The Angel of History

by Bruno Arpaia

  ‘Sure. Even if we somehow manage to get out without those two seeing us, don’t you think they’ll just stop us at the station?’

  Now Benjamin thought that Frau Lippmann was speaking and he lowered his eyes when he realised that she was looking right at him, expectantly, waiting for his answer. He tried to shrug her off, to deny everything. He looked at his plate but all he saw were those eggs and peas floating in a watery sauce, and the fear of death.

  ‘I’m not leaving,’ he said angrily with trembling lips. ‘I’m not going anywhere. Whatever happens happens. I’d rather have it over and done with here.’

  No, no. This was not what he was supposed to say at all. He wasn’t asking for pity. But what . . .

  ‘Doctor,’ protested Frau Lippmann, ‘you’ll see that when we call the American consulate tomorrow . . . And don’t you have a letter for the Dominican prior? We can call them too. Don’t worry. We won’t be sent back.’

  This was not how it was meant to go. He was almost relieved when he felt another pain shooting through his stomach, constricting his throat. This pit was his last refuge.

  ‘Will you all excuse me?’ he murmured. ‘I don’t feel well, and I’d like to retire, with your permission.’

  He stood and gestured reassuringly to the women. Then he headed back toward the stairs, struggling to hold himself upright. Later, in bed, when the pain finally let up a little he realised that he could barely remember dragging himself up to his room, or flinging open the window or gasping for air before falling onto the bed and drifting off into a restless half-sleep. The shadows of night were now creeping over the walls and darkness was consuming the ceiling like a terrifying invading army. The church bells rang nine o’clock. How slowly time moved. Then it started racing. Walter suddenly felt like he was being strangled. There was a hoarse whistle coming from his throat, an almost animal sound. In the dark, with these stomach pains and short breath, his body became a silent battleground. He sat at the edge of the bed, gasping through an open mouth, stretching his jaw and holding his neck in his hands. Enough! What had he done to deserve this kind of suffering? He sat there, frozen and frightened, waiting for the grip of pain to ease enough so that he could lie back on the pillow. He was a wreck – sweaty and weak. The sounds of people eating dinner floated up from the restaurant. Then he heard the shuffle of footsteps on the stairs, coming to a stop in front of his door, which he’d left open. Frau Lippmann pushed it open very slowly, and peered into the dark room.

  ‘Excuse me. Did I wake you?’

  A bald, lanky elderly man, dressed all in black, stood behind her.

  ‘We thought,’ she said, tripping on her words, ‘that you might need a doctor. We took the liberty of . . . Well, this is Doctor Vila Moreno.’

  ‘No,’ spat Benjamin. But he looked at the woman and was again reminded of his mother. ‘I am grateful to you, madam,’ he added a little more calmly. ‘But I don’t have any need of a doctor.’

  ‘It may be necessary,’ insisted the woman, ‘in this case. Perhaps the doctor could give you a certificate so that you could stay on in the hotel a few more days.’

  He understood. So he let the doctor take his pulse and tap his stomach and abdomen, listen to his chest with an icy stethoscope and then measure his blood pressure.

  ‘Breathe deeply,’ he heard him ask.

  ‘Easy for you to say,’ he answered with a forced smile. ‘I have a bad heart and asthma. There should be an X-ray in my bag.’

  But the old doctor ignored him, going on with the examination, communicating in monosyllables and gestures. He finally looked up and removed the stethoscope with a deep sigh.

  ‘I’m going to give you a shot,’ he explained. ‘And tomorrow we’ll take some blood. Your blood pressure is extremely high, you know.’

  When Frau Lippmann returned with a syringe and kettle, Vila Moreno had already turned Benjamin on his side.

  ‘Do you have something to take,’ he asked as he prepared the needle, ‘in case of another asthma attack?’

  ‘Morphium,’ answered Benjamin between clenched teeth.

  ‘That will do.’

  Vila Moreno replaced his instruments in his bag and snapped it shut. As he headed toward the door, he said, ‘I’ll be back tomorrow morning. Try to get some sleep.’

