Flotsam

by Erich Maria Remarque

  “That’s right.” Kern raised his glass in turn. “We’ll simply assume we’re citizens of the country, won’t we Ruth? People with a home in Zürich who are just making a trip to Lucerne.”

  Ruth nodded and smiled at him.

  “Or tourists,” Binder said, “rich tourists.”

  He emptied his glass and ordered another. “Have one too?” he asked Kern.

  “Later.”

  “Have another. You’ll get into the right mood faster. Please do.”

  “All right.”

  They sat at their table and watched the dancers. There were a number of young people there no older than themselves, but nevertheless the three felt like lost children, sitting there watching with wide-eyed interest but not belonging. It was not only their homelessness that lay like a gray ring around them; it was the joylessness of a youth that was without much hope or future. What’s the matter with us, Kern thought. We were going to be gay. I have everything I could expect and almost more; what’s wrong anyway?

  “Do you like it?” he asked Ruth.

  “Yes, very much,” she replied.

  The place became dark, colored spotlights swept across the floor and a beautiful slim dancer whirled into sight.

  “Wonderful, isn’t it?” Binder asked, applauding.

  “Magnificent!” Kern clapped too.

  “The music’s excellent, don’t you think?”

  “First-rate.”

  They sat there, very eager to find things magnificent and to be happy and gay; but there were dust and ashes in everything and they could not understand why.

  “Why don’t you two dance?” Binder asked.

  “Shall we?” Kern got up.

  “I don’t think I know how,” Ruth said.

  “I don’t know how either. That makes us even.”

  Ruth hesitated an instant, then accompanied Kern to the dance floor. The colored lights flicked over the dancers. “Here comes the violet light,” Kern said. “A good chance to dive in.” They danced cautiously and rather shyly together. Gradually they became more confident, especially when they noticed that no one was paying any attention to them. “How nice it is to dance with you!” Kern said. “There are always fine new things to do with you. It’s not just that you are there—everything around changes and becomes beautiful too!”

  She moved her hand closer around his shoulder and pressed against him. Slowly they glided into the rhythm of the music. The spotlight swept over them like colored water and for an instant they forgot everything else—now they were just pliant young life drawn to one another and freed from the shadows of fear and distrust and flight.

  The music stopped and they went back to their table. Kern looked at Ruth. Her eyes were shining and her face was animated. All at once it had a beaming, self-forgetful and almost bold expression. Damn it, he thought, if one could only live as one would like—and for an instant he felt an agonizing bitterness.

  “Just look who’s coming,” Binder whispered.

  Kern looked up. Arnold Oppenheim, Councilor of Commerce, was striding diagonally across the room on his way to the door. He paused beside their table and glowered down at them. “Very interesting,” he snapped, “very instructive.”

  No one replied. “This is what I get for my generous assistance,” Oppenheim went on indignantly. “My money is immediately squandered in bars.”

  “Man does not live by bread alone, Councilor,” Binder replied calmly.

  “That’s pure rhetoric. Young people like you have no business in bars.”

  “And no business on the road either,” Binder replied.

  Kern turned to Ruth. “May I introduce this gentleman who is so upset about us. He is Councilor Oppenheim. He bought a cake of soap from me. I made a profit of forty centimes on the transaction.”

  Oppenheim was taken aback and looked at him angrily. Then he snorted something that sounded like “Impudence” and stamped away.

  “What was that?” Ruth asked.

  “The commonest thing in the world,” Binder replied derisively. “Conscious charity. Harder than steel.”

  Ruth got up. “He’s sure to get the police. We’ve got to leave.”

  “He’s much too cowardly to do that. There would be unpleasant consequences.”

  “Let’s go just the same.”

  “All right.”

  Binder paid the check and they started back for the boardinghouse. Near the railroad station they saw two men approaching from the opposite direction. “Careful,” Binder whispered. “A detective. Act unconcerned.”

