"Yes," Graeber said. "Why not?"
He walked on. After a quarter of an hour he realized that he no longer knew where he was. The fog had grown heavier and he had lost his way among the ruins. They all looked alike and the streets could no longer be told apart. It was a strange feeling: as though he had lost his way inside himself.
It took him a while to find Hakenstrasse. A wind had suddenly sprung up and the fog began to heave and roll like a noiseless, ghostly sea.
He went to his parents' house. He found no message there and was about to go on when he heard a curious resonant note. It was like the sound of a harp. He looked around. The street was empty as far as he could, see. The sound came again, higher now, plaintive and diminishing, as though an invisible buoy were ringing out its warning in the sea of fog. It was repeated, deeper, then higher, irregularly and yet at almost uniform intervals, and it seemed to come out of the air as though someone on the roof were playing a harp.
Graeber listened. Then he tried to follow the notes but he could not determine their direction. They seemed to be everywhere and to come from everywhere, strong and challenging, now singly and now like an arpeggio, an unresolved chord of inconsolable grief.
The air raid warden, he thought. The mad man—who else? He went to the house where only the façade was standing and jerked open the door. A figure inside sprang up out of an easy chair. Graeber saw it was the green chair that had been standing in the ruins of his parents' house. "What's the matter?" the air raid warden asked sharply in alarm.
Graeber saw he had nothing in his hands. The notes went on resounding. "What's that?" he asked. "Where does it come from?"
The warden brought his damp face close to Graeber's. "Ah, the soldier! The defender of the fatherland! What is that? Don't you hear it? That is the requiem for those who are buried. The cry for help. Dig them out! Dig them out! Cease this murdering!"
"Nonsense!" Graeber stared upward through the rising fog. He saw something like a dark cable swinging in the wind and every time it swung back he heard the mysterious gong-like note. All at once he remembered the piano with the top missing that he had seen hanging high among the ruins. The cable was striking against the exposed wires. "It's the piano," he said.
"It's the piano! It's the piano!" the warden mimicked him. "What do you understand about it, you unconscionable murderer! It's the funeral bell and the wind rings it. It is Heaven calling for mercy, for mercy, you rifle-shooting automaton, for that mercy which no longer exists on earth! What do you know about death, you vandal! And what could you know? Those who cause it never know anything about it!" He stooped over. "The dead are everywhere," he whispered. "They lie under the ruins with their trodden faces and outstretched arms, they lie there but they will arise and they will hunt all of you down-—"
Graeber stepped back into the street. "Hunt, you down," whispered the warden behind him. "They will accuse you and judgment will be exacted for every single one of them—"
Graeber could no longer see him. He only heard the hoarse voice issuing from the eddying wisps of fog. "For whatever ye have done unto the least of these my brethren that have ye done unto me, saith the Lord—"
He walked on. "Go to hell," he muttered. "Go to hell and bury yourself under those ruins you perch on like a bird of death." Death, he thought bitterly. Death, death! I've had enough of death! Why did I come back? Wasn't it to feel that somewhere in this wilderness there is life too? He rang. The door opened at once as though someone had been standing right behind it. "Oh, it's you—" said Frau Lieser, taken aback.
"Yes, me," Graeber replied. He had expected Elisabeth.
Just then she came out of her room. This time Frau Lieser withdrew without a word. "Come in, Ernst," Elisabeth said. "I'll be ready right away."
He followed her. "Is that your brightest dress?" he asked, looking at the black sweater and dark skirt she was wearing. "Have you forgotten we're going out tonight?"
"Did you really mean it?"
"Of course. Just look at me! This is a dress uniform belonging to a corporal. A friend of mine borrowed it for me. I've become an impostor so that I can take you to the Hotel Germania—and it's still a question whether anyone lower than a lieutenant can get in. That depends on you. Haven't you another dress?"
"Yes. But—"
Graeber saw Binding's vodka on the table. "I know what you're thinking," he said. "Forget it! And forget Frau Lieser and the neighbors. You're not hurting anyone; that's the one thing that counts. And you have to get out of here sometime; otherwise you'll go crazy. Here, have a drink of vodka."
He filled a glass and handed it to her. She emptied it. "All right," she said. "I won't take long. I was already half prepared, but I didn't know whether you'd remember. Only you've got to get out of the room while I change. I don't want to be denounced by Frau Lieser for prostitution."
"She wouldn't get away with it in this case. With soldiers that counts as patriotism. But I'll wait for you outside. On the street, not in the vestibule."
He walked up and down on the street. The fog had grown thinner but it still eddied between the walls of the houses like steam in a laundry. Suddenly a window clattered open above him. Elisabeth leaned out, bare-shouldered in a frame of light, holding two dresses in her hands. One was golden and the other nondescript and darker. They fluttered like flags in the wind. "Which?" she asked.
