Thomas Wolfe, page 479
You do not know, of course, the precise circumstance, but what you sense immediately is the final stage of tragedy. You know that someone has just died or is dying, and in the terrible eloquence of backs and shoulders, the feeding silence of the watching men, you sense a tragedy that is even deeper. It is the tragedy of man’s cruelty and his lust for pain, the tragic weakness that corrupts him, that he loathes but that he cannot cure.
And always, the manifestation of this tragedy is just the same. Even before one arrives one knows from this silent eloquence of shoulders, backs and heads that something ruinous and horrible has happened. I knew the signs too well. And now, as I hastened along beside the train and saw the people gathered in the corridor in that same feeding posture, waiting, watching, in that deadly fascinated silence, I was sure that once again in life I was about to witness death.
That was the first thing that came to me—and I believe to all of us—that someone had died. And what stunned us, what stopped us short, appalled, was that death had come to our compartment. The shades were tightly drawn, the door closed, the whole place sealed impenetrably. We had started to get on the train when this thing burst upon us. And now we saw our lady’s young companion standing at the window in the corridor. He motioned quickly to us, a gesture warning us to remain where we were. And as he did it flashed over all of us that the subject of this tragic visitation was the nervous little man who had been the companion of our voyage since morning.
The stillness of the scene, the shuttered blankness of that closed compartment, were horrible. Even as we stared, appalled and horror-stricken, at that fatal curtained closet, which had so short a time ago housed the lives of all of us, and which had now become the tenement of death, the curtained door of the compartment was opened and closed quickly, and a man came out.
He was an official, a burly-looking fellow, with a visored cap, a jacket of olive green. He was a man of forty-five or more, a Germanic type with high blunt cheekbones, a florid face and tawny mustaches, combed out sprouting, in the Kaiser Wilhelm way. His head was shaven, and there were thick creases at the base of the skull and across his fleshy neck. He came out, climbed down clumsily to the platform, signaled excitedly to another officer and climbed back into the train again.
It was a familiar type, one that I had seen and smiled at often, but one that now became, under these ominous circumstances, sinisterly unpleasant. Even the man’s physical weight and clumsiness, the awkward way he got down from the train, the awkward way he climbed up again, the thickness of his waist, the unpleasant width and coarseness of his clumsy buttocks, the way his sprouting mustaches seemed to quiver with passion and authority, the sound of his guttural voice, raised coarsely, somewhat phlegmily, as he shouted to his fellow officer, the sense that he was fairly panting with an inflamed authority—all these symptoms had now become, under the ominous prescience of the moment, loathsome, sinister, repellent.
All of a sudden, without knowing why, I felt myself trembling with a murderous and incomprehensible anger. I wanted to smash that fat neck with the creases in it. I wanted to pound that inflamed and blunted face into a jelly. I wanted to kick square and hard, bury my foot, dead center in the obscene fleshiness of those clumsy buttocks. And I knew that I was helpless, that all of us were. Like all Americans, I had never liked the police or the kind of personal authority that it sanctifies. But this feeling, this intensity, with its murderously helpless rage, was different. I felt impotent, shackled, unable to stir against the walls of an obscene but unshakable authority.
The official with the sprouting mustaches, accompanied now by his colleagues, opened the curtained doors of the compartment again, and now I saw that they were not alone. Two other officials were in the compartment and our nervous little companion—no, he was not dead!—he sat there huddled, facing them. He sat looking up at them as they bent over him. His face was white and pasty. It looked greasy, as if it were covered with a salve of cold fat sweat. Under his long nose his mouth was trembling in a horrible attempt at a smile. In the very posture of the men as they bent over him there was something revolting and unclean.
But the official with the thick creased neck had now filled the door and blotted out the picture. He went in followed by a smaller colleague, the door was closed again behind him, and again there was that vicious and ill omened secrecy.
All of this had happened in a moment while we had looked on with stupefied surprise. Now the people gathered in the corridor began to whisper to one another. In a moment our little blonde lady went over, whispered to the young man at the window and then came back, took Stefanowski and myself by the arm and led us away, out of hearing.
Then, as both of us whispered “What is it?” she looked around cautiously again and said with lowered voice: “That man—the one in our compartment—was trying to get out of the country and they’ve caught him.”
“But why?—What for?—What has he done?” we asked, bewildered.
Again she glanced back cautiously and then, drawing us toward her till our three heads were almost touching, she said, in an awed and almost frightened tone, “They say he is a Jew. They searched his baggage—he was taking money out.”
“How much?” said Stefanowski.
“I don’t know,” she whispered. “A great deal, I think. Several thousand marks. They found it.”
“But how—” I began. “I thought everything was finished. I thought they were done with all of us when they went through the train.”
