Part 5 (2/2)

Andreas rested his head in his hands on the little table and was also aware of an infinite weariness. It's Sunday, he thought, one o'clock in the morning, three more hours to go, and I must not sleep, I will not sleep, I shall not sleep; and he looked at her ardently and tenderly. That pure, gentle, small, wan girlish face, now faintly smiling in the bliss of sleep. I must not sleep, thought Andreas, yet he could feel his weariness bearing relentlessly down on him. I must not sleep. G.o.d, don't let me fall asleep, let me look at her face.... I needed to come to this brothel in Lvov, I needed to come here to find out that there is such a thing as love without desire, the way I love Olina...I must not fall asleep, I must look at that mouth...that forehead and those exhausted, golden, delicate wisps of hair over her face and the dark shadows of indescribable exhaustion around her eyes. She played Bach, to the very limits of human capacity. I must not fall asleep...it's cold...the cruel hostility of the morning is already waiting behind the dark curtains of the night. It's cold, and I have nothing to cover her with...I've flogged my coat, and we made a mess of the tablecloth...it's lying around somewhere stained with wine. My tunic, I could put my tunic over her...I could cover the open neck of her dress with my tunic, but even as he thought this he simply felt too tired to get up and take off his tunic...I can't even lift my arm, and I must not fall asleep; I've still got so many things to do, so many things to do. Just let me rest here a bit with my arms on the table, then I'll get up and put my tunic over her, and I'll pray, pray, kneel by this couch that has seen so many sins, kneel by that pure face from which I had to learn that there is such a thing as love without desire...I must not fall asleep...no, no, I must not fall asleep....

His awakening gaze was like a bird that suddenly dies high up in the air in flight and plunges, plunges into the infinity of despair; but Olina's smiling eyes caught him as he fell. He had been desperately afraid that it was too late...too late to hurry to the appointed place. Too late to hurry to the only rendezvous that mattered. Her smiling gaze caught him, and she answered the unspoken yet anguished question, saying softly: ”It's three-thirty...don't worry!” And only now did he feel her light hand resting on his head.

Her face lay on the same level as his, and he hardly needed to move his head to kiss her. It's a pity, he thought, that I don't desire her, a pity that it's no sacrifice for me not to desire her, no sacrifice not to kiss her and not to long to sink down into that seemingly sullied womb....

And he touched her lips with his, and there was nothing. They exchanged smiles of amazement. There was nothing. It was like an ineffectual bullet bouncing off armor of which they themselves were not aware.

”Come on,” she said softly, ”I'd better see you get something for your feet, hadn't I?”

”No,” said Andreas, ”don't leave me, you mustn't leave me for a single second. Never mind the shoes. I can just as well die in my socks, lots of men have died in their socks. Fled in panic when they were suddenly confronted by the Russians, and died wounded in the back, facing Germany, wounded in the back, the worst disgrace that could befall the Spartans. Many died like that, never mind the shoes, I'm so tired....”

”No,” she said, glancing at her watch. ”I could have given up my watch, and you would have kept your boots. One always thinks one has no more to give, and I honestly had forgotten my watch. I'll trade my watch for your boots, we won't be needing it any more...or anything else.”

”Or anything else,” he repeated under his breath, and he raised his eyes and looked around the room, and for the first time he saw how pitiful it was, the ancient wallpaper and meager furniture: old armchairs over there by the window, and a dingy couch.

”Yes,” Olina murmured, ”I'm going to get you away. Don't look so scared!” She smiled, her eyes close to his white, tired face. ”That car of the general's is a gift from heaven. Just trust me and believe me: no matter where I take you, it will be life. Do you believe me?” Andreas nodded in bewilderment, and she repeated, her face close to his as if in solemn entreaty: ”No matter where I take you, it will be life. Trust me!” She clasped his head. ”There are tiny little places in the Carpathians where no one will ever find us. A few houses, a little chapel, no partisans even. I used to go to one, I would try to say a few prayers and play on the priest's old baby grand. D'you hear?” She sought his eyes, but his gaze was still roaming the soiled wallpaper against which bottles had been smashed and sticky fingers had been wiped. ”We'll have music, d'you hear?”

”Yes,” he groaned. ”But the others, those other two. I can't leave them now. It's impossible.”

”That's out!”

”And the driver,” he asked, ”what did you intend doing with the driver?” They stood face to face, and there was something like hostility between their eyes. Olina tried to smile. ”Starting today,” she said softly, ”starting today I'm not going to hand over any more innocent men to the executioner. You must trust me! It wouldn't have been too difficult just with you. Simply have the driver stop somewhere, and then we'd run away...disappear! Free, just disappear! But with your two friends it won't work.”

”All right, then you'll have to leave me. No,” he raised his arm to silence her. ”I'm simply telling you there's to be no bargaining. It's either-or. You must understand, you must,” he said, looking deep into her serious eyes, ”because you loved them, some of them, didn't you? You must understand.”

