Authors: Erich Maria Remarque
“I’m a press photographer,” the man with the hat declared brushing the suggestion aside. “I only photograph what I consider interesting.”
“But this is interesting! What is more interesting? With the board in the background!”
“A board is not interesting. Action is interesting.”
“Then put it down in your report.” The man tapped the policeman on the shoulder.
“Who are you?” he asked angrily.
“I am the representative of the construction company.”
“All right,” the policeman said. “You stay here, too. What’s your name? You must know that!” he asked the woman.
The woman moved her lips. Her eyelids began to flutter. Like butterflies, like deathly tired gray moths, Ravic thought—and at the same moment: Idiot that I am! I must try to get away!
“Damn it,” the policeman said. “Maybe she’s gone crazy. That makes more work! And my office hours end at three.”
“Marcel,” the woman said.
“What? Just a moment! What?” The policeman bent down again. The woman was silent. “What?” The policeman waited. “Once more. Say it once more!”
The woman remained silent. “You with your damned chatter,” the policeman said to the representative of the construction company. “How can a man get his report together this way?”
At that moment the shutter clicked. “Thank you!” the photographer said. “Full of action.”
“Have you got our sign in it?” the representative of the construction company asked without waiting for the policeman. “I’ll order half a dozen immediately.”
“No,” the photographer declared. “I’m a Socialist. Just pay the insurance, you miserable watchdog of the millionaires.”
A siren shrieked. The ambulance. This is the moment, Ravic thought. He cautiously took a step. But the policeman held him back. “You must come with us to headquarters, doctor. I’m sorry, but we must have a record of everything.”
The other policeman stood beside him now. There was nothing to be done. Let’s hope it will work out all right, Ravic thought, and went with them.
The official on duty at police headquarters had listened quietly to the gendarme and policeman who had written the report. Now
he turned to Ravic. “You are not a Frenchman,” he said. He didn’t ask; he stated it as a fact.
“No,” Ravic said.
“What are you?”
“A Czech.”
“How is it that you are a doctor here? As a foreigner you can’t practice if you aren’t naturalized.”
Ravic smiled. “I don’t practice here. I’m here as a tourist. For pleasure.”
“Have you your passport with you?”
“Is that necessary, Fernand?” another official asked. “The gentleman has helped the woman and we have his address. That should be enough. There are still other witnesses.”
“I’m interested. Have you your passport with you? Or your
carte d’identité?
”
“Of course not,” Ravic said. “Who keeps his passport with him all the time?”
“Where is it?”
“At the consulate. I took it there a week ago. It had to be extended.”
Ravic knew that if he said his passport was at his hotel he might be sent there with a policeman and the bluff would be discovered at once. Besides, to be on the safe side, he had given a false address. He had a chance at the consulate.
“At which consulate?” Fernand asked.
“The Czech.”
“We can call up and ask them.” Fernand looked at Ravic.
“Of course.”
Fernand waited awhile. “All right,” he said then. “We’ll just ask.”
He rose and went into one of the adjoining rooms. The other
official was very embarrassed. “Pardon us, doctor,” he said to Ravic. “Of course, it isn’t necessary at all. It will be cleared up immediately. We are obliged to you for your help.”
Cleared up, Ravic thought. He looked about calmly while he took out a cigarette. The gendarme stood by the door. That was mere chance. No one really suspected him as yet. He might push him aside, but there were still the man from the construction company and the two workmen. He gave it up. It would be too hard to break through; a few more policemen would be standing outside the door.
Fernand returned. “There is no passport with your name at the consulate.”
“Maybe there is,” Ravic said.
“How is that possible?”
“An official at the telephone doesn’t necessarily know everything. There are half a dozen people who deal with these matters.”
“This one knew.”
Ravic did not reply. “You are not a Czech,” Fernand replied.
“Listen, Fernand—” the other official began.
“You haven’t a Czech accent,” Fernand said.
“Maybe not.”
“You are a German,” Fernand declared triumphantly. “And you have no passport.”
“No,” Ravic replied. “I am a Moroccan and have all the French passports in the world.”
“Sir!” Fernand shouted. “How dare you! You’re insulting the French Colonial Empire!”
