"Is this Twenty-two Marienstrasse?"
"Yes. Who do you want to see?"
"Health Councilor Kruse."
"Kruse? What do you want from him?"
Graeber peered at the man in the dark. He was wearing boots and an S.A. uniform. A self-important block warden, he thought, just what I needed. "I'll explain that to Dr. Kruse myself," he said and went into the house.
He was very weary. It was a weariness that lay deeper than eyes and bones. He had been inquiring and searching all day but he had learned little. His parents had no relatives in the city and not many of their neighbors were still there. Boettcher had been right; it was like witchcraft. People were afraid of the Gestapo and would say nothing. Or, in other cases, they had heard nothing but rumors and handed you on to others who likewise knew nothing.
He climbed the stairs. The hallway was dark. Dr. Kruse lived on the second floor. Graeber barely remembered him, but he knew that his mother had gone to him several times for treatment. Perhaps she had been there recently and he had her new address.
A middle-aged woman with a blurred face opened the door. "Kruse? You want to see Dr. Kruse?"
"Yes."
The woman examined him in silence. She did not move aside to let him in. "Is he home?" Graeber asked impatiently.
The woman made no reply. She seemed to be listening for something downstairs. "Have you come for the consultation hour?" she asked presently.
"No. On a private matter."
"Private?"
"Yes, private. Are you Frau Kruse?"
"God forbid!"
Graeber stared at her. During the day he had run into every variety of caution, hate, and evasion, but this was new. "Listen to me," he said. "I don't know what's going on here and I don't care. I want to talk to Dr. Kruse, that's all. Do you understand?"
"Kruse no longer lives here," the woman announced hi a voice suddenly loud and harsh and hostile.
"But there's his name." Graeber pointed to a brass plate beside the door.
"That plate should have been taken down long ago."
"But it's there. Does any member of the family still live here?"
The woman didn't answer. Graeber had had enough. He was on the point of telling her to go to hell when he heard a door being opened behind her in the apartment. A band of light burst from a room diagonally across the dark vestibule. "Is that someone for me?" a voice asked.
"Yes," Graeber said, taking a chance. "I would like to speak to someone who knows Dr. Kruse. It doesn't seem to be easy."
"I am Elisabeth Kruse."
Graeber stared at the woman with the blurred face. She unblocked the door and went back into the apartment. "Too much light!" she snapped in the direction of the open room. "It is forbidden to use so much electricity."
Graeber stayed where he was. A girl of about twenty came toward him through the band of light as though through a river. For a moment he was aware of high-arched brows, dark eyes, and mahogany-colored hair that flowed in a restless wave against her shoulders—then she plunged back into the muddy half-darkness of the corridor and stood before him.
"My father no longer practices," she said.
"I didn't come for treatment. I came for news."
The girl's face changed. She made a quick movement as though to see whether the other woman was still there. Then she opened the door wide. "Come in," she whispered.
He followed her into the room from which the light came. She turned around and looked at him. Her eyes were now no longer dark; they were gray and very transparent.
"But I know you," she said. "Didn't you go to high school here?"
"Yes. My name is Ernst Graeber."
Now Graeber remembered her too. She had been a skinny girl with too big eyes and too much hair. Her mother had died young and she had gone to live with relatives in another city. "My God, Elisabeth," he said. "I didn't recognize you. It must be seven or eight years since we last saw each other. You have changed a lot!"
"You too."
They stood facing each other. "Just what's going on here?" Graeber asked. "You're guarded like a general."
Elisabeth Kruse laughed shortly and bitterly. "Not like a general. Like a prisoner."
"What? Your father—"
Elisabeth Kruse made a swift gesture. "Wait!" she whispered and went past him to a table where a phonograph stood. She turned it on: The Hohenfriedberger March rolled out. "So," she said. "Now you can go on."
Graeber looked at her uncomprehendingly. Boettcher seemed to have been right; almost everyone in the city was crazy. "What's that?" he asked. "Turn the thing off! I've had enough marches. Tell me instead what's going on here. Why are you a prisoner?"
Elisabeth came back. "The woman out there is listening. She's an informer. That's why I turned on the phonograph." She stood in front of him and was suddenly breathing hard. "What about my father? What do you know of him?"
"I? Nothing. I only wanted to ask him a question. What in the world has happened to him"
"You haven't any news of him?"
"No. I wanted to ask him if he knew my mother's address. My parents are missing."
"That's all?"
Graeber stared at Elisabeth. "It's enough for me," he said then.
The tension in her face broke. "That's true," she said wearily. "I thought you were bringing news of him."
"What is all this about your father?"
"He's in a concentration camp. It's been four months now. He was denounced. When you spoke of news I thought you knew something about him."
"But I'd have told you that right away."
