Iron Gustav

by Hans Fallada

  ‘Where to, Eva?’

  ‘Away from Berlin.’

  ‘Why must you go?’

  Into her gaze came something like terror. ‘Why?’ she whispered and fell silent.

  ‘Come, Eva,’ he said gently, taking her by the hand and leading her back to the bed. ‘Come, lie down. Wait, I’ll take off your shoes. You’re cold as ice. There – now cover yourself up with the blanket. Is that better?’ But though she let him attend to her she made no reply.

  He took her hand again. ‘And now tell me why you must leave Berlin.’

  She didn’t answer, but a different expression came into her eyes. She looked around her like a child. ‘What’s this?’ she asked. ‘Am I in Mother’s bed?’

  He shook his head.

  ‘In Father’s?’

  He nodded.

  She laughed, laughed abruptly and hysterically. It was just as if she were shaken by sobbing. ‘There!’ she said, pointing. ‘I was born there. Twenty-three years ago. And now I’m lying in Father’s bed. Won’t Father be pleased to know that a whore’s lying in his bed!’

  Her laughter just as suddenly stopped and she opened her handbag, searching. A key, a powder box, some change slipped from the bed – she paid no attention. ‘Read that!’ she said, handing him a page torn from a copybook. On it was written in a child’s clumsy hand: ‘The Fir Tree. The fir tree grows in the wood. It is our German Christmas tree. No nation celebrates Christmas so beautifully as the Germans do. The fir tree …’

  ‘Can you understand it?’ she whispered, not taking her eyes from his face. ‘No, no – the other side!’

  He turned the sheet over. On the other side, disregarding the lines, was scribbled: ‘You bitch, you shot me dead but I’ll get you.’

  Nothing else.

  He looked at her.

  ‘Can you understand that?’ she whispered again, her lips trembling.

  ‘No. Who wrote it?’

  She looked at him. Finally, after a long pause, she whispered: ‘He did.’ She seemed afraid even to whisper.

  ‘The man I heard about at Tutti’s?’

  She nodded.

  ‘Well, what’s it mean? You’re not going to let yourself be frightened by that nonsense, are you, Eva?’

  ‘It isn’t nonsense.’

  ‘Of course it’s nonsense. It—’ He broke off. He saw that she was struggling with a decision.

  At last she murmured: ‘But I did kill him. I fired right into his face. I was standing in front of him.’

  ‘But, Eva, if you killed him he couldn’t write to you. And if you haven’t killed him it’s nonsense for him to say he’s dead. If you really did shoot at him you must have missed.’

  ‘I shot him dead. I saw it go off in his face.’

  ‘It’s impossible, Eva …’

  ‘Not with him – nothing is!’

  He thought again. Then he sat down beside her on the bed, took her cold hands between his and said coaxingly: ‘Tell me everything, Eva. Perhaps I can help you – I may be able to.’

  ‘Nobody can.’

  ‘Yes, perhaps I can.’

  ‘You could, if you had the courage to kill me! Oh, Bubi, I’ve thought so often – if only someone had the courage! I’m too cowardly to do it myself. But I wouldn’t be too cowardly for that. I promise you I wouldn’t run away. I wouldn’t even cry out.’

  ‘Please, Eva, tell me just how it happened. You shot at him, you say. Why? One doesn’t shoot a man just because he’s bad. You’re my sister. I know you. Such a thing must have been very difficult for you.’

  She nodded, half listening. She’d gone back to her former thoughts.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘I’m not to die. I’m to die only through him – when he’s tortured me enough. You know, Bubi,’ she said feverishly, ‘you know, it all happened some time ago, the shooting. And afterwards I didn’t know what to do. I drank all the time. I’m drunk now. But even if I were dead drunk …’ She was silent a moment. Deep in his own thoughts, lost in his own memories, Heinz unthinkingly stroked Eva’s hand.

