Then a voice called out from under a sliding window: “It’s coming! Sangsdorf just called it in!”
The women pricked up their ears as though electrified, and then they and their children surged noisily through the barrier. The old man hobbled onto the platform behind them.
“What’s going on here?” Proska asked the ticket puncher.
“Go on out, pal, and you’ll see what’s goin’ on.”
“It almost looks as though He’s coming in person.”
“Who you talkin’ about?” the employee asked.
But Proska was already past him and on the platform. He jerked his head in the direction everyone was staring in. He was here, after all, and whatever it was that the others were waiting for, he figured he might as well wait for it too. He was ready. The women’s hypnotized staring communicated itself to him. He fixed his eyes on a sharp bend in the railroad embankment, beyond which the dully gleaming double line of steel tracks disappeared. The looming surprise, it seemed, would come from there. Looming, like a threat? He leaned against a Berlin optometrist’s enamel sign that read IF IT’S THE EYES, GO TO RUHNKE. The rain left him in peace there. The barriers at the level crossing weren’t down yet. A horse-drawn carriage rattled over the roadbed, slowly, the driver exhibiting the proverbial patience of his profession. The horses rhythmically bobbed their great heads, never once taking their eyes off the road in front of them. The carriage had barely reached the other side when a warning bell sounded; with every note, the barriers came down a little lower. Proska watched them settle into the forked supports and bounce up and down a few times until they finally lay still.
And then the train came. The locomotive barreled around the curve at such a surprising speed that some of the people waiting began to tremble and cry out in frightened amazement. The engine chugged closer, its iron forehead bowed like a steer’s. It was pulling twenty-six freight cars, reddish boxes bolted shut. The women grew reckless and positioned themselves close to the rails, some of them so unthinkingly that the locomotive would certainly strike them if they didn’t move before it pulled in.
“Get back, everybody get back, away from the rails!” the ticket puncher cried. He moved along the edge of the platform, pushing the women back. The fireman leaned out over the rim of the engine’s tender. Soon there would be something to see. He got impatient and stamped on a piece of coal with his boot heel. The train stopped and was immediately besieged by the women.
The sliding doors of the freight cars rolled open, and a cluster of humanity formed around every opening. Children called out, women called out, innumerable calls resounded through the rain. Men clambered down from the freight cars and turned their heads, a little surprised and incredulous, when they heard a call meant for them. And then, without speaking, they let themselves be embraced and kissed and led away. Their faces were hollow, their eyes absent and sunken. Some were discovered while they were still in the freight cars, retrieving their tin cups from the nails they hung on. In such cases, the men were literally yanked off the train and assailed with the uninhibited joy of reunion. Several women walked rapidly up and down the platform, their eyes desperately seeking men who had been supposed to arrive and yet were not there.
Proska very attentively took in everything that was happening. So there they are…they held out to the end for the Gang…and now it’s gone, and the poor dogs are still suffering…maybe some of them would have done what I did, if they’d only had the opportunity…strength isn’t so important, but opportunity…the old guy with the cane seems to have spotted his son…hold on to it, for God’s sake, keep that stick in your hand, it’s your friend…without it, you’re finished…it’s not just an ornament…you see, you almost fell…there, that’s better, like that…and there’s the ticket puncher, feet planted wide apart, spine bent forward…he wants to see some sights too…the fellow’s enjoying himself.
At this point, Proska’s thoughts stopped. They shut down abruptly, as though crushed by a heavy weight. Before him stood a long, tall man, a man carrying a cotton jacket over his shoulder and, in one hand, a cardboard box. Proska wouldn’t have noticed the man if he hadn’t stopped in front of him. On his head sat a fur cap, a shabby, weather-beaten thing. His face was emaciated by the past, and a shred of heaven swam in his expressionless eyes. The wind was lashing him like a whip, pressing the material of his pants against his scrawny thighs and calves and pushing his legs apart. He leaned back slightly, as if he found in the wind something that could support him. The man looked like a bent nail, and he was staring and staring at Proska. His gaze made Proska feel cold inside; he gripped the coins in his pocket and rubbed them together. He’d moved away from the enamel sign. There was no more feeling in the soles of his feet. He had the sensation that he’d come upon himself unexpectedly, as though he’d never known himself before in his life and had gone to the station by chance, unaware of his existence and surprised to find that he could exist at all. He had the sensation that he, Proska, had been withholding himself from himself all the livelong time, and that now, as never before, he was approaching himself, ready to say, “Hello, Proska,” and “How are you doing?” He also had the sensation that he hadn’t needed to breathe in the past and was discovering only now that breathing was an absolute necessity.
