I Confess (26 page)

"You shouldn't have done that." Wilma was close to tears again. I assembled all the roses—there were at least three dozen—^into one huge bouquet, and laid it in Wilma's lap. She looked at me. She was breathing hard and fast. She didn't say a word but her eyes were shining. By now it was quite dark in the little tea shop; outside the street Ughts went on.

"Why did you do that?"

•'Because I'm happy."

"Happy? About what?"

•^Because they arrested Lauterbach and I'm not going to get my money," I said and laughed, suddenly crazy with rehef.

"I don't understand. How can you be happy about that?"

"Because now I can stay in Vienna," I said and even my voice wasn't steady.

"And why do you want to stay in Vienna, Mr. Frank?"

•'Because I love you." And then I kissed her.

Her lap was full of red roses to which she clung as I embraced her. Her lips were wonderful and young. She slipped into my embrace, moaning softly. Then her mouth became warm and soft, her lips parted. I held her close, felt her body next to mine, her breath on my lips. "I love you too," she said when we could finally release each other. A few roses had fallen to the floor. I picked them up. She gathered them all together and buried her face in them.

"Come," I said. "Let's go."

"Where?"

"I don't know where." Suddenly I had to face reality. I couldn't take her to my place, and I hated the idea of a hotel.

"Come to me," she said.

"To you? But your parents ..."

"They're not home," she said softly. "I'm all alone until tomorrow morning."

Even in the dark around us—^the madam still hadn't turned on the Ughts—^I could see the hot blood suffusing her face. It gave me a longing I had never experienced before. It was not the lust that Yolanda aroused in me. That was an adventurous, perilous longing, doomed to hopelessness, a longing that made me ill, hollowed me out and burned itself up in despair, self-accusation and enfee-blement. But my desire for Wilma was a blessing. It gave me strength. I felt free, secure and at home in my love for her. It was sanctuary.

We walked through the city. Now it was raining quite heavily. The streets glittered, the cars passing by splashed us—^we noticed nothing. We walked arm in arm and barely spoke. The rain poured down on us, strange people bumped into us—^we were unaware of it. We were happy. Soon, I told myself, soon we would be alone. What was to happen after that was a matter of complete indifference to me. Let them arrest me, tomorrow, the next day ... let Yolanda report me . . . let me die. I had found Wilma. I had loved her on a rainy evening on which an obscure crook had been arrested. I had loved her as only a human being can love. That was all that mattered.

We reached her house, and suddenly I could feel her stiffen. The lights were burning in the windows of her apartment. "My parents," she whispered. "They must have come home ahead of time."

I could feel my heart contract painfully. I looked up at the hghted windows and everything in me went dead. "WhatshaUwedo?"

"I don't know," she whispered.

The blood was racing through my veins as I felt her

breath on my face. The rain poured down and the darkness enfolded us. I smiled. I thought again, for a moment, of a hotel room, then I said cheerfuUy, "Go."

"No!" She was stiU in my arms.

"Yes," I said. "Go now, my beloved. We still have that much time. I can wait. Beheve me, I can wait."

"I beheve you," she whispered. Then she tore herself away and ran into the house. I looked after her. My shoes were full of water, but I was happy. And if there is a God in heaven, I thank him for that evening in the city of Vienna, on the fifteenth of October when I walked through the rain with Wilma, free, filled with love, and with that unfulfilled longing which in itself is fulfiUment

14

"Auf Wiedersehen, auf Wiedersehen, don't stay away too long...."

Women's voices and the accompanying sax could be heard all the way out into the hallway. Yolanda had the radio turned on loud. The apartment resounded with the noise of primitive syncopation. Every room was brightly lit and in comparative disorder.

"Good evening," I said, looking around me in astonishment. "What's going on here?"

Yolanda lifted her head for a moment—she was kneeling beside an open trunk—then she turned back to what she was doing. "We're leaving," she said.

I looked at the pile of underwear on the bed, the shoes on the carpet, the clothes hangers scattered all over the place and said politely, "So suddenly?"

"Yes."

