Iron Gustav

by Hans Fallada

  ‘Madame, shall I take the coat to the gentleman?’

  ‘Yes, Erna, do. You don’t mind, Henri, I hope? To tell the truth there is a gentleman here who’s interested in it.’

  Heinz made an angry gesture. He watched the maid go away. ‘What is she going to do with my coat?’

  ‘Silly Henri, silly, silly Henri! Does Erna embarrass you? All she thinks is – here’s the young gentleman who has fallen in love with Madame. You have fallen in love with me, haven’t you?’

  ‘No! No! No!’ he shouted furiously.

  She laughed. ‘You see! But there’s no harm in it, you can love me, Henri. You don’t want anything, you’re a German, so you don’t want to take me from Erich. I’m your German Gretchen – no, not Gretchen. Gretchen had a child.’ She laughed.

  Shameless! As shameless as Nature! She threw him into chaos and stopped at nothing. She stopped at nothing. But suppose she were not shameless, suppose she were simply coarse? What then? And as if she had guessed his thoughts she suddenly released his shoulders. ‘All right, go, Henri. You want to leave me alone, too. I’m alone all day … So go, if you want to.’

  Acting, of course! But where was his coat? Should he go without it? Was she so upset by this little disagreement with her seventeen-year-old brother-in-law that she wanted to let him go out in the miserable damp without a coat? Just acting! But there was the merest chance that she didn’t really mean it. Or did she?

  All of a sudden her hand was quite close to his mouth … She was looking so strangely at him … Yes, there was a faint chance that she did like him – not with the passion so tormenting and wonderful that he felt for her, but a genuine liking perhaps … And his lips fastened on her hand, breathing its fragrance, his mouth devouring the soft flesh … insatiable.

  ‘Oh,’ she said, her eyes quite serious now. ‘You’re learning, Henri! It wouldn’t do for Erich to see this.’

  And then they joined the gentleman to whom the overcoat had been taken, a very dapper man with a pointed blond beard, who turned out to be a tailor called in by Madame; and he, in accordance with Madame’s instructions, had brought a suit with him. ‘For you can’t go about like that any longer, Henri.’

  The new suit was, strangely, a perfect fit.

  ‘Madame has certainly the French eye for style.’

  But the real suits were yet to come, made to measure, of course, and from English materials … Together with a winter overcoat, an ulster.

  Pale and without a word Heinz stood there and raised his arms as requested, so that the gentleman in the cutaway coat could take his measurements … This is the depth of ignominy, he thought, to let myself be clothed by Erich’s mistress, with Erich’s money.

  But it was only the beginning of ignominy.

  And more tormenting even than this dishonour was the sense of his own cowardice in not daring to quarrel with Tinette in front of the tailor. Or he could quite simply have refused to be measured by the man. Instead, he submissively made his choice between wide or narrow lapels, between single or double-breasted … After which the tailor took his leave. He really did have a pearl in his tie, and he really did kiss the lady’s hand, but only shook his, promising delivery as soon as possible.

  For a moment the two of them looked at him going without saying a word. Then Tinette in her sweetest voice said that Henri should pick up his suit and come with her. They were sure to find a suitable shirt in Erich’s room …

  Whereupon Heinz suddenly shouted that he wouldn’t dream of it, and she as suddenly screamed that she didn’t want some scrubby, dowdy-looking fellow near her. And there was an outcry about my money and his money and her money and about personal tidiness and idealism and materialism and daintiness, and about the justifiable right of beautiful women to be accompanied by young, well-dressed gentlemen … It seemed as if the quarrel would never come to an end, but end it did when Tinette called out in a voice of intense surprise: ‘Henri, oh dear! I believe my shoe’s come undone! Do help me!’ And, looking helplessly at him, she put a foot clad in grey suede on a chair.

