By the time I got there it was dark. There were no street lights in the Romanstrasse. The rain was pouring down, streaming between the vine that covered the outer walls of the house as I entered the quiet lobby. I walked slowly up to the second floor. I still had the key to Yo-landa's apartment and unlocked the front door. The small foyer was dark. I called Yolanda's name, but there was no answer.
I walked through the whole apartment. I turned on the light in every room, in the kitchen too, and in the bathroom. The apartment was empty. It looked as if Yo-landa had left it to go on a long journey. Closets stood
172
open, hangers were scattered on the floor and pieces of underwear were lying around on chairs.
I walked into the bedroom and opened the window. The rain was beating on the tin roof underneath it, and I sat down on the unmade bed. A bottle of beer stood on the bedside table next to the telephone. It was open and half empty. I let my head fall onto the pillow and buried my face in it. The pillow smelled of Yolanda. I closed my eyes and lay quite still. I left all the lights burning.
38
When I awoke it was ten minutes before eleven. My head ached and I felt chilled. At first I was startled; I didn't know where I was. Then I remembered and got up to close the window. It had rained in, the carpet was wet. I walked through the apartment again and turned out all the Ughts. I laid the letter for Yolanda on the bed. Then I went out, locked the front door and went down to my car.
I had parked it beside the iron fence of a canal. I tore up my American passport and threw it and all other personal papers, including my driver's license, between the iron pickets into the canal. Then I drove back to a parking lot near the station, took out my suitcase, locked the car and left it there. I counted what money I had left once more. I knew I couldn't take much across the border and therefore kept only a hundred marks. The rest I tossed into one of the ruins. Approximately eighteen hundred marks.
I had hoped that my headache would ease up in the fresh air, but it didn't. In fact it increased in intensity. It was 11: 20 p.m. I went into the station restaurant, ordered
coffee again and took two aspirin. Then I ate two sandwich rolls although I wasn't really hungry. At 11:45 I went out on the platform. My headache was no better. The platform was long and gUstened because it was wet. There were quite a few people. The train to Vienna was apparently full. I asked where I could fibad the sleeping car. "The first car after the locomotive, sir," said the conductor.
I walked alongside the cars and could feel the rain dripping off the brim of my hat, down my wig and neck. The further I went, the more I got the feeling that I had gone this way before.
A conductor stood beside the steps leading up to the sleeping car. I gave him my bed number. "Herr Walter Frank," he read aloud, and with a polite gesture, "Let me take your suitcase." He got into the car before me. My head was bursting. "Bed No. 14," he said as he walked ahead of me down the corridor. "Your wife is expecting you."
I closed my eyes. "Who did you say was expecting me?"
"Your wife," he said without stopping. "She has already retired." He stopped in front of a closed compartment and knocked.
"Come in," said a voice.
The conductor walked in and I could hear him apologizing for the intrusion. The door fell shut as he stowed away my suitcase, then it opened again and he came out to me. "There you are," he said. "I keep your ticket until the morning."
"Yes," I said.
"Is there anything else I can do for you, sir?"
"No."
He left. I walked into the compartment and closed the door behind me. Both beds were made up. In the upper one lay Yolanda. "Good evening," she said. She was smoking and she didn't look at me.
"Good evening, Yolanda."
"My name isn't Yolanda," she said, exhaling a cloud of smoke.
"No? Then what is your name?" I asked politely. I had the feeling that if the pain in my head went on much longer, I would faint.
"My name is Valery."
"A pretty name," I said, smiling, and clung to the railing of her bed.
"And my last name is Frank," she said. "Valery Frank. I am your wife."
Outside porters were yelling and the locomotive whistle blew mournfully. I leaned against the mirror of the wash basin. "Did Mordstein :tell you everything?"
She nodded.
"You know him?"
"Yes."
"You went to him?"
"No. He called me and told me you were planning to leave."
"And your papers... you got them from him too?"
She nodded again.
"Where did you get the money to pay for them?"