  Frau Lippmann walked the doctor out, leaving Walter alone. He looked about for the watch he’d put on the nightstand. It was ten thirty. The dull light from the straw lampshade on the nightstand fell on his head and cast broad circles on the ceiling. Then he felt another twinge come on and then a doubt which he tried to beat away the minute he saw Frau Lippmann reappear in the doorway.

  ‘Did I pay the doctor?’

  ‘No,’ she answered. ‘But he explained to me in horrible French that he’ll charge it to the hotel bill.’

  ‘Ah ha,’ mumbled Benjamin as if that were reassuring. ‘You must be exhausted.’

  ‘A little,’ she admitted. ‘But I wouldn’t dream of leaving you alone.’

  ‘Don’t worry about me. I feel better now. Go on. I’m fine.’

  They went back and forth like this until they finally agreed that she would go to sleep under the condition that Walter would bang on the wall if he needed anything. Her room was right on the other side and she would come at the slightest tap.

  ‘Okay,’ said Benjamin as a new shooting in his intestines made him wince. He tightened his lips to keep the shivers away, while Frau Lippmann brought him water, pulled the covers over his legs, put her hand on his forehead and shyly rubbed his temples.

  ‘Has it passed?’ she asked. ‘Promise that you’ll try to get some sleep now.’

  Back into darkness, left alone again to wrestle with the hunch-backed dwarf and the thoughts racing crazily through his head. He counted the bells: eleven o’clock. He tried to face his destiny. There was a bustling of footsteps down in the alley, and the howl of a dog in the night. Walter didn’t move. He stared at the dense shadows with bulging eyes. He strained his ears as if he were worried about being surprised in his sleep by some sound. He knew that the creaking and whining wasn’t the bed. It was death, he thought, with a shiver. It was the slow, steady gait of death growing inside him.

  Chapter Forty-six

  ‘You’re back early. It’s only midnight. Is everything okay?’

  Mercedes was sitting in the shadows on the edge of her chair, one elbow resting on the table. She was smoking. Doña Pepa, plump in her apron, was over by the fire peeling potatoes and tossing them one by one into the pot.

  ‘Everything’s fine,’ answered Laureano as he took off his coat. Quickly he put his backpack down on a chair and sighed. He was beyond tired – and irritated. ‘Is there anything new here?’ he asked, just to make conversation.

  Mercedes shrugged and pursed her lips. ‘Nothing much,’ she said, shaking her head.

  ‘What do you mean, nothing?’ said doña Pepa turning around, knife in mid-air, and looking severely at her daughter. It wasn’t right not to mention what had been going on in town.

  ‘What do you mean,nothing?’ she said. ‘What about the refugees?’

  ‘What refugees?’ Laureano asked, releasing a puff of his cigarette. His eyes were suddenly flashing in the firelight.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ remembered Mercedes. ‘But refugees, all these people in flight – it isn’t news anymore.’

  ‘Except that,’ said doña Pepa sharply, ‘this time they want to send them back to France. Fine men they are, doing that to women and a child. The blacksmith Miguel saw the lot of them. He says there’s even an old man. A very sick old man. Doctor Vila Moreno was just there.’

  ‘An old man,’ said Laureano.

  ‘He must be the one I could see from our courtyard. With glasses, all rumpled. He’s staying in the room across the way.’

  Mercedes had barely finished speaking, but Laureano was already at the door, wrestling with the doorknob that seemed suddenly stuck.

  ‘I’ll be right back,’ he said as he left.


  ‘But where are you going? Are you crazy? There are policemen and guards over there. You have to watch out for Enrique.’

  But he was gone. If it weren’t for the lamp swinging in the wind and the laughter of the last diners in the restaurant, he would have been alone in the silence, in the dirty darkness of night-time before the rain comes. He crossed the street, hiding in the shadows of the alley. Hugging the wall he edged around the hotel. There had to be a back door. In fact there was, and it was open, propped open. Someone, a cleaner, was going in and out, carrying out the rubbish. The first moment he could, Laureano lurched out of his shelter and burst inside. A corridor, a door in the back on the left, a stairway. One, two, three, go. He pretended he was still on the battlefield, a rifle between his hands. The dark over the stairs hid him. From below he could hear the door scraping and the sound of a man dragging something.

  ‘There’s another bag here, Luis, are you going to get this one?’

