After Midnight (17 page)

Franz saw Schleimann. He was sitting on a rickety little seat in his arbour, right hand on the handle of a spade, left hand on the handle of a small hoe. The allotment felt like a graveyard where no one rested in peace, and it smelled of murder.

“You informed on me and my friend, Herr Schleimann,” said Franz, standing there in the arbour. A shiny brown box of face powder was lying on the floor like a giant beetle; a sweet and oily lilac scent filled the little place. “Bloody women!” said Herr Schleimann, smiling to himself, and he spat.

“You informed on me and my friend, Herr Schleimann,” said Franz again.

“Don’t you come bothering me, you stupid fool, get out of here, I’ve got other things on my mind,” snapped Schleimann, letting go of his hoe and reaching for an opened,
half-full bottle of schnapps that was standing on the floor beside him.

The schnapps flowed all over the floor. Franz’s hands had a firm and merciless grip on Schleimann’s neck. All the blazing heat of his hatred streamed into those hands, giving them immense strength. The spade dropped from Schleimann’s right hand.

Franz went back to the station. He didn’t take a tram, he went on foot. It was a long way.

Franz sat in the third-class waiting room, waiting for the train to Frankfurt. He was not glad or sorry. He felt no fear and no remorse. He had nothing to do now but wait for the train.

So that was it. He is sitting beside me, empty, burnt out. “Oh, Franz!” Telling his own story has not woken or warmed him. He is frozen. He feels no pain, no joy, he feels no remorse or fear, and he feels no love for me either.

“It’s a good thing if you did kill that pig, Franz!”

He sits there in silence, head fallen forward on his chest—it will fall right off any minute now, it will fall into his lap. As a child I sometimes read stories about ghosts who carried their heads under their arms when they went out haunting. The red silk scarf flows over his bent neck like bright blood. Dear Mother of God, they will cut his head off, they’ll execute him. They executed some Communists in the Klingelpütz prison in Cologne. They screamed—I heard them. I was going to the cathedral on the Number 18 tram—what’s the street called? What is it called? … Unter-Sachsenhausen. Thank God I remember. Unter Sachsenhausen. I was on the Number 18 tram—why
was I going to the cathedral? What did I want there? When the tram was driving past the side street where that dreadful prison stands, the Klingelpütz, we could hear the screaming. Screams that made the air shake with pain. “That’s the Communists being executed in the Klingelpütz,” said a young SA man standing near the tram driver. He sounded proud that he knew what was going on. I couldn’t make out how we could hear them all this way off. “I knew one of ’em, quite a young fellow he was, eighteen at the most,” said the tram driver. He sounded proud too. He drove on, and the screaming went with us. One man took his hat off in a gesture of solemn and devout respect, as you might at the funeral of someone much loved and well esteemed. He put it on again hastily, with a hand that shook, when the SA man gave him a sharp, suspicious glance. A child laughed, and its mother wept. One fat woman clutched her left breast with both hands, breath coming short, a desperate look in her eyes. The screaming still hung in the air, though we couldn’t hear it any more, but we could see it. We all saw it and felt it, and for a second we were united in fear and grief. For life had been taken, and we had been there. Then everything in the world was still. A young man got out of his seat, dropped to his knees and prayed. The SA man and the tram driver preferred to suppose he was mad, rather than have to rebuke him. They took great pains not to hear what he was praying. So we drove on to the cathedral, where we all got out.

Franz must get away. The thoughts are pulsing through my head, hard and well defined, coming thick and fast and very clear. Franz has killed someone. When you have killed someone you’re on the run, always on the run for the rest of your life. I’ll run with you, Franz, I love you, where can we
go? What was that whistle? A policeman? Is he after Franz?

All is quiet. That—what was his name?—that Schleimann may not be dead after all. Maybe he was just unconscious. But never mind how they find him, unconscious or dead, they’ll be after Franz and cut his head off. He must get away …

Lore, Lore, Lore, oh, aren’t the girls pretty at seventeen or …

The gramophone is playing, I’m laughing, I’m singing, nobody must notice anything odd about me. Have I been missed? “Oh, Sanna, here you are—look, here’s Sanna! Oh, Susanne, isn’t life marvelous?” Liska is drunk; she kisses me. However, she’s acting a good deal drunker than she really is, so that she can behave how she likes. You have to be drunk before you can pretend to be drunk. She leans right over, to let Heini see down the neck of her dress. He isn’t looking.

