Ammers nodded eagerly. He stood up and brought a crystal decanter and two silver liqueur glasses with long stems and gold inlay from the sideboard. Steiner looked at his preparations with horror. “What’s this?” he asked.
“Cognac. I thought perhaps you would like a little refreshment.”
“You only serve cognac this way when it’s very bad, Ammers,” Steiner said with a touch of geniality, “or if you’re giving it to a member of some order dedicated to chastity. Bring me a plain tumbler that’s not too small.”
“Very good!” Ammers was delighted that the ice seemed to be broken.
Steiner drank. The cognac was fairly good. But that was not thanks to Ammers. There was no bad cognac in Switzerland.
Steiner took the blue portfolio out of the leather brief case Beer had loaned him. “Here, by the way, is something else, friend. Strictly confidential. You know that our propaganda in Switzerland has not been going as well as it should?”
“Yes,” Ammers agreed eagerly. “I’ve always said that myself.”
“All right.” Steiner genially dismissed the difficulty. “That’s going to be changed. We’re going to establish a secret fund.” He glanced at his list. “We already have several large gifts. But smaller contributions are also welcome. This attractive house belongs to you, doesn’t it?”
“Yes. To be sure there are two large mortgages on it. And so to all intents and purposes it really belongs to the bank,” Ammers announced hurriedly.
“The mortgages are there so you’ll have less taxes to pay. A Party member who owns a house is no four-flusher who doesn’t have enough money in the bank. How much shall I put you down for?”
Ammers looked nonplused. “It’s not at all a bad thing for you just now,” Steiner said encouragingly. “We’ll naturally send the list of names to Berlin. I think we can put you down for fifty francs.”
Ammers appeared relieved. He had counted on a hundred at least. He knew how insatiable the Party was. “Why, of course,” he agreed immediately. “Or perhaps sixty,” he added.
“Good, we’ll say sixty then.” Steiner made a note. “Have you any given name beside Heinz?”
“Heinz, Karl, Goswin—Goswin with an S.”
“Goswin is an unusual name.”
“Yes, but thoroughly German! Old German. There was a king named Goswin during the Migration of Nations.”
“I can well believe it!”
Ammers laid down on the table a note for fifty francs and one for ten. Steiner pocketed the money. “A receipt is out of the question,” he said. “You understand why?”
“Of course! Secrecy! Here in Switzerland!” Ammers winked slyly.
“And no unnecessary rows in the future, Party Member! Keeping quiet is half the battle! Always remember that!”
“Certainly! I know how to behave! This was only an unfortunate accident.”
Steiner walked through the winding streets back to Dr. Beer’s. He grinned contentedly. Cancer of the liver! That Kern! How he’d look when he got the sixty francs from this expedition of revenge!
Chapter Seventeen
THERE WAS A KNOCK. Ruth listened intently. She was alone. Since morning Kern had been out looking for work. For an instant she hesitated, then she got up quietly, went into Kern’s room and shut the communicating door behind her. The two rooms were situated around the corner from each other. This was an advantage in case of raids. You could reach the corridor from either room without being seen by anyone standing in front of the other door.
Ruth noiselessly closed the outer door of Kern’s room. Then she walked along the corridor and around the corner.
A man about forty years old was standing in front of her door. Ruth knew him by sight. His name was Brose and he lived in the hotel. For seven months his wife had been sick in bed. They lived on a small stipend from the Refugees’ Aid and on a little money they had brought with them. This was no secret. In the Hotel Verdun each knew almost all there was to know about everyone else.
“Do you want to see me?” Ruth asked.
“Yes. I wanted to ask you a favor. You’re Fräulein Holland, aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“My name is Brose and I live on the floor below you,” the man said in embarrassment. “My wife is sick and I have to go out to look for work. So I wanted to ask whether, perhaps, you had a little time—”
Brose had a narrow, tormented face. Ruth knew that almost everyone in the hotel ran from him at sight. He was always looking for company for his wife.
