I Confess (13 page)

I walked into the compartment. Both beds had been made up. In the top one lay Yolanda.

"Good evening," she said. She was smoking and didn't look at me.

"Good evening." I closed the door. "EHd they ask you too?"

"Yes."

"And?"

"I betrayed you."

"I betrayed you too."

"We betrayed each other. That's why we're here."

"But only one of us is supposed to be on the train," I said, startled.

At that moment there was a knock on the door and a conductor walked in without waiting for permission.

"Passports please."

"Listen," I said, excitedly. "I know only one of us is supposed to be on this train."

He looked at our passports, put them in his pocket and

handed me a new one. "There is only one person on this train."

"But..."

"I hope you betrayed each other?" he asked suspiciously.

"Of course we did.'*

"Then everything is in order. You are one." And with that he walked out and closed the door.

I stared at Yolanda. Then I opened the passport. Its pages were empty and there was no name.

"Go to bed," said Yolanda. Suddenly she didn't have a face. I undressed slowly. As I did, I could feel the train begin to move. I turned out the light and lay down on the lower bed.

"Yolanda?"

"Yes."

"When do we arrive?"

"I don't know," her voice replied.

The car rocked rhythmically on its axles. We were moving fast.

20

I was thirsty. My lips were burning. My tongue was heavy in my mouth. My head ached. Two hammers were pounding in my temples. When I opened my eyes cautiously, the daylight hit me like a blow.

I was lying in my bed. Margaret was sitting beside me. The tears were coursing down her cheeks. Now she smiled. "Darling," she said softly and drew a deep breath.

"What is it?" I asked. I tried to move, but I couldn't. I

felt very weak. "Why am I here? When are they going to operate?"

"It's all over," she said.

"Over?" Suddenly I felt very hot, then very cold, after that I felt sick. I vomited and nearly choked. Margaret wiped the sweat from my forehead and put the small kidney basin away.

"Was it a tumor?"

"No."

"So what was it?"

"A benign growth."

"So?"

"Darling," she said, and laughed hysterically with the tears still coursing down her cheeks. "All they did was bore two little holes and examine the growth and saw it was harmless. They didn't have to operate at all."

That was the last I heard before I lost consciousness again.

21

I stayed two more days in the clinic.

On the evening of the first day I was able to hear and see clearly again and was fully conscious. On the morning of the second day only- my head still ached and I was a Uttle weak in the legs. But in the meantime I had begun to realize that I didn't have a tumor on the brain, nothing but a harmless growth, and I began to feel optimistic. My spirits rose.

"It's a growth that we can eliminate with ten or twenty x-ray treatments," said Vogt when he came to see me and

give me the final diagnosis. "You can have the x-ray treatment here or anywhere you Uke."

"How long does it take?"

"A few weeks. The x-rays should take place at intervals of two or three days."

"When can I have the first?"

"In a week or two. Your brain has to calm down. The examination was a great exertion. Try to rest now, relax, and then, in about ten days, come back to see us, Mr. Chandler. Is that all right with you?"

"Fme," I said.

During this time Margaret was with me almost constantly. She looked dreadful and had a way of bursting into tears suddenly which made me realize she must be suffering from nervous exhaustion. I called Yolanda on the morning of the second day and told her I had, so to say, got away with murder. I said I would come to her as soon as I had left the sanatorium. She seemed curiously indifferent and I only spoke to her briefly.

On the second day I had visitors. Clayton appeared, Hellweg brought flowers and the Baxters came to wish me well. When they left, Margaret began to cry again and it took a long time before she calmed down. For the first time in ages I felt something akin to pity for her.

But the event that triggered the final catastrophe had nothing to do with her. She behaved admirably. Everybody concerned behaved admirably. And the occasion that first gave me an inkling of the truth was something ridiculously trivial. Under certain circumstances I wouldn't even have been conscious of it. Only my irritated, over-active brain registered the true reason for Dr. Renter's visit.

