‘In Zürich, comrade,’ he said to Friedrich, ‘you’ll see how the world treats us. People can’t get over our invasion of Belgium. I was against it from the start. But the war has quickly taught us to distinguish the solid basis of fact from theory. In peacetime it’s a different matter. One can make claims in a flourishing economy. But if the entire economy is imperilled one must try to preserve it, whether one is an employer or an employee. I know that you and your comrades don’t share our opinions. But it’s easier for you. You simply can’t compare us, proletarians but with equal civil rights as citizens of a western, civilized, constitutional monarchy, with the oppressed Russian proletariat. It is clear that the Russian proletarian is no patriot in the sense that the German proletarian is. After the war our Kaiser will have to be contented with a purely decorative role, like the King of England for example. A victory for the Tsar would lead only to greater oppression of the Russian proletariat, a German victory to the liberation of the German. Then we shall take giant strides towards the Republic.’
Friedrich took his leave before midnight, when he heard the party leader’s wife calling from the bedroom. It was still raining. The town was dark. Not a single one of its many windows showed a gleam of light. The people slept in the midst of war. Was there no widow mourning her husband? Could mothers sleep whose sons had fallen? He recalled the night when he had walked through the streets of Vienna. Then, too, all were asleep with few exceptions. Those who had woken then were now in the field, in concentration camps, in prisons or, at best, in Switzerland. The others slept. They slept when it was still peacetime and the war was only getting under way, they were sleeping now. ‘Today, as then, I am the only unsleeping being in the world. Each has his tomb, his grave, his stone with its inscription, his baptismal certificate, his documents, his military pass, his Fatherland. That gives them security. They can sleep. The codings in the chancellery offices register their fate. There is no government office in the world that has my coding. I have no number. I have nothing.’
In that town, and on that night, he was the only human being awake. He opened the window and looked out into the dark street. From the second floor on which his window lay he saw the feeble rectangular glimmer on the wall opposite and that gave him a certain satisfaction, as if the glimmer were his reward.
It was still raining.
It also rained the next two days, while he had to wait for his passport. ‘The German authorities,’ said the tailor consolingly, ‘are even making conditions in places where they are themselves becoming illegal.’
‘How quickly Kapturak manages it!’ thought Friedrich.
Nevertheless, he was delighted when he had the passport and the tailor handed him his travelling money. ‘For the first time,’ he said to himself, ‘I have proper documents. The authorities themselves have become my accomplices. Such are the miracles of war. Things are progressing.’
The next day he travelled to Zürich.
He sat in the third class and listened to the soldiers talking. They spoke of quite ordinary things: of bacon, meat dishes, a medical officer, a field hospital, brands of cigarettes. They had already domesticated the war. They were already living at their ease. The violent and premature death that was now stalking them had become as familiar as natural death in times of peace, familiar and remote. The war, once an unnatural phenomenon, had become a natural one.
At the last station before the frontier, he put Hilde’s letter in the post. ‘By the time it reaches her, I’ll be over there.’
He telegraphed his arrival to Berzejev.
14
From that moment he thought only of Berzejev. He would be seeing him soon. He remembered the origin of this friendship. Even more easily recalled than troubles suffered in common and dangers endured together during their escape, were Berzejev’s words and gestures, fixed in Friedrich’s memory without any particular association. He remembered how Berzejev slept and how he ate, how he held his left knee between his hands when he sat down and was pensive, and how he used to wash himself in the morning, rapidly and carefully and with a visible enjoyment of cold and water that was like a daily reaffirmation of the union of man with the elements.
He was already travelling over Swiss soil. No more martial posters on the station walls and no more trains full of uniformed men. It was as if he had come straight from a battle, not just from a country at war. Only here did the peaceful world he had yearned for in Siberia begin. It seemed to him that peace held a strange and unfamiliar aspect and that war had been the more obvious and natural condition. Throughout the entire journey across Russia, Austria and Germany he had grown accustomed to the idea of the sovereignty of certain death in Europe. All of a sudden, at a frontier, ordinary life began. It was as if he had reached the edge of a downpour and had been allowed to glimpse briefly how sharp the separation was between blue and cloudy sky, damp and dry earth. Suddenly he saw young men in civilian clothes who should long ago have worn uniform. Suddenly he saw men tranquilly taking their leave of women, heard how they said to each other: ‘Till we meet again’. It was evident that all were secure in their lives. At the newsstands the newspapers of every country hung side by side, as if they did not contain reports of bloodshed. ‘So this is the substance of neutrality, he told himself. ‘Even from the train I can feel how unimportant the war is. The awareness that so much blood is flowing no longer fills everyone’s thoughts. I begin to understand the disinterestedness of God. Neutrality is a kind of divinity.’
‘He’ll be at the station,’ he said. And, immediately afterwards, ‘He won’t come to the station, he’ll wait for me at the house. There’s no point in waiting for someone at the station. Besides, so far I’ve always arrived alone. No one has ever expected me or accompanied me. All the same, I shall be pleased if he is at the station.’
But Berzejev really was waiting, placid as ever. ‘You got my telegram, then?’ asked Friedrich. ‘No,’ said Berzejev, ‘I’ve been meeting every train coming from Germany for a week.’ ‘But whom were you expecting?’ ‘You!’ said Berzejev.
For the first time they saw each other in European civilian clothes. For the first time each noticed in the other’s dress a few minor features that were like the ultimate and most irrefutable evidence of the community of their way of thought. ‘So you’re wearing your hat, then!’ said Friedrich. ‘You don’t like it?’ asked Berzejev. ‘On the contrary, I can’t picture it otherwise.’ And they talked like two young men of the world about neckties, hats, double-breasted and single-breasted coats, as if there were no war and as if they were not there to await the Revolution.
‘If Savelli could hear us!’ said Berzejev, ‘how he’d despise us. Even here he obstinately insists on going around without a collar, to spite us, to spite R. and myself, and especially all “intellectuals”. It’s no ordinary ostentation. With him, it’s real hatred.’
As a matter of fact things weren’t going well for any of them. They had nothing to live on. It was a struggle for them to raise enough money each week for the flat. Savelli ate only once a day, R. urgently needed a pair of trousers. He wrote for a review, for which Savelli despised him. ‘And you?’ asked Friedrich. ‘I have money,’ said Berzejev. ‘I’m working. I’ve found work at a theatre. An actor I’ve become friendly with got a place for me. It wasn’t easy. The Swiss theatrical employees were not friendly at first; finally they found me congenial. I’ve even saved money. We could both live for a month without lifting a finger. You’re staying at my place. No rooms available. Deserters and pacifists have occupied the whole of Switzerland.’