by Bruno Arpaia
The only sound in the room was the scratching of Benjamin’s fountain pen over the paper, the sound of thoughts falling into place in his head. It was already deep night outside. Benjamin took a breath and continued, ‘My attempt to reach Marseille, in order to put my case at the consulate there, was a wasted effort. For some time now it has been impossible for foreign nationals to obtain a permit for a change of residence. Thus I remain dependent on what all of you are doing for me from abroad. I hope it’s clear to you that I am keeping calm despite the difficult circumstances. I’ve not wavered on this. I can’t hide however that the situation has grown dangerous. I think very few people will manage to get out of this.’
He fell asleep late. The darkness was already diluted and he slept fitfully, tossing and grinding his teeth. He woke exhausted before dawn and lay awake for a very long time with his eyes closed, thinking and rethinking about what awaited him. At last he decided to get up and go out. Settled in at the table of a bar, a coffee in front of him, he nervously leafed through the Paris soir, Marseille edition. He read of the actors and society people filling the beaches of the Riviera. A new decree from the Vichy government required swimsuits to cover down to the knee: ‘No more shorts. No more French women cross-dressing as men!’ wrote the journalist enthusiastically. ‘La Révolution nationale marche.’
When he rose, dismayed, Walter struggled to grasp the slender thread of hope still left to him. He headed reluctantly out into the pounding sun and went to the post office. He went more out of a sense of duty than conviction, but there was a surprise waiting for him. Juliane Favez, the secretary of the Institute in Geneva, had forwarded him a telegram from Pollack in New York: ‘Please tell Benjamin to get to Marseille right away. There should be a visa for America waiting for him there.’
He could hardly believe it. He turned the paper over in his hands, one thought after another tumbling through his head. It was done. He hadn’t been wrong to count on Horkheimer and Adorno. He wished he could show the telegram to Dora, and run to get travel papers for Marseille, and go to the station. But instead, he had to return to the café and order a chamomile tea and choke down a heart pill, so frightened he was by the shivering that felt like it would take him down. A shiver that seemed to be made of memories come looking for him that should have stayed instead in the trenches of the past. Calmer now, he squinted into the bright light and watched two women teeter past on their high heels and then disappear around the corner. He smiled when he looked at the telegram on the table under the ashtray. It was August 4, and he thought all his problems had been resolved in a moment.
But he was wrong. It would be days and days before he could get confirmation from the American consulate in Marseille and to convince the military command in Lourdes to grant him a travel permit. It was days of telegrams and going back and forth between offices. Now that his request for a pass had put him back into the open, he lived in terror of being arrested and sent back into the mouth of the Gestapo. But he kept that fear to himself, speaking with people as little as possible and leaving his room only when necessary. He wrote careful, disconsolate letters. On August 9, he wrote to Hannah Arendt at her old address in Paris, hoping it would get to her even if she was still in Gurs. ‘Time,’ he wrote, ‘is so oppressive, it would be better for my mood to suspend the life of my body and spirit.’ He told her he was reading The Red and the Black and that he was in agony thinking about his manuscripts and that he possibly had a visa for the States waiting for him at the consulate in Marseille, but that he was still waiting for confirmation in order to secure his travel permit and leave.
Marseille finally sent that confirmation on the seventeenth. Three days after that Benjamin left on the midnight train – though he had to get to the station at eight in order to make curfew. Those were four long hours, waiting on the platform, then hunched in the car, his legs folding under him, and his head getting heavier and heavier. Every so often a patrol would pass.
‘Papers?’
His heart raced when he displayed his papers even as he reminded himself that he had nothing to fear. And yet as soon as he saw the hats and uniforms, his breath grew painful and his palms wet. His lips trembled. He was a wreck by the time the lights of the pavement started moving along the window and he could feel the tracks clanging under his feet. The dark of night cancelled out the landscape. He sat there, his bag squeezed between his legs and his forehead pressed to the side of the car. As for his eyes, he couldn’t seem to choose between the darkness outside and the pounding behind his eyelids. He couldn’t sleep because he kept being wakened by a strange, tickling sensation, like ice on his stomach; it was a feeling Walter recognised by going back to his childhood, remembering how the hunchback from the nursery rhymes chased him beneath the covers. There was no mistaking it now either; it was fear.