“Yes,” she said, “but don’t you remember he said something about not having a ticket the whole way. He got off the train to get one. And I think that’s when they caught him,” she whispered. “I think they had their eye on him. That’s why they did not question him when they came through the train”—as indeed, I now remembered, “they” had not—“And they caught him here,” she went on. “They asked him where he was going and he said to Paris. They asked him how much money he was taking out; he said ten marks. Then they asked him how long he was going to remain in Paris, and for what purpose, and he said he was going to be there for a week and that he was attending this congress of lawyers that he spoke about. They asked him then how he proposed to stay in Paris for a week and attend this congress if all he had was ten marks. And I think,” she whispered, “he got frightened then. He began to lose his head. He said he had forgotten, that he had twenty marks besides, which he had put into another pocket. And then, of course, they had him. They searched him. They searched his baggage, and they found more,” she whispered in an awed tone. “Much, much more.”
For a moment we all stared at one another, too stunned to say a word. Then the little woman laughed in a low, almost frightened, sort of way, a little uncertain “o-hoh-hoh-hoh-hoh” ending on a note of incredulity.
“This man,” she whispered again, “this little Jew—”
“I didn’t know he was a Jew,” I said, “I should not have thought so.”
“But he is,” she whispered, and looked stealthily ground again to see if we were being overheard. And he was doing what so many of the others have done—he was trying to get out with his money.” And again she laughed, the uncertain little hoh-hoh-hoh that mounted on a note of incredulous amazement. And yet, I saw, her eyes were troubled, too.
All of a sudden I felt sick, empty, nauseated. That money, those accursed ten marks, were beginning to burn a hole in my pocket. I put my hand into my vest pocket and the coins felt greasy, as if they were covered with sweat. I took them out and closed them in my fist and started to cross the platform toward the train.
The woman seized me by the arm. “Where are you going?” she gasped. “What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to give that man his money. I can’t keep it now.”
Her face went white. “Are you mad?” she whispered. “Don’t you know that that will do no good? You’ll only get yourself arrested and, as for him—he’s in trouble enough already. You’ll only make it So much worse for him. And besides,” she faltered, as the full consequences came to her, “God knows what he has done, what he has said already. If he has told that we have transferred money to one another—we may all be in for it!”
We had not thought of this. But now we did. And as we saw the possible consequence of our act we just stood there and stared helplessly at one another. We just stood there, three abreast, feeling dazed and weak and hollow. We just stood there and prayed.
And now they were coming out of the compartment. The fellow with the sprouting mustache came out first, carrying the little man’s valise. He looked around. It seemed to me he glared at us. We just stood still and prayed. We expected now to see all of our baggage come out. We thought that we were in for it.
But in a moment the other three officials came out of the compartment, with the little man between them. They marched him right along the platform, white as a sheet, greasy looking, protesting volubly, in a voice that had a kind of anguished lilt. He came right by us. I made a movement with my arms. The greasy money sweated in my hand and I did not know what to do. I started to speak to him. And at the same time I was praying that he would not speak. I tried to look away from him, but I could not look away. He came toward us, still protesting volubly that everything could be explained, that all of it was an absurd mistake. And just for a moment as he passed us, he stopped talking, glanced at us, white-faced, smiling pitiably, his eyes rested on us for a moment, and then, without a sign of further recognition, he went on by.
I heard the little blonde woman at my side sigh faintly and I felt her body slump against me. We all felt pretty weak and hollow. In a moment we went on across the platform and got up into the train. The evil tension had been snapped. People were now talking feverishly, still in a low tone but with obvious released excitement. Our little blonde companion leaned from the window of the corridor and spoke to the fellow with the sprouting mustache who was still standing there. “Are—are you going to keep him here?” she said in a low tone. “You’re not going to let him go?”
He looked at her stolidly for a moment. Then an intolerable smile broke deliberately across his brutal features. He nodded his head, slowly, with the finality of a gluttonous satisfaction: “Nein,” he said, “Er bleibt.” And, shaking his heavy head ever so slightly from side to side, “Geht nicht!”
They had him. Far down the platform we heard the sudden fifing shrill of the engine whistle. The guard cried warning; all up and down the platform doors were slammed. Slowly the train moved from the station. We rolled right past him, very slowly. They had him. They surrounded him. He stood among them, protesting volubly, talking with his hands now, insisting all could be explained. And they said nothing. They had him. They just stood and watched him, each with the faint suggestion of that intolerable slow smile upon his face. They raised their eyes, unspeaking, looked at us as we rolled past, with the obscene communication of their glance and of their smile.
And he—he too paused once from his voluble and feverish discourse as we passed him. He lifted his eyes to us, his pasty face, and he was silent for a moment. And we looked at him for the last time, and he at us—this time, more direct and steadfastly. And in that glance there was all the silence of man’s mortal anguish. And we were all somehow naked and ashamed, and somehow guilty. We all felt somehow that we were saying farewell, not to a man but to humanity; not to some nameless little cipher out of life, but to the fading image of a brother’s face. We lost him then. The train swept out and gathered speed—and so farewell.
I turned and looked at Stefanowski. He, too, was silent for a moment. Then he spoke.
“Well, then,” he said, “I think that this is a sad ending to our trip.”
And we? We went back in and took our former seats in our compartment. But it seemed strange and empty now. The ghost of absence sat there ruinously. He had left his coat and hat; in his anguish he had forgotten them. Stefanowski rose and took them, and would have given them to the conductor. But the woman said: “You’d better look into the pockets first. Perhaps there’s something in them. Perhaps”—quickly, eagerly, as the idea took her—“perhaps he has left money there.”
