Frau Lieser stared at Graeber's suit; then she recognized him. "You? Fräulein Kruse is not at home. You should know that."
"Yes, I did know that, Frau Lieser."
"Well then?"
She looked at him hostilely. On her brown blouse shone a pin with the swastika. Her hair was oily and disordered. In her right hand she held a dust cloth as though it were a weapon.
"I would like to leave a package for Fräulein Kruse. Will you put it in her room?"
Frau Lieser looked at him uncertainly. Then she took the bag of sugar which he held out to her. "I have a second small package here," Graeber said. "Fräulein Kruse has told me in what exemplary fashion you sacrifice your time for the common good. I have a pound of sugar here, and I don't know what to do with it. Since you have a child who can use sugar I wanted to ask you whether you would like to have it."
Frau Lieser's face assumed an official expression. "We have no need for hoarders' goods. We are proud to get along with what the Fuehrer allows us."
"Your child too?"
"My child too!"
"That's the proper attitude," Graeber said, staring at the brown blouse. "If everyone at home behaved like that many a soldier at the front would be in a happier frame of mind. But these are no hoarders' goods. This is sugar from a package the Fuehrer gives soldiers at the front who are leaving on furlough, so they can take it with them to their families. My family is missing; so you needn't hesitate to take it."
Frau Lieser's face lost some of its severity. "You came from the front?"
"Of course. Where else?"
"From Russia?"
"Yes."
"My husband is stationed in Russia, too."
Graeber pretended an interest he did not feel. "Where is he stationed?"
"With the Central Army Group."
"Thank God it's quiet there for the moment."
"Quiet? It is not quiet there! The Central Army Group is fully engaged.'And my husband is in the very front line."
The very front line, Graeber thought. As though there still were such a thing as a front line! For a moment he was tempted to explain to Frau Lieser what it was actually like-beyond the wall of phrases about Honor, Fuehrer, and Fatherland; but he gave it up at once. "I hope he'll come back soon on leave," he said.
"He'll come on leave when his turn comes. We don't ask any favors."
"Neither did I," Graeber remarked dryly. "On the contrary. The last time I was here was two years ago."
"Were you out there the whole time?"
"From the beginning. When I wasn't wounded."
Graeber stared at the unshakable Party warrior. Why do I stand here and justify myself in the eyes of this woman? he thought. I ought to shoot her down—just as her husband, who is probably in the S.D., is shooting down Russian kulaks in order to gain that notorious Lebensraum for his Fuehrer.
The Liesers' child came out of the room in which the desk stood. She was a thin girl with lusterless hair, who stared at Graeber and then began to pick her nose.
"Why are you suddenly wearing civilian clothes?" Frau Lieser asked.
"My uniform is being cleaned."
"So that's it! I thought perhaps—"
Graeber did not find out what she had thought. He suddenly saw that she was smiling at him with yellow teeth, and it almost terrified him. "Well, all right," she said. "Thank you. I will use the sugar for my child."
She took the two packages and Graeber noticed that she weighed one against the other in her hands. He knew she would open Elisabeth's as soon as he had gone and that was just what he wanted. She would be amazed to find simply the second pound of sugar and nothing more. "That's right, Frau Lieser. Auf Wiedersehen."
"Heil Hitler!"
The woman stared at him. "Heil Hitler," Graeber said.
He went out of the house. Beside the front door he found the house warden leaning against a wall. He was a little man with S.A. trousers, boots, and a round little paunch under his rooster chest. Graeber stopped. Even this scarecrow had suddenly become dangerous. "Nice weather today," he said, getting out a package of cigarettes. He took one and offered the package to the man.
The house warden grunted something and accepted one. "Discharged?" he asked with an oblique glance at Graeber's clothes.
Graeber shook his head. He considered saying a few words about Elisabeth, but decided not to. It was better not to arouse the house warden's curiosity. "In a week I am off again. For the fourth time."
The house warden nodded indifferently. He took the cigarette out of his mouth, looked at it, and spat out a few shreds of tobacco. "Doesn't it taste all right?" Graeber asked.
"Oh sure. But I am really a cigar smoker."
"Cigars are in damn short supply, aren't they?"
"They certainly are."
"I know someone who still has some boxes of good ones. Next time I have the chance I'll take a couple and bring them along. Good cigars."
"Imported?"
"Probably. I don't know much about them. Cigars with bands."
"Bands mean nothing. Any bunch of beech leaves can have a band around it."
"The man is a commander in the S.A. He smokes a good weed."
"A commander in the S.A.?"
"Yes. Alfons Binding. My best friend."
"Binding is your friend?"
"An old school friend, as a matter Of fact. I have just
come from seeing him. He and S.S. Commander Riese are old comrades of mine. I am going over to Riese's house now."