I must have a word with Dr. Breslauer, a very quiet word. We have to get away to a foreign country, and I don’t know how to set about it. What’s the point of going to school if you don’t learn these vital things there? I’d like to take Franz something to eat, but there’s no time left for eating. Franz is waiting in the dark. I’ve locked him in the coal cellar; he mustn’t run away from me. “You’ve got to do as I say, Franz, because I shall kill myself if anything happens to you.”

We’re in the living room—where are all the others? In the hall-cum-taproom? It’s so dark in here; who put out the light? There are only three candles burning on the little table in the middle of the room. Heini probably happened to say he likes candles, and Liska thinks candlelight will make him passionate. “We are dying, we are dying, we are dying every
day,” chants Heini. “Bit like a funeral here, eh, Frau Liska? Give me another drink, will you—thanks. Wonder why the schnapps is so warm?”

“Dr. Breslauer, when are you leaving for Rotterdam?” I’ve got to find out how you escape. “Whereabouts is Rotterdam, what country, how far is it to Rotterdam?”

Liska has gone to sit on the divan beside Heini; she puts her arm around his neck as if she’d strangle him in her despair. Where’s Algin?

Just for a moment, Heini gazes into Liska’s burning eyes, and he looks embarrassed and almost alarmed. Liska is crying, silently, without moving. Her face is fixed, tears flow from her open eyes. Heini strokes her hair, and Liska begins to sob quietly. “There, there,” says Heini, “what’s the matter, then, Frau Liska? Can’t turn life into a romantic opera, you know.”

We will go to Rotterdam. Breslauer is kind; Breslauer is rich. He will be in Rotterdam too in a few days’ time. “What hotel are you staying at, Dr. Breslauer?” I mustn’t say anything to him now, not yet, but I’ll go to his hotel in Rotterdam and tell him the whole story. He will advise us, he’ll help us.

When is there a train to Rotterdam? We must get away tonight. How late is it? Just on midnight … what? A train leaving at one in the morning? We must catch it. What else must I do, what else must I remember? We’ll need passports. Where’s mine? Nothing for it—I’ll have to steal Algin’s passport for Franz. How much money have I got? Oh, but you’re not allowed to take money over the border, are you? Only ten marks. So what are we going to live on? Liska has some diamond rings she doesn’t like, almost never wears. She’d give them to me if she knew what had happened, why I need
them. I’ll take the rings with me. We can sell them, later. And I’ll write to Liska, explaining everything. I’ll leave her my savings account book to pay for the rings. I must take one of Algin’s suits for Franz, and a coat. I must pack a case. But they’ll miss me after a while, they’ll tell the police. I’ll leave a note on Liska’s bedside table, saying I have to go away, I’m in love, I’ll explain later. She’s sympathetic to anyone in love.

What else must I ask Dr. Breslauer, what else … oh, Heini’s talking to him. Heini’s hand is resting on Liska’s hair, as if he’d forgotten it. Liska is looking peaceful, almost happy. She dares not move for fear his hand will drop away.

“Yes, of course my life here’s hell,” Heini is saying, grave and calm, “but what would I do anywhere else? Without money or the chance of earning it? Without belief in God or Man, Communism or Socialism—without belief in change and improvement over the next few decades? I’ve loved mankind, I’ve spent over ten years writing my fingers to the bone, racking my brains, to warn people of the madness of the barbarism ahead. A mouse squeaking to hold back an avalanche. Well, the avalanche has come down, burying the lot of us. And the mouse has squeaked its last. I am old and ridiculous: no power or desire to begin all over again. Quite apart from the fact that I’ve never had an actual chance to begin all over again. I have said what I thought I had to say, in my own way, in my own words. There are plenty of others to say the rest of what I would have said for me. It’s no bad thing, in these times of the general inflation of language, for a man to take counsel with himself and begin to hold his peace. I was a witty, humorous journalist. Can’t be a witty and humorous journalist in this country or anywhere else with screams from German concentration camps for ever in
your ears. There have been too many atrocities. One dreadful day, revenge will come, and it won’t be divine revenge, it will be even more atrocious, more human, more inhuman. And that atrocious revenge which I both desire and fear will necessarily be followed by another atrocious revenge, because the thing that has begun in Germany looks like going on without any hope of an end. Germany is turning on her own axis, a great wheel dripping blood, Germany will go on turning and turning through the years to come—it hardly makes any difference which part of the wheel is uppermost at any given time. Over a hundred years ago, Platen complained of being sick unto death of his fatherland. Well, in those days you could still live in exile all right. It’s different today. You’re a poor emigrant. You’ll find any other country is smooth and hard as a chestnut shell. You become a trial to yourself and a burden on others. For the roofs that you see are not built for you. The bread that you smell is not baked for you. And the language that you hear is not spoken for you.