Stefanowski searched the pockets. There was nothing there. He shook his head. The woman began to search the cushions of the seats, thrusting her hands down around the sides. “It might just be, you know,” she said, “that he hid money here.” She laughed excitedly, almost gleefully. “Perhaps we’ll all be rich.”
The young Pole shook his head. “I think they would have found it if he had,” he said—and here he paused suddenly, peered out the window, and thrust his hand into his pocket, “I suppose we’re in Belgium now. Here’s your money.” And he returned to her the money she had given him.
She took it and put it in her purse. I still had the ten marks in my hand and was looking at them. The woman looked up, saw my face, then said quickly, warmly, “But you’re upset about this thing! You look so troubled.”
I put the money back and in a moment said: “Ich fühle gerade als ob ich Blutgeld in meiner Tasche hätte.”
She leaned over, smiling, and put her hand reassuringly upon my arm: “Nein. Nicht Blutgeld—Judgeld!” she whispered. “Don’t worry about it. He had plenty more!”
My eyes met those of Stefanowski for a moment and his too were grave. “This is a sad ending to our trip,” he said again.
And she—our little blonde companion—she tried to laugh and joke, but her eyes were also full of trouble. She tried to talk us out of it, to talk herself into forgetfulness.
“These Jews!” she cried. “These things would never happen if it were not for them! They make all the trouble. Germany has had to protect herself. The Jews were taking all the money from the country—thousands of them escaped, taking millions of marks with them. And now, when it is too late, we wake up to it! It is too bad that foreigners must see these things, that they’ve got to go through these painful experiences—it makes a bad impression. They do not understand the reason. But it is the Jews!” she whispered.
We said nothing and the woman went on talking, eagerly, excitedly, earnestly, persuasively, but really as if she were trying to convince herself, as if every instinct of race and loyalty was now being used in an effort to justify something that had filled her with a sense of shame and sorrow. But even as she talked her clear blue eyes were full of trouble. And at length she stopped. There was silence for a moment. Then gravely, quietly, the woman said: “He must have wanted very badly to escape.”
We remembered then all he had said and done throughout the journey. And now every act and gesture, every word became invested with a new and terrible meaning. We recalled how nervous he had been, how he kept opening and shutting the door, kept getting up to pace up and down along the corridor. We recalled how he kept peering around at us suspiciously, how eagerly he had asked Stefanowski if he would change places with him when the Pole had got up to go into the dining-car with me. We recalled his explanations about having to buy passage from the frontier to Paris, the explanations he had given to the conductor. And all these things, which at the time we had dismissed as irascible ill temper or trivial explanation, now were revealed in a sequence of terrible significance.
“But the ten marks!” the woman cried at length. “In God’s name, since he had all this other money, why did he give ten marks to you? It is so stupid!”
And we could find no reason, except that he had done it because he thought it might alleviate any suspicion in our minds about his true intent; or, what was even likelier, I thought, that he was in such an inner state of nervous frenzy that he had acted blindly, wildly, on the impulse of the moment.
We did not know. We never would find out the answer now. We discussed the money he had given me. The young Pole remarked that I had given the man my name and my address and that if he was later on allowed to complete his journey, he could write to me. But we all knew I would never hear from him again.
Late afternoon had come. The country had closed in, the train was winding through a pleasant, romantic landscape of hills and woods. There was a sense of forest dusk, cool darkling waters, the slant of evening and the wane of light. We knew somehow that we had entered another land. Our little blonde companion peered anxiously out the window and then asked if we were really now in Belgium. The conductor assured us that we were. We gave the man our late companion’s hat and coat and explained the reason for them. He nodded, took them, and departed.
The woman had her hand upon her breast, and now when the man had gone I heard her sigh slowly, with relief.
In a moment she said quietly and simply: “Do not misunderstand. I am a German and I love my country. But—I feel as it a weight has lifted from me here”—she put her hand upon her breast again. “You cannot understand perhaps just how it feels to us but—” and for a moment she was silent as if painfully meditating what she wished to say. Then quickly, quietly: “We are so happy to be—out!”
Out? I too was “out.” And suddenly I knew just how she felt. I too was “out,” who was a stranger to her land, who never yet had been a stranger in it. I too was “out” of that great land whose image had been engraved upon my spirit in my childhood and my youth, before I had ever seen it. I too was “out” from that land which had been so much more to me than land, which had been for me so much more than place. It was a geography of heart’s desire. It was a soul’s dark wonder, the haunting beauty of the magic land. It had been burning there forever, like the dark Helen burning in man’s blood. And now, like the dark Helen, it was lost to me. I had spoken the language of its spirit before I ever came to it. I had spoken the accents of its speech most brokenly from the hour when I first entered it, yet never with a moment’s strangeness. I had been at home in it and it in me. It seemed I had been born in it and it in me. I had known wonder in it, truth and magic in it, sorrow, loneliness and pain in it. I had known love in it, and for the first time in my life I had tasted there the bright delusive sacraments of fame.
