by Hans Fallada
And in exchange Gustav Hackendahl was to have free drinks (but in moderation) and two hearty meals, one when he came and the other when he left. As for what was spent by the guests at his table, here he was to have ten per cent of the bill, as agreed upon between the Iron and the Rude Gustavs and confirmed by handshake.
Ten, even five, years ago Gustav Hackendahl would have laughed in contempt had someone asked him to play the buffoon in a wine bar – now it was he who offered. There had been the war; that army which had been his pride existed no longer; the empire that was his mainstay had broken down miserably; none of his five children had done anything to be particularly proud of. He himself might have thrown in the sponge or have grown harder. He did something else. He laughed. It was a disease of the times. Before the war people had been told (and they believed it) that mankind was good, helpful, noble, full of faith, painstaking, dutiful (and ought to be so). Now they said: mankind is bad, murderous, lying, swinish, lazy, ignoble – and this too was believed. They were even proud of it. It cheered them up – cheered them up, to be sure, in a crapulous way, grinning as though they had swallowed vinegar, an-end-of-the-world cheerfulness (and for the older generation the world actually had come to an end).
Therefore Hackendahl didn’t regard himself as the hired buffoon of others; no, he wanted to poke his fun at them, he wanted to tickle their drunkenness so that when the vulgarity came out, he would be able to think: it wasn’t only me who had the bad luck. They’re none of them any better than my own children, they’re all baked in the same oven, soft on one side, burnt on the other and doughy in between.
That’s how he’d thought it out when his fantasy had been fired by the Irish-American’s drink. And even if he later forgot most of what happened, Iron Gustav never did think of himself as a professional joker. Yes, he could afford to grin when he looked around, for things went much better than expected. The table of the ‘Original Berlin Cabby’ was rarely unoccupied and Iron Gustav, after he had trained his black horse, achieved a kind of fame in Berlin nightlife, for it turned out that those who got intoxicated at his table invariably wanted him to drive them on to the next place, Rude Gustav’s being rather a port of call than a destination. Since he was supposed to be a cabman he had better drive as well. But the landlord did not at all relish the round table being without its chief attraction for an hour at a time perhaps, when even half an hour counted a lot in a place that had little more than six worthwhile hours in twenty-four.
Hackendahl, however, had another idea. He trained the black horse so that when he called ‘Gee-up!’, instead of advancing, it backed in the shafts, crab-fashion, and forced the vehicle against the kerb. And the more the driver shouted and cracked his whip the more unmanageable did the black horse become – until it at last lay down in the road. Then there was nothing for the guests but to get out and look for some other means of conveyance, which they always did with the greatest of good humour. Indeed, it was rare that Hackendahl was not handsomely compensated for the fare he had thus missed; so everybody was satisfied – landlord, customers, cabman – and it is to be presumed that the horse (now called Blücher) also enjoyed the fun.
Heinz had been quite right to comfort his mother. The business at least brought money into the house; after only a short time, Mother’s clothes began to look less ill-fitting.
And yet Heinz had been wrong. For Iron Gustav, there were dangers. He had been a man of perhaps restricted vision but with an ideal according to which he had shaped his life, in obedience to the dictates of honesty, work and duty. Now, however, he became every day more of a cynic, one who did nothing but scoff. To be sure, he did not neglect his obligations. There was his wife at home – her wants had to be attended to – and let the atmosphere in the wine cellar be as lively as it liked, every half-hour he went out and saw that the horse was properly covered, fed and watered as it should be.
But all this he did more out of habit than from a sense of duty. He hadn’t a single thing to do. His world was shattered – bit by bit, till nothing remained. Ten years before, he would have been horrified by a life of such cynicism and empty bars. He couldn’t have led that life. He would have been incapable of entertaining his guests. Now he could do so.
