Alfons received him red-faced and open-armed. "There you are, Ernst! Come in! Today is my birthday! I have a few. friends here."
The hunting room was full of smoke and people. "Listen to me, Alfons," Graeber said quickly in the corridor. "I can't stay. I only dropped in for a minute and I have to go right back."
"Go back? But, Ernst! That's entirely out of the question!"
"I have to. I had made an appointment before I heard you had asked for me."
"That doesn't matter! Tell the people you have to go to an unexpected official meeting. Or to a hearing!" Alfons laughed boisterously. "There are two Gestapo officers sitting inside! I'll introduce you to thern at once. Tell your friends you had to go to the Gestapo. Then you won't even be lying. Or bring them over if they're nice."
"That's impossible."
"Why? Why is it impossible? Everything goes with us!"
Graeber saw that the simplest thing, was to tell the truth. "You should be able to imagine, Alfons," he said. "I didn't know you were celebrating your birthday. I came by to get something to eat and drink from you. I'm going to meet someone I can't possibly bring here. I'd be a fine fool if I did. Now do you understand?"
Binding grinned. "I've got it," he announced. "The eternal feminine! At last! I was beginning to give up hope for you. I understand, Ernst. You're excused. However, we have a couple of fancy dames here. Won't you at least take a look at them? Irma is a damned enterprising woman—the blonde over there with the high heels, a hot number, a warden in the women's concentration camp—and with Gudrun you can unquestionably go to bed tonight. She's always available for front-line soldiers. The smell of the trenches excites her."
"It doesn't excite me."
Alfons laughed. "Nor the concentration camp smell around Irma, eh? It gives Steegemann wings. That fat fellow on the sofa. Not my taste. I'm normal and all for coziness. You see that little trick in the corner? How do you like her?"
"First class."
"You want her? I'll give her up to you if you'll stay, Ernst."
Graeber shook his head. "It can't be done."
"I understand. It must be someone really high class you've picked up. You don't need to be embarrassed, Ernst. Alfons is a cavalier himself. Let's go into the kitchen and find something for you and later you'll drink a glass to my birthday. Agreed?"
"Agreed."
Frau Kleinert was standing in the kitchen in a white apron. "We're having a cold buffet, Ernst," Binding said. "Your good luck! Pick out whatever you like! Or better yet, Frau Kleinert, make up a nice package. We two will go on down to the cellar."
The cellar was well stocked. "Now you just let Alfons attend to this," Binding said. "You won't be sorry. Here, to begin with, is a genuine turtle soup in cans. Just heat it up and eat it. Comes from France. Take two."
Graeber took the cans. Alfons went on searching. "Asparagus, Dutch, two cans. You can eat it cold or warm it up. No extensive cooking. And here's a Polish ham in a can too. That's Czechoslovakia's contribution." He climbed up on a little ladder. "A piece of Danish cheese and a can of butter—it all keeps, that's the advantage of canned goods. Here are some brandied peaches, too. Or does the lady prefer strawberries?"
Graeber looked at the short legs standing in front of him in the highly polished boots. Behind them shimmered the rows of bottles and tins. He thought of Elisabeth's pathetic supplies. "There'd be more nourishment in both," he said.
Alfons laughed. "You're right. At last you're the same old boy again. No point in being sad, Ernst. Things are bad enough without that. Grab what you can and let the priests worry about the rest. That's my watchword."
He got off the ladder and went to the other side of the cellar where the bottles lay. "Here we have a respectable selection of booty. Our enemies are great in their liquors. What will you have? Vodka? Armagnac? Here's slivowitz, too, from Poland."
Graeber had not really intended to ask for liquor. The supply from the Germania still sufficed. But Binding was right—booty was booty, and one ought to take it wherever one found it. "There's champagne here too," Alfons said. "I don't like the stuff myself. But it's said to be marvelous for romance. I hope it helps you out tonight!" He laughed loudly. "Do you know what my favorite schnapps is? Kuem-mel, believe it or not. Old honest kuemmel. Take a bottle along and think of Alfons when you drink it."
He put the bottles under his arm and went into the kitchen. "Make up two packages, Frau Kleinen. One with the food and one with the bottles. Paper between the bottles so they won't break. And put in a quarter pound of the good bean coffee, too. Will that do you, Ernst?"
"I just hope I can carry it all."
Binding beamed. "Alfons doesn't do things by halves. Not on his birthday! And certainly not for an old schoolmate!" He was standing in front of Graeber. His eyes gleamed and his red face glowed. He looked like a boy who has found a bird's nest. Graeber was moved by his kindliness, but then he reflected that Alfons had looked exactly the same way when he was listening to Heini's stories of Russia.
Binding winked at Graeber. "The coffee is for tomorrow morning. I hope you realize that's Sunday and don't go back to sleep in the barracks! And now come! I'll just introduce you to a couple of friends. Schmidt and Hoffmann of the Gestapo. You can never tell when that sort of acquaintance will be useful. Just for a minute or two. Drink a glass to my health. May everything stay just as it is here and now! The house and everything that goes with it!" Binding's eyes were moist. "We can't help it, we Germans are just helpless romantics."
