by Bruno Arpaia
They stopped to rest on a narrow overhang above the vineyard. It was hot and the sun was high. They had been walking for more than four hours. According to the mayor they should have already reached Spain, but they knew they were still quite a distance from Port Bou.
‘Mountaineers,’ grumbled Benjamin when he recovered his breath and could feel his heart slowing down, ‘they make it look easy.’
‘Yes,’ agreed Lisa. ‘But we still have time. We could eat now if you want.’
No one was very hungry. After all these months, the camps, the flights, the bombs and rations, their stomachs had shrunk and yet they had to eat something.
‘May I serve myself gnädige Frau?’ asked Benjamin.
There was old Benjamin as ever standing on ceremony. Absurd. Lisa pushed the tomatoes toward him, and something caught her eye just over his shoulder. What was it? The bleached skeleton of a goat? Two vultures swept across the blue sky overhead.
‘We’d better get moving,’ she said.
The path had grown less steep, but Benjamin was worn from the accumulated effort of the morning and was having more and more difficulty. His pace grew slower and his rests lasted longer. It seemed that he only cared about keeping his rhythm regular. Lisa was walking out in front of the group when they hit the crest between the Coll de Rumpisa and Pla del Ras. She stopped short and caught her breath, thinking she might be looking at a mirage.
‘Come!’ she allowed herself to shout. ‘Come up and see.’
Behind them in the distance lay the brilliant blue sea of France, the green, yellow and ochre of the vineyards they’d passed through. Below her, as far as the eye could see, there was the Spanish coast, rows of jagged cliffs standing over a turquoise sea, calm and transparent. Beyond that a delicate veil seemed to have burst from the horizon, shooting a milky blue between the water and the sky.
‘It’s marvellous,’ said Lisa.
They were almost there. Port Bou lay below them, hidden behind a knoll. They just had to walk straight from there and they would arrive in no time. It was done. They passed their umpteenth frontier. They were almost saved. Lisa would have to turn back now. Their visas and papers were all in order. But hers weren’t. She couldn’t possibly run the risk at that point. Imagine being caught in Spain. But they all agreed that she would walk with them another bit.
Twenty minutes later, they passed a greenish, stinky puddle, thick with mud and fungus. Right there Walter kneeled and, waving the insects away from his face, prepared to drink.
‘What are you doing? Can’t you see that the water’s filthy? It’s polluted.’
Lisa’s canteen was empty now, but Benjamin hadn’t even asked her for a sip. Now it suddenly seemed that drinking had become a matter of life or death.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said calmly, leaning over the puddle. ‘But I don’t have a choice. If I don’t drink, I’m not sure I’ll make it.’
‘Listen to me,’ begged Lisa. ‘Please just stop a minute and listen. We’re almost there, just one last stretch and then you can have all the water you want. Think about it. Do you really want to expose yourself to typhoid now?’
For a moment, Walter lifted his head to look at her. His icy blue eyes were rimmed with red, inflamed with conjunctivitis. Black dust had settled into his wrinkles.
‘Of course, I might get sick,’ he patiently explained. ‘But you must try to understand. The worst case is that I’ll die of typhoid once I cross the border. But at least my book will be safe. Forgive me, gnädige Frau, but I must drink now.’
They didn’t speak after that as they descended the easy slope. Only after they’d hit the edge of the ridge, Lisa turned to speak. It was two thirty. They could see the white shape of the Port Bou train station below them, gleaming in the sun, the web of tracks, a church spire, the low houses coasting the sea and the bay.
‘I must leave now,’ said Lisa. ‘There should be a real road after this. It’s an hour’s walk at the most and you’ll be there. Go straight to the police to present your papers and get an entry visa stamp on your passports. After that, get on the first train to Lisbon. But you already know all of this. Good luck.’
‘Good luck to you,’ they all answered simultaneously.