Chapter Thirty-four
No, not yet. I didn’t meet your philosopher then. It was July when I got to Port Bou but I didn’t see Benjamin until the end of September, over two months later. I stumbled over him one night in the middle of the Pyrenees. He was trying to sneak across the border but it wasn’t easy then. When I did it the first time in July, right after the armistice, it hadn’t occurred to anyone to watch the mountains. Pétain deployed French troops there later, and then the Gestapo came and the Spanish border control. But we didn’t meet a soul. We left Port-Vendres at night. It still wasn’t dawn when we got to the top of a hill and saw the sea. The town was darker than the sky that was slowly turning violet over by the horizon and there were lights dangling in the blackness.
‘We don’t have far to go,’ I said. ‘That must be Port Bou down there.’
‘Down there . . .’ muttered Alfonso, indicating toward the horizon with his chin, ‘is my home too.’
You did forget – you just didn’t think about the fact that Alfonso was Italian. No one was forcing him to go back to Spain, to Franco’s Spain, I mean. He was in love, really deeply in drooling love.
‘You’ll go back soon,’ I said trying to comfort him. ‘Hopefully with Ana María.’
But he sucked his lower lip between his teeth and didn’t answer. He practically didn’t open his mouth for the whole time we were hidden. Almost a day. The village was dark, but we still couldn’t go prancing around there like two tourists, so we waited until nightfall. The sun set behind us, a crumb of red like an apple, its warmth tickling our backs. It filled the mountains with a soft clean light that extended across the sea and the sky, lighting the edges of the clouds and the houses of Port Bou, a stain in the dark at the bottom of the hill. Spain. This was my home, this sky, this light, this perfume of sage and rosemary, cow shit, sea and burnt wood. By the first houses of the village, before the train tracks, the rubble of war was still everywhere, in the squares and the flowerbeds. We were lucky to find Mercedes’ house in the dark, picking out addresses from the narrow and empty street corners. When I knocked on the door, my heart was leaping crazily in my chest.
‘Who’s there?’ came the voice of an old lady.
‘My name is Laureano. Is Mercedes there?’
‘It’s late; come back tomorrow.’
‘Please, I’m begging you.’
I don’t know how long the silence lasted but it seemed endless to me. We were about to turn the whole show around and go back to the mountains for the night when the door opened. Mercedes. Not even the time to say how d’you do and she was crying, just standing there crying. No hugs or kisses. She should have been happy to see me again after all this time, but instead her tears were flowing like a river. Emotion is fine, but in this world, you have to laugh too, be happy. Isn’t that so? Women, bless them. But I still don’t know what goes through their heads and I’m seventy-eight years old.
‘Come now. Why are you crying?’ I asked, pressing her to me.
‘You’re like two ghosts,’ she said, her words broken by sobs.
That wasn’t hard to believe. I could only imagine what I must have looked like in a mirror after all th
ose months – a rag. Thirty pounds less meat on my bones, a long beard, sunken eyes with the bags under them hanging down to my feet. Mercedes was run-down too. Her eyes were red and circled with melancholy, her nose had got sharper, and her blue dress couldn’t conceal the deep pits around her collarbones. Her mother, on the other hand, doña Pepa, was a big lady, fat as a pillow. You could see that she took care of things. The three of us were still in the doorway and she was already in the kitchen cooking.
‘Come on. It’s ready,’ we heard her call.
Bacon, cheese, bread, wine – and all of us sitting there in silence, like a funeral. It’s always like that when there are too many questions. Your tongue dissolves. Or, when there is only one real answer; that’s too scary. Even doña Pepa was quiet. She poured the wine without saying a word, and walked around the kitchen as if she were sliding on a carpet.
