Flotsam

by Erich Maria Remarque

  Steiner packed his things. He was like a frozen river when the ice breaks up. He could hardly believe he had talked to someone under the same roof with Marie; it seemed almost inconceivable to him that his own voice had droned so close to her inside the hard black rubber of the telephone receiver; it all seemed unimaginable—that he was packing, that he would take a train and that tomorrow he would be where she was.

  He threw the few things he needed into his bag and shut it. Then he went to find Ruth and Kern. They had already heard everything from Marill and were waiting for him, in sorrow and sympathy.

  “Children,” he said, “I’m going away now. It’s taken a long time but I always knew at bottom this is how it would be. Not exactly this way,” he added. “But then I don’t believe that yet. I only know it.”

  He smiled a sad, twisted smile. “Good-by, Ruth.”

  Ruth gave him her hand. She was crying. “There’s so much I’d like to say to you, Steiner. But now I’ve forgotten what it is—I’m just sad. Will you take this with you?” She handed him the black sweater. “I just finished it today.”

  Steiner smiled and for an instant was as he used to be. “That turned out just right,” he said. Then he turned to Kern. “So long, Baby. Sometimes things go dreadfully slow, don’t they? Sometimes damn fast.”

  “I don’t think I’d be alive if it hadn’t been for you, Steiner,” Kern said.

  “Sure you would. But it’s nice of you to say that to me. It means the time wasn’t entirely wasted.”

  “Come back to us,” Ruth said. “That’s all I can say. Come back. There’s not much we can do for you, but everything we are is yours. Always.”

  “Fine. We’ll see. So long, children. Keep your chins up.”

  “We’d like to go with you to the station,” Kern said.

  Steiner hesitated. “Marill is going along. Yes, you come too.”

  They walked down the steps. On the street Steiner turned around and looked back at the shabby gray front of the hotel. “Verdun—” he murmured.

  “Let me carry your bag,” Kern said.

  “Why, Baby? I can do it all right myself.”

  “Give it to me,” Kern begged with a shy smile. “I showed you just this afternoon how strong I’ve grown.”

  “Yes, so you did. This afternoon. How long ago that was!” Steiner gave him the bag knowing that Kern wanted to do something for him and that there was nothing else to do but this trifling service of carrying his bag.

  They arrived just in time to see the train off. Steiner got in and lowered a window. The train had not begun to move; but it seemed to those on the platform that the window already separated Steiner irrevocably from them. With burning eyes Kern looked at the stern, lean face—trying to impress it on his mind for all time. This man had been his friend and teacher for many months; for whatever in himself had become tempered and resilient, he had Steiner to thank. And now he saw this face, composed and calm, going voluntarily to destruction; for none of them counted on the miracle of Steiner’s coming back.

  The train began to move. No one spoke. Steiner slowly lifted his hand. The three on the station platform looked after him until the cars disappeared behind a curve.

  “Damnation!” Marill said presently, in a hoarse voice. “Come along. I need a drink. I’ve seen many a man die but I was never present at a suicide before.”

  They returned to the hotel. Kern and Ruth went to Ruth’s room. “Ruth,” Kern said after a while, “everything is suddenly empty and it makes you feel cold—as if the whole city had died.”

  That evening they went to visit Father Moritz, who was now bedridden. “Sit down, children,” he said. “I know all about it and there’s nothing to be done. Every human being has the right to decide his own fate.”

  Moritz Rosenthal knew he would never get up again. And therefore he had had his bed so placed that he could look out the window. There wasn’t much he could see—just a section of the row of houses opposite. But since he had nothing else, that was a great deal. He looked at the windows and they became the epitome of life. In the mornings he saw them opened, he saw faces appear, he knew the sullen servant girl who cleaned the panes, the weary young wife who sat in the afternoon almost motionless behind the open shutters, staring into the street, and the bald-headed man on the top floor who exercised in the evenings in front of the open window. In the afternoon he saw the lights behind drawn curtains, he saw shadows moving back and forth; in the evenings he saw some windows that were dark as abandoned caves and others where lights burned far into the night. That and the muffled noise from the streets represented the outer world, to which now only his thoughts belonged, not his body. The other world, the world of memory, he had on the walls of his room. With the last of his strength, aided by the chambermaid, he had put up with thumbtacks all the photographs he possessed.

