Deviation Read online

  “Is it a foreigner’s money?” I ask him.

  “Of course,” he says, “I don’t steal from our own anymore.” He looks at me as if begging me to accept his gift. Suddenly I’m ashamed of my rudeness: What was I thinking! Giving him a lecture! “Thanks.” I smile, mortified. “Thank you, Louis.”

  Then, looking straight ahead—sitting in the shadows, so close to me that I practically brush against him—he tells me that he is the son of Normandy fishermen, that his father died at sea when he was a child. At eight years old he sailed off as a cabin boy and since then he’s always been on the water, traveling on the cargo ship of a smuggler from Marseilles; the ship called at the most unexpected shores.

  And once, to avoid port customs, they stopped for a long time at a harbor in the French Congo, and he caught malaria. Then, when the ship returned home, they left him ashore with no money, nothing.

  “I earned a little, yeah, but I spent it all. Meanwhile, my mother had died from TB. So I went to Paris and looked for another job. I couldn’t do much because I can barely read and can hardly write at all. I have no skills. I’m twenty-six years old.”

  As he speaks, haltingly, he seems like an untamed, wounded animal. I want to squeeze his hand, but I don’t dare and I don’t move. We fall silent.

  “Go and eat,” he says finally, “it’s late.”

  “Come on,” I say.

  “I have things to do.”

  “Can’t you take a break?”

  “When I work, I don’t think about anything else.”

  I take his hand, a rough, cracked hand, a hand with chilblains. Louis dismisses me without returning my squeeze. “Go on, go,” he says.

  I get out of the car and head for camp, shaken, preoccupied by absurd feelings. I now know that I am more drawn to the vagrants at Thomasbräu than to anyone in my earlier, proper life. I’m fearful of the hold such a short time has taken on me, and I feel like my life will never be as genuine and secure as it is now. In my bourgeois way, I know, I’m ashamed of Louis, but just thinking about him I feel a pang, my heart pounding.

  I leave the garage; the city throbbing with tiny flickering lights is profiled against the backdrop of a sky in which clouds, like lumps of coal, spread a last flaming glow to the edges. I am suddenly listless, and feel the joy of a short time ago slip down around my feet, like a loose-fitting tunic.

  I enter the brewery and slump down on a bench next to my companions.

  Three German soldiers come into the room and sit at our table. They’ve come from the front, you can tell, and maybe they don’t know about us or just don’t care. They order bread and beer and chew slowly.

  We decide to pool the vouchers required for a meal among the three of us and place them on the table, next to the soldiers. They take them without a word. They have no idea how much the vouchers cost us. We start eating again, we even order dessert for them and offer them a cigarette.

  They’re exhausted, unkempt, their hair is prematurely graying, they don’t even talk to one another. In the end they thank us awkwardly. I catch them shooting a vivid glare of resentment at these extravagant, uninhibited foreigners who feed them in their own home. The look of a poor relative.

  So I explain to one of them, whispering in his ear, that we’re poor bastards with no place to sleep, that we’re crammed in like cattle in a stall full of lice.

  The soldier looks at me, cowed, then he consults with the others in a low voice. Finally, stumbling over the words, he explains that their houses were destroyed, that they haven’t been able to trace their families, and that they spent their whole leave like that, in a fruitless search; his voice is trembling, they don’t know where to spend the night. The Soldiers’ Home at the station is chock-full and the offices are now closed. Their three questioning pairs of eyes, their three faces marked by unending struggle, their jaws accustomed to a nameless discipline, their calloused, methodical hands all give me an obscure feeling of guilt.

  When they’ve finished, we get up from the table with them and take them to our camp. We give them our best straw pallets, and two women—escaped French partisans—beat and brush the blankets for them.

  The next day we see them leave, inconspicuous in their nondescript legality. Dunja even accompanies them for a stretch. The foreigners light cigarettes, frowning, their disoriented dignity stamped in their eyes.

  *

  We’re almost finished getting dressed when a French girl rushes into the room:

  “It’s so sunny outside it seems like summer. Today is a great day for an outing. It’s Sunday and nobody will ask us for documents.”