Slowly, heavily, Olina's head drooped. Andreas did not realize this was a nod until she said: ”All right, I'll try....”

While Olina, her hand on the door, waited for him, he cast one more look around that dirty little Polish bar, then followed her out into the ill-lit corridor. But the room, the bar, was palatial compared with that corridor in the early morning. That mocking, chill, dingy half-light in a brothel corridor at four in the morning. Those doors, like doors in a barracks, all alike. All equally shabby. And that dreary, dreary squalor.

”In here,” said Olina. She pushed open one of the doors and there was her room: scantily furnished with the necessities of her trade; a bed, a small table and two chairs, and a washbasin on a spindly, three-legged stand, next to the stand a pitcher, and a small closet against the wall. Only the bare necessities, like in a barracks....

It was all so unreal, sitting on the bed and watching Olina wash her hands, take her shoes out of the closet, remove her red slippers, and put on her shoes. Oh yes, there was a mirror too, for her to refurbish her beauty. Those traces of tears must be wiped away and fresh powder put on, there being nothing ghastlier than a red-eyed wh.o.r.e. Lipstick and eyebrow pencil had to be reapplied, nails cleaned, and all this was carried out as deftly as a soldier preparing for the alert.

”You must trust me,” she said in a chatty, matter-of-fact tone. ”I'm going to get you away, d'you hear? It won't be easy if you insist on taking along the other two, but it can be done. A lot can be done....”

Don't let me go out of my mind, Andreas prayed, don't let me go out of my mind in this brutal attempt to grasp reality. The whole thing is impossible, this room in a brothel, shabby and faded in the gray dawn, full of revolting smells, and that girl over there by the mirror, crooning softly, crooning to me, while her fingers skillfully touch up the red on her lips. This is impossible, and this tired heart of mine that wishes for nothing, and these limp senses of mine that desire nothing, neither to smoke nor eat nor drink, and my soul that is deprived of all longing and wants only to sleep, to sleep....

Maybe I'm already dead. Who can grasp all this, these bedclothes I automatically pushed aside, the way one always does if one has to sit down on a bed, these sheets that are not dirty and yet not clean, these horribly mysterious sheets, not dirty and not clean...and that girl over there by the mirror, busy coloring her eyebrows, black, fine-drawn eyebrows on a pale forehead.

”A-hunting and fis.h.i.+ng we will go, like in the good old days! D'you know that one?” asked Olina with a smile. ”It's a German poem. 'Archibald Douglas.' It's about a man who was exiled from his native land. And we Poles, we have been exiled into into our native land, into the midst of one's native land; no one knows what that means. Born 1920. A-hunting and fis.h.i.+ng we will go, like in the good old days. Listen!” She was actually crooning that old ballad, and it seemed to Andreas that now the limit had been reached, a gray cold morning in a Polish brothel, and a ballad, set to music by Lowe, being crooned for his benefit.... our native land, into the midst of one's native land; no one knows what that means. Born 1920. A-hunting and fis.h.i.+ng we will go, like in the good old days. Listen!” She was actually crooning that old ballad, and it seemed to Andreas that now the limit had been reached, a gray cold morning in a Polish brothel, and a ballad, set to music by Lowe, being crooned for his benefit....

”Olina!” came that level voice again outside the door.

”Yes?”

”The bill. Hand it out to me, please. And get ready to leave, the car's at the door....”

So this is the reality, the girl handing out the bill through the door, with tapering fingers, a bill on which everything had been written down, beginning with the matches, which he still had in his pocket, those matches he had been given yesterday evening at six. That's how fantastically fast time goes, this time we cannot grasp, and I've done nothing, nothing, in that time, and there's nothing I can do but follow this refurbished beauty, down the stairs to settle the account....

”These Polish tarts,” said Willi, ”simply terrific! That's what I call pa.s.sion, eh?”

”Yes.”

The room downstairs was just as meagerly furnished. A few rickety chairs, a bench, a threadbare carpet that looked like frayed paper, and Willi was smoking. He was completely unshaven and was searching his luggage for more cigarettes.

”You were certainly the most expensive, my lad. My bill wasn't much less either. But this young friend of ours, he cost almost nothing. Hey there!” He dug the blond fellow, who was still asleep, in the ribs. ”A hundred and forty-six marks.” He snorted with laughter. ”It seems he actually did sleep with the girl, literally slept. There were two hundred marks left over, so I slid them under the door of his girl's room, as a tip, see? Because she made him happy so cheaply. D'you happen to have a cigarette left?”

”Yes.”

”Thanks.”

What an incredibly long time Olina was taking to settle the account, over there in the madame's office, at four in the morning. That was an hour when the whole world slept. Even in the girls' rooms all was quiet, and downstairs in the big reception room it was quite dark. The door from which the music had come was dark, and one could see and smell that dark room. The only sound was the discreet engine purring away outside. Olina was behind that reddish door, and it was all reality. It had to be reality....