Elisabeth shook her head. "Not if it had been smuggled news. You would have had to be cautious."
Cautious, Graeber thought. All day long I have heard nothing but that word. The Hohenfriedberger March rolled on, brassy and intolerable, "Can we turn that thing off now?" he asked.
"Yes. And it would be better for you to go. I've told you what happened here."
"I'm no informer," Graeber said angrily. "What about the woman out there? Did she denounce your father?"
Elisabeth lifted the phonograph arm. She did not turn off the machine. The disk went on turning silently. In the stillness a siren began to wail. 'The alarm!" she whispered. "Again!"
Someone banged on the door. "Lights out! That's what happens! Always too much light."
Graeber opened the door. "What happens?"
The woman was already at the far side of the vestibule. She shouted something else and disappeared. Elisabeth took Graeber's hand off the doorknob and closed the door.
"What kind of intolerable she-devil is that?" he asked. "How does that woman come to be here?"
"An official tenant. Billeted here by the authorities. I can be happy that I'm allowed to keep this room."
From outside new uproar arose. The screams of a woman and the weeping.of a child. The howling of the preliminary alarm grew louder. Elisabeth picked up a raincoat and put it on. "We must go to the air raid shelter."
"We've still got plenty of time. Why don't you move away from here? It must be hell for you staying with that spy."
"Lights out!" the woman screamed again from outside. Elisabeth turned around and snapped off the light. Then she glided through the dark room to the window. "Why don't I move? Because I won't run away!"
She opened the window. All at once the noise of the sirens rushed into the room and filled it completely. She stood black against the diffused light from outside and hooked the casement open to prevent the panes from being broken by the force of the explosions. Then she came back. The noise was like a torrent bearing her before it. "I won't run away!" she shouted through the howling. "Can't you understand that?"
Graeber saw her eyes. Now they were dark again as they had been earlier at the door, and full of passionate strength. He suddenly had a feeling that he must protect himself against something, against the eyes, against the face, against the fury of the sirens and against the chaos that was forcing its way in through the win
dow behind them. "No," he said, "I don't understand it. That only drives you mad. A position that can't be held must be given up. That's something you learn as a soldier."
She stared at him. 'Then give it up!" she shouted violently. "Give it up and leave me alone!"
She tried to go past him to the door. He took hold of her arm. She tore it away. She was stronger than he had expected. "Wait!" he shouted. "I'm going with you."
The uproar drove them before it. It was everywhere, in'the room, in the corridor, in the vestibule, on-the stairs—it broke, on the walls and threw back echoes against itself as though it came from all sides, and there was no escape from it, it did not stop at the ears or the surface of the skin, it broke through and foamed in the blood, it made the nerves tremble and the bones vibrate, and it extinguished all thought.
"Where is that damned siren?" Graeber shouted on the stairs. "It drives you mad."
The door of the house slammed shut. For an instant the howling was dampened. "It's in the next block," Elisabeth said. "We must go to the cellar in the Karlsplatz. The one in in this house is no good."
Shadows were running down the stairs with bags and bundles. A flashlight went on, illuminating Elisabeth's face. "Come along with us if you're alone!" someone shouted.
"I'm not alone."
The man hurried on. The house door flew open again. Everywhere people were tumbling out of houses as though they were tin soldiers being shaken out of boxes. Air raid wardens were shouting orders. A woman in a red silk dressing gown with flying yellow hair galloped by like an Amazon. A few old people were stumbling along beside the walls; they were talking, but in the driving noise none of it could be heard —as though the flabby mouths were silently chewing dead words to a pulp.
They came to the Karlsplatz. At the entrance to the shelter an excited mob was milling. Air raid wardens ran about like sheepdogs trying to create order. Elisabeth stopped. "We can try to get through from the side," Graeber said.
She shook her head. "Let's wait here."
The crowd crept darkly down into the darkness of the stairway and disappeared underground. Graeber looked at Elisabeth. She suddenly stood there as calm as though all this did not matter to her. "You have courage," he said.
She glanced up. "No. Just fear of the cellar."
"Come on! Come on!" shouted the air raid warden. "Down the stairs! Do you have to have a special invitation?"
The shelter was large and low and well constructed, with galleries, side passages, and lights; there were benches there and wardens, and a good many people had brought mattresses, blankets, suitcases, parcels, and folding chairs; life underground was already organized. Graeber glanced around. It was the first time he had been in an air raid shelter with civilians. The first time with women and children. And the first time in Germany.
The pale, bluish light took the color out of people's faces as though they had been drowned. Graeber noticed not far from him the woman in the red dressing gown. Her gown was now violet and her hair had a green glow. He glanced at Elisabeth. Her face looked gray and hollow, too, her eyes lay deep in the shadows of the sockets and her hair was lusterless and dead. Drowned people, he thought. Drowned in lies and fear, hunted under the earth and at war with light and purity and truth!
