I HAVE A THING TO TELL YOU

(Nun Will Ich Ihnen Was Sagen)

In the summer of 1936 Wolfe made his last visit to Germany, a land which he felt was in many ways his spiritual home. But that summer the horrors hidden behind the mask of Naziism revealed themselves and were crystallized in an incident on the train from Berlin to Paris in which a frightened little Jew had given Wolfe a handful of coins to keep for him just before he was dragged back into the Nazi terror at the border. That incident Wolfe made the center of a short novel, which he first called I Have Them Yet, in reference to the coins, but later named “I Have a Thing to Tell You. In September he wrote his agent from Paris: “I’ve written a good piece over here—I’m afraid it may mean that I can't come back to the place where I am liked best and have the most friends, but I've decided to publish it.” Yet months of work, re-writing and refining the story, were to take place before it was finally ready for publication in the New Republic in three installments on March 10, 17, and 24, 1937. His prophecy was true; his books were immediately banned in Germany.

In “I Have a Thing to Tell You” Wolfe returned to the short novel form as the one in which to recount the truth he discerned about Germany. He wrote to Dixon Wecter: “. . . the story wrote itself. It was the truth as I could see it, and I decided that a man’s own self-respect and integrity is worth more than his comfort or material advantage.”

Yet Wolfe did not regard this short novel as propaganda. When he was asked to allow it to be translated into Yiddish, he feared that it would be used for propaganda purposes, and said: “And frankly I do not think the story ought to be used in that way. It is a straight story; so far as I know, it has no propaganda in it save what the reader wishes to supply for himself by inference, and its greatest value, it seems to me, lies in that fact—that I wrote it as I wrote all my other stories about a human situation and living characters.”

“I Have a Thing to Tell You” is an objective, rapid, straight-forward narrative, centered sharply in its revelation of the state of Germany. When it was incorporated in You Can't Go Home Again, where it appears in greatly expanded form on pages 634-640, 641-651, 655, 663-704, and 743, its emphasis was shifted so that it became one of several incidents in George Webber’s German experience. Perhaps the greatest violence ever done a passage by Wolfe was that done the concluding paragraphs of “I Have a Thing to Tell You” when they were transferred to the last page of the novel and set in a totally new context, so that they appear to be a prophecy of his approaching death.

The version here reprinted is that of The New Republic, LXXXX (March 10, 17, 24, 1937), pages 132-136, 159-164, 202-207.

At seven o’clock the phone beside my bed rang quietly. I stirred, then roused sharply, from that fitful and uneasy sleep which a man experiences when he has gone to bed late knowing he has got to get up early. It was the porter.

“It is seven o’clock,” he said.

I answered: “All right. Thank you. I’m awake.’’

Then I got up, still fighting dismally with a stale fatigue which for sleep and with a gnawing tension of anxiety which called for action. One look about the room assured me. My old leather trunk lay packed and ready on the baggage rest. Now there was very little more to do except to shave and dress and drive to the station. The train was not due until half-past eight, and the station was not three minutes distant. I thrust my feet into my slippers, walked over to the windows, tugged the cord and pulled up the heavy blinds.

It was a gray morning. Below me, save for an occasional taxicab or motor car, the quiet thrum of a bicycle, or some one walking briskly to his work, with a lean, spare clack of early morning, the Kurfürstendamm was bare and silent. In the center of the street, above the tram tracks, the fine trees had already lost their summer freshness—that deep intensity of German green which is the greenest green on earth and which gives to all their foliage a kind of forest darkness, a legendary sense of magic and of time. The leaves looked faded now and dusty. They were already touched here and there by the yellowing tinge of autumn. A tram, cream-yellow, spotless, shining as a perfect toy, slid past, with a kind of hissing sound upon the rails and at the contacts of the trolley. Except for this the tram made no noise. Like everything they made, the tram was perfect in its function. Even the little cobblestones that paved the tramway were spotless as if each of them had just been gone over thoroughly with a whisk broom, and the strips of grass on either side were as green and velvety as Oxford sward.

On both sides of the street the great restaurants, cafes and terraces of the Kurfürstendamm were also bare and empty. Chairs were racked upon the tables, and everything was clean and still. Three blocks away, at the head of the street, the clock on the Gedachtnis-Kirche struck seven times. I could see the great bleak masses of the church, and in the trees a few birds sang.

Some one knocked upon the door. I turned and crossed and opened it. The waiter stood there with his breakfast tray. He was a boy of fifteen years, a blond-haired solemn child with fresh pink face. He wore a boiled shirt and a waiters uniform that was spotless-clean, but that, I think, had been sawed off and shortened down a little from the costume of some more mature inhabitant to fit its present owner. He marched in solemnly, stolidly uttering, in a gutteral and toneless voice, his three phrases of English, which were: “Good morning, sir,” as I opened the door; “If you bleeze, sir,” as he set the tray down upon the table; and “Sank you very much, sir,” as he marched out, turned and closed the door behind him.

For six weeks the formula had not varied by an atom, and now as he marched out again I felt a feeling of affection and regret. I told him to wait a moment, got my trousers, took some money and gave it to him. His pink face reddened into happiness. I shook hands with him, and then the boy said: “Sank you very much, sir.” And then, very quietly and earnestly: “Gute Reise.” He clicked his heels together and bowed formally; and then closed the door. And I stood there for a moment, with that nameless feeling of affection and regret, knowing that I should never see him again.

Then I went back to the table and poured out a cup of the hot rich chocolate, broke a crusty roll, buttered it, spread it with strawberry jam and ate it. The pot was still half full of chocolate, the dish still piled with little scrolls of creamy butter. There was enough of the delicious jam, the crusty rolls and flaky croissants to make a half-dozen breakfasts, but I had eaten all I wanted. I brushed my teeth and shaved myself, put shaving brush and toothbrush, all the other things, together in a little leather case, and put it away in the old trunk. Then I dressed. By seven-twenty I was ready.

Hartmann came in as I was ringing for the porter. He began to laugh as he saw me, closing his eyes, contorting his features and snuffling with laughter through his sourly puckered lips as if he had just eaten a half-ripe persimmon. Then he looked anxiously at me and said: “You are ready, then? You are going?”

I nodded. “Yes. Everything’s all ready. How do you feel. Franz?

He laughed suddenly, took off his spectacles and began to polish them. Without his glasses, his small face had a tired and worn look, and his weak eyes were bloodshot and weary from the night before. “Oh, Gott!” he cried with a kind of gleeful desperation. “I feel perfectly dret-ful! I have not efen been to bett! May I tell you something?” he said, and peered at me with the serious intensity with which he always uttered these words, “I feel like hell—I really do.”

