A little fat major with a bushy white mustache was standing in front of them. He must have come up on rubber soles. Graeber saw at once that he was a superannuated war horse from the reserves who had been got out of mothballs and was now pulling his rank. He would have liked to pick the old man up and give him a thorough shaking but he could not risk it. He acted as an experienced soldier should; he said nothing and stood at attention.
The old man let his flashlight wander over him. For some reason Graeber found this especially insulting. "Dress uniform!" barked the old man. "You must have an armchair job to be able to afford something like that! A home-front warrior in a dress uniforml That certainly is something! Why aren't you at the front?"
Graeber made no reply. He had forgotten to take his service ribbons from his old tunic and put them on the borrowed one.
"Necking and petting, that's all you're good for, eh?" barked the major.
Elisabeth moved suddenly. The circle of the flashlight hit her face. She looked at the old man and stepped out of the beam toward him. The major cleared his throat, threw an oblique glance at her and went off.
"I'd had just about enough of him," she said.
Graeber shrugged his shoulders. "You can't do anything about these old goats. They wander around the streets so that people will have to salute them. That's their life. To think that nature has labored for a couple of million years to produce something like that in the end."
Elisabeth laughed. "Why aren't you at the front?"
Graeber grinned. "That's what I get for cheating with this dress uniform. Tomorrow I'll put on civilian clothes. I know where I can borrow some. I've had enough of saluting. Then we can sit in peace tomorrow in the Germania."
"Do you want to go there again?"
"Yes, Elisabeth. Those are the things you remember later out there. Not the commonplace. I'll come and get you at eight o'clock. And now I'm going. Otherwise that old fool will come by again and ask to see my paybook. Good night."
He drew her to him and she yielded. He felt her in his arms and suddenly everything dissolved; he wanted her and he wanted nothing but her, and he held her close and kissed her and did not want to let her go and let her go.
He went once more to Hakenstrasse. In front of his parents* house he stopped. The moon broke through the mist. He bent down. Then with a sudden jerk he pulled the notice out from between the stones. Something had been written in thick lead pencil on one corner. He reached for his flashlight. "Inquire at Main Post Office. Window Fifteen," he read.
Involuntarily he glanced at his watch. It was much too late; the post office was not open at night and he would not be able to find out anything until eight next morning; but then at last he would know. He folded the notice and put it in his pocket so that he could show it at the post office. Then he walked through the dead-still city to the barracks and it seemed to him that he had no weight and was walking in a vacuum from which he dared not emerge.
CHAPTER XIII
PART of the post office was still standing. The rest had collapsed and burned. There were crowds everywhere. Graeber had to wait for a while. Then he got to Window Fifteen and showed the slip of paper with the message that had been written on it.
The clerk handed the slip back to him. "Have you means of identification?"
Graeber pushed his paybook and his furlough certificate through the grating. The clerk studied them. "What is it?" Graeber asked. "A message?"
The clerk made no reply. He got up and disappeared in the background. Graeber waited, staring at his papers lying open on the counter.
The clerk came back with a small battered package in his hand. Once more he compared the address with the one on Graeber's furlough certificate. Then he pushed the package through the window. "Sign here."
Graeber saw his mother's handwriting on the package. She had sent it to him at the front and it had been forwarded from there. He looked for the sender's address. It was still Hakenstrasse. He took the package and signed the receipt. "Is that all there was?" he asked.
The clerk glanced up. "Do you think we are withholding something?"
"Not that. I thought perhaps you might have gotten my parents' new address."
"We're not responsible for that here. Ask on the second floor in the delivery section."
Graeber went up. The second floor was only half roofed over. Over the remainder one could see the sky with clouds and sun. "We've no new address here," said the woman who sat behind the window. "Otherwise we would not have sent the package to Hakenstrasse. But you can always ask the letter carrier from your district."
"Where is he?"
The woman looked at her watch. "He's on his rounds now. If you come back this afternoon about four he'll be here. That's when the mail is distributed."
"Could he possibly know the address when you don't know it here?"
"Of course not. He only gets the addresses from us. But there are people who like to ask him just the same. It re- assures them. That's the way people are. Or aren't they?"
"Yes, probably."
Graeber took his package and went down the stairs. He looked at the date. It had been sent three weeks before and had taken a long time to reach the front but from there it had got back quickly. He stood in a corner and opened the brown paper. A dry cake lay inside, a pair of woolen socks, a package of cigarettes, and a letter from his mother. He read the letter. There was nothing in it about a change of address or about air raids. He put it in his pocket and waited until he was calm again. Then he went out into the street. He told himself that now surely he would soon get a letter with a new address; nevertheless he felt more miserable than he had expected.
He decided to go and see Binding. Perhaps he would have some news.
"Come in, Ernst!" Alfons called. "We're busy emptying a bottle. You can help us."
