Flotsam (45 page)

He felt his veins dissolve and open, he felt his blood stream out and become part of a luminous river that flowed outside him, that absorbed his blood and returned it, enriched, to him. It carried away his hands to meet other outstretched hands; its eddies broke him apart, piece by piece, and washed him away, as a torrent in spring breaks up an ice pack, putting an end to his isolation. In this one endless night it brought him the solitary joy of union with the universe. It brought him on its waters the sum of things—his life, the dead years, the splendor of love, and the profound knowledge of a recurrence beyond destruction.

STEINER ARRIVED
at eleven o’clock in the morning. Leaving his bag in the station checkroom he went immediately to the hospital. He did not see the city; he was only aware of something flowing by on either side of him, a stream of houses, cars and people.

In front of the big white building he stopped and hesitated, staring at the wide entryway and the endless rows of windows, floor after floor. Somewhere there—but perhaps not there any longer. He clenched his teeth and walked in.

“I should like to inquire when visitors are admitted,” he said at the reception desk.

“Which class?” the nurse asked.

“I don’t know. This is the first time I’ve been here.”

“Whom do you wish to see?”

“Frau Marie Steiner.”

Steiner had a moment of astonishment as the nurse began calmly leafing through a thick book. He had almost expected the white walls to crash about his ears or the nurse to jump up
and summon a watchman or the police when he pronounced his name.

The nurse was turning over the pages. “First-class patients may receive visitors at any time,” she said continuing to search.

“It wouldn’t be first class,” Steiner answered, “perhaps third.”

“Visitors’ hours for the third class are from three to five.”

The nurse went on searching. “What was the name again?” she asked.

“Steiner, Marie Steiner.” Steiner’s throat was suddenly dry. He stared at the pretty doll-like nurse as though she were about to pronounce his death sentence. He knew she was going to say: Dead.

“Marie Steiner,” the nurse said, “second class. Room five hundred five, fifth floor. Visitors’ hours from three to six.”

“Five hundred five. Thank you very much, nurse.”

“Not at all, sir.”

Steiner still stood there. The nurse reached for the buzzing telephone. “Was there something else you wanted to ask, sir?”

“Is she still alive?” Steiner asked. The nurse laid down the telephone. In the receiver a low tinny voice went on squeaking as though the telephone were an animal.

“Certainly, sir,” the nurse said and glanced in her book. “Otherwise there would be a note after her name. Demises are always reported immediately.”

“Thank you.”

Steiner forced himself not to ask whether he could go up at once. He was afraid they would ask why, and he had to avoid making himself conspicuous. And so he went out.

———

He wandered aimlessly through the streets, passing the hospital in wider and wider circles. She’s alive, he thought. My God, she’s alive! Suddenly he was overcome with fear that someone might recognize him and he took refuge in an obscure bar where he could wait in safety. He ordered something to eat but could not swallow it.

The waiter looked offended. “Don’t you like it?”

“Yes, it’s good. But bring me a kirsch first.” He forced himself to eat the meal and then ordered a newspaper and cigarettes. He pretended to read the paper and really tried to, but nothing registered in his mind. He sat in the half-darkened room that smelled of food and stale beer, and went through the most horrible hours of his life. In his mind he saw Marie dying, now at this very hour, he heard her desperately calling him, he saw her face drenched with death sweat and he sat like a lump of lead on his chair with the rustling newspaper in front of his eyes and clenched his teeth in order not to groan and leap up and run out. The crawling hand on his watch was the arm of fate that dammed up his life and almost choked him by its slowness.

Finally he put down the paper and stood up. The waiter was leaning on the bar picking his teeth. He approached when he saw the guest getting up.

“Want to pay?” he asked.

“No,” Steiner said. “Another kirsch.”

“All right.” The waiter poured it out.

“Have one with me.”

“I don’t mind if I do.” The waiter poured out another glass and raised it with two fingers.

“Here’s to health!”

“Yes,” Steiner said, “to health!”

They drank and put down their glasses. “Do you play billiards?” Steiner asked.

The waiter looked at the shabby table that stood in the middle of the room. “A little.”

“Shall we play a game?”

“Why not? Do you play well?”

“I haven’t played in a long time. We can play a trial game first if you like.”

“Right.”

They chalked their cues and played a few balls. Then they began a game, which Steiner won.

“You’re better than I am,” the waiter said. “You’ll have to give me ten points.”

“All right.”

If I win this game, Steiner thought, everything will be all right. She will be alive, I shall see her, perhaps she will even get well—

He concentrated on the game and won. “Now I’ll give you twenty points,” he said. These twenty points represented life, health and escape together; and the clicking of the white balls was like the key of fate turning in the lock. The play was close. In a good run the waiter came within two points of the full score, and missed the last ball by a fraction of an inch. Steiner took his cue and began to play. There were flashes before his eyes and sometimes he had to pause, but he ran out the string without an error.

“Well played!” said the waiter admiringly.

Steiner nodded his thanks and looked at the time. It was after three. He quickly paid his check and went out.

———

He mounted the linoleum-covered steps, his whole being a strange, high-pitched and tormenting vibration. The long corridor writhed and undulated. And then a chalk-white door sprang up to meet and confront him: Five hundred five.

Steiner knocked. There was no answer. He knocked again. A dreadful fear that something might already have happened twisted his stomach as he opened the door.

The little room lay in the light of the afternoon sun like an island of peace in another world. It seemed as if the roaring onward rush of time had lost its power over the infinitely quiet figure that lay in the narrow bed and looked at Steiner. He swayed a little and his hat fell from his hand. He started to bend over and pick it up but in the act he felt as if he had been pushed from behind and, not knowing how he got there, he found himself kneeling by the bed and weeping silently with the tumultuous emotion of homecoming.