  On the wall above his bed hung faded pictures of his family: his parents; his wife, who had died forty years before; the portrait of a son who had lived to be fifty and who had died; the picture of a grandson who died at seventeen; the picture of a daughter-in-law who had lived to thirty-five—the dead, among whom Moritz Rosenthal, old and impassive, now himself awaited death.

  The wall opposite was covered with landscapes. Photographs of the Rhine, towns, castles and vineyards, interspersed with colored clippings from newspapers, sunrises and thunderstorms over the Rhine, and at the end a series of pictures of the little town of Godesberg-on-the-Rhine.

  “I can’t help it,” Father Moritz said in embarrassment. “I really ought to have pictures of Palestine hanging there, at least a few in the collection—but they don’t mean a thing to me.”

  “How long did you live in Godesberg?” Ruth asked.

  “Until I was seventeen. Then we left.”

  “And later on?”

  “Later on I never went back.”

  “That was a long time ago, Father Moritz,” Ruth said.

  “Yes, it was long, long before you were in the world. Perhaps your mother was born about that time.”

  How strange, Ruth thought. When my mother was born these pictures were already memories in the brain behind that forehead—and she lived her difficult life and is gone, and these same memories live on like ghosts behind this ancient forehead as though they were stronger than many lives.

  There was a knock and Edith Rosenfeld came in. “Edith,” Father Moritz said, “my eternal love! Where have you been?”

  “I’ve come from the station, Moritz, I’ve just seen Max off. He is on his way to London, and from there to Mexico.”

  “Then you’re alone now, Edith—”

  “Yes, Moritz. Now I’ve found places for them all and they can work.”

  “What’s Max going to do in Mexico?”

  “He’s going as a day laborer. But he plans to try to get into the automobile business.”

  “You’re a good mother, Edith,” Moritz Rosenthal said after a pause.

  “I’m like all of them, Moritz.”

  “What will you do now?”

  “I’ll rest a little. And then I’ve already found something else to do. There’s a baby here in the hotel. Born two weeks ago. The mother will soon have to get back to work. Then I’ll become its adoptive grandmother.”

  Moritz Rosenthal raised himself a little. “A baby? Two weeks old? Then he’s already a Frenchman. That’s more than I’ve been able to achieve at eighty.” He smiled. “Can you sing it to sleep despite that, Edith?”

  “Yes—”

  “The songs you sang my son to sleep with! It was a long time ago, Edith. Suddenly everything is a very long time ago. Won’t you sing one of them again for me? Sometimes I’m like a child that wants to go to sleep.”

  “Which one, Moritz?”

  “The song about the poor Jewish child. It’s forty years since I’ve heard you sing that. You were young then, and very beautiful. You are still beautiful, Edith.”

  Edith Rosenfeld smiled. Then she straightened herself a little and b
egan, in her frail voice, to sing the old Yiddish lullaby. Her voice tinkled a little like the thin melody of an old music box. Moritz Rosenthal lay back and listened. He closed his eyes and drew his breath peacefully. In the barren room the old woman sang the nostalgic melody of homelessness and the sad words that accompanied it:—

  “With almonds and with raisins

  You’ll earn your daily keep,

  You’ll trade, Yiddele, haggle and trade

  Sleep, Yiddele, sleep.”

  Ruth and Kern sat listening in silence. Above their heads roared the wind of time—forty years, fifty years rushed by, in the conversation of the old woman and the old man. The ancient pair seemed to find it natural that those years had passed. But in their company crouched these two people of twenty, for whom a single year was endless and almost unimaginable, and they felt a kind of shadowy dread: that everything passes and must pass, and that presently time would reach out for them too.…

  Edith Rosenfeld got up and bent over Moritz Rosenthal. He was asleep. She looked at the old man’s large face for a while. “Come,” she said then. “We’ll let him sleep.”

