“Just recognized you,” he said, glancing at my cap. “Come on in for a bit.”
He squeezed up against the side of the booth facing the promenade and gestured that I was welcome to take the other side. We stood together like two guards in a sentry box.
“Lousy weather,” he resumed, “bloody lousy. Whole season’s ruined.”
“Yep,” I said, and stared out again at the bend in the river. Then I exclaimed, “There!” as a white boat, lighter and faster, pulled alongside and passed the black barge.
“Waiting for someone? Your wife?”
“Yes,” I said, and instantly regretted having joined him. It would have been more pleasant to stand in the rain and know that in a quarter of an hour I would be sitting at a table with her, drinking hot tea. The man was so close to me that his curious eyes almost touched my forehead.
I kept my eyes glued on the prow of the white boat, which was now passing under the bridge, still in midstream. It was difficult to see the banks, which were veiled by the vapor of the rain, and the lofty, gloomy mountains floated ghostlike above the haze.
“Ah, love …” the old man said, and shoved his cap back on his head. Staring at the boat, I followed its every move as if I myself were on the river, clasping my hands tightly as I recalled how I had simply reached out in the dark, as the film began. I took her hand and held it, the hand of a stranger who pulled back at first, then gave in, a small hand, hot with shame. Now and then, when the dull shimmer of light from the screen fell upon us, we would glance at one another: I saw a narrow face with pale, serious eyes that seemed to be asking something, and later, when the film had ended, she tried to flee, to lose herself in the crowd, but I spotted her green raincoat again at the tram station.
The boat was now making its way toward the bank from midriver, and only when the man from the booth left and hurried down the smooth gangway did I realize how close the boat was. The motor was clearly audible, and people in raincoats were visible standing by the front exit. The bell was already clanging, its tones ringing out in the rain clouds like signals at sea. I stepped outside, and only then, at that moment, did I realize I felt no touch of joy; only anxiety, restlessness, and the prickling sense of danger that tempts a driver to floor the accelerator on a series of sharp curves.
I tossed my cigarette into a puddle and walked down the gangway. The old man, standing at the bottom, dropped a thick pad between the boat and the piling. A rope was slung over the side of the boat, and the old man wrapped it around an iron stanchion. Then the deckhand slid the gangplank across. I stared blankly at the entrance. Not even her green cape could free me entirely from my trance …
“Good day, Frau Doctor,” said the old man, who was now unloading and stacking cases of empty soft-drink bottles.
I took her arm without looking at her and drew her along with me. “Thank you,” I said hoarsely.
She sighed deeply, but said nothing.
I squeezed her arm mutely. The bell rang out again behind us, and the motor swelled, then receded as we walked through the puddles on the promenade and entered the hotel.
The lobby was nearly empty. I removed her cape and saw for the first time that she was carrying a small suitcase. “Sorry,” I said softly, and took the case, hanging up her cape and freeing myself from my own damp coat and cap. The old art dealer’s widow who had forced her company upon me that morning, drinking brandy and regaling me with cynical anecdotes, was sitting in the lobby. She glanced up at us, then returned to her pastry. The only other person present was an old gentleman who had besieged the newsstand by noon.
“What would you like to drink?” I asked.
“Tea, or something hot.” She didn’t turn around, and I was offered only the delicate fragrance of her perfume, mingled with the fine haze produced by the rain. I sat down opposite her and called for the waiter, who had been lounging in the corner, keeping an eye on us.
I gave him our order.
We smoked in silence. From time to time we glanced at each other, but whenever our eyes met we would look away. In the stillness we heard only the gentle murmur of the rain, a faint clinking from the table of the art dealer’s widow, who was devoting herself wholeheartedly to her torte, and a low conversation between the barmaid and two waiters, which largely drowned itself in the thick carpets and curtains.
