Flotsam (43 page)

They walked across together. Under the bare trees a man of about fifty was standing. “Are you Steiner?” he asked.

“No!” Steiner said. “Why?”

The man looked at him sharply for an instant. “I have a letter for you from your wife.” He took a letter out of his portfolio and showed it to Steiner. “You probably recognize the handwriting.”

Steiner knew that he was standing still but it took all his
strength, for suddenly inside him everything was unsteady and quivering. He could not lift his head; he believed if he tried to it would fly away.

“What made you think Steiner was in Paris?” Marill asked.

“The letter reached me from Vienna. Someone took it there from Berlin. When he tried to find you he was told you were in Paris.” The man pointed to a second envelope.
Josef Steiner, Paris
, was written on it in Lilo’s large handwriting. “He sent it to me along with other letters. I’ve been looking for you for several days. Finally at the Café Maurice they told me I would find you here. You needn’t tell me whether you are Steiner. I know how careful one has to be. All you need do is take the letter. I want to get rid of it.”

“It’s for me,” Steiner said.

“Good.”

The man handed him the letter. Steiner had to force himself to take it. It was different and heavier than any other letter in the world. But once he felt the envelope between his fingers you would have had to cut his hand off to get it away from him.

“Thanks,” he said to the man. “You’ve been to a lot of trouble.”

“That’s nothing. When people like us get mail it’s important enough to do a little searching. I’m glad I found you.”

He waved to them and left.

“Marill,” Steiner said, completely beside himself. “From my wife. The first letter. What can it be? She ought not to write me, you know.”

“Open it—”

“Yes. Stay here with me. Damn it, what can have gone wrong with her?” He tore open the envelope and began to read. He sat like a stone and read the letter to the end; but his face began to
change, it became pale and drawn. The muscles in his cheeks tensed and the veins stood out.

He let the letter fall and sat for a time silently staring at the floor. Then he glanced at the date. “Ten days—” he said. “She’s in the hospital. Ten days ago she was still alive—”

Marill looked at him and waited.

“She says she can’t be saved. That’s why she wrote. She doesn’t tell me what’s wrong. It doesn’t matter now. She writes—you understand—it’s her last letter—”

“In what hospital is she?” Marill asked. “Did she tell you that?”

“Yes.”

“We’ll call up at once. We’ll call the hospital, under some other name.”

Steiner stood up unsteadily. “I must go there.”

“Call first. Come, we’ll go to the Verdun.”

Steiner gave the number. In a half-hour the telephone rang and he went into the booth as though into a dark cavern. When he came out he was dripping with sweat.

“She’s still alive,” he said.

“Did you speak to her?” Marill asked.

“No. To the doctor.”

“Did you tell him your name?”

“No. I said I was one of her relatives. There has been an operation and there is no hope for her. Three or four days at most, the doctor says. It was for that reason she wrote. She didn’t think I’d get the letter so quickly. Damn it!” He still had the letter in his hand and he looked around as though he had never before been in the dirty lobby of the Verdun. “Marill, I’m taking the train tonight.”

Marill stared at him. “Have you lost your mind?” he asked softly.

“No. I’ll get across the border. I have a passport, you know.”

“The passport won’t do you any good once you’re over there. You know that perfectly well yourself.”

“Yes.”

“You also know what it means once you cross the border?”

“Yes.”

“That you’re probably done for.”

“I’m done for if she dies.”

“That’s not true!” Marill was suddenly very angry. “It may sound tough, Steiner, but I advise you to write her, telegraph her—but stay here.”

Steiner shook his head absent-mindedly. He had scarcely heard.

Marill seized him by the shoulder.

“You can’t help her. Even if you get there.”

“I can see her.”

“She will be horrified if you go. If you were to ask her now, she would make every effort to have you stay here.”

Steiner had been staring into the street without seeing anything. Now he turned around quickly. “Marill,” he said, and his eyes wavered, “she is still all there is for me, she is alive, she breathes, her eyes are still there and her thoughts, I am still there behind those eyes—and in a few days she will be dead; there will be nothing left of her; she will lie there and be nothing but a strange, disintegrating body. But now, now she is still alive for a few days longer, the last days—And I am not to be with her? Try to understand that I must go. There is no other way. Damn it, the world is ending; if I don’t see her I’ll simply break. I’ll die with her.”