“She’s alone a great deal—and you must know what that’s like. It’s easy for her to lose hope. There are days when she’s especially sad. But if she has a little company she gets better at once. I thought perhaps you too would like some conversation. My wife is intelligent—”
Ruth was just learning to knit pullover sweaters out of light cashmere wool; she had been told there was a Russian firm in the Champs Elysées that would buy them in order to resell at three times the price. She wanted to go on working and probably would have refused to accompany Brose, but this pathetic word of praise, “My wife is intelligent,” was decisive. In a strange way it made her feel ashamed. “Wait a minute,” she said. “I’ll get a few things and then I’ll go with you.”
She fetched her wool and the pattern and went downstairs with Brose. His wife was lying in bed in a little room that faced toward the street. Brose’s face changed as he entered with Ruth. It radiated forced cheerfulness. “Lucy, here is Fräulein Holland,” he said eagerly. “She wants to keep you company for a while.”
Two dark eyes in a waxen pale face turned suspiciously toward Ruth. “Well, then, I’ll go now,” Brose said hurriedly. “I’ll be back tonight. I’m sure I’ll get something today. Good-by.”
He waved to them, smiling, and closed the door behind him.
After a while the pale woman said, “He got you to come, didn’t he?”
Ruth started to contradict her, but then she just nodded.
“That’s what I thought. Thanks for coming; but I can get along all right by myself. Don’t let me disturb you in your work. I can get some sleep.”
“I haven’t any plans,” Ruth said. “I’m just learning to knit and I can do that just as well here. I brought my wool and needles with me.”
“There are pleasanter things than sitting with an invalid,” the woman said wearily.
“Certainly. But it’s better than sitting alone.”
“Everyone says that just to comfort me,” the woman murmured. “I know, people are always trying to comfort the sick. Why don’t you admit you find it repulsive to sit with an unknown, bad-tempered invalid and that you’re only doing it because my husband persuaded you to?”
“That’s right,” Ruth replied. “And I have no intention of comforting you. But I’m glad to have a chance to talk to someone.”
“But you could go outdoors,” the sick woman said.
“I don’t care much for that.”
Ruth glanced up when there was no answer. She saw a face from which all control had vanished. The sick woman had propped herself up and was staring at her, and suddenly tears streamed from her eyes. For an instant her face was inundated. “My God,” she sobbed. “You can say that—and I—If I could only get out on the streets just once more—”
She fell back among the pillows. Ruth had risen. She saw the gray-white shoulders shake, she saw the miserable bedstead in the dusty afternoon light; and she saw beyond it the cold sunny street, the houses with their little iron balconies—and towering over the roofs a gigantic electric sign, the advertisement for Dubonnet apéritif, senselessly shining in broad afternoon; and for a moment it seemed to her as if all this were very far away, on some other planet.
The woman stopped crying. Slowly she straightened up. “You’re still there?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“I’m nervous and hysterical. Sometimes I have days like this. Please don’t be angry with me.”
“No. I was thoughtless
, that’s all.”
Ruth sat down again beside the bed. She laid the sweater pattern she had brought with her in front of her and went on copying it. She did not look at the sick woman. She did not want to see that uncontrolled face again. Her own good health seemed in bad taste by contrast.
“You’re not holding the needles right,” the sick woman said presently. “And that’s slowing you up. This is the way to do it.”
She took the needles and showed Ruth. Then she took the part Ruth had knitted out of her hands and looked at it. “You’ve dropped a stitch here,” she explained. “We’ll have to unravel it. Look, this way!”
Ruth glanced up. The sick woman was smiling at her. Her face was now attentive and animated and entirely absorbed in her work. It showed no trace of the former outburst. Her pale hands were working easily and quickly. “There,” she said eagerly. “Now you try it.”
Ruth took the knitting. Strange, she thought in amazement; is it terrible that something like this can change so quickly or is it a tremendous comfort?
When Brose returned that evening the room was dark. Beyond the window was the apple-green evening sky and the huge flaming-red Dubonnet sign. “Lucy?” he said into the darkness.