What should I pack? We’ll need everything, we won’t be able to buy anything. What will we live on? I can leave that old blue dress here. I’ll take the picture of the Virgin Mary. Shall we have a room where I can hang it? “For the roofs that you see are not built for you …” I’m afraid, I’m afraid. The magnolia tree is coming into flower outside my window; it’s so beautiful here in spring. My bed is soft and warm. I could lie in it and sleep tonight, tomorrow night, every night. My hands are shaking, my knees are weak with weariness. I feel sick, I’ll have to throw up. I’m not well, I’ve got a temperature, I can’t escape. Was that a ring at the bell?
Perhaps they’ve already come to arrest Franz. Then I can stay here, it’s not my fault, I did all I could, all I could … Oh, I am a pig, a pig! God forgive me for my sins. I love you, Franz. Everything will be all right if we love each other and keep together. Perhaps we’ll die together. That’s better than living alone and sad and spiteful like Betty Raff. But we’re both young, why should we die?

“Who’s that?” Case pushed under the bed, quick. How my heart is beating! I’m coming to open the door, I’m coming. “Why, Gerti!” My God, what’s happened? She looks dreadful. Hair tousled, her lovely dress crumpled like a dishcloth, her eyes red with weeping. She has been asleep in Liska’s bed. Oh yes, I remember, Dieter Aaron has gone for ever, let his mother send him away. Frau Aaron is still here, I saw her only a few minutes ago. She was sitting in a corner of the living room pulling firecrackers with that fool of a student. She kept giving a shrill little giggle before a cracker exploded.

“Dear Gerti.” Oh, but I wish she’d go away. She sits down on my bed, weeping, talking. She would have gone anywhere with Dieter, she wouldn’t have been afraid of anything in the world if only he’d been true to her. “But he’s only a weakling, Sanna, just a wretched weakling.” She hates him. She’s going to write the Gestapo a letter saying she committed a racial offence with him, and then she will go to prison with him. Or else she’ll marry Kurt Pielmann and be a Nazi and an anti-Semite. She’ll pay Frau Aaron out, she will kick her and slap her, she’ll plan an attempt on the lives of the Nazi leaders. Oh, dear God, I haven’t got time to soothe and comfort her just now. Liska in tears, Gerti in tears, Betty Raff in tears—all in tears because they haven’t got the man they want. I’m the only lucky one, I’ve got Franz, I am to be
envied, I should be thankful, I … what was that? A cracker? No cracker goes off with quite such a loud bang.

There is screaming, the sound of running footsteps. “Gerti—Gerti, what’s happened?”

Heini is lying on the floor of the living room, with Liska sprawled over him, cradling his head. Why is she doing that? Everyone’s looking at her. They are all there, Algin, Betty, the Aarons, everyone. I feel dizzy with shock and shame. Something shocking has happened, but it is something shameful too. All of a sudden everything is frightful: naked and indecent. I wish Liska would get up. A candle has fallen off the table and is burning away on the carpet, it ought to be put out, it ought—but I can’t move. Is that someone crying? Breslauer is kneeling beside Heini on some limp roses, the tears are flowing from his eyes, while I feel like laughing aloud with hatred. I’ve gone crazy, that’s what it is. I shall dance and laugh and sing my way to the lunatic asylum. Where is the Frankfurt lunatic asylum? You never seem to know these vital things. I shall dance out of the window, I shall dance down the streets, I shall—oh, do help me, God, do help me, Franz.

Streamers rustle beside Heini’s head, blood is flowing over Liska’s hand. Everyone and everything are frozen into a dreadful, bright picture. We are not living creatures, we are painted. Betty Raff’s thin moaning is painted too. She is hanging round Algin’s neck. Algin doesn’t notice her. He is looking with heavy, thoughtful eyes at his wife, lying sprawled on another man’s body. Crazy Liska. She has left a living man to embrace a dead one. Because Heini is dead, I know it. He didn’t want Liska when he was alive—she oughtn’t to be hugging him like that now he’s dead and can’t defend himself. Frau Winter the cleaning lady has turned
to stone too, with her quiet, hurried account of what happened. “Sick unto death of it,” Heini had said, and added, “My apologies if I’m disturbing the party a little, ladies and gentlemen, but I’m in the mood to do it now, I don’t think I can wait a moment longer. So goodbye, then, and good night.” And then he shot himself through the temple with a revolver and collapsed, very slowly and quietly. Everyone thought it was a silly joke at first.