“You won’t die with her. Come, telegraph her, take my
money, take Kern’s money, telegraph her every hour, pages, letters, anything—but stay here.”

“It’s not dangerous for me to go. I have my passport. I’ll get back with it.”

“Don’t talk nonsense to me. You know it’s dangerous! They have a damned good organization over there.”

“I’m going,” Steiner said.

Marill tried to seize him by the arm and lead him away. “Come, we’ll empty a couple of bottles of brandy. Get drunk! I promise you I’ll telephone every couple of hours.”

Steiner shook him off as though he were a child. “It won’t do, Marill. That won’t fix it. I know what you mean. I understand it, too. I’m not crazy. I know what the stakes are, but if they were a thousand times higher I’d still take that train and nothing could stop me. Can’t you understand that?”

“Yes,” Marill roared. “Of course I understand it! I’d take the train myself!”

Steiner packed his things. He was like a frozen river when the ice breaks up. He could hardly believe he had talked to someone under the same roof with Marie; it seemed almost inconceivable to him that his own voice had droned so close to her inside the hard black rubber of the telephone receiver; it all seemed unimaginable—that he was packing, that he would take a train and that tomorrow he would be where she was.

He threw the few things he needed into his bag and shut it. Then he went to find Ruth and Kern. They had already heard everything from Marill and were waiting for him, in sorrow and sympathy.

“Children,” he said, “I’m going away now. It’s taken a long
time but I always knew at bottom this is how it would be. Not exactly this way,” he added. “But then I don’t believe that yet. I only know it.”

He smiled a sad, twisted smile. “Good-by, Ruth.”

Ruth gave him her hand. She was crying. “There’s so much I’d like to say to you, Steiner. But now I’ve forgotten what it is—I’m just sad. Will you take this with you?” She handed him the black sweater. “I just finished it today.”

Steiner smiled and for an instant was as he used to be. “That turned out just right,” he said. Then he turned to Kern. “So long, Baby. Sometimes things go dreadfully slow, don’t they? Sometimes damn fast.”

“I don’t think I’d be alive if it hadn’t been for you, Steiner,” Kern said.

“Sure you would. But it’s nice of you to say that to me. It means the time wasn’t entirely wasted.”

“Come back to us,” Ruth said. “That’s all I can say. Come back. There’s not much we can do for you, but everything we are is yours. Always.”

“Fine. We’ll see. So long, children. Keep your chins up.”

“We’d like to go with you to the station,” Kern said.

Steiner hesitated. “Marill is going along. Yes, you come too.”

They walked down the steps. On the street Steiner turned around and looked back at the shabby gray front of the hotel. “Verdun—” he murmured.

“Let me carry your bag,” Kern said.

“Why, Baby? I can do it all right myself.”

“Give it to me,” Kern begged with a shy smile. “I showed you just this afternoon how strong I’ve grown.”

“Yes, so you did. This afternoon. How long ago that was!”
Steiner gave him the bag knowing that Kern wanted to do something for him and that there was nothing else to do but this trifling service of carrying his bag.

They arrived just in time to see the train off. Steiner got in and lowered a window. The train had not begun to move; but it seemed to those on the platform that the window already separated Steiner irrevocably from them. With burning eyes Kern looked at the stern, lean face—trying to impress it on his mind for all time. This man had been his friend and teacher for many months; for whatever in himself had become tempered and resilient, he had Steiner to thank. And now he saw this face, composed and calm, going voluntarily to destruction; for none of them counted on the miracle of Steiner’s coming back.

The train began to move. No one spoke. Steiner slowly lifted his hand. The three on the station platform looked after him until the cars disappeared behind a curve.

“Damnation!” Marill said presently, in a hoarse voice. “Come along. I need a drink. I’ve seen many a man die but I was never present at a suicide before.”

They returned to the hotel. Kern and Ruth went to Ruth’s room. “Ruth,” Kern said after a while, “everything is suddenly empty and it makes you feel cold—as if the whole city had died.”