  Kern began to whistle quietly. He took Ruth’s arm and strolled with deliberate slowness. He felt that Ruth wanted to walk faster. He pressed her arm, laughed, and wandered slowly ahead.

  The two men went by them. One of them wore a bowler hat and was carelessly smoking a cigar. The other was Vogt. He recognized them and on his face they saw an almost imperceptible expression of regret.

  Kern looked around presently. The two men had disappeared.

  “Bound for Basle. The twelve-fifteen train to the border,” Binder announced with assurance.

  Kern nodded. “Too humane a judge, as he feared.”

  They walked on. Ruth shivered. “All at once it seems scary here,” she said.

  “France,” Binder replied. “Paris … A big city is best.”

  “Why don’t you go there too?”

  “I don’t know a word of French. And besides I’m a specialist on Switzerland. And then too—” he stopped speaking.

  They walked on in silence. A cool breeze was blowing from the direction of the Lake. Above them the sky was vast and iron-gray and alien.…

  * * *

  In front of Steiner sat the former lawyer, Dr. Goldbach II, once a member of the Court of Appeals in Berlin. He was the new telepathic assistant. Steiner had found him in the Café Sperler.

  Goldbach was about fifty years old and had been ordered out of Germany because he was a Jew. He carried on a business in neckties and illegal legal advice. In this way he earned exactly enough to keep him from starving to death. His wife was thirty years old and very beautiful, and he was in love with her. At the moment she was paying her expenses by selling her jewelry; but he knew she would probably leave him before long. Steiner had listened to his story and got him the job of assistant for the evening performances. And so during the day he could carry on his other professions.

  Very shortly it became apparent that Goldbach was not suited to the job. He kept getting confused and ruining the performances. And then in the evening he would come to Steiner in despair and beg not to be fired.

  “Goldbach,” Steiner said, “it was especially bad today. It really can’t go on this way. Why, you’re forcing me to be a genuine mind-reader.”

  Goldbach gazed at him like a dying sheep dog.

  “It’s all so simple,” Steiner went on, “the number of steps you take to the first tent pole means the number of the row the person is sitting in. Closing your right eye means a woman—your left, a man. The number of fingers casually extended shows how many seats he is from the left. Extending your right foot means the object is hidden on the upper part of the body—the left foot, the lower part. The farther forward the foot, the farther up or down. We’ve already changed the system because you’re so jittery.”

  The lawyer nervously ran his fingers around his collar. “Herr Steiner,” he said, “I know it by heart. Heaven knows I practise it every day. It’s as though I were possessed—”

  “But, Goldbach,” Steiner said patiently, “as a lawyer you must have had to keep much more complicated things in mind.”

  Goldbach wrung his hands. “I know the Civil Code by heart. I know hundreds of citations and decisions. Believe me, Herr Steiner, my memory was the terror of the judges—but this thing is a jinx—”

  Steiner shook his head. “But a child can remember it, Goldbach. Just eight different signs. And then four more for unusual cases.”

  “I know them all right. My God
! I practise them every day. It’s just the excitement that—”

  Goldbach sat, a small huddled figure, on a stool and stared helplessly in front of him. Steiner laughed. “But you were never excited in the courtroom. You have conducted important cases in which you had to have complete and calm command of a complicated subject.”

  “Yes, yes, that was easy. But here! Before it begins I know every detail perfectly—the minute I step inside the tent I get everything confused in my excitement.”

  “For heaven’s sake, what makes you so excited?”

  Goldbach was silent for a moment. Then he said in a whisper, “I don’t know. There’s so much mixed up in it.”

  He got up. “Will you give me one more chance, Herr Steiner?”

  “Of course. But tomorrow it has to work; otherwise we’ll have Potzloch on our necks.”

  Goldbach fumbled in the pocket of his coat and brought out a tie wrapped in tissue paper. He offered it to Steiner. “I brought you a little present. You have so much trouble with me—”

  Steiner waved it aside. “Put it away. We don’t do that sort of thing.”

  “It doesn’t cost me anything.”