The woman looked at him for a time with an expression of peace in her eyes. Then gradually they became uneasy. Her forehead began to wrinkle and her lips moved. Something like panic flickered in her eyes, her hand, which had rested motionless on the cover, rose as though she wanted to reassure herself by touch of what her eyes had seen.

“It’s me, Marie,” Steiner said.

His wife tried to raise her head. Her eyes searched his face, which was close before her.

“Be calm, Marie. It’s me,” Steiner said. “I have come.”

“Josef—” his wife whispered.

Steiner had to lower his head. His eyes were filled with tears. He bit his lips and swallowed. “It’s me, Marie. I have come back to you.”

“If they find you—” the woman whispered.

“They won’t find me. They can’t find me. I can stay here. I shall stay with you.”

“Hold me, Josef. I want to feel that you are really here. I’ve so often seen you—”

He took her fragile, blue-veined hand in his and kissed it. Then he bent over her and pressed his lips on hers, those tired lips that seemed already part of another world. When he stood up, her eyes were full of tears. She gently shook her head and the drops fell like rain.

“I knew you could not come but I have waited for you always.”

“Now I shall stay with you.”

She tried to push him away. “You can’t stay here. You must leave. You don’t know what it has been like. You must go at once. Go, Josef—”

“No. It is not dangerous.”

“I know better. It is dangerous. I have seen you; now go. I shall not last much longer. I can face it all right alone.”

“I have made arrangements so I can stay here, Marie. There is going to be an amnesty and I fall under it.”

She looked at him incredulously.

“It’s true,” he said, “I swear it to you, Marie. No one need know that I am here. But even if they find out it won’t matter.”

“I shall say nothing, Josef. I have never said anything.”

“I know that, Marie.” The blood rushed to his head. “You have not divorced me?” he asked softly.

“No. How could I? Please don’t be angry.”

“It was only for your sake, so that things would be easier for you.”

“I haven’t had a bad time. People have helped me. That’s how I happen to have this room. It has been nicer to be alone; you were with me more.”

Steiner looked at her. Her face was drawn, her cheekbones stood out and her skin had a waxy pallor with blue shadows. Her neck was thin and frail and her collarbone stood out prominently from the shrunken shoulders. Even her eyes were veiled and her mouth was colorless. Only her hair sparkled and glowed, it seemed to have become heavier and thicker as though all her former strength were concentrated there in triumph over her wasting body. Spread out in the afternoon sun it was like an aureole of red and gold, like a wild protest against the weariness of the childlike body, of which hardly enough remained to show beneath the sheets.

The door opened and a nurse came in. Steiner got up. The nurse was carrying a glass filled with a milky fluid which she placed on the table. “You’re having company?” she said, examining Steiner with sharp blue eyes.

The sick woman nodded her head. “From Breslau,” she whispered.

“From so far? Isn’t that nice? Now you will have a little entertainment.”

The blue eyes swiftly inspected Steiner once more as the nurse drew out a thermometer.

“Has she been having fever?” Steiner asked.

“No indeed,” the nurse replied cheerfully. “She hasn’t had any for days now.” She put the thermometer in the patient’s mouth and went out. Steiner drew a chair up to the bed and sat down close to Marie. He took her hands in his. “Are you glad I’m here?” he asked, conscious of how foolish the question was.

“It’s everything,” Marie said without smiling.

They looked at each other in silence. There was little to say, for being together meant so much. They looked at each other and there was nothing else that mattered. They were lost in
each other and had come home to each other. Life no longer had a future or a past; it was all present. It was rest, quietness and peace.

The nurse came in again and made a note on the fever chart; they barely noticed her. They were looking at each other. The sun slowly advanced; it reluctantly abandoned the beautiful flaming hair and lay down like a soft kitten of light on the pillow beside it; then it moved over, still reluctantly, to the wall and slowly climbed it; they looked at each other. Blue-footed dusk stole into the room and filled it. They looked at each other and could not stop, till the shadows drifted from the corners of the room and with their wings covered the white face, the one face in the world.

The door opened and the doctor entered in a flood of light with the nurse behind him. “You must go now,” the nurse said.

“Yes,” Steiner said, getting up. He bent over the bed. “I’ll come back tomorrow, Marie.”

She lay like a play-weary child already half asleep, already half in the world of dreams. “Yes,” she said, and he could not tell whether she spoke to him or to a figure in a dream. “Yes, come back.”

Steiner waited outside for the doctor and asked him how long it would last. The doctor inspected him sharply. “Three or four days at most,” he said. “It’s a miracle she has lived this long.”

“Thank you.”

Steiner went slowly down the stairs. In front of the entrance he stopped. Suddenly the city lay spread before him. He had not really seen it on his way there; but now it stretched in front of him at once clear and inescapable. He saw the streets,
he saw the houses and he saw danger, silent invisible danger, lying in wait for him at every corner, in every doorway, in every face. He knew there was not much he could do. The place where he could be caught like a wild beast at a drinking hole in the jungle was this white stone building behind him. But he knew, too, that he must hide in order to be able to come back to it. Three or four days. An instant and an eternity. For a moment he debated whether he should try to find one of his friends, but in the end he decided on some nondescript hotel. That would be the least conspicuous place to go for the first day.

* * *

Kern was sitting in one of the cells in the Santé prison, with the Austrian Leopold Bruck and the Westphalian Moenke. They were pasting together paper bags.