She came just before I left the clinic, to say goodbye. She looked as fascinating and immaculately groomed as ever. She had a few minutes time and sat down with me. After she had congratulated me on the diagnosis, we got to talking about motion pictures. She had seen two in the last days: Heaven Can Wait, by Lubitsch, and The Silver

Net, a crime picture. She had loved the Lubitsch. The Silver Net was running in Germany under the title The Net of Death, and she went on to talk about it.

"I saw the Lubitsch first," she said, "then The Net, and I must say ..."

"I wrote the script for The Net,'' I interrupted her, grinning in expectation of an unfavorable attack. I was looking forward to it Uke to a wrestling match with a friend. Frau Dr. Renter, with her hatred of men and her predilection for saying unpleasant things to me, amused me. I had no idea that my interruption of her sentence was about to change my entire life.

"Oh," she said and stared at me.

"Didn't you see my credit Une?"

"I came too late for the credits," she said. She seemed embarrassed, and to my boundless astonishment she blushed suddenly, a deep red.

"Go on, say it," I told her. "Tell me that the picture is -the worst crap you've ever seen."

She shook her head, the color faded from her cheeks and she smiled happily. "Not at all. I loved the picture. I really did, Mr. Chandler. Especially the story. At last I can say something nice about you."

And that was the moment in which my suspicions were aroused, when cold fear shot through me like a spring freshet. She had hked the picture? That was why she had spoken first of the Lubitsch and then, in a contrast that had been perfectly clear, had been about to start criticizing The Net, Derogatorily. I thanked her for the friendly words with which she now followed up her protest, but I didn't listen to them. She was lying. She had been going to say something quite different. And she would Have said it, if I hadn't interrupted her. She had been about to say that she'd hated the picture, that she'd found it awful. Now she was declaring the opposite. Now, after I'd told her something she hadn't known—that I'd written the picture.

Why was she domg this? What was going on in her

mind? Three days ago this would have been an occasion for her to heap friendly scorn upon me. I recalled my first meeting with her. Now another woman was sitting here, a different person. Frau Dr. Renter was lying. Frau Dr. Renter was making me compliments. Suddenly my head was bursting. I sat up in bed, thanked her for her effusiveness and didn't give any indication of what was beating a tattoo in my head, the one word: why?

When she finally left I sat quite still, leaning against the headboard, my eyes closed. I couldn't have explained to a soul what I sensed. I had no intention of telling anyone what I now knew, what I had grasped thanks to Frau Dr. Renter's unnatural behavior. An instinctive certainty bored its way into my consciousness, deeper and deeper with every passing second. I knew: she had lied to me. I knew: I did not have a benign tumor. I knew: my case was hopeless. That was why they hadn't operated. And no one knew that I knew. I knew it on this autumn afternoon, a few hours before I was to leave the clinic after having been pronounced healthy. That was when I knew I was lost

22

I have just read what I have written and come to the conclusion that it sounds absurd. The incident doesn't seem to have any realistic relationship to the conclusions I drew from it, so that on rereading, I couldn't help feeUng a httle uneasy. But that's the way it was. Ridiculously exaggerated, absolutely senseless and without any adequate justification, this incident and the idee fixe bom of it determined everything I undertook from then on. I saw and

judged everything that happened from here on in the light of my sudden conviction.

The friendliness of everyone who came to see me, Margaret's tears, her fearful worry about my comfort—all were proof presented daily. Proof that I was going to die and that nothing could save me. That was what I was thinking of, stretched out in the autumn sunshine in Joe Clayton's garden in Griinwald; that was what I thought of in the night, with Margaret sleeping beside me; that was what I thought of with every breath I took, with every bite I ate, in the days following my release from the hospital.

I lay in the lounge chair while there was daylight; when it was dark I rested on a comfortable couch in my room. I rarely did anything but rest during those September days of last year, and I rarely thought of anything but of how to find out for sure, how to be certain. For I was still sane enough to realize that my idee fixe was not actual proof. But I became suspicious, terribly suspicious. And I had never been suspicious before. Now I trusted nobody. I had the feeling that everybody was lying to me, that no one was going to tell me the truth anymore if I asked a question. I therefore asked no questions.