"He gave them to me on credit."
Outside a hoarse loudspeaker announced that the Vienna express was leaving in a few minutes from platform 3. The doors were to be closed, non-travelers were asked to leave the train.
"Where were you all these last days, Yolanda?" I asked softly.
"Why?"
"I tried to reach you."
"Fm sorry about that."
*Why did you do it?" T asked. T could feel the train start to move. "Why did you come here? Why did you get false papers?"
"Because I want to go away," she said. "Far away. Farther and farther away. That's what you want too, isn't it?"
"Yes," I said. "That's what I wanted too."
"And now you don't want it any more?"
"I wanted to go away alone."
She looked at me seriously. "Without me?"
"Yes."
"Well, that's impossible, Jimmy," she said. "You've got to take me with you. You'll see, everything will turn out all right. It's going to be beautiful. Wasn't it beautiful sometimes?'*
"Yes."
"And it will be again."
"But I don't want it."
"Then you'll have to get out and call the police and tell them I'm traveling with false papers because I wanted to be with you...."
"... and because Mordstein told you I had a lot of money."
"Yes, you'll have to tell the police that too," she said calmly.
The train whistle blew again. I said nothing. I looked at the little table beside the window. On it lay a long-stemmed white rose.
"Who sent the rose?"
"Mordstein. He gave it to me as a goodbye present. Why?"
"I was just asking."
She slipped a hand under her pillow. '"By the way, here's your correct ID card. Mordstein gave it to me to give to you. You've got to throw the other one away. It says you're single."
She gave me the yellow card. "Thank you," I said. Then I took the other ID card out of my pocket and threw it out the window.
Yolanda watched me. "Jimmy . . ."
"Yes?"
"The money you have all of a sudden • •. you stole it, didn't you?"
"Yes," I said. "From a bank. On Monday they'll start looking for me."
She nodded. "That's what I thought."
I sat down on the lower bed and began to take off my shoes.
"Jimmy..."
"Yes."
"You*re a little crazy, aren't you?"
"I think so."
I stood up, took off my shirt and got my pajamas out of my suitcase.
"Jimmy..."
"Yes?"
"I think I'm crazy, too. Will you beat me up if I say something?"
"No," I mumbled. "I won't beat you up. What is it?"
"I love you," she said.
I put on my pajamas and turned out the light. Then T lay down on the lower bed. Now it was completely dark in the compartment, only a little fitful light fell through the cracks on either side of the windowshade. I lay quietly, my head still hurt.
"Junmy..."
"Yes?"
"When do we get to the border?"
"I don't know." -
The axle beat in a steady rhythm. We were moving fast
BOOK TWO
It is February fourteenth.
I am in bed, and Dr. Freund has forbidden
me to write. He would be very angry if he knew I was disobeying him. But I must, I have to get on with it, I have to finish. I know now that I don't have much time left. One or two more attacks like the one last week, and the morphine won't help any more. That will be the right time to end it all. The last attack, which forced me to stay in bed, was not the first, but it was the worst. And it came quite unexpectedly. I had just finished writing the last lines of how I found Yolanda on the train to Vienna with me when the headache began.
Lately the attacks have changed their character. Now, when they come, it is with periods of stupor and they last for days. Morphine helps to reduce the intensity of the pain but increases the depth of this semi-conscious state. I have now lain for a whole week in such a semi-coma, my body leaden, my temples throbbing. Today, for the first time, I feel better.
Dr. Freund has looked after me in the most touching manner. He has sat at my bedside for hours, Ustening to my feverish ramblings. It seems that during this last week, I evidenced an irrepressible urge to confide in someone, perhaps as a substitute of sorts for my interrupted writing which has absorbed me from morning to night these last four weeks and resulted in Book One of my story. It was
probably the cause of my breakdown. I worked too hard. Dr. Freund agrees with me on that
"I don't intend to let you kill yourself wantonly and senselessly like this," he said, after which it wasn't very diflficult to convince him that what he had just said was absurd, and he had to admit that his good advice couldn't possibly lead to a successful conclusion. Altogether, his relationship to me is something that perplexes him. Inadvertently I influence him to quite a few illegal acts. Until now he has not called in the police, and I have been frank with him about the fact that I take morphine. He doesn't really know what to do and I can see that this worries him. We finally agreed that I would not go on writing until I felt relatively well and that I would then spare myself by writing only four hours a day and spend the remaining time resting. However, I can't help feeling that under the circumstances such precautions are ridiculous.
