Flotsam

by Erich Maria Remarque

  “Of course.” Twenty francs, Kern thought, will do for four days’ lodging. Perhaps he’ll give me even more.

  “The fact that an individual sometimes has to suffer, or certain groups—” Oppenheim gave a quick snort. “Well, that’s an unavoidable necessity of politics. There is no place for sentimentality in national politics. We simply have to accept that as a fact.”

  “Certainly.”

  “You can see for yourself,” Oppenheim went on, “the people are employed. National dignity has been enhanced. There have been extreme measures, of course, but that always happens at the beginning. It will be corrected. Just consider how our armed forces have been transformed. Why, it’s unique in history! Suddenly we have become again a powerful nation. Without a large well-equipped army a country is nothing, absolutely nothing.”

  “I don’t know anything about such matters,” Kern replied.

  Oppenheim gave him an irritated look. “But you should!” he declared getting up. “Especially abroad!” He made a quick grab for a gnat and methodically squashed it. “And now they’re afraid of us again. Take my word for it, fear is the most important thing of all. It’s only when the other fellow is afraid that you can accomplish anything.”

  “I know that,” Kern said.

  Oppenheim emptied his glass and took a few strides through the garden. Beneath them the Lake gleamed like a blue shield fallen from heaven. “And what about you?” he asked in an altered tone. “Where do you want to go?”

  “To Paris.”

  “Why Paris?”

  “I don’t know. I want a goal of some sort, and they say it’s easier to get on there.”

  “Why don’t you stay in Switzerland?”

  “Councilor Oppenheim,” Kern said, suddenly breathless, “if I could only do that! If you would only help to make it possible for me to stay here. Perhaps you would give me a recommendation, or the chance to work. If you would use your name—”

  “I can’t do a thing,” Oppenheim interrupted him quickly. “Nothing at all! Absolutely nothing! That’s not what I meant, anyway. It was just a question. I have to remain politically neutral in every respect. I can’t allow myself to become involved.”

  “But there’s nothing political about this.”

  “Nowadays everything is political. Switzerland at present is my host. No, no, don’t ask me anything like that.” He was becoming more and more angry. “And what else did you want to see me about?”

  “I wanted to ask whether you could use any of these trifles.” Kern brought some of his wares out of his pockets.

  “What have you here? Perfume? Toilet water? No use at all for them.” Oppenheim pushed the bottle aside. “Soap? Soap is always useful. Here, show it to me. Fine. I’ll take this piece. Wait a minute—” He reached in his pocket, hesitated for an instant, put a few coins back and laid two francs on the table. “There, I guess that’s a good price, isn’t it?”

  “As a matter of fact, it’s too much. The soap costs one franc.”

  “Well, let it go,” Oppenheim said generously. “But don’t tell anyone about this. As it is, I’m bothered to death.”

  “Councilor Oppenheim,” Kern said with restraint, “for that very reason I will only accept the price of the soap.”

  Oppenheim looked at him in surprise. “Well, just as you like. It’s a good principle, of course. Never accept gifts. That’s always been my motto too.”

  That afternoon Kern succeeded in selling two cakes of soap, a comb and three cards of safety pins. The profit was three francs. Finally, more from indifference than hope, he went into a small linen store belonging to one Frau Sara Grünberg.

  Frau Grünberg, a woman with untidy hair and a pince-nez, listened to him patiently.

  “This isn’t your regular business, is it?” she asked.

  “No,” Kern said, “and I’m not very good at it either.”

  “Would you like work? I happen just now to be taking inventory and I could use an extra man for two or three days. Seven francs a day and good food. You can come tomorrow at eight.”

  “Thank you,” Kern said, “but—”

  “I know—but no one’s going to find out anything from me. And now give me a bar of soap. Here’s three francs, is that enough?”

  “It’s too much.”

  “It is not too much. It’s too little. Don’t lose your nerve.”

  “Nerve alone won’t get you far,” Kern said, accepting the money. “But now and then you have a little luck as well. That’s better.”

