Solidarité révolutionnaire avec la compagnonne incarcérée à Cologne
▻https://nantes.indymedia.org/articles/39735
Dans la nuit #de jeudi à vendredi, dans les environs de la gare TGV, nous avons accroché une banderole en solidarité avec Lisa, compagnonne incarcérée à Cologne pour un braquage de banque à Aachen, en Allemagne.
#Répression #/ #prisons #centres #rétention #besançon #Répression,/,prisons,centres,de,rétention
You Can’t Go Home Again, by Thomas Wolfe : 43. The Capture
▻https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/w/wolfe/thomas/you-cant-go-home-again/chapter43.html
Adamowski and George stepped out on the platform together and walked forward to inspect the locomotive. The German engine, which had here reached the end of its journey and would soon be supplanted by its Belgian successor, was a magnificent machine of tremendous power and weight, almost as big as one of the great American engines. It was beautifully streamlined for high velocity, and its tender was a wonderful affair, different from any other that George had ever seen. It seemed to be a honeycomb of pipes. One looked in through some slanting bars and saw a fountainlike display composed of thousands of tiny little jets of steaming water. Every line of this intricate and marvellous apparatus bore evidence of the organising skill and engineering genius that had created it.
Knowing how important are the hairline moments of transition, how vivid, swift, and fugitive are the poignant first impressions when a traveller changes from one country to another, from one people to another, from one standard of conduct and activity to another, George waited with intense interest for the approach of the Belgian locomotive in order to see what it might indicate of the differences between the powerful, solid, and indomitable race they were leaving and the little people whose country they were now about to enter.
While Adamowski and George were engaged in observations and speculations on this subject, their own coach and another, which was also destined for Paris, were detached from the German train and shifted to a string of coaches on the opposite side of the platform. They were about to hasten back when a guard informed them that they still had ample time, and that the train was not scheduled to depart for another five minutes. So they waited a little longer, and Adamowski remarked that it was a pitiful evidence of the state Europe was in that a crack train between the two greatest cities on the Continent should be carrying only two through coaches, and these not even filled.
But the Belgian locomotive still did not come, and now, glancing up at the station clock, they saw that the moment for departure had arrived. Fearful of being left behind if they waited any longer, they started back along the platform. They found the little blonde-haired lady and, flanking her on each side, they hastened towards their coach and their own compartment.
As they approached, it was evident that something had happened. There were no signs of departure. The conductor and the station guard stood together on the platform. No warning signal had been given. When they came alongside of their car, people were clustered in the corridor, and something in the way they stood indicated a subdued tension, a sense of crisis, that made George’s pulse beat quicker.
George had observed this same phenomenon several times before in the course of his life and he knew the signs. A man has leaped or fallen, for example, from a high building to the pavement of a city street; or a man has been shot or struck by a motor-car, and now lies dying quietly before the eyes of other men — and always the manifestation of the crowd is just the same. Even before you see the faces of the people, something about their backs, their posture, the position of their heads and shoulders tells you what has happened. You do not know, of course, the precise circumstances, but you sense immediately the final stage of tragedy. You know that someone has just died or is dying. And in the terrible eloquence of backs and shoulders, the feeding silence of the watching men, you also sense another tragedy which ‘is even deeper. This is the tragedy of man’s cruelty and his lust for pain — the tragic weakness which corrupts him, which he loathes, but which he cannot cure. As a child, George had seen it on the faces of men standing before the window of a shabby little undertaker’s place, looking at the bloody, riddled carcass of a negro which the mob had caught and killed. Again, as a boy of fourteen, he had seen it on the faces of men and women at a dance, as they watched a fight in which one man beat another man to death.
And now, here it was again. As George and his two companions hastened along beside the train and saw the people gathered in the corridor in that same feeding posture, waiting, watching, in that same deadly fascinated silence, he was sure that once again he was about to witness death.
That was the first thought that came to him — and it came also, instantaneously, without a word of communication between them, to Adamowski and the little blonde woman — the thought that someone had died. But as they started to get on the train, what suddenly stunned them and stopped them short, appalled, was the realisation that the tragedy, whatever it was, had happened in their own compartment. The shades were tightly drawn, the door closed and locked, the whole place sealed impenetrably. They stared in silence, rooted to the platform. Then they saw the woman’s young companion standing at the window in the corridor. He motioned to them quickly, stealthily, a gesture warning them to remain where they were. And as he did so it flashed over all three of them that the victim of this tragic visitation must be the nervous little man who had been the companion of their voyage since morning. The stillness of the scene and the shuttered blankness of that closed compartment were horrible. They all felt sure that this little man who had begun by being so disagreeable, but who had gradually come out of his shell and become their friend, and to whom they had all been talking only fifteen minutes before, had died, and that authority and the law were now enclosed there with his body in the official ceremony that society demands.
Even as they stared appalled and horror-stricken at that fatally curtained compartment, the lock clicked sharply, the door was opened and closed quickly, and an official came out. He was a burly fellow in a visored cap and a jacket of olive green — a man of forty-five or more with high, blunt cheek-bones, a florid face, and tawny moustaches combed out sprouting in the Kaiser Wilhelm way. His head was shaven, and there were thick creases at the base of his skull and across his fleshy neck. He came out, climbed down clumsily to the platform, signalled and called excitedly to another officer, and climbed back into the train again.
