Flotsam (23 page)

“There’s one thing about having been in the hoosegow,” he said. “Afterwards everything’s wonderful.”

Steiner nodded. “What you really want to do is to start this evening, isn’t it?” he asked.

Kern looked at him. “I want to leave and I want to stay here. I wish we could all go together.”

Steiner gave him a cigarette. “Stay here for a day or two anyway,” he said. “You look like hell. The prison grub has got you down. Feed yourself up a bit here. You’ll need marrow in your bones for the trip. It’s better to wait here a few days than to fold up on the road and get nabbed. Switzerland is no child’s play. A strange country—you’ll have to have all your wits about you.”

“Is there anything for me to do here?”

“You can help in the shooting gallery. And in the evening with the mind reading. I had to get someone for that, to be sure; but two are always better anyhow.”

“Good,” Kern said. “You’re probably right. I ought to pull
myself together a bit before I start. Somehow I have a dreadful feeling of hunger. Not just in my stomach—in my eyes and my head, everywhere. I’d better wait till I’m straightened out a bit.”

Steiner laughed. “Right! Here comes Lilo with hot piroshki. Make a good meal, Baby. I’m going now to wake up Potzloch.”

Lilo put the platter in front of Kern. He began to eat again, feeling between times for his letters.

“Are you going to stay here?” Lilo asked in her slow, slightly harsh German.

Kern nodded.

“Don’t be worried,” Lilo said. “You mustn’t be worried about Ruth. She will get along. I know faces.”

Kern wanted to tell her that he wasn’t worried for that reason; that he was only afraid she might be arrested in Zürich before he got there. But one look at the Russian woman’s face, shadowed by an immense sadness, made him stop short. All his affairs seemed small and unimportant by contrast. However, she seemed to have read his thought. “It is not bad,” she said. “So long as the other is alive, it is never bad.”

It was two days later in the afternoon. A party of men wandered into the shooting gallery. Lilo was busy with a crowd of boys and the men approached Kern. “Come on! We want to shoot.”

Kern gave one of them a rifle. First the men took a few shots at the clay figures, which they smashed, and at the little glass balls dancing in a jet of water. Then they began to study the list of prizes and called for targets in order to compete for them.

The first two men scored thirty-four and forty-four points.
They won a plush bear and a silver cigarette case. The third, a thick-set man with bristling hair and a heavy brown shoe-brush of a mustache, aimed long and carefully and made a forty-eight. His friends roared applause. Lilo glanced over quickly. “Five more shots!” the man ordered, pushing back his hat. “With the same gun.”

Kern loaded. With the first three shots the man scored thirty-six points, a twelve each time. Kern saw that the silver fruit basket and cutlery, the heirlooms and family treasures, were in danger. He took one of Director Potzloch’s magic bullets. The next shot was a six.

“Hold on!” The man laid down his gun. “There’s something wrong here. I made a perfect shot that time.”

“Perhaps you trembled a little,” Kern said. “It’s the same gun.”

“I don’t tremble,” the man answered angrily. “An old police sergeant doesn’t tremble. I know the way I shoot.”

It was Kern’s turn to tremble. A policeman even in plain clothes made him jumpy. The man stared at him. “There’s something fishy here,” he said menacingly.

Kern made no reply. He handed him the loaded rifle again. He had put a regular cartridge in it this time. The sergeant glanced at him again before he aimed. He scored another twelve and laid the rifle down. “Well?”

“It sometimes happens,” Kern said.

“It sometimes happens? It does not happen! Four twelves and a six! You don’t even believe that yourself, do you?”

Kern said nothing. The man pushed his red face closer. “I’ve seen you somewhere before—”

His friends interrupted him. They were shouting for a free shot. The six was not to count. “You fellows did something to the cartridge!” they cried.

Lilo came up. “What’s wrong?” she asked. “Can I be of service to you? This young man is new here.” The others began to argue with her. The policeman took no part. He was looking at Kern and thinking hard. Kern met his glance steadily. He remembered all the lessons his stormy life had taught him. “I’ll talk to the director,” he said casually. “I have no authority to make decisions.”

He was thinking of giving the policeman his free shot, but he already saw Potzloch writhing at the loss of his wife’s family heirloom. He was caught between Scylla and Charybdis. Slowly he got out a cigarette and lighted it, forcing his hands not to tremble. Then he turned around and strolled over to Lilo.