Binding was not alone. An S.S. man was half lying on the big sofa under the Rubens, as though he had fallen there and could not immediately get up again. He was a thin fellow with a sallow face and hair so extremely blond that he looked as though he had neither eyelashes nor brows. "That is Heini," AJfons said with a certain measure of respect. "Heini, the snake charmer! And this is my friend Ernst, on furlough from Russia."
Heini was fairly drunk. He had very pale eyes and a small mouth. "Russia!" he muttered. "I was there too. Fine times! Better than here!"
Graeber looked at Binding questioningly. "Heini is already one bottle ahead," Alfons explained. "He has trouble. His parents' home was bombed. Nothing happened to the family; they were all in the cellar. But the house is wrecked."
"Four rooms," Heini growled. "All new furniture. The piano, too. Wonderful piano! Beautiful tone. Those swine!"
"Heini will get even for that piano," Alfons said. "Come, Ernst, what will you have to drink? Heini's drinking cognac. There's vodka and kuemmel here too, or anything else you want."
"Nothing at all. I just stopped in for a moment to ask whether you've found out anything."
"Nothing new yet, Ernst. Your parents are no longer in this district. At least they have not been reported anywhere. Nor in the villages. Either they have moved away and haven't reported yet or they've been sent on with the other evacuees. You know how it is nowadays. The whole country is being bombed by those swine. And so it takes a while for communications to be restored. Come along, have something to drink. You can risk one glass, can't you?"
"All right, some vodka."
"Vodka," Heini muttered. "We swilled it in rivers! And then poured it down the beasts' throats and lit it. Made flame-throwers out of them. Children, how they hopped around! You'd die laughing! Fine times then in Russia—"
"What?" Graeber asked.
Heini did not reply. He was staring glassily straight a,head.
"Flame-throwers," he muttered. "Magnificent idea."
"What's he talking about?" Graeber asked Binding. Alfons shrugged his shoulders. "Heini had a hand in all sorts of things. He was with the S.D." "With the S.D. in Russia?"
<
br /> "Yes. Have another drink, Ernst."
Graeber picked up the bottle from the copper smoking stand and looked at it. The clear liquor swished back and forth. "What proof is vodka?"
Alfons laughed. "It's pretty strong. Sure to be a hundred and twenty proof. The Ivans can take it strong."
They can take it strong, Graeber thought. And if it's as strong as that then it will burn if someone pours it down your throat and lights it. He looked at Heini. He had heard enough stories about the Security Service of the S.S. to know that what Heini was saying in his drunkenness was no exaggeration. The S.D., under pretext of providing Lebensraum for the German people, carried on liquidations in the grand style and by the thousands. They liquidated everything they considered undesirable and to keep the mass killings from becoming monotonous, the S.S. invented humorous variations. Graeber knew about some of them; others had been told him by Steinbrenner. Living flame-throwers were new.
"Why are you staring at the bottle?" Alfons asked. "It won't bite you. Fill your glass."
Graeber put the bottle back. He wanted to get up and go away but he remained seated. He forced himself to remain seated. He had gone away often enough and refused to know. He and a hundred thousand others. And they had thought in that way they could quiet their consciences. He no longer wanted that. He no longer wanted to evade. He had not come back on furlough for that purpose.
"Won't you change your mind and have one more?" Alfons asked.
Graeber looked at Heini who was half asleep. "Is he still with the S.D.?"
"No longer. He's here now."
"Where?"
"He's a commander in the concentration camp."
"The concentration camp?"
"Yes. Have another swallow, Ernst! We'll not be as young when we meet again! And stay a while longer. Don't always run off right away!"
"No," Graeber said, continuing to stare at Heini. "I'll not run off any more."
"At last you're talking sense. What will you have to drink? Another vodka?"
"No, give me kuemmel or cognac. No vodka."
Heini roused himself. "Of course no vodka," he mumbled.
"Much too wasteful. We lapped up the vodka ourselves. It was gasoline. Gasoline burns better—"
Heini was vomiting in the bathroom. Alfons was standing with Graeber in front of the door. The sky was filled with fleecy white clouds. In the birch trees a blackbird was singing, a little black ball with a yellow beak in whose voice was all of spring. "Mad fellow, that Heini, eh?" Alfons said.
He said it like a boy talking about a bloodthirsty Indian chief—-with a mixture of horror and admiration.
"He's a mad fellow with people who can't defend themselves," Graeber replied.
"He has a stiff arm, Ernst. That's why he can't be in the regular army. Got it in a beer hall brawl with the Communists in 1932. It's what makes him so wild, too. Man, that was quite a story about the pyre of wood, wasn't it?" Alfons puffed at a dead cigar he had lighted while Heini was recounting his further Russian exploits. In his excitement he had let it go out. "First a layer of wood and then a layer of people, and each layer having to haul its own wood and then lie down on it and be shot in the back of the head— that's something, eh?"
"Yes, that's something."
"And the women! Can you imagine what went on with them!"