He spoke good English. He had lived and worked in London for a year or two and since then his knowledge of the language had made his services extremely useful to the exporting firm that employed him. He rarely made an actual mistake in accent or pronunciation, yet one was instantly aware that he was speaking in a foreign tongue. It is not easy to describe—it was, more than anything else, perhaps, a certain intonation of the voice—a voice that spoke familiar words with the latent rhythm of another speech. He spoke without difficulty—there was occasionally a certain awkwardness in tense, an unsure exercise of idiom, a Germanic transposition of the English words—but his speech was always fluent, and his meaning clear. Yet, even when he spoke such simple words as “You are ready, then?” one was aware of a certain carefulness with “then,” as of one who had been schooled to say the word correctly. Or again, when he used such phrases as “Now, I may tell you something”—an expression that he used habitually, one felt a sense of strangeness not so much from the way he spoke the words (he spoke them very well, with a slight tendency toward the lisp, almost as if he were saying “thumthing”) as from the rather curious use he put them to. Thus, if one asked a casual question—where to buy a shirt, or where to get a bus, or whether there had been a call upon the telephone—Hartmann would turn with an air of almost startled earnestness and say: “Now I may tell you something—someone did call, yes.”

I looked at him a moment as he put his spectacles back on.

“Then you’ve had no sleep at all?” I said.

“Oh, yes,” he said wearily. “I have slept an hour. I came back home. My girl was asleep—I did not want to wake her up. So I laid down upon the couch. I did not efen take off my clothes. I was afraid I would be coming too late to see you at the station. And that,” he said peering at me most earnestly again, “would be too dret-ful!”

“Why don’t you go back home and sleep today after the train goes? I don’t think you’ll be able to do much at the office, feeling as you do. Wouldn’t it be better if you took the day off and caught up on your sleep?”

“Well, then,” said Hartmann abruptly, yet rather indifferently, “I will tell you something. It does not matter. It really does not matter. I will take something—some coffee or something”—he shrugged his shoulders—“it will not be too bad. But, Gott!” again the desperately gleeful laugh, “how I shall sleep tonight! After that I shall try to know my girl again.”

“I hope so, Franz. I'm afraid she hasn’t seen much of you the last month or so.”    

“Well, then,” said Hartmann, as before, “I will tell you something—it does not matter. It really does not matter. She is a good girl—she knows about these things—you like her, yes?—you think she is nice?”

“Yes, I think she’s very nice.”

“Well, then,” said Hartmann, “I may tell you: she is very nice. We get along together very well. I hope they will let me keep her,” he said quietly.

“They? Who do you man by ‘they,’ Franz?”

“Oh,” he said, wearily, “these people—these stupid people— that you know about.”

“But, good Lord, Franz! Surely they have not yet forbidden that, have they? Why you can step right out on the Kurfürstendamm and get a dozen girls before you’ve walked a block.”

“Oh,” said Hartmann, “you mean the little whores. Yes, you may still go to the little whores. That is quite all right. You see, my dear shap”—here Hartmann's small face puckered in a look of impish malice and he began to speak in that tone of exaggerated and mincing refinement that characterized some of his more vicious utterances—“I will now tell you something. Under the Dritte Reich we are all so happy, everything is so fine and healthy that it is perfectly God damn dret-ful,” he sneered. “You may go to the little whores in the Kurfürstendamm. But you cannot have a girl. If you have a girl you must marry her and—may I tell you?” he said frankly—I cannot marry. I do not make enough money. It would be quite impossible!” he said decisively. “And may I tell you this?” he continued, pacing nervously up and down the room, taking rapid puffs at his cigarette. “If you have a girl, then you most have two rooms. And that also is quite impossible! I have not efen money enough to afford two rooms.”

“You mean, if you are living with a girl you are compelled by law to have two rooms?”

“It is the law, yes,” said Hartmann, nodding with the air of finality with which a German states established custom. “You must. If you are living with a girl, she must have a room. Then you can say,” he went on seriously “you are not living with each other. You may sleep together every night. But then, you see, you will be good. You will not do some things against the Party. . . . Gott!” he cried, and lifting his impish face, he laughed again. “It is all quite dret-ful.”

“But if they find, Franz, that you’re living with her in a single room?”

“Well, then,” he said quietly, “I may tell you she will have to go.” And then, wearily, with the tone of bitter indifference that had become so marked in one short year: “It does not matter. I do not care. I pay no attention to these stupid people. I have my work. I have my girl. If they let me keep them that is all that matters.”

But now the porter had come in and was busy adjusting the straps of the leather trunk. I packed my briefcase with the letters, books and manuscript that had accumulated and gave it to the man. He dragged the baggage out into the hall and told us he would wait for us below.

I looked at my watch, found that it still lacked three-quarters of an hour until train time, and then asked Hartmann if we should go immediately to the station or wait at the hotel.

“Well, then,” he said, “I may tell you that we can be waiting here. If you wait here another half an hour I should imagine there would still be time.”

He offered me a cigarette. I struck a match for him. Then we sat down, myself at the table, Hartmann upon the couch against the wall. And for a moment more we smoked in silence.

“Well, then,” said Hartmann, “this time, it really is to be good-bye. . . . This time you really will be going,” he said, peering at me sharply with his earnest, anxious look.

“Yes, Franz. I’ve got to go this time. I’ve missed two boats already. I can’t miss another one.”

We smoked in silence for a moment, and then suddenly, earnestly, as before, “Well, then, may I tell you something? I am sorry.”

“And I, too, Franz.”

“We will all be terribly missing you,” he said.

And again we smoked in troubled silence.

“You will come back, of course,” said Hartmann presently. And then, most emphatically, “You must, of course. We like you here”—and in a moment, very simply, quietly, “you know, we do so love you.”

I did not say anything, but something tightened in my throat. And he, peering at me anxiously again, continued: “And you like it here? You like us? Yes!” he cried, in answer to his own question. “Of course you do!”

“Of course, Franz.”

“Then you must come back,” he said quietly. “It would be quite dret-ful if you did not.”

I did not speak, but again I noticed, as I had so often done before, the deep and tragic resonance of his quiet voice, a voice touched somehow, for an American, with unfathomed depths of living, with a resignation that had long since passed despair, a fortitude that had gone far past both pride and hope; He looked at me searchingly again, but I said nothing. In a moment Hartmann said: “And I—I too shall hope that we shall meet again.” 

“I hope so, Franz. I believe we shall, some day.” And then, trying to throw off the sadness that had fallen on us, I said strongly: “Of course we shall! I will come back, and we shall sit together talking just the same as we are now.”

He did not answer, but for a moment his face was contorted by the look of bitter humor I had seen so often.

“You think so,” he said and smiled his wry and bitter smile. 

“I’m sure of it!” I said more positively than ever. “We’ll sit together drinking, we’ll have parties, we’ll stay up all night and dance around the trees and go to Aenna Maentz at three o’clock for chicken soup. All of it will be the same.”

“Well, then,” he said quietly, “I hope that you are right. I am not too sure,” said Hartmann, “I may not be here.”

“You!” I said, and laughed derisively. “Franz, you know you will be here as long as Karl is here. You couldn’t get along without each other. You’ll always be together. Besides, the firm has got to have you for the English trade.”

“I am not so sure,” he said. He was silent a moment longer, puffing at his cigarette, and then he continued, rather hesitantly: ‘You see—there are these fools—these stupid people!” He ground his cigarette out viciously in the ashtray and, his face contorted in a wry smile of defiant, lacerated pride, he cried angrily: “Myself —I do not care. I do not worry for myself. I have my little life!” cried Hartmann—“my little chob—my little girl—my little room. These people—these fools!” he cried—“I do not notice them. I do not see them! It does not bother me!” he cried. And now indeed his face was bitter as a grotesque mask. “I shall always get along,” said Hartmann. “If they run me out—well, then, I may tell you that I do not care! There are other places!” he cried bitterly. “I have lived in England and Vienna. If they take my chob, my girl”—he cried scornfully and waved his hand impatiently—“may I tell you that it does not matter? And if these fools—these stupid people—if they take this little life of mine, I do not think that is so terrible. You think so? Yes?”