February 16 Today I got up for the first time. I really do feel much better and I think I shall start writing tomorrow, or the day after. I would start right now except for the necessity of a slight interruption—I have to go through everything I have written in order to find out what has gone before because I just can't remember certain events. Everything is slightly hazy in my mind. Apparently my memory is beginning to be affected as Dr. Kletterhohn so kindly indicated at the time. I shall do my best to concentrate.
February 18. I am seated again at my table by the window. Outside, in the park, the snow is faUing, silently, steadily, hour after hour, day and night. By now it is very deep. The children play in it, build snowmen, fight with snowballs. The central heating is on in my room. It is pleasantly quiet and wamL
The heating was on in the sleeping car that brought Yolanda and me to Vienna. The compartment became so hot that I got up in the night and opened the window halfway; then I pulled the shade down over the part that was open. I could make out Ughts rushing by, and when the train stopped at a station, I could hear voices and other sounds. I didn't sleep much. Yolanda was silent although she too was awake. I knew she was awake although we didn't talk.
At about two a.m. we arrived at the Austrian border where the train stood for nearly two hours. Border guards and customs inspectors came in and stamped-our papers. They didn't examine our luggage. They were sleepy and wet. It was raining here, too. At five we reached the Soviet demarcation Une in Ems. This time Yolanda was asleep when the inspector came in, and she jumped up when he touched her gently and asked for her papers.
"It isn't true!" she screamed. "He's lying! I didn't do it!''
The inspector stepped back, startled
"Yolanda," I said gently.
She looked about her, bewildered, then she pushed her 183
hair off her forehead and laughed. "Oh," she said, *Tm sorry."
She gave the inspector her ID card. He looked at it and smiled, then he left us alone again. The sleeping car conductor closed the door behind him. We lay in our respective beds and were silent.
An hour later the day began to dawn. It had stopped raining and the autumnal landscape rushed past our window, damp, misty, not a Uving soul in sight. A narrow strip of gold Ught showed up suddenly on the wash basin. The sun had risen.
"Yolanda?"
"Yes?"
"Come to me."
She slipped off her bed onto the floor. I moved over to the wall and she lay down beside me. Her body was hot, her hands were ice cold. "What is it?"
"Yolanda," I said, "I've been thinking. I can't go to the police, that's, obvious. You can, of course, anytime you like."
"Yes," she said.
The strip of gold light on the wash basin widened. The shade flapped rhythmically against the window.
"But I have to be alone," I whispered. "I did what I did because I have to be alone. I'm not reproaching you. But I'd like to propose something."
"Yes?"
"You tell me how much it will cost me if you leave me alone and go back to Munich."
"No!" Her answer came fast and vehemently.
"I have a lot of money. Think it over."
"I have thought it over."
"And?"
"And I want to be with you. I donl want to go back. Ever." Her breathing was agitated. "I want to get away. I don't want to stay any more than you do. I have to get away. / have to! And you have to take me with you. That's why I've done what I did."
"And because you love me," I said politely.
"And because I love you," she said. "Yes, that too, idiot!"
"You don't love me," I said, "any more than I love you. You decided to blackmail me, unscrupulously, just as I decided, unscrupulously, to abandon you. That's one thing we have in common—a lack of scruples."
"We have other things in common."
"But not love."
"Love too," she said, and suddenly she sighed deeply. It was more Uke a groan.
"What's the matter?"
"Nothing," she said quickly. "Lie down again.**
I had sat up and was bending over her. Now I sank back again.