The woman in the bed stirred and now Brose could see her face. It had a soft reddish glow from the reflection of the electric sign—as though a miracle had happened and she had suddenly become well.
“Were you asleep?” he asked.
“No, I’ve just been lying quietly.”
“Has Fräulein Holland been gone long?”
“No, only for a few minutes.”
“Lucy.” He seated himself cautiously on the edge of the bed.
“My dear.” She stroked his hand. “Did you find anything?”
“Not yet. But I will in time.”
For a while the woman lay in silence. “I am such a burden to you, Otto,” she said presently.
“How can you say such a thing, Lucy! What would I be without you?”
“You would be free. You could do what you liked. You could even go back to Germany and work.”
“Could I?”
“Yes,” she said. “Get a divorce from me. Back there they’ll think very highly of you for doing it.”
“The noble Aryan finally takes thought for the purity of his blood and divorces the Jewess, eh?” Brose asked.
“Very likely that’s what they’ll say. After all they haven’t anything against you, Otto.”
“No, but I have against them.”
Brose rested his head against the bedpost. He remembered the time when his superior had come into the drafting room and had spent a long while talking about the times and about Brose’s ability and what a shame it was that they would have to give him notice simply because he had a Jewish wife. He had taken his hat and left. A week later he had given a bloody nose to the janitor, who was also Party ward-heeler and spy, because he had called Brose’s wife a dirty Jewess. That had been very nearly a disaster. Luckily his lawyer had been able to prove that the janitor had made drunken speeches against the Government; whereupon the janitor had disappeared. But his wife no longer felt safe on the street. She did not like being jostled by prep school boys in uniform. Brose could not find another position, and so they had left for Paris. On the way his wife had become ill.
The apple-green sky beyond the window lost its color. It became misty and dark. “Have you been in pain, Lucy?” Brose asked.
“Not much. I am just dreadfully tired. Way inside.”
Brose stroked her hair. It gleamed in the copper reflection from the Dubonnet sign. “You’ll soon be able to get up again.”
The woman slowly moved her head under his hand. “What can it be, Otto? I’ve never had anything of this sort before and this has lasted for months!”
“It’s just one of those things. Nothing serious. Women often get something like this.”
“I don’t think I’ll ever be well again,” his wife said in sudden despair.
“You are going to get well soon. You just have to keep up your courage.”
Outside night crept over the roofs. Brose sat quietly, his head still resting against the bedpost. His face, which had been distressed and fearful during the day, became serene and peaceful in the last vague light.
“I love you, Lucy,” Brose said softly, without changing his position.
“No one can love a sick woman.”
“A sick woman is doubly to be loved, for she is a woman and a child at the same time.”
“That’s just it!” The woman’s voice grew small and constrained. “I’m not even that. Not even your wife. You don’t have even that. I am only a burden, nothing more.”
“I have your hair,” Brose said, “your beloved hair.” He bent over and kissed her hair. “I have your eyes.” He kissed her eyes. “Your hands.” He kissed her hands. “I have you. Your love. Or don’t you love me any more?”
His face was close above hers. “Don’t you love me any more?” he asked.
“Otto—” she murmured weakly and pushed her hand between her breast and him.
“Don’t you love me any more?” he asked softly. “Say it. I can understand you might no longer love a worthless fellow who isn’t able to earn a living. Just say it once, Beloved, Only One!” he said threateningly to the wasted face.
Suddenly her eyes overflowed with happy tears and her voice was soft and young. “Do you really love me still?” she asked with a smile that tore his heart.
“Must I repeat it every evening? I love you so much I am jealous of the bed you lie on. You ought to lie in me, in my heart and in my blood!”
He smiled so that she would see it and once more bent over her. He loved her and she was all he had—but nevertheless he often had an inexplicable reluctance to kiss her. He hated himself for it. He knew the cause of her suffering and his healthy body was simply stronger than he was. But now in the tender warm reflection of the apéritif sign the evening was like an evening of years ago—beyond the dark power of the disease—a warm and comforting reflection like the red light from the roofs across the way. “Lucy,” he murmured.
