Flotsam

by Erich Maria Remarque

  The light went out and he saw a shadow. She must stay in bed, he thought, suddenly filled with joy. She waved; he waved back wildly. Then he remembered that she could not see him. Desperately he looked around for a street light, for any light at all before which he could stand. There was none to be seen. Then an inspiration came. He pulled out of his pocket the package of matches he had got that morning with his two cigarettes, struck one of them and held it above his head.

  The shadow waved. He waved back cautiously with the match. Then he tore out two more and held them so they lighted his face. Ruth waved eagerly. He signaled her to go back to bed. She shook her head. He held the light near his face and nodded emphatically. She did not understand him. He saw that he would have to go away to make her return to bed. He took a few steps to show her he was going. Then he threw all the burning matches high in the air. They fell flickering to the ground and went out. Kern went to the next corner and then turned around. The light continued to burn for an instant, then went out. And the window seemed darker than all the others.

  * * *

  “Congratulations, Goldbach,” Steiner said. “For the first time today you were really good. Calm and confident and no mistakes. It was first-rate, the way you gave me the tip about the watch hidden in that woman’s brassière. That was really hard.”

  Goldbach looked at him gratefully. “I don’t know myself how it happened. It came suddenly like a revelation between yesterday and today. You just watch, I’m going to become a good assistant. I’ll start tomorrow to think up new tricks.”

  Steiner laughed. “Come on, we’ll have a drink to this happy occasion.” He got out a bottle of apricot brandy and poured drinks. “Prosit, Goldbach!”

  “Prosit!” Goldbach choked over his drink and put the glass down. “Excuse me,” he said. “I’m not used to it any more. If you don’t mind I’d like to go now.”

  “Sure. We’re through for the day. But aren’t you going to finish your drink?”

  “Yes, thank you.” Goldbach drank obediently.

  Steiner shook hands with him. “And don’t practise too many tricks. Otherwise I’ll get lost among your subtleties.”

  “No, no.”

  Goldbach strode quickly down the boulevard to the city. He felt as light as though a heavy burden had fallen from his shoulders. But it was a lightness without joy—as though his bones were full of air and his will was a vapor which he could not control and which was at the mercy of every passing breeze.

  “Is my wife in?” he asked the maid at the door.

  “No,” she replied and laughed.

  “Why are you laughing?”

  “Why shouldn’t I laugh? Is there a law against laughing?”

  Goldbach looked at her abstractedly. “I didn’t mean that,” he muttered. “Go ahead and laugh.”

  He walked along the narrow corridor to his room and listened through the partition. He heard nothing. Carefully he brushed his hair and his suit; then he knocked at the communicating door, despite the fact that the maid had said his wife was not there. Perhaps she’s come in meanwhile, he thought. Perhaps the maid didn’t see her. He knocked again. There was no reply. Cautiously he raised the latch and went in. The light on the dressing table was burning. He stared at it like a sailor watching a beacon. She’ll be back right away, he told himself, otherwise the light wouldn’t be on.

  He already knew, somewhere in the emptiness of his bones, in the gray, scattered ashes in his veins, that she would not come back. He knew it below the level of his thought, but with the obstinacy of fear his mind held fast, as though to a projecting timber that would save him from the flood, to the meaningless words: She will certainly come back—otherwise the light would not be burning…

  Then he discovered the emptiness of the room. The brushes and jars of cold cream were gone from in front of the mirror; the door of the closet was half-open, revealing that the rose and pastel-colored dresses were missing; the closet yawned black and abandoned. Only her scent was still in the room, a breath of life, but already fainter—memory and pain lying in wait. Then he found the letter and wondered dully why he had missed it for so long—it was lying in the middle of the table.

  It was some time before he opened it. He knew everything anyway—why should he open it? Finally he slit the envelope with a forgotten hairpin that he found lying beside him on the chair. He read the letter but the words could not penetrate the sheath of ice around his brain; they remained dead, words out of a newspaper or book, accidental words that had no connection with him. The hairpin in his hand had more life.

  He sat there quietly waiting for the pain and surprised that it did not come. There was only a dead feeling, an immense let-down, like the anxious moment before falling asleep when he had taken too much bromide.

  He sat thus for a long time, staring at his hands which lay on his knees like dead white animals, like pale insentient sea-monsters with five flaccid tentacles. They were no longer his. No part of him was any longer his; he was a strange body with eyes turned inward, scrutinizing a paralysis that showed no sign of life but an occasional quiver.

  Finally he got up and went back to his own room. He saw the ties lying on the table. Mechanically he got out a pair of scissors and began to cut the ties into pieces methodically, strip by strip. He did not let the fragments fall to the floor but pedantically gathered them up in the hollow of his hand and arranged them on the table in multicolored piles. In the midst of this automatic activity he suddenly realized what he was doing; he laid aside the scissors and stopped. But he forgot immediately what he had done. He walked stiffly across the room and sat down in a corner. He remained crouching there, continually rubbing his hands with a strangely weary, old man’s gesture, as though he were cold and no longer possessed the vitality to warm himself.