The house warden looked at Graeber. Graeber understood the glance; the house warden did not understand why Health Councilor Kruse was in a concentration camp if Binding and Riese were such old friends.
"Several mistakes have been cleared up," he said casually. "Very shortly things will be in order again. Some people will be surprised. I expect. One ought never to be too hasty, eh?"
"Never," declared the house warden with conviction.
Graeber looked at his watch. "I must be off. I won't forget the cigars."
He went on. That was a pretty good start in corruption, he thought. But presently uneasiness seized him once more. Perhaps what he had done was just the wrong thing. It seemed suddenly childish. Perhaps he should not have done anything at all. He stopped and stared down at himself. This damn civilian outfit! It seemed to be to blame for everything. He had wanted to escape from army regulations and to feel free; instead he had immediately got into a world of fear and uncertainty.
He debated what more he could do. Elisabeth could not be reached before evening. He cursed the haste with which he had applied for the papers. Protection, he thought bitterly. Yesterday morning I was making a big point about marriage being a protection for her—and now it has become nothing but danger.
"What's the meaning of these carnival jokes?" a rude voice shouted at him.
He glanced up. A little major was standing in front of him. "Have you no conception of the seriousness of the times, you clown?"
Graeber stared at him for a moment, not comprehending. Then he understood. He had saluted the major without remembering that he was wearing civilian clothes. The old man had interpreted this as derision. "Mistake," he said. "Forget it."
"What? You have the gall to make stupid jokes? Why aren't you a soldier?"
Graeber looked at the old man more closely. He was the same one who had given him a dressing down the evening he had been standing with Elisabeth in front of her house.
"A slacker like you ought to.sink into the earth for shame instead of cutting capers like this," the major barked.
"Oh, don't excite yourself," Graeber said angrily. "And get back into your moth chest."
The old man's eyes took on an almost insane expression. He choked and turned red as a crab. "I'll have you arrested," he wheezed.
"You can't do that, as you should know yourself. And now leave me alone, I have other things to worry about."
"Why, that's—" The major was about to burst forth afresh when suddenly he c
ame a step closer and began to sniff with wide-open, hairy nostrils. His face contorted. "Ah, now I understand," he announced disgustedly. "That's why you're not in uniform! The third sex! Pfui Teufel! A fairy! Wearing perfume! A male whore!"
He spat, wiped his white bristly mustache, threw Graeber one more glance full of abysmal disgust, and walked off. It had been the bath salts. Graeber smelled his hand. He could detect it now, too. A whore, he thought. I'm not far from being one, though. How corrupt a little fear for someone else can make you! Frau Lieser, the block warden—and what else mightn't I be ready to do! I've tumbled damned fast from my heights of virtue!
He stood diagonally across the street from the headquarters of the Gestapo. In the entrance drive a young S.S. man was walking up and down yawning. A couple of S.S. officers came out laughing. Then an elderly man approached, hesitated, looked up at the windows, halted and took a slip of paper out of his pocket. He read it, looked around, glanced toward the sky as though taking leave and then went slowly up to the guard. The S.S. man read the summons and let him in.
Graeber stared up at the windows. He felt fear again, stickier, heavier and clammier than before. He was acquainted with many fears, sharp ones and dark ones, breathless ones and paralyzing ones, and also with the last great one, the animal's fear of death—but this was a different one, it was a creeping, strangling fear, undefined and threatening, a fear that seemed to soil, slimy and destructive, that was not to be seized and that could not be brought to bay. a fear of helplessness and gnawing doubt, the corrupting fear for others, for the guiltless victims, the unjustly persecuted, the fear before the caprice of power and automatic inhumanity, it was the black fear of the times.
He turned away. He felt helpless and miserable. Hirschland, he thought, Hirschland had known it too! Hirschland who had become a soldier to protect his family, who had volunteered for patrols because he hoped that if he got a decoration it would keep his father out of a concentration camp; Hirschland whose parents he had promised to visit.
He stopped. Where had he put the slip of paper with the address? All at once it seemed very important to him to go there immediately—as though it had a connection with Elisabeth and as though everything would be all right with her if he only went there at once. It was childish, but as a soldier one learned to believe in strange happenings. He searched in all his pockets and finally he found the slip in his pay book.
It was a small three-storied house. He climbed to the third floor and rang twice more. Then the door was opened cautiously. A pale woman peered out.
"May I speak to Frau Hirschland?"
"I am Frau Hirschland."
The woman looked straight at him with very bright, staring eyes. "I'm in the same company as your son," Graeber said.
The woman continued to look at him. It was like the glance of a terrified animal that has been brought to bay and is ready to fight. "Your son asked me to come and see you," Graeber said. "I'm here on furlough. That's why I've got civilian clothes on."
