"I stopped in the darkness beneath the portal. To the right lay the city hall, in shadow except for the carved stone faces which caught a faint glow of moonlight. In 1648 the end of the Thirty Years' War had been proclaimed on the steps outside that city hall; so had the beginning of the Thousand-Year Reich in 1933. I wondered whether I would live to witness the announcement of its end. I had little hope.
"I did not try to go inside the church. I was suddenly repelled by the idea of hiding. I was still determined to be careful, but since I had seen Helen, I didn't want to act like a hunted animal any more, unless I had to.
"Still, it wouldn't be safe to stay here too long, so I began to stroll about. The city, which before had seemed dangerous, familiar and at the same time strange, now came to life. I sensed that this was so because I myself had begun to live. It came to me that my anonymous existence of the last few years, which had seemed so empty, a sheer fight for survival, had not been so useless. It had molded me, and now, like a flower that had opened during the night, a sense of life that I had not known before was within me. There was nothing romantic about it; but it was new and exciting, as if an enormous, bright-colored tropical bloom had appeared by magic on a common garden plant that might at best have been expected to produce a measly bud or two. I came to the river, stopped on the bridge, and looked down over the rail at the water. To the left of me stood a medieval watchtower, which now housed a laundry. The windows were lighted, and the girls were still at work. The light came blowing across the
river in broad beams. The black wall with the linden trees stood out against the tall sky, and to the right lay gardens and the silhouette of the cathedral.
"I stood very still, completely relaxed. There was nothing to be heard but the splashing of the water and the muffled voices of the laundry girls behind the windows. I couldn't make out what they were saying. All I heard seemed to be human sounds that had not yet shaped themselves into words, signs of human presence, but not yet, as finished words would have been, signs of falsehood, betrayal, stupidity, and frantic loneliness, ugly overtones disfiguring what had been conceived as a pure melody.
"I breathed, and it seemed to me that I was breathing in the same rhythm as the water. For a timeless moment I even felt that I was a part of the bridge, that the water was flowing through me with my breath. This seemed perfectly natural, and I was not surprised. I didn't think; my thoughts had become as unconscious as my breathing and the water.
"A subdued light moved quickly through the line of lindens at my left. My eyes followed it, and then I heard the voices of the girls again. I realized that for a time I had not heard them. And again I noticed the smell of the lindens, carried across the water by the breeze.
"The moving light went out and at the same time the windows behind me darkened. For a minute the water lay black as pitch, then I saw the little spangles of moonlight that had been drowned out by the light of the laundry. Now that the moonlight was alone, its play was more delicate and varied than the coarse yellow light it had replaced. I thought of my life, in which years before a light had been extinguished, and I wondered whether a multitude of soft lights that I had never seen before might not reappear in it—like the sparkling moonlight on the river. Until then I had only been aware of my loss—it had never occurred to me that I might have gained something by it.
"I left the bridge and walked back and forth between the dark lines of trees on the ramparts until the half hour was up. The smell of the lindens grew stronger as the night advanced, and the moon sprinkled the roofs and towers with silver. It was as though the city were doing everything in its power to show me that I had built up a lie, that there was no danger lurking in wait for me anywhere, that I could go home with an easy heart after a long and aimless journey, to be myself again.
"There was no need to be on my guard against this feeling. Something within me watched of its own accord, peering out in all directions. Too many times I had been arrested in Paris, Rome, and other cities in exactly this state of mind— surrendering to beauty and lulled to security by delusions of love, understanding, and forgetfulness. The police never forgot. Moonlight and the scent of linden trees didn't make saints of stool pigeons.
"Cautiously, my senses alert like bats' wings, I made my way to Hitler-Platz. The house was on a corner, where a street entered the square. The street still had its old name.
"The window was open. I remembered the story of Hero and Leander and the fairy tale about the prince and princess in which the nun puts out the light and the prince drowns; I wasn't a prince, I thought; the Germans had lots of beautiful fairy tales, nevertheless, or perhaps for that very reason, the most revolting concentration camps in the world. Calmly I crossed the street, and it was not the Hellespont and not a northern sea.
"When I reached the entrance, I saw someone coming down the hallway. It was too late to turn back; I walked on toward the stairs with an air of knowing where I was going. It was an elderly woman I had never seen before. My heart stood still—" Schwarz smiled. "That's another cliche1 that you don't believe until you've felt it. I didn't look around. I heard the house door close, and ran quickly up the steps.
"The door was slightly ajar. I pushed it open and there was Helen. 'Did anyone see you?' she asked.
" 'Yes, an old woman.'
" 'Without a hat?'
"'Yes, without a hat.'
" 'It must have been the maid. Her room is in the attic. I gave her off until Monday afternoon; she must have spent all that time primping. She thinks people have nothing else to do than to find fault with her dress.'
" 'Don't worry about her,' I said. 'Whether it was she or not, she didn't recognize me. I know when somebody recognizes me.'