Lisa watched them for a while before turning back. Her three companions climbed down to the road over the rocks and around the ditches. There was a gentle breeze, heavy with brine, the perfume of capers and mint, the dried summer weeds growing along the path. They were too tired to talk or even to enjoy the view. But they could sense eyes on them. Benjamin turned around, his heart in his throat, and was relieved to see four women a hundred metres behind them. They were Jews, like them. Jews in flight. But . . . yes! He knew at least three of them from Paris, quite possibly from longer ago, from Berlin. There stood Grete Freund of Tagebuch, and Birmann and her sister, Frau Lippmann. They all seemed exhausted too. Grimy with dust and leaning on sticks they’d picked up along the trail. He stopped, breathlessly, to wait for them, motionless under the sun and rubbing his eyes with his hand.
‘Most happy to see you here,’ he said with a bow. ‘If one can be happy at all under these circumstances.’
‘When did you leave? Are you alone? Do you think we’re almost there?’ asked Grete in a rush. ‘We’ve been walking since early this morning. We’re so tired. No one told us which way to go.’
The metres closed between them before either Benjamin or José could answer, meanwhile Henny Gurland was calling to them.
‘Let’s go. It’s getting late. We’ll catch up later.’
They walked together for a short distance but Walter was moving too slowly. He’d take ten steps and then stop to rest.
‘Please don’t worry about me,’ he said. ‘You all go on ahead and I’ll join you in town.’
An hour later, with Gurland leading the way, and José practically glued to Benjamin’s side, they reached the first houses of the town. There were the train tracks and then, far off, the tops of two palm trees on the beach. They could hear the sound of dishes being washed, the strong scent of garlic and fried fish wafting from the windows. They passed a gallery and then followed the tracks that led into the station. There was a great silence under that vaulted ceiling, their dragging footsteps, a few people scattered on the benches and one train parked at the last platform. A yellow light fell lazily in through the windows.
‘Thank you, José. I’ll take my bag now. Thank you very much.’
The room where the police were stationed was long and narrow with two benches, three desks and two bored-looking soldiers in conversation. A poster hanging on the wall read, ‘Primera Cruzada,’ and ‘España espiritual del mundo.’ The sergeant’s office was at the far end behind a partition. The three ladies and a fourth friend of theirs were already sitting on the benches, and the expressions on their faces said everything. There was trouble.
‘What’s happening?’ asked Benjamin, still standing in the doorway.
‘They say,’ sobbed Frau Lippmann, ‘that they won’t let us in. There were new orders.’
In the meantime, one of the policemen had come over to Benjamin and the Gurlands and asked for their papers. He stood slowly flipping through them and shaking his head with an expression somewhere between sympathy and scorn.
‘Sergeant, can you come out a minute?’ he finally said.
And the scene repeated itself. A tall man, his officer stripes on his shoulder, irritably examined the blue and pink documents. He shook his head and let out a long sigh.
‘There’s nothing we can do,’ he said without looking up. ‘A new order came in yesterday,’ he explained quietly. ‘It says that sans nationalité, everyone without a French exit visa should be handed over to the French police to be sent back.’
It was as if another piece of the world crumbled with every word and now as he finished an avalanche of ruins fell around them. Benjamin had done everything in his power to climb down off this one last cross and now he would have to climb up on another – this one
perhaps the last for real. He felt like he’d reached a dead end and this was perhaps what gave him sudden strength, enabled him to gather up what little adrenaline was left him as the women wept and begged.
‘You know very well,’ he cried in a broken voice, ‘that for a triviality, for a silly stamp on our papers you are condemning us to death! By sending us back you are delivering us hog-tied over to the Gestapo. You are a murderer!’
Then shocked, even a little scared of what he’d said, Walter lowered his eyes and fell back onto the bench, gasping loudly. The women were silent now, and José’s eyes were wide with fear. And the sergeant stood there, pretended to review their documents again and then sighed.
‘There’s nothing I can do,’ he finally said. ‘Really, I’m sorry, but I have orders to follow.’
Silence. A heavy, desolate silence, like that of a cemetery or a desert inhabited only by thoughts that whirled but never settled – unable to find their form, to become an idea, a word . . . Until someone dared speak.
