Iron Gustav

by Hans Fallada

  Sophie continued: ‘And everything’s all right at home? Yes, I can see of course that your circumstances are reduced somewhat. Well, we’ve all had to make our sacrifices, in our purses or our persons. Poor Otto also fell. Yes, yes.’ She shut her mouth tightly. It was as if she were closing Otto’s coffin lid.

  ‘An’ what’ll you do now, Sophie?’ asked old Hackendahl. ‘You c’n see for yourself that we haven’t enough grub for you too. Bubi’s already got his notice to quit at Easter.’ He laughed.

  Heinz thought his father had changed tremendously of late. Not that he had fallen farther than the general decline. It was rather as if recent times had brought him to himself with a jolt. He seemed to be secretly amused at everything, making fun both of the world and his children.

  ‘No,’ answered Senior Sister Sophie slowly, ‘I don’t think I shall become a burden to you. The Senior Staff Surgeon, Herr Schwenke, has offered me a post as theatre sister. There’s only too much to do at home, unfortunately – instead of uniting in the hour of trouble we assist our enemies by killing one another. Sad! Yes, yes.’ She lowered her pale eyelids. All she said was undeniably true, but she said it in a manner which Heinz considered loathsome.

  ‘There are also other plans for me … Well, we shall see, there’s no hurry. But it’s very unlikely that I shall ever be a burden on you.’ Her lips closed.

  ‘That’s fine, my girl,’ said Hackendahl. ‘I c’n quite see you’ve feathered your nest all right. Well, you’ve bin a lot smarter than your poor ole dad. He’s only a common cabby again.’

  She evaded commenting on this. ‘I haven’t been in Berlin for a long time,’ she said, ‘and perhaps I may be mistaken – but you used not to speak in such a … a local way, did you, Father?’

  ‘You notice everythin’, girl,’ grinned Hackendahl. ‘No. When I had a proper business I did me best to speak refined like but now, as a common cabby … it don’t pay. See?’

  ‘I see. Yes, yes. I understand, Father.’ The nun lowered her eyelids. ‘Previously you used to play the part of – what did they call you? – of Iron Gustav! And now it’s the jolly Berliner. Original, Father! Really very original.’

  ‘Played a part? No, there you’re mistaken, Sophie. It’s other folks who’re acting here an’ I know why. You can’t frighten me. I’ve always bin Iron Gustav an’ I’ll stick to it. As for my way of talkin’ it fits in better with our reduced circumstances.’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ said Sophie. ‘I understand entirely, Father.’ And then, possibly to change the subject: ‘And what is Evchen doing? Where is she? You never mentioned her in your letters, Mother.’

  Frau Hackendahl started and looked anxiously at her husband. Eva’s name was never spoken before him. But although he scowled he nevertheless replied equably: ‘Eva? We had nothing good to say about her. She’s become a whore, that’s what she’s become.’

  Silence reigned. Sophie, a study in white under her nurse’s hood, had not winced but was sitting very still, her hands in her lap. ‘Pardon me, Father,’ she said at last. ‘Just one more question. Are you merely dissatisfied with her mode of life or is she really what the word implies?’

  ‘Of course, a real whore, with what goes with it – permit and pimp.’ Only the way he spoke showed Heinz how difficult it was for his father to speak thus about his former favourite. ‘It has nothing to do with disapproving or approving her mode of life. That’s not the issue. It’s just a fact.’

  ‘And now we won’t say another word about it,’ said Frau Hackendahl, unusually firm. ‘You’re only upsetting Father, Sophie.’

  ‘I’m not upset,’ said Hackendahl heatedly. ‘Everybody must do according to their lights.’

  Again silence. The four members of the family dared not look at each other.

  ‘Yes, yes,’ said Sophie, lost in thought. ‘And Erich? How’s Erich?’

  ‘You’ll have to ask Heinz. He’s there every day.’ And Hackendahl got up.

  Unexpected, this – Heinz was not aware that his father knew about those visits. Of course he had told Mother one or two things about Erich but it was news that she had passed them on.

