I Confess (20 page)

I read both letters a second time, then put each in an envelope and addressed them. I got stamps from the waiter. Then I paid for my coffee and went back to my car. It was still pouring and grew dark early.

At four thirty I was back in Muuich. The first thing I did was go to the Wagon-Uts office in the station and buy a ticket, second class sleeper to Vienna. The train was due to leave Munich at 11: 55.1 reserved the bed under the name of Walter Frank and used my Austrian passport for the first time. When I came out into the street again, I saw a mailbox. I mailed the letter to Margaret, then I hesitated. I stood in front of the yellow mailbox, in the rain, the second letter in my hand, and looked across the wide empty square. The street lights had already been turned on. Then, without being able to explain to myself what moved me, I turned and went back to my car with the second letter and drove to 127 Romanstrasse.

By the time I got there it was dark. There were no street lights in the Romanstrasse. The rain was pouring down, streaming between the vine that covered the outer walls of the house as I entered the quiet lobby. I walked slowly up to the second floor. I still had the key to Yo-landa's apartment and unlocked the front door. The small foyer was dark. I called Yolanda's name, but there was no answer.

I walked through the whole apartment. I turned on the light in every room, in the kitchen too, and in the bathroom. The apartment was empty. It looked as if Yo-landa had left it to go on a long journey. Closets stood

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open, hangers were scattered on the floor and pieces of underwear were lying around on chairs.

I walked into the bedroom and opened the window. The rain was beating on the tin roof underneath it, and I sat down on the unmade bed. A bottle of beer stood on the bedside table next to the telephone. It was open and half empty. I let my head fall onto the pillow and buried my face in it. The pillow smelled of Yolanda. I closed my eyes and lay quite still. I left all the lights burning.

38

When I awoke it was ten minutes before eleven. My head ached and I felt chilled. At first I was startled; I didn't know where I was. Then I remembered and got up to close the window. It had rained in, the carpet was wet. I walked through the apartment again and turned out all the Ughts. I laid the letter for Yolanda on the bed. Then I went out, locked the front door and went down to my car.

I had parked it beside the iron fence of a canal. I tore up my American passport and threw it and all other personal papers, including my driver's license, between the iron pickets into the canal. Then I drove back to a parking lot near the station, took out my suitcase, locked the car and left it there. I counted what money I had left once more. I knew I couldn't take much across the border and therefore kept only a hundred marks. The rest I tossed into one of the ruins. Approximately eighteen hundred marks.

I had hoped that my headache would ease up in the fresh air, but it didn't. In fact it increased in intensity. It was 11: 20 p.m. I went into the station restaurant, ordered

coffee again and took two aspirin. Then I ate two sandwich rolls although I wasn't really hungry. At 11:45 I went out on the platform. My headache was no better. The platform was long and gUstened because it was wet. There were quite a few people. The train to Vienna was apparently full. I asked where I could fibad the sleeping car. "The first car after the locomotive, sir," said the conductor.

I walked alongside the cars and could feel the rain dripping off the brim of my hat, down my wig and neck. The further I went, the more I got the feeling that I had gone this way before.

A conductor stood beside the steps leading up to the sleeping car. I gave him my bed number. "Herr Walter Frank," he read aloud, and with a polite gesture, "Let me take your suitcase." He got into the car before me. My head was bursting. "Bed No. 14," he said as he walked ahead of me down the corridor. "Your wife is expecting you."

I closed my eyes. "Who did you say was expecting me?"

"Your wife," he said without stopping. "She has already retired." He stopped in front of a closed compartment and knocked.

"Come in," said a voice.

The conductor walked in and I could hear him apologizing for the intrusion. The door fell shut as he stowed away my suitcase, then it opened again and he came out to me. "There you are," he said. "I keep your ticket until the morning."

"Yes," I said.

"Is there anything else I can do for you, sir?"

"No."

He left. I walked into the compartment and closed the door behind me. Both beds were made up. In the upper one lay Yolanda. "Good evening," she said. She was smoking and she didn't look at me.