“Yes, I think so, Franz. I should not like to die.”

“Well, then,” said Hartmann quietly, “with you it is a different matter. You are American. With us, it cannot be the same. I have seen men shot, in Munich, in Vienna—I do not think it is too bad”—he turned and looked searchingly at me again, “no, I should imagine it is not too bad,” he said.

“Oh, hell, you’re talking like an idiot now! No one's going to shoot you. No one’s going to take your job or girl away.”

Hartmann did not answer for a moment. Presently he said, abruptly: “Now I think that I may tell you something. In the last year here these fools—these stupid people—have become quite dret-ful. All the Chews have been taken from their work, they have nothing to do any more. These people come around—some stupid people in their uniforms,” he said contemptuously— “and they say that everyone must be an Aryan man—this wonderful plue-eyed person eight feet tall who is being Aryan in his family since 1820. If there is a little Chew back there—then I should imagine it will be a pity.” Hartmann jeered. “This man can no more work—he is no more in the Gherman spirit. It is all quite stupid.” He smoked in silence for a moment, then continued. “This last year these big fools are coming round to Karl and me. They demand to know who I am, where I am from— whether I am porn or not. They say I must be proving to them that I am an Aryan man. Otherwise I can no longer hold my chob.”

“But, my God, Franz!” I cried, and stared at him in stupefaction. “You don’t mean to tell me that—why you’re not a Jew! Are you?”

“Oh, Gott, no! Hartmann cried, with a sudden shout of gleeful desperation. “My dear shap, I am so God damn Cherman it is simply dret-ful.”

“Well, then,” I demanded, puzzled, “why should they bother you? Why do they worry about your being Aryan if you’re German?”

Hartmann was silent a moment longer before he answered, and the look of wounded humor in his face had deepened perceptibly before he spoke again. “My dear Paul,” he said, “now I may tell you something. I am completely Cherman, it is true. Only, my poor dear mother—I do love her so, of course—but, Gott!” He laughed again through a closed mouth, with a kind of bitter merriment in his face, as if he were laughing with an unripe persimmon in his mouth. “Gott! She is such a fool. This poor lady,” he said, a trifle contemptuously, “was loving my father very much, so much, in fact, that she did not go to the trouble to marry him. So these people come and ask me all these questions and say ‘Where is your father?’—and of course I cannot tell them. Because, alas, my dear old shap, I am this bastard. Gott!” he cried again, seeing the look of stupefaction on my face, and, with eyes narrowed into slits, laughed through the corners of his mouth. “It is all so dret-ful—so stupid—and so horribly funny!” Hartmann cried.

“But Franz! Surely you must know who your father is—you must have heard his name?”

“My Gott, yes!” he cried, and laughed through his closed lips again. “That is what makes it all so funny.”

“You mean you know him, then? He is living?”

“But of course!” said Hartmann. “He is living in Berlin.”

“But do you ever see him?”

“But of course!” he said again. “I see him every week. We are quite good friends.”

“But—then I don’t see what the trouble is—unless they can take your job from you because you are a bastard. It’s embarrassing, of course, but can’t you explain it to them? Won’t your father help you out?”

“I am sure he would,” said Hartmann, “if I told this thing to him. Only, I cannot tell him. You see,” he went on quietly, after a moment’s pause, “my father and I are quite good friends. We never speak about this thing together—the way he was knowing my mother. And now, I would not ask him to help me—because it might be seeming I was taking an advantage. It might spoil everything.”

“But your father—is he known here? Would these people know his name?”

“Oh, Gott, yes!” Hartmann cried out gleefully. “That is what makes it all so horrible—and so dret-fully amusing. They would know his name at once—perhaps they say I am this little Chew and throw me out because I am no Aryan man—and my father,” Hartmann choked, bent half over in his bitter merriment—“my father is this big Nazi—this most important person in the Party!”

For a moment I looked at him and could not speak. As he sat there, smiling his embittered and disdainful smile, the whole legend of his life became plain. He had been life’s tender child, so sensitive, so affectionate, so amazingly intelligent. He had been the fleeceling lamb thrust out into the cold to bear the blast and to endure the bitter strife of want and loneliness. He had been wounded cruelly. He had been warped and twisted and yet he had maintained a kind of bitter hard integrity.

“I'm so damned sorry, Franz! I never knew of this.”

“Well, then,” said Hartmann indifferently, “I may tell you that it does not matter. It really does not matter.” He snuffled a little through his lips, flicked the ash off his cigarette and shifted his position. “I shall do something about it—I have engaged one of these little men—what do you call them?—lawyers—oh, Gott! but they are dret-ful!” Hartmann shouted gleefully—“to make some lies for me. This little man with his papers—he will feel around until he discovers fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers—everything I need. If he cannot, if they will not believe—well, then,” said Hartmann, “I must lose my chob. It does not matter.

“But these fools,” he said again with an expression of disgust— “these dret-ful people! Some day, my dear Paul, you must write a bitter book. You must tell all these people just how horrible they are. Myself—I am a little man. I have no talent. I am only a little clerk. I cannot write a book. I can do nothing but admire what others do and know if it is good. But you must tell these dret-ful people what they are. I have a little fantasie,” he went on with a look of impish glee—“when I feel bad—when I see all these dret-ful people sitting at the tables putting food into their mouths, walking up and down in the Kurfürstendamm, then I imagine that I have a little ma-shine gun. So I take this little ma-shine gun and go up and down and when I see one of these dret-ful people I take the little ma-shine gun and I go—ping-ping-ping-ping-ping!” As he uttered these words he took aim and hooked his finger rapidly, saying “ping-ping-ping” in a rapid, childish key. “Oh, Gott!” he cried ecstatically, “I should so enchoy it if I could go around with this little ma-shine gun and use it on all these stupid fools. But I cannot. My ma-shine gun is only in imagination. With you it is different. You have a ma-shine gun you can really use. And you must use it,” he said earnestly. “Some day you must write this bitter book in which you tell these fools where they belong. Only,” and he turned anxiously toward me, “you must not do it yet. Or if you do, you must not say some things in your next book that will make these people angry with you here.”

“What kind of things do you mean, Franz?”

“These things about”—he lowered his voice and glanced quickly toward the door—“about politics—about the Party. Things that would bring them down on you. It would be quite dret-ful if you did.”

“Why would it?”    

“Because,” he said, “you have a name here. I don't mean with these fools, but with the people left who still read books. If you should spoil it now—if you should write some things now that they would not like—the Reichsschriftenkammer would forbid your books. And that would be a pity. We do so like you here— I mean the people who do understand. They cannot believe that they are reading a translation. They say that it must sound as if it had been written in Cherman in the beginning and—Oh, Gott!” he shouted gleefully again—“they call you this very great writer.” 

“That’s a good deal more than they do at home, Franz.”