Proska stepped closer to the scrawny man, who was watching him unmoving. But the moment Proska took a step forward, the other took a step back; these steps were repeated four times. Apparently the scrawny man didn’t want Proska to come any nearer. Proska gave up and stood still, because he realized what he was doing was futile, because the other was retreating from him with such calm seriousness, and because Proska could see in the other’s emaciated face his readiness to back away from him, if necessary, to the end of the world. Many of those in the crowd who had found one another were streaming out of the station, and the ticket puncher hastened to detach the chain he’d put up between his little house and a barrier. Eventually, even those who had waited and hoped in vain left the platform; however, they didn’t go away completely, but rather occupied a position behind the picket fence next to the station and stared hard at the empty train.
Proska’s hand was ready, and if the other had extended his own into the space between them, Proska’s would have reached the middle first. But the other did no such thing. He just stood there, leaning slightly on the wind, and hypnotized Proska with his presence. Proska couldn’t take this for very long; he began to reason with himself, and thought that the best way to overcome such situations was by speaking, if only a single word. What was tormenting him and petrifying him was the uncertainly that lay in silence, and he sought a way to break that silence; for then, he told himself, it would be easier for him to cope with the apparition of the other. And he raised one hand and made a trivializing gesture in the scrawny man’s direction, as if to say, What’s with the shark look? That’s not like you, and in the very same second, Proska said, “Zwiczos, for heaven’s sake! Where have you been?”
He actually asked that question: Where have you been? Nothing else occurred to him. His imagination had shrunk under Thighbone’s eyes, withered by that merciless stare, which seemed to have seen through him a long time ago. The sensation of being seen through inhibited him fearfully. But now that the first word had been spoken, he wanted to assess its effect.
“Thighbone,” he added, “how did you wind up here? Why are you looking at me like that? Come here, for heaven’s sake, I won’t do you anything. Are you afraid of me?”
Whereupon Zwiczosbirski silently turned away from him, circled him carefully, as though he were taboo, and walked into the station without looking back at him. Proska pursed his lips and jingled the coins in his pocket.
The ticket puncher approached him from behind and said, “Whatcha waitin’ for? There ain’t no one left.”
• SIXTEEN •
I’ve been expecting you for some time now,” said the colonel. “Frankly, I
often wonder why it’s so hard for you to find your way to me. Sit here by the desk.”
“How did you know I intended to come and see you?” asked Proska. His surprise was so great that he forgot to sit down.
“That’s not important,” Colonel Swerdlow answered. “And even if I told you, it wouldn’t help you any.”
“But you can’t suspect what I have in mind.”
“We don’t suspect it, that’s true, but we know it.”
“Then you know why I’m here.”
“I know why, but just so you won’t doubt our willingness to listen to you, go ahead and tell me!”
Swerdlow started to clean his fingernails with a pocketknife. The surface of his desk was empty; apparently, the colonel had been on the point of leaving his office. However, he didn’t give the impression that Proska’s visit was keeping him from doing other things. He even seemed happy that Proska had finally come to him.
“Come, sit down, Proska, and tell me what’s on your mind. Do you want to take off your overcoat?”
“No.”
“But why not? Your coat can dry while you’re here. Maybe it won’t dry completely, but at least enough to look like it’s dry. Besides, you can speak more freely with your coat off.”
“I’ll keep it on,” said Proska. He sat down and laid the skirts of his coat over his knees.
“You don’t have much to say to me, right?”
“Yes.”
“You’ve come here to make a demand?”
“Yes,” Proska repeated. “I’ve come here to demand an explanation.”
The knife scratched away under the colonel’s fingernails.
“There,” said the colonel after a while. He folded the knife shut and threw it onto his desk. “One must do that from time to time.” He smiled and went on: “Tradition collects like black dirt under your fingernails, and because it accumulates fast and nobody wants to put up with it, you have to dig it out every now and then…Do you know why monkeys don’t make any progress? Because they haven’t yet discovered the revolutionary significance of hygiene. If they had, they’d be in a completely different position today…But I don’t want to bore you with dull pleasantries. Right now, you look as if you’ve never laughed in your life. What have you come to tell me?”
“You already know.”
“You seem to be distressed by the fact that I know something you consider your exclusive knowledge. Believe me, it’s the only way to conduct a revolution without risk. If we didn’t know what the rest of you know, if we had no clue about what you want, then we could lay ourselves on the stove and let Grandma stuff us. Why have we revalued the individual consciousness in favor of the collective consciousness? Why have we given ourselves so much trouble to creep inside your ganglia? Why have we drilled into your lives like worms burrowing into the earth? Why have we denied ourselves and slept and sweated beside you under a single blanket? Because we recognized that the revolution can succeed only under one condition. And this condition requires us to know what the rest of you know, requires us to be aware that our knowledge has value only if we’ve discovered what knowledge you all are carrying around inside your skulls. Whoever’s not prepared to sleep with the masses and to remain cold during the consummation in order to record their reactions—whoever can’t do that is sunk without hope.”