He pointed to the golden one. She nodded and closed the window. Graeber looked around. The street was still empty and dark. No one noticed the violation of the blackout. He walked up and down again. But the night suddenly seemed to have become vaster and fuller. The weariness of the day, the strange mood of the evening and his determination to turn away from the past had slowly transformed themselves into a mild excitement that now all at once turned into impatient expectation.
Elisabeth came through the door. She came quickly and she was slender and supple and seemed taller than before in the long, golden dress which glittered in the faint light. Her face, too, had changed. It was thinner and her head seemed smaller, and it took Graeber a moment to realize that this was because she was wearing a low-necked dress. "Did Frau Lieser see you?" he asked.
"Yes. She was speechless. She is convinced that I ought constantly to do penance in sackcloth and ashes. For a minute I had a bad conscience."
"It's always the wrong people who have a bad conscience." "It's not just a bad conscience. It's fear as well. Do you think—"
"No," Graeber replied. "I don't think anything. And tonight we're not going to do any more thinking either. We've thought enough for a while and it's made us edgy enough, too. Now we're going to see for once whether we can't just have a good time—"
The Hotel Germania stood between two wrecked houses like a rich woman between needy relatives. The rubble had been neatly piled up on either side, and as a result the two ruins no longer seemed wild and haunted by death; they had already been made orderly and almost respectable.
The doorman examined Graeber's uniform with an appraising glance. "Where is the wine room?" Graeber asked sharply before he could say anything.
"To the rear at the right of the hall, sir. Please ask for Fritz, the headwaiter."
They walked along the corridor. A major and two captains passed them. Graeber saluted. "They say it's crawling with generals here," he said. "A couple of military commissions have their offices on the second floor."
Elisabeth stopped. "Then aren't you being very reckless? Suppose someone noticed your uniform?"
"What would they notice? It's not hard to behave like a corporal. I used to be one myself."
A lieutenant colonel accompanied by a small thin woman strode by, spurs ringing. He looked straight over Graeber's head. "What will happen to you if they find out?" Elisabeth asked.
"Nothing serious."
"Could they shoot you?"
Graeber laughed. "I don't believe they would do that, Elisabeth. They need us too much at the front,"
"What else might happen to you?"<
br />
"Nothing much. At most a couple of weeks' arrest. That would be a couple of weeks of rest. Almost like a furlough. When you have to be back at the front in about two weeks there's not much that can scare you."
Headwaiter Fritz emerged from the passage at the right. Graeber slipped a bill into his hand. Fritz allowed it to disappear and made no difficulties. "The wine room, for dinner, of course," he said and solemnly led the way.
He seated them at a table hidden behind a pillar and departed with dignity. Graeber glanced around. "Just what I wanted. I need some time to accustom myself to this. And you?" He looked at Elisabeth. "You certainly don't," he said in surprise. "You look as though you came here every day."
A little old waiter who looked like a marabou appeared. He brought them the menu. Graeber took it, placed a bill inside and handed it back to the marabou. "We'd like to have something that's not on the menu. What have you?"
The marabou looked at him expressionlessly. "We have nothing except what is on the menu."
"All right. Then for the time being bring us a bottle of Johannisberger Kochsberg 1937, G. H. von Mumm, not too cold."
The marabou's eyes lit up. "Very good, sir," he said with sudden respect. Then he bent over. "We happen to have some Ostend sole on hand. Absolutely fresh. With it perhaps a Belgian salad and a few parsley potatoes?"
"Good. And what have you for hors d'oeuvres? No caviar, of course, with the wine."
The marabou became even more animated. "Of course not. But we still have a little Strasbourg goose liver, truffled—"
Graeber nodded.
"And afterwards I recommend a piece of Dutch cheese. It will bring out the bloom of the wine completely."
"Excellent."
The marabou disappeared in excitement. He might at first have taken Graeber for a soldier who had wandered in by chance; now he saw in him a connoisseur who was by chance a soldier.
Elisabeth had listened in amazement. "Ernst," she said, "where did you find out all that?"
"From my friend Reuter. This, morning I didn't know any of it. He's such a great connoisseur that he has the gout. That, however, has rescued him from the front. Thus, as always, sin pays."
"But the trick with the tip and the menu?"
"All from Reuter. He knows his way around here. How to behave like a man of the world—he taught me that, too."
Elisabeth laughed suddenly. It was a warm, free and tender laugh. "God knows this isn't how I remember you," she said.
"Nor I you, the way you are now." He looked at her. He had never seen her like this before. She changed completely when she laughed. It was as though all the windows in a dark house had suddenly opened. "That's a very beautiful dress," he said, a little embarrassed.
"It's one of my mother's. I made it over last night."
"Do you mean you can sew? You don't look as if you could."
"I couldn't, either, until some time ago, but I have learned. Now I sew Army overcoats eight hours a day."
"Really? Were you snapped up by the labor service?"
"Yes. I had to join. And I wanted to, too. I thought perhaps it would help my father."