It was precisely that which he and others called iron. His insistence, for example, that he could still drive a horse cab, despite the fact that everyone knew that the era of the horse cab had gone for ever. But that wasn’t iron, that was just old. Had he been younger, he would have been sitting behind the wheel of a motor taxi long ago. What seemed iron was that he didn’t chase after his children any more, or want to see his grandchildren … But that too wasn’t iron, but his age. A younger person gets up after a fall and tries once more, but Gustav Hackendahl never wanted to love anyone again – Eva gone! Erich gone! Never again!
No, all that cannot be called iron.
And yet there was something indestructible – a life force. He never winced, he never complained, he lay on his bed as he’d made it, but also as others had made it. Naturally – without giving it a thought. With a powerful endurance, a matter-of-fact endurance. He had no realization of his sufferings and would have turned purple with rage, roaring the place down, had he been told he was of iron only in his endurance …
But there came an evening when even this virtue seemed about to forsake him, when endurance itself seemed impossible, and when everything in him seemed empty.
§ III
It was not an evening out of the ordinary for the people of Germany – but it was also a particularly bad evening for them, who had become used to such bad days and evenings over the last years. It was the evening of that day when passive resistance had been decided on in the Ruhr. The Cuno government had proclaimed a Day of National Mourning and had called upon the German people to prepare for sacrifices, and to renounce luxury and high living. But, doubting the effect of this appeal, they had ordered all places of public entertainment to be closed at ten o’clock at night.
Not for a long time had the centre of Berlin been so crowded as on that evening; people seemed possessed by the devil of contradiction. Having been ordered to go home by ten o’clock they made a point of going out at precisely that hour. That was a result of the period that had just passed. They mistrusted every government, and every order. They had completely lost all trust in anything. The police had to bear the brunt. No sooner had they chased the people out of one place than they crowded into the next. This the police emptied and in the meantime the first place was full again. Behind closed shutters, behind locked doors, sat those who were rejoicing at this chance of snapping their fingers at the government and the police.
But meanwhile, French and Belgian battalions were marching on the Ruhr. They took possession of the drinking places, the mines and the factories, and they occupied the banks, having confiscated the money. They also confiscated – in the middle of the coldest winter – coal deliveries to hungry, freezing Germany, and they imprisoned anyone who didn’t carry out their orders. Into a densely populated part of the country they brought extreme misery and the worst death. At the end of the battle for the Ruhr, a hundred and thirty-two people had paid with their lives, and countless had lost their freedom; a hundred and fifty thousand people had been expelled from their homeland, and the damage to the German economy was estimated to be four milliard gold marks.
However, Berlin celebrates – but mourns when it wants to, not when ordered to. The worse things get, the more we’ll celebrate; when things are really bad we shan’t be able to celebrate at all – we’ll be dead.
At Rude Gustav’s they were at first uncertain whether to shut down or not, but by ten o’clock the place was more than half full and in those days of devaluation a landlord was not inclined to eject patrons simply because they wanted a drink at all costs. So the windows were darkened and a couple of lads sent out to do their best to fill the bar by the back door, through the courtyard.
Gustav Hackendahl sat alone at his round table; it was to
o early for him to play his part yet. At this hour most of those present were couples; he could see them sitting in dark corners where possible, or at least separated from the next couple by a vacant table. A dead cigar in the corner of his mouth, Gustav was sleepily discussing the evening’s prospects with his namesake and what would happen to a landlord and what to a cabman should the place be raided, and whether Marshal Retreat, the black horse Blücher, wouldn’t be giving them away by standing outside.
By eleven o’clock the bar was crowded. Over and over again the door leading to the service rooms and the coal cellar opened to admit guests who, bewildered by the dark entry, looked surprised to have got there at last. Then he was slapped on the shoulder. ‘All right, fatty, are you here too? Your friend Olga is already sitting back there by the pillar. What? I would never have known! It’s your wife! Couldn’t you have been a bit clearer and given a hint? Then I’d know straight away to be more careful. Well, it’s too late now. Fancy our fatty as a philanderer! What do you think of that, my good lady? Blows his own trumpet occasionally, says he has an important business meeting. But haven’t I seen you before somewhere, my good lady? Weren’t you sitting over there with the bald-headed fat man, kissing his pate? My, how wonderful love can be!’
