"She said that as if I had left her five years before with another woman and had come back alone to get my things and leave again. I made no attempt to set things right; it would have done no good. She would only have looked at me in amazement and said no such thought had entered her head but if that was how I felt about it . . . and I would have been drawn into a senseless argument. Strange how complicated we can make things just to avoid showing what we feel!
"I went into the bathroom. The sight of my old suits had no other effect on me than to show me how much thinner I had grown. I was happy to find clean underwear and decided to take a supply of it with me when I left. I was not touched by any sentiment. I had decided long before to think of exile not as a misfortune but as a kind of cold war, necessary to my development. That decision proved helpful now and then.
"The day passed in an emotional twilight. My impending departure depressed us both, but I was more used to this kind of thing than Helen. My experience had prepared me for it, while to Helen the thought that I was getting ready to leave again came almost as a personal insult. Before she had recovered from the shock of my arrival and before the wound to her pride had time to heal, here I was leaving her again. With both of us a reaction to the night had set in; the tide of feeling ebbed, baring submerged fragments of wreckage, trifles that took on enormous proportions. We were ever so careful not to touch sensitive spots; we had lost the habit of each other. I would have liked to be alone for an hour to collect my wits; but when it came to me that an hour meant the twelfth part of my remaining time with Helen, I abandoned the idea. Formerly, in peaceful years, I had occasionally entertained myself wondering what I would do if I knew I had only a month to live. I had never come to any definite conclusion. By a strange contradiction, whatever I thought I ought to do was at the same time something I wouldn't have done under any circumstances. It was the same now. Instead of embracing the day, of opening myself up to it wholeheartedly, instead of feeling Helen with every fiber of my being, as I longed to, I moved about as gingerly as if I were made of glass. She seemed to be having the same trouble. We suffered, we were all sharp edges, and only when the light began failing did our dread of losing each other become so intense that we knew each other again.
"At seven the doorbell rang. I started. To me bells meant the police. 'Who can it be?' I whispered.
" 'Let's be quiet and wait,' said Helen. 'It must be some friend; if I don't answer, he'll go away.'
"The bell rang again. Then came an authoritative pounding on the door. 'Go into the bedroom,' Helen whispered.
"'Who is it?'
" 'I don't know. Go into the bedroom. I'll get rid of him. If he keeps on pounding, it will stir up the neighbors.'
"She pushed me away. I looked around quickly to make sure none of my belongings were lying about. Then I went into the bedroom. I heard Helen asking: 'Who is it?' and a man's voice answering. Then Helen said, 'Oh, it's you? What's wrong?' I pulled the door shut. The apartment had a second exit through the kitchen but I couldn't reach it. I'd have been seen. The only thing I could do was to hide in a big built-in closet, where Helen kept her clothes. It wasn't really a closet, just a big niche in the wall with a door across it. I had plenty of air.
"I heard the man going into the living room with Helen. I recognized his voice. It was her brother, Georg, who had sent me to the concentration camp.
"I looked at Helen's dressing table. The only available weapon was a paper cutter with a jade handle; I saw nothing else. Without stopping to think, I put the knife in my pocket and went back into the closet. If he discovered me, I'd have to defend myself; there was no other way. I'd try to kill him and to get away.
" The telephone?' I heard Helen say. 'I didn't hear anything. I was asleep. Is anything wrong?'
"There are moments of danger when you feel hot and dry inside, as though the slightest spark would set you on fire. You think so fast it's almost as if you were clairvoyant. Even before I heard Georg's answer, I sensed that he knew nothing of my presence.
" I tried to phone you several times,' he said. 'Nobody answered. Not even the maid. We thought something had happened. Why didn't you open?'
" 'I was asleep,' said Helen calmly. "That's why I switched off the telephone. I had a headache; I still have. You woke me up.'
"'A headache?'
" 'Yes, and it's worse than ever. I took two pills. I've got to sleep them off.'
"'Sleeping pills?'
" 'No, headache pills. I'll have to put you out now,' Georg. I've got to sleep them off.'
" 'Pills are ridiculous,' said Georg. 'Get dressed and come for a walk. It's beautiful out. Fresh air is better than pills.'
" 'But I've already taken them. I've got to sleep them off. I don't feel like running around.'
"They talked a while longer. Georg wanted to come back for Helen later, but she said no. He asked if she had enough to eat in the house. Yes, she had plenty to eat. Where was the maid? She had the afternoon off; she'd be back to make supper.
" 'Then there's nothing to worry about?' said Georg.
" 'Of course not.'
" 'Well, I just thought . . . sometimes people worry . . . even when there's no need to. After all . . .'
" 'After all, what?' asked Helen sharply.
" 'Well, there was once a time . . .'
"'So what!'
" 'All right,' said Georg. 'Why talk about it? If everything is all right, so much the better. But after all, I'm your brother. It's only natural that I should worry. . . .'
" 'Yes.'
" 'Yes, what?'