"Helen took my raincoat and hat. She was going to hang them in the vestibule.
" 'Don't leave them here,' I said. 'Somebody might see them. Put them in a closet.'
" 'Nobody will be coming,' said Helen, and led the way to the living room.
"Before following her, I turned the key in the lock.
"In the first years of my exile I had often thought of my home; then I had tried to forget it. Now that I was in it, I didn't feel much. It affected me like a picture that had once belonged to me and that reminded me of a certain period of my life. I stood in the doorway. Hardly anything had changed. The couch and the chairs had been done over.
" 'Weren't they green before?' I asked.
"'Blue,'said Helen."
Schwarz turned to me. "Things have a life of their own, and it's terrible when you compare them to yours."
"Why make comparisons?" I asked.
"Don't you?"
"Yes, but in a different way. I stick to myself. When I'm hungry on the water front, I compare myself with an imaginary me, who, in addition to being hungry, has cancer. That makes me happy for a minute, because I'm only hungry, without the cancer."
"Cancer," said Schwarz, and stared at me. "What makes you think of that?"
"I could have said syphilis. Or tuberculosis. Cancer seemed the most plausible."
"Plausible?" Schwarz was still looking fixedly at me. "There's nothing plausible about cancer. It's unthinkable."
"All right," I said in a conciliatory tone. "I just took it as an example."
"It's simply inconceivable."
"That's true of every fatal illness, Mr. Schwarz."
He nodded in silence. "Are you still hungry?" he asked after a while.
"No. Why?"
"You said something about hunger."
"I've eaten dinner twice since I've been with you."
He was silent. After a while he said more calmly: "The chairs were yellow. They had been done over; that was all that had happened there in five years, while I had been suffering all the ironies of fate. Sometimes things are incongruous, that's what I meant."
"Yes," I said. "A man dies, but his bed is still there. His house is still there. Objects remain as they were. If we could only destroy them, too!"
"Not if they do
n't mean anything to us."
"That's right," I said. "Besides, a human life isn't that important."
"No?" said Schwarz, and there was agony in the face he raised to me. "Not important? No, of course not. But tell me, if a life isn't important, what is?"
"Nothing," I said, knowing even as I spoke that it was true and yet untrue. "It's we ourselves who make things important."
Schwarz took a quick gulp of the dark wine. "And whynot?" he asked in a loud voice. "Can you tell me why we shouldn't make them important?"
"No, I can't tell you that. Anyway, it was just a silly manner of speaking. I myself take life seriously enough."
I looked at my watch. It was a little after two. The band was playing dance music, a tango. The short, muted notes of the horn reminded me of the far-off sirens of a departing ship. Only a few hours until dawn, I thought; then I'll be able to get out of here. I felt for the tickets in my pocket. They were still there. I had almost expected them not to be; the unaccustomed music, the wine, the curtained room, and Schwarz's voice created an atmosphere of drowsy unreality.
"I was still in the doorway of the living room," Schwarz went on. "Helen looked at me and asked: 'Has your home become so strange to you?'
"I shook my head and took a few steps forward. A curious embarrassment had come over me. The objects in the room seemed to be reaching out for me; but I no longer belonged to them. Perhaps I no longer belonged to Helen either. 'Everything is the same,' I said quickly, with a desperate fervor. 'Everything is the same, Helen.'
" 'No,' she answered. 'Nothing is the same. Why have you come back? For that? So everything would be the same?'
" 'No,' I said. 'I know that can't be. But didn't we live here? Where are those years?'
" 'Not here. And they aren't in the old clothes that we've thrown away. Or is that what you thought?'
" 'No. I'm not asking for myself. But you've been here the whole time. I'm asking for you.'
"Helen gave me a strange look. 'Why didn't you ever think of that before?' she said.
" 'Before?' I asked uncomprehending. 'What do you mean? I couldn't come back any sooner.'
" 'That's not what I mean. I mean before you went away.'
"I didn't understand. 'What should I have asked, Helen?'
"She did not reply at once. Then she said quickly: 'Why didn't you ask me to go with you?'
"I stared at her. 'With me? To leave your home? Your family? Everything you loved?'
" 'I hate my family.'
"I was utterly bewildered. 'You don't know what it's like out there,' I murmured finally.
" 'You didn't either, then.'
"That was true. 'I didn't want to take you away from here,' I said feebly.
"'I hate it,' she answered. 'I hate everything here. Why have you come back?'
" 'You didn't hate it then.' -
" 'Why have you come back?' she repeated. She was standing at the other end of the room, separated from me by the yellow chairs and more than five years. A wave of hostility and bitterness struck me full in the face. At the time of my flight my conduct had seemed perfectly natural. How could I involve Helen in the dangers and uncertainties of a life in exile? Now it came to me that perhaps I had offended her deeply by running off and leaving her alone.
" 'Why have you come back, Josef?' she asked.