  In the midst of all the shouting, he suddenly broke off and stared, stunned, at her little foot. She looked at him helplessly and he took it in his hand. However, the strap wouldn’t reach, and he couldn’t get the hole over the button. The foot, which seemed more naked than naked in its thin, blue-grey silk stocking, was so close to him! Its shoe was styled so that he could just see the beginnings of her toes. He liked that … A fragrance came from this foot, a fragrance of perfume and leather, which came also from her and from all women, from eternity …

  And he brought the foot to his mouth, and thought, as he heard her laughing softly over him, what profound shame, and he kissed it and kissed it …

  He heard her still laughing softly and went on kissing … And he thought, I mustn’t, and went on kissing. And he thought, she’s just making you do what she wants you to, and he carried on kissing…

  And the wave rose higher and higher.

  Suddenly he thought: if I don’t stop now I’ll be lost for ever. And she is not worth that. For a fraction he thought of freedom, and tore his mouth from her foot, looked not at her but at the door, and stormed out of the room and out of the house, without either coat or hat.

  But even in the street, he thought he could hear her laughter . .

  § V

  And of course he returned, he always returned. Sometimes he stormed in, full of reproaches. At other times, covered with embarrassment, he hovered round her like some reprieved criminal, accepting gratefully every kind word she threw to him. He was quarrelsome or tender, and occasionally was overcome by a mood to tell her everything in his mind; once he sat there for many hours reading to her from his favourite poets. On another occasion he helped her to arrange some underclothing in a wardrobe, and the sight of these utterly unfamiliar garments, with their delicate tints and texture, so confused him that he could hardly talk.

  Of course he dreamed about her. At first he couldn’t get to sleep. The memory of a part of her leg, which she had carelessly allowed him to see, and of the soft swelling of her breast, which he, behind her as she sat, had seen half reluctantly, all confused, tortured and disturbed him. But these visions, once he had fallen asleep, would lose their reality and he was led by dreams into a world where everything seemed to hide behind its first aspect a second, an evil, one. The wounds and deformities of trees became obscene; from the flower arose the pistil, intent on fertilization; the outstretched finger of a signpost seemed to point at his loins.

  This he hated – without being religious he felt it sinful. To be obsessed thus by his brother’s mistress humiliated him. I don’t love her like that, he repeated to himself a hundred times. I don’t want to steal her from Erich. I’m not a thief … And rage overcame him when he realized more and more often, and ever more clearly, how much his body was cheating him, inflicting greater and greater defeats. I won’t think of Tinette in that way, he decided. It’s loathsome; it degrades both of us. And he resisted. He fought himself.

  Then, in the midst of his struggles, he quite suddenly gave up all resistance – he surrendered.

  He would perhaps be sitting with Tinette and Erich, with the enigmatic Erich who seemed to regard his brother’s daily visits as a matter of course; though even more enigmatic was the woman herself – he could never make out why she always wanted him around – him, who wasn’t particularly clever, who wasn’t particularly good-looking, and who was unkempt and badly dressed. And out of the corner of his eye he would watch Erich sitting there with his whisky and retailing the latest news … On one occasion it became too much for him and he rose, busying himself with the fire; then, straightening up, he stood behind her looking down into her low-cut blouse, watching with an insolent despair the rise and fall of her breasts and staring across at his brother challengingly. I’m not ashamed, his eyes said. On the contrary! I look and look and look!

  Or he made one of his rare appearances at school. There sat the other boy
s looking frightfully honourable and boring while the voice of Schneider, the senior master, jarred the ear. It smelled of schoolroom dust, the great unwashed, ink and paper. And deliberately he set about visualizing Tinette as he had seen her the evening before, Tinette kneeling in front of a chest, Tinette with her skirt so tight over her hips that he could see the line of her slender thighs and between them that mysterious triangle, the eternal object of all dreams …

  Full of contempt, he looked at his schoolfellows. There they sat, leading their stupid lives, thinking of homework and examinations and collecting firearms – childish pursuits. He, however, was a man and went every day to a beautiful woman. His life was a life of vice, of secrets, of transgressions; all they ever did was to scribble in their exercise books. Schneider said: ‘Good, Porzig!’ and Porzig was happy. Such children were they, such a man he.