Graeber looked at her and shook his head. "It doesn't suit you. Not any more than your first name. How did you happen to get that?"
"My mother picked it out. She came from southern Austria and looked Italian, and she hoped I would be a blonde with blue eyes—and I was to be called Elisabeth. Then she called me that anyway in spite of her disappointment."
The marabou came with the wine. He held the bottle as though it were a jewel and he poured carefully. "I have brought you very thin, plain crystal glasses," he said. "It's the best way to see the color. Or would you prefer goblets?"
"No. Thin, clear glasses."
The marabou nodded and uncovered a silver platter. The rosy slices of black-truffled goose liver lay surrounded by a circle of quivering aspic. "Fresh from Alsace," he announced proudly.
Elisabeth laughed. "What luxury!"
"Luxury!" Graeber raised his glass. "Luxury," he repeated. 'That's it! We'll drink to that, Elisabeth. For two long years I've eaten out of a tin mess kit and was never quite sure whether I could finish my meal—so this is not simply luxury. It is much more. It is peace and security and joy and festivity —it is everything that is lacking out there."
He drank and felt the wine and looked at Elisabeth and she was part of it. It was always the unexpected, he suddenly realized, the thing that transcended need, the unnecessary, apparently useless that produced lightness and elation, and this was so because these qualities belonged to the other side of existence, to the brighter side, to play and superfluity and dreams. After his years close to death the wine was now not just wine, the silver not just silver, and the music that stole into the room from somewhere not just music—they were all symbols of that other life, the life without death and destruction, the life for life's sake that had already become almost a myth and a hopeless dream.
"Sometimes one completely forgets that one's alive," he said. "I found that out today."
Elisabeth laughed. "I've known that all the time. But I could never put it to any use."
The marabou approached. "How is the wine, sir?"
"It must be good. Otherwise I wouldn't suddenly be thinking of things I haven't thought of in a long time."
"That's the sun, sir. The sun that ripened it in the autumn. It shines out of it again. In the Rhineland they call a wine like this a monstrance."
"A monstrance?"
"Yes. It is full-bodied and like gold and it shines in all directions."
"So it does."
"You feel it with the first glass, don't you? Filtered sunshine!"
"Even at the first sip! It doesn't go into the stomach. It goes straight behind the eyes and changes the world."
"You understand about wine, sir." The marabou bent toward him confidentially. "Over there at that table to the right they have the same wine. There where the two troop leaders are sitting. Those persons pour it down as though it were water. They ought to be drinking Liebfraumilch!"
"This seems to be a good day for impostors, Elisabeth," Graber said. "How's the wine for you? A monstrance too?"
She leaned back and stretched her shoulders. "I feel like someone who has escaped from' prison. And like someone who will soon be locked up again for swindling."
He laughed. "That's how we are! Afraid of our feelings. And when we.become aware of them we immediately think we are swindlers."
The marabou brought the sole and the salad. Graeber watched him as he served. He felt completely relaxed and seemed to himself like someone who has ventured out on thin ice and to his amazement finds that it holds. He knew it was thin and perhaps would not hold for long, but it was holding now and that was enough.
"There's one good thing about having lain in the dirt so long," he said. "Everything is as new and exciting as though you were seeing it for the first time. Everything—even a glass and a white tablecloth."
The marabou he'd up the bottle. He was now like a mother. "In general, Moselle is served with fish," he explained. "But sole is different. It has an almost nutty flavor. With it a wine from the Rhinegau is a revelation, don't you think?"
"Absolutely."
The marabou nodded and disappeared.
"Ernst," Elisabeth said, "can we pay for all this, too? It's sure to be frightfully expensive."
"We can pay for it. I have two years' combat pay with me. And it doesn't need to last long." Graeber laughed. "Only for a short life, Elisabeth. Two weeks. It will do all right for that."
They were standing in front of the door to the house. The wind had dropped and it had grown foggy again. "When do you have to go back?" Elisabeth asked. "In two weeks?"
"Just about."
"That's soon."
"It's soon and at the same time it's a long way off. That changes from moment to moment. Time in war is different from time in peace. I'm sure you know that too. It's just as much the front here as out ther
e."
"It isn't the same."
"Yes, it is. And this evening was my first real day of leave. God bless the marabou and Reuter and your golden dress and the wine."
"And us," Elisabeth said. "We could use it."
She stood in front of him. The mist hung in her hair and the pale light glittered on it. It glittered on her dress and the mist made her face damp as a fruit. It seemed suddenly hard for Graeber to leave all this, the web of tenderness, relaxation, quietude, and excitement that had woven itself so unexpectedly over the evening, and go back to the stink and the jokes of the barracks, into the desolation of waiting and brooding over the future.
A sharp voice cut through the stillness. "Have you no eyes in your head, corporal?"
A Time to Love and a Time to Die Page 16
