Iron Gustav

by Hans Fallada

  In the end he disappeared into the front room, where he slept with the boys (she slept in the kitchen), and she heard the sound of water splashing. She settled down at the table with her sewing, deeply unhappy – even more so than in the morning when she discovered his deceit. Because now that she had seen him again, she was almost certain that everything was different. Hadn’t he said that the whip came from Grandfather? So, that’s where it came from. So she had only needed to ask him, why now from Grandfather and not from the bank? But she hadn’t asked. And now it’s all a mess.

  He should have told me for sure before; her thinking was dogged and bitter. I don’t want to have to interrogate him all the time! At the same time, she was sound enough in herself to feel that everything, including the interrogation, was a bit exaggerated.

  During the next ten minutes, Heinz went numerous times past the kitchen, in a hurry, as if on fire. He went between the front room and the corridor. Outside, in the corridor, his voice was pronouncedly carefree. He was cleaning; in the front room and in the kitchen, he was silent. At one moment she nearly flared up, when he rummaged through her mending basket for a cloth, and – typical man – took away the one indispensable item – a patch for Gustav’s trousers.

  However, she controlled herself. If he doesn’t eat, he can ruin the mending of Gustav’s trousers too. She would have to find a new patch. Let him go on being like that!

  She simply accepted everything like no other woman, and her silence was so striking that it was almost audible …

  Heinz perhaps felt that too. Because he stopped walking up and down like a fireman, and for a while she heard him still whispering with the children, telling them to be quiet – ‘Don’t upset Mummy, the poor thing’s not well’ – and then she only heard the children whispering.

  She didn’t really trust the apparent peace. And, after a further quarter of an hour, when she looked for him, she established that young Heinz had gone, not just to the lavatory halfway up the stairs, but that he had completely gone, with hat and coat.

  The children were playing with the whip. They had made it into a cab. One grasped the handle, the other the lash, and easily, at will, turned it into a horse and driver. Just as easily as Mummy and Heinz had changed from being the best of friends to being bitter enemies.

  Because that’s what they now were – Gertrud could see it no other way. The fact that he had deceived her about his holiday, and that he not only refused his meal, but even left the house without saying goodbye – and at a time when he never went out. No, that really crowned his behaviour! She would never speak to him again – and if he spoke to her, then she would give him a bit of her mind, and tell him exactly what she thought of him.

  For the next three-quarters of an hour, she seemed to sew everything that she thought of him into Elfriede Fischer’s dress. The sewing held, but every needle prick must eventually make itself felt a thousand times on the said Fräulein Fischer!

  Then she had to give the children their supper, which took place – against all custom – almost in silence. Then Gustav put Otto to bed, and she heard the children chatting in the front room, with their grandfather as their favourite subject. Grandfather who had sent a whip and imagined it would make everything all right … Grandfather, whose stubbornness Heinz had inherited. Oh God, she would have to take much more care of the children to see that they did not inherit the same. Defiance is a curse! Stubbornness is too. Just as Heinz had always stubbornly said: ‘I won’t have any soup today’ – just as in Struwwelpeter – unbearable. Horrible!

  Then Gustav came back into the kitchen to read for another hour, as he did every evening before going to sleep. Just then, Tutti thought she heard Heinz on the staircase, and wanted to be alone with him on his return. So Gustav was sent off; he had of course forgotten to cut the little one’s nails.

  Gustav stubbornly insisted that tomorrow, not today, was the weekly nail-cutting day. But such persistent stubbornness made Gertrud very angry: ‘Go and cut his nails at once! You must do as I say. Your stubbornness is horrible.’

  However, it had not been Heinz on the staircase, so Gustav had to suffer the downpour from his mother’s storm clouds for nothing. She immediately regretted this very much, but then comforted herself with the thought that it was enough if he learned to obey, even if he didn’t understand the meaning of the order.

  However, her ear-slapping mode prevailed. It was in Heinz’s favour, because it brought her a small step closer to him. She took the letter about the inheritance out of her little handbag and put it visibly on the little shoe cupboard. That would be a starting point. If he didn’t take it up out of pure defiance, then she would consider him lost – lost for ever.

