Flotsam (16 page)

KERN SUCCEEDED IN
getting his permit extended for five days; then he was ordered to leave. He was given a railroad pass as far as the border and he rode to the customs house.

“No papers?” asked the Czech official.

“None.”

“Go inside. There are some others there now. About two hours from now is the best time.”

Kern went into the customs building. Three people were there—a very pale man, accompanied by a woman, and an old Jew.

“Good evening,” Kern said.

The others muttered an indistinct reply.

Kern put down his valise and seated himself. Wearily he closed his eyes. The trip later on would be long he knew, and he wanted to get some sleep.

“We’ll get across,” he heard the pale man say. “You’ll see, Anna; and then everything will be better.”

The woman said nothing.

“We’re sure to get across,” the man began again. “Absolutely sure. Why shouldn’t they let us across?”

“Because they don’t want us,” the woman answered.

“But after all we’re human beings—”

You poor fool, Kern thought. He heard indistinctly the man’s continued murmuring; then he fell asleep.

He awoke when the customs man came to get them. They went across fields and came to a leafy woods which lay in front of them like a solid black block in the darkness.

The official stopped. “Follow this path and keep to the right. When you get to the road, turn left. Good luck.”

He disappeared into the night.

The four stood hesitating. “What shall we do now?” the woman asked. “Does anyone know the way?”

“I’ll go ahead,” Kern said. “I was here once before, a year ago.”

They groped their way through the dark. The moon had not yet risen. The grass was wet, and they could feel its strange, invisible touch against their ankles. Then came the woods and swallowed them up in its breathing darkness.

They walked for a long time. Kern heard the others behind him. Suddenly flashlights blazed in front of them and a harsh voice shouted: “Halt! Stand where you are!”

With a sidewise leap Kern got away. He plunged into the darkness, striking against trees and groping his way; he plowed through a blackberry thicket and threw his valise into it. There was the sound of running feet behind him. He turned. It was the woman. “Hide yourself!” he whispered. “I’m going to climb this tree!”

“My husband—Oh this—”

Kern hurriedly climbed the tree. Crouching in a fork, he could feel the soft, rustling foliage beneath him. The woman
stood motionless below; he could not see her, he just felt her standing there. In the distance he heard the old Jew talking.

“Bosh!” the harsh voice answered. “Without a passport you don’t get across. That’s all there is to it!”

Kern strained his ears. After a while he could hear the low voice of the other man answering the guard. So they had caught them both. At that instant there was a rustling under him. The woman was going back, muttering to herself.

For a time everything was quiet. Then the beams of the flashlights began to sweep beneath the trees. Footsteps approached. Kern pressed himself against the tree-trunk. He was well hidden by the thick leaves under him. Suddenly he heard the piercing, hysterical voice of the woman. “This is where he must be. He climbed a tree, here—”

The beam was directed upward. “Come down!” the harsh voice shouted. “Otherwise we’ll shoot.”

Kern considered the situation; there was nothing to be done. He climbed down. The blinding flashlights were thrust into his face. “Passport?”

“If I’d had a passport I wouldn’t have climbed that tree.”

Kern looked at the woman who had given him away. She was disheveled and almost out of her mind. “You’d have liked that, wouldn’t you?” she hissed at him. “To get away and leave us here! All of us are going to stay,” she screamed, “all of us.”

“Shut your mouth!” roared the guard. “Stand close together!” He turned his light on the group. “We really ought to throw you into prison, you know that well enough! Unauthorized entry! But what’s the use of feeding you? About-face! Back to Czechoslovakia! But make a note of this: next time we’ll shoot at sight!”

Kern got his valise out of the thicket. Then the four went back silently in single file, followed by the guards with the
flashlights. They could see nothing of their opponents but the white circles of the flashlights; it gave them an eerie feeling as if voices and light had captured them and were now driving them back.

Presently the lights stopped moving. “March straight ahead,” commanded the coarse voice. “Anyone who returns will be shot.”

The four went on until they could no longer see the lights behind the trees.

Kern heard behind him the gentle voice of the man whose wife had betrayed him. “You must excuse her—she was beside herself—forgive her—I am certain she feels sorry now—”

“That makes no difference to me,” Kern said over his shoulder.