  Hackendahl clapped on his top hat and, after being helped by Heinz into his driver’s coat, took the whip from the corner by the cupboard. ‘I want to exercise meself and me horse,’ he said. ‘So long, Sophie. Bin a great pleasure. Good luck! An’ before you start on anythin’ new don’t forget to ask yourself what you’ll get out of it. Bye-bye, girl! Bye-bye, Mother! Heinz, you might fetch your mother a sack of coal sometime – if it ain’t too much trouble, that is.’

  And old Hackendahl went. He hadn’t changed – the only difference was that, instead of bellowing at his family, he now relied on sarcasm.

  Sophie too had observed this. ‘I don’t know, Mother,’ she said, having waited for the outer door to bang. ‘Father has changed a good deal. It almost sounds as if he’s angry with us children. I’ve certainly done nothing to him. After all, I have achieved something – it’s not impossible I may be appointed Matron.’

  ‘That’s all very well,’ said her mother, ‘but a child ought to think now and again of the parents. During the last two years you’ve written only three times.’

  ‘Of course, if you take that amiss …’

  ‘I don’t know – Father never speaks about it. But we can’t say our children show any interest in their parents.’

  ‘I don’t understand you, Mother. I had to look after hundreds – thousands – of wounded. At times we were fifteen hours on end at the operating table … You simply can’t write letters afterwards.’

  ‘Surely you had a free hour now and again in two years!’

  ‘That’s when I slept. I had to sleep, Mother, to keep myself fit. The wounded came first. I knew from your letters you were all well …’

  Sophie, of course, ended by convincing her mother. Silently Heinz sat, admiring his sister’s skill in pumping their mother about the family affairs. There was little doubt that Sophie had had intentions similar to Erich’s, but now that she knew there was nothing to be got at home she wouldn’t be making a nuisance of herself by too frequent visits.

  When she left she asked Heinz to accompany her for a bit. (The streets were so unsettled. Not even a nurse was safe from molestation!) But this was only a pretext; of that Heinz was quite convinced – Sophie didn’t at all look as if men could frighten her nowadays. No, he in his turn was to be pumped. And this proved the case. What did he know about Erich? She was now much less guarded and showed her interest quite frankly.

  ‘Yes, Erich is clever, he’ll get along all right … Splendid! Twenty-one and he’s got his finger in the pie already. Yes, yes. He knows one has to earn money. Very sensible. Very clever. What did you say his address was? … Yes, I’ll definitely look him up soon – a connection like that’s worth using. I’ve got certain plans of my own, perhaps I can interest him in them.’

  Heinz returned home in the best of spirits. He’d tell Erich about it that evening and prepare him for Sophie’s visit. Erich would be extremely amused.

  § VII

  So he went back into the house. But he wasn’t yet so dishonest as to persuade himself that he did so to bring his brother news of Sophie. No, he struggled with himself, resisted but in the end gave up.

  When Erich smirkingly said to him, as he was showing off the splendour of his new clothes, ‘Well, Bubi, for the extreme idealist you are, you look damn materialistic!’ he would have liked to beat him up out of anger and humiliation.

  However, man, the most adaptable creature on the planet, accomodates itself to everything, especially if no one notices anything special about his new appearance.

  Heinz began to wear his splendid new clothes.

  ‘Well,’ said his mother, ‘Erich’s doing something for you at least even if he can’t find his way to us.’

  And old Hackendahl exercised that grim new humour of his. ‘S’posing it gets awkward for you to see me in the street you don’t need ter look awa
y or hide yerself. I won’t be recognizing you.’

  No, none of them found anything special about it. Heinz’s reputation among his school classmates even rose considerably. It was rumoured – and no one knew who started it – that he had a rich girlfriend. And they were all so young that, despite emergencies and weapon collections, their young hearts got completely carried away with the idea of consorting with a beautiful and wealthy woman.