"Yes." The woman opened the door wider. "Yes, please. Come in please, Herr—"
"Graeber. Ernst Graeber."
The woman preceded him into a living room. She walked noiselessly and very lightly. In the living room against one wall was a wide chaise longue with high legs; over it was thrown a blue cover which had been pulled down low in front. Graeber was about to sit down on the chaise longue when the woman pushed up a chair. "Here, you will be more comfortable in this. That over there—we only have this one room—that's the bed."
Graeber sat down on the chair. The room was clean ancL furnished in middle-class fashion. Over the chaise longue hung a few pictures; there were others on the two side walls. "About two weeks ago I was still with your son," Graeber said.
The woman had not seated herself. Her glance had lost none of its glassy fixity; but her hands jerked restlessly this way and that. "Perhaps you will—I could—perhaps you'd take a little something—"
Graeber suddenly realized that he was very thirsty. "Thanks," he said. "A glass of water—if you happen to have a glass of water—"
"Yes, certainly." Frau Hirschland looked around the room.
"Yes, I will—in the kitchen—just one moment—I'll go and get it—"
She went. At the door' she looked around once more. What's the matter with her? Graeber thought. He was used to people being afraid but this was something more than usual.
He got up and looked at the pictures on the wall. They were reproductions. One was a chestnut tree in bloom, another the profile of a Florentine girl. The picture over the chaise longue was a big etching. He stepped closer to get a better view. In doing so his foot jostled something behind the hanging cover. He bent down and lifted the cover to see whether he had upset anything. He saw two narrow cardboard boxes arranged end to end and extending almost the whole length of the chaise longue. One was at an angle. Graeber pushed it straight. As he did so he saw a girl's hand in the crack between the two boxes. Someone was lying behind the boxes next to the wall, with her arm pressed close to her body. He let the cover fall and went back to his chair.
Frau Hirschland came in. She was carrying a lacquer tray on which there was a small glass of red wine; on a plate next to it were two slices of bread. "Please have something," she said.
Graeber took a sip. The wine was very sweet and sticky. "Things are going well with your son," he said. "When I left we were in reserve position. All of us like your son."
The woman looked at him. He took another sip. He was surprised that she did not ask him where they were located, how the food was, whether it was dangerous, and all the questions mothers ask.
"So, things were going well with him?" she asked finally.
"As well as is possible in the field. Now it's just about the same here as out there. Almost equally dangerous."
He waited a while longer. But Frau Hirschland asked nothing more. Perhaps she is worried about the girl she has hidden, Graeber thought. "That's really all," he finally said lamely and stood up. The woman walked noiselessly with him to the door. "Your son and I are good friends. Do you want me to take him some message? I have to go back in a week."
"No," she replied, barely audibly.
"I can take something to him. A letter or a package. I can come and get it before I leave."
She shook her head.
Graeber looked at her in amazement. Parents weren't usually like this. He thought she did not trust him and got out his pay book. "Here are my papers—I'm just accidentally in civilian clothes—"
She raised her hand as though to push the pay book aside, but she did not touch it. "He is dead," she whispered.
"What?"
She nodded.
"But how is that possible? He was the last one I talked to—"
"Dead," the woman whispered. "The news came four days ago." She shook her head rapidly as Graeber was about to ask something more. "No, please don't, forgive me, many thanks, I can't, letters still keep coming from him, one just today, no, please—"
She shut the door. Graeber went down the stairs. He tried to recall Hirschland. He had known very little about him. Not even his first name. He thought of the cigarettes Hirschland had given him. It was too bad he had not taken more trouble with him. But it was too bad about so many others too. Hirschland had had a miserable life. Now his mother was sitting up there hiding another child. Perhaps the child of a second marriage in which more Jewish blood was involved, making her ripe for a concentration camp. He paused on the half-darkened stairs and was suddenly wholly at a loss. Threatening and hopeless, the darkness closed in around him and it seemed as though there was no escape any more. If someone had to be hidden for that reason, he thought, then what might not happen to Elisabeth!
He was standing in front of the factory long before closing time. It took a while before Elisabeth came. He was already beginning to fear that she had been arrested in the factory when he finally saw her. She was taken aback to see him in civilian clothes and began to laugh. "How y
oung you are!" she said.
"I don't feel young. I feel a hundred years old."
"Why? What has happened? Do you have to go back ahead of time?" ■
"No, all that is all right."
"Do you feel a hundred years old because you are wearing civilian clothes?"
"I don't know. But it seems to me that I've put on all the cares of the world along with this damn outfit. What have you done about your papers?"
A Time to Love and a Time to Die Page 24