“But you must understand,” the man whispered; “the shock, the fear—”

“Sure, I understand.” Kern turned around. “Forgiving is too much trouble. I’d rather forget.”

He stopped. They were in a little clearing. The others stopped too. Kern lay down on the grass and put his valise under his head. The others whispered together. Then the woman approached. “Anna,” her husband said.

The woman placed herself in front of Kern.

“Aren’t you going to show us the way back?” she asked sharply.

“No,” Kern replied.

“It’s your fault they caught us. You louse!”

“Anna!” her husband said.

“Leave her alone,” Kern said. “It always helps to get it out of your system.”

“Get up!” screamed the woman.

“I’m staying here. You can do what you like. Straight ahead
and turn to the right beyond the woods; that’ll take you to the Czech customs house.”

“You Jewish bum!” the woman screamed.

Kern laughed. “I thought that was coming.”

He watched the pale man whispering to his hysterical wife and urging her to leave. “He’s planning to go back,” she sobbed. “I know he’s planning to go back. And he’ll get across. He must take us—it’s his duty—”

The man led her slowly away toward the woods. Kern was fumbling for a cigarette when something dark bobbed up a couple of yards in front of him like a gnome popping out of the earth. It was the old Jew who had also been lying down. He straightened up and shook his head. “These Christians!”

Kern made no reply. He lit his cigarette.

“Do we stay here all night?” the old man asked softly.

“Till three. That’s the best time. They are on the lookout now. If no one comes back they’ll get tired.”

“Waiting is something I can do too,” the old Jew said contentedly.

“It’s a long way and we’ll have to crawl part of it,” Kern replied.

“It don’t matter. I’ll turn into a Yiddish Indian in my old age.”

They sat in silence. Gradually the stars appeared from among the clouds. Kern recognized the Great Bear and the North Star.

“I’ve got to get to Vienna,” the old man said presently.

“There’s really no place I have to get to,” Kern replied.

“That’s how it is sometimes.” The old man began to chew a blade of grass. “Later on there’ll be some place or other you have to get to. That’s the way it goes. You just have to wait.”

“Yes,” Kern said. “That’s what you have to do. But what is one waiting for?”

“For nothing really,” the old man replied calmly. “When it comes it’s nothing. Then you start waiting again for something else.”

“Maybe so.” Kern stretched out again. He felt the bag under his head. It was nice to feel it there.

“I am Moritz Rosenthal from Godesberg-on-the-Rhine,” the old man said after a while. He got a thin gray ulster out of his knapsack and threw it around his shoulders. It made him look even more like a gnome. “Sometimes it’s ridiculous to have a name, isn’t it? Especially at night—”

Kern looked up at the dark sky. “And when one has no passport. Names have to be written down, otherwise they don’t belong to you.”

The wind caught in the tops of the trees and made a murmuring sound as though beyond the forest lay an ocean. “Do you think the fellows over there will shoot?” Moritz Rosenthal asked.

“I don’t know. Probably not.”

The old man rocked his head. “There’s one advantage in being sixty-five: There’s not so much of your life left to risk—”

Steiner had finally found out where old Seligmann’s children were hidden. The address that had been stuck in the Hebrew prayer-book had been right; but meanwhile the children had been taken somewhere else. It took Steiner a long time to find out where: everyone took him for a police spy and distrusted him.

He got the bag from the rooming house and started off. The house was situated on the east side of Vienna. It took him
more than an hour to get there. He climbed up the stairs. On each floor there were the doors to three flats. He struck matches and read the names. Finally on the fifth floor he found an oval brass plate with the inscription: S
AMUEL
B
ERNSTEIN
, C
LOCK-MAKER
. He knocked.

Beyond the door he heard a sound of scurrying and of moving furniture. Then a cautious voice asked: “Who’s there?”

“I have something to deliver,” Steiner said: “a bag.”

Suddenly he felt he was being watched and turned around quickly.

The door to the apartment behind him had opened noiselessly. An emaciated man in shirt sleeves stood at the entrance. Steiner put down the bag.

“Whom do you want?” the man in the doorway asked.

