Suddenly the colonel turned round and said: ‘Talking of dialects, you are from Frankfurt, aren’t you?’
‘No! From Breslau!’ retorted the correspondent in a firm, almost military, voice.
‘Not bad either,’ said the colonel and regarded the landscape anew.
‘So you are from the press,’ began the Austrian major, as if he had only just realized that the reporter had something to do with a newspaper. ‘The seventh great power, eh?’ he enquired amiably.
The journalist smiled. ‘Now,’ continued the major, ‘you know better than we do when it will end. What’s your opinion?’
‘Who can tell!’ replied the journalist. ‘Our armies are deep in enemy territory. The nation is united as never before. The Social Democrats are fighting like everyone else. Who would have thought this miracle possible! You are on your way to Germany, aren’t you? Well, you’ll see how all our distinctions of class and creed have vanished. The old dispute between Catholicism and Protestantism is over.’
‘Really,’ said the major. ‘Well, and how about the Israelites?’
The journalist was silent and the colonel smiled at the landscape.
‘A dwindling number!’ said the bearded one, as if he would have liked to say: ‘There aren’t any at all.’
‘Our Israelites are very brave,’ continued the major perseveringly.
‘Excuse me,’ said the journalist and left the compartment. They saw him through the glass of the door. He went right and then left.
‘Occupied!’ intimated the colonel. And, as if the occupied W.C. were a matter of geography, he said: ‘He’s from Breslau.’
When the correspondent sat down in his place again he began to talk about Paris at the outbreak of war, where he had been working for several years for his newspaper. He spoke at length about the measures the Parisians had taken against the Germans, who were destined to be sent off to camps. Often and again he mentioned the names of the German ambassador, some military attachés and embassy counsellors. He seemed to wish to attribute a special significance to the fact that he had left the country in the same train in which the staff of the German embassy had travelled. And some ten times in his narrative he returned to the phrase: ‘We, a dozen German gentlemen’. The colonel continued to look out at the landscape. A German delegation which had left the enemy country at the same time as Dr Süsskind meant less to him than the troop kitchen of a foreign regiment. It was easy for the reporter to talk of military attachés. The Austrian major paid no more attention. He drew out a notebook and asked: ‘Do you know any Jewish jokes, Doctor?’ And as the correspondent did not reply the major began reading out jokes from his notebook, which all began with the words: ‘Two Jews were sitting in a train.’ The colonel regarded the major with a despairing and reproachful seriousness. The journalist had assumed a fixed smile to oblige, which became neither more nor less marked but remained the same at the point of the jokes as at their beginning. And only Friedrich laughed. Once, when the major used one of those Yiddish expressions that had already become part of the German vocabulary of wags and tailors, which he could reasonably assume everyone present would understand, the interested journalist asked what it meant. ‘What, you don’t know what it means?’ asked the major. ‘No.’ The correspondent claimed not to know. Only gradually did he recall that once, on a journey through Egypt, he had heard a similar sounding Turkish word. And he mentioned Egypt as if that country had never played an important part in the history of his race. The colonel redoubled his attentions to the windowpane, as if the landscape had become even more interesting.
They were nearing the German frontier. The major had finished his jokes. He was turning the pages in his little book in the hope of finding a hidden anecdote. But he found no more.
The journalist became restless, got up, and lifted his case from the luggage-rack with a visible effort.
‘Are you getting out?’ asked the colonel, without looking up and in a tone that he might have used to say: ‘Have we got rid of you?’
‘Yes, indeed, Colonel!’ came the firm and soldierly reply.
As the train travelled more slowly and the first signs of an approaching station became evident, the journalist put his case in the corridor, returned to the compartment, clicked his heels together with a snap one would not have credited him with and said goodbye.
To the ire of the Prussian colonel, the Austrian major held out his hand and said: ‘It’s been a pleasure!’
The colonel contented himself with saying: ‘Likewise!’ It sounded like an oath.
The journalist stood on the platform and embraced his wife. She was wearing a wide black feathered hat which sat flat as a saucer on her head. Her large red ears were aflame in the cold. In her hand she carried an umbrella with a yellow handle of twisted horn.
The train started to move off again slowly.
13
‘So that’s the newspaper correspondent Süsskind,’ thought Friedrich. He knew the name and the newspaper in which this man’s initials figured so often and so prominently. No connection could be found between the style that singled out this correspondent from his colleagues and the servility with which he denied his Jewishness. ‘This Süsskind,’ said the colonel, as if he meant to pursue Friedrich’s thoughts aloud, ‘would do better to stay out of sight.’
The train was delayed; it did not arrive at M. until the early morning.
M. was a small town in which it was raining. Most of the houses were built of dark red brick. In the middle of the town was a green square, and in the middle of the square rose a steep red-brick building. It was a Protestant church.
Opposite the entrance to the church stood a school for boys and girls, made of red brick. To the right of the school stood a revenue office of red brick. And to the left of the school was the town hall with a pointed spire. It too was made of red brick.
In the wide shop-windows were leather goods made of paper, wristwatches for soldiers, cheap novels, and mittens for Christmas in the field.
From inside the boys’ and girls’ school came the sound of clear children’s voices singing: In der Heimat, in der Heimat. From time to time a dark-green tramcar glided by rapidly, swaying and emanating a brisk clanging. And it rained, heavily, slowly, monotonously from a deep dark-grey leaden sky that had not been blue for a single hour since the creation of the world.
It rained. Friedrich found a seat in a large empty café on whose wide windows were posted patriotic and puristic notices such as: ‘Don’t say adieu but auf Wiedersehn!’ and ‘Don’t use foreign languages!’, alongside picture postcards with verses by Theodor Körner in heavy type. A waitress brought him a pallid coffee with a pinkish tinge at the edges. He sat by the window and watched the rain trickling down. It struck twelve from the town hall, and the girl workers and a few isolated workmen emerged from the munitions factory. They were a silent crowd. Only their steps could be heard on the damp cobbles. Even the young girls did not speak. They walked at the head of the irregular file because they had nimbler legs than the others. He had plenty of time. Tomkin was not available before five in the afternoon.
Friedrich got into a tram. It was empty. A conductress sold him his ticket. She had left her ears exposed and done up her hair so tightly at the nape of her neck that she could have been taken for a man. A tin trumpet hung at her bosom like a brooch. The poor woman wore pincenez. She walked with long strides through the swaying car like old sea-dogs on deck in a tempest. As no one was sitting in the car, Friedrich asked her if she would not sit down. She directed her pince-nez at him and said: ‘Conductors aren’t allowed to.’ Friedrich felt offended by the masculine plural in which she had so firmly included herself. And, irritated, he said to her: ‘You’re no conductor!’ using the masculine form. ‘I’d have you know,’ she replied, pince-nez directed straight at him, ‘that you have committed an offence against an official. I shall report you!’ ‘In this town,’ Friedrich thought, ‘Babel had lived. Women and Socialism. This country is the home of the proletarian idea. Here the proletariat is most strongly organized.’