Flotsam

by Erich Maria Remarque

  “I’ve watched it happen,” Kern said.

  Marill emptied his glass. “A crude age. Peace is stabilized with cannon and bombers, humanity with concentration camps and pogroms. We’re living in a time when all standards are turned upside-down, Kern. Today the aggressor is the shepherd of peace, and the beaten and hunted are the troublemakers of the world. What’s more, there are whole races who believe it!”

  A half-hour later they heard a thin, squalling cry from the next room.

  “Damn it,” Marill said, “they’ve done the trick! One more Czech in the world! We’ll have a drink to that! Come on, Kern! To the greatest mystery in the world, birth. You know why it’s a mystery? Because later on one dies. Prost!”

  The door opened and the second doctor came in. He was spattered with blood and he was sweating. In his hands he held a squalling object as red as a lobster. He was slapping it on the back. “It’s alive,” he growled. “Is there anything here—” He reached for a pile of diapers. “These will have to do—young lady!”

  He handed the child and the diapers to Ruth. “Bathe and wrap up—not too tight. The old woman in there, the proprietress, knows how—but keep it away from the ether, leave it in the bathroom—”

  Ruth took the child. Her eyes seemed to Kern twice as large as usual. The doctor sat down at the table. “Is that cognac?”

  Marill poured him a glass. “How does a doctor feel,” he asked, “when he sees new bombing planes and guns built every day but no new hospitals? After all, the only purpose of the former is to fill the latter.”

  The doctor glanced up. “Up shit creek,” he said. “That’s how! A nice job; you sew them up with the best modern technique so they can be torn to pieces again with the most primitive savagery. Why not kill the children at once? It’s much simpler.”

  “My dear fellow,” answered former deputy Marill, “killing children is murder. Killing grown-ups is a prerogative of national honor.”

  “In the next war there’ll be plenty of women and children killed too,” the doctor muttered. “We stamp out cholera—and it’s a harmless little ailment compared to a dose of war.”

  “Braun!” called the doctor from the next room. “Quick!”

  “Coming!”

  “Damnation! Things don’t seem to be going right,” Marill said.

  After a while Braun came back. He looked worn out. “Tear in the wall of the uterus,” he said. “Nothing to be done. The woman’s bleeding to death.”

  “Nothing to be done?”

  “Nothing. We’ve tried everything. The hemorrhage won’t stop.”

  “Couldn’t you try a transfusion?” asked Ruth, who was standing in the doorway. “You could use my blood.”

  The doctor shook his head. “It wouldn’t help, my child. If it doesn’t stop—”

  He went back, leaving the door open. The rectangle of bright light had a ghostly look. The three sat in silence. Presently the waiter tiptoed in. “Shall I clear off?”

  “No.”

  “Will you have something to drink?” Marill asked Ruth.

  She shook her head.

  “Do. Take some. It will do you good.” He poured her half a glass.

  It had become dark. Across the roofs the last wan greenish-orange light still lingered on the horizon. In it swam the pale moon, pitted with holes like an old brass coin. Voices floated up from the street, loud, self-satisfied and unaware. Suddenly Kern thought of Steiner and of what he had said.… When someone dies beside you, you don’t feel it. That is the misfortune of the world.… Sympathy is not pain, sympathy is dissimulated joy—a sigh of relief that it is not oneself or someone one loves. He looked over at Ruth. He could no longer see her face.

  “What’s that?” Marill asked, listening.

  The long, full note of a violin swept through the gathering night. It died away, rose again, swelling higher and higher, triumphant and defiant—then came a series of bubbling runs, more and more tender, and a melody emerged, simple and sad as the waning light.

  “It’s here in the hotel,” Marill said, peering through the window, “above us on the fourth floor.”

  “I think I know him,” Kern replied. “He’s a violinist I’ve heard once before, but I didn’t know he was living here.”

  “That’s no ordinary violinist. He’s much more than that.”

  “Shall I go up and ask him to stop?”

  “Why?”

  Kern motioned toward the next room. Marill’s eyeglasses flashed. “No. Why do that? One can always be sad. And death is everywhere. It all belongs together.”

