I'm Not Stiller (2 page)

Then he tapped the ash from his cigar.

'I'm not Stiller,' I reiterated, as he began conscientiously to fill in the voluminous form, but it was as though he simply didn't hear me any more. I tried a different tone of voice. I spoke solemnly and soberly: 'Inspector, I haven't got another passport.' Or with a laugh: 'That's a lot of nonsense.' But in spite of my drunkenness I could clearly feel that the more I spoke, the less he listened. Finally I shouted: 'I'm not Stiller, devil take it.' I yelled and banged my fist on the table.

'Why get so excited?'

'Inspector,' I said, 'give me my passport.'

He didn't even look up.

'You're under arrest,' he said, turning the pages of my passport with his left hand, copying down the number, the date of issue, the name of the American consul in Mexico, everything the blue form demanded in such cases, and said in a not unfriendly voice: 'Sit down.'

***

My cell—I have just measured it with my shoe, which is a trifle
less than twelve inches long—is small, like everything in this country, so clean one can hardly breathe for hygiene, and oppressive precisely because everything is just right. No more and no less. Everything in this country is oppressively adequate. The cell is 10 feet long, 7 feet 10 inches wide, and 8 feet 3 inches high. A humane prison, there's no denying it, and that's what makes it so unbearable. Not a cobweb, not a. trace of mildew on the walls, nothing to justify indignation. Some prisons get stormed when the people learn about them; here there's nothing to storm. Millions of people, I know, live worse than I do. The bed has springs. The barred window lets in the sun—at this time of the year until about eleven a.m. The table has two drawers and there is also a Bible and a standard lamp. And when I have to do my business I only have to press a white button and I am taken to the appropriate place, which is not supplied with old newspapers one can first read, but with soft crepe paper. And yet it's a prison, and there are moments when you feel like screaming. You don't do so, any more than in a big store; you dry your hands on a towel, walk on linoleum, and say thank you when you're locked into your cabin again. Apart from the already autumnal foliage of a chestnut tree I can see nothing, not even if I climb up on the sprung bed, which incidentally (with shoes) is forbidden. Sounds of unknown origin are the worst torment, of course. Since I discovered they still have trams in this town I have almost been able to ignore their rumbling. But the unintelligible announcer on a nearby radio, the daily clatter of the dustcart, and the wild beating of carpets in echoing courtyards are bad. It seems that in this country people have an almost morbid fear of dirt. Yesterday they started entertaining me with the stutter of a pneumatic drill; somewhere they are tearing up the street so that later they can pave it again. I often feel as though I am the only unoccupied person in this town. To judge by the voices in the street, when the pneumatic drill stops for a minute, there is much cursing and little laughter here. Round midnight the drunks start bawling because at this hour all the pubs are shut. Sometimes students sing as though one were in the heart of Germany. Around one o'clock silence falls. But it's not much use putting out the light; a distant street-lamp shines into my cell, the shadows of the bars stretch across the wall and bend over on to the ceiling, and when it is windy outside, so that the street lamp swings, the swaying shadows of the bars are enough to drive you crazy. In the morning, when the sun shines, these shadows do at least lie on the floor.

***

Without the warder, who brings me my food, I shouldn't know to this day what's really going on here. Every newspaper reader seems to know who Stiller was. This makes it almost impossible to get any information out of anyone; everybody acts as though you were bound to know all about it, and they themselves only have a rough idea.

'—for a time, I believe, they looked for him in the lake,' said my warder, 'but without success, then all of a sudden people said he was in the Foreign Legion.'

While he was speaking, he ladled out the soup.

'Lots of Swiss do that,' he told me, 'when it gets on their nprves here.'

'They join the Foreign Legion?' I asked.

'Three hundred a year!'

'Why the Foreign Legion?' I asked.

'Because it gets on their nerves here.'

'Yes, I know,' I said, 'But why the Foreign Legion? That's worse still.'

'It makes no difference to me.'

'So he just left his wife at Davos,' I asked, 'ill as she was?'

'Maybe it was a blessing to her.'