He belonged to a familiar and well-known type, one which George had seen and smiled at often, but one which now became, under these ominous and unknown circumstances, sinisterly unpleasant. The man’s very weight and clumsiness, the awkward way he got down from the train and climbed up again, the thickness of his waist, the width and coarseness of his lumbering buttocks, the way his sprouting moustaches quivered with passion and authority, the sound of his guttural voice as he shouted to his fellow-officer, his puffing, panting air of official indignation — all these symptoms which ran true to type now became somehow loathsome and repellent. All of a sudden, without knowing why, George felt himself trembling with a murderous and incomprehensible anger. He wanted to smash that fat neck with the creases in it. He wanted to pound that inflamed and blunted face into a jelly. He wanted to kick square and hard, bury his foot dead centre in the obscene fleshiness of those lumbering buttocks. Like all Americans, he had never liked the police and the kind of personal authority that is sanctified in them. But his present feeling, with its murderous rage, was a good deal more than that. For he knew that he was helpless, that all of them were, and he felt impotent, shackled, unable to stir against the walls of an unreasonable but unshakable authority.
The official with the sprouting moustaches, accompanied by the colleague he had summoned, opened the curtained door of the compartment again, and now George saw that two other officers were inside. And the nervous little man who had been their companion — no, he was not dead! — he sat all huddled up, facing them. His face was white and pasty. It looked greasy, as if it were covered with a salve of cold, fat sweat. Under his long nose his mouth was trembling in a horrible attempt at a smile. And in the very posture of the two men as they bent over him and questioned him there was something revolting and unclean.
But the official with the thick, creased neck had now filled the door and blotted out the picture. He went in quickly, followed by his colleague. The door closed behind them, and again there was nothing but the drawn curtains and that ill-omened secrecy.
All the people who had gathered round had got this momentary glimpse and had simply looked on with stupefied surprise. Now those who stood in the corridor of the train began to whisper to one another. The little blonde woman went over and carried on a whispered conversation with the young man and several other people who were standing at the open window. After conferring with them with subdued but growing excitement for a minute or two, she came back, took George and Adamowski by the arm, and whispered:
“Come over here. There is something I want to tell you.”
She led them across the platform, out of hearing. Then, as both of the men said in lowered voices: “What is it?”— she looked round cautiously and whispered:
“That man — the one in our compartment — he was trying to get out of the country — and they’ve caught him!”
“But why? What for? What has he done?” they asked, bewildered.
Again she glanced back cautiously and, drawing them together till their three heads were almost touching, she said in a secretive whisper that was full of awe and fright:
“They say he is a Jew! And they found money on him! They searched him — they searched his baggage — he was taking money out!”
“How much?” asked Adamowski.
“I don’t know,” she whispered. “A great deal, I think. A hundred thousand marks, some say. Anyhow, they found it!”
“But how?” George began. “I thought everything was finished. I thought they were done with all of us when they went through the train.”
“Yes,” she said. “But don’t you remember something about the ticket? He said something about not having a ticket the whole way. I suppose he thought it would be safer — wouldn’t arouse suspicion in Berlin if he bought a ticket only to Aachen. So he got off the train here to buy his ticket for Paris — and that’s when they caught him!” she whispered. “They must had have their eye on him! They must have suspected him! That’s why they didn’t question him when they came through the train!” George remembered now that “they” had not. “But they were watching for him, and they caught him here!” she went on. “They asked him where he was going, and he said to Paris. They asked him how much money he was taking out. He said ten marks. Then they asked him how long he was going to remain in Paris, and for what purpose, and he said he was going to be there a week, attending this congress of lawyers that he spoke about. They asked him, then, how he proposed to stay in Paris a week if all he had was ten marks. And I think,” she whispered, “that that’s where he got frightened! He began to lose his head! He said he had twenty marks besides, which he had put into another pocket and forgotten. And then, of course, they had him! They searched him! They searched his baggage! And they found more”— she whispered in an awed tone —“much, much more!”
They all stared at one another, too stunned to say a word. Then the woman laughed in a low, frightened sort of way, a little, uncertain: “O-hoh-hoh-hoh-hoh,” ending on a note of incredulity.
“This man”— she whispered again —“this little Jew ——”.
“I didn’t know he was a Jew,” George said. “I should not have thought so.”
“But he is!” she whispered, and looked stealthily round again to see if they were being overheard or watched. “And he was doing what so many of the others have done — he was trying to get out with his money!” Again she laughed, the uncertain little “Hohhoh-hoh” that mounted to incredulous amazement. Yet George saw that her eyes were troubled, too.
All of a sudden George felt sick, empty, nauseated. Turning half away, he thrust his hands into his pockets — and drew them out as though his fingers had been burned. The man’s money — he still had it! Deliberately, now, he put his hand into his pocket again and felt the five two-mark pieces. The coins seemed greasy, as if they were covered with sweat. George took them out and closed them in his fist and started across the platform towards the train. The woman seized him by the arm.
“Where are you going?” she gasped. “What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to give the man his money. I won’t see him again. I can’t keep it.”
Her face went white. “Are you mad?” she whispered. “Don’t you know that that will do no good? You’ll only get yourself arrested! And, as for him — he’s in trouble enough already. You’ll only make it so much worse for him. And besides,” she faltered, “God knows what he has done, what he has said already. If he has lost his head completely — if he has told that we have transferred money to one another — we’ll all be in for it!”
