The Game of Cards

by Adolf Schroder

  Markus, who has heard every word, although apparently like Berger he has lost all interest in what is being said, turns his gaze from the window and glances at Berger’s small sunken shape. Had he really left the front door open? Had he really held the attaché case over his head? He looks at Vorberg, but the latter does not return Markus’ gaze, and continues to stare fixedly, almost seeking help, at the woman next to the desk, as if he were scared that Berger might get involved and with his unpredictable questions destroy the peace that the woman had carefully established.

  “And that was enough for you to inform the police,” says the official as she puts down the pencil and, also darting a glance at Berger, leans back in her chair.

  “Not immediately of course. I waited.”

  “What for?”

  “I waited to see whether Frau Bruhns would come and close the front door. The light from the hallway fell onto the steps. I saw some of the animals leaving the house. But Frau Bruhns did not come out. The door remained open.”

  “You could have gone over there.”

  “That’s so easy to say.”

  “Instead of which you called the police.”

  “Yes,” says Vorberg, and there is relief in the short word, as if he had finally found the right ending to a complicated story.

  “Was it this attaché case?”

  Berger has leapt out of his chair. He trips over to the desk. He bends over and from under the desk pulls out an attaché case. He places it in front of the man on the desk surface, springs open the catches, but does not open the case.

  “Yes, it was a case like that,” says Vorberg, as he and Markus observe Berger going back to his chair, pushing it before him to his desk, swinging on to it, and laying both hands flat on the surface of the desk, as if he wanted to make it clear that he had again taken the desk into his possession and they now had him to reckon with.

  “But of course there are many cases like this. They all look similar. I can’t say for sure that it was exactly this case that Herr Hauser was holding over his head yesterday evening to shield himself from the rain.”

  Markus starts when he hears his name spoken so confidently by this man, as if it had long been familiar to him. He feels the desire to forbid this man from ever uttering his name again.

  “Open it,” says Berger.

  Vorberg, now forced to look at Berger again, since the latter is speaking to him directly and repeating his order, does not react, but merely gazes uncomprehendingly at Berger as if he has not understood, as if he has indeed heard the words, but not grasped that they have anything to do with him.

  “Open it,” repeats Berger.

  “How am I supposed to do that,” answers the man. Only now does he appear to have understood that the words were addressed to him. He stands up and walks backwards to the door.

  “What gives you any right to treat me like this. What have I done to you? I came to make a statement, I didn’t expect to be treated like a criminal.”

  Vorberg has reached the door and, without turning round, is fumbling for the handle. He has stopped speaking.

  “Open it,” says Berger for the third time.

  “No.”

  Then Vorberg screams. Markus can no longer stand the struggle between the two men, a struggle that he does not understand although he has the feeling he ought to understand it since it seems to be about him. He stands up, goes to Berger’s desk and lifts the lid of the case. He looks at the bundles of money in the case.

  “You can go,” says Berger to Vorberg, who only now, from the door where he is standing, looks first at Berger then at the woman and finally at Markus. He leaves Berger’s office, closing the door behind him.

  Berger’s colleague stands up.

  “No, Margret, you stay.”

  His voice sounds friendly and intimate. But the woman whose first name Berger has uttered in such a matter-of-fact way in front of Markus goes to the door as Vorberg before her had gone, says: “You know where you can find me,” and leaves Markus alone with Berger.

  THE THIRD DAY

  MARKUS DID NOT WAKE UP. In his half-sleep his left hand groped over the bedside table when, at around seven, his alarm clock began to ring. His fingers found the button to switch off the alarm.

  Christine came into the bedroom, and only when she sat on the bed and placed her hand on his forehead did he become aware of her presence, though he did not know whether she was really sitting next to him or whether she was an element in his dreams.

  “Markus,” she said, “aren’t you going to get up?”

  He did not reply, even though he heard her words, but he had no strength to move his lips. He wanted to say something, perhaps he wanted to ask for help, but then he heard the animals charging forward. To begin with it was simply the hammering of the cats’ paws on the floor, then he heard them even before he could see them. He could smell the stench. Involuntarily, for now he could move, he reached out for Christine’s hand. When the animals had come so close that he could feel their paws on his body, he opened his eyes.

  “I’m glad you’re here, Christine,” he said, perfectly calmly, sitting half upright and reaching for his cigarette packet on the bedside table. As he smoked, Christine stayed with him, pushed her hand under the blanket and stroked his sex.

  “Is that woman waiting for you?” she asked, though Markus could hear neither curiosity nor jealousy in her voice, simply the calm interest that she seemed to have felt for Markus right from the start, and that Markus did not know how seriously to take. Christine pulled her hand out and stood up, went to the desk in front of the window, and took the roll of yellowed papers held together with an elastic band from the desktop, but did not remove the elastic band, raising the roll of papers to her nose and sniffing it.

  “Did you bring this back?” she asked and put the roll of papers back as if her interest could not be sustained long enough to hold them any longer.

  “They’re letters. I stole them from the chests full of letters,” said Markus. He stubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray, threw back the quilt, he was chilly although it was warm in the room, and stood up.