  Chapter Fourteen

  JUST AS KERN WAS throwing the last of his matches into the air a hand fell on his shoulder. “What’s going on here?”

  He jumped and, turning, saw a uniform. “Nothing,” he stammered. “Excuse me. It’s just a foolish game, nothing more.”

  The officer scrutinized him carefully. It was not the same one who had arrested him at Ammers’ house. Kern looked anxiously up at the window. Ruth was no longer to be seen. Possibly she had not noticed anything; it was so dark. “I really beg your pardon,” he said lightly, attempting a carefree smile. “It was just a sort of joke. You can see for yourself no harm could come from it. Just a few matches, that was all. I was trying to light a cigarette. It wouldn’t burn properly, so I took a half-dozen matches at once and very nearly burned my fingers.”

  He laughed, waved his hand, and started to go on. But the officer kept hold of him. “Just a minute. You’re not Swiss, are you?”

  “Why do you think that?”

  “I can tell by the way you talk. Why are you lying?”

  “I’m not lying at all,” Kern replied. “I was just interested in how you knew right away.”

  The officer looked at him suspiciously. “Perhaps we ought—” he murmured and turned on his flashlight. “Listen,” he said suddenly, and his voice had a different ring, “do you know Herr Ammers?”

  “Never heard of him,” Kern replied as calmly as he could.

  “Where do you live?”

  “I only got here this morning. I was just going to look for an inn. Could you recommend me? One that’s not too expensive.”

  “First of all come with me. There’s a formal complaint by Herr Ammers that fits you exactly. We’ll begin by looking into that.”

  Kern went along. He cursed himself for not having been more alert. The officer must have stolen up behind him on rubber soles. For a week everything had gone well and probably that was the trouble. He had got to feeling too safe. Surreptitiously he glanced about for a chance to run away, but the way was too short; a few minutes later they were at the police station.

  The officer who had let him escape the first time was sitting at a table writing. Kern felt encouraged. “Is t
his the man?” asked the officer who had brought him in.

  The first officer gave Kern a quick glance. “Might be. I can’t say for sure. It was too dark.”

  “Then I’ll call up Ammers. He’ll know him.”

  He went out. “My boy,” said the first officer, “I thought you were gone long ago. Now things are going to be tough. Ammers lodged a complaint.”

  “Can’t I run away again?” Kern asked quickly. “You know that—”

  “Out of the question. The only way is through the anteroom over there and that’s where your friend’s standing telephoning. No—you’re up a creek now. And you tumbled into the hands of the sharpest man on our force, a fellow who’s after promotion.”

  “Damnation!”

  “Yes. Particularly since you ran away once. I had to make a report of that at the time because I knew Ammers would be snooping around.”

  “Jesus!” Kern said, taking a step backward.

  “You might even say Jesus Christ,” the officer remarked. “It won’t help you this time. You’ll get a couple of weeks.”

  A few minutes later Ammers came in. He had run so fast that he was panting. His pointed beard glistened. “Of course,” he said, “that’s the man! As big as life, the impudent scoundrel!”

  Kern looked at him.

  “This is one time he won’t slip through your fingers, eh?” Ammers asked.

  “No, this time he won’t,” the policeman agreed.

  “The mills of the gods grind slow,” Ammers declaimed unctuously, “but they grind exceeding fine. The jug that goes too often to the well will be broken.”

  “Do you know you have cancer of the liver?” Kern interrupted him. He hardly knew what he was saying or how he had hit upon the idea. He was suddenly raging mad, and without fully realizing his misfortune he concentrated all his thoughts automatically on a single point, to hurt Ammers in some way. He could not strike him, for that would increase his sentence.

  “What?” In his amazement Ammers forgot to shut his mouth.

  “Cancer of the liver; a typical case.” Kern saw that his blow had struck home. Immediately he followed it up. “In a year the intolerable pain will set in. You will have a frightful death! Nothing to be done about it either! Nothing!”

  “Why, that—”

  “The mills of the gods …” Kern hissed. “What did you say? Slow, very slow!”

  “Officer,” Ammers chattered, “I demand that you protect me from this individual.”

  “Draw up your will,” Kern snapped. “It’s the one thing left for you to do. You’ll be eaten out and rotted from the inside!”

  “Officer!” Ammers looked around wildly seeking help. “It’s your duty to defend me from these insults.”

  The first officer looked at him curiously. “So far he hasn’t insulted you,” he announced, “up to now he’s just made a medical diagnosis.”

  “I demand that it be put on record,” Ammers screamed.

  “Just look.” Kern pointed his finger at Ammers, who shrank back as though it were a snake. “The leaden-gray color of the skin during excitement, the yellowish eyeballs—unmistakable symptoms. A candidate for death! All you can do for him is to pray.”

  “Candidate for death,” bawled Ammers, “put candidate for death in the record.”

  “Candidate for death is not an insult either,” explained the first officer with visible enjoyment. “You won’t be able to make a complaint stick on that ground. We’re all candidates for death.”

  “The liver rots inside your living body!” Kern saw that Ammers had suddenly grown pale. He took a step forward. Ammers drew back as though fleeing Satan. “At first you don’t notice anything,” Kern explained in triumphant rage. “There is hardly enough to make a diagnosis. But when you notice it it’s already too late. Cancer of the liver! The slowest and most dreadful death there is!”

