?”
I looked up at the face of my bald friend. I said, “I have my visa, my transit visa, and a prospective exit visa. But now it turns out I don’t have a ticket.”
He said, “Yes, you do have a ticket. You just don’t know you do.”
I said, “No, unfortunately I’m quite certain I don’t have one.”
He said, quite firmly, “Yes you do have a ticket. Here it is. I’m about to return mine and I’m giving it to you.”
I tried to conceal my bewilderment. He was more agitated than usual, as often happens to people who’ve made an important decision that they’re telling someone about for the first time.
“I’ll explain everything. Come celebrate the transfer of my ticket to you. I’m leaving too, but I’m headed in another direction.” He pulled me back to the shipping company counter.
I pulled away from him, saying, “You’ve made a mistake. I don’t have the money to pay for this ticket. And I have no money to pay the security deposit that you need to get an exit visa, and without the exit visa, no ticket for a passage on a ship.”
He again grabbed my wrist and said calmly, “If that’s all that’s standing in your way! Listen, you have a letter in your pocket that says your trip has been paid for in advance. Your money for the passage is on deposit in Lisbon. I don’t need your money here in this place. I’d much rather that the money is outside France.”