For a while he sat on a bench that had remained standing close to the edge of a bomb crater. He was completely relaxed and empty and could not have said whether he was disconsolate or not. He just did not want to think any more. There was nothing more to think about. He leaned his head back and closed his eyes and felt the sun warm on his face. He felt nothing else. He sat still there, breathing quietly, and felt the impersonal, comforting warmth which knew neither justice nor injustice.
After a while he opened his eyes. The square lay before him very clear and distinct. He saw a large linden tree that stood in front of a demolished house. It was unharmed and thrust its trunk and branches up out of the earth like a giant, wide-open hand, touched with green, straining upward toward the light and the bright clouds. The sky behind the clouds was very blue. Everything gleamed and shimmered as though after a rain, it had depth and power, it was life—strong, open life, self-evident, without questions, without sorrow, without despair. Graeber felt it as though he were emerging ' from a nightmare, it burst full upon him, and everything melted into it, it was a wordless answer beyond all questions, beyond all thought, an answer that he knew from the nights and days when death had brushed him and when, out of spasm, rigidity, and finality, life had suddenly rushed back into him, a hot and rescuing drive that blotted out the brain in its surge.
He got up and went past the linden tree, between the ruins and the houses. He felt suddenly that he was waiting. Everything in him was waiting. He was waiting for the evening as though for an armistice.
CHAPTER XIV
"TODAY we have an excellent Wiener Schnitzel," the marabou said.
"Good," Graeber replied. "We'll take it. And everything with it that you recommend. We put ourselves entirely in your hands."
"The same wine?"
"The same, or a different one if you wish,. We leave that to you, too."
The waiter stalked off, gratified. Graeber leaned back and looked at Elisabeth. He felt as though he had been transported from a shell-torn sector of the front into a place of peace. The afternoon was far away. There remained only an afterglow of that moment when life had suddenly been very close to him, when, up through the paving stones and ruins, it had seemed to burst forth in the trees stretching out their green hands to grasp the light. Two weeks, he thought. Two weeks more of life. I must grasp it the way the linden tree grasped the light.
The marabou came back. "How would a young wine do today?" he asked. "We have a Johannisberger Kahlenberg —champagne's common soda water by comparison—"
"The Johannisberger Kahlenberg," Graeber said.
"Very good, sir. You are a connoisseur. The wine will go admirably with the Schnitzel. I will give you a tossed green salad as well. It will bring out the sparkling bouquet."
The condemned man's last meal, Graeber thought. Two weeks of last meals! He thought it without bitterness. Until now he had not looked beyond his furlough. It had seemed endless. Too much had happened and too much seemed still to lie before him. Now, after reading the war news and being with Pohlmann, he suddenly knew how short it was and how soon he would have to go back.
Elisabeth followed the marabou with her eyes. "Blessings on your friend Reuter," she said. "He has turned us into connoisseurs."
"We're no connoisseurs, Elisabeth. We're more than that. We are knights-errant. Knights-errant of peace. The war has turned everything upside down. What used to be the symbol of security and stale bourgeois respectability has today become a great adventure."
Elisabeth laughed. "We make it that."
"Not we. It is the times. But there's certainly one thing we can't complain of—boredom and monotony."
Graeber looked at Elisabeth. She was sitting on the banquette opposite him and was wearing a close-fitting dress. Her hair was hidden under a little cap. She looked almost like a boy. "Monotony," she said. "Weren't you going to wear civilian clothes this evening?"
"I couldn't. Hadn't any place to change."
He had intended to change at Alfons's; but after the afternoon's conversation he had not gone back. "You can do it at my place," Elisabeth said.
"At your place? And Frau Lieser?"
"To hell with Frau Lieser. I've been thinking about it."
"To hell with a lot of things," Graeber said. "I've been thinking too."
The waiter brought the wine and opened it; but he did not pour. He held his head cocked to one side listening. "There it goes again," he said. "I'm sorry, sir!"
He had no need to explain what he meant. The next moment the howling of the sirens had risen above the chatter in the room.
Elisabeth's glass rang. "Where's the nearest cellar?" Graeber asked the marabou.
"We have one here in the hotel."
"Isn't that reserved for guests?"
"You are a guest, sir. The cellar is very good. Better than a good many elsewhere. We have important officers here."
"All right. What will become of the Wiener Schnitzels?"
"They're not on the fire yet. I'll save them. I can't serve them down there though. You understand why."
"Of course." Graeber took the bottle out of the marabou's hand and filled two glasses. He handed one to Elisabeth. "Drink this. And drink it all." |
She shook her head. "Don't we have to go?"
"We have plenty of time. That was just the first alarm. Perhaps nothing at all will happen, like last time. Drink it up, Elisabeth. It helps you over the first fright."
"I believe the gentleman is right," said the marabou. "It is a shame to toss off so noble a wine—but this is a special case."