" 'You're my brother.'
" 'I wish you really realized that.'
" 'I realize it very well,' said Helen impatiently.
" 'What's got into you today?'
" 'Nothing.'
" 'I hope it's not the old business starting up again.'
" 'Nothing is starting up. I've got a headache and that's that. And I don't like to be checked up on.'
" 'Nobody's checking up on you. I'm just concerned.'
" 'There's nothing to be concerned about. I'm fine.'
" 'Have you been to see the doctor?'
" 'Yes,' Helen replied after a moment's silence.
"'What does he say?'
" 'Nothing.'
" 'But he must say something.'
" 'He says I should rest,' said Helen irritably. 'He says I should sleep when I'm tired and have a headache, and not argue, and not have to ask whether taking a nap is compatible with my duties as a national comrade and citizen of the glorious Thousand-Year Reich.'
"'Did he say that?'
" 'No, he did not say that,' Helen answered in a loud voice. 'I put that in. He only told me not to work myself up unnecessarily. He committed no crime and there's no need to send him to a concentration camp. He's a sincere supporter of the government. Are you satisfied?'
"Georg muttered something. I assumed that he was preparing to leave, and since I had learned that this is a risky moment, because unexpected things can happen, I closed the door except for a slight crack. A moment later I saw him coming into the bedroom. I saw his shadow through the crack and heard his footsteps moving into the bathroom. It seemed to me that Helen had come in, too, but I didn't see her. I closed the door completely and stood there in the darkness, surrounded by Helen's clothes; the paper cutter was clenched in my fist.
"I knew that Georg had not discovered me and I knew that he would probably return from the bathroom to the living room and go away; just the same I had a tightening in my throat and the sweat trickled down my sides from my armpits. Fear of the unknown isn't the same as fear of something you know. Something unknown may be dangerous, but it's undefined; you can check your fear with discipline or even with tricks. But when you know what's facing you, you can't do much with discipline or psychological handsprings. I had known the first kind of fear before they sent me to the concentration camp; I felt the second now, for I knew what was in store for me in the camp if I should be sent back t
here.
"Strange to say, I hadn't given the matter a thought in all the time since I had crossed the border; I hadn't wanted to. The thought would have stopped me, and I didn't want to be stopped. Besides, our memory falsifies things to help us survive. It glosses over the unbearable parts of the past. You know what I mean?"
"Yes, I know," I replied. "But they are not really forgotten, just lying dormant. A jolt can bring them back to life."
Schwarz nodded. "I stood in the dark, perfumed corner of the closet. The clothes pressed in on me like the soft wings of giant bats. I stood stock-still, scarcely breathing, for fear the silk would rustle or that I'd cough or sneeze. Fear rose up from the closet floor like a black gas. I thought it would asphyxiate me. My experience in the concentration camp could have been worse. I had suffered the usual mistreatment, but then I had been released, and in the end my memories had faded. But now it all came alive before me; what I myself had seen, what had happened to others, the things I had heard about or guessed from indications—it was beyond me how I could have been insane enough to leave the blessed countries where my only punishment for living would be imprisonment or expulsion. Such countries, it seemed to me now, were veritable havens of humanity.
"I heard Georg in the bathroom. The wall was thin and Georg was too much a member of the master race to do things quietly. He threw back the toilet lid with a crash and urinated with self-assurance. That should have comforted me; it showed that he had nothing on his mind, that he was untouched by suspicion, but later, strangely enough, this struck me as the worst humiliation of all: having to listen while he relieved himself, even if it reminded me of stories about burglars who soil the premises before leaving, to show their contempt or out of shame, because the urge was originally brought on by their fear.
"I heard the toilet flush and I heard Georg marching victoriously out of the bathroom and through the bedroom. Then came the muffled closing of the hall door and the closet was thrown open; I saw the light and in it Helen's dark silhouette. "He's gone,' she whispered.
"I stepped out like an Achilles surprised in women's clothing. The change from terror to a feeling of ridiculousness and embarrassment was so quick that they merged into one. Such mixtures were nothing new to me; still, there is a difference whether that arm clutching at your throat means expulsion or death.
" 'You've got to leave right away,' Helen said.
"I looked at her. I don't know why I expected to see something akin to contempt in her face; perhaps it was because I myself, a moment after the danger was past, felt humiliated as a man, a feeling that would never have come to me with anyone but Helen.
"Her face showed nothing but naked terror. 'You've got to get away,' she repeated. 'It was insane of you to come here.'
"Although I had thought the same a moment before, I shook my head. 'Not now,' I said. 'In an hour. He might be taking a walk in the neighborhood. Will he come back?'
" 'I don't think so. He doesn't suspect anything.'
"Helen went into the living room, turned out the lamp, opened the curtains, and peered out. The light from the bedroom formed a golden cone on the floor. Just outside the beam, she stood there watching tensely, as though on the lookout for game. 'You can't walk to the station,' she whispered. 'Somebody might recognize you. But you've got to leave town. I'll borrow Ella's car and drive you to Münster. What fools we've been! You can't stay here!'