They had not thought of this. And as they realised the possible consequences of their good intentions, they just stood there, all three, and stared helplessly at one another. They just stood there, feeling dazed and weak and hollow. They just stood there and prayed.
And now the officers were coming out of the compartment. The curtained door opened again, and the fellow with the sprouting moustaches emerged, carrying the little man’s valise. He clambered down clumsily onto the platform and set the valise on the floor between his feet. He looked round. It seemed to George and the others that he glared at them. They just stood still and hardly dared to breathe. They thought they were in for it, and expected now to see all of their own baggage come out.
But in a moment the other three officials came through the door of the compartment with the little man between them. They stepped down to the platform and marched him along, white as a sheet, grease standing out in beads all over his face, protesting volubly in a voice that had a kind of anguished lilt in it. He came right by the others as they stood there. The man’s money sweated in George’s hand, and he did not know what to do. He made a movement with his arm and started to speak to him. At the same time he was hoping desperately that the man would not speak. George tried to look away from him, but could not. The little man came towards them, protesting with every breath that the whole thing could be explained, that it was an absurd mistake. For just the flick of an instant as he passed the others he stopped talking, glanced at them, white-faced, still smiling his horrible little forced smile of terror; for just a moment his eyes rested on them, and then, without a sign of recognition, without betraying them, without giving any indication that he knew them, he went on by.
George heard the woman at his side sigh faintly and felt her body slump against him. They all felt weak, drained of their last energies. Then they walked slowly across the platform and got into the train.
The evil tension had been snapped now. People were talking feverishly, still in low tones but with obvious released excitement. The little blonde woman leaned from the window of the corridor and spoke to the fellow with the sprouting moustaches, who was still standing there.
“You — you’re not going to let him go?” she asked hesitantly, almost in a whisper. “Are — are you going to keep him here?”
He looked at her stolidly. Then a slow, intolerable smile broke across his brutal features. He nodded his head deliberately, with the finality of a gluttonous and full-fed satisfaction:
“Ja,” he said. “Er bleibt.” And, shaking his head ever so slightly from side to side: “Geht nicht!” he said.
They had him. Far down the platform the passengers heard the shrill, sudden fife of the Belgian engine whistle. The guard cried warning. All up and down the train the doors were slammed. Slowly the train began to move. At a creeping pace it rolled right past the little man. They had him, all right. The officers surrounded him. He stood among them, still protesting, talking with his hands now. And the men in uniform said nothing. They had no need to speak. They had him. They just stood and watched him, each with a faint suggestion of that intolerable slow smile upon his face. They raised their eyes and looked at the passengers as the train rolled past, and the line of travellers standing in the corridors looked back at them and caught the obscene and insolent communication in their glance and in that intolerable slow smile.
And the little man — he, too, paused once from his feverish effort to explain. As the car in which he had been riding slid by, he lifted his pasty face and terror-stricken eyes, and for a moment his lips were stilled of their anxious pleading. He looked once, directly and steadfastly, at his former companions, and they at him. And in that gaze there was all the unmeasured weight of man’s mortal anguish. George and the others felt somehow naked and ashamed, and somehow guilty. They all felt that they were saying farewell, not to a man, but to humanity; not to some pathetic stranger, some chance acquaintance of the voyage, but to mankind; not to some nameless cipher out of life, but to the fading image of a brother’s face.
The train swept out and gathered speed — and so they lost him:
#Deutschand #Berlin #Geschichte #Nazis #Rassegesetze #Juden #Literatur #Bahnhof_Zoo #Kurfürstendamm #Charlottenburg
You Can’t Go Home Again, by Thomas Wolfe : 42. The Family of Earth
▻https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/w/wolfe/thomas/you-cant-go-home-again/chapter42.html
The woman smiled at them as they came in, and all three of their 1 fellow-passengers looked at them in a way that showed wakened curiosity and increased interest. It was evident that George and Adamowski had themselves been subjects of speculation during their absence.
Adamowski now spoke to the others. His German was not very good but it was coherent, and his deficiencies did not bother him at all. He was so self-assured, so confirmed in his self-possession, that he could plunge boldly into conversation in a foreign language with no sense whatever of personal handicap. Thus encouraged, the three Germans now gave free expression to their curiosity, to the speculations which the meeting of George and Adamowski and their apparent recognition of each other had aroused.
The woman asked Adamowski where he came from —“Was fur ein Landsmann sind sie?”
He replied that he was an American.
“Ach, so?” She looked surprised, then added quickly: “But not by birth? You were not born in America?”
“No,” said Adamowski. “I am Polish by birth. But I live in America now. And my friend here”— they all turned to stare curiously at George ——“is an American by birth.”
They nodded in satisfaction. And the woman, smiling with good-humoured and eager interest, said:
“And your friend — he is an artist, isn’t he?”
“Yes,” said Adamowski.
“A painter?” The woman’s tone was almost gleeful as she pursued further confirmation of her own predictions.
“He is not a painter. He is ein Dichter.”
The word means “poet”, and George quickly amended it to “ein Schriftsteller”— a writer.
All three of them thereupon looked at one another with nods of satisfaction, saying, ah, they thought so, it was evident. Old Fussand–Fidget even spoke up now, making the sage observation that it was apparent “from the head”. The others nodded again, and the woman then turned once more to Adamowski, saying:
“But you — you are not an artist, are you? You do something else?”
