Three Comrades

  "And you'll soon have me out of here wonderfully, eh?" said I, kissing her. Her hands were moist and hot and her lips dry and cracked.

  Antonio lived on the second floor. He lent me a pair of boots and they fitted well, for we were much of a size. We went to the nursery slope which lay some way beyond the village. Antonio eyed me as we walked along. "Fever makes you restless," said he. "Queer things happen here sometimes on days like this." He laid the skis down in front of him and fastened them on. "The worst part is the waiting and not being able to do anything. It drives you crazy and does you in."

  "The healthy ones, too," said I. "To have to stand by and be unable to do anything . . ."

  He nodded. "A good few of us work/' he went on; "some read whole libraries. But the majority turn into schoolchildren again, they play truant from their rest-cure as they used to from the gym lesson, and fly, giggling in alarm, into pantries and cupboards if a doctor happens along. Secret smoking, drinking on the quiet, forbidden midnight parties, gossip, silly practical jokes—just to escape the emptiness. And the truth. A pretense; a frivolous, and perhaps even heroic, ignoring of death. After all what else is left for them?"

  Yes, thought I, after all what else is left for all of us?

  "Should we have a try?" asked Antonio, propping his ski poles in the snow.

  "Yes."

  He showed me how to fasten the skis and how to keep my balance. It wasn't difficult. I fell fairly often, but gradually I got accustomed and could do it a bit. After an hour we stopped.

  "Enough," remarked Antonio. "As it is, you'll know tonight where your muscles are."

  I loosed the skis and felt the blood streaming through my veins.

  "It was good to come out, Antonio," said I.

  He nodded. "We might do it every morning. It takes your mind off things."

  "Should we have a drink somewhere?" I asked.

  "We could. A Dubonnet at Forster's."

  We drank the Dubonnet and went back to the sanatorium. At the office the secretary told me the postman had 'been asking for me; he had left a message I should go to the post office, there was some money for me there. I looked at my watch. There was still time, and I went back. At the post office they paid over to me two thousand marks. There was a letter from Köster as well. I was not to worry; there was more if I wanted. I had only to write.

  I stared at the notes. Wherever did he get it? And so quickly. I knew our resources. And suddenly it dawned on me. I saw Bollwies again, the racing manufacturer of ready-to-wear dresses, that evening at "The Bar" when he lost his bet, tapping covetously around Karl and saying: "I'm a buyer for the car any time." Yes, damn it, Köster had sold Karl. Hence the money so promptly. Karl, of whom he had said he would sooner lose a hand than the car—Karl was gone. He was now in the fat hands of the dressmaker, and Otto, whose ear knew him miles off, would now be hearing him howling through the streets like an outcast dog.

  I pocketed Köster's letter and the little packet with the morphia phials. At a loss what to do I still stood at the guichet. I should have liked to send the money back, but it couldn't be done; we needed it. I smoothed out the notes and put them away. Then I went. Damn—from now on I would have to make a wide detour round every motor car. Cars are friends, but Karl had been more than that to us. He had been a comrade. Karl, the Road Spook. We belonged together. Karl and Köster, Karl and Lenz, Karl and Pat . . . Angry and helpless I stamped the snow from my feet. Karl was gone. And Pat? With blinded eyes I stared at the sky, this grey, endless sky of a crazy god, who had made life and death for his amusement.

  In the afternoon the wind turned, it became clearer and colder, and by night Pat was better. Next morning she was able to get up, and some days later when Roth, the chap who was cured, went away, she was even able to go down to the station.

  A whole swarm accompanied Roth. That was the custom here whenever anyone left. Roth himself wasn't especially cheerful. He had had bad luck in his way. Two years before, a specialist, answering his question, how long he still had had to live, had said two years at the outside, provided he looked after himself carefully. To make quite sure he then asked a second doctor. This one gave him even less. Roth thereupon realised all his resources, divided them into two years, and lit out for all he was worth, without troubling any more, about his illness. Finally with a bad haemorrhage he landed in the sanatorium. And here, instead of dying, he began steadily to get better. When he arrived he had weighed ninety pounds. Now he weighed a hundred and fifty and was in such good shape he was able to go out again. But his money was gone.

  "What'll I do though?" he asked me, scratching his ginger head. "You've just come up, haven't you? How is it down there, then?"

  "It's changed a lot," I replied, contemplating his round, chubby face with its colourless eyelashes. He had got well again, though he had been given up—for the rest he did not interest me.

  "I'll have to find myself a job," said he. "What are the chances that way?"

  I gave a shrug. What use was it my telling him he probably wouldn't find one? He'd discover that for himself soon enough.

  "Have you connections, friends, or anything?" I asked.

  "Friends—well, you know." He laughed scornfully. "When you suddenly have no more money, they hop away like fleas off a dead man."

  "Then it'll be difficult."