‘Your daughter?’ I said, looking at the wine in my glass. I had to ask.
A smile, that’s all. Just one of her smiles. And I sighed in relief.
‘María is well. She’s sleeping now,’ she answered.
There would be time to ask everything else later. Once the silence has been broken, a good man knows how to keep it. Alfonso, his mouth full, began, ‘Do you have any news of Ana María?’
I shot him a look that would incinerate a bull.
A grey cloud of unhappiness passed briefly over Mercedes’ face, gathering in her eyes and burst out like a storm.
‘You’d be better off if you just forgot about her.’
Alfonso turned red; he coughed, drank some wine and coughed again. Some cheese had gone into his windpipe and he was gasping for air. His eyes bulged in his purple face like a drowning man.
‘Why?’ he asked in a high-pitched, almost falsetto voice.
Mercedes thought for a minute before telling him and then sighed in frustration.
‘Because she goes with a killer now, a fascist – one of the ones who went around after the war shooting people,’ she spat out all at once. ‘They came with a truck and rounded up whoever they could and put them in a row against a wall and then shot them. Laughing like madmen. Bastards, fascists, sons of bitches. They still come around. And she goes with the worst of them – the secretary of Figueres Party. Did you realise who you were fucking?’
‘Mercedes! Your language,’ scolded doña Pepa.
That was it. And this time the silence was good. What was there to say to Alfonso? I stood and put a hand on his shoulder, squeezing it gently.
‘Can we stay here tonight?’ I asked without looking up at their faces.
Mercedes nodded. She stood and disappeared behind a door. A few moments later, there was a flash of her crossing the corridor, a bundle in her arms. Her mother pulled a straw pallet from the closet and laid it out on the ground in the kitchen. How were we going to sleep? Mercedes alone, or Alfonso on the pallet and me with Mercedes? I was blushing like a boy, and felt like I’d never had sex before. I was as nervous as if my entire future were being decided there. But the anxiety didn’t last. Mercedes poked her head back into the kitchen and looked at Alfonso.
‘That mattress doesn’t look comfortable, but it is. We’ll talk tomorrow. Good night.’
Then she looked at me and said nothing. She just held out her hand and smiled.
‘Good night,’ mumbled doña Pepa.
I couldn’t believe it. Today it might seem normal for a girl to bring you to her bed while her mother mutters good night. But back then, my son, it was a whole different ball game. Still a little stunned, I followed her, followed her perfume, her shoulders – so skinny her dress was falling off – and that ass I hadn’t forgotten.
‘Here we are,’ she said.
Four bare walls, two chairs, a dresser and a big old walnut bed. I could see a depression in the mattress where María had been sleeping.
‘Undress,’ whispered Mercedes.
There was a bit of war cry in that invitation. I took off my clothes and lay down next to her. Her hand was between my legs and her tongue was exploring my neck. Then what? That’s it. The last thing I remember was my body relaxing, like a boat coming into the harbour. I must have disconnected, told her that was enough and let the tiredness of the past year and a half collapse around me, and it was a moment really. I slept without realising it. What a feeling.
Chapter Thirty-five
Standing, or rather leaning against the door of his car on the train, Benjamin looked out on the docks and warehouses, the poor quarters, the periphery, the pitched battle of the telegraph poles and the Agaves, the barbed wire and the palms, the steps and stinky alleys against the green hills. Then there was Marseille, with its odour of closure and brine, gas, piss and ink, its archways, stairs, bridges and balconies along the alleys. Coming out of the station of Saint-Charles, the sun was already setting. From the top of the square, Walter narrowed his eyes and shaded them with his hand against the setting sun. He looked out over the stretch of roofs, mountains, Notre-Dame de la Garde on the hill, the bridge that the train crossed. The blue below the Canebière and then the old port and the sea. The flat-bed boats slid under the iron drawbridge; the masts of the boats seemed to brush the façades of the old houses. Benjamin stopped for a moment to inhale the mistral carrying the germ of August. Then he picked up his black bag, adjusted his glasses and set off.