  She turned out the light and they went out noiselessly into the dark corridor and found their way across to their own rooms.

  * * *

  Just as Kern was pushing a heavy wheelbarrow of dirt from the pavilion over to Marill, he was stopped by two men. “One moment, please.” One of them turned to Marill. “You too.”

  Kern ceremoniously set down the wheelbarrow. He knew what this was. The tone was familiar; anywhere in the whole world he would have leaped up out of the deepest sleep at hearing these polite, low, inexorable accents beside his bed.

  “Will you be so kind as to show us your papers of identification?”

  “I haven’t mine with me,” Kern replied.

  “Please identify yourselves first,” Marill said.

  “Certainly, with pleasure. Here, this will do, won’t it? I am from the police. The gentleman here is an inspector from the Ministry of Labor. You understand, the large number of French unemployed forces us to make a check-up.”

  “I understand, sir. Unfortunately, I can only show you a residential permit; I have no permit to work; you could hardly have expected that—”

  “You are quite right, sir,” the inspector said politely. “We did not expect that, but what you have is sufficient. You may go on working. In this particular case—in the construction of the Exposition—the Government has no desire to be too strict in enforcing regulations. We beg your pardon for disturbing you.”

  “Not at all. It’s your duty.”

  “May I see your papers?” the inspector asked Kern.

  “I have none.”

  “No récépissé?”

  “No.”

  “You entered the country illegally?”

  “There was no other way.”

  “I am very sorry,” said the man from the police, “but you must come with us to the Prefecture.”

  “That’s what I expected,” Kern replied and looked at Marill. “Tell Ruth I’ve been nabbed. I’ll come back as soon as I can. Tell her not to worry.”

  He had spoken in German. “I have no objection if you want to talk to your friend for a moment more,” the inspector said obligingly.

  “I’ll look out for Ruth until you get back,” Marill said in German. “Tough luck, old fellow. Get them to deport you by way of Basle. Come back again by way of Burgfelden. Telephone from the Steiff Inn to Hotel Steiff in St. Louis for a taxi to Mühlhausen and from there to Belfort. That’s the best way. If they take you to the Santé, write me as soon as you can. Klassmann will keep a lookout anyway. I’ll telephone him immediately.”

  Kern nodded to Marill. “I’m ready,” he said then.

  The representative of the police turned him over to a man who had been waiting near by. The inspector looked at Marill and smiled. “A nice way to say good-by,” he said in perfect German. “You seem to know our border well.”

  “Unfortunately,” Marill replied.

  * * *

  Marill was sitting with Waser in a bistro. “Come on,” he said, “let’s have one more drink. Damn it, I hate to go into that hotel! This is the first time something like this has happened to me. What’ll you have, a fine or a Pernod?”

  “A fine,” Waser said with dignity. “That anisette stuff is for women.”

  “Not in France.” Marill summoned a waiter and ordered a cognac and a straight Pernod.

  “I could tell her,” Waser proposed. “In our circles that sort of thing is an everyday affair. Every few minutes someone is picked up and then you have to tell his wife or his girl. The best thing for you is to start off with the great, common cause that always demands sacrifices.”

  “What sort of common cause?”

  “The Movement! The revolutionary enlightenment of the masses, of course!”

  Marill regarded the Communist attentively for a while. “Waser,” he said calmly, “I don’t think we’d get far that way. That’s good for a socialist manifesto, but for nothing else. I forgot you were mixed up in politics. Let’s finish our drinks and start marching. Somehow or other I’ll get it done.”

  They paid, and walked through the slushy snow to the Hotel Verdun. Waser disappeared into “the catacombs” and Marill climbed slowly up the stairs.

  He knocked at Ruth’s door. She opened it as quickly as if she had been waiting behind it. The smile on her face faded a little when she saw Marill. “Marill—” she said.

  “Yes. I’m not the one you were expecting, am I?”

  “I thought it was Ludwig. He’ll be here any minute now.”