  “What did you do that for?” asked Christine. As always with her questions, Markus was not sure whether she was really expecting any answer. He felt the desire to embrace her. He did not.

  “I wanted to rescue the letters,” he said, going past her and out of the bedroom.

  Christine followed him into the kitchen.

  “We need to have a talk,” she said, “but I don’t have time right now.”

  “Why do we need to have a talk,” said Markus, pouring the coffee that Christine had made for him out of the glass coffee-pot before sitting on the chair next to the kitchen table and lighting his second cigarette.

  “About this woman,” said Christine. “I have a feeling that you’re going far far away when you go to her place, as if you are no longer here, in the city, near me, as if you were in a foreign country.”

  She uttered the last two words hesitantly, as if she were unsure whether they were the right ones.

  “I’ll be back this evening,” he said, “I won’t be needing much longer for my work.”

  “How long?” asked Christine.

  “Two, three days.”

  On the fifth day, when Selma Bruhns had led him into her room for the first time and taken a well worn pack of cards out of her dress pocket—the cards were in a cardboard packet closed with a rubber band, and on the packet there was an advert for a beer manufacturer—Markus had left Selma Bruhns’s house in the evening and driven over to see Rufus.

  “Do you have a pack of cards,” he had asked Rufus, “an ordinary skat deck will do.”

  Rufus, who as usual was in his leather get-up, tight black trousers and a jacket that was also black and fringed, and who kept breaking out into his usual abrupt laughter, had asked no questions and laid the cards on the table.

  “Choose a card,” Markus had said. Rufus drew a ten. Then Markus drew a card too,
a jack.

  “First game to me,” said Markus, “now you choose again.”

  Rufus drew a queen, Markus an eight.

  “Last card decides,” said Markus, and drew another jack. Rufus took the uppermost card from the heap, a king.

  “You’ve won,” Markus had said, and Rufus laughed his crowing laugh, saying, “Have you gone crazy?” He sat in the armchair, said, “So I’ve won. And?”—picked up a can of beer from the floor next to the armchair, took a swig, and said: “I’ll read you the poem that I made up last night.” Markus had sat on the carpet and listened. Then he had driven home.

  Berger first sits quickly down at his desk, before leaving his place, leaping up from his chair, and walking round the desk, closing as he does so the cover of the attaché case without shutting the clasps; he walks towards the door, but as Markus wonders whether he’s going to leave him by himself again, he does not go to the door, but to the cupboard, which he opens, taking out a jacket. After throwing the clothes hanger on which the jacket had been hanging back into the wardrobe, he closes the cupboard doors; the jacket is now lying on his bent left lower arm. He turns to Markus and says, in a tone of voice which Markus cannot decide is friendly, indifferent or chilly—his anger seems to have abated now—he says: “Come with me, Herr Hauser.”

  Markus stands up and walks past Berger out of the office. He expects to see Margret in the outer office, but her chair is empty.

  “In your flat they found not only the attaché case with the money, but also several letters belonging to Selma Bruhns,” says Berger.

  They walked down the corridor to the left, where Berger presses the button and they stand waiting.

  “Why did you take those letters?”

  Since another police official, who greets Berger with a nod, has come up to them, Markus does not reply. The double doors open, and they step into the illuminated lift. They go down. On the third floor the other man gets out of the lift, and Berger and Markus are alone.

  “I wanted to rescue the letters,” says Markus.

  “Explain.”

  The lift gently lands on the ground floor, the doors part, and Berger and Markus step out of the lift.

  “When I had put a particular bundle of letters into the right order, Selma Bruhns came into the small room where I was and took the bundle away,” says Markus.

  They walk through the main hall whose illuminated windows lead to the street, Berger tripping quickly along and Markus trying in vain to keep up with him.

  “What did Selma Bruhns do with the letters?” asks Berger.

  On the evening of the fourth day Markus had completely emptied the second wooden chest. On the floor of the small room there were piles of letters with the already familiar handwriting. As he again checked the bottom of the chest to make sure that he hadn’t left any letters behind, he noticed a faintly shimmering, brightly coloured rectangle standing out against the brownish cardboard with which the bottom of the chest was covered. Markus bent right down into the chest and reached down for the sheet of paper that was evidently different in quality from the pages of the letters written on normal paper.

  When he had straightened up and turned over the firm sheet of paper, which felt smooth and pliable, he found himself looking into the face of a young woman gazing directly at the spectator.

  Markus leant against the wall of the room and held the picture right under the electric bulb as if he hoped this would help him to decipher the details of the photograph more precisely and thus discover who this young woman was. In her gaze Markus thought he could now, in the brighter light from the bulb, perceive a mocking twinkle, as if she were making fun of the person looking at her photograph. The blouse that the woman in the photograph was wearing, her hairstyle, the barely visible chain from which a brooch was hanging, and the earrings that were almost concealed under her hair, led Markus to think the photo had been taken a long time ago, but her face was so lively that Markus felt he had already seen it in a café, in a cinema, on the streets. As he gently laid the photograph to one side and the light fell on another corner of the photographic paper, he recognized her. It was Selma Bruhns. Perhaps the Selma of whom the woman had spoken when Markus had taken the petrol can back to his car.