  ‘So I thought I must find peace,’ she continued. ‘And because I’ve never found peace in life, I thought I must die. Then I heard they were planning something against the sailors, and that evening I crept into the Imperial stables. And I’d hardly got there when the Noske soldiers began to shoot. They shot at the Imperial stables with cannon, and they began to burn quite merrily. But when I heard all that – the shooting, and the cries of the dying, and how the flames leaped up – I went half mad for joy, because I thought that now I would die too. And I danced and sang in front of the soldiers, and helped them with their guns, and they said: “The little one is right.” Because the other women had to be locked in the cellar. But no one knew why I was like that.’

  She was silent. Then she said: ‘And it did me no good, after all. Once again dying escaped me. When it got to the stage when everything was burning, and the crunch came – they just surrendered! And they dragged me out with them, no matter how much I pleaded. No, it’s fated to be like that – either he dies through me or I through him. And the probability is that he’ll be the one to do it.’

  ‘Do what? You said you killed him.’

  ‘Yes, right in his face. He fell as if he was made of lead.’

  She considered for a while. ‘Do you think, Bubi, that Mother will give me some money to go away with?’

  He looked at her thoughtfully. It seemed to him as though she were more confused than a drunken person should be; had she crossed the borderline between sanity and madness? He didn’t know, and he also didn’t know anyone he could ask. He could only ask her. Cautiously he started to question her and gradually wormed out the story, from the theft at the Stores down to the bullet in a Dahlem villa hardly five minutes away from that other house.

  And, as he listened to the account of how his sister had come more and more under the domination of an evil person, it seemed as if she were describing his own recent sufferings. ‘What was I to do, Bubi?’ she demanded passionately. ‘I couldn’t do anything at all – and sometimes the worse he behaved the more I somehow seemed to like it. But you can’t possibly understand.’

  Heinz, however, nodded. ‘I can, Eva, I understand only too well. You’re pleased when something within you is killed and you say to yourself: that’s what I wanted. The sooner everything goes to blazes the better.’

  ‘Yes, that’s right,’ she cried, and carried on spiritedly with her story.

  However, when Eva had finished, and began to accuse herself, Eugen, her father, God and the world in general, Heinz had to consider what was best to do, what he himself could do, and the extent to which she could help him do it, and how much depended on her. Going away, running away – out of the question! They had no money, neither she, he, nor the parents – that was the first thing he had to emphasize. And nothing could be achieved by it anyway; even when she had thought Eugen dead she still hadn’t been at peace but had wanted to die, too. She had taken to drink in the hope of forgetting. No, first of all the truth about the shooting in the villa must be ascertained.

  ‘If you had really killed him, Eva, the police would have arrested you long ago, you mustn’t forget that.’

  Here, however, Heinz had made a false move; to Eva’s fear of Eugen was now added fear of the police and of courts and of prisons – more than ever did she want to leave Berlin at once, and if she couldn’t do that, then she wanted to change her address at least. She knew a dozen places where she could stay without registering.

  With deep astonishment Heinz realized that Eva had as much fear of the police as if she were still the respectable daughter of a respectable citizen. He had been thinking of persuading her to give herself up so that, by paying off the old debt – the theft from the Stores – she need have no further fear of Bast’s threats. But of this there was now no hope. Getting out of bed, Eva hurried into her shoes – she must move on the spot! Perhaps the police were looking for her already.

  So the f
irst thing Heinz had to do for his sister was something quite against the grain, a flit in a taxicab – hasty packing, hints big as bricks given to the other girls in between tots of spirits, whispered enquiries of the landlady about other landladies – a flit which the most stupid policeman could have tracked down without any difficulty. Heinz, however, was at least able to help with the packing, watched by the girls, some insolent, some inquisitive; quite unblushingly they discussed him with his sister and decided that he was still rather young. He thought so too and went off to the laundry where, with a great deal of trouble, he got them to hand over the washing, wringing wet though it was. ‘My sister has to leave town urgently.’ The laundress grinned; she knew quite well what sort of a sister his was and that urgent departures in such cases were customarily made in green police vans.