He was pale and smiled with an effort. "Sir," he said to Graeber, "formerly we used to look up to heaven to pray. Now we do it to curse. That's what we've come to."
Graeber looked at Elisabeth. "Drink it down! We still have lots of time. We could empty a whole bottle."
She lifted her glass and drained it slowly. She did it with a determined gesture that had in it, at the same time, a kind of reckless prodigality. Then she put down her glass and smiled. "To hell with panic too!" she said. "I must get used to this. Look how I'm trembling."
"You're not trembling. It's life in you that's trembling. That has nothing to do with courage. One has courage when one can do something to defend himself. All the rest is vanity. The life in us is smarter than we are, Elisabeth."
"Good. Give me some more to drink."
"My wife," said the marabou. "Our youngster is sick. Tuberculosis. He's eleven. Our cellar is not good. It is hard for her to get the youngster down there. She is delicate; a hundred and six pounds. Twenty-nine Suedstrasse. I cannot help her. I have to stay here."
Graeber picked up a glass from the next table, filled it and offered it to the waiter. "Here! Drink this with us. There's an old soldier's rule: When there's nothing you can do, don't get excited. Does that help you?"
"It's easy to say!"*
"Right. We are not all born statues. Empty the glass."
"It is not permitted, on duty—"
"This is a special case. You just said so yourself."
"Very good." The waiter looked around and accepted the glass. "May I take the liberty of drinking to your promotion?"
"To what?"
"To your promotion to corporal."
"Thanks. You have sharp eyes."
The waiter put down his glass. "I can't empty it at one gulp, sir. Not a noble wine like this. Not even in this special case."
"That does you honor. Take the glass with you."
"Thank you, sir."
Graeber refilled Elisabeth's glass and his own. "I'm not doing this to show how cool-headed we are," he said. "I'm doing it simply because it's better during an air raid to drink whatever you have. You never know whether you'll find it again."
Elisabeth looked at his uniform. "Won't you be caught if the cellar is full of officers?"
"No, Elisabeth."
"Why not?"
"Because I don't care."
"Aren't people caught if they don't care?"
"Less often. Fear attracts attention. And now come— we have got over the first fright."
A part of the wine cellar had been reinforced with steel and concrete and had been fitted up as an air raid shelter. Chairs, tables, and sofas stood around, a few worn carpets lay on the floor, and the walls had been newly whitewashed. There was a radio and on a sideboard stood glasses and bottles. It was a shelter de luxe.
They found a place at one side where the real wine cellar was shut off by a lattice-work door. A swarm of guests were pushing their way in. Among them was a very beautiful woman in a white evening gown. Her back was bare and her left arm flashed with bracelets. A noisy blonde with a face like a carp followed her, then came a number of men, an older woman, and a group of officers. A waiter and a busboy appeared. They began to open bottles.
"We could have brought our wine with us," Graeber said.
Elisabeth shook her head.
"You're right. It's damned play-acting."
"One oughtn't to do that," she said. "It's bad luck."
She's right, Graeber thought, and looked angrily at the waiter who was going around with his tray. It's not courage; it's frivolity. Danger is too serious a thing for that. How serious and how profound, one only knew after much death.
"The second warning," said someone behind him. "They're coming!"
Graeber pushed his chair close to Elisabeth. "I'm afraid," she said, "in spite of the Johannisberger Kahlenberg and all my resolutions."
"So am I." He put his arm around her shoulders and felt how tense she was. A wave of tenderness suddenly came over him. She was like an animal that smells danger and draws itself together, she had no pose and wanted none, her courage was her defense; life contracted in her at the changed tone of the sirens, which now meant death, and she did not try to hide it.
He saw that the blonde's escort was staring at him. He was a thin first lieutenant with a pointed chin. The blonde laughed and was being admired from the next table.
A mild tremor ran through the cellar. Then came the muffled rumble of an explosion. The conversation halted and then began again, louder and more self-conscious. Three more explosions followed, quick and nearer.
Graeber held Elisabeth tight. He saw that the blonde had stopped laughing. A heavier blow unexpectedly shook the cellar. The busboy put down his tray and clung to the spiral columns of the buffet. "Don't get excited," someone shouted. "It's a long way off."
Suddenly the walls rippled and cracked. The light flickered as in a bad film. There was a sound of crashing. Darkness and light alternated wildly and, in the jumpy flashes, the groups at the tables seemed like frames of an extremely slow-motion picture. The woman with the bare back was still sitting in the first flash; in the next she was standing, in the third she was running into the next darkness, and then people were there holding her and she was screaming and the light went out completely and in a roar that was re-echoed a hunderd times all the earth's gravity seemed neutralized and the cellar hung suspended.
"It's only the light, Elisabeth!" Graeber shouted. "It has gone out. It was just the shock of the explosion. Nothing more. The wiring has been broken somewhere. The hotel has not been hit."
