There was a shout behind him. The group of Jewish students had succeeded in breaking through. Some of them were running across the square. The fight changed ground, and suddenly Kern and Ruth were in the middle of it.
“Ah, Rebecca! Sarah!” One of the attackers tried to get his hands on Ruth.
Kern felt something like the snapping of a spring. He was much surprised to see the student slowly collapse to one side. He was not conscious of having hit him.
“Pretty punch!” someone beside him said admiringly.
It was the big fair-haired student, who had seized two others and was engaged in knocking their heads together. “No harm done,” he said, dropping them like wet sacks and making a grab for two more.
Kern felt a cane strike his arm. He leaped forward, striking about him in a red fog. He smashed a pair of eyeglasses and jumped aside to avoid someone. Then there was a dreadful roaring in his head and the red fog turned black.
He came to at the police station. His collar was torn, his cheek was bleeding and his head kept on roaring. He sat up.
“Hello,” said a voice beside him. It was the big blond student.
“Damn it!” Kern said. “Where are we?”
The other laughed. “In detention, my friend. A day or two and then they’ll let us out.”
“They won’t let me out.” Kern looked around. There were eight of them there. All Jews, except for the blond student. Ruth was not among them.
The student laughed again. “Why are you peering around like that? You think they pinched the wrong ones? You’re mistaken, my friend. The guilty ones are not the attackers but those they attack. They are the cause of the disturbance. It’s the latest psychology.”
“Did you see what happened to the girl who was with me?” Kern asked.
“The girl?” The blond student reflected. “Nothing will have happened to her. What would happen? After all, girls don’t get mixed up in a fist fight.”
“Are you sure of that?”
“Yes. Fairly. And besides, the police got there just then.”
Kern stared in front of him. The police. That was just it. But Ruth’s passport was still valid. They couldn’t do much to her. But even that was too much.
“Was anyone besides us arrested?” he asked.
The student shook his head. “I don’t think so. I was the last one. And they hesitated about running me in.”
“Are you sure you were the last?”
“Yes. Otherwise the rest would be here. We’re still at the police station, you know.”
Kern sighed with relief. Perhaps nothing had happened to Ruth.
The blond student looked at him ironically. “Feel sunk, don’t you? That’s the way it always is when you’re innocent. It’s easier when you’ve done something to deserve punishment. You know, I’m the only one who belongs here according to the good old-fashioned ideas of right and wrong. I got into it of my own free will. And I’m glad I did.”
“It was decent of you,” Kern said.
“The hell with decency!” The blond student made a sweeping gesture. “I’m an anti-Semite from away back. But you can’t just stand and watch a slaughter like that. Incidentally, that was a pretty straight right of yours. Sharp and quick. Ever studied boxing?”
“No.”
“Then you ought to learn. You have natural ability. Only you’re too much of a hothead. If I were the Jewish Pope I’d ordain an hour’s boxing lesson every day for my people. You’d see how quick the boys would get respect for you.”
Kern cautiously felt his head. “At the moment I’m not in the mood for boxing.”
“Rubber blackjack,” the student commented matter-of-factly. “Our brave police force. Always on the winning side. Tonight your head will be better. Then we’ll begin to practise. We’ve got to have something to do.” He drew his long legs up on the bench and looked around. “We’ve been here two hours already! Damned boring spot. If we only had a deck of cards. Surely someone here would know how to play blackjack or one of those games.” He measured the Jewish students with a contemptuous look.
“I have a deck with me.” Kern reached in his pocket. Steiner had made him a present of the pack that had belonged to the pickpocket. Since that time he had carried it with him constantly as a sort of talisman.
The student looked at him admiringly. “Good for you! Now don’t tell me that the only thing you can play is bridge. Every Jew can play bridge and nothing else.”
“I’m a half-Jew. I play skat, faro, jass and poker,” Kern replied with pride.
“First-rate! You’re ahead of me there. I can’t play jass.”