He replied that he was a business man —“ein Geschäftsmann”— that he lived in New York, and that his business was in Wall Street. The name apparently had imposing connotations for them, for they all nodded in an impressed manner and said “Ali!” again.
George and Adamowski went on then and told them of the manner of their meeting, how they had never seen each other before that morning, but how each of them had known of the other through many mutual friends. This news delighted everyone. It was a complete confirmation of what they had themselves inferred. The little blonde lady nodded triumphantly and burst out in excited conversation with her companion and with Fuss-and-Fidget, saying:
“What did I tell you? I said the same thing, didn’t I? It’s a small world after all, isn’t it?”
Now they were all really wonderfully at ease with one another, all talking eagerly, excitedly, naturally, like old friends who had just met after a long separation. The little lady began to tell them all about herself. She and her husband, she said, were proprietors of a business near the Alexander-platz. No — smiling — the young man was not her husband. He, too, was a young artist, and was employed by her. In what sort of business? She laughed — one would never guess. She and her husband manufactured manikins for show-window displays. No, it was not a shop, exactly — there was a trace of modest pride here — it was more like a little factory. They made their own figures. Their business, she implied, was quite a large one. She said that they employed over fifty workers, and formerly had had almost a hundred. That was why she had to go to Paris as often as she could, for Paris set the fashion in manikins just as it did in clothes.
Of course, they did not buy the Paris models. Mein Gott!— that was impossible with the money situation what it was. Nowadays it was hard enough for a German business person even to get out of his own country, much less to buy anything abroad. Nevertheless, hard as it was, she had to get to Paris somehow once or twice a year, just in order to keep up with “what was going on.” She always took an artist with her, and this young man was making his first trip in this capacity. He was a sculptor by profession, but he earned money for his art by doing commercial work in her business. He would make designs and draw models of the latest show-window manikins in Paris, and would duplicate them when he returned; then the factory would turn them out by the hundreds.
Adamowski remarked that he did not see how it was possible, under present circumstances, for a German citizen to travel anywhere. It had become difficult enough for a foreigner to get in and out of Germany. The money complications were so confusing and so wearisome.
George added to this an account of the complications that had attended his own brief journey to the Austrian Tyrol. Ruefully he displayed the pocketful of papers, permits, visas, and official stamps which he had accumulated during the summer.
Upon this common grievance they were all vociferously agreed. The lady affirmed that it was stupid, exhausting, and, for a German with business outside the country, almost impossible. She added quickly, loyally, that of course it was also necessary. But then she went on to relate that her three-or four-day trips to Paris could only be managed through some complicated trade arrangement and business connection in France, and as she tried to explain the necessary details of the plan she became so involved in the bewildering complexities of cheques and balances that she finally ended by waving her hand charmingly in a gesture of exhausted dismissal, saying:
“Ach, Gott! It is all too complicated, too confusing! I cannot tell you how it is — I do not understand it myself!”
Old Fuss-and-Fidget put in here with confirmations of his own. He was, he said, an attorney in Berlin —“ein Rechtsanwalt”— and had formerly had extensive professional connections in France and in other portions of the Continent. He had visited America as well, and had been there as recently as 1930, when he had attended an international congress of lawyers in New York. He even spoke a little English, which he unveiled with evident pride. And he was going now, he said, to another international congress of lawyers which was to open in Paris the next day, and which would last a week. But even so brief a trip as this now had its serious difficulties. As for his former professional activities in other countries, they were now, alas, impossible.
He asked George if any of his books had been translated and published in Germany, and George told him they had. The others were all eagerly and warmly curious, wanting to know the titles and George’s name. Accordingly, he wrote out for them the German titles of the books, the name of the German publisher, and his own name. They all looked interested and pleased. The little lady put the paper away in her pocket-book and announced enthusiastically that she would buy the books on her return to Germany. Fuss-and-Fidget, after carefully copying the paper, folded the memorandum and tucked it in his wallet, saying that he, too, would buy the books as soon as he came home again.
The lady’s young companion, who had shyly and diffidently, but with growing confidence, joined in the conversation from time to time, now took from an envelope in his pocket several postcard photographs of sculptures he had made. They were pictures of muscular athletes, runners, wrestlers, miners stripped to the waist, and the voluptuous figures of young nude girls. These photographs were passed round, inspected by each of them, and praised and admired for various qualities.
Adamowski now picked up his bulky paper package, explained that it was filled with good things from his brother’s estate in Poland, opened it, and invited everyone to partake. There were some splendid pears and peaches, some fine bunches of grapes, a plump broiled chicken, some fat squabs and partridges, and various other delicacies. The three Germans protested that they could not deprive him of his lunch. But Adamowski insisted vigorously, with the warmth of generous hospitality that was obviously characteristic of his nature. On the spur of the moment he reversed an earlier decision and informed them that he and George were going to the dining-car for luncheon anyway, and that if they did not eat the food in the package it would go to waste. On this condition they all helped themselves to fruit, which they pronounced delicious, and the lady promised that she would later investigate the chicken.
At length, with friendly greetings all round, George and his
Polish friend departed a second time and went forward to the Speisewagen.
