Flotsam (3 page)

“Good God! Did anyone ever hear such drivel?” The owner of the chicken in the trunk pressed his hands in desperation to his head.

“Apparently he can’t lose on roast chicken,” Steiner said. “As far as they are concerned, our Jesus Christ is immune. A Diogenes among roast chickens. How about stewed chicken?”

“Truly not,” the Pole announced firmly.

“And chicken paprika?”

“Not at all chicken.” The Pole beamed.

“I’m going crazy!” howled the tormented owner of the chicken.

Steiner turned around. “And eggs, Jesus Christ, chicken’s eggs?”

His smile disappeared. “Little eggs, yes—love little eggs.” An expression of yearning stirred his untidy beard. “Very much love.”

“Thank God, at last a flaw in this perfection.”

“Very much love little eggs,” the Pole insisted; “four eggs, six eggs, twelve eggs—six boiled, other six fried. With little potatoes. Little fried potatoes and bacon.”

“I can’t listen to any more of this. Nail him to the cross, this gluttonous Jesus Christ!” stormed the Chicken in the Trunk.

“Gentlemen,” said a pleasant bass voice with a Russian accent, “why all this excitement about an illusion? I smuggled a bottle of vodka through. May I offer you some? Vodka warms the heart and soothes the spirit.” The Russian uncorked the bottle, took a drink, and handed it to Steiner. The latter drank and handed it to Kern. Kern shook his head.

“Drink, Baby,” Steiner said. “It’s part of this business. You’ve got to learn.”

“Vodka very good,” the Pole agreed.

Kern took a small swallow and handed the bottle to the Pole, who tilted it to his lips with an accomplished gesture.

“That egg-fiend is swigging it all up,” growled the Man with the Chicken, tearing the bottle away from him. “There’s not much left,” he said regretfully to the Russian after he had drunk.

The latter waved it aside. “It doesn’t matter, I’m getting out tonight at the latest.”

“Are you sure of that?” Steiner asked.

The Russian made a little bow. “Yes. I might almost say, unfortunately. As a Russian I have a Nansen passport.”

“Nansen passport!” repeated the Chicken admiringly. “That makes you one of the aristocracy of men without a country.”

“I’m sorry you haven’t the same advantage,” the Russian said politely.

“You got the start of us there,” Steiner replied. “You were the first. You got the lion’s share of the world’s sympathy. We only have the leftovers. People pity us, but we’re a nuisance and unwanted.”

The Russian shrugged his shoulders. Then he handed the bottle to the last man in the cell, who had hitherto sat in silence. “Please have a swallow too.”

“No thanks,” the man replied arrogantly. “I don’t belong in your crowd.”

They all looked at him.

“I have a passport, a country, a permit to stay here and a permit to work.”

They were all silent. “Pardon the question,” the Russian said presently in a hesitant tone, “but then why are you here?”

“Because of my profession,” the man explained haughtily. “I’m no fly-by-night refugee without papers. I’m a substantial pickpocket and professional gambler, with full rights of citizenship.”

At noon there was bean soup without beans. In the evening the same thing, only this time it was called “coffee” and a piece of bread came with it.

At seven o’clock there was a knock on the door. The Russian was released, as he had predicted. He said good-by as though to old friends. “In two weeks I’ll look in at the Café Sperler,” he said to Steiner. “Perhaps by then you’ll be there and I may have something for you. Good-by.”

By eight o’clock the substantial citizen and cardsharp was ready to capitulate. He brought out a package of cigarettes and handed them around. Everyone began to smoke. The twilight and the glowing cigarettes gave the cell an almost homelike air. The pickpocket explained that the police were just giving him a routine going-over to see if they could pin anything on him during the last six months. He didn’t think they could. Then he proposed a game and conjured up a pack of cards out of his coat.

It had grown dark and the electric light had not been turned on. But the cardsharp was equal to the situation. He waved his hands again and produced a candle and matches. The candle was stuck in a ledge in the wall where it gave a dim flickering light.

