Authors: B. TRAVEN
The clerk lifted his eyebrows high up. He felt himself growing to the size of a god. Before he spoke he made a gesture with his hands and with his head as though he wished to impress on a mortal in distress that the continued existence of the universe depended upon what he was to utter. From the attitude he assumed it could easily be expected that he might cry out: “Be there no earth before me!” and the earth would disappear into a fluttering fog.
The great gesture finally materialized: “That time, when you were serving the Imperial Navy Hurrah for our poor great Kaiser! then, of course, without the slightest doubt, you were a German citizen. Because we never allowed an alien to set foot on our Imperial battle-ships. And that glorious day when you were wounded at Skagerrack you were still a German citizen; it was then that we gave these perfidious sons of that even more perfidious Albion the licking of their lifetime. Those glorious times! I pray to the old God of the Germans that they may come soon again to finish those stinking dogs for good. In those times you surely were a German citizen of whom the country could be proud. But, understand this, my man, if you are still a German citizen you will have to prove it, and there’s no way of getting out of it. As long as you cannot prove you’re still a German citizen, sorry, my man, I can do nothing for you, and there will be no sailor’s identification book for you. That’s all, good-by.”
“Pardon me, sir, where do I have to go to prove my German citizenship?”
“Police headquarters, Resident’s Registration, Citizenship Department.”
38
Stanislav had to eat. He could not have a ship without proper papers. So he had to take up once more what he used to call his honorable profession. If all people had a decent job to occupy their minds, and regular meals to satisfy their hunger, most crimes would not be committed. Sitting in an easy chair, the belly filled with an excellent supper topped off with a pint of good Scotch, it is a pretty entertainment t talk about crime waves and the vanishing morality of the jobless. Standing in the shoes of Stanislav, the world and its morals look entirely different. Stanislav could not help it. It was not his fault that the world was as it was presented to him. No job was to be had at this time, not even as third assistant to a rag-picker. Everybody lay upon the dole. Stanislav had an aversion to live on unemployment relief funds. He preferred his honorable trade.
“You feel so terribly depressed,” he said, “standing all the time among the unemployed to get your few cents. The whole world looks then as if only unemployed were still alive and as if every hope for any better time had vanished for ever. I’d rather look around to see if somebody’s pocket-book is annoyed with its owner than stand in file with those jobless talking of nothing but their misery. Matter of fact, I respect everybody’s property. But I assure you I didn’t make this world. And I have to eat. Had these god-damned bureaucrats only given me a sailor’s book, I would have been off on the great voyage long ago.”
He went to police headquarters, Department of Citizenship. He was asked: “Where were you born?”
“In Posen, or what is now Poznan.”
“Birth-certificate?”
“Here is the postal receipt of the registered letter I mailed them weeks ago to send the certificate. They don’t even answer. And the money I put in for expenses they have kept.”
“The identification stamps of the inspector of your district will do. I accept them. It is only the citizenship which is in question. Have you adopted for Germany?” the clerk asked him.
“Have I done what?”
“Have you adopted for Germany? I mean have you officially chosen German citizenship? Did you, within the proper time given, declare before a German authority, especially assigned to take such declarations, declare that you wish to retain German citizenship after the Polish provinces according to the provisions of the Treaty of Versailles were returned to Poland?”
“I did not,” Stanislav answered. “I did not know that it had to be done. I always thought that if I was once a German I should always be a German as long as I did not take out citizenship for any other country. Why, I was in the K.M. I have fought for Germany at Skagerrack.”
“Then you were a German,” the clerk admitted. “Because then Poznan belonged to Germany. Where were you when all the people born in the Polish provinces but living in Germany were officially ordered to adopt either country as their native land?”
“I was shipping on a Dane. I was likely then somewhere off the Chinese coast.”
“It was your duty to go to a German consul at the nearest port and make there your proper declaration.”
“But I did not know that such a thing had to be done. You see, when sailing, and working hard, out on the sea, you have no time or even thoughts to think of such things.”