  Steiner slapped him on the shoulder. “Attempted bribery by a lawyer. What additional punishment does that bring in a trial?”

  Goldbach smiled feebly. “That’s a question you must put to the prosecuting attorney. The only thing you ask a good defense counsel is, how much less does it bring? Besides, the amount of punishment is the same; only in such cases mitigating circumstances are ruled out. The last celebrated instance was the case of Hauer and Associates.”

  He became animated. “The defense had Freygang. An able man, but too fond of paradox. A paradox is admirable as byplay because it confuses the opposition; but it can’t serve as the basis of a defense. That’s where Freygang came to grief. He tried to plead extenuating circumstances for a country lawyer on the ground of—” he laughed appreciatively—“ignorance of the law.”

  “A brilliant inspiration,” Steiner said.

  “As a joke, yes; but not in a lawsuit.”

  Goldbach stood for a time with his head bent a little to one side, his eyes suddenly sharp between narrowed lids. He was no longer the pathetic exile and tie peddler, he was once more Dr. Goldbach II of the High Court of Appeals, the dreaded tiger of the legal jungles.

  With quick step and erect bearing he walked along the main avenue of the Prater, as he had not walked in a long time. He did not notice the melancholy of the clear autumn night—he was standing in an overcrowded courtroom with his notes in front of him, taking the place of lawyer Freygang. He watched as the state’s attorney finished the summing up for the prosecution and took his seat; he straightened his own robes, rested the knuckles of his hands lightly on the table, swayed a little as a fencer sways and then began in a metallic voice: “High Court of Appeals—Hauer, the accused—”

  Sentence followed sentence, brief and pointed, inexorable in their logic. He took up the arguments of the State’s attorney, one after the other. He appeared to agree with their conclusions, he appeared to prosecute and not to defend. The room became quiet, the judges lifted their heads. But suddenly, with an adroit twist, he changed ground, cited the statute on bribery and in four slashing questions revealed its ambiguity. Then with a snap like a whiplash he introduced the exonerating evidence, now carrying a wholly new weight.

  He stopped in front of the house where he lived and slowly mounted the stairs—moving slower and slower and ever more hesitantly. “Has my wife come in?” he asked the sleepy maid who opened the door.

  “She got in fifteen minutes ago.”

  “Thanks.” Goldbach went along the hall to his room. It was narrow and had a single small window opening on the court. He brushed his hair and then knocked on the communicating door.

  “Yes?”

  His wife was sitting in front of a mirror intently studying her face. She did not turn around. “Well, what now?” she asked.

  “How are things, Lena?”

  “How do you expect them to be in a life like this? They’re bad. What makes you ask such questions anyway?” The woman examined her eyelids.

  “Were you out?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where were you?”

  “Oh, some place or other. I can’t sit all day and stare at the walls, you know.”

  “I don’t want you to do that. I’m happy if you have been entertained.”

  “Well, that makes everything fine, doesn’t it?”

  His wife began to rub cold cream into her skin, slowly and carefully. She spoke to Goldbach with no animation in her voice, with galling indifference as though she were addressing a stick of wood. He stood by the door and looked at her, hungry for a kind word. She had flawless, rosy skin that shone in the lamplight. Her body was soft and plump.

  “Have you found anything yet?” she asked.

  Goldbach seemed to shrink in size. “But, Lena, you know I have no permit to work. I went to my colleague Höpfner; but he can’t do anything for me either. Everything takes so horribly long—”

  “Yes, it’s taken too long already.”

  “I’m doing all I can, Lena.”

  “Yes, I know. I’m tired.”

  “I’m going. Good night.”

  Goldbach closed the door. He was at a loss what to do. Should he burst in and beg her to understand him, plead with her to sleep with him for one night—or? He clenched his fists impotently. Beat her, he thought. Inflict on that rosy flesh all the humiliation and shame he had suffered, let himself go for once, release his rage, smash the room to bits and strike and strike again until that haughty and indifferent mouth screamed and whimpered and the soft body writhed on the floor.