  “Then start right away and help me clean up. One franc an hour. Do you call that luck?”

  “Certainly,” Kern said. “Luck’s something you’ve got to recognize when you see it. Then it comes oftener.”

  “Do you learn things like that on the road?” asked Frau Grünberg.

  “Not on the road but in the intervals when I have a chance to think. I try to learn something then from what’s been happening to me. Every day you learn something. Sometimes even from Councilors of Commerce.”

  “Do you know anything about linen?”

  “Only the coarsest sort. A short time ago I spent two months in an institution learning how to sew. The simplest sort of articles, to be sure.”

  “Never does any harm,” Frau Grünberg remarked. “For instance, I know how to pull teeth. Learned how twenty years ago from a dentist. Who knows, perhaps I’ll make my fortune that way sometime.”

  Kern worked until ten o’clock in the evening and received a good supper and five francs in addition. That, added to the rest, was enough for two days, and it raised his spirits more than they would have been raised by a hundred francs from Councilor Oppenheim.

  Ruth was waiting for him in a little boardinghouse they had selected from Binder’s list of addresses. It was possible to stay there for a few days without being reported to the police. She was not alone. At the table beside her on the little terrace sat a slim, middle-aged man.

  “Thank heaven, you’re here,” Ruth said, getting up. “I was worried about you.”

  “You mustn’t worry. Whenever you feel inclined to worry usually nothing happens. Accidents only occur when you’re not counting on them.”

  “That is a sophism but not a philosophy,” said the man who was sitting with Ruth.

  Kern turned toward him and the man smiled. “Come and have a glass of wine with me. Fräulein Holland will tell you that I am harmless. My name is Vogt, and I used to be a university instructor in Germany. Keep me company with my last bottle of wine.”

  “Why your last?”

  “Because tomorrow I’m going to become a lodger for a while. I’m tired and I have to rest.”

  “A lodger?” Kern asked in perplexity.

  “I call it so. You might add—in prison. Tomorrow I’m going to report to the police and tell them I have been an illegal resident in Switzerland for two months. As punishment I will be given a few weeks in jail because I have already been deported twice. The state boardinghouse. It is important to say you have been in the country for some time; otherwise breaking the order to stay out of the country counts as an act of self-preservation and you are simply put across the border again.”

  Kern looked at Ruth. “If you need money—I’ve earned quite a bit today.”

  Vogt waved aside the offer. “Thank you, no. I still have ten francs. That’s all I need for the wine and the night. I am just tired; I want a little rest. And people like us can find that only in jail. I am fifty-five years old and not in very good health. I am really very tired of running around and hiding. Come and sit down with me. When one is so much alone company is a great pleasure.” He filled the glasses. “It is Neuchâtel, sharp and clear as glacier water.”

  “But prison—” Kern said.

  “The prison in Lucerne is good. I am acquainted with it—That’s a luxury I grant myself, to choose where I want to go to jail. My only fear is that I won’t be admitted. That I will appear before judges who are too humane and who will simply deport me. T
hen the whole thing will start over again. And for us so-called Aryans it’s harder than for Jews. We have no religious organizations to help us—and no fellow believers. But let’s not talk about these things—”

  He lifted his glass. “We’ll drink to the beauty of the world; that is imperishable.”

  They touched glasses with a clear tinkling sound. Kern drank the cool wine. The juice of the grape, he thought. Oppenheim. He sat down with Vogt and Ruth at the table.

  “I thought that I was going to have to be alone again,” Vogt said, “and now you’re here. How beautiful the evening is with its clear autumn light!”

  They sat for a long time in silence on the half-lighted terrace. A few late nocturnal butterflies were hurling their heavy bodies against the hot glass of the electric bulbs. Vogt leaned back in his chair with a rather absent-minded but very peaceful look on his thin face and in his clear eyes; and all at once it seemed to the other two that here was a man from some past century calmly and collectedly taking leave of his life and the world.