“I know. But then, I notice, in America they love everyone a year—and then they spit upon him. Here, with many people you must have it—this name of yours,” he said earnestly. “And it would be too dret-ful if you spoil it now. You will not?” he said, and again looked anxiously at me.

I did not answer for a moment, and then I said: “A man must write what he must write. A man must do what he must do.” 

“Then you mean if you felt you had to say some things—about politics—about these stupid fools—about—”

“What about life?” I said. “What about people?”

“You would say it?”

“Yes, I would.”

“Efen if it did you harm? Efen if it spoiled you here?” And, peering anxiously at me, he waited for my answer.

“Yes, Franz, even if that happened.”

He was silent a moment more and then, with apparent hesitancy, said: “Efen if you write something—if they say to you that you cannot come back?”

I too was silent now. There was much to think of. But at last I said: “Yes, even if they told me that.”

He straightened sharply, with a swift intake of anger and impatience. “Then I may tell you something,” he said harshly. “You are one big fool.” He rose, flung his cigarette away and began to pace nervously up and down the room. ''Why should you go and spoil yourself,” he cried. “You are at home here. Everybody understands you. And for a little politics”—he said bitterly— “because there are these stupid fools, you would now go and spoil it all.”

I made no answer. In a moment, still walking feverishly up and down he said: “Why should you do it? You are no politician. You are no propaganda Party man. You are not one of these God damn little New York Salon-Kommunisten.” He spat the word out viciously, his pale eyes narrowed into slits. “May I now tell you something?” He paused abruptly, looking at me. “I hate these bloody little people—they are everywhere the same. You find them everywhere—in London, Paris and Vienna. They are bad enough in Europe, but in America!” Hartmann shouted, his face lighting up with impish glee—“Oh, Gott! If I may tell you, they are simply dret-ful! Where do you get them from? Even the European esthete says, ‘My Gott! these bloody men, these awful people, these damned esthetes from the Oo Ess Ah—are dret-ful!’ ”

“Are you talking now of Communists?”

“Well, now, I may tell you something”—curtly and coldly, with a kind of arrogant dismissal that was becoming more and more characteristic of him—“it does not matter what they call themselves. They are all the same. They are these little expressionissmus, surrealissmus, kommunisstnus people—but really they are all the same. I am so tired of all these belated little people,” he said, and turned away with an expression of weariness and disgust. “It simply does not matter what they say. For they know nothing.”

“You think then, Franz, that all of communism is like that— that all communists are just a crowd of parlor fakes?”

“Oh, die Kommunisten” said Hartmann wearily. “No, I do not think they are all fakes. And Kommunissmus!” he looked at me, shrugged his shoulders with an air of protesting agreement, and said: “Well, then, I think that it is very good. I think that some day we may live like that. Only, I do not think that you and I will see it. It is too great a dream. It is more than to expect. And these things are not for you. You are not one of these little propaganda Party people—you are a writer. It is your duty to look about you and to write about the world and people as you see them. It is not your duty to write propaganda speeches and call them books. You could not do that. It is quite impossible.”

“But if by writing about the world and people as you see them you come in conflict with these propaganda Party people—what then?”

“Then,” he said roughly, “you will be a great big fool. You can write about the world and people without these Party people coming down on you. You do not need to mention them. And if you do, and do not say nice things, then you cannot come back. And for what? If you were some little propaganda person in New York, you could say these things and then it would not matter. Because they can say anything they like—but they know nothing of us, and it costs them nothing. You have so much to lose. You have a name. The people admire you here!” Anxiously, earnestly, searchingly again, he looked at me and said: “And you? You do so like the people, too?”

“Enormously.”

“You must, of course,” he quietly replied, then added gently: “They are really a good lot. They are big fools, of course, but they are not too bad.”

He was silent a moment, ground out his cigarette in the ashtray and then said, a little sadly, “Well then, you must do what you must do. But you are one big fool. Come on, old shap,” he said. He looked at his watch and put his hand upon my arm. “Now it is time to go.”

We paused a moment, looking at each other, then we clasped each other by the hand.

“Good-bye, Franz,” I said.

“Good-bye, dear Paul,” said Hartmann quietly. “We shall miss you very much.”

“And I you,” I answered.

Then we went out.

II.

The hour had come: along the station platform there was a flurry of excitement in the crowd, a light flashed, the porters moved along the quay. I turned and looked up the tracks. The train was sweeping down on us. It bore down swiftly, sweeping in around the edges of the Zoologic Gardens, the huge snout of the locomotive looming bluntly, the fenders touched with trimmings of bright green. The great machine steamed hotly past and halted. The dull line of the coaches was broken vividly in the middle with the glittering red of the Mitropa dining car.

We swung to action. My porter, heaving up my heavy leather case, clambered quickly up the steps and found a seat for me. There was a blur of voices all around, an excited tumult of farewell. Hartmann shook hands hard and fast, his small and bitter face was contorted as if he were weeping, as indeed he was. With a sudden shock of recognition I saw how close together were his laughter and his grief. I heard his curiously vibrant, deep and tragic voice saying, “Good-bye, good-bye, dear Paul, auf wiedersehen”

Then I climbed up into the train. The guard slammed the door. Even as I made my way down the narrow corridor toward my compartment the train started, was in motion. These forms, these faces and these lives all slid away.

Hartmann kept walking forward, waving his hat, his face still contorted with that strange grimace that was half bitter mirth, half sorrow. Then the train swept out around the curve. And he was lost.

We gathered speed. The streets and buildings of the West slipped past me—those solid ugly streets, those great solid ugly buildings of Victorian German style, that yet, with all the pleasant green of trees, the window-boxes bright with red geraniums, the air of order, substance and comfort, had always been as familiar and as pleasant to me as the quiet streets and houses of a little town. Already we were sweeping through Charlottenburg. We passed the station without halting and on the platforms, with the old and poignant feeling of loss and of regret, I saw the people waiting for the Stadtbahn trains. Upon its elevated track the great train swept on smoothly toward the West, gathering in momentum slowly. We passed the Funkturm. Almost before I knew it we were running through the western outskirts of the city, toward the open country. We passed an aviation field. I saw the hangars and a flock of shining planes. Even as I looked a great silverbodied plane moved out, taxied along and gathered speed, lifted its tail and, as we vanished, broke slowly from the earth.

And now the city was behind us. Those familiar faces, forms and voices of just six minutes past were now remote from me as dreams, imprisoned there as in another world, a world hived of four million lives, of hope and fear and hatred, anguish and despair, of love, of cruelty and devotion, that was called Berlin.

And now the land was stroking past, the level land of Brandenburg, the lonely flatland of the north that I had always heard to be so ugly and that I had found so strange, so haunting and so beautiful. The dark solitude of the forest was around us now, the loneliness of the kiefern trees, tall, slender, towering and straight as sailing masts, bearing upon their tops the burden of their needled and eternal green. Their naked poles shone with that lovely gold-bronze color that is itself like the material distillation of a magic light. And all between was magic too. The forest dusk was gold-brown, also, with this magic light, the earth gold-brown and barren, the trees themselves alone and separate, a pole-like forest filled with haunting light.

And then, the light would open and the wood be gone. And we were sweeping through the level cultivated earth, tilled thriftily to the very edges of the track. And I could see the clusters of farm buildings, the red-tiled roofs, the cross-quarterings of barns and houses. Then we would find the magic of the woods again.

