Flotsam Read Online Free PDF

anyway?” Kern asked hesitantly. “You’re not a Jew.”
    Steiner was silent for a while. “No, I’m not a Jew,” he said finally.
    There was a rustling in the woods behind them. Kern leaped to his feet. “A rabbit or a squirrel,” Steiner said. Then he turned to Kern. “Here’s something you can think about, kid, when you’re feeling low: You are out of the country, your father is out, your mother is out. I’m out too—but my wife is in Germany. I don’t know what’s happening to her.”
    The rustling behind them came again. Steiner pressed out his cigarette and leaned back against the bole of the beech tree. A breeze was blowing. The moon hung above the horizon, chalk-white and pitiless, as it had been on that last night …
    * * *
    After his escape from the concentration camp, Steiner had hidden for a week at a friend’s house. He had sat in a locked attic room, ready to flee over the roof at the first suspicious sound. When it got dark, his friend brought him bread, preserves, and a couple of bottles of water. On the second night he brought a few books. Steiner read them feverishly, all day long, over and over, trying not to think. He dared not strike a light or smoke. He had to satisfy the needs of nature in a pot hidden in a cardboard box. His friend took it away after dark and brought it back again. They had to be so careful that they barely whispered to each other. The maids who slept near by might have heard and given them away.
    “Does Marie know I’m out?” Steiner had asked, on the first night.
    “No. The house is being watched.”
    “Has anything happened to her?”
    His friend shook his head and went away.
    Steiner always asked the same question. Every night. On the fourth night his friend finally brought him the news that he had seen her. Now she knew where he was. He had had a chance to whisper the news to her. Tomorrow he would see her again—in the market-day crowd. Steiner spent the whole following day writing a letter, which the friend was to give her secretly. In the evening he tore it up. Perhaps she was being watched. For the same reason, he asked his friend not to meet her again. He spent three more nights in the room. Finally his friend came with money, a ticket, and some clothes. Steiner cut his hair and bleached it with peroxide. Then he shaved off his mustache. In the morning he left the house, wearing a laborer’s jacket and carrying a box of tools. He had intended toleave the city immediately, but he weakened. It was two years since he had seen his wife. He walked to the market place. An hour later his wife came. He began to shake. She walked past him, however, without seeing him. He followed her and, when he was close behind her, he said: “Don’t look around. It’s me. Go on! Go on!”
    Her shoulders quivered and she threw back her head. Then she went on. She seemed to be listening with every fiber of her body.
    “Have they done anything to you?” asked the voice behind her.
    She shook her head.
    “Are you being watched?”
    She nodded.
    “Now?”
    She hesitated, then shook her head.
    “I’m going to leave immediately. I’ll try to get across the border. I won’t be able to write you. It’s too dangerous for you.”
    She nodded.
    “You must get a divorce from me.”
    The woman paused in her stride for an instant. Then she went on.
    “You must get a divorce from me. You must go tomorrow and say that you want to divorce me because of my political views. You must say that you hadn’t realized before what they were. Do you understand?”
    His wife did not move her head. She walked straight on, holding herself rigidly erect.
    “You must understand me,” Steiner whispered. “It’s only to make you safe. I would lose my mind if they did anything to you. You must divorce me, then they’ll leave you alone.”
    His wife made no reply.
    “I love you, Marie,” Steiner said softly through his teeth, and his eyes swam with emotion. “I love you and I won’t go