The Chicken, the Pole, and Steiner drew up. “We’re not playing for money, are we?” the Chicken asked.

“Of course not.” The cardsharp smiled.

“Aren’t you going to play too?” Steiner asked Kern.

“I can’t play cards.”

“That’s something you’ll have to learn. What else can you do in the evenings?”

“Not today—tomorrow.”

Steiner turned around. The light dug deep furrows in his face. “Is there something the matter with you?”

Kern shook his head. “No. Just a little tired. I’ll lie down for a while on the bunk.”

The cardsharp was already shuffling. He had an elegant, brisk way of letting the cards snap together. “Who deals?” asked the Chicken. The substantial citizen offered the cards around. The Pole drew a nine, the Chicken a queen, Steiner and the cardsharp each an ace.

The cardsharp glanced up quickly. “A tie.”

He drew another ace. He smiled and handed the deck to Steiner. The latter casually flipped up the lowest card in the deck—the ace of clubs.

“What a coincidence!” The Chicken laughed.

The cardsharp did not laugh. “Where did you learn that trick?” he asked Steiner in amazement. “You belong to the profession?”

“No, I’m an amateur. That’s why recognition by an expert pleases me so.”

“It’s not that.” The cardsharp looked at him. “The fact is I invented the trick.”

“Really?” Steiner pressed out his cigarette. “I learned it in Budapest. In prison, before I was deported. From a man named Katscher.”

“Katscher! Now I understand.” The cardsharp sighed with relief. “So that’s where it came from! Katscher is a pupil of mine; you learned it well.”

The cardsharp handed him the deck and looked inquiringly at the candle. “The light is bad—but of course we’re only playing for fun, gentlemen, aren’t we? Strictly aboveboard.”

Kern lay down on his bunk and closed his eyes. He was full of an unformulated gray sadness. Since the hearing that morning he had been thinking steadily of his parents—for the first time in a long while. He saw his father as he had appeared when he had returned from the police station. A business competitor had denounced him for talking against the State—in order to bankrupt his small laboratory for the manufacture of medicinal soap, perfumes, and toilet water, and then to buy it up for a song. The plan had succeeded, as a thousand others had at that time. After six weeks’ detention,
Kern’s father had come back a completely broken man. He never spoke of his experiences; but he sold his factory to his competitor at a ridiculous price. Soon afterward came the order to leave, and with it the beginning of an endless flight. From Dresden to Prague; from Prague to Brünn; from there by night over the border into Austria; the next day past the police back into Czecho, two days later slipping secretly across the border to Vienna—making improvised splints from branches for his mother’s arm, broken during the night; from Vienna to Hungary; a couple of weeks with his mother’s relatives; then the police once more; the farewell to his mother, who was allowed to remain because she was of Hungarian descent; the border once more; Vienna once more; the heartbreaking business of peddling soap, toilet water, suspenders, and shoestrings; the constant dread of being denounced and caught; the night when his father did not return; the months alone, stealing from one hiding place to another…

Kern turned over, bumping someone as he did so. On the bunk beside him lay something that looked like a bundle of rags in the darkness. It was the final occupant of the cell, a man of about fifty who had hardly moved all day.

“I beg your pardon,” Kern said. “I didn’t see you—”

The man made no reply. Kern noticed that his eyes were open. He knew this condition; he had often encountered it on the road. The best thing to do was to leave the man alone.

“Damnation!” the Chicken suddenly shouted from the corner where the card players were. “What a fool I am! What a terrible fool!”

“How’s that?” Steiner asked calmly. “The queen of hearts was exactly the right card.”

“That’s not what I mean. But that Russian could have sent
me my chicken. God in Heaven, what a contemptible fool I am! A simple, weak-minded idiot!”

He looked around him as though the world had come to an end.