‘But how can we leave now?’ stuttered Frau Freund. ‘You can see that we’re tired and there’s a child with us.’
‘And they’re women,’ Benjamin interrupted.
The sergeant seemed to consider it and then said, ‘One moment.’ He disappeared behind the partition into his office and emerged again five minutes later.
‘Okay,’ he said. ‘You can stay here tonight and rest. Obviously, we’ll be guarding you. Núñez and Alcina will bring you to the Hotel Francia. Then tomorrow we’ll take you back to the border.’
It was just a few hours, but it was another reprieve from their meeting with death.
‘Please follow me,’ said one of the policemen, taking his hat from the hook on the wall.
Before leaving, Benjamin turned to the sergeant who was standing still in the middle of the room. ‘I should apologise for before,’ he said, ‘I seldom lose control.’
The man nodded and smiled perhaps. Then he looked up at the old man with the long beard and dishevelled hair and crossed eyes, his suit in tatters and a tie dangling over a filthy shirt. He stank. The sergeant looked at him with dismay and whispered, ‘See you around,’ and bowed ceremoniously.
Chapter Forty-five
Outside in the dark hall, stopping on the stairs leading from the station to the street,Walter batted his eyes against the light flooding the entry and shining in the square beyond. Then he grew pale. He had a gripping pain, a wicked spurt in his stomach that stole his breath. The women and José watched him with concern while the two policemen snorted nervously.
‘Are you sick?’ asked Henny Gurland.
Benjamin leaned on the rail and wheezed. ‘Not really,’ he murmured. ‘I just need a moment to collect myself.’
‘José, go and help him. Carry the bag.’
But Walter motioned that the moment had passed. He started timidly down the steps, pausing on each one, then slowly following the group down a street lined with burnt plane trees, across the square and past the market stalls. A few passers-by turned to look at the dejected procession of foreigners being escorted by two policemen – an elderly man in a beret, hands clasped behind his back, a child playing with a dog, and a man who seemed to be rushing toward the boardwalk. A train whistle blew behind them. Benjamin lifted his gaze and looked ahead. Grete Freund was pointing to her left: the Hotel Francia, a narrow two-storey building, a crumbling edifice crying out for a new coat of paint. When they reached the door, the two policemen had already disappeared inside making the beaded curtain rattle. One of the two men, Núñez or Alcina, poked his head back out the door and called to them.
‘Are you coming?’ he said.
Walter entered last, leaning on José’s shoulder. They found themselves in the main room of a tiny restaurant with redcheckered tablecloths, the still blades of a fan in the middle of the ceiling, walls painted halfway up with a steely matt grey. Two old men were sitting by a turned-off radio. In the back of the room, by the counter where the women were already gathered, a man with heavy eyebrows and the grin of a rabbit stood recording their names in his register. Benjamin sat with his bag on his knee, eyes shut, to wait for his turn. He was thinking that he should call the American consulate in Barcelona when Núñez, or Alcina, called him over.
‘Señor,’ he said as Walter dragged himself to the counter and presented his documents to the owner.
‘Benjamin, Walter?’ asked the man with a smooth smile, bending the name to accommodate the Spanish vowels. But Walter didn’t care about that anymore.
‘Yes,’ he answered, attempting a bow. ‘Mucho gusto.’
The man looked at him without lifting his head from the register. What ceremony? Didn’t the old man in the glasses realise his predicament? Was he joking? No. He wasn’t joking.
‘Juan Suñer at your service,’ he forced himself to say. ‘Room number four, first floor.’
He pulled away from the counter and opened a door off to the right.
‘Through here,’ he said.
‘We’ll be staying here. No one leaves the hotel. Is that clear?’ directed one of the two policemen – the one with the moustache who looked like a mouse. Was that Alcina or Núñez? It didn’t matter. Now he needed to concentrate on climbing the steep narrow stairs in almost complete darkness, waiting and gasping for breath while the owner got the women settled. Finally Juan Suñer opened the door to number four.