"Yes, well enough. Would you like to have been there?"
"With the women?"
"No, with the others. At the burning pyre and the Christmas trees covered with hanged men and the mass machine-gunnings."
Binding reflected for a moment. Then he shook his head. "I don't think so. Perhaps once, just to have seen it. Otherwise I'm not the type for it. Too romantic, Ernst."
Heini appeared in the doorway. He was very pale. "Dutyl" he growled. "Late already! Time to get going! I'll twist the swines' snouts for this."
He stamped down the garden path. At the gate he straightened his cap, threw back his shoulders and strode on like a stork.
"I wouldn't like to be the next prisoner to fall into his hands," Alfons said.
Graeber glanced up. He had been thinking the same thing. "Do you think that's right, Alfons?" he asked.
Binding shrugged his shoulders. "They're all traitors to the nation, Ernst. They're not there for nothing."
"Was Burmeister a traitor to the nation?"
Alfons laughed. 'That was a private matter. Besides, nothing much happened to him."
"And if something had happened to him?"
"Then that would have been his bad luck, Ernst. Lots of people have had bad luck these days. From bombs, for example. Five thousand in this city alone. Better people than those in the concentration camp. So what does it matter to me what happens there? It's not my responsibility. Nor yours."
A couple of sparrows flew twittering to the bird bath in the middle of the lawn. One of them waded in and began to beat his wings, and all at once they were all in the bath splashing about. Alfons was watching them intently. He seemed to have forgotten Heini already. Graeber looked at the satisfied, harmless face and, with sudden shock, he realized the eternal hopelessness to which justice and sympathy are condemned: always to suffer shipwreck on egoism and indifference and fear—he realized it and he realied, too, that he himself was not exempt, that he too was caught in it in an anonymous, indirect, and sinister fashion, as though he and Binding somehow belonged together, however much he might struggle against it.
"This business of responsibility isn't as simple as all that, Alfons," he said somberly.
"But, Ernst! Don't be funny! You can only be held responsible for what you yourself do. And then only when you're not acting on orders."
"When we shoot hostages we say exactly the opposite— that they are responsible for what others have done."
"Have you shot hostages?" Binding asked, turning around with interest.
Graeber made no reply.
"Hostages are something else again, Ernst. They are exceptions! Necessary exceptions."
"Everything's a necessary exception," Graeber declared bitterly. "Everything that one does oneself, I mean. Of course not what the others do. When we bomb a city that's a strategic necessity; when the others do it it's a hideous crime."
"That's what it is! At last you're thinking sensibly!" Al-fons looked at Graeber and grinned slyly from the side. "That's what's called modern politics. The right is what is useful to the German people, as our Minister of Justice has said. And after all, he must know! We only do our duty. We are not responsible." He bent forward. "There—there's the blackbird. Do you see him? The first time he's taken a bath. How the sparrows clear out!"
Graeber suddenly saw Heini in front of him. The street was empty, between the garden hedges lay dull sunlight, a yellow butterfly floated low over the strips of sand that bordered the cement sidewalk, and about a'hundred yards ahead Heini swung around the corner.
Graeber walked on the sand. It was very quiet and his footsteps were inaudible. He looked around. If anyone wanted to get rid of Heini this was the right time. There was no one in sight. The street seemed asleep. You could approach almost noiselessly on the strip of sand. Heini would not notice anything. Vou could strike him down and strangle him or stab him. A shot would make too much noise and attract people too quickly. Heini was not very powerful; you could strangle him.
Graeber noticed that he was walking faster. Alfons would not suspect him, he thought. He would believe that someone had taken revenge on Heini. There were certainly plenty of grounds for that. It was a splendid opportunity for someone to take revenge. And it was an opportunity, too. to rid the world of a murderer who in an hour's time would in all likelihood be torturing to death some terrified, defenseless human being.
Graeber felt his hands sweating. Suddenly he was very hot. He came to the corner and saw that he had gained about thirty yards on Heini. There was still no one in sight If he ran quickly along the strip of sand everything could be over in less than a minute. He could stab Heini and run on
instantly.
All at once his heart was beating like a hammer. It seemed to beat so loud that for a moment he feared Heini might hear it. What's the matter with me? he thought. What concern is this of mine? How have I got involved in it? The idea that a moment before had been fortuitous had now suddenly transformed itself into a dark compulsion. It seemed to fill up all his mind. It was as though he had to do it, as though everything depended on his doing it; as though it were a justification for many things in the past, for his own life, for things in it that he wanted to forget and for things he had done and things he had left undone. Vengeance, he thought in confusion, but it was someone he hardly knew, someone who had done nothing to him! Nor did he have any cause for vengeance! Not yet, he thought, but was it not possible that Elisabeth's father was already among Heini's victims, or might he not belong to their number today, or tomorrow, and whom had the hostages harmed or the countless innocents, and where was the guilt for that and where the atonement?