  He reached the top of the stairs. He could just make out a long shadowy hall. It wasn’t hard to find his friend’s room – the sound of his heavy tortured breath could be heard through the door, which was ajar.

  ‘Doctor? Doctor Benjamin,’ he whispered, sticking his nose in.

  ‘Who is it?’

  The voice was feeble and pasty, barely audible.

  ‘It’s me, Laureano.’

  ‘Well then, come on in.’

  ‘Would it bother you if I turned on the light?’

  And he saw him: pale, hair falling in clumps over his forehead, a grey beard carving hollows into his cheeks. His nose seemed to have grown sharper and his lips were wrinkled, his eyes red and tired. Laureano knew what he was looking at. He’d seen so many of them during the war, the wounded, two steps from death, their faces already marked by death – hanging on, like a fly to a mule.

  ‘How are you?’ he asked.

  ‘Honestly, I don’t feel well.’

  Walter tried to find a more comfortable position on the bed, and to distract himself from the sharp pain that wouldn’t leave him be. He looked around the room, nodding at the crumbling walls, the rickety wardrobe, the flies buzzing around the light. Okay. He’d ended up here, but when precisely along the way did he get so lost. How did he get to this room in this sad hotel – he asked himself that as he watched the shadow dance over the wall. The watch on the nightstand read one thirty.

  ‘Where did I go wrong?’ He seemed to be asking himself. There was a tense smile on his face.

  ‘We all make mistakes,’ said Laureano under his breath. ‘I’ve made mistakes in my life. If I ever stop to think about them I get a stomach-ache. But at a certain point it’s no use to rehash the past. It’s better to look ahead. Believe me.’

  ‘Ahead? There’s nothing in my future.’

  Benjamin shook his head and cast a sideways glance at Laureano who was leaning against the table. Very far away there came the sound of thunder rolling off the mountains.

  ‘Don’t talk nonsense. You didn’t think you were going to make it last night and yet here you are.’

  ‘I’m at the end of the line. I’ve finally hit the end of the line.’

  His mind was a-flutter like a wasp locked in a jar, his arms were tingling and there was a heaviness in his chest. Walter exhaled a deep, sad sigh. He’d already decided. He’d weighed all the possibilities and at last his thoughts had fallen into place in his mind. At least that’s the way it seemed to him.

  ‘It just doesn’t make sense anymore,’ he added slowly. ‘Do you know what Kafka said? I never redeemed myself through writing. I’ve spent my life dying and now I die for real.’

  Laureano blanched and then recovered himself. He tried to smile.

  ‘And do you know what my uncle Adolfo said? A live dog is better than a dead lion. That’s what he said.’

  ‘Apologies to your uncle, but that line comes from Ecclesiastes.’

  ‘From what?’

  ‘Ecclesiastes.’

  Okay so that hadn’t worked. He still couldn’t give up. Laureano stared at the damp forehead and expression of ultimate disorder that the old man wore on his face.

  ‘So,’ he said. ‘We should stop joking about these things.’

  Walter coughed, gasped, then closed his eyes for a moment – just enough time to see Dora, Stefan, Asja, Jula, Lisa Fittko, the sergeant, Scholem, Koestler, Henny Gurland – a silent crowd waving to him.

  ‘I’m not joking,’ he muttered when he caught his breath. ‘I’ve lost and I must surrender.’

  ‘Losing,’ said Laureano with a sigh. ‘What does that mean. I’ve grown a thick skin over it. I make a habit of losing and yet I’m still here.’

  They sat in silence for a while thinking of the way time moved so slowly in that room, as the church bells rang two, and the wind scratched the glass. Then, there was the sudden sound of footsteps on the stairs and Laureano flattened himself against the wall by the closed door until they faded and he returned to the bedside.

  ‘I can’t stay long,’ he whispered.

  Walter lowered his eyes and nodded. It was true; there wasn’t much time.

  ‘Listen,’ he started talking again in a rough voice. ‘Even if I were able to make it through until tomorrow morning. Do you realise what’s waiting for me? Spanish customs want to send me back to the Vichy police who will make a fine present of me to the Gestapo. And then, after days and days without food or drink, crammed into freight cars, we’ll get to Germany, to one of those camps where my cousin has probably already died. I’d rather not even think about it. Do you really think that in my condition I could make it? And to what end? So that I have to work even harder to die?’