  “Serenity,” Vogt said thoughtfully after a pause, almost as though he were talking to himself, “serenity, calm daughter of tolerance, has been lost to our times. Too many things are required for it—knowledge, superiority to circumstance, tolerance and resignation in the face of the inevitable. All that has taken flight before the brutal military ideal which today is intolerantly trying to improve the world. Those who want to improve the world have always made it worse—and dictators are never serene.”

  “Nor are those to whom they dictate,” Kern said.

  Vogt nodded and slowly took a sip of the bright wine. Then he motioned toward the silver Lake sparkling in the light of the half-moon, and towards the mountains that surrounded it like the sides of a precious chalice. “No one can dictate to them,” he said, “nor to the butterflies. Nor to the leaves of the trees. Nor, for that matter, to those—” He pointed to a few well-read books. “Hölderlin and Nietzsche. One wrote the purest hymns to life—the other conceived the divine dancer full of Dionysian ecstasy—and both went mad—as though nature had set a limit somewhere.”

  “Dictators don’t go mad,” Kern said.

  “Of course not.” Vogt got up smiling. “But they do not become sane either.”

  “Are you really going to the police tomorrow?” Kern asked.

  “Yes, I am. Good-by, and thank you for wanting to help me. I am going down to spend an hour beside the lake.”

  He went slowly down the street. It was deserted and they could hear his steps for some time after he had disappeared.

  Kern looked over at Ruth and she smiled at him. “Are you afraid?” he asked.

  She shook her head.

  “It’s different with us,” he said. “We’re young, we’ll get along.”

  Two days later Binder blew in from Zürich, cool, elegant and self-assured. “How are you?” he asked. “Everything all right?”

  Kern told him about his experience with Councilor Oppenheim. Binder listened attentively. He laughed when Kern described how he had begged Oppenheim to use his influence in his behalf. “That was your mistake,” he said. “That man is the most cowardly toad I know. But I’m going to launch a punitive expedition against him.”

  He went off and returned that evening with a twenty-franc note in his hand.

  “Nice work,” Kern said.

  Binder shrugged in disgust. “It wasn’t pretty; you can take my word for that. Herr Oppenheim, the nationalist, who understands everything because he’s a millionaire. Money ruins the character, doesn’t it?”

  “And lack of it too.”

  “That’s right. But not so often. I gave him a thorough scare with wild reports from Germany. Fear is the only thing that will make him give. Hoping to bribe fate. Doesn’t it say that on the list?”

  “No. It says: ‘Gives, but only under pressure.’ ”

  “That’s the same thing. And perhaps sometime we’ll run into Councilor Oppenheim as a fellow hobo on the road. That would make up to me for a lot.”

  Kern laughed. “He’ll get around it somehow. But why are you in Lucerne?”

  “It got a little too hot in Zürich. There was a detective after me. And besides—” his face darkened—“I come here from time to time to get letters from Germany.”

  “From your parents?”

  “From my mother.”

  Kern was silent. He was thinking about his mother to whom he wrote occasionally. But he never received an answer because he was always changing his address.

  “Do you like cake?” Binder asked after a while.

  “Yes, of course. Have you some?”

  “Yes, just wait a minute.”

  He came back with a package. It was a cardboard box in which there was a Madeira cake carefully wrapped in wax paper. “It came through the customs today,” Binder said. “The people here got it for me.”

  “But you must eat it yourself,” Kern said. “Your mother baked it with her own hands. I can see that.”

  “Yes, she baked it herself. That’s the reason I won’t eat it. I can’t do it, not a bite.”

  “I can’t understand that. Good Lord, if I had a cake from my mother I would be eating it for a month, a small slice every evening!”

  “Don’t misunderstand me,” Binder said with suppressed emotion. “She didn’t send it to me. It was intended for my brother.”

  Kern stared at him. “But you said your brother was dead.”

  “He is, but she doesn’t know it.”

  “She doesn’t know it?”