Steiner looked at him. “Bernstein isn’t in,” the man added.

“I have old Seligmann’s things here,” Steiner said. “This is where his children are supposed to be. I was present when he met his end.”

The man examined him for a moment longer. Then he shouted: “It’s all right to let him in, Moritz.”

There was the rattling of a chain, a key grated in the lock and the door of the Bernstein flat opened. Steiner strained his eyes in the dim light. “Why—” he said. “Why, it can’t be! But of course it is, it’s Father Moritz!”

Moritz Rosenthal stood in the doorway. In one hand he held a wooden spoon. An ulster was draped around his shoulders. “It’s me,” he replied. “But who—Steiner?” he said suddenly, in pleased surprise. “I might have guessed! My eyes certainly are getting bad! I knew you were in Vienna. When was the last time we saw each other?”

“That was about a year ago, Father Moritz.”

“In Prague?”

“In Zürich.”

“Right, in the prison in Zürich. Nice people there. I’ve been getting a little confused recently. Six months ago I was in Switzerland again. Basle. Excellent food there; unfortunately no cigarettes like in the state prison in Locarno. There they even had a camellia bush in the cell. I was sorry to have to leave. Milan was nothing by comparison.” He broke off. “Come in, Steiner. We’re standing there, like old criminals, exchanging reminiscences in the corridor.”

Steiner went in. The flat consisted of a kitchen and one room. There were a couple of chairs, a table and two mattresses with blankets. A number of tools were spread out on the table. Amid them stood some cheap clocks and a painted case with baroque angels who supported an antique clock the second hand of which was a little figure of Death with a scythe that swung back and forth. On a curved bracket above the hearth hung the kitchen lamp with a chipped, greenish-white burner. A large soup kettle was steaming on the iron ring of a gas-cooker.

“I was just stewing something for the children,” Moritz Rosenthal said. “Found them here like mice in a trap. Bernstein is in the hospital.”

The three children of the late Seligmann were crouching beside the hearth. They were not looking at Steiner. They were staring at the soup kettle. The eldest was a boy of about fourteen; the youngest was seven or eight.

Steiner put down the bag. “Here’s your father’s bag,” he said.

The three children looked at him simultaneously, almost without moving. They barely turned their heads.

“I saw him,” Steiner said. “He spoke of you—”

The children looked at him and made no reply. Their eyes glittered like polished, round, black stones. The flames of
the gas burner hissed. Steiner was uncomfortable. He had a feeling that he ought to say something friendly and human, but everything that occurred to him seemed trite and false in the face of the destitution emanating from these three silent children.

“What’s in the bag?” the eldest asked presently. He had a colorless voice and spoke slowly, stiffly and cautiously.

“I don’t remember exactly. Various things of your father’s. And some money.”

“Does it belong to us now?”

“Of course. That’s why I brought it.”

“Can I take it?”

“Why, naturally!” Steiner said in surprise.

The boy got up. He was thin, dark and tall. Slowly he approached the bag, his eyes fastened on Steiner. With a quick animal movement he seized it and then sprang back as though he were afraid Steiner would tear his prize away from him. He immediately dragged the bag into the next room. The two other children followed close behind him, pushing each other like two big, black cats.

Steiner looked at Father Moritz. “Well, yes,” he said, relieved. “Of course they’ve known about it for some time—”

Moritz Rosenthal stirred the soup. “It doesn’t mean very much to them now. They saw their mother and two brothers die. This doesn’t hurt them so much now. What happens often no longer hurts so much.”

“Or it hurts even more,” Steiner said.

Moritz Rosenthal peered at him from wrinkle-circled eyes. “Not when you’re very young. Not when you’re very old either. The period in between is the bad time.”

“Yes,” Steiner said. “Those lousy fifty years in between, they’re the ones.”

Moritz Rosenthal nodded placidly. “That’s all over for me.” He put the cover on the pot. “We’ve found places for them already,” he said. “Mayer is taking one with him to Rumania. The second is going to an orphanage in Locarno. I know someone there who will pay for him. For the time being the oldest is going to stay here with Bernstein—”

“Do they know they’re going to be separated?”