She pressed against him. "Candles! Matches!" someone shouted. "There must be candles somewhere. Hell and damnation, where are the candles? Or flashlights!" i
A few matches flared. They seemed like small marsh lights in the great resounding space and they lighted faces and hands as though the bodies had already been destroyed by the roar and only the bare hands and faces were left floating there.
"Damn it, hasn't the management any emergency lights? Where's that waiter?"
The circles of light wavered to and fro and up and down on the walls. For an instant the woman's bare back was there, the glitter of jewelry and a dark open mouth—they seemed to flutter in a black wind, and the voices were like the weak screeches of field mice above the deep rumble of opening abysses. Then a howl arose, increasing until it became maddening and unbearable, as though a huge steel planet were plunging straight at the cellar. Everything shook. The circles of light shuddered and went out. The cellar was no longer suspended; the monstrous roar seemed to break up everything and cast it into the air. Graeber felt as though his head were flying up to the ceiling. He clasped Elisabeth with both hands—it was as though she were being torn away from him. He threw himself against her, over her and pulled her to the floor, tilted a chair over her head and waited for the ceiling to fall.
There was a splintering and clattering, a tearing and roaring and cracking as though a giant paw had struck the cellar and thrown it into a vacuum so that lungs and stomachs were torn out of bodies and the blood forced out of veins. It seemed as if all that could come now was the last thundering darkness and suffocation.
It did not come. Instead there was suddenly light, a quick twisting light as though a pillar of fire had burst up out of the floor, a white torch was there, a woman screaming: "I'm burning! I'm burning! Help! Help!"
She sprang up and beat about her with her arms, sparks cascading under her blows; jewels glittered, her horrified face was starkly lit—then voices and parts of uniforms descended on her, someone pulled her to the floor, she twisted and screamed, a scream that soared above the sirens and the flak and the destruction, high, inhuman, and then muffled, deadened, under coats and tablecloths and cushions in the dark cellar, as though from a grave. ,
Graeber held Elisabeth's head between his hands, under him, he pressed it against himself and his arm against her ear until the blaze and the screaming had ceased and the whimpering had turned into darkness and the smell of burned clothes and flesh and hair.
"A doctor, get a doctor! Is there a doctor here?"
"What?"
"We must get her to a hospital! Damn it, you can't see a thing. We've got to get her out of here."
"Now?" someone asked. "Where to?"
Everyone fell silent. They were listening. Outside the anti-aircraft guns were firing madly. But the explosions had stopped. Only the guns were in action.
"They're gone! It's over!"
"Stay where you are," Graeber said in Elisabeth's ear. "Don't move. It's over. But stay on the floor. No one will step on you here. Don't move."
"We must wait for a while. There may be another wave," a slow, schoolmaster's voice announced. "It's not yet safe outside. The shell fragments of the flak!"
A round beam of light fell through the door. It came from a flashlight. The woman on the floor began to scream again. "No! No! Beat it out! Beat out the fire!"
"It's not a fire, it's a flashlight."
The spot of light wavered feebly through the darkness. It was a very small flashlight. "This way! Come over here! Who is it? Who are you with that light?" ;
The beam swung rapidly around, glided over the ceiling and back again and lighted a starched shirt front, part of a dinner jacket, a black tie and an embarrassed face. "I'm the headwaiter, Fritz. The dining room is destroyed. We cannot go on serving. If the gentlemen will perhaps pay—"
"What?"
Fritz continued to hold the light on himself. "The attack is over. I have brought this flashlight and the checks—". "What? That's unbelievable!"
"Sir," Fritz replied helplessly into the darkness, "the head-waiter is personally responsible to the restaurant."
"Unbelievable," snorted a man in the dark. "Are we swindlers? Don't keep lighting up your miserable face! Come here! As quick as you can. Someone is hurt!"
Fritz disappeared again in the darkness. The circle of light wandered over the walls, over a lock of Elisabeth's hair, along the floor to a bundle of uniforms and stopped there. "My God!" said a man, now palely visible in his shirtsleeves.
He leaned back. Now only his hands were lighted. The beam wavered over them. The headwaiter was shaking visibly. Army coats were thrust aside.
"My God!" the man said once more.
"Don't look," Graeber said. "That sort of thing happens. It can happen anywhere. It has
nothing to do with the air raid. But you mustn't stay in the city. I'll take you to a village that won't be bombed. I know one. I know people there. They'll take you in. We can live there and you will be safe."
"A stretcher!" said the kneeling man. "Have you a stretcher in the hotel?"
"I think so. Yes, Herr—Herr—" Headwaiter Fritz could not distinguish the man's rank. The blouse of his uniform lay with the others on the floor beside the woman. He was now just a man in braces with a sword around his waist and a commanding voice. "I beg your pardon about the checks," Fritz said. "I did not know that someone was injured."
"Hurry up! Get the stretcher. Or no, wait. I'll go with you. How is it outside? Can we get through?"
A Time to Love and a Time to Die Page 19