  He puckered his forehead. "Just can't picture it, you know. I've only got a few hundred marks left. And I never learned anything but handing out money. Looks as if my old quack was right when be said I'd kick inside two years, though in another way perhaps—by a bullet."

  I suddenly was seized with an insane fury against this blathering idiot. Didn't be realise then what life is? I saw Antonio walking ahead of me with Pat, saw their shoulders and the back of their necks, grown thin in the grip of the disease; I knew how much they wanted to live, and I could have murdered Roth at that moment without turning a hair, if Pat might thereby have been made well again.

  The train pulled out. Roth was waving his hat. Those left behind called after him all kinds of things, laughing. One girl ran tottering a short way after the train, calling in a cracked, thin voice: "Au revoir! Au revoir!" Then she came back and burst into tears. The others made wry faces.

  "Hello!" called Antonio. "Anyone crying on the station must pay a forfeit. An old sanatorium rule. A forfeit to the funds for the next party."

  With a large gesture he held out his hand. The others were laughing again. Even the girl, the tears still trickling down her poor pinched face, smiied and took a shabby purse from her coat pocket.

  It made me miserable. These faces around—it wasn't a laugh at all, it was a convulsive, tortured jollity—not smiles but grimaces;

  "Come on," said I to Pat taking her firmly by the arm.

  We walked in silence down the village street. At the nearest shop I went in and bought a bag of sweetmeats.

  "Roasted almonds," said I, offering her the packet. "You like them, don't you?"

  "Robby," said she. Her lips quivered.

  "One moment," I replied, and went swiftly into the florist's alongside. Moderately calm again, I came back with my roses.

  "Robby," said Pat.

  I grinned lugubriously. "Turning into a cavalier in my old age, Pat."

  I don't know what had come over us suddenly. Apparently it was that damned train going away. It was like a leaden shadow, a grey wind that blew down everything we most wanted still to stand. We were two runaway children, hardly knowing in from out, but anxious to keep up a brave show.

  "Come, let's have a drink, quick," said I.

  She nodded. We went into the nearest café and sat at an empty table by the window.

  "What'll you have, Pat?"

  "Rum," said she, and looked at me.

  "Rum," I repeated, reaching for her hand under the table. She pressed it firmly in mine.

  The rum came. It was Bacardi with lemon. "Old darling," said she, raising her glass.

  "Good old lad," said
I.

  We sat on awhile.

  "Queer, sometimes, isn't it?" said Pat.

  "Yes. Does come once in a while. But it passes again."

  She nodded. We went on, walking close side by side. Steaming sleigh-horses trotted past us. Tired sunburnt skiers; an ice hockey team in red and white sweaters, spitting life . . .

  "How do you feel, Pat?" I asked.

  "Good, Robby."

  "If we could only become like that, eh?"

  "Yes, darling." She pressed my arm against her.

  The street emptied. The evening glow lay like a pink quilt on the snowy mountains.

  "Pat," said I, "I didn't tell you we have stacks of money now. Köster sent some."

  She stopped. "That's perfectly wonderful, Robby. Then we'll be able really to go out for once?"

  "Why sure," said I, "as often as we like."

  "Then we'll go on Saturday to the Kursaal. The last big-ball of the season is being held there then."

  "But you aren't allowed out at night."

  "Most of them aren't, but they go all the same."

  I made a serious face.

  "Robby, all the time you weren't here I did everything they told me. I was nothing but one anxious prescription. And it hasn't helped. I've only got worse. Don't interrupt me; I know what you're going to say. I know, too, what is involved. But the time I have still, this time with you— let me do as I will."

  Her face was flushed in the descending sun. It was grave and still and full of an immense tenderness. What are we saying? thought I with dry mouth; it's not possible we should be standing here discussing a thing that never can, and never shall be. And it's Pat who is saying these things! Resigned, almost without regret, as if there was nothing to oppose to it any more, not even the pitiful shreds of a deceitful hope—Pat of all people, little more than a child still, whom it's my business to shield—Pat, suddenly gone far from me, familiar already and reconciled with the nameless thing on the other side.

  "You mustn't say things like that," I murmured at last. "I only thought, perhaps we ought to ask the doctor first."

  "We're asking nobody any more, nobody." She shook her lovely, frail head and looked at me with her dear eyes. "I don't want to know any more. I only want to be happy still."

  In the evening there was whispering and running to and fro in the corridors of the sanatorium. Antonio arrived with an invitation. There was to be a party, in a Russian's rooms.

  "Can I go then, so simply?" I asked.

  "Here?" replied Pat.

  "You can do lots of things here you can't elsewhere," said Antonio, smiling.

  The Russian was a dark, older man. He occupied two rooms spread with numerous carpets. On a chest stood schnapps bottles. The rooms were in semidarkness, only candles burning. Among the guests was a beautiful young Spaniard. It was her birthday that was being celebrated.