"I should have liked to say that I had come back for her sake. But at the moment I couldn't. It was not so simple. I saw what I had never seen before: what had driven me back was a quiet, stark desperation. My reserves had been used up; my naked instinct of self-preservation had not been strong enough to endure the chill of loneliness any longer. I had not been able to build up a new life. In my heart I had never really wanted to, because I had never really put my old life behind me. I couldn't forget it, and I couldn't overcome it. Gangrene had set in, and I had to choose. I could let myself rot away, or I could go back and try to get well.
"I had never figured all this out, and even now it was only half clear to me; but it was an enormous relief to know even as much as I did. My feeling of oppression and embarrassment left me. Now I knew why I was here. From five years of exile I had brought nothing with me but my sharpened senses, an eagerness to live, and the caution and experience of a fugitive criminal. In all other respects, I was bankrupt. The nights in the no man's land between borders, the cruel boredom of a life spent fighting for a little food and a few hours of sleep, the underground existence of a mole—all this fell away from me as I stood here on the threshold of my home. I was bankrupt, but at least I had no debts. I was free. This was not a return. The self of those years had committed suicide when I crossed the border. It was dead. Another self was alive, and it was a gift, involving no responsibility." Schwarz turned to me. "Do you know what I mean? I repeat myself and talk in contradictions."
"I think I understand you," I answered. "The possibility of committing suicide is a blessing, though we seldom appreciate it. It gives you the illusion of free will. And probably we commit suicide more often than we suspect. We just don't know it."
"That's it!" said Schwarz eagerly. "If we only knew it for suicide! Then we'd also be able to rise from the dead. We'd have several lives instead of dragging the ulcers of experience from one crisis to the next and succumbing to them in the end.
"Of course I couldn't explain that to Helen," he continued. "And I didn't have to. All at once I felt so light that there was no need to explain. On the contrary, I felt that explanations would only make for confusion. She probably wanted me to say that I had come back on her account; but I knew with my new insight that that would have been my ruin. The past would have broken over us with all its reproaches, with all its guilt and lost opportunities and offended love, and we would never have found our way out. If this idea of spiritual suicide, which now seemed almost joyful, was to have any meaning, it had to be complete; it had to take in not only the years of exile, but also the years before it; otherwise a second gangrene, even older than the first, would set in. Helen stood there, an enemy, ready to strike out at me with love and an exact knowledge of my vulnerable points, and I wouldn't have had a chance. The suicide that had held out hope of liberation would become an excruciating moral agony —no longer death followed by resurrection, but complete annihilation. It is a mistake to explain too much to women. The thing to do is to act.
"I approached Helen. When I touched her shoulder, I felt her tremble. 'Why have you come?' she asked again.
"'I've forgotten,' I said. 'I'm hungry, Helen. I haven't had anything to eat all day.'
"Beside her on a little painted Italian table was the silver-framed photograph of a man I did not know. 'Do we need that?' I asked.
" 'No,' she said in surprise. She took the picture and shoved it into the table drawer."
Schwarz looked at me and smiled. "She didn't throw it away," he said. "She didn't tear it up. She put it in the drawer. She'd be able to take it out and set it up again any time she pleased. I don't know why, but the discreet calculation of her gesture delighted me. Five years before, I would not have understood it. I would have made a scene. Now it put an end to a situation that was threatening to get stuffy. We can stomach big words in politics, but not in love. Unfortunately. It would be better the other way around. Helen's rationalistic gesture was not loveless; this was love seasoned with feminine perspicacity. I had disappointed her once; why should she be in any hurry to trust me? I, for my part, hadn't lived in France for nothing; I asked no questions. And what could I have asked? And by what right? I laughed. She was taken aback. Then her face brightened and she laughed, too. 'Tell me,' I asked, 'have you divorced me?'
"She shook her head. 'No. I refused. But not on your account. It was to annoy my family.'
CHAPTER 5
"I didn't sleep much that night," said Schwarz. "I was very tired, but I kept waking up. The night pressed into the little room where we lay. I thought I heard sounds. I would half drop off and dream that I was running and being pursued. I started in
terror.
"Helen woke up only once. 'Can't you sleep?' she asked through the darkness.
"'No. I didn't expect to.'
"She put on the light. The shadows leapt from the window. 'There's no use expecting too much,' I said. 'I have no control over my dreams. Is there any wine left?'
" 'Plenty. That's one thing I can count on from my family. When did you begin to drink wine?'
" 'Since I've been in France.'
"'That's good,' she said. 'Do you know anything about wines?'
" 'Not much. What I know best is the cheap red stuff.'
"Helen went to the kitchen and came back with two bottles and a corkscrew. 'Our glorious Führer has changed the regulations about wine making,' she said. 'There used to be a law against adding sugar to natural wines. Now wine makers are even allowed to interrupt the fermentation.'
The night in Lisbon Page 6