  “Yes.”

  Marill walked into the room. He saw a plate on the table, an alcohol stove over which water was boiling, bread and sliced meat and a few flowers in a vase. He saw all this, he saw Ruth standing expectantly in front of him, and irresolutely, just for something to do, he picked up the vase. “Flowers,” he murmured. “Even flowers—”

  “Flowers are cheap in Paris,” Ruth said.

  “Yes. That’s not what I meant. Only—” Marill replaced the vase as cautiously as though it were not made of cheap thick glass but of eggshell porcelain. “It’s just that it makes it so damnably hard, all this—”

  “What?”

  Marill made no reply.

  “I know,” Ruth said suddenly. “The police have picked up Ludwig.”

  Marill swung round to face her. “Yes, Ruth.”

  “Where is he?”

  “At the Prefecture.”

  Ruth silently picked up her coat. She put it on, stuffed a few things into the pockets, and tried to go past Marill and out the door. He stopped her. “It’s silly,” he declared. “It won’t help him or you at all. We have someone at the Prefecture who will keep us informed. You stay here!”

  “How can I? I could see him again! Let them lock us both up. Then we could go across the border together.”

  Marill kept hold of her. She was like a compressed steel spring. Her face was pale and seemed to have grown smaller with anxiety. Then she suddenly gave up. “Marill,” she said helplessly, “what shall I do?”

  “Stay here. Klassmann is at the Prefecture. He’ll tell us what happens. All they can do is deport him. Then in a couple of days he’ll be back again. I promised him you would wait here. He knows you’ll be reasonable.”

  “Yes, I will be.” Her eyes were full of tears. She took off her coat and let it drop to the floor. “Marill,” she said, “why do people do all this to us? After all, we’ve not harmed anybody.”

  Marill looked at her thoughtfully. “I believe it’s for that very reason,” he said. “Actually, I think that’s it.”

  “Will they put him in jail?”

  “I don’t think so. We’ll find out from Klassmann. We’ll have to wait until tomorrow.”

  Ruth nodded and slowly picked up her coat from the floor. “Didn’t Klassmann tell you anything more?”

  “No, I only spoke to him for a moment.
Then he went straight to the Prefecture.”

  “I was there with him this morning. They ordered me to come.” She took a paper out of her coat pocket, smoothed it out and gave it to Marill. “For this.”

  It was a residential permit for Ruth, good for four weeks.

  “The Refugees’ Committee arranged it. I had an expired passport, you know. Klassmann brought me the news today. He’s been working on it for months. I wanted to show it to Ludwig. That’s why I got those flowers too.”

  “So that’s the reason!” Marill held the permit in his hand. “It’s marvelous luck and a damned shame at the same time,” he said. “But mostly luck. This is a kind of miracle. It doesn’t happen often. But Kern will come back. Do you believe that?”

  “Yes,” Ruth said. “The one’s no good without the other. He must come back!”

  “Fine. And now you’re coming out with me. We’ll have dinner somewhere. And we’ll have something to drink—to the permit, and to Kern. He’s an old soldier. We’re all soldiers. You too. Am I right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Kern would let himself be deported fifty times with howls of joy to get you what you have there in your hand. You know that, don’t you?”

  “Yes. But I would a hundred times rather not—”

  “I know,” Marill interrupted. “We’ll talk about that when he’s here again. That’s one of the first rules of a soldier.”

  “Has he money to get back with?”

  “I assume so. All of us old campaigners always have some with us for that emergency. If he hasn’t enough, Klassmann will smuggle in the rest. He’s our advance post and patrol. Now come along! Sometimes it’s a damned good thing that there’s drink in the world! Especially in these times!”

  * * *

  Steiner was awake and alert when the train stopped at the border. The French customs men went through it quickly and perfunctorily. They asked for his passport, stamped it and left the compartment. The train started and rolled slowly on. Steiner knew that at this moment his fate was sealed; now he could not go back.

  After a time two German officials came in and bowed. “Your passport, please.”

  Steiner took out the booklet and gave it to the younger of the two.