She pressed her wet lips against his mouth. Thus she lay quietly, forgetting for a while her tortured body in which, in ghostlike silence, cancer cells ran riot and, under the spectral touch of death, uterus and ovaries were slowly falling like weary coals into gray amorphous ash.
* * *
Kern and Ruth were strolling along the Champs Elysées. It was evening. The shop windows blazed, the cafés were full of people, electric signs glittered; and dark, like an entrance to heaven, stood the Arc de Triomphe in the clear air of Paris which is silvery even at night.
“Just look there to the right,” Kern said. “Waser and Rosenfeld.”
In front of the huge show window of the General Motors Company stood two young men. They were shabbily dressed. Their suits were threadbare and neither of them wore an overcoat. They were arguing so heatedly that Kern and Ruth stood beside them for some time without being noticed. They were inmates of the Hotel Verdun. Waser was a technician and a Communist; Rosenfeld, the son of a banking family from Frankfurt, who lived on the third floor. Both were car fanciers. Both lived on almost nothing.
“Rosenfeld!” Waser said imploringly. “Just try to be sensible for a minute. A Cadillac—not bad at all for old people! But what do you want with a sixteen-cylinder job? It drinks gasoline the way a cow drinks water and isn’t a bit faster for all that.”
Rosenfeld shook his head. He was staring in fascination at the brightly lighted show window, in which a tremendous black Cadillac was slowly turning on a revolving stand. “Suppose it does use up gas?” he exclaimed excitedly. “By the barrel, as far as I’m concerned! That’s not the point. Just see how marvelously comfortable the body is, as safe and reassuring as an armor-plated turret!”
“Rosenfeld, those are arguments for a life insurance policy, but not for a car!” Waser pointed to the next window which belonged to the Lancia agency.
“Just take a look at that. You have breeding and class there. Only four cylinders, but a low-slung nervous creature, like a panther ready to spring. In it you could run straight up the wall of a house if you wanted to.”
“I don’t want to run up the wall of a house. I want to drive to the Ritz for cocktails,” Rosenfeld replied unmoved.
Waser disregarded this objection. “Take a look at its lines,” he cried enthusiastically. “The way it seems to creep along close to the ground! An arrow, a bolt of lightning—by comparison even the eight-cylinder job strikes me as too heavy. A dream of speed!”
Rosenfeld broke into derisive laughter. “And how do you expect to get into that baby’s coffin? Waser, Waser, that’s a car for Lilliputians! Picture a woman in evening clothes with an expensive fur coat and perhaps a dress of gold brocade or sequins. You’re coming out of Maxim’s—it’s December, say, with snow and slush on the street—and you in this radio cabinet on wheels. Can’t you see you’d just be ridiculous?”
Waser got bright red in the face. “Those are the ideas of a capitalist. For pity’s sake, Rosenfeld, you’re dreaming of a locomotive, not an automobile. How can you get any satisfaction out of a mammoth like that? It’s all right for captains of industry, but you’re a young fellow. If you have to have something heavier, then for God’s sake take a Delahaye. It has breeding and can always turn up one hundred sixty kilometers without trying.”
“Delahaye,” Rosenfeld snapped. “And fouled sparkplugs every few minutes. That’s what you like, eh?”
“Not a chance, if you know how to drive! A jaguar, a projectile! You get drunk listening to the song of the motor. Or if you want something really marvelous, then take the new Supertalbot: it’s good for one hundred eighty kilometers. You’ve really got something there.”
Rosenfeld sputtered with indignation. “A Talbot! Yes, I’ve got something there! That’s a car I wouldn’t take as a gift. A machine with so much compression it boils in traffic. No, my friend. I’ll stick to the Cadillac.” He turned back to the General Motors window. “Just look at its quality; for five years at a time you don’t even have to lift the hood. Luxury, dear Waser! Only the Americans really understand luxury. The motor is sleek and noiseless, you can’t even hear it.”