  Shortly before seven o’clock Heinz returned, all sweet innocence, cheeks freshly reddened by the cold. He had a lively talk with his nephew, first about the whip, then about the Occupation of the Ruhr, which the English Law Courts had now also declared illegal. As a result of that, the mark had become a little stronger.

  And then, at table: ‘I did a quick shop and bought what was available. We at the bank don’t think the French will give way. So the mark will fall again. There are also two hundredweight of briquettes in the cellar.’

  ‘Thanks,’ said Tutti. ‘We already had enough briquettes.’

  And she would have liked to hit out again, first because what she said was not the case, and second because, whatever she did, she could only make the war situation worse. In these icy conditions, to drag two hundredweight of briquettes from the coal merchants to the cellar was an achievement indeed!

  Heinz responded to this expression of thanks with a surprised shrug of the shoulders, fetched a book from the front room (and in doing so quite needlessly whispered for a long time with little Otto, who should have been asleep long ago), sat down at the table and began to read.

  Unbroken silence reigned until half past seven, when Gustav closed his book, said goodnight, and disappeared. Two minutes later Gertrud got up, went to the little shoe cupboard, within sight – incidentally – of the reading Heinz, made a provocative noise, as he wouldn’t look up, with the document from the Bergen court in Hiddensee, and then disappeared, leaving the letter behind – to go into the adjoining room to see that that rascal Gustav was washing himself properly.

  When she came back into the kitchen ten minutes later, she looked first at her brother-in-law, then at the letter. He was reading as before, and the letter was also lying where it had been.

  She began her sewing with a feeling of total devastation. Two hours lay before them before bedtime, but she was convinced that, after so much accommodation on her part, she was no longer capable of uttering a word. Were they to go to bed in a state of strife? And what about? About nothing. (She was now convinced that it had all been ‘about nothing’.) And he had dragged two hundredweight of briquettes into the cellar! And he’d thought of coconut oil too. What misery!

  Time went by in total silence. The reader’s face was near her; occasionally she heard the sound of pages being turned. He wasn’t just pretending to read; he really was reading. About every half-hour he got up and went into the corridor. It was just the same as ever; he never smoked in the kitchen. He went into the stairwell to smoke, so that she didn’t have to sleep in a smoke-filled kitchen. That was actually thoughtful, but not today; it was just habit. She was almost convinced that, had he only thought of it, he would have smoked in the kitchen just to annoy her.

  By the time it was past nine o’clock, she was feeling ever more anxious. Only twenty-five minutes to go! She had never gone to bed with such a burden, and she still had to talk things over with him. But he was completely pig-headed.

  At ten minutes before half past nine, Heinz went out to the stairwell for the last time to smoke his habitual last cigarette. While he was outside, she controlled herself heroically. Once again, she gave way. She took the letter from the little shoe cupboard and put it in the middle of the table. Two minutes later she pushed the letter ne
arer his book, and a minute after that close up to his book. And if he had come back a little later, her spirit of sacrifice would have driven her to put it on the book itself.

  But he had already come in. ‘Well, goodnight, Tutti,’ he said carelessly and took his book. He started when he saw the letter. (He really started, so he really hadn’t seen it before. Incredible!) He read the sender’s address, repeated ‘Well, goodnight, Tutti’, and went towards the door of the front room.

  ‘Heinz!’ she cried, like a drowning woman.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ he asked, a bit grumpy.

  ‘The letter!’ and she pointed to it.

  ‘Yes, so what?’

  ‘Read it, Heinz. Please read it.’

  He looked at her and suddenly, seeing her standing there, a bundle of misery, almost in tears – suddenly he began to laugh, to roar with laughter.

  ‘Tutti! Tutti!’ he cried, laughing. ‘Whatever is wrong with you today? You make a thorough mess of me, you don’t feed me, and you don’t utter a word – you’re not going sick on me, are you?’