“It’s a Swiss game. I’ll teach you if you like.”
“Good. In return I’ll give you boxing lessons. An exchange of spiritual values.”
They played until evening. The Jewish students meanwhile discussed politics and justice. They reached no conclusion. Kern and the student played jass at first, and later poker. At poker Kern won seven schillings. He had learned Steiner’s lessons well. Gradually his head became clearer. He avoided thinking about Ruth. There was nothing he could do for her; brooding about her would make him dull. And he wanted to have his wits about him when he was brought before the judge.
The student threw down the cards and paid Kern. “Now we come to the second part,” he said. “Come on! We’re going to make a second Dempsey out of you.”
Kern got up. He was still very weak. “I don’t think I can do it,” he said. “My head won’t stand another blow.”
“Your head was clear enough to win seven schillings from me,” the student replied grinning. “Come on, down with the inner cur! Give the Aryan ruffian inside you a chance to speak. Muzzle your humane Jewish half.”
“I’ve been doing that for a year.”
“Splendid! For the time being, then, we’ll spare your head. Let’s begin with the legs. The chief thing about boxing is to be light on your feet. You must dance. Dancing you knock out your opponents’ teeth. Applied Nietzsche!”
The student assumed position, bent his knees, and took a number of steps alternately forward and back. “Imitate that.”
Kern imitated it.
The Jewish students had stopped disputing. One of them, with eyeglasses, got up. “Would you teach me too?” he asked.
“Of course! Off with your glasses and at it!” The blond student slapped him on the shoulder. “Rise and foam, blood of Maccabees!”
Two more pupils applied. The rest remained seated on the bench, disdainful but curious.
“Two on the right. Two on the left.” The blond student directed. “Now for a lightning course. We are going to make up for thousands of years of neglect in your education in barbarism. You don’t hit with your arm, you hit with your whole body—”
He took off his coat. The others followed suit. Then he gave a short explanation of body movement and drilled them in it. The four hopped about zealously in the half-darkened cell.
The blond student cast a fatherly glance over his sweating pupils. “There,” he announced after a while, “you’ve got that now. Practise it while you serve your week for inciting noble Aryans to race hatred. Now stop for a couple of minutes. Take a deep breath! And now I’ll show you the short punch, the tricky middle ground of boxing.”
He showed them how it was done. Then he rolled his coat into a ball and, holding it at the height of a man’s head, made the others practise hitting it.
Just as they were getting well warmed up the door opened. A jailer came in with two steaming basins. “Why, this is—” Quickly he set down the basins and shouted back into the corridor: “Guard! Hurry! This crowd is going on fighting right here in the police station!”
Two guards rushed in. The blond student quietly laid down his coat. The four boxing pupils had quickly effaced themselves in the corners. “Rhinoceros!” the blond student said with great authority to the jailer. “Blockhead! Miserable prison oaf!” He turned to the guard. “What you see here,” he said, “is an instruct
ion period in modern humanism. Your appearance, with your eager hands on your blackjacks, is unnecessary. Understand?”
“No,” said one of the guards.
The blond student looked at him pityingly. “Physical culture. Gymnastics. Bodily exercise. Now do you understand? Is that supposed to be our supper?”
“Sure,” said the jailer.
The blond student bent over one of the bowls and screwed up his face in disgust. “Take it out!” he roared suddenly. “How dare you bring in this slop? Dishwater for the son of the President of the Senate? Do you want to be demoted?” He stared at the guards. “I’m going to make a complaint. I wish to speak to the police captain immediately! Take me to the Commissioner of Police at once. Tomorrow my father’s going to make things hot for the Minister of Justice on your account.”
The two guards stared up at him. They did not know whether they dared be rude or had better be careful. The blond student stared back fixedly.
“Sir,” the older of the two said presently in a cautious tone, “this is the regular prison food.”
“Am I in prison?” The student was a picture of injured dignity. “I am in detention. Don’t you know the difference?”