They had a long and sumptuous meal. It began with brandy, proceeded over a fine bottle of Bernkasteler, and wound up over coffee and more brandy. They were both determined to spend the remainder of their German money — Adamowski his ten or twelve marks, George his five or six — and this gave them a comfortable feeling in which astute economy was thriftily combined with good living.
During the meal they discussed their companions again. They were delighted with them and immensely interested in the information they had gathered from them. The woman, they both agreed, was altogether charming. And the young man, although diffident and shy, was very nice. They even had a word of praise for old Fussand–Fidget now. After his crusty shell had been cracked, the old codger was not bad. He really was quite friendly underneath.
“And it goes to show,” said Adamowski quietly, “how good people really are, how easy it is to get along with one another in this world, how people really like each other — if only ——”
“— if only ——” George said, and nodded.
“— if only it weren’t for these God-damned politicians,” Adamowski concluded.
At the end they called for their bill. Adamowski dumped his marks upon the table and counted them.
“You’ll have to help me out,” he said. “How many have you got?”
George dumped his out. Together, they had enough to pay the bill and to give the waiter something extra. And there was also enough left over for another double jolt of brandy and a good cigar.
So, grinning with satisfaction, in which their waiter joined amiably as he read their purpose, they paid the bill, ordered the brandy and cigars, and, full of food, drink, and the pleasant knowledge of a job well done, they puffed contentedly on their cigars and observed the landscape.
They were now running through the great industrial region of western Germany. The pleasant landscape was gone, and everything in sight had been darkened by the grime and smoke of enormous works. The earth was dotted with the steely skeletons of great smelting and refining plants, and disfigured with mountainous dumps and heaps of slag. It was brutal, smoky, dense with life and labour and the grim warrens of industrial towns. But these places, too, had a certain fascination — the thrill of power in the raw.
The two friends talked about the scene and about their trip. Adamowski said they had done well to spend their German money. Outside of the Reich its exchange value would be lower, and they were already almost at the border; since their own coach went directly through to Paris, they would have no additional need of German currency for porters’ fees.
George confided to him, somewhat apprehensively, that he had some thirty dollars in American currency for which he had no German permit. Almost all of his last week in Berlin had been consumed, he said, in the red tape of departure — pounding wearily from one steamship office to another in an effort to secure passage home, cabling to Fox Edwards for more money, then getting permits for the money. At the last moment he had discovered that he still had thirty dollars left for which he had no official permit. When he had gone in desperation to an acquaintance who was an official in a travel agency, and had asked him what to do, this man had told him wearily to put the money in his pocket and say nothing; that if he tried now to get a permit for it and waited for the authorities to act on it, he would miss the boat; so to take the chance, which was, at most, he thought, a very slight one, and go ahead.
Adamowski nodded in agreement, but suggested that George take the uncertified money, thrust it in the pocket of his vest, where he would not seem to hide it, and then, if he were discovered and questioned, he could say that he had put the money there and had forgotten to declare it. This he decided to do, and made the transfer then and there.
This conversation brought them back to the thorny problem of the money regulations and the difficulties of their fellow-travellers who were Germans. They agreed that the situation was hard on their new-found friends, and that the law which permitted foreigners and citizens alike to take only ten marks from the country, unless otherwise allowed, was, for people in the business circumstances of the little blonde woman and old Fuss-and-Fidget, very unfair indeed.
Then Adamowski had a brilliant inspiration, the fruit of his generous and spontaneous impulses.
“But why ——” he said —“why can’t we help them?”
“How do you mean? In what way can we help them?”
“Why,” he said, “I have here a permit that allows me to take twenty-three marks out of the country. You have no permit, but everyone is allowed ——”
“— to take ten marks,” George said. “So you mean, then,” he concluded, “that each of us has spent his German money ——”
“— but can still take as much as is allowed out of the country. Yes,” he said. “So we could at least suggest it to them.”
“You mean that they should give us some of their marks to keep in our possession until we get across the frontier?”
Adamowski nodded. “Yes. I could take twenty-three. You could take ten. It is not much, of course, but it might help.”
No sooner said than seized upon. They were almost jubilantly elated at this opportunity to do some slight service for these people to whom they had taken such, a liking. But even as they sat there smiling confirmation at each other, a man in uniform came through the car, paused at their table — which was the only one now occupied, all the other diners having departed — and authoritatively informed them that the Pass–Control had come aboard the train, and that they must return at once to their compartment to await examination.
They got up immediately and hastened back through the swaying coaches. George led the way, and Adamowski whispered at his shoulder that they must now make haste and propose their offer to their companions quickly, or it would be too late.
As soon as they entered the compartment they told their three German friends that the officials were already on the train and that the inspection would begin shortly. This announcement caused a flurry of excitement. They all began to get ready. The woman busied herself with her purse. She took out her passport, and then, with a worried look, began to count her money.
Adamowski, after watching her quietly for a moment, took out his certificate and held it open in his hand, remarking that he was officially allowed twenty-three marks, that he had had that sum at the beginning, but that now he had spent it. George took this as his cue and said that he, too, had spent all of his German money, and that, although he had no permit, he was allowed ten marks. The woman looked quickly, eagerly, from one to the other and read the friendship of their purpose.
“Then you mean ——” she began. “But it would be wonderful, of course, if you would!”
“Have you as much as twenty-three marks above what you are allowed?” asked Adamowski.