"I saw her standing at the window, only a few feet away, but even that was a separation, and I felt a twinge of pain. She herself seemed to realize for the first time that we would have to part again. All the barriers that had kept materializing during the day vanished. Now she had seen the danger with her own eyes and that had dispelled every other thought. She was all fear and love, and at the same moment crushed by a sense of loss. We would have to part; I saw it as clearly as she did, without evasion or pretense, and my intolerable grief transformed itself into an equally unbearable desire. I wanted to hold her—I reached out for her, I wanted her, I had to have her once more! 'Not now!' she whispered. 'I've got to call Ella! Not now. We have to . . .'
"Have to nothing, I thought. I had an hour, and then the world would collapse. Why hadn't I realized that before? I had sensed it, but why had I built up a glass wall between myself and my feeling? If it had been insane of me to come back, this had been even more so. I had to take something of Helen with me into the gray emptiness to Which I would return, something more than a memory of cautious, devious behavior, more than that one union between sleep and sleep; I had to have her, lucidly, with all her senses, her mind, her eyes, her thoughts, entirely, not merely like an animal between night and morning.
"She resisted. She whispered that Georg might come back, and I don't know whether she really believed so. I had been in danger so often that I was able to forget it the moment it was past—now I wanted only one thing, in this room with the smell of Helen's perfume and clothes and the bed and the twilight: to possess her with everything that was in me, and if there was one thing that tormented me and pierced the flat dull sense of loss, it was the realization that nature wouldn't let me possess her even more fully and deeply. If only I could spread myself over her like a blanket, if only I could have had a thousand hands and mouths, if only I could have held her in a perfect concave mold, skin to skin without intervening space—but even then there would be a last regret, for still it would be only skin to skin instead of blood in blood: we could be together, but never completely united."
CHAPTER 7
I had listened to Schwarz without interrupting. He was speaking to me, but I knew that as far as he was concerned I was little more than a wall that sent back an occasional echo. That, too, was how I regarded myself; otherwise I couldn't have listened without embarrassment, and I felt certain that otherwise he would have been unable to tell about these things that he wished to resurrect once again before they came to rest in the silent sands of memory. I was a stranger whose path crossed his for one night, that is why he was without reticence in my company. He had come to me wrapped in the anonymous cloak of a strange, dead name, Schwarz, and when he cast off the cloak, he would also cast off his personality and disappear in the anonymous crowd moving toward the black gate at the last border, where no papers are required and from which no one is ever sent back.
The waiter informed us that a German diplomat had arrived. He pointed him out to us. Hitler's emissary sat five tables away from us with three other persons, a man and two women. The ladies were rather on the hefty side; they had on silk dresses, both blue, but of different shades, which clashed. The German diplomat had his back turned to us; that struck me as fitting and proper; reassuring, too.
"I thought it would interest you gentlemen," said the waiter, "because I heard you speaking German."
Involuntarily Schwarz and I exhanged the refugee glance— an imperceptible lifting of the eyelids, followed by a look of blank indifference, as if we couldn't care less. The refugee glance is different from the German glance under Hitler— that cautious peering around in all directions, followed by a hurried exchange of whispers—but both, like the forced migration of innumerable Schwarzes from Germany and the displacement of whole populations in Russia, are a part of twentieth-century civilization. In a hundred years, when all the cries of anguish have died away, a clever historian will discover that all these miseries have served as a leaven to progress.
Schwarz looked up at the waiter without the slightest sign of interest. "We know who he is," he said. "Bring us some more wine. . . . Helen," he continued just as calmly, "went to get her friend's car. I waited alone in the apartment. Night had fallen, and the windows were open. I had turned out all the lights to make it look as if no one was there. If anyone rang, I wouldn't answer. If Georg came back, I could get away by the service entrance if necessary.
"For half an hour I sat near the window, listening to the street sounds. An immense feeling of loss came over me. It wasn't painful. More like a dark shadow slowly spreading until it black
ed out the whole earth and swallowed up the horizon. And in the midst of all this desolation I seemed to see a pair of scales weighing an empty past against an empty future, and Helen between them, the shadow of the scales across her shoulders. It was as though I had come to the mid-point in my life; the next stop would throw the scales off balance; they would slowly incline toward the future, fill up with gray, and never be in balance again.
"I was awakened by the sound of the car. I saw Helen alight in the glow of the street lamp and disappear into the entrance. I went through the dark dead apartment and heard the key in the door. She came in quickly. 'We can go now,' she said. 'Do you have to go back to Minister?'
" 'I've left my suitcase there. I've registered under the name of Schwarz. Where else can I go?'
" 'Pay your bill and go to another hotel.'
" 'Where?'
"'Yes, where?' Helen pondered. 'In Münster,' she said finally. 'You're right. Where else? That's the nearest place.'
The night in Lisbon Page 8
