Ordeal by Visa

TRANSIT -- Anna Seghers -- Little, Brown ($2.50).

"About this man Weidel," said the French hotel proprietress, a few days after the Nazis entered Paris. "He came in, trembling. ... He didn't want to register. . . . Next morning ... he was lying fully dressed on the bed; a little glass bottle stood on the night table, empty. . . . We predated . . . Mr. Weidel's name on the register. . . . Then he was buried. . . . What am I to do with [his suitcase]?"

The anonymous narrator (a German refugee) of Anna Seghers' novel of refugee life in France had never known the late anti-Nazi Mr. Weidel. But on the spur of the moment he took the dead man's suitcase. In it he found the unfinished manuscript of one of the most brilliant novels he had ever read. One of the characters seemed strangely like himself. It was as though the young refugee was destined to complete the novel with the events of his life.

The young refugee fled from Occupied France to Marseilles. No one there knew that Weidel was dead. At the Mexican Consulate they were wondering why the author had never turned up to claim the precious visa offered him by the Mexican Government. Gradually, the young refugee found himself stepping into the dead man's shoes. In Weidel's name he obtained the Mexican visa. Then he fell in love with a refugee woman, who was searching the Marseilles cafes for her husband. Her husband's name: Weidel.

The conscience-stricken refugee hinted that her husband might be dead. She replied that Mr. Weidel had recently asked for visas at various consulates. Then she went on searching. But in the end she lost faith, accepted the "protection" of a man with a visa, sailed for the U.S.--on a ship that was torpedoed. The young refugee decided to wait in hiding for Europe's liberation.

Should Grandmother Die Alone? In the fantastic world of which Author Seghers writes, this strange story does not seem fantastic. For Transit is filled with the weird reality of the flight of thousands of refugees to U.S. consulates that wielded a power of life & death over them. Day after day the refugees stand in endless lines, waiting for the precious documents with their bindings of red tape. Incessantly they discuss the same things--visas, exit permits, transit permits, ship sailings. They are harrowed by terrible doubts: should a family leave its ailing grandmother to die alone, or should they sit by her side until death--and then find the visas have expired? "Would it be better for a pregnant woman not to mention the fact [to the consul]? Would it be better to conceal the seriousness of an illness or to exaggerate it? Was it wise to admit that the German commission might demand extradition if there was any further delay. . . ?"

Well and plainly written, Transit gives a true and simple picture of those whom leftish Author Seghers (who lives in Mexico City) calls members of the "Order of the Legion of Honor of Seekers of American Transit Permits."

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