“Merde,”
one of the workmen said. The representative of the construction company made a face as if he wanted to salute.
“Fernand, now don’t—”
“You’re lying! You’re not a Czech. Have you a passport or not? Answer!”
The rat in man, Ravic thought. The rat in man which one can never drown. What does it matter to this idiot whether I have a passport or not? But the rat smells something and here it comes creeping out of its hole.
“Answer!” Fernand barked at him.
A piece of paper! To have it or not to have it. This creature would beg my pardon and bow if I had that scrap of paper. It would not make any difference if I had murdered a family or robbed a bank—this man would salute me. But even Christ without a passport—nowadays he would perish in a prison. Anyhow, he would be slain long before his thirty-third year.
“You’ll stay here until this is cleared up,” Fernand said. “I’ll see to that.”
“All right,” Ravic said.
Fernand stamped out of the room. The second official rummaged among his papers. “Sir,” he said presently, “I am sorry. He is crazy on this subject.”
“Never mind.”
“Are we through?” one of the workmen asked.
“Yes.”
“All right.” He turned to Ravic. “When the world revolution comes, you won’t need a passport.”
“You must understand, sir,” the official said. “Fernand’s father was killed in the World War. That’s why he hates the Germans and does such things.” He looked at Ravic for a moment in embarrassment. He seemed to surmise what was wrong. “I am awfully sorry, sir. If it was up to me …”
“Never mind.” Ravic looked around. “May I use the telephone before this Fernand returns?”
“Of course. There on the table. Do it quickly.”
Ravic telephoned Morosow. He told him in German what had happened. He was to let Veber know.
“Joan too?” Morosow asked.
Ravic hesitated. “No. Not yet. Tell her I have been detained, but everything will be all right again in two or three days. Take care of her.”
“All right,” Morosow replied, not over-enthusiastically. “All right, Wozzek.”
When Fernand returned, Ravic put the receiver down. “What were you talking just now?” he asked with a grin. “Czech?”
“Esperanto.”
Veber came next morning. “A damned hole,” he said as he looked around.
“French prisons are still real prisons,” Ravic replied. “Not tainted with the humbug of humanitarianism. Good stinking eighteenth century.”
“Disgusting,” Veber said. “Disgusting that you got into it.”
“One shouldn’t do any good deeds. One has to suffer for them immediately. I should have let the woman bleed to death. We live in an iron age, Veber.”
“In a cast-iron one. Did our friends find out that you are here illegally?”
“Naturally.”
“The address too?”
“Of course not. I would never expose the old International. The hotelkeeper would be punished because she harbors unregistered guests. And a raid would ensue during which a dozen refugees would be caught. I gave the Hôtel Lancaster as my address this time. An expensive, fine little hotel. I stayed there once during my former life.”
“And your new name is Wozzek?”
“Vladimir Wozzek.” Ravic grinned. “My fourth.”
“Hell,” Veber said. “What can be done, Ravic?”
“Not much. The main thing is that our friends mustn’t find out that I’ve been here a few times before. Otherwise it will mean six months in prison.”
“Damn it!”
“Yes, the world becomes more humane day by day. Live dangerously, Nietzsche said. The refugees do—against their will.”
“And if they don’t find out?”
“Two weeks, I guess. And the usual deportation.”
“And then?”
“Then I’ll return.”
“Until you are caught again?”
“Exactly. It has taken a long while this time. Two years. A lifetime.”
“We must do something. It can’t go on like this.”
“It can. What can you do?”
Veber thought about it. “Durant!” he then said suddenly. “Naturally! Durant knows a lot of people and is influential—” He interrupted himself. “My God, you yourself performed an operation on one of the principal bigwigs! That man with the gall bladder!”
“Not I. Durant—”
Veber laughed. “Naturally he can’t tell that to the old gentleman. But he’ll be able to do something. I’ll wring his heart.”
“You’ll achieve very little. I cost him two thousand francs some time ago. His type doesn’t forget that sort of thing easily.”
“He will,” Veber said, rather amused. “The thing is he’ll be afraid you might tell about those ghosted operations. You have performed dozens for him. Besides he needs you badly.”