“Yes,” she nodded quickly, with a worried look. “I have more than that. But if you would take the twenty-three and keep them till we are past the frontier ——”
He stretched out his hand. “Give them to me,” he said.
She gave them to him instantly, and the money was in his pocket in the wink of an eye.
Fuss-and-Fidget now counted out ten marks nervously, and without a word passed them across to George. George thrust the money in his pocket, and they all sat back, a little flushed, excited but triumphant, trying to look composed.
A few minutes later an official opened the door of the compartment, saluted, and asked for their passports. He inspected Adamowski’s first, found everything in order, took his certificate, saw his twenty-three marks, stamped the passport, and returned it to him.
Then he turned to George, who gave him his passport and the various papers certifying his possession of American currency. The official thumbed through the pages of the passport, which were now almost completely covered with the stamps and entries which had been made every time George cashed a cheque for register-marks. On one page the man paused and frowned, scrutinising carefully a stamp showing reentrance into Germany from Kufstein, on the Austrian border; then he consulted again the papers George had handed him. He shook his head. Where, he asked, was the certificate from Kufstein?
George’s heart jumped and pounded hard. He had forgotten the Kufstein certificate! There had been so many papers and documents of one kind and another since then that he no longer thought the Kufstein certificate was needed. He began to paw and thumb through the mass of papers that remained in his pocket. The officer waited patiently, but with an air of perturbation in his manner. Everyone else looked at George apprehensively, except Adamowski, who said quietly:
“Just take your time. It ought to be there somewhere.”
At last George found it! And as he did, his own sharp intake of relief found echo among his companions. As for the official, he, too, seemed glad. He smiled quite kindly, took the paper and inspected it, and returned the passport.
Meanwhile, during the anxious minutes that George had taken to paw through his papers, the official had already inspected the passports of the woman, her companion, and Fuss-and-Fidget. Everything was apparently in order with them, save that the lady had confessed to the possession of forty-two marks, and the official had regretfully informed her that he would have to take from her everything in excess of ten. The money would be held at the frontier and restored to her, of course, when she returned. She smiled ruefully, shrugged her shoulders, and gave the man thirty-two marks. All other matters were now evidently in order, for the man saluted and withdrew.
So it was over, then! They all drew deep breaths of relief, and commiserated the charming lady upon her loss. But they were all quietly jubilant, too, to know that her loss had been no greater, and that Adamowski had been able in some degree to lessen it.
George asked Fuss-and-Fidget if he wanted his money returned now or later. He replied that he thought it would be better to wait until they had crossed the frontier into Belgium. At the same time he made a casual remark, to which none of them paid any serious attention just then, to the effect that for some reason, which they did not follow, his ticket was good only to the frontier, and that he would utilise the fifteen minutes’ wait at Aachen, which was the frontier town, to buy a ticket for the remainder of the trip to Paris.
They were now approaching Aachen. The train was beginning to slacken speed. They were going once more through a lovely countryside, smiling with green fields and gentle hills, unobtrusively, mildly, somehow unmistakably European. The seared and blasted district of the mines and factories was behind them. They were entering the outskirts of a pleasant town.
This was Aachen. Within a few minutes more, the train was slowing to a halt before the station. They had reached the frontier. Here there would be a change of engines. All of them got out — Fuss-and-Fidget evidently to get a ticket, the others to stretch their legs and get a breath of air.
#Deutschand #Berlin #Geschichte #Nazis #Rassegesetze #Juden #Literatur #Bahnhof_Zoo #Kurfürstendamm #Charlottenburg
Un peu #de rage contre la machine à expulser et à enfermer
▻https://nantes.indymedia.org/articles/37996
Ces dernières nuits de forte chaleur, on tenait plus en place et la rage suscitée par la condamnation de la compagnonne à Aachen et le refus de libération conditionnelle de Damien, toujours incarcéré à Fleury, nous a incité à sillonner les rues à la recherche de cibles appropriées.
#/ #prisons #centres #rétention #actions #directes #squat #logement #immigration #sans-papieres #frontieres #besançon #/,prisons,centres,de,rétention,actions,directes,squat,logement,immigration,sans-papieres,frontieres
Aachen (Allemagne) : La compagnonne condamnée à 7 ans et demi de prison, le compagnon acquitté-Non Fides
▻http://www.non-fides.fr/?Aachen-Allemagne-La-compagnonne-condamnee-a-7-ans-et-demi-de-prison-le
@Ad Nauseam - Aujourd’hui, le 7 juin 2017, la juge a rendu le verdict dans l’affaire contre nos compagnon-ne-s accusé-e-s d’avoir braqué une agence de la PaxBank à Aachen en 2014. Si le compagnon est ressorti libre, notre sœur et compagnonne a été condamnée à sept ans et demi de prison. - Solidarité (...)
Aachen (Allemagne) : La proc demande 9 ans et 8 ans 1/2 de prison pour les deux anarchistes accusés de braquage-Non Fides
▻http://www.non-fides.fr/?Aachen-Allemagne-La-proc-demande-9-ans-et-8-ans-1-2-de-prison-pour-les-de
@Ad Nauseam - L’audience du 22 mai a commencé en reprenant le sujet du voyage d’un des accusé-e-s en Blablacar en France. La témoin française a écrit une lettre disant qu’elle ne se présenterait pas au procès, mais qu’elle reconnaissait la personne accusée sur une photo. A ce moment, le juge a annoncé qu’il (...)
