Georg Letham (13 page)

But I am more dead than alive just the same. My right hand is carrying everything. It has to do all the work, because, again, the left one is not free. It belongs to the handsome, tall but not very muscular, sweat-soaked, bony, flaxen-haired man with the not unintelligent, still childlike face. He has become listless, his small, heart-shaped, almost fleshless face sags, pale and tired. It tautens in childish pride only occasionally. The lips quiver defiantly but let out not a curse, not a sigh, not a word.

My left hand belongs to this man, in exchange for which I have his right. What acts might this right hand have committed? Question mark? Exclamation point! Dash–We have not introduced ourselves. Our only calling cards are the large Arabic numerals painted on our uniforms over our hearts. And what is interesting beyond that and distinguishes one person from another is revealed to the connoisseur of human nature in our faces.

Gallows faces or angel faces? Dwell together, beloved brethren, enjoy safe pasture. What more could you want? It is not good that man should be alone. This bond of love keeps us together, for as a pair we are weaker than each of us would be on his own.

Long live due process! As long as humanity exists, it will always be the next best thing to justice as our way of passing judgment on one another and serving God in the highest.

Hand in hand! Thus is the unruly individual brought together with his fellow man and molded to the most primitive, but truest, collective. Be thou blest! Amen.

Since the (to me no longer) puzzling disappearance of my brother, I have been firmly resolved to attain the greatest possible degree of freedom, both inward and outward. The first paragraph of this, my declaration of freedom, states that I shall close myself off from my fellow prisoners without exception insofar as possible. This will not always be easy. Thus there can be no exchange of cigarettes between me and my companion, and no conversation, though everyone around me is engaged in the liveliest discussions.

And now they shout to those beyond the cordon! They cry out for love–and what they have in mind is tobacco. But they do not get the latter and have none of the former. They waste no time moping, preferring to jabber and quarrel.

My companion, the tall, handsome youth, is unlike them. He is quiet. He is reserved. He radiates something, how shall I say, something plain to everyone, something inspiriting, something endearing, that might bind one to him. One might, if pressed, even conceive that this man shouldered his guilt for someone else's sake. Or that he acted out of some fanatically, childishly cherished, mad idea. For an ideal beyond price.

The man looks miserable now. He is suffering. He has suffered. He will suffer.

He fascinates me and yet I do not speak to him. We are two total strangers, thrown together by mere chance. Traveling acquaintances. We look at each other, we do have to meet each other's gazes. If he lifts his hand, I lift mine. If he goes somewhere, I follow. Constant brothers, more constant than nature makes them. For, let us be honest, the best brothers are not those nature gives us.

No? I remain solitary because that is what I want. That is what I want because I have no choice.

The time has come for me to consider my situation clearly. I have not done this in a long while.

What lies in store for me would be worse than death to most people. Nevertheless it is preferable to death. This is not the beginning, here on the dock amid the fieriest heat and the nastiest odors, inside a cordon of guards armed with egg grenades. Nor is it the end.

A look back, then a way forward.

The guards now stop their sluggish lolling about and straighten to attention: some ship's officers have appeared, beardless, fresh-looking young men and older men in a casual line, dressed in white or khaki, freshly pressed, with wheat-colored pith helmets on their heads. Accompanied by members of the fair sex and a great many factotums, they stroll past us pariahs and up the steps of the breakwater toward the official launch, which already has a head of steam so as not to keep the big guns waiting in the blazing sun. Steel gray, polished to a sparkle, its short brassbound funnel sending up boiling puffs of steam into air that quivers in the midday heat, pennants flying from the aerial masts, it
rocks on the glassy surface of the sea, circled by screeching snowy gulls that resemble descending hydroplanes as they graze the water with one lustrous mother-of-pearl wing.

The hilly terrain of the town is hidden from view by the silver and green foliage of trees standing close together on the square. But through a gap some buildings on the outskirts are visible–lime white villas pillowed in gardens–then, farther away, tin sheds built out over the water, the barnlike hangars for the naval station's hydroplanes.