  But at last they found themselves in the taxi, Heinz somewhat irritated by all this slovenliness and haste; he would have preferred to clear up matters rather than confuse them still further. Eva, however, smiled suddenly (the tots had had their effect), and declared that she was glad to have left, because the old woman charged a great deal too much for board and lodging … And besides, the Tauentzienstrasse was not the right beat for her – only the youngest and smartest got on there. North, in the Tieck- or Schlegelstrasse, it would be easier. Didn’t Heinz see she was getting wrinkles already?

  And then she started to weep. How old she looked now! Besides, with one foot in quod and the other in hospital a girl’s life wasn’t worth living … But it was all Father’s fault; if he hadn’t shouted at them so much she would never have taken up with Eugen.

  Heinz listened gloomily. He was wondering whether the task which had awoken him that morning was actually a task at all or whether this whole business of Eva had not been settled a long time ago, and for good.

  § XV

  During the following weeks Heinz was perpetually asking himself this question for, in spite of his endeavours, things became more and more involved, although Eva seemed hardly to suffer under this; confusion and disorder might have been her element.

  Later, however, he ceased to worry himself with doubts. Professor Degener had once said that he had to create order in his own small circle, to master the small tasks before the big ones. He tried to do that. If he felt very depressed, he tried to imagine how there were thousands of people in Germany who were engaged in slowly building up the war-damaged country, stone by stone, little by little, with great patience. It all begins with the healthy cell, said Professor Degener.

  I clear things away, thought Heinz, and pursued his fruitless ways, ignoring his sister’s reprimands – even thinking with smiling superiority: all your resistance won’t help you. I’ll get you out of this mess even against your will.

  It was not so easy. After school he would go about trying to get at the facts concerning the shooting, enquiries which had to be made cautiously for he dared not go to the police – how could he be sure that Eva was not implicated in other of Bast’s crimes, as well as in the jewellery theft? She’d never tell the whole truth.

  At first it seemed very interesting to run round Berlin like a detective in a thriller and track down what might turn out to be a notorious criminal – certainly a blackmailer, robber with violence, petty thief, gangster, souteneur, perhaps murderer – well, that was sufficient, quite sufficient, thank you!

  But it was not so interesting to wander night after night accosting every street girl or letting oneself be accosted and then, after the usual silly talk, to bring up the subject of a certain Eugen, ‘Dark Eugen’ as he was called. There seemed to be quite a number of Dark Eugens in the profession.

  While he continued to live like that – always in a rush, getting paler and paler, thinner and thinner – the world went on its way. They began to sell off the merchant fleet, and there were big protest meetings against the enforced peace. The National Assembly also spoke, though more moderately, against the enforced peace. There was uproar in the Ruhr and a general strike in Württemberg. The first national congress of the unemployed met in Berlin, and the first national budget was drawn up, involving fourteen million marks, of which only half were missing. In Munich a Soviet republic was set up, and the War Minister in Dresden was shot dead by the war-wounded. But the First of May was declared a holiday, strictly according to the Social Democratic Party programme, and an official Easter message was announced: ‘Put an End to Self-Destruction! Go to work!’

  In addition, there was a general strike in Brunswick. In fact there was a tendency to strike almost everywhere.

  While all this was taking place, when so many terrible things were happening, no one any more felt that something terrible was terrible.

  Moreover, he had at the same time to prepare himself for his final examination, and pass it – which he did, just scraping through. And this was not what Professor Degener had expected of him. But he’d had a meeting with his favourite teacher. He reported to him. The professor had shaken his head and murmured: ‘That’s not exactly what I meant by creating order …’ But he’d let him through all the same.

  ‘What will you do now?’ his schoolfellows asked.

  ‘What do you want to be?’ wailed his mother.

  His father said nothing, but his look was explicit enough.

  Heinz Hackendahl, however, had no time just then to occupy himself with such matters. First Eugen Bast had to be found – that nightmare, that bogey, that living corpse!

  And found he was. Heinz came to see Eugen Bast face to face. Nor was this finding of him to prove difficult, requiring detective abilities. The way of it was this. One day, when Heinz was sitting in his sister’s room, the landlady brought in a young lad. ‘Isn’t Eva in? The boy says he’s got something for her.’