“I do, yes—” The guard was now visibly shaken. “You can, of course, buy your own food, sir. That is your right. If you’re willing to pay for it, the jailer can bring you a goulash—”
“At last someone is talking sense.” The blond student’s manner softened.
“And perhaps a beer too—”
The blond student looked at the guard. “I like you. I’m going to use my influence in your behalf. What’s your name?”
“Rudolf Egger, your grace.”
“Quite so. Carry on.” The student got some money out of his pocket and gave it to the jailer. “Two orders of beef goulash with potatoes. A bottle of plum brandy—”
The guard Rudolf Egger opened his mouth. “Spirits—”
“Are allowed,” the student finished the sentence. “Two pitchers of beer—one for the guard and one for us.”
“Many thanks. Your servant, sir,” said Rudolf Egger.
“If the beer isn’t fresh and cold,” the son of the President of the Senate explained to the jailer, “I’ll saw your foot off. If it’s good, you shall keep the change.”
The jailer smiled happily. “It shall be as you say, Count.” He beamed. “I can recognize genuine, golden Viennese humor.”
The food came and the student invited Kern to join him. At first Kern refused. He saw the Jews eating their slop with earnest faces. “Be a traitor! It’s the style nowadays,” the student encouraged him. “Besides this is a meal between fellow card-players.”
Kern sat down. The goulash was good and after all he had no passport and moreover was only half Jew.
“Does your father know you’re here?” Kern asked.
“Good God!” The student laughed. “My father! He has a dry-goods business in Linz.”
Kern looked at him in astonishment. “My friend,” the student said calmly, “you seem not to know that we are living in the age of bluff. Democracy has given place to demagogy. A natural sequence. Prost!”
He uncorked the plum brandy and offered a glass to the student with spectacles. “Thanks, but I don’t drink,” the latter said in embarrassment.
“Of course not! I might have guessed it.” The fair-haired student tossed off the glass himself. “For that very reason others will persecute you forever. How about us, Kern? Shall we kill the bottle between us?”
“Yes.”
They emptied the bottle. Then they lay down on their plank beds. Kern thought he would be able to sleep. But he kept waking up. Damn it, he thought, what have they done with Ruth? And how long are they going to keep me locked up?
He was given two months in prison. Assault and battery, disorderly conduct, resisting the police, repeated illegal residence—he was surprised he hadn’t been given ten years.
He said good-by to the blond student, who was released at that time. Then he was taken downstairs. He had to turn over his possessions and was given prison clothing. While he stood under the shower it occurred to him that he had felt depressed once because he was handcuffed. That seemed a tremendously long time ago. Now his only feeling about prison clothes was that they were a help; he wouldn’t be wearing out his own things.
His fellow prisoners were a thief, a petty swindler, and a Russian professor from Kazan who had been picked up as a vagrant. All four were put to work in the prison tailor shop.
The first evening was bad. Kern remembered what Steiner had once told him—that he would get used to it. But nevertheless he sat on his bunk staring at the wall.
“Do you speak French?” the professor asked him suddenly from his bed.
Kern started. “No.”
“Do you want to learn how?”
“Yes. We can start right now.”
The professor got up. “You have to occupy yourself, you know. Otherwise your thoughts will start gnawing at you.”
“Yes.” Kern nodded. “Besides it will be useful. I’ll probably have to go to France when I get out of here.”
They sat down beside each other on a corner of the lower bunk. Above them the swindler was making a noise. He had a stump of a lead pencil and was covering the walls with obscene drawings. The professor was very thin. His prison clothes were much too big for him. He had a wild red beard and a childlike face with blue eyes. “Let’s begin with the most beautiful and futile word in the world,” he said with a charming smile that had no irony in it, “with the word ‘freedom’—la liberté.”