I opened the door of my compartment and went in and took a seat beside the door. On the other side, in a corner by the window, a young man sat and read a book. He was an elegant young man dressed most fashionably. There was a kind of foppish elegance about his costume that one felt somehow was Continental, even though one did not know from what place upon the Continent he came.

What struck me therefore with a sense of shock was the American book he was reading. Even as I pondered on this puzzling combination the door was opened and a woman and a man came in.

They were Germans. The woman was no longer young, but plump, warm, seductive-looking, with hair so blonde it was the color of bleached straw, and eyes as blue as sapphires. She spoke rapidly to the man who accompanied her, then turned to me and asked me if the other places were unoccupied. I replied that I thought so, and looked inquiringly at the young man in the corner. And he too replied, in somewhat broken German, that he believed so. The woman nodded her head in satisfaction, spoke with quick authority to her companion and he went out and presently returned with their baggage—two valises, which he arranged upon the baggage rack above their heads.

He was a tall, blond, fresh-complexioned German, who conveyed indefinably an impression of bewildered innocence. The woman, although most attractive, was obviously much the older of the two. One knew for a certainty she was in her thirties, and she might even already have attained her fortieth year. There were traces of fine wrinkles at the corners of her eyes, a kind of physical maturity and warmth which had in it the wisdom of experience, but from which some of the freshness of youth had gone.

The young fellow obviously was in his early twenties. One felt instantly, without knowing why, that there was no family relation between these two: it was completely evident that the young man could not have been a brother, but it was also evident that they were not man and wife. Again, the woman, with the seductive warmth of her appeal, had an almost shameless physical attraction, a kind of naked allure such as one often sees in people of the theatre—in a chorus girl or in the strip woman of a burlesque show. Beside her assurance, her air of practice and authority, her sharply vivid stamp, the young man was almost countrified. And he certainly did look nervous and uneasy in the art of travel: I noticed that he kept his head down most of the time, and did not speak unless she spoke to him. And when she did, he would flush crimson with embarrassment, two wedge-shaped flags of color deepening in his fresh pink face to beetlike red.

It was hard not to fall back upon an ancient parable—to assume that the boy was the village hayseed in the toils of the city siren, that she had duped him into taking her to Paris, that the fool and his money would soon be parted. And yet, there was certainly nothing repulsive about the blonde-haired woman. She was decidedly a most attractive and engaging creature. She even seemed to be completely unaware of that astonishing quality of sexual magnetism which she undoubtedly did possess, and to express herself sensually and naturally with the innocent warmth of a child.

While I was busy with these speculations the door of the compartment opened again and a stuffy-looking little man with a long nose looked in, peered about truculently and rather suspiciously, and then demanded to know if the remaining seats in the compartment were free. We all told him that we thought so. Upon receiving this information, he too, without another word, disappeared down the corridor, to reappear again with a large valise. I helped him stow it away upon the rack above his head; although I do not think he could have done it for himself, he accepted my service without a word of thanks, hung up his overcoat, fidgeted and worried about, took a newspaper from his pocket, sat down and opened it, banged the compartment door rather viciously, and, after peering around sourly and mistrustfully at the rest of us, rattled his paper and began to read.

While he read his paper I had a chance to observe this sour-looking customer from time to time. In a well known phrase of modern parlance, he was “nothing to write home about.” Not that there was anything sinister-looking about the man—decidedly there was not. It was just that he was a drab, stuffy, irascible-looking little fellow of the type that one is always afraid one is going to encounter on a trip but that one hopes fervently he won’t meet. He looked like the kind of fellow who would always be banging down the window of the compartment without asking anyone else about it, always fidgeting and fuming about—always, in short, trying by every cranky, crusty and ill tempered means to make his traveling companions as uncomfortable as possible.

Yes, he was certainly a well known type, but aside from these unpleasant aspects he was wholly unremarkable. It was only when he had intruded himself into the intimacy of a long journey and began immediately to buzz and worry around like a troublesome hornet that he became memorable. At this moment, in fact, the elegant young gentleman in the corner by the window almost ran afoul of him. The young fellow took out an expensive-looking cigarette case, and, smiling amiably, asked the lady if she objected to his smoking. She immediately answered, with great friendliness, that she minded not at all. I myself received this welcome information with considerable relief, took a package of cigarettes from my pocket and was on the point of joining my unknown young companion in the luxury of smoke when old Fuss-And-Fidget opposite me rattled his paper viciously, glared sourly at us and then, pointing at a sign upon the wall of the compartment, croaked dismally, “Nicht Raucher.”

Well, all of us had known that at the beginning, but we had not known that Fuss-And-Fidget was going to make an issue of it. The young fellow and I glanced at each other with a slightly startled look, grinned a little, caught the lady’s eye, which was also twinkling with the comedy of the occasion, and were obediently about to put our cigarettes away unsmoked when Fuss-And-Fidget looked sourly around at us a second time and then said bleakly that as far as he was concerned it was all right. He’d just wanted to point out to us that we were in a nonsmoking compartment. The implication plainly was that from this time on the crime was on our heads, that he had done what he could as a good citizen to warn us, but that if we proceeded with our guilty plot against the laws of the land it was no further concern of his. Being thus reassured, we produced our cigarettes again and lighted up.

Time passed in silence now, and presently I fell into a dozing sleep, from which I would start up from time to time to look about me, then to doze again. Again and again I started up to find old Fuss-And-Fidget’s eyes fixed on me in a look of such suspicion and ill tempered sourness that the expression barely escaped malevolence. Moreover, he was so fidgety and nervous that it was almost impossible to sleep longer than for a few minutes at a time. He was always crossing and uncrossing his legs, always rattling his newspaper, always fooling with the handle of the door, half opening the door and banging it to again, as if he were afraid it was not securely closed. He was always jumping up and going out into the corridor, where he would pace up and down, look out the windows at the speeding landscape, and fidget up and down the corridor again, holding his hands behind him, twiddling his fingers nervously as he walked.

Meanwhile, the train was advancing across the country at terrific speed. Forest and land, village and farm, tilled land and pasture rushed past us with the deliberate but devouring movement of the high velocity. We slackened a moment as we crossed the Elbe but there was no halt. Two hours after our departure from Berlin we were sweeping in beneath the arched, enormous roof of the Hannover station. There was a halt of ten or fifteen minutes here. I had fallen into a doze but as the train slackened and began to come into the outskirts of the old city I awoke. But fatigue still held me. I did not get up.

The others in the compartment—everyone except myself and the elegant young gentleman in the corner—got up and went out upon the platform to get as much fresh air and exercise as our short stay allowed. Meanwhile, my companion in the corner had put down his book and, after peering out the window for a moment, turned to me and said in English, marked by a slight accent, “Where are we now?”

I told him we were at Hannover.

He sighed a little and said, “I am tired of traveling. I shall be glad when I get home.”

“And where is home for you?”

“New York,” he said, and seeing a look of surprise upon my face he added quickly: “Of course I am not American by birth, as you can see. But I am a naturalized American and my home is in New York.”

I told him that I lived there too, and he asked me if I had been long in Germany.