  But naturally, it was inevitably and indeed enviously discovered that an inner voice remained in him which repeatedly reminded him that shame was shame … One thing was very soon made clear to Heinz, however – these new suits were not going to be used for walks. Once, and once only, did he and Tinette go out into the wintry Grunewald; and after five minutes she insisted on going back immediately. ‘Call this a wood? Brooms! Ugly bristly brooms stuck upside down in the ground, that’s what the trees are! Ground that immediately fills your shoes with sand and pine needles.’ And she enthused about some park or another to the west, with its soft, abundant foliage and yellow pebble pathways.

  ‘But it’s winter there now, too, Tinette!’

  ‘Winter? What are you talking about, Henri! It’s never really winter there – I mean among the people! You’re all winter people here, miserable, cold. But we’re always happy, always like spring.’

  ‘Always happy – that’s not possible, Tinette.’

  ‘Not possible – oh, you should see …’ She paused, then it burst out of her: ‘If the French hadn’t only got as far as the Rhine; if only they’d come as far as here! We would at least have had people whom we could laugh with. Here, you feel completely alone. I’ve never frozen so much in my whole life as during these last few months here.’

  ‘And Germany has to have the French, so that you can laugh with some lieutenant? Poor Germany!’

  ‘Why should I care? If I’d known who you really were, I would never have come here. But I came upon Erich – and thought you others would be a bit like he is. But not at all, not at all.’

  ‘Well, Tinette, if it’s so terrible here, you can of course always return to your own country. Erich isn’t in a position to tie you down.’ Heinz felt personally hurt.

  ‘That’s the point. Oh, Henri, how stupid you are! Do you think I can go back? I wouldn’t stay here for another hour, Erich could earn a hundred times as much. But of course I can’t go back, definitely not for the time being …’

  And she told him that over there, at home, they despised women who had gone with Germans.

  ‘I would never get another job. I could starve. They would stone me.’

  And me. Me? He had wanted to ask. Do I mean nothing to you? But why ask? Didn’t he already know the shameful, humiliating answer? He was nothing but a toy, a pastime, the companion of long, grey, lonely hours – someone one immediately and totally forgot as soon as something more amusing came along.

  (And perhaps one was a little bit more, after all. Someone one could torture, and try out one’s power on – a servant, a slave, a bonded serf. Yes, bonded, the shame one no longer felt, the shared shame – inflicted and suffered – that bound them together!) From then on they went in every day to town, at first only in the daytime because Erich came home in the evening; then in the evening also, because Erich was working till late at night. This Erich, so self-indulgent and charming, had an extraordinary toughness when it came to making money. This weakling could become strong when it was a question of cash.

  What were his thoughts on seeing his brother and Tinette always together? It could not remain hidden, nor did they make a secret of it. The servants knew, and Tinette would ring Erich at his office to ask for the car, so that she might go shopping with Henri.

  What did he think?

  Ah, the amiable fellow was inscrutable; he was much more difficult to understand than Tinette. Although Heinz had no desire to think about his brother at all, he was constantly forced to do this. What was going on in Erich’s mind? He had never really been a caring brother. He worked all right and did little deals, but such deals are themselves also work, and Erich noticed how his girlfriend and Heinz spent the money he himself made like water.

  ‘You’re both enjoying yourselves, I hope? You’re not bored, are you? Here, Heinz.’ And he would push a wad of notes into his brother’s hand – an incredible sum. ‘No nonsense, Bubi. It’s impossible to go around without a penny in your pocket; Tinette told me you walked from Dahlem to the Wexstrasse. What nonsense! Take a taxi. I may be self-centred, but I can appreciate the kind way you’re looking after Tinette.’

  He smiled – was it in scorn or friendliness? Or was he merely tired? Perhaps he was glad to know Tinette was safe with his brother; she had to have some companion, and another man – any other man – would have been a greater danger than this seventeen-year-old schoolboy.

  Or was everything quite different, much more difficult and complicated? Some even lower motive?

  Oh, it was impossible to discover! Heinz had thought women very difficult to understand and certainly he understood very little about Tinette, but concerning his own brother he was completely ignorant …

  § VIII

  So, instead of walks, they went out shopping; it was surprising how much shopping a woman like Tinette had to do and what a long time she spent on it. Shopping Heinz had always considered a tiresome domestic duty – Mother would set out with a shopping bag and queue up for hours to buy a packet of dismal spaghetti. Tinette and he, however, always went by car, gliding past long queues of women before the food shops, drab, silent women with pinched faces. On his knee rested a fold of her dress; the movement of the car caused their arms to come in contact; she opened her mouth to speak – oh, how beautifully shaped were her teeth!