  He trembled as he listened. Karbatke—no, that wasn’t right—Karbutke, that had been the man’s name. He was a thick-set fellow with hair that grew low on his forehead and a face such as a layman pictures a murderer’s to be. And because of that face it had been hard to plead for acquittal on the ground that the man had acted under the influence of passion. He had knocked his girl’s teeth out, broken one arm and torn the corner of her mouth; even at the hearing her eyes were still swollen he had beaten her so; nevertheless she loved this ape with doglike devotion—perhaps because of it. The acquittal had been a great success, a deeply penetrating psychological masterpiece of defense, as his colleague Cohn III had said at the time in congratulating him.

  Goldbach let his hands drop. He looked at the selection of cheap imitation silk ties that lay on his table. Yes, at that time among his colleagues in the lawyers’ chambers, how conclusively he had demonstrated that a woman’s love demands a lord and master; at that time, when he was earning sixty thousand marks a year and was giving Lena the jewelry she was now selling for her own uses.

  He strained his ears as she got into bed. It was something he did every night and hated himself for doing, but he could not help it. His cheeks became mottled as he heard the springs creak. He clenched his teeth, went to the mirror and looked at himself. Then he took a chair and placed it in the middle of the room. “Let’s assume that a woman in the ninth row, three from the end, has hidden a key in her shoe,” he muttered. Carefully he took nine short steps to the chair, winked his right eye quickly, ran three fingers over his forehead and put his left foot forward—farther forward—now he was completely absorbed; he saw Steiner searching and pushed his foot even farther forward.

  In the reddish light of the electric bulb, his shadow, pathetic and grotesque, wavered across the wall.

  * * *

  At about this time Steiner was saying, “I wonder what our kid’s doing now, Lilo. Heaven knows, it’s not just on account of that miserable Goldbach—I really do miss him often, that kid.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  KERN AND RUTH were in Berne. They were living in the Pension Evergreen, which was on Binder’s list. You could stay there for two days without being reported to the police.

  Very late on the second even
ing there was a knock at Kern’s door. He had already undressed and was about to get into bed. For a moment he stood motionless. There was another knock. Noiselessly, on bare feet, he ran to the window. It was too high to jump down and there was no rainpipe by which he could climb to the ground. Slowly he went back and opened the door.

  A man of about thirty stood outside. He was a head taller than Kern, had a round face with deep blue eyes, and crisp, light blond hair. In his hands he held a gray velour hat which he was twisting nervously.

  “Excuse me,” he said. “I am an emigree like you—”

  Kern felt as if he had suddenly grown wings. Saved, he thought. It’s not the police!

  “I am very much embarrassed,” the man went on. “Binding is my name—Richard Binding. I am on my way to Zürich and I haven’t a single centime left to pay for a night’s lodging. I am not going to ask you for money. I just want to enquire whether you will let me sleep here on the floor for the night.”

  Kern looked at him. “Here?” he said. “In this room? On the floor?”

  “Yes. I’m used to it and I’ll promise not to disturb you. I’ve been on the road for three nights now. You know what it’s like sleeping outdoors on benches in constant fear of the police. After that you’re happy if you can find any place where you’re safe for a couple of hours.”

  “I know. But just take a look at this room. There’s not enough room anywhere for you to stretch out. How are you going to sleep here?”

  “That doesn’t matter,” Binding declared eagerly. “It will work all right. Over there in the corner, for instance. I can sleep sitting up or leaning against the wardrobe. That’ll work fine! When you just have a little peace, people like us can sleep anywhere, you know.”

  “No, that won’t do.” Kern thought for a moment. “A room here costs two francs. I can give you the money. That’s the simplest thing to do. Then you can get a good night’s rest.”

  Binding lifted his hands in protest. They were big and red and thick. “I won’t take your money! I haven’t come to that yet. Anyone who lives here needs his few groschen. And besides, I’ve already asked downstairs whether there wasn’t some place I could sleep. There are no rooms free.”