“No, not recently. I came over about two months ago.”

“At first, when you came in this morning, I thought you were German. But then I saw you could not be German from your accent. When I saw you reading The Paris Herald I decided that you were English or American.”

“I am American, of course.”

“Yes, I can see that now. I,” he said, “am Polish by birth. I went to America fifteen years ago to live, but my family still live in Poland.”

“And you have been to see them, naturally?”

“Yes. I have two brothers living in the country. I am coming from there now,” he said. He was silent for a moment and then added with some emphasis, “But not again. Not for a long time will I visit them. I am sick of Europe,” he went on. “I am tired of all this foolish business, these politics, this hate, these armies and this talk of war—the whole damn stuffy atmosphere—here”—he cried indignantly and, thrusting his hand into his breast pocket, he pulled out a paper, “Will you look at this?”

“What is it?”

“A paper—a permit—which allows me to take twenty-three marks out of Germany. Twenty-three marks!” he repeated scornfully, “—as if I want their God damn money.”

“I know. You’ve got to get a paper every time you turn around. Look here!” I cried, and reaching in my own breast pocket I pulled out a mass of papers big enough to choke a horse. “I got all of these in two months’ time.”

The ice was broken now. Upon a mutual grievance we began to warm up to each other. It quickly became evident that my new acquaintance, with the patriotic fervor of his race, was almost passionately American.

“Oh,” he said, “it will be good after all this to be back there where all is Peace—where all is Friendship—where all is Love.”

I had myself some reservations on this score, but I did not utter them. His fervor was so genuine and warm that it would have been unkind to try to qualify it. And besides, I too was homesick now and his words, generous and wholehearted as they were, warmed me with their pleasant glow.

For I, as he, was weary and oppressed, exhausted with these pressures, worn out with these tensions of the nerves and spirit, sickened by the cancer of these cureless hates which had not only poisoned the life of nations but had eaten in one way or another into the lives of all my friends, of almost everyone that I had known here. And so, like my new-found fellow countryman, I too felt, beneath the extravagance and intemperance of his language, a certain justice in comparison. And I felt further that it would be very good to be back home again, out of the poisonous constrictions of this atmosphere, where, whatever we might lack, we still had air to breathe in, winds to clear that air.

My new friend now told me that he was a member of a brokerage concern in Wall Street. This seemed to call for some similar identification on my part and I gave him the most truthful answer I could make, which was that I worked for a publishing house. He remarked then that he knew the family of a New York publisher. And when I asked him who these people were he answered, ‘The Edwards family.”

I said: “I know the Edwardses. They are friends of mine and Mr. Edwards is my publisher. And you,” I said, “your name is Johnnie, isn't it? I have forgotten your last name, but I have heard it—”

He nodded quickly, smiling. “Yes, Johnnie Stefanowski,” he said. “And you?—what is your name?”

I told him.

He said, “Of course. I know of you.”

And instantly we were shaking hands, with that kind of stunned but exuberant surprise which reduces people to the banal conclusion that “it’s a small world after all.”

And now indeed we had established contact at a thousand points and found we knew in common scores of people. We discussed them enthusiastically, almost joyfully. By the time the other people returned to the compartment and the train began to move again we were engaged in rapid conversation.

Our three companions looked somewhat startled to hear this rapid-fire of conversation, this evidence of acquaintanceship between two people who had apparently been strangers just ten minutes since. Our little blonde lady smiled at us and took her seat; the young man also. Old Fuss-And-Fidget, all ears now, glancing quickly, sharply, from one to the other of us, listened attentively to all we said.

The cross-fire of our talk went back and forth, from my corner of the compartment to my friend’s. I felt myself a sense of embarrassment at the sudden intrusion of this intimacy in a foreign language among fellow travelers, with whom we had heretofore maintained a restrained formality. But Johnnie Stefanowski evidently was troubled not at all and smiled in a friendly fashion at our companions as if they too were parties to our conversation and could understand every word we said.

Under this engaging influence, everyone began to thaw out visibly. The little blonde lady now began to talk in an animated way to her young companion. In a few moments Fuss-And-Fidget chimed in too. In a very short time the whole compartment was humming with this rapid interplay of English and of German.

Johnnie Stefanowski now proposed that we seek out the Speisewagen and procure refreshment. “I am not hungry,” he said indifferentlv. “In Poland I have had to eat too much. I am sick of food—but would you like some Polish fruits?” he said, indicating a large paper-covered package at his side. “I believe they have prepared some things for me—some fruits from my brother’s estate, some chickens and some partridges. I have no appetite myself, but wouldn’t you take something?”

I told him that I was not hungry yet.

He suggested thereupon that we get a drink. “I still have these marks,” he said, “seventeen or eighteen of them. I no longer have any need of them. But now that I have met you I think it would be nice if we could spend them. Shall we go and see what we can find?”

To this I agreed. We arose, excused ourselves to our companions and as Stefanowski left his seat, old Fuss-And-Fidget asked him if he was willing to change seats. Indifferently the young man answered, “Yes, take my seat, of course. It does not matter to me where I sit.”

We went out into the narrow corridor and, moving forward through several coaches of the hurtling train, we finally reached the Speisewagen, skirted the hot breath of the kitchens and seated ourselves at one of the tables in one of the beautiful, bright clean coaches of the Mitropa service. Stefanowski seemed to have a Polish gentleman's liberal capacity for drink. He tossed his brandy off at a single gulp, remarking rather plaintively: “It is very small. But it is good and does no harm. We shall have more.”

Pleasantly warmed by brandy, and talking together with the ease of people who had known each other for many years, we now began to discuss our companions in our own compartment.

“The little woman—she is rather nice,” said Stefanowski—“I think she is not very young, and yet, she is quite charming, isn’t she? A personality.”

“And the young man with her?” I inquired. “You do not think he is her husband?”

“No, of course not,” replied my companion instantly. “It is most curious,” he went on in a puzzled tone, “he is much younger, obviously, and not the same—he is much simpler than the lady.”

“Yes. It’s almost as if he were some young fellow from the country, and she—”

“Is like someone in the theatre,” Stefanowski nodded. “An actress. Or perhaps some music-hall performer.”

“And the other man?” I said. “The little one? The fidgety little fellow who keeps staring at us. Who is he?”

“Oh, that one,” said my friend impatiently. “I do not know. I do not care. He is some stuffy little man—you always meet them on a trip—it does not matter. But shall we go back now?” he said, “and talk to them? We shall never see them after this: and it would be interesting to find out who they are.”

I agreed. Accordingly, my Polish friend now called the waiter, got our bill and paid it—and still had ten or twelve marks left from what remained of the waning twenty-three. Then we got up and went back through the speeding train to our compartment.

The lady smiled at us as we came in. And our three fellow passengers all regarded us with a kind of sharpened curiosity. It was evident that during our absence we had been the subject of their speculation. Stefanowski smiled and spoke to them at once. His German was somewhat broken but coherent, and he was a man of such natural warmth and social assurance that his deficiencies did not bother him at all. Our companions responded quickly, even eagerly, to our greeting, and immediately gave free expression to their curiosity, to the speculations which our meeting, our apparent recognition of each other, had aroused.

The lady asked Stefanowski where he came from—“Was sind sie fur ein Landsmann?” And he replied that he was an American.