  They sat and listened. After a long time Braun came out of the next room. “All over,” he said. “Exit. She didn’t suffer much. And she knows her child is alive. We were able to tell her that.” The three stood up. “We can bring her back in here,” Braun said. “The other room is being used.”

  The woman, white and now thin, lay amid the confusion of blood-soaked cloths, basins, pitchers and the piles of bloody wadding. She wore a detached, austere expression and nothing mattered to her any more. The doctor with the bald spot was working over her. There was something shocking and improper in the contrast—full, lusty, vigorous, relentless life beside the peace of fulfillment.

  “Leave her covered,” the doctor said. “It’s just as well for you not to see any more. It was rather much, even so, wasn’t it, little lady?”

  Ruth shook her head.

  “You behaved like a soldier. No shirking. Do you know what I, Braun, would like to do now? Go and hang myself. Simply go to the next window and hang myself.”

  “You saved the child; that was a fine achievement.”

  “Hang myself! You see, I know that we did all we could; you’re helpless in that situation. Nevertheless I could hang myself.”

  His fleshy face grew red with rage above the collar of the bloodstained gown. “For twenty years I’ve been doing this. And every time a patient slips through my fingers I’d like to hang myself. Silly, isn’t it?” He turned to Kern. “Get the cigarettes out of the left-hand pocket of my coat and put one in my mouth. Yes, little lady, I know what you’re thinking. All this, and then I smoke. I’m going to wash up.” He stared at his rubber gloves as though they were to blame for everything and moved heavily into the bathroom.

  They carried the bed with the dead woman out into the hall and back to her own room. There were a few people outside, those who lived in the big room. “Couldn’t they have taken her to a hospital?” asked a scrawny woman with a throat like a turkey gobbler.

  “No,” Marill said. “Otherwise they’d have done it.”

  “And is she going to stay here all night? Who will be able to sleep with a corpse in the next room?”

  “Then stay awake, grandmother,” Marill replied.

  “I’m no grandmother,” snorted the woman.

  “That’s obvious.”

  The woman gave him a withering look. “And who’s to clean up the room? We shall never be rid of the smell. They could just as well have used Number 10, over on the other side!”

  “You see,” Marill said to Ruth, “this woman is dead. Her child had need of her and very likely her husband too. But that sterile ironing board out there is still alive. Probably she’ll live to a great old age to be a plague to her fellowmen. That’s a puzzle no one can solve.”

  “Evil is stronger; it can withstand more,” Ruth replied grimly.

  Marill looked at her. “Where did you find that out?”

  “Nowadays it’s hard to miss.”

  Marill made no reply but watched her thoughtfully. The two doctors came in. “The proprietress has the child,” said the one with the bald spot. “Someone will come to get it. I’m going to telephone about that right away. And about the woman. Did you know her well?”

  Marill shook his head. “She came a few days ago. I have only talked to her once.”

  “Perhaps she has some papers. The authorities will want them.”

  “I’ll look.”

  The d
octors left. Marill searched the dead woman’s suitcase. There was nothing in it except baby clothes, a blue dress, some underwear and a bright-colored rattle. He put the things back again. “Strange how all this suddenly seems dead too.”

  In her handbag he found a passport and a certificate from the Frankfurt police. He held it up to the light. “Katharina Hirschfeld, née Brinkmann, from Munster, born March 17, 1901.”

  He stood up and looked at the dead woman, at the blond hair and the narrow, hard, Westphalian face. “Katharina Brinkmann who married Hirschfeld.”

  He looked at the passport again. “Still good for three years,” he murmured. “Three years, three years for someone else. The certificate from the police is enough for a grave.”

  He put the papers in his pocket. “I’ll look after this,” he said to Kern. “And I’ll get a candle. I don’t know why, but I have a feeling someone ought to sit with her for a while. It doesn’t do any good, of course—but I have a funny feeling that someone ought to sit with her for a while.”

  “I’ll stay,” Ruth said.

  “So will I,” Kern said.

  “Fine. I’ll come back later and relieve you.”