'Do you think so?'

'It makes no difference to me,' he said. 'Since then she's lived in Paris.'

'I know.'

'She's a dancer.'

'I know.'

'As pretty as a picture.'

'How's her T.B.?' I inquired sympathetically.

'Cured.'

'Who says so?'

'She does.'

'How do you know all this?'

'How do I
know
?' said my warder. 'Why, from the papers.'

I can't find out much else.

'Eat,' says my warder. 'Eat the soup while it's still hot, and don't lose your grip, Mr White. That's what they're waiting for, these Herr Doktors, I know them.'

The soup, a
minestra,
was good; in general I can't complain about the food here, and I think my warder has a soft spot for me; at any rate he doesn't address me (like everyone else) as Herr Stiller, but as Mr White.

***

So they want me to tell them my life story. And nothing but the plain, unvarnished truth. A pad of white paper, a fountain pen with ink that I can have refilled whenever I like at the expense of the State, and a little good will—what's going to be left of truth, when I get at it with my fountain pen? And if I just stick to the facts, says my counsel, we'll get truth in the corner so to speak, where we can grab it. Where could truth escape to, if I write it down? And by facts, I think my counsel means especially place-names, dates that can be checked, details of jobs, and other sources of income, for example, duration of residence in different towns, number of children, number of divorces, religion, and so on.

 

P.S. Where was I on 18 January 1946?

***

Walking in the prison yard.

It's not nearly so bad, not nearly so humiliating as you expect, and as a matter of fact I'm glad to be able to walk again, even if it's only round and round in a circle. The yard is pretty big—paving-stones with moss growing in between, a fine plane tree in the centre, ivy on the walls, and of course the fact that we are not yet wearing convict's clothes, but the civilian clothes we had on when we were arrested, makes a lot of difference. If we widen the circle in which we have to walk we can see a flat roof with flapping washing; apart from this there is only sky around the roofs, which are covered with cooing pigeons. Unfortunately, we have to keep in single file, which makes proper conversation impossible. In front of me walks a fat man with a shiny bald patch (like myself) and folds of fat on the back of his neck, who paddles himself along with his arms when he's made to walk—probably a newcomer; when a friendly warder tells him it's time for his walk, he looks round (which costs him a physical effort) half stubbornly, half bewildered, dumbly seeking support. Support against what? Behind me goes the Italian who is so fond of singing in the shower-bath, and the warders can't help laughing at his comic imitation of myself. Once I looked round to see my portrait. It was funny enough: hands behind the back, the attitude of a thinker, always slightly out of line through absent-mindedness, a look of nostalgia for distant places combined with yearning glances over the nearest brick wall, a man who shyly flatters himself he doesn't belong here, and on top of this the awkward cordiality of the intellectual. It's probably a good likeness, anyhow even the Jew has to laugh, the only intellectual among the prisoners, who unfortunately walks in the other half of the circle, so that we can only converse in grimaces and gestures. He seems to have very little faith in Swiss justice...

Suddenly someone began playing football with a raw potato; there were a few brisk passing movements before the head warder, a very correct man who always takes it as a personal insult when anything discreditable happens, finally spotted the potato. Squad halt! A serious inquiry as to where the potato came from. We stood in a circle grinning, not saying a word. The head warder walked from man to man, the peeled potato in his hand, and looked each of us in the eye. Everyone shrugged his shoulders. The head warder had missed the chance of simply throwing the potato away, against his wish the matter had suddenly become important, a matter of principle. I had the feeling it was all a farce and the head warder himself was finding it hard not to laugh and dismiss the lot of us. At the same time I felt that perhaps they had a torture chamber after all, perhaps the stolen potato was enough to make them come with red-hot irons. Suddenly my Jew put up his hand, to the accompaniment of general laughter. Even the head warder realized that this admission could only be an act of derision (he had never seen a Jew who played football) which was worse than the theft of an uncooked potato. The Jew, white with agitation, had to step out of the ranks. The rest of us were told to go round at the double for five minutes. Of course the poor fat fellow in front of me, wobbling like a hot-water bottle, was left behind on the first time round and ran in a spiral to shorten the distance, until a warder told him to fall out. They were not inhuman. But order must be maintained and also a certain gravity. After all, we were in a remand prison...