Kern learned a great deal during this time. At the end of three days he could talk without moving his lips to the prisoners in front of him and behind him during the exercise period in the courtyard. In the tailor shop he memorized French verbs in the same way with the professor. In the evening when he was tired of French, the thief taught him how to pick a lock with a wire and how to quiet watchdogs. He also taught him the times when all the various fruits ripened in the fields, and the technique of crawling unobserved into a haymow. The swindler had smuggled in with him a few copies of the World of Fashion. It was the only thing, aside from the Bible, that they had to read, and they learned from it how to dress at diplomatic receptions and on what occasions a red or white carnation was proper with a dinner coat. Unfortunately the thief was incorrigible on one point; he maintained that a black cravat was the right thing with tails—he had often enough seen waiters in restaurants dressed that way.
As they were being taken out of their cell on the morning of the fifth day, the jailer gave Kern a violent shove so that he lurched against the wall. “Look out, you ass!” he roared.
Kern pretended he couldn’t stand up. He hoped in this way to get a chance to kick the jailer in the shins without being punished. It would have looked like an accident. But before he was able to do it the jailer plucked him by the sleeve and whispered: “Ask to leave the room in an hour. Say you have stomach cramps.” Then he shouted, “Get going! Do you think we’re all going to wait for you?”
During the walk Kern speculated as to whether the jailer was trying to get him in trouble. They hated each other. Later in the tailor shop he discussed the subject in a noiseless whisper with the thief, who was an expert on prisons.
“You can always leave the room,” the latter explained. “That’s a human necessity. No one can get you for that. Some people have to go often, and some not so often. That’s nature. But after that look out!”
“All right. I’ll just see what he wants. Anyhow it’s a change.”
Kern pretended to have stomach cramps and the jailer led him out of the room. He took him to the washroom and looked around. “Cigarette?” he asked.
They were forbidden to smoke. Kern laughed. “So that’s it! No, my friend, you’ll not get me that way.”
“Oh, shut up! You think I’m trying to get you in trouble, do you? Do you know Steiner?”
Kern stared at the jailer. �
��No,” he said presently. He guessed that this was a trick to catch Steiner.
“You don’t know Steiner?”
“No.”
“All right then, listen. Steiner has sent word to you that Ruth is safe. You need have no anxiety. When you get out you’re to have yourself deported to Czecho and then come back. Now do you know him?”
Kern suddenly realized he was shaking. “Cigarette now?” the jailer asked. Kern nodded. The jailer took a package of Memphis and matches out of his pocket. “Here, take them! From Steiner. If you’re caught, I don’t know anything about it. And now sit down in there and smoke one of them. Blow the smoke down the can. I’ll watch outside.”
Kern sat down on the toilet. He took out a cigarette, broke it in two and lit one of the halves. He smoked slowly with deep inhalations. Ruth was safe. Steiner was on the lookout. He stared at the dirty wall with its obscene drawings and thought this was the finest room in the world.
“Look,” said the jailer as he came out. “Why didn’t you tell me you knew Steiner?”
“Have a cigarette,” Kern said.
The jailer shook his head. “I wouldn’t think of it.”
“Where did you know him?” Kern asked.
“He got me out of a mess once. A damned bad mess. Now come along.”
They went back to the tailor shop. The professor and the thief looked at Kern. He nodded and sat down. “Everything all right?” the professor asked noiselessly.
Kern nodded again.
“Well, let’s get on,” the professor whispered into his red beard. “Aller. Irregular verb. Je vais, tu vas, il …?”
“No,” Kern said. “Today we’ll take up something else. What’s the word ‘to love’?”
“ ‘To love’? Aimer. But that’s a regular verb—”
“That’s the very reason,” Kern said.
The professor was released at the end of four weeks; the thief at the end of six; the swindler a few days later. Toward the end he tried to convert Kern to homosexuality; Kern was strong enough to keep him away. Finally he knocked him out with the short punch the blond student had taught him; after that he had peace.
Flotsam Page 16