So the old jokes were churned out, to the thankful laughter of the guests whose dim flame of matrimonial love was thereby a little fanned into life. Then, when the wine list was placed before them, the silence which could be heard … ‘Spot of Rhine wine? Oh no, you don’t, there’s only champagne going tonight. D’you think I’m risking me licence and quod for the sake of a thimbleful? Stop being so mean; you don’t behave like that with your girlfriend … Well, hurry up, man, the dollar won’t wait.’
Suddenly a new batch of visitors was admitted and this time it was for Iron Gustav to receive them. ‘Eh, chaps, shove the silver away. These nobs only eat with silver knives and you don’t want to pay for a stomach operation to get ’em back again …’ Settling himself in his chair – one hand round the stem of his glass, his whip in the other – with the shiny hat over his brows and his head sunk on his chest, he looked the genuine article, a cabby dozing off in the warmth of a bar.
And indeed he felt like dozing. As through a fog he heard the new arrivals, the waiters, the landlord talking. Then a rather unctuous voice called out: ‘Champagne? Of course! Champagne!’ Something was slapped down on the table. ‘Money? What’s it matter about money? Get rid of it! There’s plenty more where this comes from. No end! You can just go on dipping into their pockets for ever – long live all suckers! Champagne!’ Then the voice was lowered. ‘You, landlord, get that old cabby away from our table. Why’s he dossing here? He should sleep it off somewhere else. Anyway, I can’t stand cabmen, I’ve taken a dislike to them.’
Old Hackendahl had by now realized whose voice this was, in spite of its having changed so, and for a moment he thought of stealing away; but he had never been a coward, and wasn’t one now either. Pushing his hat back off his forehead and blinking in the light, he looked across the table at his son Erich who, all his intoxication suddenly leaving him, stared back at the old cabman with the grizzled beard, baggy, bloodshot eyes and stained blue greatcoat. He had turned pale. His tongue refused to speak, he wanted to jump up from the table. Yet he could not free himself from that unrelenting gaze. For his father continued to stare at his son with big round eyes, across the table on which the waiters in their red waistcoats and shirtsleeves were ranging bottles of champagne in the coolers. Nothing in his face showed he had recognized his son … had recognized in that puffy white face, with greying temples and thinning hair, the Erich of old, his hope and pride, the possessor of charm and ease, the quick-witted lad whom he had locked up in the cellar for throwing away four gold coins on women … Now the son was sitting between two women under the eyes of his father, one of them with a white arm over his shoulder; the father could see they were obviously local girls dragged up from another bar.
And all that was over in a moment – just a moment, in which the past went by. Nine years had flown by since they had seen each other, and now they met again. Time passed, life rolled on, an autumn wind tore the last bright leaves from the branches. Now it was all over, all wrinkled and dead. Yes, it had been just a moment in which both recognized that everything was irretrievably over. And the guests had hardly noticed that the jolly Erich Hackendahl had fallen silent.
And the old man was already in his role. ‘Well, young feller, what’s up, eh? What’ve you got against cabmen? P’r’aps you had to gather horse dung orf the street for Ma’s allotment, what? And that’s why you’ve got a grudge against the cabbies. Chuck it, man! These days you’ve got the stink of petrol from the cars instead. It’s just the same. Only you don’t notice it.’
There was no need for Erich to reply – his friends had burst out laughing and the girls from the Maxim Bar (who had, of course, heard about Iron Gustav) hastened to instruct their gentlemen concerning the real position of this odd character. The very fat dark gentleman, the only one of the company to be tolerably sober, merely smiled, however – as Erich’s friend and patron he no doubt knew that the young man’s antipathy to cabmen was no drunken whim. But it had escaped even the clever lawyer and experienced Reichstag deputy that Erich was startled by meeting his father. He also had no idea that father and son were now sitting opposite each other, and that, misunderstood by everyone, the battle between the two continued.
