Flotsam (26 page)

“Why your last?”

“Because tomorrow I’m going to become a lodger for a while. I’m tired and I have to rest.”

“A lodger?” Kern asked in perplexity.

“I call it so. You might add—in prison. Tomorrow I’m going to report to the police and tell them I have been an illegal resident in Switzerland for two months. As punishment I will be given a few weeks in jail because I have already been deported twice. The state boardinghouse. It is important to say you have been in the country for some time; otherwise breaking the order to stay out of the country counts as an act of self-preservation and you are simply put across the border again.”

Kern looked at Ruth. “If you need money—I’ve earned quite a bit today.”

Vogt waved aside the offer. “Thank you, no. I still have ten francs. That’s all I need for the wine and the night. I am just tired; I want a little rest. And people like us can find that only in jail. I am fifty-five years old and not in very good health. I am really very tired of running around and hiding. Come and sit down with me. When one is so much alone company is a great pleasure.” He filled the glasses. “It is Neuchâtel, sharp and clear as glacier water.”

“But prison—” Kern said.

“The prison in Lucerne is good. I am acquainted with it—That’s a luxury I grant myself, to choose where I want to go to jail. My only fear is that I won’t be admitted. That I will appear before judges who are too humane and who will simply deport me. Then the whole thing will start over again. And for us so-called Aryans it’s harder than for Jews. We have no religious organizations to help us—and no fellow believers. But let’s not talk about these things—”

He lifted his glass. “We’ll drink to the beauty of the world; that is imperishable.”

They touched glasses with a clear tinkling sound. Kern drank the cool wine. The juice of the grape, he thought. Oppenheim. He sat down with Vogt and Ruth at the table.

“I thought that I was going to have to be alone again,” Vogt said, “and now you’re here. How beautiful the evening is with its clear autumn light!”

They sat for a long time in silence on the half-lighted terrace. A few late nocturnal butterflies were hurling their heavy bodies against the hot glass of the electric bulbs. Vogt leaned back in his chair with a rather absent-minded but very peaceful look on his thin face and in his clear eyes; and all at once it seemed to the other two that here was a man from some past century calmly and collectedly taking leave of his life and the world.

“Serenity,” Vogt said thoughtfully after a pause, almost as though he were talking to himself, “serenity, calm daughter of tolerance, has been lost to our times. Too many things are required for it—knowledge, superiority to circumstance, tolerance and resignation in the face of the inevitable. All that has taken flight before the brutal military ideal which today is intolerantly trying to improve the world. Those who want to improve the world have always made it worse—and dictators are never serene.”

“Nor are those to whom they dictate,” Kern said.

Vogt nodded and slowly took a sip of the bright wine. Then he motioned toward the silver Lake sparkling in the light of the half-moon, and towards the mountains that surrounded it like the sides of a precious chalice. “No one can dictate to them,” he said, “nor to the butterflies. Nor to the leaves of the trees. Nor, for that matter, to those—” He pointed to a few
well-read books. “Hölderlin and Nietzsche. One wrote the purest hymns to life—the other conceived the divine dancer full of Dionysian ecstasy—and both went mad—as though nature had set a limit somewhere.”

“Dictators don’t go mad,” Kern said.

“Of course not.” Vogt got up smiling. “But they do not become sane either.”

“Are you really going to the police tomorrow?” Kern asked.

“Yes, I am. Good-by, and thank you for wanting to help me. I am going down to spend an hour beside the lake.”

He went slowly down the street. It was deserted and they could hear his steps for some time after he had disappeared.

Kern looked over at Ruth and she smiled at him. “Are you afraid?” he asked.

She shook her head.

“It’s different with us,” he said. “We’re young, we’ll get along.”

Two days later Binder blew in from Zürich, cool, elegant and self-assured. “How are you?” he asked. “Everything all right?”

Kern told him about his experience with Councilor Oppenheim. Binder listened attentively. He laughed when Kern described how he had begged Oppenheim to use his influence in his behalf. “That was your mistake,” he said. “That man is the most cowardly toad I know. But I’m going to launch a punitive expedition against him.”

He went off and returned that evening with a twenty-franc note in his hand.

“Nice work,” Kern said.

Binder shrugged in disgust. “It wasn’t pretty; you can take my word for that. Herr Oppenheim, the nationalist, who understands
everything because he’s a millionaire. Money ruins the character, doesn’t it?”

“And lack of it too.”

“That’s right. But not so often. I gave him a thorough scare with wild reports from Germany. Fear is the only thing that will make him give. Hoping to bribe fate. Doesn’t it say that on the list?”

“No. It says: ‘Gives, but only under pressure.’ ”

“That’s the same thing. And perhaps sometime we’ll run into Councilor Oppenheim as a fellow hobo on the road. That would make up to me for a lot.”

Kern laughed. “He’ll get around it somehow. But why are you in Lucerne?”

“It got a little too hot in Zürich. There was a detective after me. And besides—” his face darkened—“I come here from time to time to get letters from Germany.”

“From your parents?”

“From my mother.”

Kern was silent. He was thinking about his mother to whom he wrote occasionally. But he never received an answer because he was always changing his address.

“Do you like cake?” Binder asked after a while.

“Yes, of course. Have you some?”

“Yes, just wait a minute.”

He came back with a package. It was a cardboard box in which there was a Madeira cake carefully wrapped in wax paper. “It came through the customs today,” Binder said. “The people here got it for me.”

“But you must eat it yourself,” Kern said. “Your mother baked it with her own hands. I can see that.”

“Yes, she baked it herself. That’s the reason I won’t eat it. I can’t do it, not a bite.”

“I can’t understand that. Good Lord, if I had a cake from my mother I would be eating it for a month, a small slice every evening!”