I felt my jaw twitch nervously; it was a relief when the waiter arrived. Even the aroma of the strong tea helped. Our hands touched over the sugar bowl; I took her hand firmly and squeezed it, but she pulled away, turning pale, staring in shock at my hand. I followed her startled gaze, and my own hand, with its thick pale fingers, seemed strange to me, strange and uncanny, as if I’d never seen it before. I had forgotten to remove my wedding ring.
“For heaven’s sake,” I said softly, “aren’t you glad to be here?”
“No,” she said, shaking her head firmly.
I stirred my tea.
“Are you?” she asked.
I said nothing.
Her skin was white and shining, so cool, and her dark hair gleamed with moisture.
“Did you have a nice trip?”
“Yes,” she said quietly, “it was a nice trip, splendid really. On the water like that, properly fogged in, and it smelled so nice. The only bad thing was having to stop here. I would have loved to go on, on up the Rhine in that rain to … yes, to Basel for all I care. Let me go,” she said suddenly. I looked at her: She was pale and her lips were trembling.
“That’s crazy,” I said quietly. “Why did you come, then?”
“Let me go.”
“You probably came just to drive me crazy. Waiter!” I called out loudly.
“Let me go.”
The waiter came strolling in from the lobby. “Yes?” he asked.
“Take my wife’s suitcase to my room, please.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Let me go,” she said, when the waiter had disappeared with her luggage and cape.
I looked around: The old gentleman was reading his twenty-seventh newspaper, the widow was on her tenth torte, the rain droned down on the skylights, and from the recess by the buffet below came the impersonal murmur of the barmaid with the waiters.
I glanced at her: That beautiful face was totally changed, obstinate and trembling, as she sipped hastily at her scalding tea.
“Come on,” I said hoarsely, and took her hand.
“I asked if you were glad.”
“No,” I cried.
The old gentleman looked up from his paper, and the widow stopped chewing for a moment.
She laughed and followed me.
It was even quieter upstairs. The window in the room opened onto a light shaft, at the bottom of which ashes and rubbish lay soaking beside overflowing trash cans. The only sound was the crazed drone of the rain.
She sat on the bed and smoked, while I paced back and forth with my own cigarette. From time to time we glanced at each other, like people standing at the foot of a mountain, listening to the roar of an onrushing avalanche.
I remembered how I had kissed her in the dark vestibule of a large block of flats on the outskirts of town, where streetcars screeched their way to the end of the line, and in the light of an auto that rounded a corner, I saw her face, white and smiling against the rough brown wall.
“My God,” she said suddenly, “why all the moaning? Sit here beside me.” She smiled for the first time that day, then shoved the pillow over and made room for me.
“Give me your hand.”
I did. Her hands were cool and dry, very light. I felt her touch my wedding ring, then she put my hand back in my lap: My hand was heavy, almost dead.
“Let me go,” she said.
“Go,” I said.
Her lips brushed my hand.
I went to the window and waited. The rain was soaking a heap of ashes that had built up beside the trash can. Beneath the slender strands of yellowish rain a narrow, dirty channel of water flowed from the trash can toward a stopp
ed-up drain. Scraps of paper drifted in a large puddle with peels and crushed cigarette butts, stringy bits of tobacco floating on the surface like small yellow worms. I flicked my own stub downward as well, then turned. The room was empty. I had heard nothing.
THE TRIBE OF ESAU
That heel, the woman thought, he’s off again. He’s escaped me and this filthy earth. He’s gone … She regarded the man with a bitter face. He lay half on his side; she saw his childlike, smiling profile, the mussed hair, and the half-bare arm. He had rolled up his sleeves and was holding a sheet of paper tightly in his right hand.
What a heel, she thought. He is a heel. He calls that work, he calls that life, nothing steady, no moderation, a life without order, the heel. Smiling like that.