The champagne glasses had been filled to the brim, the waiters in accordance with the charming custom of inflation bars surreptitiously adding a couple of empty bottles to the dead ones, so as to swell the bill. The trick worked in ninety-five per cent of cases.
The glasses clinked together, and the girls laughed out loud as they lifted them to their lips as the thickset gentleman, in a dinner jacket and with a monocle and duelling scars on his bulldog face, had knocked with a champagne bottle on the side of the cooler. The flower of successful business Berlin began to commemorate the Occupation of the Ruhr, and the man in the dinner jacket spoke: ‘Comrades! Respected Ladies! Esteemed cabmen! To what we are – Youth!’
They drank.
‘To what we love – the sweet life and all that goes with it!’ And he pinched the neck of the girl beside him, who gave a little scream.
They drank again.
‘To what we want – that the wretched right-wing Cuno government recovers the Ruhr, so that it’s ours again! And soon!’
They drank and laughed. Only the lawyer smiled weakly; he didn’t much like such behaviour in public houses.
‘And now,’ said the gentleman with the monocle, sitting down, ‘relate us some amusing episode from your life, respected charioteer. You’re bound to have had a lot of experience.’
‘I have,’ agreed Hackendahl. ‘Only, when I’m in company with educated chaps in monocles who plump money down on the table like the young ’un over there, so that all the waiters immediately sharpen their pencils an’ get the bill ready – I don’t know, out of sheer respect me tongue freezes an’, poor ole fool, I go on rackin’ me nut without ever findin’ out how you folk earn the dough you do while I can’t buy me ole woman the dripping for her bread.’
‘Don’t soak so much, old boozer.’
‘When I see that,’ said old Hackendahl, pointing to his son who was glancing at him uneasily, ‘that’s a young chap all right and I ask meself, how’s he do it? Naturally he’s got education but education don’t earn you money nowadays. I ask meself, how do the likes of him do it? I should have been in quod long ago.’
Erich compressed his lips and tried to look threateningly at his father but shrank immediately from the old man’s eye.
Some of those round the table protested. ‘Dry up, old fellow. We’re not here to drink their apple juice and be made fools of by you.’
‘The old chap’s jealous.’
‘No, it’s dense I am,’ went on Hackendahl. ‘I can’t an’ don’t understand it. I’d like to be p
ut wise.’
‘You can’t be,’ said the man in the monocle. ‘You’ve got to be born to it. The gentleman you’re speaking about was born to it, that’s all.’
‘Well, I certainly wasn’t or else I wouldn’t be actin’ the ole fool before you puppies.’ Complacent laughter. ‘But I’d like to get hold of it all the same.’
‘What is it you want to get hold of?’
‘Well, how you set about it, profiteering, I mean. People talk of nothing else but I don’t grasp it. How d’you pull off a big deal now? I rack me bloody brains but what can I profiteer in? The young gentleman here – I ask him with all due respect – is he a profiteer p’r’aps?’ And he pointed to his son.
All except Erich were amused. The girls beamed. In such dens of extortion to be a profiteer was a kind of honour. Money has no smell; that saying was to many their one and only article of faith.
‘He a profiteer! Why, you can call him a king of profiteers,’ said the man with the monocle. ‘He could sell you and you wouldn’t even notice it.’
‘There you are then! But p’r’aps I’d get to know I’d been sold in time. Young feller,’ he was addressing his son now, ‘show a bit of kindness to an ole man an’ tell me how you get yer money out of the mugs.’
‘I …’ began Erich defiantly. Then he reached out for his glass. ‘I find this boring. Can’t we go on somewhere else?’
‘You can’t get away now, young feller. Don’t you hear the police whistles outside? What a comedown if you had to go to the police station! It don’t matter about me, but then I’m only a common cabby.’
‘Hackendahl,’ said the man with the monocle, ‘let’s do the old man a favour and show him how you make money. As a matter of fact I’ve got something for you.’ He reached into the inside pocket of his dinner jacket and brought out what was, for such a well-dressed gentleman, a rather soiled pocketbook. ‘Now where was it?’ he muttered, turning over the pages.