If only I have the will! If only I am ruthless and unflinching enough with myself and others in the midst of the battle for existence, the war of all against all! If I do as my father schooled me . . . then I'll never have to bow to anyone except when absolutely necessary. Then and only then. Then I will be equal to my situation to all intents and purposes.

By exacting its punishment, the state wants to deter me? No need for that. I will never repeat my crime or commit one anything like it. Never again.

The state wants to pay me back for the evil I have done to others? Because I have made others suffer, should I myself suffer?

Let the state protect itself and its “loving hearts” as it can. I have to protect myself. Let me hold my own! Let me last two or three years where countless others have perished from the hardships of the abnormal life, of the climate, despondency, and malaria.

The worst punishment is something else. To be thrown in with people and to see them, to have to see them, not as sympathetic companions in suffering but only as mortal enemies–I have understood what deportation, what prison mean. Here internal conflicts, there deadly epidemics. But to stand unbowed despite death and the devil as long as you have a spark of life left in you, G. L. the younger, is that not a task that
must make life worth living to you, wherever, however? Yes, it is. I might survive. I might return from the prison island someday.

If only I were of one mind
with myself
at bottom! That's the thing! If only I could accept all of life. Could bow in uncritical worship before the “wonders of God's creation.” Could pray. Could finally conquer the logical despair that unmoors me, but also lets me think clearly; that cripples me, but has also protected and shielded me since my father's crucial experiment on me as a child. So let me at the wheel of fortune! I'll give it a whirl. The dead do not rise. But perhaps I can raise myself up to a new life. No difficulty would be too great for me. I wouldn't be the first one lucky enough to escape.

In this burst of energy, I have pulled my left hand to my heart. My companion's right hand is forced to follow. He laughs out loud. But why does his feverishly bright gaze ignore me? Is that wonderful, heart-gladdening laugh not for me? No, his laughing nod was to the photographer, his laugh was grandstanding for the reporter: look, I'm in chains, sent up for who knows how many years of hard labor–and I'm
laughing
!

Vanity is paramount in his character too. Is it paramount in my own? In any case my inspiration ends in another shattered illusion. Next time I'll be still tougher, more hard-boiled. The old man was right. The way he looked at life after his unsuccessful expedition to the northern lands, that was the way it was.

Despite the terrible sun, my companion takes his cap off his long, nicely shaped, clean-shaven skull and throws it in the air. It twirls, a brown butterfly, and he catches it between his knees. Finally he straightens up like a gymnast on the horizontal bar. He pats at himself, trying to look neat–all this even though he seems to be feverish. Oh,
all right. We know,
you
have the attention of the press, the public has its eye on you, not me. Laugh! Show your handsome, pearl-like child's teeth. That's what your astonished contemporaries will see in the Sunday paper. Heads up: one–two–three–now! The shutter finally makes its clattering sound, the plate has been exposed, the dramatic moment has passed–and the reporter has undoubtedly earned his five dollars (or ten, with reproduction rights). You can laugh and be happy! And if you wave your cap at the reporter, he'll answer you from the balcony with his handkerchief. Peace on earth. Goodwill toward men and, with luck, no scratches or halo on the plate and the viewfinder doing its job and the distance estimated correctly . . . Nonsense, all of it.

Once the picture has been taken, the handsome man slumps. I feel it, I have become “empathetic,” close to him as I am. And through his loose prison uniform I note his elevated temperature. Never were patient and doctor closer.

The launch is back, and a tall, lean officer with general's insignia is the last to commit himself to the gangway. His storklike gait seems familiar: he reminds me of Major Carolus at the Pasteur Institute. But he is too far away for me to make out his face.

A little girl and her nanny, who seem to have come with him, have stayed onshore with a tiny, woolly dog wearing a sky blue bow and a twinkling little bell. The child waves to the tall general on the launch. He takes off his pith helmet to wave back, revealing a pumpkin-shaped bald head. It can only be Carolus!