She attempted to take the sheet of paper from him, but he grumbled angrily in his sleep and she quickly turned away, toward the hot-plate. The electric cord was defective, the Bake-lite connection was broken, the prongs stuck in the hot-plate’s socket every time as if they’d been glued, and if you pulled hard it damaged the coil, which was constantly going bad. Swearing softly, she repaired the coil, attached it to the hot-plate, and plugged it in. She waited for the coil to glow, holding her breath. It began to glow, and she put on the water. Then she began to straighten the room, rather noisily. It was a mess. He had soaked his feet and shaved before he started drinking; his things lay scattered about, the bowl filled with dirty water, the little mug with dried shaving cream stuck to the rim, his old socks, two hand towels, all scattered about the table, the chair, and the floor between the table and the chair.
Flowers stood on the desk; she removed the wilted ones and tossed them in the washbowl, added the water from the shaving mug, and emptied the whole thing into the rain gutter.
Heel, she thought, almost murmuring now, how long is he going to lie there. He calls that work.
She regarded him more closely. The room was tidy, the water was just starting to simmer, she had time. The look of happiness on his face almost drove her crazy; she hated that happiness. He doesn’t get that happiness from me, she thought, he stole it somewhere. He prowls among the fragments of paradise and steals from their substance. And yet I love him …
Abruptly, she tried to imagine him far away, in America or Australia, and her heart convulsed with fear that it might happen. I can’t live without him, she thought, it’s terrible. Even the pain he causes me makes me happy, the heel.
She pulled the chair over from the desk and sat down by the couch. Her feet hurt; she had walked a long way, looking for a place to borrow more money. No dice again. The last of the tea, she thought, the last of the butter and the last of the bread, and this heel is drunk again. I’d like to know what he wrote …
She tried once more to pull the sheet of paper from his hand, very gently, but he grumbled again, and she was afraid to interrupt the natural course of his sleep. He hated being jerked from sleep. He always said it reminded him of the war: “Jerked from sleep! Sleep, one of God’s most precious gifts.”
She didn’t have a penny, not a bit of credit left anywhere. No money for rent, for electricity—oh, why go over it all again.
She glanced at the hot-plate; the bubbling had subsided. She lifted the kettle with a curse. The coil was no longer glowing. She unplugged it, held her hand over the plate to check the heat, then began poking about on the coil, slowly and systematically, to see where the problem was this time. She cursed softly as she did so. She could feel her throat constricting to cry.
It was driving her crazy. Even if you had money, even if you tried to buy a new coil or a new hot-plate, or a new connection, you couldn’t afford it. They asked ridiculous prices for items like that. And yet here you are going nuts over a connection, this shitty little piece of Bake-lite, not worth twenty cents. Sighing, she lifted one tine of the fork—she’d discovered the break, it was hard to see, the coil had darkened and was brittle in several places. Almost every time it was used, it burned through in a new spot. She pulled on both ends of the wire coil and wrapped them around each other, then plugged it back in. It started to glow. She put the water on again.
It just makes me sick, she thought, the way they torment us. If I ever get hold of one of the guys who makes these Bake-lite things or those coils, who drives thousands of men and women nuts, if I ever get hold of him, I’ll murder him … The water started bubbling again.
If he would only wake up. His face was so insanely happy it made her sick. She saw nothing of herself in his face. It was horrible to be so alone, to sit by his couch and not know what he had written, or whether it would be published, or if they would get any money for it. Not to know why he was smiling so happily, not to know where he found the money or the credit to get drunk. The bottle had tipped over next to the bed. She picked it up and sniffed at it: Wine, she thought, red wine …
The water seemed to be boiling. She lifted the lid, turned her face quickly from the billowing steam, and poured water in the teapot. Just a bit to warm the pot, then she set it back on the hot-plate. Tea water has to boil like mad, she thought, it has to get just as hot as it can. It has to be almost boiled to death.
She lifted the bottle again, sniffed at it once more, and replaced it carefully beside the couch. I love this heel, she thought … I love him. She returned to the desktop with a sigh and lifted the lid again. The water was bubbling; she filled the pot, unplugged the hot-plate, and set the pot on the plate, which was still warm.