Two weeks later, when I could walk easily again and was completely mobile, my plans were made down to the last detail. I didn't tell Margaret a word of what I had in mind, I told nobody else either. I had no. opportunity to tell Yolanda even if I had wanted to. During the second week I called her and got the answering service. I was told that Miss Caspari had left town for several days.

"Do you want to leave a message?"

"No thank you."

"Who's speaking?"

"It's not important," I said, and hung up. It was very strange and I couldn't understand Yolanda at all. This took place on September 21. That was the day I drove into the city for the first time. I went to a wig maker.

I had found his address in a telephone book. He Kved in Nymphenburg, in the basement of an apartment house. He was gaunt and drunk. His name was Manierlich. There was a sign on the door: Alphonse ManierUch. Business was poor. I explained that I was just getting over a minor operation and that I found it embarrassing to run around with a bald head.

"Your hair'll grow in again, sir," he said and stank of cheap hquor. His workshop was dimly Ut. Clumps of hair lay around all over the place and in one corner sat a Uttle girl plaiting a braid of red hair. She looked at me out of her Uttle blue eyes.

"But I don't want to wait until it grows out," I explained.

"Because of the young ladies," said Manierlich with a leer.

"Because of the young ladies."

The Uttle girl giggled.

"My stepdaughter," said ManierUch, gesturing in her direction.

**Gritss gott/' said the stepdaughter. I nodded. I had the feeling that she was not his stepdaughter. Something sordid was going on between those two.

"WeU, sit down, sir," said ManierUch. "Let's have a look."

I sat down. "Judith," he said, "come and help me."

The girl got up and came over to us slowly, lazily. She wiped her hands on her dress and picked up a pencil.

"So where did you do time?" asked ManierUch. 117

"I beg your pardon?" I knew what he meant.

"How long were you in the slammer?" Judith explained and rubbed her back against a cupboard, all the time staring at me shamelessly.

"You've got it all wrong!" I could feel myself reddening with anger. "I've been in the hospital."

"Sure, sure," said Manierhch, measuring my head. "So where did you do time?" he persisted.

"You're crazy," I said, pushing him away. "How dare you insinuate... ?"

"Oh, come off it man." Judith was laughing in my face. "Do you think you're the only one who comes here and wants hair? Fast? Your pals are our best cUents."

"I'd say just about the only ones," her stepfather said sadly.

"Who are you talking about?"

"You jailbirds, of course," he said, picking his nose.

A truck drove by. The windows of his workshop were level with the street; all I could see were the wheels. And legs walking past the window. Suddenly I had to laugh.

"There you are," said Manierhch. "You may call me^ Alphonse."

"Very well, Alphonse," I said and sat down again. I slapped Judith on her behind. She wiggled obligingly and giggled again.

"Thirty-three," said her stepfather, who was measuring my head, and she wrote it down. He gave her further numbers, then he asked, "What color do you want?"

"Black?"

"Short or long?"

"On the short side."

"But not too short."

"Not too short."

"I hate hair cut too short," said Judith, scratchine her back against the bureau again. "It makes a man look Uke a Prussian."

"So military," said her stepfather.

"You can chase me with them," said his stepdaughter.

"As far as they're concerned," said her stepfather, "we've had it. Down the back, 44; along the side, above the ear, 31Vi. You won't believe me, Comrade, but I had an apartment in Dresden. I'm telUng you—you would have fallen flat on your face. Mahogany panelled. Orientals. What a set up! And a thriving business. Mostly from the theatre. All of that—an elegant home, good money and a pretty wife."

"A very pretty wife," said his stepdaughter.

"Shut up!" said her stepfather. He turned my head to the light. "Good heavens, you do have two scars."

"I was in a fight," I said quickly. I didn't want to lose their sympathy. He nodded and went on talking. "And then the bombing. Fire bombs at first, then three waves of the real thing. The apartment down the drain, the business ditto, and my wife burnt to death. All right, she was a whore. So what? Did that mean she had to burn?"

"All I was trying to say. . . ." said the Httle girl.