Flotsam

PART I

To live without roots
takes a stout heart

KERN AWOKE
with a start out of a seething blackness and listened hard. Like all hunted creatures he was completely conscious at once, alert and ready for flight. As he sat motionless on the bed, his thin body bent forward, he debated how he could get away if the stairs were already occupied.

The room was on the fourth floor. A window opened toward the courtyard, but it had no balcony or cornice from which the gutters could be reached. Flight in that direction was out of the question. There was only one other way: along the corridor to the attic and from there across the roof to the next house.

Kern glanced at the illuminated dial of his watch. It was a little after five. The room was still almost black. On the two other beds the sheets gleamed indistinctly gray in the darkness. The Pole, who slept next to the wall, was snoring.

Cautiously Kern slid out of bed and crept to the door. At the same instant the man in the middle bed moved. “Is something wrong?” he whispered.

Kern made no reply; he kept his ear pressed to the door.

The other sat up and fumbled among the things on the iron
bedstead. A pocket flash went on, catching in its wavering circle of pale light a section of the brown door, from which paint was scaling, and the figure of Kern, with mussed hair, in rumpled underwear and socks, at the keyhole listening.

“Damn it, what’s up?” hissed the man on the bed.

Kern straightened. “I don’t know. Something woke me, something I heard.”

“Something! What was it, you fool?”

“Downstairs, something downstairs. Voices, steps, something like that.”

The man got up and came to the door. He was wearing a yellow shirt from under which a pair of hairy, muscular legs protruded in the glow of the flashlight. He listened for a while, then asked, “How long you been staying here?”

“Two months.”

“Been a raid in that time?”

Kern shook his head.

“Aha! You’ve been hearing things. When you’re asleep a fart sometimes sounds like thunder.”

He threw the light in Kern’s face. “Well, well, barely twenty, eh? Refugee?”

“Of course.”

“
Jesus Christus tso siem stalo
—” the Pole in the corner gurgled suddenly.

The man in the shirt let the beam of light slide across the room. Out of the darkness emerged a wild, black beard, a great gaping mouth and two deep-set, staring eyes under bushy brows.

“Shut up about Jesus Christ, Polack,” growled the man with the flashlight. “He’s not alive any more. Died as a volunteer at the Somme.”

“
Tso?
”

“There! There it is again!” Kern sprang toward his bed. “They’re coming upstairs. We’ve got to get across the roof.”

The other spun around like a top. There was a sound of closing doors and lowered voices. “Damn it! Get going! Polski, run for it! Police!”

He snatched his things from the bed. “Know the way?” he asked Kern.

“Yes. Along the hall to the right, up the stairs behind the sink.”

“Let’s go!” The man in the shirt opened the door noiselessly.

“
Matka boska!
” gurgled the Pole.

“Shut up! Don’t tell them anything!”

The man drew the door shut. He and Kern raced along the narrow, dirty hall. They ran so silently they could hear the leaky tap dripping in the sink.

“Turn here,” Kern whispered, swung around the corner and collided with something. He staggered, saw a uniform and tried to turn back. At the same instant he received a blow on the arm. “Stand still! Raise your hands!” someone commanded out of the darkness.

Kern let his things tumble to the floor. His left arm was numb from the blow that had hit his elbow. The man in the shirt looked for a second as if he were going to throw himself on the voice in the darkness. But then he caught sight of the barrel of a revolver, which a second policeman was holding against his chest. Slowly he raised his arms.

“Turn around!” ordered the voice. “Stand by the window!”

The two obeyed.

“See what’s in that stuff,” said the policeman with the revolver.

The second policeman searched the clothes lying on the floor. “Thirty-five schillings—a flashlight—a pipe—a pocketknife—a louse comb—nothing else—”

“No papers?”

“Couple of letters.”

“No passports?”

“No.”

“Where are your passports?” asked the policeman with the revolver.

“I haven’t one,” Kern said.

“Of course not.” The policeman poked his revolver into the ribs of the man in the shirt. “And you? Do I have to ask you separately, you son of a bitch?”

The man turned around slowly. “What do you mean, ‘son of a bitch’?” he asked.

The policemen looked at each other. The one without a revolver began to laugh. The other licked his lips. “Just look,” he said slowly, “a fine gentleman! His Excellency, the Bum! General Stinker!” He drew back his arm suddenly and struck the man on the chin. “Keep your hands up!” he roared as the other staggered.

The man looked at him. Kern thought he had never seen such a look. “I mean you, you bastard,” said the policeman. “Will you talk now? Or do you want me to jog up your brains again?”

“I haven’t a passport,” the man said.

“ ‘I haven’t a passport,’ ” the policeman mimicked. “Of course Herr Son of a Bitch hasn’t a passport. That’s what we thought. Go on, get your clothes on, quick!”

A group of policemen came running along the hall, pulling open doors. One of them with shoulder stripes approached. “Well, what have you caught?”

“A couple of birds that were trying to fly away over the roof.”

The officer looked at them. He was young. His face was narrow and pale. He wore a carefully trimmed, small, black mustache and smelled of toilet water. Kern recognized it; it was Eau de Cologne 4711. His father had owned a perfume factory; that’s how he knew about such things.

“We’ll take special care of these two,” the lieutenant said. “Handcuffs!”

“Are the Viennese police allowed to strike a man while making an arrest?” asked the man in the shirt.

The officer looked up. “What’s your name?”

“Steiner. Josef Steiner.”

“He hasn’t a passport and he threatened us,” explained the policeman with the revolver.

“There’s a lot more allowed than you think,” the officer said sharply. “Get them downstairs!”

The two put on their clothes, and the policemen got out handcuffs. “Come, my pets. There, now, you look better. Fit as if they were made to order.”

Kern felt the cold steel on his wrists. It was the first time in his life he had been fettered. The steel rings didn’t hinder him much in walking. But it seemed to him that they had shackled more than just his hands.

Outside was the light of early morning. Two police wagons stood in front of the house. Steiner made a wry face. “First-class funeral. Pretty fine, eh kid?”

Kern did not answer. He was hiding the handcuffs under his coat as well as he could. A few milkmen were standing in the street, watching eagerly. In the houses opposite windows
had been raised. Faces gleamed like dough in the dark openings. A woman giggled.

About thirty people had been arrested and were now being loaded into the uncovered wagons. Most of them climbed in silently. The owner of the building was among them—a fat, bright-blond woman of fifty. She alone was raising an angry protest. Several months before she had converted, in the cheapest possible fashion, two empty floors of her dilapidated house into a kind of
pension
. Word soon got around that one could sleep there without being reported to the police. The woman had only four legitimate boarders who had passports and were registered—a peddler, a rat-killer, and two whores. The others crept in after dark. Almost all were emigrants and refugees from Germany, Poland, Russia, and Italy.

“Get in, get in!” the lieutenant was saying to the landlady. “You can explain all that at the police station. You’ll have time enough for it there.”

“I protest—” screamed the woman.

“Protest all you like. Right now you come along with us.”