  Ammers could only stare at Kern. He made no reply. Involuntarily he pressed his hand in the region of his liver.

  “Now you be quiet!” snarled the second officer with sudden severity. “There’s been enough of this! Take a seat over there and answer our questions. How long have you been in Switzerland?”

  Kern was arraigned next morning before the District Court. The judge was a stout middle-aged man with a round red face. He was humane, but he could not help Kern. The law was clear.

  “Why didn’t you report to the police after illegally crossing the border?” he asked.

  “Then I’d have been put straight out of the country again,” Kern answered wearily.

  “Yes, of course you would.”

  “And on the other side I’d have had to report to the nearest police station at once if I didn’t want to break the law there. Then the next night they’d have brought me back to Switzerland. And from Switzerland back to the same place again. Then back to Switzerland. I’d have slowly starved to death between the customs houses, and if I hadn’t, I’d have wandered forever from one police station to the other. What is there for us to do except break the laws?”

  The judge shrugged. “I cannot help you. It is my duty to sentence you. The minimum punishment is fourteen days in prison. That is the law. We have it to protect our country from being flooded with refugees.”

  “I know.”

  The judge glanced at his notes. “All that I can do is to make a recommendation in your behalf to the Superior Court that you be given detention and not a prison sentence.”

  “Many thanks,” Kern said. “But it’s all one to me. I have no pride left.”

  “It is not all one by any means,” the judge explained with some vehemence. “On the contrary it is of great importance for full civil rights. If you are simply placed in detention then you will have no prison record. Perhaps that’s something you hadn’t thought about.”

  Kern looked for a while at the good-natured, unsuspecting man. “Full civil rights …” he said then. “What would I do with them? Why I haven’t even the commonest civil rights. I am a shadow, a ghost, a dead man in the eyes of society. What have I to do with what you call full civil rights?”

  The judge was silent for a while. “But you’ll have to get papers of some sort,” he said finally. “Perhaps an application could be made through a German consulate for identification papers.”

  “That was done a year ago by a Czechoslovakian court. The application was denied. We no longer exist so far as Germany is concerned. And for the rest of the world only as prey for the police.”

  The judge shook his head. “Hasn’t the League of Nations done anything for you yet? After all there are many thousands of you; and you have to be allowed to exist somehow!”

  “The League of Nations has spent a couple of years debating whether to give us identification papers,” Kern replied patiently. “Each country represented there is trying to dump us on some other country. And so in all probability it will go on for a number of years.”

  “And meanwhile—”

  “Meanwhile—you can see for yourself!”

  “But, my God!” the judge said suddenly and helplessly in his soft, broad Swiss dialect. “Why, that’s a terrific problem! What’s to become of all of you?”

  “I don’t know. The more important thing is: What’s to happen to me now?”

  The judge ran his hand over his glistening face and looked at Kern. “I have a son,” he said, “who is just about as old as you. If I were to picture him being hunted from place to place for no other reason than that he had been born—”

  “I have a father,” Kern replied. “If you were to see him …”

  He glanced out the window. The autumn sun was shining peacefully on an apple tree in full fruit. Out there was freedom. Out there was Ruth.

  “I should like to ask you a question,” the judge said after a while. “It has no bearing on your case. But I should like to ask it nevertheless. Do you still believe in anything at all?”

  “Oh, yes. I believe in holy egoism! In heartlessness! In lies! In hardness of heart!”


  “That’s what I feared. But what else could one expect?”

  “That isn’t all,” Kern replied calmly. “I also believe in kindness and comradeship, in love and helpfulness. I have run into them more often perhaps than many people who have had an easy time.”

  The judge got up and moved heavily around his chair to face Kern. “It’s good to hear that,” he murmured. “If I only knew what I could do for you!”

  “Nothing,” Kern said. “By this time I know something about the laws, too, and I have a friend who’s a specialist. Send me to jail.”

  “I will hold you for examination and send your case to the higher court.”

  “If it’s going to lighten the sentence, fine. But if it’s going to take longer, I’d rather go to jail.”

  “It won’t take longer. I’ll see to that.”

  The judge took a huge wallet out of his pocket. “There is only this simple form of help,” he said uncertainly, taking out a folded bill. “It distresses me that I can do nothing more for you.”

  Kern took the money. “It’s the only thing that really helps us,” he replied, and thought: Twenty francs! What luck! That will be enough to get Ruth to the border.

  Kern did not dare to write to her. It might have resulted in their finding out that she had been in the country for some time and then she might be arrested. As it was, she would probably just be asked to leave the country, or if luck was with her she might simply be released from the hospital.

  The first evening he was unhappy and restless and could not sleep. He saw Ruth lying feverish on her bed and woke up because he dreamed she was being buried. He crouched on the plank bed and remained for a long time with his arms wrapped around his knees. He was determined not to let this panic get the upper hand, but at the same time he felt that it might be stronger than he was. It’s the night, he thought, the night and the night fears. Daylight fears have a reasonable basis, but night fears are limitless.