"We can't leave that in the kitchen," Elisabeth said, overwhelmed. "I must try to hide it. If Frau Lieser saw it she'd immediately report me as. a black marketeer."
"Damn it! I hadn't thought of that! Can't she be bribed? With some of the stuff we don't like ourselves?"
"Is there anything we don't like?"
Graeber laughed. "Nothing but your artificial honey. Or the margarine. And we'll be able to use those too in a couple of days."
"She is incorruptible," Elisabeth said. "She takes pride in living exclusively on her ration coupons."
Graeber reflected. "We can eat up part of the stuff by tomorrow evening," he explained then. "But we won't be able to manage it all. What can we do with the rest?"
"We'll hide it in my room. Behind the clothes and books. I still have a trunk too that I can lock."
"And if she conies snuffling around?"
"I lock my room every morning when I go out."
"And if she has another key?" '
Elisabeth looked up. "I hadn't thought of that. It's possible."
Graeber opened a bottle. "We'll decide about, it tomorrow afternoon. Just now we'll eat as much as we can. Let's unpack the whole lot! We'll crowd the table with it as though it were a birthday spread. All together and all at once!"
"The tins too?"
"The tins too. For decoration! We don't need to open them yet. First let's eat whatever won't keep. And let's put the bottles there as well. All our riches which we have honorably won by theft and corruption."
"The ones from the Germania, too?"
"Those, too. We earned them honestly by fear of death."
They pushed the table into the middle of the room. Then they opened all the packages and uncorked the slivowitz, the cognac, and the kuemmel. They did not open the champagne. It had to be drunk once it was uncorked; the liqueurs could be corked again.
"It looks magnificent," Elisabeth said. "What are we celebrating?"
Graeber handed her a glass. "We're celebrating everything at once. We haven't time any more for a lot of separate celebrations. Nor any time for distinctions. We're simply celebrating everything at once no matter what it is and principally that we are here and that we have two days to ourselves!"
He walked around the table and took Elisabeth in his arms. He felt her and it was as if a second life opened in him, warmer, more colorful and easier than his own, without boundaries and without past, wholly present and without any shadow of guilt. She leaned again
st him. The laden table gleamed like a feast in front of them. "Wasn't that a bit much for a single toast?" she asked.
He shook his head. "It was only long-winded. At bottom it always comes down to the same thing—to be happy that we're still here."
Elisabeth emptied her glass. "Sometimes I believe we would know quite well what to do with life if they'd only let us."
"At the moment, we're not doing too badly," Graeber said.
The windows were open. A house diagonally across the street had been hit by a bomb the night before and the panes in Elisabeth's room had been broken. She had covered the frames with black air raid paper and hung thin, bright-colored curtains in front of them. They waved in the breeze. So the room looked less like a vault.
They had no lights on; thus they could leave the windows open. From time to time they heard people going by in the street. A radio was playing somewhere. House doors slammed. Someone coughed. Shutters were closed. "The city is going to sleep." Elisabeth said. "And I'm fairly drunk."
They were lying side by side on the bed. On the table stood the remnants of dinner and the bottles, except for the vodka and the cognac and one bottle of champagne. They had not cleared anything away; they were waiting till they got hungry again. They had drunk the vodka-. The cognac was standing on the floor beside the bed, and from behind the bed came the sound of running water in the wash basin. The champagne was lying there cooling.
Graeber placed his glass on a little table beside the bed. He was lying in the darkness and it seemed to him that he was in a small town before the war. A fountain was splashing, a linden tree was humming with bees, windows were being closed, and somewhere a man was playing a final tune on his fiddle before going to bed.
"The moon will rise soon," Elisabeth said.
The moon will rise soon, he thought. The moon, tenderness, and simple creature happiness. They were there already. They were in the sleepy circling of his blood, in the stilled wishes of his mind and in the slow breath that wafted through him like a weary wind. He thought of the afternoon with Pohl-mann. It was infinitely far away. Strange, that hard on the heels of such clear hopelessness there could come so much violent feeling. But perhaps it was not strange at all; perhaps it could not be otherwise. As long as one was full of questions' one was incapable of perceiving much else. Only when one no longer expected anything was one open to everything and without dread.
A beam of light swept over the window. It disappeared, flickered back and remained. "Is that the moon already?" Graeber asked.
"It can't be. Moonlight is not so white."
They heard voices. Elisabeth got up and slipped on a pair of bedroom slippers. She went to the window and leaned out. She did not look for a cover or a dressing gown. She was beautiful and sure of it and therefore without shyness. "It's a clean-up detail from the air defense." she said. "They have a searchlight and shovels and pickaxes and they're over by the house across the street. Do you think there are still people buried in the cellar?"