Proska said, “None of that interests me.”
“I know these things don’t interest you,” said the colonel. “And the truth is, there’s no need for you to worry about them either. You’re a misfit, Proska, and you can consider yourself lucky to be one. Because if you weren’t a misfit, we surely wouldn’t have forgiven you so many times. But we need men like you…You’re probably wondering why I’m speaking to you so frankly, right?”
“No.”
“So you’re not wondering?”
“I’m wondering, but about something else,” said Proska. He pressed his fingers against the edge of the desk so hard that the knuckles turned white.
“You’re wondering why the people in your office change so often, is that it?”
“Yes,” Proska said loudly. “You and the others in charge, you disappear everyone who doesn’t suit you. One morning people just don’t come to work, and nobody knows what’s become of them. What do you do with the people who don’t suit you, huh?” He thought of Zwiczos and clenched his teeth and looked Swerdlow hard in the face. “How can we keep working with these constant changes?”
The colonel opened and closed his knife and ran his tongue over his upper teeth. “Calm down. The changes correspond exactly to the dynamic principle of progress. Stale water tastes bad. What would you rather drink from, a stagnant pond or a mountain stream? You see what I mean.”
Proska was shaking. He bounded to his feet and said, “You people on top, you drill your way into us, that’s true, but once you’re inside, you inject poison into our bloodstream and devour us from within. I’ve watched you long enough to know. I see where you want to take us. You can’t fool me.”
Swerdlow gave him a narrow-eyed, scrutinizing look and said calmly, “Don’t get so worked up. We haven’t transferred you anywhere. Which is how you can tell that we trust you. And in fact, we trust you even though you don’t come to any meetings or participate in any indoctrination sessions. And yet you of all people could sure use some indoctrination. Then you’d understand why the engine must be cleaned.”
“Why was Mospfleger arrested?” Proska asked coldly.
“For sufficient reasons.”
“For what reasons?”
“Have you accepted the fact that we know more than you?”
Proska said nothing.
The colonel went on: “So you have accepted it. Is it unthinkable that we knew more than you in Mospfleger’s case too? To breathe is not to judge, Proska; breathing is indeed a prerequisite for judging, but only one prerequisite out of many. Since you’re apparently lacking the other prerequisites, I would—if I were you—let breathing be enough and refrain from judging in this way.”
“You disappeared him because he was promoting an antiwar organization.”
“The setting up of any organization is a thorn in the State’s side. But you be quiet now. You’ve already said enough. I’ll be chewing on what you’ve told me for a good while.”
The colonel got up, scurried over to the window, and pulled down the shade. Then he returned to his place behind the desk and explained, “I don’t like being looked at through a window. It always makes me feel so defenseless. Can you imagine that?”
“God can see through window shades too.”
“Yes, but you know, I’ve never yet had a feeling of defenselessness where he’s concerned. When he shaped us in his image, he made a mistake. And now he’s paying a stiff price, because as soon as we get in a quarrel with him, we use the abilities he gave us against him. I wouldn’t like to be in his shoes. But you shouldn’t talk about God at every opportunity…You wanted to know what we do with the people who disappear from your office?”
“I don’t want to know anything else about any of you,” said Proska. He stood up and went to the door. “You can all do whatever you want. I’ve always put my cards on the table, and I can say I—”
“Hush,” the colonel interrupted him. “Be quiet now. You’re tired and overexcited. You have to get some sleep. Go home, Proska. Rest up, recover from the world. Who knows what got you so upset…Good night.”
Proska left the colonel’s room without another word. A little dazed, he stopped on the first landing of the staircase, and it seemed to him as if he heard a brief, metallic click. Then he slowly continued down the stairs, passed unimpeded through the checkpoint, and reached the street. Rain was still falling, thin as threads. Proska wrapped his overcoat tight around himself and walked in some direction, any direction, if only to leave the vicinity of that building. But whichever way he tur
ned and however fast he walked, the house didn’t let go of him; sure, he could set out and head north, south, east, or west, but he couldn’t get more than a certain distance away. When he stood on the farthest point, he lost the impulse to go any farther and turned back, as though he were a small particle in an electromagnetic force field and couldn’t leave a strictly limited area under his own power. He decided to go to a favorite bar and get something to drink. Beer, potato schnapps, something. He was a familiar figure in the bar; even the cats knew him. Whenever he ate there, they would sit at his feet and beg, closely following the spoon as it approached his mouth. The animals carried on with their innocent shamelessness until he finally grew angry and threw some scraps on the floor. Then the cats spared him for a while and gobbled up whatever had come their way.
When Proska entered, the bar owner gave a start and led his guest to one of the rooms in the back. It was a small room with bare walls, a table and chairs in one corner, and on the table, beer; Kunkel, a man from Proska’s office, was sitting on one of the chairs.
The Turncoat Page 23