  Benjamin paused to catch his breath. Grinding his teeth, he leaned to one side, trying to bear the torment of his stomach. Who knew if the dumbfounded boy standing by him now had understood any of what he said. But his eyes seemed honest. He had more life accumulated in his pupils than his years. If he could only try to explain.

  ‘Does it seem so wrong to you,’ he whispered, ‘to want to die with a little bit of dignity?’

  What could Laureano say? Was there any use insisting? There wasn’t a crack in his logic. Doctor Benjamin wasn’t one who shirked from looking at things straight on and calling them by their first and last names. A pity that there was no point to living. Laureano sighed deeply and stayed quiet. Then he cast his eyes down and Walter saw in that blink of an eye the beating wings of his angel – the angel watching over his last journey, the angel of the prophet, the messenger. Yes, the boy had understood everything.

  ‘My bag,’ he said. ‘Will you hand me my bag from the table?’

  He got up and sat panting in the middle of the bed with the bag on his lap and started opening the buckles as if he were handling a sacred relic. Then he pulled out a blue folder stuffed with papers and tied shut.

  ‘This is my manuscript.’ Benjamin’s voice was a wisp. The words like stones unmoving in his mouth. ‘It is the most important thing in the world to me. You must promise that you will get it to Teddy Adorno in the United States. I’ve written the address on that piece of paper.’

  ‘Of course,’ stuttered Laureano, embarrassed. ‘But wouldn’t it be better to give it to one of your friends? One of the women you came with?’

  Benjamin shook his head slowly. He’d thought of this too.

  ‘If they—’ he began with difficulty. ‘If it doesn’t go well, they could end up like me. But I must be sure that this book gets to the States. Understand?’

  No, he didn’t know how those pages full of tiny writing could be more important than life. But if he were to say that . . . How could he possibly leave the man on that bed, pretending he didn’t know what he was thinking?

  ‘Perhaps it would be better,’ he murmured.

  But old Benjamin wasn’t listening anymore. He lowered his head softly onto the pillow, closed his eyes, and started breathing slowly. He began to die right in front of him.

  Chapter Forty-seve
n

  Laureano didn’t speak. He laid a hand on Benjamin’s shoulder, turned out the light and left. When he was alone,Walter let the dark back through his eyelids. There, in that obscurity, he looked for the only thing that could emerge – he looked at his future, now as irrevocable as his past. The church bells rang three, then four, as he lingered feebly in a kind of lucid doze, balancing between threads of pain and the fear of not being able to breathe until he heard more thunder from even farther away shaking the glass. He opened his eyes and turned on the light. His pipe, passport, papers, identification, two books, the X-ray – it was all there. The pills, even though the phial had got bent in the bag. He sat on the edge of the bed and dumped two pills into his hand, and then he put them in his mouth. He picked up the glass of water and swallowed, closing his eyes and breathing deeply. He stopped a moment to watch the night shadows flying slowly about the room, then swallowed another two pills and took another sip of water. Then he paused again – like a ceremony, a ritual, still more pills, water, and more. The thought occurred to him that perhaps for the first time in his life he was making a decision that wouldn’t end in catastrophe. But then again, he had done nothing more than manage to follow in the footsteps of the hunchbacked dwarf. To trace what was already written in his book of destiny. But what big words were these. The important thing now was to stay calm, prepared. Many years before he’d experimented with drugs with his friend Fränkel, so he knew very well what was waiting for him. There would be lucidity initially, euphoria, and then a pounding heart and little by little, thirst, a headache, the sensation that both his legs and arms were being broken, and then something like paralysis followed by sleep, slowed breathing, asphyxia. There wasn’t much time. He had to hurry.

  There was a moment when, breathless and sitting up in bed, he spied death and wasn’t afraid. He clenched his teeth to bear the new rush of twinges then took a white sheet of paper and his pen from the bag. ‘In a predicament without recourse,’ he slowly wrote, ‘I have no choice but to end it.’ He inhaled deeply before continuing. ‘I beg you to convey my thoughts to my friend Adorno and to explain the situation I find myself in to him. There is no more time left for me to write all the letter that I wanted to write.’