“He can easily find someone else. Binot or some refugee surgeon. There are plenty of them.”
Veber smoothed his mustache. “Not with your hand. We’ll try
it anyway. I’ll do it this very day. Can I get anything for you here? How is the food?”
“Ghastly. But I can make them bring in something.”
“Cigarettes?”
“Enough. You can’t help me with what I really need—a bath.”
Ravic lived there for two weeks with a Jewish plumber, a half-Jewish writer, and a Pole. The plumber was homesick for Berlin; the writer hated it; nothing mattered to the Pole. Ravic provided the cigarettes. The writer told Jewish jokes. The plumber was indispensable as an expert in combatting the stench.
After two weeks, Ravic was summoned. First he was brought before an inspector who only asked him whether he had any money.
“Yes.”
“All right. Then you can take a taxi.”
An official went with him. The street was light and sunny. It was good to be outside again. An old man was selling balloons at the entrance. Ravic could not imagine why he was selling them in front of the prison. The official hailed a taxi. “Where are we going?” Ravic asked.
“To the chief.”
Ravic did not know which chief it was. It didn’t make much difference to him either as long as it wasn’t the chief of a German concentration camp. There was only one real horror in the world: to be completely and helplessly at the mercy of brutal terrorism. The present incident was harmless.
The taxi had a radio. Ravic turned it on. He got the vegetable market reports; then the political news. The official yawned. Ravic dialed another station. Music. A hit. The official perked up. “Charles Trenet,” he said. “Ménilmontant. Real class!”
The taxi stopped. Ravic paid. He was conducted into a waiting
room that smelled of expectation, sweat and dust, like all the waiting rooms in the world.
He sat for half an hour and read an old issue of
La Vie Parisienne
left behind by a visitor. It was like classic literature after two weeks without books. Then he was taken before the chief.
It took some time before he recognized the short, fat man. Usually he was not concerned with faces when he operated. They were as unimportant to him as so many numbers. He was interested in the sick places only. But he had looked at this face with curiosity. There he sat, healthy, his potbelly filled again, minus gall bladder: Leval. Ravic had forgotten by this time that Veber had intended to seek Durant’s aid and he had not expected to be presented to Leval himself.
Leval looked him up and down. Thereby giving himself time. “Of course your name is not Wozzek,” he grumbled.
“No.”
“What is your name?”
“Neumann.” Ravic had arranged this with Veber, who had explained it to Durant. Wozzek was too improbable.
“You are a German, aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Refugee?”
“Yes.”
“One never can tell. You don’t look it.”
“Not all refugees are Jews,” Ravic explained.
“Why were you lying? About your name.”
Ravic shrugged his shoulders. “What else can we do? We lie as little as possible. We have to—do you think it’s fun for us?”
Leval swelled up. “Do you think it is fun for us to be bothered with you?”
Gray, Ravic thought. His head had been whitish gray, the lacrimal sacs dirty-blue, the mouth had gaped half open. At that
time he hadn’t talked; then he had been a heap of flabby flesh with a rotting gall bladder in it.
“Where do you live? The address was wrong, too.”
“I have lived everywhere. Sometimes here, sometimes there.”
“For how long?”
“For three weeks. Three weeks ago I came from Switzerland. I was put across the border. You know that from a legal point of view we haven’t the right to live anywhere without papers—and that most of us haven’t yet been able to make up our minds to commit suicide. That’s the reason we bother you.”
“You should have remained in Germany,” Leval grumbled. “It isn’t quite so bad there. People exaggerate.”
A slightly different incision, Ravic thought, and you wouldn’t be here to talk this nonsense. The worms would have crossed your borderline without papers—or you would be a handful of dust in an undistinguished urn.
“Where did you live here?” Leval asked.
That’s what you would like to know, to catch the others too, Ravic thought. “In first-rate hotels,” he said. “Under various names. Always for only a few days.”
“That’s not true.”
“Why do you ask me if you know better?” said Ravic, who was slowly getting fed up.
Leval struck the table angrily with the flat of his hand. “Don’t be impudent!” Immediately afterwards he examined his hand.