"Good evening, Yolanda."

"My name isn't Yolanda," she said, exhaling a cloud of smoke.

"No? Then what is your name?" I asked politely. I had the feeling that if the pain in my head went on much longer, I would faint.

"My name is Valery."

"A pretty name," I said, smiling, and clung to the railing of her bed.

"And my last name is Frank," she said. "Valery Frank. I am your wife."

Outside porters were yelling and the locomotive whistle blew mournfully. I leaned against the mirror of the wash basin. "Did Mordstein :tell you everything?"

She nodded.

"You know him?"

"Yes."

"You went to him?"

"No. He called me and told me you were planning to leave."

"And your papers... you got them from him too?"

She nodded again.

"Where did you get the money to pay for them?"

"He gave them to me on credit."

Outside a hoarse loudspeaker announced that the Vienna express was leaving in a few minutes from platform 3. The doors were to be closed, non-travelers were asked to leave the train.

"Where were you all these last days, Yolanda?" I asked softly.

"Why?"

"I tried to reach you."

"Fm sorry about that."

*Why did you do it?" T asked. T could feel the train start to move. "Why did you come here? Why did you get false papers?"

"Because I want to go away," she said. "Far away. Farther and farther away. That's what you want too, isn't it?"

"Yes," I said. "That's what I wanted too."

"And now you don't want it any more?"

"I wanted to go away alone."

She looked at me seriously. "Without me?"

"Yes."

"Well, that's impossible, Jimmy," she said. "You've got to take me with you. You'll see, everything will turn out all right. It's going to be beautiful. Wasn't it beautiful sometimes?'*

"Yes."

"And it will be again."

"But I don't want it."

"Then you'll have to get out and call the police and tell them I'm traveling with false papers because I wanted to be with you...."

"... and because Mordstein told you I had a lot of money."

"Yes, you'll have to tell the police that too," she said calmly.

The train whistle blew again. I said nothing. I looked at the little table beside the window. On it lay a long-stemmed white rose.

"Who sent the rose?"

"Mordstein. He gave it to me as a goodbye present. Why?"

"I was just asking."

She slipped a hand under her pillow. '"By the way, here's your correct ID card. Mordstein gave it to me to give to you. You've got to throw the other one away. It says you're single."

She gave me the yellow card. "Thank you," I said. Then I took the other ID card out of my pocket and threw it out the window.

Yolanda watched me. "Jimmy . . ."

"Yes?"

"The money you have all of a sudden • •. you stole it, didn't you?"

"Yes," I said. "From a bank. On Monday they'll start looking for me."

She nodded. "That's what I thought."

I sat down on the lower bed and began to take off my shoes.

"Jimmy..."

"Yes."

"You*re a little crazy, aren't you?"

"I think so."

I stood up, took off my shirt and got my pajamas out of my suitcase.

"Jimmy..."

"Yes?"

"I think I'm crazy, too. Will you beat me up if I say something?"

"No," I mumbled. "I won't beat you up. What is it?"

"I love you," she said.

I put on my pajamas and turned out the light. Then T lay down on the lower bed. Now it was completely dark in the compartment, only a little fitful light fell through the cracks on either side of the windowshade. I lay quietly, my head still hurt.

"Junmy..."

"Yes?"

"When do we get to the border?"

"I don't know." -

The axle beat in a steady rhythm. We were moving fast

BOOK TWO

It is February fourteenth.

I am in bed, and Dr. Freund has forbidden me to write. He would be very angry if he knew I was disobeying him. But I must, I have to get on with it, I have to finish. I know now that I don't have much time left. One or two more attacks like the one last week, and the morphine won't help any more. That will be the right time to end it all. The last attack, which forced me to stay in bed, was not the first, but it was the worst. And it came quite unexpectedly. I had just finished writing the last lines of how I found Yolanda on the train to Vienna with me when the headache began.