Lilo was ready for him. She proposed a compromise. The policeman should take five more shots. In vain of course. The others were against it. Lilo had been watching Kern and had noticed that he was pale and that more was wrong than just a quarrel about Director Potzloch’s magic bullets. Suddenly she smiled and seated herself on the counter facing the policeman. “Surely a fine fellow like you can shoot just as well a second time. Come on, try it. Five free shots for the King of the Sharpshooters!”

The policeman preened himself at this flattery. “A man with a hand like that would never be afraid,” Lilo said, laying her own slender hand on the sergeant’s powerful fist covered with reddish hair.

“Afraid! I don’t know the word.” The policeman thumped his chest and laughed woodenly. “This is even better than we asked for.”

“That’s what I thought!” Lilo looked at him admiringly and handed him the rifle.

The policeman took it, aimed carefully, and shot. A twelve. He looked proudly at Lilo. She smiled and loaded the gun again. The policeman scored fifty-eight.

Lilo beamed at him. “You’re the best shot that’s been here in years,” she said. “Your wife need never be anxious.”

“I have no wife.”

She looked into his eyes. “I can tell that’s only because you don’t want one.”

He grinned. His friends were raising an uproar. Lilo fetched the picnic basket he had won. He smoothed his mustache and then suddenly said to Kern, his eyes narrow and cold: “I’m not through with you yet. I’m coming back in uniform.”

Then he took the basket, grinning, and went away with his friends.

“Did he recognize you?” Lilo asked quickly.

“I don’t know. I don’t think so. I’ve never seen him before. But he may have seen me somewhere.”

“Go now. It’s better not to let him see you again. Tell Steiner.”

The policeman did not come back that day. But Kern decided to leave that evening anyway.

“I’ve got to get away,” he said to Steiner. “I have a feeling that otherwise something is going to happen. I’ve been here for two days now and I think I’m in working order again. Don’t you think so too?”

Steiner nodded. “Go ahead, Baby. I’ll be on my way too in a couple of weeks. My passport is better anywhere than here. It’s becoming dangerous in Austria. I’ve heard that everywhere in the last few days. Come along, we’ll go to Potzloch.”

Director Potzloch was in a rage about the picnic basket. “Worth thirty schillings, young man, at wholesale—” he trumpeted. “You’re ruining me.”

“He’s leaving,” Steiner said, and explained the situation. “The basket was a necessary sacrifice,” he concluded. “Otherwise your family heirloom would have been lost.”

This horrid thought made Potzloch pale. Then he brightened. “Well, well, that’s different.” He paid Kern his wages and led him over to the gallery. “Young man,” he said, “you shall see what sort of man Potzloch is! Pick out some presents for yourself. As souvenirs. To be sold, of course. Only a fool keeps souvenirs; they embitter your life. You’re going to try peddling, aren’t you? Pick something out. Anything you like—”

He disappeared toward the Wonders of the World. “Go ahead and do it,” Steiner said. “Trash always sells well. Take small, light things. And do it fast before Potzloch changes his mind.”

But Potzloch didn’t change his mind. In addition to the ash trays and dice that Kern had selected, he added of his own accord three little naked goddesses of genuine imitation bronze. “They’ll be your biggest success in the smaller cities,” he explained, leering and grabbing for his glasses. “Men in the small cities are full of suppressed desires. Small cities without brothels, that is. And now, God be with you, Kern! I’ve got to go to a meeting in protest against the amusement tax. A tax on amusement! That’s typical of this century. Instead of giving a bounty for it!”

Kern packed his bag. He washed his socks and shirts and hung them up to dry. Then he had supper with Lilo and Steiner.

“Be sad, kid,” Steiner said. “You have a right to be. The
heroes of ancient Greece wept more often than our silly, sentimental modern women. They knew it did no good to hold it back. Our ideal is the impassive courage of a statue. Unnecessary. Be sad and then you’ll soon be over it.”

“Sadness is sometimes—the final happiness,” Lilo said calmly, handing Kern a dish of borsch and cream.