“Ach so?”—for a moment she looked surprised, then added quickly, “but not by birth?”

“No,” said Stefanowski, “I am Polish by birth. But I live in New York now. And my friend here”—he indicated me, and they all turned to stare curiously at me—“is an American by birth.”

They nodded in satisfaction and, smiling with eager curiosity, the lady said—“And your friend here—he is an artist, isn’t he?”

Stefanowski said I was.

“A painter?”—the lady almost gleefully pursued the confirmation of her own predictions.

“He is not a painter. He is a writer.” My young Polish friend said “Dichter,” which means poet, which I amended quickly to “ein schriftsteller.”

All three of them thereupon looked at one another with nods of satisfaction, saying ah, they thought so, it was evident, etc.

Old Fuss-and-Fidget even now chimed in with a sage observation that it was apparent “from the head.” The others nodded in agreement, and the lady, now turning again to Stefanowski, said, “But you—you are not an artist, are you? You do something else?”

He replied that he was a business man—a “Geschäftsmann”—that his business was in Wall Street, a name which apparently had imposing connotations for them, for they all nodded in an impressed manner and said “ah” again.

We went on then and told them how we had never seen each other before that morning, but how each of us had known of the other through many mutual friends whom we had known for years. This news delighted everyone. Our little blonde lady nodded triumphantly, burst out in excited conversation with her companion and with Fuss-And-Fidget, the effect of which was, “What did I tell you? I said the same thing, didn't I? It’s a small world after all, isn’t it?” etc.

Now we were all really wonderfully at ease with one another, all talking eagerly and naturally, as if we had known one another for years. The little lady began to tell us all about herself. She and her husband were, she said, proprietors of a business near the Alexanderplatz. No—smiling—the young man was not her husband. He was a young artist and employed by her. In what sort of business? She laughed—one would never guess. She and her husband manufactured mannikins for window-shop display. Their business, I inferred, was quite a large one. She told us that they employed over fifty workers, and occasionally they had had almost a hundred. For this reason, she had to go to Paris once or twice a year. For, she explained, Paris set the fashion in these figures as it did in clothes.

Of course, they did not buy the Paris models. Mein Gotti that was impossible with the present money situation as it was. Nevertheless, hard as it was, she had to get to Paris somehow once or twice a year, just in order to keep up with “what was going on.” She took this young man with her on these trips. He made designs, drew models of the late show-window modes in Paris, and duplicated them for her when he returned.

Stefanowski now remarked that he did not see how it was even possible, under present circumstances, for a German citizen to travel anywhere. It had become difficult enough for a foreigner now to travel in and out of Germany. The money complications were so confusing and so wearisome. I added to this an account of my own experiences of the summer in my brief travels—the difficulties that had attended even a short journey to the Austrian Tirol. Ruefully I displayed the pocket full of papers, permits, visas and official stamps I had accumulated in two months. Upon this common ground we all again were vociferously agreed. The lady affirmed that it was stupid, exhausting and, for a German with business out of his own country, almost impossible. She added quickly, loyally, that of course it was also necessary, but then began to give an account of her own difficulties, which went swiftly into a bewildering maze of checks and balances, and which finally ended by her waving her hand charmingly, saying, “Ach Gott! it is all too complicated, too confusing, to explain.”

Old Fuss-And-Fidget put in here, with confirmations of his own. He was, he said, an attorney in Berlin—a “Rechtsanwalt”—who had formerly had extensive professional connections in France and in other portions of the Continent. He had visited America as well, he added. He had been there, in fact, as recently as 1930, when he had attended an international congress of lawyers in New York. He even spoke a little English, which he now unveiled for us, and he was going now, he told us, to another international congress of lawyers which was to open in Paris within the next day or so and which would last a week. But it was hard for a German to make a trip even of this short duration. And as for his former professional activities in other countries, they were now, alas, impossible.

He asked me if any of my books had been translated and published in Germany and I told him they had. They were all warmly curious, wanted to know the title and my name. Accordingly, I wrote out for them the German titles of the books, the name of the German publisher, my own name. The little lady put the paper away in her pocketbook and announced enthusiastically that she would buy the books on her return to Germany. And Fuss-And-Fidget, after carefully reading the paper, folded it and put it away in his wallet, remarking that he too would buy the books when he returned.

Stefanowski now picked up his bulky paper package, opened it and demanded that everyone partake. There were some splendid pears and peaches, a plump broiled chicken, some fat squabs and various other delicacies. Our companions protested that they could not deprive him of his lunch, but the young man insisted with a vigorous warmth that was obviously a characteristic of his good-hearted nature that he and I were going to the dining car for luncheon anyway, and that if they did not eat the contents of the package it would go to waste. Whereupon, they all helped themselves to fruit, which they pronounced delicious, and the lady promised she would later on investigate the chicken. Upon these assurances, with friendly greetings all around, my Polish friend and I departed for a second time.

III.

It is astonishing how short a time it takes to get acquainted on a journey. As we made our way a second time along the corridors of the speeding train I reflected that already Stefanowski and I were as accustomed to each other as if we had been friends for many years. As to the new-found friends in our compartment, we were delighted with them all. In the most extraordinary way, and in the space of fifteen minutes’ time, we seemed to have entered into the lives of all these people and they in ours. Now we were not only immensely interested in the information they had given us about themselves: we were as warmly, eagerly concerned with the problems that confronted them as if their troubles were our own.

During a long and sumptuous meal—a meal that began with brandy, proceeded over a fine bottle of Bernkasteler and wound up over coffee and more brandy and a good cigar, a meal on which we were both exuberantly determined to spend the remainder of our German money, we discussed our companions again. The little woman, we agreed, was charming. And the young man, although diffident and shy, was very nice. We even had a word of praise for Fuss-And-Fidget now. After we had cracked his crusty shell the old codger was not bad. He really was quite friendly underneath.

“And it does show,” said Stefanowski quietly, “how good people really are, how easy it is to get along with one another in this world, how people really like each other—if only—”

“—if only—” I said, and nodded.

“These damned politicians,” Stefanowski said.

At length we called for our bill and paid it. Stefanowski dumped his marks upon the table, counted them: “You’ll have to help me out,” he said. “How many have you got?”

I dumped mine out. We had enough to pay the bill, to give the waiter something extra. And there was enough left over for a double jolt of brandy and a good cigar.

So, grinning with satisfaction, in which our waiter joined amiably as he read our purpose, we paid the bill, ordered the brandy and cigars, and, full of food, of drink, and of the pleasant knowledge of a job well done, we puffed contentedly on our cigars.

We were now running through the great industrial region of western Germany. The pleasant landscape had been darkened by the grime and smoke of enormous works. Now it was grim with the skeletons of enormous smelting and refining plants, disfigured with great heaps of slag, with mountainous dumps. It was a new portion of the land, one of the few I had not seen before. It was brutal, smoky, dense with life, the grimy warrens of industrial towns. But it had the brutal fascination of these places too, the thrilling power of raw, enormous works.

Stefanowski informed me that we were already almost at the border and that, since our own coach went directly through to Paris, we should have no additional need of money for porter’s fees.