Lately the attacks have changed their character. Now, when they come, it is with periods of stupor and they last for days. Morphine helps to reduce the intensity of the pain but increases the depth of this semi-conscious state. I have now lain for a whole week in such a semi-coma, my body leaden, my temples throbbing. Today, for the first time, I feel better.

Dr. Freund has looked after me in the most touching manner. He has sat at my bedside for hours, Ustening to my feverish ramblings. It seems that during this last week, I evidenced an irrepressible urge to confide in someone, perhaps as a substitute of sorts for my interrupted writing which has absorbed me from morning to night these last four weeks and resulted in Book One of my story. It was

probably the cause of my breakdown. I worked too hard. Dr. Freund agrees with me on that

"I don't intend to let you kill yourself wantonly and senselessly like this," he said, after which it wasn't very diflficult to convince him that what he had just said was absurd, and he had to admit that his good advice couldn't possibly lead to a successful conclusion. Altogether, his relationship to me is something that perplexes him. Inadvertently I influence him to quite a few illegal acts. Until now he has not called in the police, and I have been frank with him about the fact that I take morphine. He doesn't really know what to do and I can see that this worries him. We finally agreed that I would not go on writing until I felt relatively well and that I would then spare myself by writing only four hours a day and spend the remaining time resting. However, I can't help feeling that under the circumstances such precautions are ridiculous.

February 16 Today I got up for the first time. I really do feel much better and I think I shall start writing tomorrow, or the day after. I would start right now except for the necessity of a slight interruption—I have to go through everything I have written in order to find out what has gone before because I just can't remember certain events. Everything is slightly hazy in my mind. Apparently my memory is beginning to be affected as Dr. Kletterhohn so kindly indicated at the time. I shall do my best to concentrate.

February 18. I am seated again at my table by the window. Outside, in the park, the snow is faUing, silently, steadily, hour after hour, day and night. By now it is very deep. The children play in it, build snowmen, fight with snowballs. The central heating is on in my room. It is pleasantly quiet and wamL

The heating was on in the sleeping car that brought Yolanda and me to Vienna. The compartment became so hot that I got up in the night and opened the window halfway; then I pulled the shade down over the part that was open. I could make out Ughts rushing by, and when the train stopped at a station, I could hear voices and other sounds. I didn't sleep much. Yolanda was silent although she too was awake. I knew she was awake although we didn't talk.

At about two a.m. we arrived at the Austrian border where the train stood for nearly two hours. Border guards and customs inspectors came in and stamped-our papers. They didn't examine our luggage. They were sleepy and wet. It was raining here, too. At five we reached the Soviet demarcation Une in Ems. This time Yolanda was asleep when the inspector came in, and she jumped up when he touched her gently and asked for her papers.

"It isn't true!" she screamed. "He's lying! I didn't do it!''

The inspector stepped back, startled

"Yolanda," I said gently.

She looked about her, bewildered, then she pushed her 183

hair off her forehead and laughed. "Oh," she said, *Tm sorry."

She gave the inspector her ID card. He looked at it and smiled, then he left us alone again. The sleeping car conductor closed the door behind him. We lay in our respective beds and were silent.

An hour later the day began to dawn. It had stopped raining and the autumnal landscape rushed past our window, damp, misty, not a Uving soul in sight. A narrow strip of gold Ught showed up suddenly on the wash basin. The sun had risen.

"Yolanda?"

"Yes?"

"Come to me."

She slipped off her bed onto the floor. I moved over to the wall and she lay down beside me. Her body was hot, her hands were ice cold. "What is it?"

"Yolanda," I said, "I've been thinking. I can't go to the police, that's, obvious. You can, of course, anytime you like."

"Yes," she said.

The strip of gold light on the wash basin widened. The shade flapped rhythmically against the window.

"But I have to be alone," I whispered. "I did what I did because I have to be alone. I'm not reproaching you. But I'd like to propose something."

"Yes?"

"You tell me how much it will cost me if you leave me alone and go back to Munich."

"No!" Her answer came fast and vehemently.

"I have a lot of money. Think it over."

"I have thought it over."

"And?"