That evening they went to visit Father Moritz, who was now bedridden. “Sit down, children,” he said. “I know all about it and there’s nothing to be done. Every human being has the right to decide his own fate.”

Moritz Rosenthal knew he would never get up again. And therefore he had had his bed so placed that he could look out
the window. There wasn’t much he could see—just a section of the row of houses opposite. But since he had nothing else, that was a great deal. He looked at the windows and they became the epitome of life. In the mornings he saw them opened, he saw faces appear, he knew the sullen servant girl who cleaned the panes, the weary young wife who sat in the afternoon almost motionless behind the open shutters, staring into the street, and the bald-headed man on the top floor who exercised in the evenings in front of the open window. In the afternoon he saw the lights behind drawn curtains, he saw shadows moving back and forth; in the evenings he saw some windows that were dark as abandoned caves and others where lights burned far into the night. That and the muffled noise from the streets represented the outer world, to which now only his thoughts belonged, not his body. The other world, the world of memory, he had on the walls of his room. With the last of his strength, aided by the chambermaid, he had put up with thumbtacks all the photographs he possessed.

On the wall above his bed hung faded pictures of his family: his parents; his wife, who had died forty years before; the portrait of a son who had lived to be fifty and who had died; the picture of a grandson who died at seventeen; the picture of a daughter-in-law who had lived to thirty-five—the dead, among whom Moritz Rosenthal, old and impassive, now himself awaited death.

The wall opposite was covered with landscapes. Photographs of the Rhine, towns, castles and vineyards, interspersed with colored clippings from newspapers, sunrises and thunderstorms over the Rhine, and at the end a series of pictures of the little town of Godesberg-on-the-Rhine.

“I can’t help it,” Father Moritz said in embarrassment. “I really ought to have pictures of Palestine hanging there, at
least a few in the collection—but they don’t mean a thing to me.”

“How long did you live in Godesberg?” Ruth asked.

“Until I was seventeen. Then we left.”

“And later on?”

“Later on I never went back.”

“That was a long time ago, Father Moritz,” Ruth said.

“Yes, it was long, long before you were in the world. Perhaps your mother was born about that time.”

How strange, Ruth thought. When my mother was born these pictures were already memories in the brain behind that forehead—and she lived her difficult life and is gone, and these same memories live on like ghosts behind this ancient forehead as though they were stronger than many lives.

There was a knock and Edith Rosenfeld came in. “Edith,” Father Moritz said, “my eternal love! Where have you been?”

“I’ve come from the station, Moritz, I’ve just seen Max off. He is on his way to London, and from there to Mexico.”

“Then you’re alone now, Edith—”

“Yes, Moritz. Now I’ve found places for them all and they can work.”

“What’s Max going to do in Mexico?”

“He’s going as a day laborer. But he plans to try to get into the automobile business.”

“You’re a good mother, Edith,” Moritz Rosenthal said after a pause.

“I’m like all of them, Moritz.”

“What will you do now?”

“I’ll rest a little. And then I’ve already found something else to do. There’s a baby here in the hotel. Born two weeks ago. The mother will soon have to get back to work. Then I’ll become its adoptive grandmother.”

Moritz Rosenthal raised himself a little. “A baby? Two weeks old? Then he’s already a Frenchman. That’s more than I’ve been able to achieve at eighty.” He smiled. “Can you sing it to sleep despite that, Edith?”

“Yes—”

“The songs you sang my son to sleep with! It was a long time ago, Edith. Suddenly everything is a very long time ago. Won’t you sing one of them again for me? Sometimes I’m like a child that wants to go to sleep.”

“Which one, Moritz?”

“The song about the poor Jewish child. It’s forty years since I’ve heard you sing that. You were young then, and very beautiful. You are still beautiful, Edith.”

Edith Rosenfeld smiled. Then she straightened herself a little and began, in her frail voice, to sing the old Yiddish lullaby. Her voice tinkled a little like the thin melody of an old music box. Moritz Rosenthal lay back and listened. He closed his eyes and drew his breath peacefully. In the barren room the old woman sang the nostalgic melody of homelessness and the sad words that accompanied it:—