“Don’t misunderstand me,” Binder said with suppressed emotion. “She didn’t send it to me. It was intended for my brother.”

Kern stared at him. “But you said your brother was dead.”

“He is, but she doesn’t know it.”

“She doesn’t know it?”

“No, I can’t tell her. I simply can’t do it. She’ll die when she finds out. He was her darling. She liked him better than me. He was better, too. That’s why he couldn’t stand it. I’ll get through! Of course! You can see that.” He threw Oppenheim’s money on the floor.

Kern picked up the bill and put it back on the table. Binder sat down on a chair, lighted a cigarette, and drew a letter out of his pocket. “Here, just read this—this is her last letter. Came with the cake. When you read it you’ll understand how this sort of thing makes you feel.”

It was a letter written on pale blue paper in a delicate, slanting hand as though written by a young girl.

Greetings to George
.

Kern put the letter back on the table. He did not place it in Binder’s hand; he laid it near him on the table.

“A picture,” Binder said. “Where can I get a picture?”

“Has she just received the last letter your brother wrote?”

Binder shook his head. “He shot himself a year ago. Since then I’ve been writing to her. Every week or two. In my brother’s handwriting. I learned to copy it. She must not know. Absolutely not. Don’t you agree that she must not know?”

He looked earnestly at Kern. “Tell me what you think.”

“Yes. I believe it’s better this way.”

“She is sixty, and her heart is bad. Probably she won’t live much longer. Very likely I’ll be able to keep her from finding out. That he should have done it himself, you understand, that’s something she would never be able to accept.”

“Yes.”

Binder got up. “I must write her again now. From him. Then it will be over. A picture—where can I get a picture?”
He picked up the letter from the table. “Take the cake, I beg you. If you don’t want it, give it to Ruth. You don’t have to tell her the whole story about it.”

Kern hesitated.

“It’s a good cake. I’d like to take just a small slice—just so as to have—”

He took a knife out of his pocket, cut a narrow slice from the edge of the cake and placed it in his mother’s letter. “Do you know,” he said then with a strange, disillusioned look, “my brother never really loved Mother very much. But I—I! Funny, isn’t it?”

He went up to his room.

It was going on eleven in the evening. Ruth and Kern were sitting on the terrace. Binder came down the stairs. He was his cool and elegant self once more.

“Let’s go somewhere,” he said. “I can’t go to sleep this early and I don’t want to be alone tonight. Just for an hour. I know a place that’s safe. Do it as a favor to me.”

Kern looked at Ruth. “Are you tired?” he asked.

She shook her head.

“Do it as a favor to me,” Binder repeated. “Just for an hour. Get a change of scene.”

“All right.”

He took them to a café where there was dancing. Ruth looked inside. “This is too elegant,” she said. “This is not for us.”

“For whom should it be if not for us cosmopolitans?” Binder replied sardonically. “Come on. It’s not really so elegant when you get a good look at it. Just elegant enough to be safe from detectives. And a cognac here costs no more than anywhere else. On the other hand, the music is much better. And there
are times when you need this sort of thing. Come on please. There’s a table now.”

They sat down and ordered drinks. “Here’s to nothing!” Binder said, raising his glass. “Let’s be gay. Life is short, and afterwards no one gives a damn whether we’ve had a good time or not.”

“That’s right.” Kern raised his glass in turn. “We’ll simply assume we’re citizens of the country, won’t we Ruth? People with a home in Zürich who are just making a trip to Lucerne.”

Ruth nodded and smiled at him.

“Or tourists,” Binder said, “rich tourists.”

He emptied his glass and ordered another. “Have one too?” he asked Kern.

“Later.”

“Have another. You’ll get into the right mood faster. Please do.”

“All right.”

They sat at their table and watched the dancers. There were a number of young people there no older than themselves, but nevertheless the three felt like lost children, sitting there watching with wide-eyed interest but not belonging. It was not only their homelessness that lay like a gray ring around them; it was the joylessness of a youth that was without much hope or future. What’s the matter with us, Kern thought. We were going to be gay. I have everything I could expect and almost more; what’s wrong anyway?

“Do you like it?” he asked Ruth.

“Yes, very much,” she replied.

The place became dark, colored spotlights swept across the floor and a beautiful slim dancer whirled into sight.

“Wonderful, isn’t it?” Binder asked, applauding.

“Magnificent!” Kern clapped too.

“The music’s excellent, don’t you think?”

“First-rate.”

They sat there, very eager to find things magnificent and to be happy and gay; but there were dust and ashes in everything and they could not understand why.

“Why don’t you two dance?” Binder asked.

“Shall we?” Kern got up.

“I don’t think I know how,” Ruth said.

“I don’t know how either. That makes us even.”

Ruth hesitated an instant, then accompanied Kern to the dance floor. The colored lights flicked over the dancers. “Here comes the violet light,” Kern said. “A good chance to dive in.” They danced cautiously and rather shyly together. Gradually they became more confident, especially when they noticed that no one was paying any attention to them. “How nice it is to dance with you!” Kern said. “There are always fine new things to do with you. It’s not just that you are there—everything around changes and becomes beautiful too!”

She moved her hand closer around his shoulder and pressed against him. Slowly they glided into the rhythm of the music. The spotlight swept over them like colored water and for an instant they forgot everything else—now they were just pliant young life drawn to one another and freed from the shadows of fear and distrust and flight.

The music stopped and they went back to their table. Kern looked at Ruth. Her eyes were shining and her face was animated. All at once it had a beaming, self-forgetful and almost bold expression. Damn it, he thought, if one could only live as one would like—and for an instant he felt an agonizing bitterness.