‘Let’s go,’ he said to himself out loud.
A dark girl on the train had already warned him: ‘It’s useless to look for a room. All the inns and hotels are full. It’s like the whole world decided to meet up in Marseille.’
So what was he to do then? The girl conspiratorially told him about a refugee centre where you didn’t have to show papers or ask questions. The city had put it up in an old school over by La Joliette. Benjamin was now walking, hunched over, practically limping, and looking for the school. He descended into the fray of Canebière and then almost down to the quai des Belges in the old port that had been destroyed in the Great War. In the Corsican quarter, he sat down to rest on the edge of a fountain, heaving for air, his bag on his knee. It was ten years since he’d seen it for the first time, and Marseille still struck him; it was as spare, still and naked as an African city. But those alleys, ports, and boulevards forcing your gaze out to sea, were very much a part of Europe. The Europe of refugees and of all the nations, of people flocking from concentration camps, lost soldiers and deserters, people stranded without their family, papers or money, whom the neutral countries had pushed out like a plague. People like Benjamin were ultimately lucky because they hadn’t died yet in a concentration camp or cattle car. Marseille was the last refuge for a shattered continent, the end of the line for an exodus that fed right into a trap. The trap of waiting without hope for ships that would never leave, where you could go crazy trying to get visas, money, permits, and trying to escape the Gestapo; the night patrol and the police ready to pluck any suspicious-looking man from the crowd.
Benjamin breathed, stood up and began to climb a steep stairway. He paused on each step to catch his breath, look out over the stalls and empty piers in the quai de la Joliette, and the beams of light coming from the Coniche lighthouse, its islands barely visible in the faint twilight. He got to the school when it was still light enough out to see the straw pallets spread haphazardly over the floor, the hundreds of men and women crowded into the room, and to smell the bitter, unbearable odour that clung to the walls. They gave him a baked tomato on bread in the refectory and then turned off the lights. ‘Better than nothing,’ he thought as he stretched out on an empty cot and arranged his bag under his head. This was his last thought as he sank helplessly into a deep, dreamless sleep. When he woke the next morning, he was bruised but rested.
By eight he was sitting in the glassed-in terrace of the Café de la Rotonde, at the head of cours Belsunce. His black bag was on the table in front of him along with the remains of his morning coffee. It was still cold outside as the mistral wrapped around the city, whirling down streets and acros
s squares, full of brine and bits of paper. The café was already full of smoke, a gallery of every different kind of European face and language. Every so often you could make out a word, ‘Oran . . . Portugal . . . Cuban visa . . . in transit . . . Martinique . . .’ At first he liked being alone there, observing like a flâneur the people on the Canebière weighed down by their belongings, the crumbling façades of the houses, and light cutting obliquely through the damp air, making the pavements glisten. But then the voices from the neigh-bouring tables, the cities and places whirling around him, began to compose an atlas of defeat. He slid into an almost liquid discomfort, into solitude so unrelenting that just in order to talk to someone he ordered a croissant from the waiter.
‘Do you have a coupon?’ replied the man irritably.
‘What coupon?’
‘You just got here, right?’ The old man sitting next to Benjamin drew near, leaning imperceptibly on his seat and just turning his face slightly from where it was resting on his closed fist.
‘There’s been rationing in force for a while here,’ he explained. ‘You need a coupon for everything. May I? Carl van Erde.’
His face was serious and traced by wrinkles; blue eyes and long white hair parted neatly down the middle. Benjamin noticed it when he bowed and extended his hand in introduction.
‘It’s my pleasure,’ he said, nodding, and making a gesture of standing. ‘I’m Doctor Benjamin, Walter Benjamin.’
‘I imagine that this is your real name. Well this is your first mistake. It’s better to avoid your name unless all your papers are in order.’