Steiner smiled and ran his hand over her hair. “The final happiness in your case, young cosmopolite, is going to be a good meal. That’s something a soldier understands. And you’re a soldier, don’t forget that—an advance guard; a patrol; a pioneer citizen of the world. In an airplane you can cross ten national boundaries in a day; each needs the others—and all are armed to the teeth with iron and powder against one another. That can’t last. You are one of the first Europeans—never forget that. Be proud of it.”

Kern smiled. “That’s all well and good. And I am proud of it. But what am I going to do tonight when I’m alone?”

Kern took the evening train. He chose the cheapest class and the cheapest train and came by roundabout ways to Innsbruck. From there he went on by foot, hoping for a lift. He had no luck. In the evening he went to a small inn and ate an order of baked potatoes—food that was cheap and filling. That night he slept in a haystack. He made use of the technique that the thief had taught him in jail. It worked fine.

Next morning he got a ride as far as Landeck. The owner of the car bought one of Director Potzloch’s goddesses for five schillings. Toward night it began to rain. He stopped at a little tavern and played tarots with a couple of loggers. He lost three schillings. This depressed him so much that he couldn’t sleep until midnight. Then he realized that it was
even worse to have paid two schillings for a night’s sleep which he wasn’t getting; at that thought he dozed off.

Next morning he went on. He stopped a car but the driver demanded five schillings fare. It was an Austro-Daimler worth fifteen thousand schillings. Kern passed it up. Later a peasant gave him a lift in his wagon and presented him with a thick sandwich. He slept that night in the hay. It was raining, and he spent a long time listening to the monotonous patter and smelling the sharp, musty, exciting odor of the wet, fermenting hay.

Next day he climbed the Arlberg Pass. He was nearly exhausted when a policeman on a bicycle overtook him near the top and arrested him. Nevertheless he had to walk the weary distance back to St. Anton beside the wheel. There they locked him up for the night. He didn’t get a minute’s sleep for fear they would find out that he had been in Vienna and would send him back there for trial. But they took his word that he wanted to get across the border and next morning they let him go.

This time he sent his valise by freight to Feldkirch; it was because of it that the policeman had spotted him. Next day he arrived in Feldkirch and recovered the valise. He waited until night, undressed and waded across the Rhine, holding his bags and clothes high above his head. Now he was in Switzerland. He spent two nights walking, hiding by day, until he had got past the danger zone. Then he expressed his valise and soon afterward found a car that took him to Zürich.

It was afternoon when he got to the station and left his bag at the checkroom. He knew Ruth’s address but did not want to go there until after dark. For a while he stayed at the station;
then he inquired in several Jewish stores about refugee aid societies. In a hosiery store he was given the address of a religious group and went there.

A young man received him. Kern explained that he had crossed the border the day before.

“Legally?” asked the young man.

“No.”

“Have you papers?”

Kern looked at him in amazement. “If I had papers I wouldn’t be here.”

“Are you a Jew?”

“No. I am a half-Jew.”

“Religion?”

“Protestant.”

“Aha, Protestant. Then I’m afraid we can’t do much for you. Our means are very limited, and as a religious organization our chief interest is naturally—you understand—in Jews of our faith.”

“I understand,” Kern said. “I fled from Germany because my father is a Jew. Here you can’t help me because my mother is a Christian. Funny world!”

The young man shrugged his shoulders. “I’m sorry, but we have only private funds at our disposal.”

“Could you at least tell me where I can stay for a couple of days without reporting to the police?” Kern asked.

“Unfortunately I can’t. It’s against the law. The regulations are very strict and we have to abide by them precisely. You must go to the police and see if you can get a permit.”

“Well,” Kern said, “I’ve had some experience with that sort of thing.”

The young man looked at him. “Please wait a moment.” He went into a back office and presently came out again. “This is
an exception to our rule but we can help you out to the extent of twenty francs. Unfortunately there’s nothing more we can do for you.”

“Thank you very much. That’s more than I had expected.” Kern folded the note carefully and put it in his wallet. It was the only Swiss money he had.

He paused for a moment on the street, not knowing where to go.

“Well, Herr Kern,” said a jeering voice behind him.

Kern whirled around. An elegant young man of about his own age stood smiling behind him. “Don’t be alarmed. I just happened to be in there,” he pointed to the door of the religious society. “This is your first time in Zürich, isn’t it?”