There are times, alone in my cell, when I have the feeling that I have only dreamed all this; that at any moment I could stand up, take my hands away from my face and look round in freedom, as though the prison were only within me.

***

'I've done my best,' said my defending counsel, 'to make your stay in the remand prison, which I hope will be short, as comfortable as possible—whisky is not allowed. You have the best room in the building, believe me, not the biggest, but the only one with morning sunshine; you have this view into the old chestnut tree. As to the bells of the Cathedral, they're very loud, I admit; but what do you expect me to do? I can't put the Cathedral somewhere else.'

That was quite right, just as everything my counsel says is right in a way that never convinces me and yet always puts me in the wrong. The ringing of the cathedral bells, a metallic hum which breaks out at least twice a day and more often when there are weddings or funerals, makes it impossible to hear oneself think; it is like a trembling of the air, a soundless quaking, a noise like a man diving into the water from an excessively high diving board; it makes me deaf, dizzy, and idiotic. But my counsel is right; he can't put the cathedral somewhere else. And as I then remain silent out of sheer hopelessness, he picks up his folder and says:

'Right, let's get down to business.'

My counsel is a thoroughly decent, or at least inoffensive fellow, from a well-to-do family, virtuous through and through, rather inhibited, but even his inhibitions are turned into good manners; and above all, he is just, no doubt of that, just in even the most trivial matter, desperately just, just out of an almost inborn conviction that justice exists, at least in a constitutional State, at least in Switzerland.

At the same time, he's not stupid. He knows a great deal, he's as reliable as an encyclopedia, especially where Switzerland is concerned, so that there is really no point in discussing Switzerland with my counsel; every idea that casts doubt on Switzerland is smothered under a mass of indisputable historical facts, and in the end, if you don't actually praise his Switzerland, you are always in the wrong, just as I was wrong over the bells of their cathedral. Perhaps it's only his lack of temperament, his virtuousness, his moderation, which so immoderately irritate me; he is superior to me in intelligence, yet he employs all his intelligence simply to avoid making mistakes. I find such people unbearable. I can reproach him with nothing; he considers me a thoroughly decent, or at least inoffensive, fundamentally sensible fellow, a man' of good will, a Swiss. This is the basis on which he is conducting my defence, and every time I see him I nearly explode. Then I turn on my heels, leave him sitting on the bed and turn my back to him; I maintain an almost insulting silence arid stare out of the window at the old chestnut trees with my hands in my pockets, simply because in the long run I can't stand people of his sort—people who can't imagine committing murder themselves, and therefore can't imagine that I could commit murder either.

'I understand you perfectly,' he said, 'I understand you perfectly. You're annoyed with Switzerland because it greets you with imprisonment, understandably—I mean, understandably annoyed, for it is painful to look at one's homeland through bars—'

'What do you mean, homeland?' I asked.

'Only'—he skipped my not unimportant question—'don't make it difficult for me to defend you. Unfortunately some of the remarks you made when you were arrested have found their way into the Press. What's the use of making bad blood? I beg you, in your own interest, to refrain in future from criticizing our country, which is your country too, after all.'

'What did I say?'

'People here are very sensitive,' he replied with splendid frankness, but at the same time evidently unwilling to utter remarks uncomplimentary to Switzerland with his own mouth, and continued: 'To keep to the matter in hand, I have now examined all the papers, and if you will be good enough to tell me, at least in general terms, where and how you have spent the last six years—'

He asks me that every time. And yet I swore not to make any statement without whisky. It's a positive dossier he takes out of his leather brief-case, so full that one can't even turn the pages without first undoing the clip. I laughed in his face. He is convinced that this dossier is mine, nothing will prevent him from reading it aloud for hours on end. As though the boredom he inflicts on me day after day were not also a kind of torture.