Aachen (Allemagne) : Résumé des audiences des 31 mars et 7 avril du procès de deux anarchistes pour braquage-Non Fides
▻http://www.non-fides.fr/?Aachen-Allemagne-Resume-des-audiences-des-31-mars-et-7-avril-du-proces-de
@Ad Nauseam - Il y a aujourd’hui un an que notre compagnonne a été arrêtée, séquestrée le 13 avril 2016 par les Mossos d’Esquadra catalans au cours d’une opération conjointe avec la police allemande. Elle se trouve actuellement en détention préventive dans la prison de Cologne, en même temps que se tient le procès (...)
Aachen (Allemagne) : Résumé des audiences du procès pour braquage contre deux anarchistes-Non Fides
▻http://www.non-fides.fr/?Aachen-Allemagne-Resume-des-audiences-du-proces-pour-braquage-contre-deux
@Ad Nauseam - Les 3 journées ont été essentiellement dédiées aux interrogatoires de témoins de l’accusation : tout d’abord deux femmes de ménages de la banque et une passante qui, voyant des personnes au comportement « suspect » dans les parages de la banque, avait averti la police. - Repression et oppression / (...)
Aachen (Allemagne) : Compte-rendu de la première audience du second procès pour braquage-Non Fides
▻http://www.non-fides.fr/?Aachen-Allemagne-Compte-rendu-de-la-premiere-audience-du-second-proces-po
@Ad Nauseam - Aujourd’hui 23 janvier, s’est tenue la première audience contre nos compagnonNEs anarchistes accuséEs du braquage de l’agence de la Pax Bank en novembre 2014 dans la ville de Aachen. Dans la salle se tenaient le représentant du parquet, le juge, les deux accusés avec leurs avocats, un "jury (...)
Amsterdam (Pays-Bas) : La compagnonne inculpée pour braquage de banque extradée vers l’Allemagne
▻http://cettesemaine.info/breves/spip.php?article1885
La compagnonne inculpée pour braquage de banque extradée vers l’Allemagne Le tribunal d’Amsterdam a décidé aujourd’hui, jeudi 15 septembre, de se conformer à la demande de l’Etat allemand d’extrader notre compagnonne, qui passera en procès à Aix-la-Chapelle (Allemagne) sous l’accusation de braquage de (...) — Autour de braquages à Aachen, solidariteit
Qu’est-ce qui s’est passé vraiment à Cologne ? D’après un éminent anthropologue algérien, « un problème de langage, un déficit de communication. »
►http://analysedz.blogspot.com/2016/03/le-syndrome-de-cologne-ou-lorgie.html
Suite au débat médiatique suscité par l’article de Kamel Daoud dans le « Monde » où l’anthropologie, voire la psychanalyse, se muent en débat idéologique jusqu’à faire intervenir publiquement le Premier ministre français, je me réveille de mon amnésie pour évoquer un ancien souvenir.
Il ne s’agit pas pour moi d’entrer dans la surenchère de l’invective, sachant que la liberté d’expression est mon maître mot, à condition que l’on ne s’improvise pas psychanalyste, anthropologue ou sociologue à moindre frais. Je voudrais seulement rappeler un fait peu connu chez nous : celui de la fête du carnaval dont les préparatifs durent plusieurs jours jusqu’à la fête des Cendres (Mardi gras).
Au cours de l’année académique 1966-1967 je me trouvais à Maastricht proche de Köln (Cologne) et d’Aachen (Aix-la-Chapelle), ancienne métropole de la chrétienté sous les Carolingiens (9ème siècle), pour une enquête sociologique sur les conditions de vie des mineurs maghrébins dans les charbonnages du Limbourg belgo-néerlandais ayant pour chefs-lieux respectifs Liège et Maastricht(*). Le carnaval est fêté conjointement par les citoyens de Cologne et de Maastricht, distants d’une centaine de kilomètres à peine.
On y assiste alors à une permissivité qui contraste avec la vie austère des deux cités luthériennes, qui ont accueilli depuis l’Edit de Nantes les Huguenots, protestants condamnés à l’exil sous le règne de Louis XIV. Il n’est pas rare, en effet de rencontrer à Maastricht des noms bien français. La bibliothèque municipale y contient des ouvrages francophones datant du 16ème siècle. Quiconque a vécu à Maastricht, en tout cas à cette époque, est saisi par la grande exubérance de la population, notamment les jeunes, dans une ambiance où la bière coule à flots et où tout semble permis. Une bonne partie des gens de Maastricht continue la fête à Cologne et vice-versa. Des amis néerlandais m’avaient confié qu’un nombre anormalement élevé de naissances sous X surviennent neuf mois après les fêtes du carnaval ! …
Encore une fois, je ne suis pas psychanalyste, je constate un fait, celui de l’orgie collective permise le temps du carnaval, une fête bien catholique malgré son soubassement païen (ce qui n’est pas propre à la religion catholique). Comment qualifier les évènements festifs encadrés par ce rituel populaire qui était bien présent à Cologne au moment des faits rapportés par la presse, précisément sur le précèdent mettant en cause des migrants maghrébins ? Je laisse le soin aux spécialistes d’investiguer sur les circonstances précises de ce fait divers. Il se peut que mon propos soit à côté du débat et des faits qui l’on suscité. Je voudrais néanmoins restituer un fait que les populations autochtones de cette région de l’Europe de l’Ouest connaissent très bien.