  We all look outside, gauge the sky. It’s decided: after excited preparations, the Sicilian gathers us in the entryway with the faucet; there are about a dozen of us, each has procured a chunk of bread, and we leave.

  We wander through the city unhurriedly. We amble along the impetuous Isar that twists and turns, its waters absorbing reflections of the sky and some small clouds that lightly float by.

  Passersby are smiling. We wander along, dragging our feet on the pavement as though aimless, headed for the dry bed of a tributary.

  The sun rises in the sky as we leave the city behind us, and the last houses gleam like little white flashes amid the green.

  We skirt the tributary through a stretch of rolling countryside with trim little houses scattered among regular, straight rows of trees.

  We climb over the verge and slide down the bank toward the river rocks, which look like homemade loaves of bread arranged on the pale table of the dry riverbed. Rivulets of water flow through them; hopping from one stone to another, laughing, arms outstretched to keep from falling, we reach the other side, which is lower, like an island, and lie down under the trees, in the breezy warmth of the autumn sun, vagrants without a roof and without a care.

  We make a ball with a little bit of earth wrapped in a strip of cloth that we tie tightly, and we play. Two or three older ones fashion a game of bocce with smooth stones; the younger guys wrestle. Then we stretch out and smoke. I blow my small white cloud toward a large leaf on a curving branch. The smoke settles over it as though resting on a tray, before vanishing.

  “We always go on outings in the summer,” a voice says, as if it were true, “such wonderful afternoons, I can’t tell you.”

  Louis appears. He pops out from behind a tree trunk and stands there in front of me. He has two rosebuds in his hand, sets them down beside my feet.

  He sits on the ground, not far from me, hugging his knees. I observe him through half-closed eyelids, in the clear, tremulous air that seems to glow with an inner light. With his eyes he’s following the movements of those playing bocce.

  I sit up. I pick up the rosebuds. Greenhouse flowers. One is like a newborn’s skin, with very clear crimson veins, the heart a deep yellow, genteel and languorous. The other has purplish petals with a pastel orange underside fading into a pale pink at the tips.

  I am filled with a sense of mellowness, of brimming perfection, of ripeness. The stems are very long, with no leaves, with bright red thorns.

  On the way home, I am cheerful and content, the two rosebuds in the buttonhole of my overalls, the stems tapping against my chest with every step; hands in my pocket, I run ahead and sing a pointless, whimsical refrain, having no connection to anything, like my state of mind. I flit from one person to the next, I pass the group, then wait up for it, leaning against a tree, and once again I feel at home, as if I’ve known my companions forever.

  Louis walks far behind with the worried men, staring down at the ground.

  The other Italian boys are singing Lassù sulle montagne tra boschi e valli d’or … up there in the mountains among woods and valleys of gold …

  I wait for Louis.

  “Thank you,” I say, falling in step with him. He stops. The others continue on; we remain behind. He takes a small case out of his pocket.

  “Here,” he says.

  I take the case, open it. I find an exquisite litt
le gold watch, a Swiss brand.

  “No!” I say, frightened, thinking they’ll arrest him, they’ll arrest me.

  “Because of the money?”

  “Not the money!”

  “Then why not? Are you afraid of being too indebted to me afterward? Don’t be. For me it’s nothing.”

  “That’s not it, Louis.”

  “Wouldn’t you like to be dressed nicely, well fed, elegant—in a word, rich?”

  “Me?”

  “If a man offered you a fortune, would you marry him?”

  “If I love a man, I’ll marry him even if he’s penniless,” I say brightly, and looking at him, I realize that Louis has turned violently red. He laughs briefly, as if grunting.

  “It’s small-minded,” he says sarcastically, “to always deprive yourself of everything, to demean yourself.”

  “What do you care?” I smile at him. But I see he’s sulky. “Let’s not get ourselves killed, Louis. They mustn’t catch you. We can look for work, under false names, until the war ends.”

  “For you it’s the war, not for me. That’s why you don’t give a damn.”

  “That’s not true!” I shout.

  “I know, I know very well,” he says under his breath. Then abruptly he grabs back the case, takes out the watch, tosses the case into the river, and slips the watch on my wrist, gently.