This made us remember the difficulties of our fellow travelers, who were Germans. We agreed that the existing law which permitted native citizens to take only ten marks from the country was, for people in the business circumstances of our little blonde companion and old Fuss-And-Fidget, a very trying one.

At this moment Stefanowski had a brilliant inspiration, the result of his own generous impulse. “But why,” he said, “why can’t we help them?”

“How? In what way can we help them?”

“Why,” he said, “I have here a permit that allows me to take twenty-three marks out of the country. You have no permit, but everyone is allowed—”

“To take ten marks,” I said and nodded. “So you mean then,” I concluded, “that since each of us has spent his German money—” 

“But can still take as much as is allowed out of the country— yes,” he said. “So we could suggest it to them—” he went on.

“—that they give us some of their marks to keep, you mean?” He nodded. “Yes. It is not much, of course. But it might help.” 

No sooner said than seized upon. We were almost jubilantly elated at this opportunity of doing some slight service for these people to whom we had taken such a liking. At this moment, even while we were smiling confirmation at each other, a man in uniform came through the car, paused at our table—which was the only one that was now occupied—and quietly but authoritatively informed us that the Pass-Control had come upon the train and that we must return at once to our compartment to await examination. We rose, knowing now we had no time to lose, hastened back along the coaches of the swaying train, entered our compartment again and immediately told our fellows that the inspection would soon begin and that the officials were on the train.

There was a flurry of excitement. Everyone began to get ready. The blonde lady took out her purse and passport and with a worried look began to count her money. Stefanowski watched her quietly for a moment and then, taking out his own certificate and showing it, remarked that he was officially allowed possession of the sum of twenty-three marks, that he had had the sum in his possession, but now had spent it. I took this as my cue and remarked that I too had spent the ten marks that the law allowed me.

Our little blonde companion looked eagerly at both of us and read the friendship of our meaning.

“Then you mean?” she said, and gleefully—“but it would be wonderful, of course, if you would!”

“Have you as much as twenty-three marks?” said Stefanowski.

“Yes,” she nodded quickly, with a worried look, “I have more than that. But if you would take the twenty-three and keep them until we are past the frontier—”

He stretched out his hand. “Give them to me,” he said quietly. The transfer was completed, the money in his pocket, in the wink of an eye.

In another moment Fuss-And-Fidget had taken ten marks from his pocket and without a word passed them across to me. I thrust the money in my pocket, and we all sat back, a little flushed, excited but triumphant, trying to look composed.

A few minutes later an official opened the compartment door, saluted and asked for our passports. He inspected Stefanowski’s first, found everything in order, took his certificate, saw his twenty-three marks, stamped the passport and returned it to him.

Then he turned to me. I gave him my passport and the various papers certifying my possession of American currency. He thumbed through the pages of the passport, which were now almost completely covered with stamps and entries, and finally smiled quite kindly, and returned my passport to me. Then he inspected the passports of the little blonde lady, her companion and Fuss-And-Fidget. Everything, apparently, was in order, save that the lady had confessed to the possession of more than twenty marks, and the official regretfully informed her that he must take from her anything in excess of ten. It would be held at the frontier and restored to her, of course, when she returned. She smiled ruefully, shrugged her shoulders, and gave the man twelve marks. All other matters were evidently now in order, for the man saluted and withdrew.

So it was over then! We all drew a deep breath of relief, and commiserated our charming lady friend upon her loss. But I think we were all quietly jubilant, too, to know her loss had been no greater, that we had been able in some degree to lessen it. I asked Fuss-And-Fidget if I should return his money now or later on. He told me to wait until we had crossed the frontier into Belgium. At the same time, he made some casual explanation, to which none of us paid any serious attention at the time, to the effect that his ticket was good only to the frontier, and that he would utilize the fifteen minutes of our wait at Aachen, the frontier town, to buy a ticket for the remainder of the trip to Paris.

We were now, in fact, approaching Aachen. The train was slackening speed. We were going through a pleasant countryside, a smiling landscape of green fields and gentle hills, unobtrusively, mildly, somehow unmistakably European. The seared and blasted districts of the mines and factories were behind us. We were entering the outskirts of a pleasant town.

This was Aachen. In another moment the train was slowing to a halt before the station. We had reached the frontier. There was to be a wait of fifteen minutes and a change of engines. All of us got out—Fuss-And-Fidget to get a ticket, the others to stretch their legs and get a breath of air.

My Polish friend and I got out and walked forward along the platform to inspect the locomotive. The German locomotive which would here be supplanted by its Belgian successor was a magnificent machine, almost as big as one of the great American engines. The evidence of high velocity was legible in every line of it. What was most remarkable was the tender, a wonderful affair, the whole of which seemed to be a honeycomb of jetting pipes. One looked in through some slanting bars and saw a fountain-like display, composed of thousands of tiny little jets of steaming water. It was a marvelous machine, which bore in every line the evidence of the tremendous engineering talent that had created it.

Knowing how vivid, swift and fugitive are those poignant first impressions that come at the moment when we change from one country to another, I waited with an almost feverish interest for the approach of the Belgian locomotive. I knew in advance it would not be so good as the German one because the energy, the intelligence, the strength and the integrity which produced it were inferior, but I was eagerly sensitized to observe the exact degree and quality of these differences between the powerful, solid and indomitable race that I was leaving and the little people I would now encounter.

Presently we walked back along the platform, found our little blonde-haired lady and, flanking her on either side, began to stroll up and down beside the train. At length, observing the station clock and seeing that the moment scheduled for departure had already come, we moved quickly back towards our own coach and our own compartment.

As we approached it was evident that something had happened. There were no signs of departure. The conductor and the station guard stood together on the platform. No warning signal had been given. And, moreover, there was now evident a kind of subdued tension, a sense of crisis that made my pulse beat quicker as I approached.

I have often observed this phenomenon in life, its manifestations under certain conditions are nearly always identical. A man has leaped or fallen, for example, from a high building to the pavement of a city street. Or a man has been shot, or beaten. He has been struck by a motor car; or again, a man is dying quietly on the street before the eyes of other men. But always, the manifestation of the crowd is just the same. Even before you see the faces of the people, when you see their backs, their posture, the position of the head and shoulders, you know what has happened.

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 around 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 staled 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 bis 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 if 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 how, 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.

Therefore, it was no foreign land to me. It was the other half of my heart’s home. It was the dark lost Helen I had found, it was the dark found Helen I had lost—and now I knew, as I had never known before, the countless measure of my loss—the countless measure of my gain—the way that now would be forever closed to me—the way of exile and of no return—and another way that I had found. For I knew that I was “out.” And that I had now found my way.

To that old master, now, to wizard Faust, old father of the ancient and swarm-haunted mind of man, to that old German land with all the measure of its truth, its glory, beauty, magic and its ruin—to that dark land, to that old ancient earth that I had loved so long—I said farewell.

I have a thing to tell you:

Something has spoken to me in the night, burning the tapers of the waning year; something has spoken in the night; and told me I shall die, I know not where. Losing the earth we know for greater knowing, losing the life we have for greater life, and leaving friends we loved for greater loving, men find a land more kind than home, more large than earth.

Whereon the pillars of this earth are founded, toward which the spirits of the nations draw, toward which the conscience of the world is tending—a wind is rising, and the rivers flow.