Yolanda shook back her hair and sat up to reach for a half-empty glass standing beside her. A bottle of cognac stood beside the glass. It too was half-empty. Yolanda drank. She had apparently already drunk quite a bit. Her eyes glittered and her movements weren't as sure as usual. Her hands were trembling a little as she stuck a cigarette in her mouth. I stepped forward to give her a light and at the same time turned the radio down.

"Why are you turning it off?"

"I'm not turning it off. I'm turning it down.'*

She gave me a strange look, then, without another word, went on with her packing.

"Yolanda," I said, "we can't leave."

"We can."

"No, we can V

"And why can't we?"

"They've arrested Lauterbach."

That penetrated. "You didn't get the money?"

"No."

She hesitated, seemingly absorbed in a pair of nylons she was holding in her hand. Suddenly she laid them in the trunk. "So we'll leave without the money."

"No, we won't," I said. "I have different plans."

"That makes no difference to me."

"Yolanda, what's the matter with you?" I said, raising my voice. Outside a sudden storm had blown up. The windows were rattling. It was an old house.

She emptied her glass. "I've had enough of Vienna, that's what's the matter. That's why I'm leaving and you're coming with me."

"Oh no I'm not."

"Very well," she said. The look in her green eyes was cold and hard. "Then you're going to have a lot of explaining to do to the pohce."

Suddenly I felt very tired and bored with the whole thing. Wilma appeared to me fleetingly; I tried to capture the picture, but then it was gone. "You've been drinking, Yolanda."

"Oh yes/'

"Too much."

"I'm not responsible for all of it," she said, gesturing in the direction of the bottle. "I had a visitor."

"Who?"

"Felix."

"Who's that?" For a moment I really couldn't place the name.

"You don't remember Felix?"

"Sorry, but I don't."

"Actually he came to see you." She sat down on the trunk and drew up her legs. Her robe fell open. She sat carelessly, heels turned in, toes out; her stockings were rolled halfway down. She burped softly and I could smell the stale cognac.

"What did he want to talk to me about?" For the first time in weeks my temples ached.

"About Wilma." Yolanda blew a cloud of smoke into the room. The ash on her cigarette grew longer. Now I knew who Felix was. Wilma's boyfriend. The sweetheart of Wilma, the girl I loved. Felix. He had been here.

"When he found out you weren't here, he decided to talk to me."

"About what?"

"About what was worrying him."

"He's worried?"

"Yes." The ash was almost two inches long. "About Wilma." The ash fell on the carpet between Yolanda's legs. She reached for the bottle. So did I. A tug of war with the bottle . . . "You've had enough."

"Not by a long shot." She got the bottle from me and filled her glass until it ran over. As she Hfted it to her mouth, she spilled some more. "Felix was terribly upset because Wilma loves you. He asked my advice and help. I couldn't give him any advice, but I promised to help him."

My headache grew stronger. "You mean to say he actually came here to tell you that Wilma loves me?"

"He's very young, Jimmy. You mustn't be angry. He loves Wilma too."

"So?"

"A lot more than you do." ^ "What did you say?"

"I said, a lot more than you do."

"I don't love Wilma," I said. It hurt me to say it, I hadn't intended to say it. I had the feeling that with those words I had Jost Wilma. Why was I lying?

"Why are you lying?" asked Yolanda. Her lipstick had smeared, she looked slightly bloated and her skin was greasy.

"Yes," I said. Suddenly I found her repulsive. "Why am I lying? I love Wilma."

"So that's that." She nodded several times; in fact, I thought she was never going to stop. I stretched out a hand for her glass, but she wouldn't let go. "I'll give it back to you," I said. "I just want a swallow."

She let go. The cognac burned and was unpleasantly sweet. I was having diflficulty swallowing. I breathed deep and felt better. Only the headache was still there.

"It was my intention to talk to you about it. It's really quite simple. I fell in love with the girl. Quite a while ago."

"I know," she said calmly.

I began to pace up and down. When my back was turned I could see her in the Venetian mirror hanging on the wall. She could see me too.

"We've got to talk this thing over quietly," I said. "There must be a solution in it for both of us."

"We've got to leave," she said, her lips narrowed.

"Why do we have to leave if, as you say, you've known it all along?"