Kern suddenly discovered that he was laughing. He didn’t want to laugh, but now he found he could not stop. He laughed until his whole body shook, and he didn’t know why. Something inside him was laughing and throwing everything into confusion—sadness, the past, and all his memories.

“What’s up, Baby?” Steiner asked, glancing up from his cards.

“I don’t know. I’m laughing.”

“Laughter’s always a good thing.” Steiner threw down the king of spades, stealing a dead-certain trick from the speechless Pole.

Kern reached for a cigarette. All at once everything seemed simple. He decided to learn how to play cards tomorrow. And he had the strange feeling that this resolve had changed his whole life.

FIVE DAYS LATER
the cardsharp was released. They had not been able to prove anything against him. He and Steiner parted friends. The cardsharp had improved his time by completing Steiner’s education in the methods of his pupil Katscher. As a parting gift he gave him the deck of cards and Steiner began to instruct Kern. He taught him skat, jass, tarots, and poker—skat for emigrants; jass to be played in Switzerland; tarots for Austria; and poker for all other occasions.

Two weeks later Kern was summoned upstairs. A police sergeant led him into a room where a middle-aged man was sitting. The place seemed gigantic and so brilliantly lighted that Kern had to squint. He had grown accustomed to the cell.

“You are Ludwig Kern, a student, of no nationality, born November 30, 1916, in Dresden?” the man asked indifferently, glancing at a document.

Kern nodded. His throat was suddenly so dry he could not speak. The man looked up.

“Yes,” Kern said huskily.

“You have resided in Austria without reporting to the police …”

The man hastily read through the record. “You have been sentenced to fourteen days’ detention and have now served your time. You will be expelled from Austria. You are forbidden to return under penalty of imprisonment. Here is the official order of deportation. You are to sign here in evidence of the fact that you have taken cognizance of this order and understand that to return will make you liable to punishment. Here at the right.”

The man lit a cigarette. Kern looked in fascination at the pudgy, thick-veined hand holding the match. In two hours this man would shut up his desk and go to dinner. Afterwards, perhaps, he would play a game of tarots and drink a few glasses of vintage wine. About eleven he would yawn, pay his check and announce: “I’m tired. I’m going home to bed.” Home. To bed. At that time the woods along the border would be wrapt in darkness, strangeness, fear; and lost in them—alone, stumbling and tired, with a yearning for men and a dread of men—would be the tiny, flickering spark of life called Ludwig Kern. And the reason for this difference was that a piece of paper called a passport divided him from the bored official behind the desk. Their blood had the same temperature, their eyes the same structure, their nerves reacted to the same stimuli, their thoughts ran in the same channels—and yet an abyss separated them, nothing was the same for both; satisfaction for one was agony for the other, they were possessor and dispossessed, and the abyss that separated them was only a scrap of paper on which there was nothing but a name and a few meaningless dates.…

“Here at the right,” said the official, “first and last name.”

Kern got possession of himself and signed.

“To which border do you wish to be taken?” asked the official.

“The Czech border.”

“All right. You will leave in an hour. You will be escorted there.”

“I have a few things at the place I was staying. Can I get them?”

“What are they?”

“A bag with shirts and that kind of thing.”

“All right. Tell the officer who is to take you to the border. You can stop on the way.”

The sergeant led Kern downstairs again and took Steiner back with him.

“What happened?” asked the Chicken, eagerly.

“We’re going to get out in an hour.”

“Jesus Christ!” said the Pole. “Then that crap start again.”

“Would you rather stay here?” asked the Chicken.

“If eating better—and me with little guard job—I very glad staying.”

Kern took out his handkerchief and cleaned up his suit as best he could. His shirt was very dirty after two weeks’ wear. He reversed the cuffs which he had been carefully protecting. The Pole looked at him. “In one, two years all that—all the same,” he predicted.

“Where are you going?” asked the Chicken.

“Czecho. And you? To Hungary?”