“Didn’t your captain tell you that you had to go see the German consul?”
“But I shipped on a Dane. It was a Danish master I was with. He sure was not interested in any orders issued by German authorities.”
“Very bad for you, Koslovski.” The clerk sat back and seemed to work his mind for a solution. When, after long meditation, he had found one, he said: “Bad for you, I say again. I think that is all. I can do nothing for you in this case. Are you rich? I mean do you hold any property?”
“No, mister, I am a sailor.”
“That settles it, then. Nothing I can do for you. Even the periods of grace for proper adoption have expired. Sorry, but you cannot even rely on the fact that a higher power prevented you from making the declaration when there was time. You were not shipwrecked. You called at many ports in which there were German consuls, or at least consuls of other nations who were authorized to represent German interests. The call for adoption was published profusely and repeatedly all over the civilized world. At all consulates there were the bulletins on the blackboards.”
“Sailors never read newspapers. When in port, one has other things to do than to go to the consulate and look at bulletins. Where could I get a German newspaper? Papers in other languages I do not understand well. Sometimes, by good chance, one may pick up a German newspaper. But I never saw any notice about this adoption thing.”
“I am not responsible for this, Koslovski. Sorry. Sure I would like to help you. Yet I have not the power to do so. I am just a clerk here, an official to do what I am ordered to do.
Now, of course, it is not quite as bad as you imagine. There is still a way for you make an application to the Secretary of State. He can do it. But this takes time. Probably two years or three. Since the war, citizenship has become a more definite matter than it used to be. Besides, the Poles do not show any consideration toward our nationals. Why should we be more generous? In a certain way you are a Pole. You were born on soil that is now Polish territory. I tell you, my good man, it sure will come to the point where the Poles, those stinking godless dirty pigs, will drive out of Poland all those Germans who have adopted for German citizenship. I assure you, Koslovski, we will do the same. The only way to deal with those bandits.”
Every official assured him that he would like so very much to help him, if only he had the power to do so. Yet, suppose Stanislav had talked loudly or without proper respect to any clerk, high or low in office, or he had dared to look sternly at the face of an official, he would have been thrown into prison without mercy for having insulted an official and for having committed a criminal assault upon the state. Then the official would become automatically the almighty state in person, endowed with all the powers, forces, responsibilities, and privileges of the state. The brother of the insulted official would pass sentence, another brother of the official would beat him up with a club, and still another brother in office would lock him up in jail and guard him there for as long a time as another brother of the official thought suitable for such a horrible offense. But none of all these brothers in office have the power to help a poor individual in distress. “What, then, is the state and all its great apparatus good for if it cannot help a being in need?” Stanislav questioned.
“I can give you only one piece of good advice,” the clerk said, swinging leisurely in his chair: “You’d better go to the Polish consulate general. The Polish consul, believe me, is simply under obligation to give you a Polish passport, with which you may easily obtain a sailor’s book. If you bring us a Polish passport we will make an exception of you, having served the German navy, and having lived in Hamburg now and before the war. I will see to it, personally, that you get a German sailor’s book upon presenting a Polish passport. That is the only advice I have in your case.”
Next day Stanislav was at the Polish consulate.
“Born in Poznan?”
“Yes, my parents still live in Poznan.”
“Speaking Polish?”
“Not very much; practically none.”
“Did you live in Poznan, or in West Prussia, or in any of the Polish provinces then under the rule of Germany, Russia, or Austria at the time when Poland was declared an independent and sovereign country?”
“No”
“You did not live in any territory considered Polish territory between 1912 and the day of the armistice?”
“No. I was on high sea, mostly with Danish or German merchants.”
“What you were doing, where you were sailing, and on what ships you were at that time, I have not asked you. Answer only my questions.”
“Stanislav,” I broke in while he was saying this, “here was the right moment to grasp this nuisance by the collar, drag him across the desk, and land him the best you have in store.”