"We don't have to leave because of Wilma."

"Then why . . ."

"We have to leave for another reason."

"What reason?"

"I can't talk about it."

"Nonsense!" I said. "Why not?"

Now I was standing in front of the mirror, looking at her. I could see that her knees were shaking. She saw that I could see them knocking against each other and closed her robe over them. "I just told you I can't."

"Then you can't expect me to leave with you."

"I'm afraid!" Suddenly she was screaming. "I'm afraid! Can't you understand?"

"No."

"I've got to get away from here. At once! Tonight! And you've got to come with me. Tomorrow it will be too late."

"Too late for what?"

"For everything, you idiot! You fall in love with a pretty girl and think the world will stand still because of it. You don't know what's going on around you!"

"Apparently not. So enlighten me."

"I can't. I've told you I can't. All I can say is that it's a question of life and death. Mine. And yours!"

"You're drunk," I said. "And jealous. That's all."

"You swine!" she screamed and began to cry. Then, with Ughtning speed she bent down and the next thing I knew, her glass was flying at me. It had been blown in one piece and was heavy. I ducked. The glass hit the mirror and smashed it.

"Yolanda!" I cried and sprang at her. But she was quicker. I saw the bottle only in the split second before it hit me on the bridge of my nose. Then it too shattered. A sensation of burning as the alcohol poured over where I was cut, then a blood red curtain falling across my eyes. I staggered forward into her arms.

"Jimmy, my God, what have I done?"

''Give me a handkerchief," I said. I could see nothing.

"Yes, Jimmy, yes. I didn't mean to do it. I'm so afraid, so terribly afraid."

"A handkerchief. Hurry up!"

"Here." She pressed it against the wound.

And then it came. With the speed of Ughtning. It came

as it had come once before—a blinding light, excruciating pain and an endless fall. "Yolanda!" I screamed. "Hold me fast!"

She held me fast, still I fell, deep, deeper than ever before. It was my second serious attack.

15

Pain.

I can't describe it—^the pain in the hours that followed and in the days after that. There was nothing definable about it, one would have to invent a new word to describe it. But the human being can't find such a word because the pain is inhuman. I was no longer living. I lay there, semi-conscious, somewhere between dreaming and waking. I couldn't hear, I couldn't see, I couldn't think. I ate nothing, drank nothing. I couldn't move. As if I were paralyzed. I lay there and waited for the pain to pass. But it didn't pass. The pain endured.

16

Is it day? Isitnight.^

What time is it? What day? Once I open my eyes. Yolanda is sitting at my bedside.

I recognize her silhouette. A red-rimmed silhouette that dissolves around the edges. I am wearing a bandage. I know because I can feel it She bends over me. "Any better?"

"No."

I don't realize that T haven't said it, that only my lips have moved. I am not better. It looks as if I never will be. Is this the end? And if it is—^why does it take so long? Will this end never end?

17

The pain has spread away from my head like something growing. Sometimes I get the impression that my head isn't hurting any more at all, as if it were already dead, its veins and organs withered away like the sick branch of a tree. These are times when aU hell breaks loose in my right leg, or in my breast or in the fingers of one hand. These are, of course, all signs of the final exhaustion and erosion of my nervous system which can no longer keep pace with the exertion of these days. The communications system of my body is in total disarray, all reflexes and reactions are confused. Only one thing remains in sovereign command: the pain. On the third day—^Yolanda told me the time later—^I am able to write one word on a pad she holds for me. She reads the word. I watch her anxiously. Then she nods and rises to leave while I close my eyes in expectation of the precious miracle. The word I wrote was morphine.

I didn't get it right away. It wasn't easy to get morphine without a prescription. Yolanda tried everywhere. She went to the most disreputable places, into the darkest suburban alleyways on the other side of the Danube. She dealt with pimps, smugglers, sailors and bloated barmaids. I lay on my bed, almost unconscious, and waited for her to come back. I still couldn't talk, but even in my semiconscious state the cruel fact penetrated that Yolanda couldn't go to a doctor, that I couldn't be taken to a hospital, that every medical assistance was denied me if I was not prepared to betray myself and be arrested and indicted.