  They went to the dressmaker and milliner. Three weeks after the revolution there had returned to certain elegant streets some very elegant shops with extremely French names – ladies who called themselves Madame So-and-so and Mademoiselle This-and-that de Paris, and who sold the most magnificent and ever more and more abbreviated French creations. In their establishments Heinz would sit on some stool or in an easy chair, privileged to watch Tinette trying on hats and dresses. Girls, surprisingly painted, walked with long, proud legs to and fro; they carried dresses, they fetched dresses; under their closely fitting skirts their little buttocks swayed with delightful nonchalance. At Tinette’s side there always stood a somewhat older but still very good-looking lady and the two talked together with never-diminishing excitement and rapidity.

  They took the hat, tried it on, looked in the mirror, in two mirrors, in five mirrors, put the hat contemptuously aside on the table, took up another, tried that on, returned to the first one, pushed it a bit to the right, a bit lower down the side, straightened the feathers, put them back again … and the older lady would turn almost passionately to Heinz, begging Monsieur to say how the hat suited Madame – but his genuine, his real, his sincere opinion!

  And while Heinz was struggling to pass careful judgement they stood watching his lips as though the God of Fashion (if one existed) spoke from them. But the moment he stopped they turned away and forgot him entirely, removed the hat, put on another, and seemed no nearer a conclusion.

  In any case he never understood exactly why, in the end, some hat was bought … Why that particular one? Why must it be altered, returned, sent to be altered again, exchanged? It was a mystery.

  At the dressmaker’s he had other torments. In the beginning Tinette had disappeared into a cubicle but on the third or fourth occasion she omitted to do so … Ever slimmer and more seductive, he saw her emerging from her garments till she stood there in long silk stockings, knickers and something over the breasts. She raised her arms and the dress glided on. Then she changed again, revealing herself afresh …

  A hundred times he vowed not to look. Leaning forward, a cigarette in his hand, he would stare at the lights reflected from his spotless shoes – but in the end he had to look. There she stood, more alluring than if she had bee
n naked. He shut his eyes – yet looked again; sweet torment ever repeated.

  Soon the girls in these shops greeted him with a familiar, an almost sisterly smile – as if he belonged there. At times one of them would sit on the arm of his chair and assure him that Madame looked dazzling again today; she had an adorable figure. The bosom perhaps a trifle too full – but men liked that, didn’t they? Smiles … and they glided off, with a gentle sway of the buttocks.

  Heinz racked his brains wondering what these girls thought about him; whether they took him for Tinette’s lover or brother, whether they were out to torment him or whether they knew him for what he really was – a dependant, a slave who no longer needed to be in chains, because much stronger, invisible ties held him … Ties that bound him ever tighter and sent him ever more swiftly into the abyss.

  Back home again, it was there she was least desirous of being left alone. She wanted to talk about a thousand things she had noticed and of which he had seen nothing; she took him up to her dressing room, she changed in front of him. Sometimes her maid was present, sometimes not … She laughed, prattled away – he had only to throw in a ‘Yes’ or a ‘No’, while he sat half mad with longing, feeling like some hunger-crazed animal which sees food but also the fatal trap containing it … He trembled, despising himself and her but himself more – and yet he would not have missed a single hour of that torment.

  Once, when he could bear it no longer, almost groaning with pain he exclaimed: ‘Oh, Tinette, please! Please, Tinette!’

  She turned to him.

  ‘Oh, you’re not suffering, are you, my friend?’ She smiled. ‘You’re like my own brother, aren’t you?’

  She went up to him. He fell on his knees before her and pressed kisses on the strip of flesh between garter and knicker.

  She laughed and ruffled his hair. ‘Oh dear, Henri,’ she said lightly, ‘you must get used to it. A soldier can only prove his valour under fire, you know that!’