  Another time, in the midst of a conversation with his brother and Tinette, he had run out of the hall and crept up to her bedroom, where he had knelt by her turned-down bed and buried his face in her pyjamas … inhaling a subtle fragrance, the very fragrance it seemed of the primeval mysteries of life – seduction and sin, source and action, life’s eternal secret, and inexhaustible wellspring.

  This, however, happened not at the beginning but later, when he had fallen still deeper under her spell, for he became more and more her plaything, her minion, her slave. He gave way, at first, open-eyed, then closed his eyes and threw himself into the abyss. He was masculine (though not yet a man) and she feminine (and very much a woman). It did not lie in his nature to quarrel day after day about the same things; they wearied him and when he had repeated his point of view five times he was loath to utter it a sixth. Her willingness to argue, however, remained unimpaired. She could start again every day, and say the same thing. Every day? Every hour, every minute. Nor would she yield an inch. So often did she tell him to manicure his nails that in the end he began to cut and clean his nails, and scrape off the dead skin – do all those little things which had up till then seemed so boring, so unnecessary, and such a waste of time.

  And finally even took pleasure in it. He gave way not only for the sake of peace and so as not to hear over and over again the same nonsense, but also because it was such pleasure to sit with her, half an hour – an hour – she manicuring her nails, he manicuring his. And they talked – there was something almost comradely about it – she giving advice, taking his hand in hers, cutting a nail more expertly, speaking of these matters with extreme seriousness. Gradually he came to understand how important all this can be to certain women and that a fastidious woman finds it almost impossible to care for an unfastidious man or even to bear him near her.

  Therefore, when she asked with a laugh: ‘Well, Henri, silly boy, wasn’t I right about your nails? Don’t you look smarter now?’ he laughingly admitted that she had been right, and that he was now smart – dead smart. He gave way, no longer tested if she really was right, whether or not manicured nails were really necessary for him. He was now sitting next to her. In that case, she must be right!

  And when she repeated for the thirtieth time that he must put on the new suit, that he must go and be fitted, that no man who valued himself could go around looking as he did, that it was impossible for a woman to be seen with him and that there was nobody else with whom she could go for a walk – then he finally gave way here also.

  ‘But only that suit he left,’ said Heinz.

  She was agreeable.

  But it turned out that the suit didn’t fit; it bulged at the back. She placed Heinz between two mirrors and pointed it out till he could see for himself … No, it was impossible. He couldn’t go about like that. He would have to visit the tailor.

  And since he was going to the tailor anyhow, he might just as well try on his overcoat – it was wintertime now. All right, the Germans didn’t call it winter, then! But for her it was, and in any case she couldn’t go out with him unless he wore an overcoat. They were going to go out together, weren’t they? For long walks? Well then—

  ‘But it’s impossible, Tinette. I can never pay for it.’

  ‘Don’t be silly, Henri! The tailor won’t send in the bill for six months – you may be a rich man by then.’

  ‘But, Tinette, that’s quite impossible.’

  ‘Why should it be? Look at Erich! He’ll be rich in a year’s time. Surely you can do what your brother can.’

  ‘But you’re quite wrong, Tinette. I believe Erich is fearfully worried about money.’

  ‘Erich? Worried about money?’ She was thunderstruck. Such an idea had never occurred to her.

  ‘He counted on Father being a rich man, you know.’

  She laughed, laughed in his face. ‘Oh, Henri, you unworldly creature, you! Things have changed since then. Erich’s rolling in money, I tell you, rolling in it! Only a few days ago he bought this villa, paid for it, paid ready cash – I don’t remember how much. It was a fat gentleman who got the money. And you – you won’t even let your brother give you a couple of suits?’

  He looked suspiciously at her, convinced that she lied. ‘But where would Erich have got so much money? He must have borrowed it then.’