”So you think this general's wh.o.r.e-car will take us too?”

”Yes!”

”Hm. A Maybach, I can tell by the engine. Nifty job. Mind if I go ahead and speak to the driver? He's sure to be a noncom.”

Willi shouldered his luggage and opened the door, and there it really was, the night, the gray-veiled night and the dim headlamps of a waiting car out there by the entrance. As coldly and inescapably real as all war-nights, full of cold menace, full of horrible mockery; out there in the dirty holes...in the cellars...in the many, many towns cowering in fear...summoned up, those appalling nights that at four in the morning have achieved their most deadly power, those ghastly, indescribably terrible war-nights. One of these was there outside the door, a night full of terror, a night with no home, not even the smallest, smallest warm corner to hide in...those nights that had been summoned up by the resounding voices....

So she really believes she can rescue me. Andreas smiled. She believes it is possible to slip through the fine mesh of this net. This child believes there is such a thing as escape...she believes she will find ways to avoid Stryy. That word has been cradled within me since my birth. It has lain deep, deep down, unacknowledged and unawakened; it was with me when I was still a child, and maybe a dark shudder rippled through me, many years ago in school, when we learned about the foothills of the Carpathians and I read the words Galicia and Lvov and Stryy on the map, in the middle of that yellow-white patch. And I've forgotten that shudder. Maybe, often and often, the barb of death and summons was cast into me without ever catching in anything down there, and only that tiny little word had been set up and saved up for it, and finally the barb caught....

Stryy...that tiny little word, terrible and b.l.o.o.d.y, has surfaced and expanded into an ominous cloud that now overshadows everything. And she believes she will find ways of avoiding Stryy....

Besides, her promise doesn't attract me. I'm not attracted by that little village in the Carpathians where she proposes to play on the priest's piano. I'm not attracted by that seeming security...all we have is promises and pledges and a dark uncertain horizon over which we have to plunge to find security....

At last the door opened, and Andreas was surprised by the rigid pallor of Olina's face. She had put on a fur coat, a charming little cap was perched on her beautiful loose hair, and there was no watch on her wrist, for he was wearing his boots again. The account had been settled. The old woman was smiling so mysteriously. Her hands were folded across her desiccated body, and after the soldiers had picked up their luggage and Andreas was opening the door she smiled and uttered a single word: ”Stryy,” she said. Olina did not hear it, she was already outside.

”I too,” said Olina in a low voice as they sat side by side in the car, ”I too am condemned. I too have betrayed my country because I spent all last night with you instead of sounding out the general.” She took his hand and smiled at him: ”But don't forget what I told you: no matter where I take you, it will be life. Right?”

”Right,” said Andreas. The whole night ran through his memory like a smooth thread being reeled off, yet there was one knot that left him no peace. Stryy, the old woman had said, and how can she know that Stryy...he hadn't said anything about it to her, and still less would Olina have mentioned that word....

So this is supposed to be reality: a discreetly purring car with its subdued headlamps lighting up the nameless road. Trees, and now and again houses, all saturated with gray darkness. In front of him those two necks, encircled by sergeants' braid almost identical, solid German necks, and the cigarette smoke drifting back from the driver's seat. Beside him the blond fellow, sleeping like a child worn out by playing, and on the right the steady gentle contact with Olina's fur coat and the smooth thread of the memory of that lovely night sliding by, faster and faster, and always stopping short at that strange knot, at the place where the old woman had said: Stryy....

Andreas leaned forward to look at the softly lit clock on the dashboard, and he saw it was six o'clock, just on six. An icy shock ran through him, and he thought: G.o.d, G.o.d, what have I done with my time, I've done nothing, I've never done anything, I must pray, pray for them all, and at this very moment Paul is walking up the altar steps at home and beginning to recite: Introibo. And on his own lips too the word began to form: Introibo.

But now an invisible giant hand pa.s.sed over the softly gliding car, a terrible, silent stirring of the air, and into this silence came Willi's dry voice, asking: ”Where are you taking us, bud?” ”To Stryy!” said a disembodied voice.

And then the car was slashed by two raging knives that rasped with savage hatred, one from the front, the other from behind, tearing into that metal body which reared and turned, filled with the shriek of fear of its occupants....

In the silence that followed there was no sound but the pa.s.sionate devouring of the flames.

My G.o.d, thought Andreas, are they all dead?...and my legs...my arms, is only my head left?...is no one there?...I'm lying on this bare road, on my breast lies the weight of the world, so heavily that I can find no words to pray....

Am I crying? he thought suddenly, for he could feel something moist running down his cheeks: no, something was dripping onto his cheeks; and in that ashen morning light, which was still without the yellow mildness of the sun, he saw that Olina's hand was hanging down over his head from a fragment of the car, and that blood was dripping onto his face from her hands, and he was past knowing that now he was really beginning to cry....

<script>