  I am about to thank him, but he looks up at me, cutting off my words. We return to the camp in silence. Louis says goodbye with a nod: “I’m going.”

  “At least give me your hand,” I say.

  His face lights up with a childlike glimmer that instantly becomes amused and ironic. He grips my hand tightly, looking at me almost sternly.

  I enter the camp, happy; I don’t feel like eating, I just want to hide in a corner to savor my sweet emotions. But the big room is crowded and noisy. I go into the hallway and see the toilet door. I go in, not knowing where else to go, and promptly slip on the feces smeared on the floor; I support myself on the walls, which are also filthy with excrement and obscene graffiti.

  Why didn’t I ever clean it? After all, I’ve got lots of experience. The toilet is clogged, no doubt about it.

  The alarm sounds, followed immediately by bombs. We are so used to it that only the Labor Bureau’s clients run off, the others lie down and wait. And while with every bomb it seems that our hellhole might collapse, I get to work. I’ve done it so many times for no reason, compelled to, as a captive. Why not do it now, for us?

  I get a bucket of water, a bristly slant-edged broom, and scour the walls and floors for who knows how long, uplifted and stirred by a joy, a deep emotion at being alive, by a need for these people who have nothing to grasp at. I feel like a housewife whose children are asleep in the other room and who has no time to lose.

  In the end I admire my work and contemplate that toilet as if it were a work of art: the damp walls and gray floor seem benign, the hole in the ground surrounded by four gleaming white tiles looks almost decent. I put away the broom and bucket, I rinse off thoroughly, shut off the faucet, and climb into a bunk. For some time I’ve preferred the top bunks, because I feel less restricted up there, and can overlook everything from above.

  I start jumping around and turning somersaults in the darkness of the blackout, until I go crashing down, together with the pallet and the plank, landing on the bed below, provoking a torrent of abuse from the man occupying it. I run off and hide on another pallet, where I fall asleep at once, dreaming about feces, but not actually feces, it’s a plowed field, moist, fertile soil into which I sink as I walk.

  An unusual, suspended silence wakes me.

  You can’t hear a sound, except an ominous roar of engines that seems to well up from all sides, from the depths of the earth, from the sky, from my own body.

  “Tonight is going to be bad,” a voice whispers.

  “That was just a taste.”

  “Let’s go to the shelter.”

  One by one, careful not to make a sound, as if the slightest noise might cause an explosion, figures emerge from their beds, dress hurriedly. I too begin to panic and get out of bed. We go out stealthily, without even striking a match, holding on to one another. The air outside is even more charged with the roaring that threatens our breathing, ready to crush us. We slip into a small adjacent shelter, where we never go because, when we sense a real danger, we usually run to an underground shelter a hundred yards away.

  After some time, people begin talking.

  I don’t see either Dunja or the Sicilian.

  They tell me that, while I was sleeping, Dunja went into premature labor and the Sicilian took her away under the bombs; it was like he’d lost his mind. He kept babbling that the Germans would not get her. It wasn’t possible to stop him. No one knows where they went.

  “They want the baby so they can make him into a Nazi, but I won’t let them have him, even if I have to die for it.”

  He threw a punch at a Neapolitan who was holding him back and knocked him to the ground, out cold.

  “It’s not you they’re going to shoot,” he kept saying, “it’s her, it’s her, and I did nothing, I wasn’t able to.”

  Some Frenchmen are talking politics. One tells about how before being deported to Germany he wiped out a “nice nest” of “chleux” (Germans)* without ever being discovered. He came here as a volunteer, to perform acts of sabotage. He works outside and sometimes stops by in the evening to see his girlfriend.

  “We need to stir up more hatred for the Nazis. Even if it falls on civilians, even if we die, no matter who dies, even if everyone dies. What matters is not letting intolerance for the Nazis ever be extinguished, and if by some absurd chance the Nazis were to be viewed favorably in France, we must see to it that they are understood to be cruel and odious.”

  “There’s someone from the British service in with us,” says one young man after a pause.

  “I know.”

  “That guy benefits twice now, from the airplanes and from dealing.”

  “Oh, sure, he makes the best deals on these apocalyptic nights.”