  He started when he heard her voice, since he had not heard her coming. The photograph slipped out of his fingers and fell to the floor.

  “What’s that you’ve got?” asked Selma Bruhns, her voice did not sound neutral, it sounded hostile, as if Markus had picked something up without permission and seen something that should have remained hidden from his gaze.

  This time she did not remain standing in the doorway—when she came to collect the piles of letters that Markus had put in order, she never stepped into the room, but waited on the threshold until Markus brought her letters. Two steps. She had come up to Markus, bent down and picked up the photo. When she had straightened up again, turned the photo over and gazed at it, the expression on her face altered for a brief moment. Markus decided he had not been mistaken, her face turned as young as the image on the photograph.

  “It’s a photo of you,” said Markus.

  “No.”

  She dropped the picture. It fell to the ground. Slowly she walked back to the door, where she again turned round, and as she spoke, Markus thought that he could recognize in her eyes the mocking twinkle with which the young woman on the photo gazed at the spectator.

  “There were two of us.”

  Selma Bruhns had left the room.

  Dear Almut,

  As if the ship knew that I was longing for a wave to roll it over and drag it down to the sea floor that I sense beneath me when I walk across the deck and cling to the rail, it struggles against the waves, falling deep down, righting itself and struggling on. I don’t know where I am, far from you, far from every shore, since that is how it must be, since I have taken flight.

  In the dining room, under the chandeliers, whose crystal pendants clatter, and in which the light is refracted, I sit next to the English man. I only know his first name. Harry, as if he had already borne this name before he came into the world. He makes me laugh. He tells me about peacetime. About the school where he claims he learnt nothing. Apart from picking up a liking for books, one of which he still has with him; he insists on reading it to me. As I listen, he has a voice that sounds as young as if it were a sixteen-year-old reading out of the Torah, and the wind presses against the portholes. I still haven’t left, Almut. I still walk down the front garden path to the gate, over the flagstones, the pattern on which—black and brown flecks, like continents on a map—has been familiar to me ever since we walked to school together and our satchels bounced on our backs when we ran, so as not to be late. We often did arrive late, Almut. Harry has said that Brazil is the country in which snakes hang from the boughs of the trees and bend over the River Amazon in whose waters the little fish lie in wait for their prey, for human flesh falling from the gunboats pounding their way upriver.

  As the ship sailed away from the quayside, I felt I still had something to tell you that had never been uttered between us before, but now, as I’m writing, sitting at the narrow table in my cabin, I can’t remember it, it’s as if a little black hole had burnt itself into my memory. The sea is growing calmer, the waves are lulling the ship into a doze, in which it blindly finds its way forward, accompanied by seabirds whose cries are the most living things that I have heard on this journey. Of course Harry has tried to kiss me. We were standing under the bridge, sheltered from the wind, and the air that has become so soft and brings a hazy sunshine with it embraced us like a gentle warm shield. When he laid his arm around me, I did not push him away, but he could sense the indifference that clings to me like leprosy, he pulled his arm back and said: in two days we will be in Brazil.

  We were in a café and you drank brandy, you poured it into your coffee cup as you always do, sitting opposite me at the round table by the window, in the twilight, as the lamps in the café were already glowing, whi
le, outside, the waning daylight still lay across the square, and you said: when we meet again, the days will be shorter.

  The cabin’s walls are lined with dark red wood, whose grain surrounds me with a tangle of signs that, as I lie in bed, I try to decipher. I am sitting at a table over whose surface a piece of brown leather with gold-tipped nails is stretched, with a letter pad in front of me, which I brought along with me from the desk in which father used to hoard his writing instruments, do you remember, Almut, even though he refused all his life long to write a single letter. In front of me, under the round window, whose glass has to withstand the sea, there hangs a drawing of a ship, its sails delineated with slender strokes, its stern rising black over the bright blue of the seemingly transparent water. I think I can see the jellyfish floating under the surface, and the wind blowing into the sails as it drives the ship continually further from me. I imagine it to be sailing towards you, with an unreadable message, a letter that the monsoon rain has soaked, blurring the ink on it. When we meet again, the days will be shorter.

  Harry says we’re not only leaving a country behind, not only the people we know, we are also leaving our words behind, the ones we have said, and the ones we have heard.

  There’s someone knocking on the cabin door, Almut.

  Markus had left his car under the chestnut trees, later than on the two preceding days, taken his briefcase from the rear seat, locked the car doors and, without hurrying, although he had the feeling, as always when he was late, that he had failed again, walked down the flagstones through the front garden. The front door was locked. As he could not find the bell, he knocked on the door and waited. He observed two animals prowling through the stinging nettles. One right behind the other. One of the cats had red-brown stripes, the other was black on its whole body apart from the white heart-shaped patch on its breast. The black animal leapt onto the female running ahead of him and bit into the nape of her neck. The red-brown cat squealed until the tomcat left her alone, bounded quickly away and disappeared into the thicket of weeds.