  It was a peculiar atmosphere in these nickering rooms— reminiscent of a dugout, in their half-light and the curious fellowship of these people all united in a common destiny.

  "What will you "drink?" asked the Russian. He had a warm deep voice.

  "Whatever you have."

  He brought a bottle of cognac and a carafe of vodka.

  "Are you well?" he asked.

  "Yes," I replied slightly embarrassed.

  He offered me cigarettes with long cardboard tips. We drank. "I suppose there's a lot here strikes you as rather strange?" he observed.

  "Not so much," I replied. "I'm not used to a specially normal life."

  "Yes," said he with a dark glance at the Spanish girl. "It's a world to itself up here. It changes people."

  I nodded.

  "A queer disease," he added thoughtfully. "It makes people more alive. And better sometimes. A mystic'disease. It melts away the dross." He rose, nodded to me, and went over to the Spanish girl, who smiled at him.

  "A heavy theatrical, eh?" asked someone behind me.

  A face with no chin. A pimply forehead. Restless, feverish eyes.

  "I'm his guest," said I. "Aren't you?"

  "He catches the women with it though," persisted the other, unheeding, "he does catch them. The little one there too."

  I made no answer. "Who's that?" I asked Pat when he moved off.

  "A musician. Violinist. Hopelessly in love with the Spaniard. The way one does fall in love up here. But she won't look at him. She's in love with the Russian."

  "So should I be in her place."

  Pat laughed.

  "Seems to me that's a chap you might fall in love with," said I. "Don't you agree?"

  "No," she replied.

  "Have you never been in love here?"

  "Not very much."

  "It wouldn't make any difference to me," said I.

  "That's a nice confession." Pat straightened. "Then it ought to make a difference to you."

  "I don't mean it that way. I can't explain how I do mean it. And I can't explain, because I still don't know what you can find in me."

  "Leave that to me," she replied.

  "Do you know then?"

  "Not exactly," she replied with a smile. "Else it wouldn't be love any more."

  The Russian had left the bottles. I poured myself a few glasses. The atmosphere in the room oppressed me. I did not like seeing Pat here among all these sick people.

  "Don't you like it here?" she asked.

  "Not very much. I need to get used to it first."

  "My poor darling—" She stroked my hand.

  "I'm not poor while you're here," said I.

  "Isn't Rita very beautiful?"

  "No," said I. "You are more beautiful."

  The young Spaniard had a guitar on her knees. She plucked a few chords. Then she began singing and it was as if some dark bird hovered in the room. She sang Spanish songs in a muted voice—the hoarse, infirm voice of the sick. I don't know if it was the strange, melancholy songs, or the tremulous, twilight voice of the girl, or the shadows of the sick people cowering darkly in armchairs and on the floor, or the big, bowed, dark face of the Russian, but suddenly it came over me that all her song was only a sobbing, still exorcism of the fate standing outside beyond the curtained windows, waiting—a plea, a protest, and fear, fear of being alone with the quietly devouring Nothingness.

  The next morning Pat was in high spirits. She busied herself with her dress. "It's got too wide, much too wide," she murmured, eyeing it in the looking-glass. Then she turned to me. "Did you bring a dinner suit with you, darling?"

  "No," said I. "Didn't know I'd have any use for one here."

  "Then go to Antonio. He'll lend you one. You are the same figure."

  "But he'll want it himself."

  "He's wearing tails." She pinned a pleat. "And then go for a ski. I must get busy here. And I can't while you're about."

  "Your Antonio—" said I. "I'm robbing him properly. I wonder what we should do without him?"

  "He is a good boy, isn't he?"

  "Yes," I replied. "That just describes him—good boy."

  "I don't know what I should have done if it hadn't been for him all the time I was alone."

  "Don't let us think about that any more," said I. "It is so far back."

  "Yes." She kissed me. "And now go and ski."

  Antonio was already expecting me.

  "I thought you would probably not have a dinner suit," said he. "Just try on the coat."

  The coat was a bit tight but it would do. Antonio whistled cheerfully and hung out the suit.

  "It will be good fun to-morrow," he declared. "Luckily the little secretary is on night duty in the office. Old Rex-roth wouldn't let us out. Officially all that sort of thing is forbidden. But unofficially we aren't children, of course."

  We went skiing. I had learnt quite well, and we did not use the nursery slope any more. On the way we encountered a chap with diamond rings, checked breeches, and a flowing artist's tie.

  "Funny-looking things there are up here," said I.

  Antonio laughed. "H
e's a very important chap. A corpse companion."

  "A what?" I asked in astonishment.

  "A corpse companion," replied Antonio. "You see, there are patients here from all over the world. Especially from South America. Naturally most families want to have their relations buried at home. So a corpse companion, like that chap, goes with it and sees the coffin home. Incidentally they make quite a tidy sum and get around a lot. Death has made that one into a dandy, as you see."