  ‘Oh, you mustn’t say that. Erich’s really smart. He’s got some kind of contract …’

  ‘Contract? For what?’ It seemed less and less credible. Erich, only twenty-one, fresh from the army, in the Reichstag security service, and then no longer in it – and suddenly a wealthy contractor! ‘What kind of contract?’

  ‘It’s true. And I consider it only right his friends should do something for him. He’s very useful to them.’

  ‘But, Tinette, do listen … What can he contract for? He’s got nothing.’

  ‘Well, he buys things. They’ve commissioned him to supply some regiment or other. They say he’s so capable. A friend of his was here recently and said that Erich has produced a surprising amount of butter in spite of the blockade – Danish butter. Or was it Russian? I’ve forgotten. In any case …’

  ‘So my dear Erich’s become a profiteer. I think it’s …’

  ‘Oh, do be quiet, Henri! For a fortnight you’ve made my life a misery with those suits.’

  ‘I? The other way round, you mean.’

  ‘First you say you don’t know how you’re going to pay for them, then I tell you that Erich’s giving them to you. I discussed it with him a long time ago.’

  Again something quite fresh. So Erich knew about it. But she was lying, he was certain she was lying …

  ‘Then you say Erich hasn’t the money for such presents. I tell you he has, he earns a lot of money. And so you call him a profiteer. Yes, my dear boy, you’re demanding that Erich earns his money in a way you approve of.’

  ‘I demand nothing,’ he burst out. ‘I don’t want to hear anything more about it. I—’

  ‘Very well then, that’s settled at last. And please remember that it’s settled. You’ve no idea how sick I am of that shiny suit of yours. Come along, I’ve got you some shirts and underclothing.’

  Heinz fled. He ran out of the house, desperate, furious.

  Will she never understand anything, he thought. I can say ‘No’ a hundred times, I can shout it into her ears, all it means to her is ‘Yes’. I won’t stand it any more. I won’t come here again, and if I ever do, I swear never to wear this wretched suit. She ordered underwear for me. But I’ll never … I’m going to stay at home. I must study anyway, otherwise I’ll mess up the exams too. (What else he’d messed up he didn’t say, but he had a pretty clear feeling that just about everything was a mess.)

  No, I’ll go regularly to school for at least a week and swot terrifically. I’ll show her!

  And he imagined what she would see … How at first she would be surprised, then worried that he no longer came at all and stayed away without saying a word.

  She’ll just have to miss me. Even if she doesn’t love me, she’s used to me. She can’t be on her own … And to break it all up because of a couple of st
upid suits! She understands, she must understand, that it’s impossible.

  § VI

  At home, his parents had a visitor. But visitor wasn’t exactly the right word; a daughter had returned home. After four years of absence Sophie was back from her field hospital on the Eastern Front – a senior nurse now, sitting there in her blue-grey uniform, a Red Cross badge on her fully rounded breast and with some order or decoration pinned a little to one side of it – Sophie, Heinz’s sister, eldest daughter of the Hackendahl family, completely familiar and yet completely transformed!

  The Sophie of former days had been a sharp-nosed, rather ill-humoured creature, thin and pale. The senior nurse was fat, with a flabby face, as if appearing up from the miasma of the sickroom. After saying something she would shut her mouth and compress her lips as though tasting something.

  My, she’s certainly become revolting, thought Heinz, a sort of cross between a nun and amateur whore. And she’s learned how to be bossy all right.

  Without getting up, she had extended a plump hand to him. ‘So you’re Bubi. I suppose you have to be called Heinz now. Well, well. I need hardly tell you that you’ve grown very tall. Yes … yes. And at school? Are you getting on there? Are you at the top?’

  ‘Thanks,’ said Heinz dryly and sat down. An absolutely unbearable female! She was behaving as if he were some very small boy and she an affectionate maiden aunt. It was funny, but why was he especially chosen to have exclusively unbearable siblings? (That they found him equally unbearable didn’t occur to him.)