  The moon had grown brighter. Night had engulfed the sky, deep blue and spacious. Its breath, scented with earth and flowers, drifted into the room.

  Kern stood with Ruth at the window. It seemed to him that he had been a long way off and had come back again. Darkly within him lingered his terror at the screams of the woman in childbirth and at her convulsed and bleeding body. He heard the soft breathing of the girl beside him and he looked at her tender young mouth. He knew suddenly that she, too, belonged to this dark mystery that encircled love with a ring of horror, he sensed that the night too was a part of it, and the flowers and the heavy scent of earth and the sweet notes of the violin over the roofs; he knew that if he turned around the pale mask of death would stare at him in the flickering light of the candle, and for this very reason he felt all the more strongly the warmth beneath his skin which made him shiver and led him to seek for warmth, only for warmth, and for nothing but warmth—

  A strange hand took his and placed it around the smooth young shoulders beside him.

  Chapter Seven

  MARILL WAS SITTING on the cement terrace of the hotel fanning himself with a newspaper. Some books lay in front of him. “Come here, Kern,” he called. “Evening is approaching, the time when beasts seek solitude and man looks for company. How are you making out with your permit?”

  “It’s still good for a week.” Kern sat down beside him.

  “A week in prison is a long time; a week of freedom is short.” Marill tapped the books in front of him. “Exile is educational! At my advanced age I’m learning French and English.”

  “There are times when I can’t stand the word ‘exile,’ ” Kern said morosely.

  Marill laughed. “Nonsense! You’re in the best of company. Dante was an exile. Schiller had to leave his country. Heine. Victor Hugo. Those are just a few. Look up there at pale Brother Moon—an exile from the earth. And Mother Earth herself—an old emigree from the sun.” He squinted. “Of course it might have been better if that particular migration had never taken place and we were still roaring around as fiery gases. Or as sun spots. Don’t you agree?”

  “No,” Kern said.

  “Right.” Marill went on fanning himself with the newspaper. “Do you know what I’ve just been reading?”

  “That the Jews are to blame because it hasn’t rained.”

  “No.”

  “That a shell fragment in the belly is the only true happiness for a he-man.”

  “Not that either.”

  “That the Jews are bolshevists because they are so busy accumulating possessions.”

  “That’s not bad! Go on.”

  “That Christ was an Aryan. The illegitimate son of a German legionnaire—”

  Marill laughed. “No, you’ll never guess. Matrimonial notices. Just listen to this. ‘Where is the dear, sympathetic man who will make me happy? A maiden lady of deeply sensitive nature, distinguished and noble character, with a love for everything good and beautiful and a first-class knowledge of the hotel business, seeks a soul of similar tastes, between thirty-five and forty years of age, in a good business—’ ” He glanced up. “Between thirty-five and forty! Forty-one lets you out—that’s confidence, isn’t it? Or this: ‘Where shall I find my complement? A lady and housekeeper of happy and profoundly inquiring nature, with her zest for life, her temperament and spirit unimpaired by the daily routine, possessed of inner beauty and a talent for friendship, is seeking a gentleman with adequate income, a love of art and sport, who at the same time must be a good fellow’—Magnificent, isn’t it? Or let’s take this: ‘A spiritually lonesome man of fifty, of sensitive nature, younger in appearance than his years, orphaned—’ ” Marill paused. “Orphaned,” he reflected, “at fifty! What a pathetic creature, this defenseless fifty-year-old!

  “Here, my boy.” He held out the newspaper to Kern. “Two pages! Each week two full pages in this one newspaper. Just look at the headings—absolutely crawling with souls, kindness, comradeship, love and friendship! Paradise, that’s what it is! The Garden of Eden in the wasteland of politics. It’s encouraging. It’s refreshing. It makes you see that in these miserable times fine people still exist. Always sets you up, something like that—”

  He threw down the paper. “Why shouldn’t there be a notice like this: ‘Commandant of a concentration camp, kind disposition, sensitive soul—’ ”

  “That’s just what he’d consider himself,” Kern said.