‘It’s the smallest. I apologise, but it’s all I have.’
‘It will be fine,’ answered Benjamin breathlessly.
Once he was alone, Walter looked around. They certainly were spare accommodations: a narrow, almost rectangular closet over by the window, a little bed, a nightstand and a rickety wardrobe, a table pushed against the wall. Benjamin put his bag down on the table. Outside church bells struck five.
He practically collapsed on the bed with a sigh of relief. But as soon as he was horizontal that gripping in his stomach came back, and then he felt a pushing as if something inside him was writhing to get out. He tapped his stomach and it seemed a little swollen. Maybe Lisa had been right that he shouldn’t have drunk from that puddle. But now he had to go back downstairs and get some kind of help. He had to call the consulate, write to Juliane Favez in Geneva. He had just stood up when he heard a knock on the door.
‘Come in,’ he said.
The door slowly opened and Henny and José peered in from the dark corridor.
‘Forgive the disruption. How are you doing? Do you need anything?’
‘No thank you. I’m on my way downstairs too.’
It was all torture: the stairs, asking Señor Suñer for a telephone line, then listening to the phone ringing in the empty American consulate, trying to explain the situation in a few lines on a postcard to Favez in Geneva, and then going back up to his room and feeling that pain in his stomach come back like a knife digging out his intestines. He removed his jacket and shoes, and loosened his tie, scanned the room to make sure his bag was still on the table and lay down on the bed. The pain just got more intense. The hunchbacked dwarf inside him was elbowing. He turned on his side and brought his knees up to his chest waiting for the pain to subside. It was like an echo, a distant beating drum that he could only feel. Benjamin exhaled. This was just colic, ridiculous colic. But he couldn’t worry about his stomach now. As soon as he regained some strength he put his shoes back on and looked desperately out the window. The low light of first sunset brought out the shadows and corners of the alley below and laid bare the stairs leading up to the church in the high part of town, lit the wall of a courtyard across the way where he observed a dark-haired woman going into a hen house and emerging with a pack under her arm. The woman turned for a moment and Walter could see her green eyes and high cheekbones. Then she disappeared into the house. It seemed strange that people were living out there, and that the wind carried the perfume of the sea and that his world was slowly drumming to a close. It was all slowly coming to an end.
There was the soun
d of footsteps out in the hall and then two soft knocks at the door, barely audible. It was Frau Lippmann, small and pale. She wanted to know if he would be joining them for dinner. There was something about her eyes, he wasn’t sure what, that reminded him of his mother. So he agreed. He’d come down so that he wouldn’t have to be alone, though he wasn’t hungry and another pain, somewhat diminished now, made him fold over.
‘Are you sick?’ she asked.
‘No. Thank you. It’s nothing. I’m coming now.’
Walter looked around before sitting in the dining room. They were the only ones there at dinner. Núñez and Alcina were at a table in the corner playing cards with a blond man and a guardia civil whose moustache hung down the corners of his mouth.
‘Buon appetito,’ said the waiter as he almost furtively deposited a tray in the middle of their table.
For a while, the only sound was that of cutlery against the plates, and the clicking of the bead curtain in the doorway. Sooner or later the questions would begin. A minute passed, then two. The women all kept their eyes down, and José stuffed food into his mouth. Walter scraped his plate with a spoon. He was alone again, suspended in a time that didn’t belong to them. His future raced through his head – there wasn’t the slightest opening to let in the messiah who was supposed to save him. He was overcome again with an asthmatic wheeze, it crept up from deep in his lungs, and that mute pain in his stomach wouldn’t go away.
‘Have you come up with anything?’ Grete asked finally in a whisper. ‘Do you have any idea about what to do?’
Their voices seemed to arrive in Benjamin’s ears as if muffled, like the wake of a ship silently leaving port. Was it Henny who was speaking now?
‘Maybe if we leave when it’s still dark tomorrow morning we might be able to make a break for the six o’clock train to Barcelona.’