The child leans forward in excitement; the servant holds her back by her silk waistband. The little dog barks spiritedly and whines, then breaks loose, runs, tail held high, excited like its mistress, to the shore and back, ready to jump into the water and follow its master, the old
general or brigadier general. The child waves steadily. Her straw hat slips and she quickly straightens it with a toss of her pert little head. The little dog loyally returns to the child's feet and, out of breath from barking and running, extends its raspberry-colored tongue. The nanny holds a dark blue linen parasol over child and dog. She waves too, fluttering a kerchief in her free hand. Good-bye, good-bye, you brave man at arms!

No saber, just the épée, so this is no hero but only the rations officer or a brigadier general in the medical corps. What a touching family scene! And no less moving the scenes of parting staged by the prisoners' loved ones, the “loving hearts.” I smoke a cigarette, the first of the day.

What significance could these sentimental or idyllic scenes have for the ironic observer when thirst and the heat were making themselves more strongly and more agonizingly felt with every passing hour? It was nearly three when we received the eagerly awaited midday rations, of unusually poor quality but heavily salted to make up for it. And if they were bad, there was the consolation of their scantiness. Are we to suppose that the excellent judicial administration had been expecting fewer of us? Or had a few low-level pilferers helped themselves to some of our meager rations? Or did someone think that the sight of the ocean (deep indigo, rhythmically swept by short, quick waves, smooth swells shining with an almost metallic boldness), that this glorious view of the surging open sea would satisfy us hungry, hog-tied deportees? The little harbor is lovely, with only a few small low-draft coastal vessels bobbing in its silted-up basin, but many graceful sailboats with deep brown, saffron yellow, orange-red, rust-colored, often patched and fraying sails.
And, clanking on the rocks of the breakwater, a few ungainly cast-iron pontoons waiting for us. But as they are waiting for us, so we are still waiting for them. In vain.

The sails of the skiffs hang slackly from the masts and yardarms, the waves subside, total calm gradually spreads, and soon the stillness is oppressive. Your throat seems to close. You squat apathetically on the rocks (now unpleasantly hot, about body temperature) amid the disorder of bags thrown everywhere. Your rotting, sweat-soaked clothes stand away from you as though you have just come in from a thunder-shower and your skin is shriveled from the rain. You wonder where your emaciated body found that much moisture.

Suddenly a disturbance. A man has fallen over backward. His skull is concussed: he fell like a dead weight. The man to whom his wrist and his fortunes are bound went with him. He rolls over the fallen man as though trying to embrace him, to cover him with his body. The two men, chained together, are taken to the water's edge, to the stone steps on the shore. Why not the sick man alone? Is there a way to do that? The shackles don't come off for such petty reasons. Besides, the transport commandant, who has the key, is already on board with the rest of the aristocracy and may well be dining just now.

The man must have suffered sunstroke. He lets himself be carried by two guards, lying in their arms like a well-behaved big baby; the other man follows awkwardly like a fly with three of its six legs torn off. But now the prostrate fat insect attacks the hobbling thin insect. What a spectacle for the gods and the savages! Go on, don't be shy! Let your feelings out, comrades of better days. No, no sarcasm. To them it's deadly serious.

Why has this fight suddenly broken out, becoming wilder and more dramatic every second, far beyond the cordon of the guards, in the midst of the “loving hearts”?

The answer lies here among us. The thin man took a dim view of the fat man's “sunstroke,” his way of making contact with his relatives. Earlier the two of them had made a thieves' covenant, but even on the way here conflict had arisen between these inseparable, faithful friends. And the thin man tried to extort from the fat man, the one who was “sick” just now, who could fake so well that he could even fool the retired physician Georg Letham, a higher percentage of the expected treasures, money, tobacco, clothes, valuables–everything the fat one was hoping, dreaming, that he would receive from his equally fat relatives.