  ‘Eva must be at Olga’s. She’s only just gone,’ said Heinz and looked at the lad without, so far, any suspicion.

  He was about thirteen years of age and watched Heinz with a timid yet sullen expression. Then he grinned. ‘You her chap?’

  ‘Yes.’ Heinz held out his hand. ‘Show me what you’ve got.’

  The lad grinned again and shook his head. ‘What’ll you give?’

  Heinz was far from wealthy at the moment – as a result of his search for Eugen Bast nearly all Erich’s splendid suits had vanished in fares and tips – so he offered a mark.

  A shake of the head.

  ‘Two.’

  ‘Nix.’

  ‘Three marks.’

  ‘Fork it out,’ said the lad, taking a slip of paper from his trouser pocket. Heinz handed over the money and read what was written on the paper, which the other did not let out of his hand.

  ‘A hundred marks,’ was written there, ‘or ashtray.’ Nothing else.

  What ‘ashtray’ signified he knew from Eva, but this was not the same handwriting as in the first note. ‘Eugen hasn’t written this,’ he said. ‘Well, anyone can say that!’

  ‘I wrote it,’ explained the lad. ‘But Eugen told me what to write.’

  ‘Why didn’t he write it himself?’

  Heinz seemed to have asked a silly question, for the lad grinned, evidently thinking himself very clever. ‘Gimme a hundred marks an’ I’ll tip you why Eugen didn’t write it.’

  Heinz looked thoughtfully at him. A hundred marks were absolutely out of the question – he hadn’t got them. But in any case one thing was certain. Eugen Bast was alive. ‘Don’t tell her you showed me that note,’ said Heinz, snatching up his hat and coat.

  ‘Not such a mug. She got any dough?’

  ‘You must ask her yourself. I’m clearing out.’ And Heinz went.

  He had to wait a long time in a doorway opposite before the messenger shot out of the house like an arrow. Heinz tore after him. Had the lad suspected anything it would have been difficult to follow him; the chase went in the direction of the Oranienburger Tor, then down the Friedrichstrasse – Heinz on the other side of the street – past the station and across Unter den Linden.

  There were ma
ny depressed-looking people about. No goods had yet appeared in the shops – Germany was still subject to the blockade. Yes, it had even been tightened up … But one thing was there in superabundance – poverty. Beggars lined the great thoroughfares, leaning against the walls, squatting on mats, hawking obscene postcards; nearly all of them were war-wounded or at least claimed to be such, if one went by the placards on their breasts. During the four long years of war, people had become accustomed to the sight of maimed men, otherwise anyone finding himself unprepared amid these horrors might well imagine himself in hell …

  Armless and legless – trousers pushed up to show the thick purple or red scabs on the stumps – there they sat, the mutilated, those with faces terribly scarred and burnt, those with missing jaws – horror upon horror. The shell-shocked, groaning pitifully, shook heads or arms; with perfect regularity a man in field-grey knocked the back of his head twice a second against the wall – a hundred and twenty times a minute, seven thousand two hundred times an hour – and the back of his head was one enormous wound. People saw it. The police saw it. The government saw it.

  Although the dollar was already worth fifteen marks, instead of four marks twenty before the war, the word ‘inflation’ was still widely unknown. People spoke of price increases. A pound of bread cost twenty-five instead of fourteen marks, butter three marks instead of one forty. However, apart from the rich, no one could buy as much food as he wanted, because all life’s necessities were only available with coupons in very small quantities, so the price increases did not make themselves immediately felt. People would have been willing to spend more money, if only there had been more products to buy.

  The government stuck to the fiction that a mark was a mark. The war-wounded received their small pension – but in fact they often received nothing at all because their reduction of income had first to be calculated. However, because the war-wounded also wanted to live and many could not work, they took to the streets. In groups of three, five, ten they went up and down the houses, sang in the courtyards, made music. Or else they sat at major crossroads, selling shoelaces and matches, or begged. The government and the police could only look on. They couldn’t order people to starve in silence.