En effet, au-delà de cet épisode, je rappelle sans rentrer dans les dédales de l’anthropologie historique, voire religieuse, que la Rhénanie (qui englobe le sud-ouest de l’Allemagne et la zone contiguë flamande c’est-à-dire le Limbourg belgo-néerlandais) font partie de ce qu’on appelle les sociétés agraires tout au moins pour ce qui est de leur histoire médiévale. Dans le cas d’espèce, il s’agit de producteurs traditionnels de houblon, d’où la prépondérance de la bière dans la région. Dans toute société agraire, qui tranche avec les civilisations pastorales, il existe des rituels dédiés à la fécondité : fécondité de la femme, s’inscrivant dans le cycle végétal, et ponctués par des rituels célébrant la fertilité de la terre : les Saturnales décrites par les auteurs latins ne sont pas différentes de nos « nuits de l’erreur » (leylat el gh’lat, sorte de simulation d’un coït anonyme), vieux rituel judéo-berbère dont subsistent quelques traces sur les hauteurs de l’Atlas tellien. Abdallah Hamoudi nous en a donné une excellente restitution monographique à propos de la fête de ‘Achoura dans un village marocain près de Beni Mellal (« La victime et son masque », PUF, 1987). Dans l’antique Palestine des Cananéens, Astarté faisait office de déesse de la fécondité : les Cananéens étaient agriculteurs sédentaires et comme tous les peuples de leur espèce, on y découvre un panthéon dédié à la fertilité, du sol, des femmes. Dagon était le dieu de la charrue, Baal le dieu du grain. Dans toutes ces civilisations agraires, quelles que fussent leurs latitudes géographiques et leurs appartenances (Indo-européennes, Sémito-chamitique, amérindienne etc.), il y a deux constantes :
1. La mise en scène érotique de l’acte de production pour la survie, ce qui exclut toute interprétation normative.
2. La fragilité du statut paysan pour des raisons logistiques évidentes : le paysan sédentaire depuis le néolithique a toujours été menacé par le pasteur nomade à la recherche de pâturages. Ibn Khaldoun à admirablement développé cette épopée de la prédation pour le Maghreb médiéval. Mais la séquence médiévale décrite par ce dernier n’est qu’un épisode dont les origines remontent à la protohistoire.
De tout ce qui précède, il y a la symbolique du sexe, ou plutôt de l’Eros. Dans le panthéon des cultures agraires du monde, nous avons affaire à une dialectique irréductible de la sexualité et du mysticisme, du profane et du sacré. Pour revenir au « syndrome de Cologne », j’ai la faiblesse de croire que les préparatifs du carnaval (qui commencent le 11 novembre pour s’arrêter au mercredi des Cendres) donnent lieu -autant que je m’en souvienne- à une érotisation de la fête, processions masquées, ivresse physiologique, ambiance lubrique etc., j’ai vu à Maastricht des scènes d’accouplement débridés dans les recoins de rues ou à l’entrée des immeubles la nuit aidant. Je me suis toujours demandé pourquoi ce contraste flagrant entre le conformisme très puritain des jours ordinaires, et cette revanche dionysiaque à l’occasion du carnaval.
Je n’ai pas suivi dans les comptes rendus médiatiques si le carnaval a été signalé, car la Saint-Sylvestre s’y trouve encadrée. Encore une fois, les religions canoniques laissent apparaître des pratiques païennes, ce qu’on appelle « syncrétisme » pour faire simple. Le rapport à l’Eros, donc au corps sexué, est un problème ontologique qui se passe de psychologie différentielle. Il n’y a qu’à se reporter à Freud, et plus encore à Frazer et à Robertson Smith (le découvreur du personnage totémique et de « l’assassinat du père »). Qu’il y ait une spécificité du rapport au sexe dans l’islam des musulmans n’est qu’un épiphénomène culturaliste qui n’élimine pas le fondement archétypal du rapport à l’Eros, lequel concerne l’humanité.
Dans ce qui s’est passé à Cologne, me semble-t-il, ce n’est pas tant le caractère scandaleusement agressif des migrants, qu’un problème de langage, un déficit de communication. Jacques Lacan a fait du langage ce par quoi Eros advient. La libido est d’abord langage avant d’être corps. Plus que de la mésalliance éthique, il s’agit d’un brouillage de code. Sinon, sur le rapport au sexe, tout au moins au niveau où je situe le débat, celui de l’anthropologie générale, il n’y a rien à signaler quant à une spécificité barbare du comportement des « arabo-musulmans » ou des musulmans tout court, en dehors de ce qu’on peut appeler un fâcheux quiproquo.
PEGIDA : appel à bloquer le rassemblement international à Aix-la-Chapelle
▻http://bxl.indymedia.org/spip.php?article9675
Local | antifa, luttes sociales Comme annoncé sur les sites de Lionel Baland, PEGIDA Wallonie-Bruxelles, Novopress et tournant sur facebook, ce dimanche 13 décembre un rassemblement international du mouvement PEGIDA se tiendra à Aix-la-Chapelle (Aachen), ville allemande proche des frontières (...) — Local, antifa, luttes sociales