THE TALE OF BERKOVO BRIDGE
The tale of this bridge was a lively topic of discussion at the time. Men cursed and wept over it, some laughed about it, some saw it as one of the countless events forming the general course of war, refusing to accord it any special significance—and indeed in the end the story was forgotten, since it was of no strategic or historic importance.
Yet I now feel obliged to tell what really happened on that decisive day. I’ve decided to tell things in chronological order, in as much detail as possible, for I suspect I may be the only one still living who played a major role. I know that Schnur and Schneider fell in battle, and I believe that their opposite number, a lieutenant from the staff of the Third Engineer Regiment, fell as well in the final months of the war, for I have sought him in vain. Or he may have wound up in prison, or dropped out of sight, or gone to the dogs, for who can say whether he might not have fallen prey to the general poison of the destruction, eking out a miserable existence, wandering about with no future, and no living connection to the past?
Since I’m going to try to keep things in strict sequence, I’ll start with the day I received orders from Southeast Labor Pool Headquarters to take command of the construction—or better, reconstruction—of the bridge at Berkovo. It was a few days after Christmas, and I had been lounging about—with no project, although I longed for one—at KNX Reserve Construction Staff Headquarters. I was delighted finally to have something to do. Having requested and received the materials dealing with the project, I examined them methodically: The Berkovo Bridge had been blown up by a Russian rear-guard commando unit in the course of their retreat in 1941, shortly before the German arrival could prevent its destruction. The idea of rebuilding it was soon abandoned, since the small village of Berkovo had faded into strategic insignificance from both a military and a political point of view, particularly now that the bridge was no longer an important supply point. In the course of battle and the subsequent conquest, a military bridge had been constructed over the Berezina two kilometers to the southeast, which had since been reinforced and widened to serve as a supply line. The commanding officers of Southeast Construction and those of corresponding rank in the army deemed it more sensible at the time to use the materials, which would have been needed to rebuild the bridge at Berkovo, to construct the military bridge instead, particularly since—as I’ve already said—the market town of Berkovo was insignificant. In the course of the war it served only as a billet for a company of local defense reserves assigned to watch for rear-guard partisan acti
vity.
That, in short, was the prehistory of the Berkovo Bridge.
A few days after Christmas in 1943, I received written orders to rebuild the bridge. I was promised all the men and material necessary for the job—whatever I thought it would take—and on first inspecting the site, I discovered the following: The small river of Berezina is approximately eighty meters wide at that point. The concrete-clad piers were still standing in the river, largely undamaged, while the bridge itself had been completely destroyed in expert fashion; the Berezina River had been washing around it for the past two and a half years. The tiny village of Berkovo consisted of about ten houses, of which five were still occupied or habitable; those remaining had fallen into disrepair over the years through lack of use, and the wood in them had been stripped away by soldiers of the local guard, no doubt for use in lighting the stoves and preparing meals. At the time I was taking my measurements and making the necessary calculations, four of the houses were occupied by the local guard, who were suffering from fatigue and relatively ineffective. An old Russian woman and her daughter lived in the fifth house; the two of them cooked, washed, and cleaned for the soldiers, and kept a tavern too, stocked from mysterious sources with schnapps, wine, and food.
I also came across a small graveyard where soldiers who had died or fallen in the line of duty over the years were buried. An exhumation squad was already in the process of digging up the corpses in order to rebury them in a planned cemetery for heroes of the Fatherland.
Together with my two closest colleagues, Schnur and Schneider, it took me barely three days to make the necessary measurements and calculations. From the time I made my first site inspection, I had devised a plan utilizing the existing concrete piers, bridging them over with an iron and wood superstructure, which, though not permanent, would last for three months or so, and would support even major troop movements with heavy armor. The word from Southeast Construction Headquarters was that the bridge would probably be used in the course of a general retreat, since command expected that the bridge two kilometers to the southeast would be heavily congested.