  “Absolutely! The more primitive a man is the better he believes himself to be. You can see that from these notices. Blind conviction,” Marill grinned, “that’s what gives one impetus! Doubt and tolerance are the characteristics of civilized man. Again and again they destroy him. It’s the old story of Sisyphus—one of the profoundest symbols of humanity.”

  Suddenly the hotel clerk appeared, and announced excitedly: “Mr. Kern, there is someone here to see you. He doesn’t look like a policeman.”

  Kern got up quickly. “All right, I’ll come.”

  At first glance Kern failed to recognize the indigent elderly man. It was as though he were looking at a hazy, unfocused image on the ground glass of a camera, which only gradually became sharper and revealed familiar features.

  “Father!” he exclaimed, deeply shocked.

  “Yes, Ludwig.” The elder Kern wiped the perspiration from his forehead. “It’s hot,” he said in a tired voice.

  “Yes, very hot. Come into this room where the piano is. It’s cool in here.”

  They sat down. But almost immediately Kern got up to fetch a lemonade for his father. He was much disturbed. “We haven’t seen each other for a long time, Father,” he said cautiously as he came back.

  The elder Kern nodded. “Will you be able to stay here, Ludwig?”

  “I don’t believe so. You know how it is. They’re very decent about it. Two weeks’ permit and then perhaps two or three days more—but after that, it’s the end.”

  “Do you intend to stay on illegally?”

  “No, Father. There are too many emigrees here; that’s something I didn’t know. I’ll try to get back to Vienna. It’s easier to earn a living there. Now tell me how you’re doing?”

  “I have been sick, Ludwig. Grippe. I got up for the first time a few days ago.”

  “So that was it.” Kern breathed more easily. “You were sick. Are you all right now?”

  “Yes, you can see for yourself—”

  “And what are you doing, Father?”

  “I have found a place for myself.”

  “You’re certainly well guarded,” Kern said smiling.

  The old man looked at him with such a tormented and embarrassed expression that he paused in surprise. “Aren’t things going well with you, Father?” he asked.

  “ ‘Well,’ Ludwig? What does well mean for people like us? A little pe
ace is a great deal. I have an occupation; I keep books. It isn’t much but it’s something to do. At a coal dealer’s.”

  “But that’s splendid! How much do you earn?”

  “I don’t earn anything—just pocket money. But I get my board and lodging.”

  “That’s a good deal. I’ll come and see you tomorrow, Father.”

  “Yes—yes—Or I could come here.”

  “But why should you exert yourself? I’ll come to see you.”

  “Ludwig—” the elder Kern gulped. “I’d rather come here.”

  Kern looked at him in amazement and suddenly he understood everything. That formidable woman at the door…

  For an instant his heart beat like a trip hammer against his ribs. He wanted to leap up, seize his father and carry him away; in a daze he thought of his mother, of Dresden, of their quiet Sunday mornings together—then he looked at the doomed man in front of him, who was watching him with dreadful humility, and he thought: he’s done for, finished. The tension snapped and he felt nothing but infinite pity.

  “They deported me twice, Ludwig. If I had been there just one more day they would have found me. They weren’t unkind. But they cannot keep us all here, you know. I became sick; it rained all the time. Pneumonia with a relapse. And then—she nursed me. Otherwise I should have died, Ludwig. And she doesn’t mean any harm—”

  “I’m sure she doesn’t, Father,” Kern said calmly.

  “I do some work, too. I earn my keep. It doesn’t—you know—it isn’t that way. But I just can’t go on sleeping on benches and being frightened all the time, Ludwig—”

  “I can understand that, Father.”

  The old man stared straight ahead. “Sometimes I think your mother ought to divorce me. Then she could go back to Germany.”

  “Is that what you want?”

  “No, not for myself. For her. After all, I am to blame for everything. If she wasn’t married to me she could go back. I am to blame. For you, too. It’s on my account you no longer have a country.”

  Kern was finding it a hideous experience. This man was no longer his brisk and cheerful father of the Dresden days; this was a pathetic, helpless old man who was related to him and who could no longer cope with life. In bewilderment he got up and did something he had never done before. He put his arms around his father’s narrow, bowed shoulders and kissed him.