“I know, Pippip. I felt that way. But I was smart. I kept on smiling like a gal at her first dancing party. You see, first I wanted my passport. Then, one hour before my ship would sail, I would come back to this guy and sock him until he went shreddy. And then out and off with the can.”
The Polish consul continued: “You said that your parents are still living in Poznan.”
“Yes.”
“Since you are of age, we, of course, could not consider any adoption made by your parents on your behalf, even supposing they had done so. What concerns us is the correct answer to my question: Have you in person registered your serious intention to remain a Polish citizen before a Polish consul or any other person authorized by the Polish government to accept such declarations?”
“No. I did not know that I had to do this.”
“What you did know and what you did not know is of no importance to me. What I wish you to answer is: Did you register your declaration?”
“No.”
“Then what do you want in this office? You are a German and no Pole. Go to your own officials and do not molest us here any more. That’s all. Good afternoon.”
Stanislav narrated this experience not in an angry tone, rather sadly and almost pitifully. He would have liked to express his ideas as to bureaucracy in true sailor’s fashion. Yet it was too late for this now. The consul was not at hand.
I said: “Now look how quickly those new-born countries have acquired Prussian officialdom. Some of those countries did not even have a complete civilized language of their own yesterday, and today they are doing even better than the big powers. You may be sure that these new countries that, so far, are not even sure of their own names, will go a long way to make bureaucracy their one and only state religion. You ought to know what America has achieved in the hundred and fifty years of her existence. How fast she works to surpass even Imperial Russia with passports, visés, restrictions of free movements. Limitations and moldiness everywhere. All the world over, in consequence of the war for democracy, and for fear of communistic ideas, the bureaucrat has become the new czar who rules with more omnipotence than God the Almighty ever had, denying the birth of a living person if the birth-certificate cannot be produced, and making it impossible for a human being to move freely without a permit properly stamped and signed.”
“They are all talking high-hat at conferences about the progress of culture and civilization and the welfare of mankind,” Stanislav said. “It looks fine on the front page of the papers. But it is all talk, with nothing back of it save hypocrisy, egoism, and an insane nationalism. There is hardly any chance to become alive again, once on the
Yorikke
. Not under conditions as they are today. The only hope you have to be free again in this world is that the can goes down to ground and doesn’t take you along, but spits you out like a leper. And suppose you find yourself after such an affair at some shore again; where do you get off? Only on another
Yorikke
.”
Stanislav went again to police headquarters, Citizenship Department.
“The Polish consul does not recognize me as a Pole,” he said.
“You might have known this before,” the inspector explained. “These stinking Polish pigs need a licking, that’s what they need. The old German God in heaven is our witness, they will get it soon enough, and after that they will never come for more.” The inspector banged the desk with his fist.
When he was calm again, he said: “Now, Koslovski, what can we do for you? You must have some papers. Otherwise you will never get a ship. Not in these days.”
“Certainly, Mr. Inspector, I must have papers.”
“Right, right, Koslovski. Tell you what I will do. I shall give you a police certificate. Tomorrow morning you go with this certificate to the passport department. It is room wait a minute — yes, it is room 334, here in the same building. You shall have your passport all right. With this passport you go to the sea board, seamen’s registration, and there you will get your sailor’s book. With a good sailor’s book you will get the best liner the Hapag can afford.”
“Thank you, Mr. Inspector.”
“That’s all right. We do what we can for an old man of the K.M.”
Stanislav felt so happy that he wanted to embrace the whole world.
The Germans proved that, after all, they were less bureaucratic than all the other nations.
He went to the passport department, presented the police certificate and the photographs, stamped by the inspector as evidence that he was the person whose face the photographs showed, signed his beautiful new passport with the German republican eagle printed on it, paid seventy-five thousand billion marks as fee, and left the department with the most elegant passport he had ever possessed in all his life. With such a passport in hand he could even emigrate to God’s own beloved country, and he would be received at Ellis Island with a brass band, and all the sirens singing. Yes, sir.