"You are a writer," she said. "You have written scripts and stories about love. You try to explain it—I can't. I blackmail you, I Hve with false papers, and I want to go away with you. Maybe I'm crazy. I don't know. I can't express myself, but that's the way it is. May God punish me if I'm lying. You don't beheve me?"
"No."
"You can't understand me?'*
"No."
"You don't feel anything for me?"
"Oh yes," I said, "but you don't call that love. That's something quite different."
She groaned again. "You don't know anything," she said hoarsely. "You have no idea, Jimmy, my poor Jimmy. You don't know what's going on.. .."
At the time I couldn't think of a thing to say, but later, much later, I remembered. However, when I found out the truth, it was too late. Too late for all of us.
"Go back to your bed," I said.
"No." She turned toward me.
I sat up. "Go," I said, "or I'll beat you up.*'
She didn't go. I struck her. Then I tore her nightgown off her shoulders. She lay stUl, watching me. Her hps were
parted. She looked like the grandmother of every whore in the world. As I took her, I felt rage, helplessness and hatred rising in me in hot waves.
Later I noticed that my eyes were filled with tears, tears of rage over my weakness. Yolanda didn't notice it. She was asleep. But I lay awake for a long time and looked out into the sunshine of this Sunday morning. We were riding through a forest, I could hear the locomotive chugging uphill. Crazy thoughts were circling through my head. I felt chilled. I still hadn't freed myself. Because I was too weak. And too much of a coward.
In Vienna, we went to the Hotel Sacher.
Sunday passed quietly. The Monday morning papers didn't report anything about the e
mbezzlement. Perhaps it hadn't been discovered yet; perhaps the Austrian papers were slow in reporting the news. On Sunday I had already called Herr Jacob Lauterbach and he had told me to come to his office on Monday afternoon. He said he had the money.
On Monday I asked Yolanda to go to a real estate office and see if she could find a furnished apartment for us.
"Why? Aren't we going to stay in the hotel?"
"No," I said. "It's too risky. The police could trace us through the guest list. If we take an apartment, it won't be so easy for them."
Her eyebrows were raised, her nostrils quivered nervously. "But we were going to Italy."
"We'll have to wait for a while to do that."
"I don't want to wait. I want to get away from here.**
*T want to get away too," I said. ^TBut I don't want to go to jail. To cross any borders right now would be madness. We have to stay here, one, two, maybe four weeks, and see what happens."
She had to admit I was right. "Very well, Jimmy," she said. "I'll find us an apartment" I noticed suddenly that her fingers were trembling.
"What's the matter?"
"Nothing." She made fists of her hands. "I just want to get away, that's all."
"So do I," I said, "but it's not that sunple."
I was alone all day. I walked through the strange city, ate in a garden restaurant, then drove to the Prinz-Eugen-strasse. Herr Jacob Lauterbach's ofl&ce was on the top floor of an imposing building and consisted of several equally impressive rooms. On the door, under his name, among other data, were the words: Real Estate Agent.
Whatever real estate Herr Lauterbach controlled, it had to be lucrative business. The office boy who let me in ushered me into an enormous room and asked me to please be seated. The windows were huge, there was a Venetian chandeUer and a real Persian carpet. Two gobelins were hanging on the walls, and the furnishings were antique. A young woman sat typing behind a rococo desk. She looked up as I entered and greeted me politely. I sat down opposite her and began leafing nervously through some illustrated papers lying in front of me on a table. Then I put the papers down because I had the feeUng that the young lady was looking at me. Her typewriter was silent. Still, I was a little surprised to find that she actually was staring at me with great big, very light eyes. She had let her hands fall into her lap and was sitting quite still, staring at me, a beautiful girl, blonde, with a wide generous mouth. I returned her gaze. Her expression remained absolutely serious even after mine had broken into a smile. She was wearing a sports suit, a white blouse and brown loafers. Her eyes were grey with a touch of green. She wore her blonde hair brushed straight back in a bun.
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