Flotsam by Erich Maria Remarque Read Free Book Online Page A

He knew that many emigrees did not care to be reminded of their former lives.
    Presently he saw the violinist come in and stand looking about in bewilderment. He motioned to him; the violinist appeared surprised but came over slowly.
    Kern was embarrassed. On first seeing the man again, he had believed he was an old acquaintance; now he suddenly realized that they had not yet spoken to each other.
    “I beg your pardon,” he said flushing, “but I heard you playing a while ago and it occurred to me you might not know your way around here.”
    “As a matter of fact, I don’t. Do you?”
    “Yes, I have been here twice before. Have you been out of the country for long?”
    “Two weeks. I arrived here today.”
    Kern noticed that the professor and someone beside him were getting up. “There are two free places,” he said quickly. “Come on.”
    They pushed their way between the tables. The professor came toward them through the narrow space. He looked at Kern uncertainly and stopped. “Don’t I know you?”
    “I was one of your students,” Kern said.
    “Ah, yes, to be sure.” The professor nodded. “Tell me, do you happen to know anyone who could use a vacuum cleaner? With ten per cent discount and easy payments? Or a record player and radio combined?”
    For an instant Kern was amazed. The professor had been anauthority on cancer research. “No, unfortunately I don’t,” he said sympathetically. He knew what it meant to sell vacuum cleaners and phonographs.
    “I rather thought you wouldn’t.” The professor looked at him absent-mindedly. “I beg your pardon,” he said, as if he were speaking to someone entirely different, and went on.
    There was barley soup with boiled beef. Kern emptied his plate ravenously. When he looked up, the violinist was sitting beside him with his hands on the table, his plate untouched.
    “Aren’t you going to eat?” Kern asked in amazement.
    “I can’t.”
    “Are you ill?” The pear-shaped head of the violinist looked a sick yellow under the chalky light of the unshaded bulbs on the ceiling.
    “No.”
    “You ought to eat,” Kern said.
    The violinist made no reply. He lighted a cigarette and smoked rapidly. Then he pushed his plate to one side. “It’s impossible to live this way!” he exclaimed finally.
    Kern looked at him. “Haven’t you a passport?” he asked.
    “Yes, but—” The violinist nervously crushed out his cigarette. “Even so it’s impossible to live this way! Deprived of everything! With no ground under one’s feet!”
    “My God!” Kern said. “You have a passport and you have your violin—”
    The violinist glanced up. “But that hasn’t anything to do with it,” he exclaimed irritably. “Can’t you understand that?”
    “No, I can’t.”
    Kern was tremendously disillusioned. He had thought that anyone who could play like that must be a superior person. Someone from whom you could learn… And now he saw, sitting there, an embittered man who, though he was fifteenyears Kern’s senior, seemed to him like a spoiled child. The first phase of emigration, he thought. He will soon quiet down.
    “Aren’t you really going to eat your soup?” he asked.
    “No.”
    “Then give it to me. I’m still hungry.”
    The violinist pushed the plate toward him. Kern ate the soup slowly. Every spoonful contained strength to withstand misery and he didn’t want to lose any of it. Then he stood up. “Thank you for the soup. I’d have liked it better if you had eaten it yourself.”
    The violinist looked at him. Furrows disfigured his face. “That’s something you’re not old enough to understand,” he said apologetically.
    “It’s easier to understand than you think,” Kern replied. “You’re unhappy, that’s all.”
    “What do you mean, that’s all?”
    “It’s not much. You begin by thinking there is something extraordinary about it. But you’ll find out, when you’ve been out in the world a while longer, unhappiness is the