"Were they digging there during the day?"
"I don't know. I wasn't here."
"Perhaps they only want to repair thé electric cables."
"Yes, perhaps."
Elisabeth came back. "Sometimes after an attack I have wished that I might return here and find this house burned down. The house, the furniture, the clothes, and the memories. Everything. Do you understand that?"
"Yes."
"I don't mean the memories of my father. I mean the others, the fear, the despondency, the hatred. If the house were burned that would be finished too, I thought, and I could begin all over again."
Graeber looked at her. The pale beam from outside fell on her shoulders. The dull sound of pickax blows and the scraping of the shovels came through the window. "Just give me the bottle from the basin," he said.
"The one from the Germania?"
"Yes. We'll drink it before it's blown up. And put the others from Binding in. Who knows when the next attack will come? These bottles with carbon dioxide in them explode from negative pressure. They're as dangerous in the house as hand grenades. Have we glasses?"
"Water glasses."
"Water glasses are right for champagne. That's the way we drank it in Paris."
"Were you in Paris?"
"Yes, at the beginning of the war."
Elisabeth brought the glasses and crouched beside him. He opened the bottle carefully. The wine flooded into the glasses and foamed up. "How long were you in Paris?" she asked.
"A couple of weeks."
"Did they hate you very much?"
"I don't know. Perhaps. I didn't see much of it. Of course we didn't want to see it either. We still believed most of what we had been taught. We wanted to get the war over in a hurry and sit in the sun on the streets in front of the cafés drinking the wines of a foreign country. We were very young."
"Young—you say that as though it were many years ago."
"That's the way it seems, too."
"Aren't you young any more now?"
"Yes. But in a different way."
Elisabeth lifted her glass against the carbide light that trembled in the window. She shook it and watched the wine foam up. Graeber saw her shoulders and the wave of her hair and her back and the line of her spine with the long, soft shadows—she did not need to think about beginning all over again, he thought. She had nothing to do with this room or her work or Frau Lieser when she was without clothes. She belonged to the quivering outside the window and to the restless night, to the blind excitement of the blood and to the odd estrangement afterward, to the hoarse cries and voices outside and also even to the dead that were being dug out—but she did not belong to the accidental, to emptiness, and to senseless lostness. Not any longer! She seemed to have thrown off a disguise and to be following all at once and without reflection laws that yesterday she had not known at all.
"I wish I had been in Paris with you," she said. "I wish we could go there now and there wasn't a war. Would they let us in?"
"Perhaps. We didn't destroy anything in Paris."
"But in France?"
"Not so much as in the other countries. It went fast."
"Perhaps you destroyed enough so that they will go on hating us for many years."
"Yes, perhaps. One forgets a lot in a long war. Perhaps they do hate us."
"I wish we could go to some other country. Some country where nothing has been destroyed."
"There aren't many undamaged countries left," Graeber said. "Is there still something there to drink?"
"Yes. Enough. Where else have you been?"
"In Africa."
"In Africa too? You have seen a lot."
"Yes," Graeber said. "But not the way I once dreamed of seeing it."
Elisabeth lifted the bottle from the floor and filled the glasses. Graeber looked at her. Everything seemed a bit unreal and it was not just because they had been drinking. Their words drifted back and forth in the twilight, they were without meaning and the thing that had meaning was without words and you couldn't talk about it. It was like the rise and fall of a nameless river and the words were sails that tacked back and forth across it.
"Were you other places too?" Elisabeth asked.
Sails, Graeber thought. Where had he seen sails on rivers? "In Holland," he said. "That was at the very beginning. There were boats there that glided through the canals and the canals were so flat and low that it was as though the boats were traveling over the land. They were soundless and had huge sails and it was strange when they glided in the twilight through the countryside like gigantic white and blue and red butterflies."
"Holland," Elisabeth said. "Perhaps we can go there after the war. We could drink cocoa and eat white bread and all those different Dutch cheeses and in the evening we could watch the boats."
Graeber looked at her. Things to eat, he thought. In wartime one's ideas of happiness were inseparably bound up with eating. "Or can't we go there any more either?" she asked.
"I thin
k not. We overran Holland and destroyed Rotterdam without warning. I have seen the ruins. There was hardly a single house left standing. Thirty thousand dead. I'm afraid they won't admit us there either, Elisabeth."
She was silent for a time. Then she suddenly lifted her glass and threw it to the floor. It tinkled and broke. "We can no longer go anywhere!" she cried. "Why do we fool ourselves with dreams? Nowhere. We are captured and excluded and accursed!"
Graeber straightened up. Her eyes shone like gray transparent glass in the quivering, chalky light from outside. He bent over her and looked at the floor. The edges of the splinters glittered whitely there. "We'll have to turn on the light and pick them up," he said, "Otherwise we'll step on them and cut our feet. Wait, I'll shut the window first."
A Time to Love and a Time to Die Page 21