  He nods his head toward me.

  “That’s his girlfriend.”

  “Oh.” I seem to sense a reluctant respect in the response. To everyone’s surprise, the all-clear sounds. We go back out to the open air, discussing the possible route of the bombers. We walk nervously; someone stops, urging silence, and listens intently. It seems that the air still carries the echo of an ominous drone that emerges sporadically, though it can’t be pinpointed.

  Maybe, anxious over the alarm, I fear insurmountable problems because I don’t know what they are and I can’t avert them.

  I want to work. He won’t come with me? I’ll go away by myself, I’ll present myself as a free worker, I lost my documents in a bombing, the police won’t be able to find me, and I’ll start over, one of many—without living, feeling, or loving, I’ll await the end without intimacy.

  I curl up on a pallet, but I can’t sleep. I think of Dunja. If she dies, I’ll really be alone. My serenity, which I thought belonged to me, came from her.

  Louis has no one. No one in his own country, no one anywhere; I don’t even know his last name, nor the name of his village in Normandy. If he dies, no one will know that he existed.

  A couple of tears roll down my cheeks, and their wet streaks make my skin feel tight.

  At dawn, still gripped by an uncontrollable agitation, I get up and go out to the auto repair shop. I look for “our” car. It’s empty. On the ground is a branch from a pine tree. I pick it up and lay it down on the seat. The small pinecones without seeds look like little boats floating on waves of green. He’ll like it.

  I go back to the camp. I lie down. Always the same movements: you pull your legs up and stretch them out one at a time, and fold your arms behind your head. The hours tick away, empty.

  Word spreads: Dunja died giving birth.

  *

  I found a job, temporary, but still, it’s a start. The
trattorias sometimes need extra kitchen help and for short periods they’d rather hire undocumented foreigners to avoid having to pay additional taxes and insurance.

  The trattoria that hired me is beyond the woods of the antiaircraft artillery. I have to peel vegetables and wash dishes. As for food, no meat of course, but after the place closes there are leftovers of overcooked macaroni, fried sweet semolina balls, boiled potatoes, as well as the remains of meals on the customers’ plates. My shift goes from 10:00 a.m. until 1:00 a.m., with a three-hour break in the afternoon.

  After lunch I go for a walk in the woods with the restaurant’s other girls. It’s a mixed, uneven forest, at some points dense with oaks and beech trees, elsewhere sparse with firs and chestnuts.

  As soon as there is a semblance of sun, you hear the chirping of invisible birds. Sometimes a squirrel crosses the path, scampers up a tree, and wraps his tail around a branch.

  I love those woods and I stop to pick herbs, to study the trees one by one. A chestnut tumbles to the ground, its spines break, its husk splits open, the round, well-formed fruit emerges, smooth and firm.

  I too entered the world wearing a spiny outer shell; will I ever be able to shuck the husk of preconceptions under which I was hiding?

  Huge, peeled logs are laid out on the ground. The other kitchen girls and I climb on them and compete to see who can run faster on the trunk without losing her balance, or else we play seesaw or chase one another in order to beat the cold. Once, hiding in the bushes, I happened to disturb a couple embracing.

  Another time, when I was alone sitting astride a tree trunk—the other girls hadn’t come because of the bitter chill—I saw a forester, small and deformed, with a gray, scrunched-up face, brown lips and eyes, and very wide shoulders, spying behind a hedge. He looked like a spider.

  He tore through the hedge and shouted: “Halt!”

  I glimpsed two young people making love. They quickly composed themselves. Foreigners. You could tell they loved each other. The forester was all worked up: he stamped his feet, croaking that the young man would end up in jail and that he would hold the girl in his hut, there in the forest, while awaiting verification, that is, of whether her papers were in order as a whore. The girl turned frighteningly ashen. The young man bent over the spider in a pleading attitude. Meanwhile, the forester pulled out a revolver. The young man did not get upset: he showed him their work passes, deferentially. It was clear that he was saying that he loved the girl, that he wanted to marry her, that he had been the one to seduce her, that he was solely responsible, that the forester had to let her go because she didn’t do that sort of thing for a living.