A woman with two children crouched opposite him. The children were huddled against her knees. Their faces were flat and expressionless as though frozen. Only their eyes were alive. They shone with reflected light, they were big and wide open, they swung toward the entrance when the howling became stronger and deeper, and then toward the low ceiling and the walls, and then back once more to the entrance. Their movement was not rapid and jerky; they followed the noise like the eyes of paralyzed animals, heavy yet floating, at once swiftly and as though in a deep trance, they pursued and circled, and the faint light was reflected in them. They did not see Graeber nor even their own mother; the power of recognition and of communication had vanished from them; with anonymous intentness they followed something they were unable to see: the humming that might be death. They were no longer young enough not to scent the danger; and not yet old enough to make a useless pretense of courage. They were alert and defenseless and delivered up.
Graeber suddenly saw that it was not only the children; the eyes of the others moved in the same way. Their faces and bodies were still; they listened and it was not only their ears that listened—it was also the bowed shoulders, the thighs, the knees, the braced arms and hands. They listened motionless, and only their eyes followed the sound as though they were obeying an inaudible command.
Then he smelled fear.
Imperceptibly something changed in the heavy air. The tenseness relaxed. The uproar outside continued; but from somewhere a fresh wind seemed to come. The gallery was air at once no longer full of crouching bodies; it was filled with human beings again and they were no longer submissive and apathetic; they lifted their heads and moved about and looked at one another. They once more had faces and no longer masks.
"They've flown past," said an old man beside Elisabeth.
"They may come back," someone replied. "They do that sometimes. Swing round and come back again when everyone's out of the shelters."
The two children began to move. A man yawned. From somewhere a dachshund appeared and began to sniff about. An infant cried. A few people unpacked their parcels and began to eat. A woman gave a high scream like a Valkyrie. "Arnold! We forgot to turn off the gas! Now dinner will be burned up. Why didn't you remember it?"
"Never mind," said the old man. "When there's an air raid alarm the city turns off the gas everywhere."
"Never mind? If they turn it on again the whole house will be full of gas! That's a whole lot worse."
"The gas is not turned off for an alarm," said a pedantically instructive voice. "Only for an attack."
Elisabeth took a comb and mirror out of her hand bag and combed her hair. In the dead light the comb looked as though it were made of dried ink; but under it her hair seemed to spring and crackle. "I wish we could get out," she said. "It's suffocating here."
They had to wait for a half-hour longer; then finally the doors were opened. They walked to the exit. Over the doors hung small shaded lights. From outside moonlight fell squarely on the steps. Elisabeth changed with each step forward as though she were awaking from a trance. The shadows in her eyesockets disappeared: the leaden color flowed away, copper glints showed in her hair; her skin once more became warm and glowing; and life returned again—breathing, full, stronger than before, rewon, not lost, more precious and colorful for the brief period that one felt it thus.
They stood in front of the shelter. Elisabeth was breathing deeply. She moved her shoulders and her head like an animal coming out of a cage. "These mass graves underground!" she said. "How I hate them! You suffocate there!" With a quick gesture she threw back her hair. "Ruins are a relief by contrast. At least they have the sky over them."
Graeber looked at her. There was something wild and impassioned about her as she stood there in front of the huge, bald block of concrete, its steps leading down into a nether world from which they had just escaped. "Are you going back home?" he asked.
"Yes. Where else? I certainly don't want to run around in these unlighted streets. I've had more than enough of that."
They walked acros the Karlsplatz. The wind snuffled around them like a great dog. "Can't you move away?" Graeber asked. "Dsepîte everything you say?"
"Where to? Do you know of a room?"
"No."
"Neither do I. Thousands are roofless. So how am I going to move?"
"That's right. It's too late now."
Elisabeth stopped. "I wouldn't go away anyway even if I could. It would be like leaving my father in the lurch. Can't you understand that?"
"Yes."
They walked on. Graeber had had enough of her. She could do what she liked, he thought. He was suddenly very exhausted and jumpy and he had the feeling that his parents, at this very instant, were look
ing for him in Hakenstrasse. "I've got to go," he said. "I made an appointment and I'm late already. Good night, Elisabeth."
"Good night, Ernst."
He looked after her for a moment. Almost instantly she disappeared in the darkness. I should have taken her home, he thought. But he did not care. He remembered that even as a child he had not liked her much. Quickly he turned around and went to Hakenstrasse. He found nothing there. No one was in sight. Only the moon and the strange paralyzing stillness of fresh ruins, which was like the echo of a silent scream hanging in the air. The old ones were different.
A Time to Love and a Time to Die Page 11