  “No, I can’t tell her. I simply can’t do it. She’ll die when she finds out. He was her darling. She liked him better than me. He was better, too. That’s why he couldn’t stand it. I’ll get through! Of course! You can see that.” He threw Oppenheim’s money on the floor.

  Kern picked up the bill and put it back on the table. Binder sat down on a chair, lighted a cigarette, and drew a letter out of his pocket. “Here, just read this—this is her last letter. Came with the cake. When you read it you’ll understand how this sort of thing makes you feel.”

  It was a letter written on pale blue paper in a delicate, slanting hand as though written by a young girl.

  My dearest Leopold:—

  Your letter reached me yesterday and I was so overjoyed to get it that I had to sit down and wait a while until I became calmer. Then I opened it and began to read. My heart is no longer so good after all this confusion, as you can well imagine. How happy I am that you have finally found work! Even if you don’t earn much don’t be worried; if you are industrious you will get ahead. Then later on you will have a chance to return to your studies. Dear Leopold, please look out for George. He is so rash and thoughtless. But as long as you are there, I am not worried. This morning I baked a Madeira cake for you, the kind you have always liked. I am sending it to you and hoping that it won’t be too dry when it arrives, although of course it is all right for Madeira cake to be pretty dry. That’s why I chose it instead of coffee ring, your favorite. That would be certain to dry out on the way. Dear Leopold, write me soon again if you have time. I am always so worried. Haven’t you a picture of yourself? I hope we shall all soon be together again. Don’t forget me.

  Your loving MOTHER.

  Greetings to George.

  Kern put the letter back on the table. He did not place it in Binder’s hand; he laid it near him on the table.

  “A picture,” Binder said. “Where can I get a picture?”

  “Has she just received the last letter your brother wrote?”

  Binder shook his head. “He shot himself a year ago. Since then I’ve been writing to her. Every week or two. In my brother’s handwriting. I learned to copy it. She must not know. Absolutely not. Don’t you agree that she must not know?”

  He looked earnestly at Kern. “Tell me what you think.”

  “Yes. I believe it’s better this way.”

  “She is sixty, and her heart is bad. Probably she won’t live much longer.
Very likely I’ll be able to keep her from finding out. That he should have done it himself, you understand, that’s something she would never be able to accept.”

  “Yes.”

  Binder got up. “I must write her again now. From him. Then it will be over. A picture—where can I get a picture?” He picked up the letter from the table. “Take the cake, I beg you. If you don’t want it, give it to Ruth. You don’t have to tell her the whole story about it.”

  Kern hesitated.

  “It’s a good cake. I’d like to take just a small slice—just so as to have—”

  He took a knife out of his pocket, cut a narrow slice from the edge of the cake and placed it in his mother’s letter. “Do you know,” he said then with a strange, disillusioned look, “my brother never really loved Mother very much. But I—I! Funny, isn’t it?”

  He went up to his room.

  It was going on eleven in the evening. Ruth and Kern were sitting on the terrace. Binder came down the stairs. He was his cool and elegant self once more.

  “Let’s go somewhere,” he said. “I can’t go to sleep this early and I don’t want to be alone tonight. Just for an hour. I know a place that’s safe. Do it as a favor to me.”

  Kern looked at Ruth. “Are you tired?” he asked.

  She shook her head.

  “Do it as a favor to me,” Binder repeated. “Just for an hour. Get a change of scene.”

  “All right.”

  He took them to a café where there was dancing. Ruth looked inside. “This is too elegant,” she said. “This is not for us.”

  “For whom should it be if not for us cosmopolitans?” Binder replied sardonically. “Come on. It’s not really so elegant when you get a good look at it. Just elegant enough to be safe from detectives. And a cognac here costs no more than anywhere else. On the other hand, the music is much better. And there are times when you need this sort of thing. Come on please. There’s a table now.”

  They sat down and ordered drinks. “Here’s to nothing!” Binder said, raising his glass. “Let’s be gay. Life is short, and afterwards no one gives a damn whether we’ve had a good time or not.”