  And when she saw him standing there like that – tall, laughing, young and full of life – it suddenly hit her. She understood immediately why she had got so upset that morning over his ‘deceit’ – why she had argued with him and sulked. She understood, and she felt that she loved him – that the younger man had outlived, really outlived, the older one – that nothing more of Otto remained in her.

  In the same moment that she was conscious of her love, she was also conscious that he should never ever notice it. She saw herself as if in a mirror – her head, which with age had become more pointed, more bird-like, her hump … and she remembered that he was ten years younger than her.

  While all this went through her – a huge wave of happiness and misery which totally overwhelmed her – she was still at the same time his old sister-in-law Tutti, whom he knew. Then she pressed her lips together again and said: ‘You were absolutely right to laugh at me, Heinz. I’ve been completely crazy today. It must have been the excitement. First, excitement over the inheritance, and then my being upset when you were not at the bank, but on holiday. Why were you on holiday, by the way?’

  However, while she was still speaking, she felt the wave inside sinking and sinking, until it had gone. It had been – once again – a moment, before her life declined, which had raised her up as if on a high mountain, and enabled her to see, and for a fleeting moment to feel, all the treasures of love, happiness, and sadness too. But as she was more than halfway through her life, she easily sank back into her petty, daily round of duty and renunciation.

  The two of them sat there for a long time, talking with one another, about Irma and about the only partially persuaded grandfather, about Eva, whom Heinz had gone on holiday to help, but who didn’t want help, and about his miserably botched attempt to spare her the excitement over Eva. ‘Because you’re not in the best of health, Tutti, and I sometimes worry when I hear you coughing at night.’

  ‘I’ve always coughed, Heinz, and at home we used to say, “If you keep coughing, you’ll keep living.” ’

  ‘Yes, you and your “at home”,’ he said, ‘but who here is going to make my bed? Oh, Tutti. I’m going to find it damn difficult to live in a furnished room again, and without our boys.’

  ‘Well,’ she said and could even smile, ‘I don’t think Irma would like to live in a furnished room, and your own boys are always better than “our boys”.’

  She saw him blush, and actually blush in a way that a young man in 1923 should not have to at such a remark. And she was almost happy when he stood up and said: ‘Don’t talk such rubbish, Tutti! With Irma, of all people! Don’t forget: Closed for Family Mourning.’

  ‘Liar! For Family Celebration!’

  ‘Well, a celebration like that would be like mourning.’

  § XIV

  During the fortnight which Erich Hackendahl needed to wind up his affairs in Berlin, he wondered over and over again whether or not to ring up his friend the lawyer. More and more nebulous and drunken did that night of national mourning over what had happened in the Ruhr now appear to him; one ought not to take such things too seriously. He himself had been drunk, the other had been drunk and, as is well known, drunkenness impairs the memory – one need not remember things too clearly. In any case his recollections of the evening were vague, very vague. Several times he had picked up the receiver, only to put it back when the exchange came on, or ask for another number. Despite a faulty memory, the relationship with his father had been violated. A friendship had been damaged. But he showed more decision about converting his property into money – that is, into stable currencies. With the villa in Zehlendorf he had luck; he sold it lock, stock and barrel to a foreigner who, having acquired a fortune on the London Stock Exchange, was thinking of buying up half Berlin. He had even more luck in that both he and this purchaser were of the opinion that the State, or more exactly the Exchequer, should be involved in the matter as little as possible. A bit of a wangle, of course. And so Erich became the possessor of a demand draft in Norwegian kroner on an Amsterdam firm, and the foreigner paid him pro forma a couple of million paper marks on a very backdated purchase agreement.

  And his luck held in other things – the disposal of his firm, the collection of outstanding debts, the getting rid of his car. Erich, on the eve of his departure, could say: everything I possess is abroad.

  He paced up and down his hotel room, delighted that he had been able to invest what was left of his wretched paper marks in a fur coat, a gold watch and a diamond ring. He was wondering whether the Customs would object to the fact that everything he possessed was brand new.

  But what are one’s connections for? Erich went to the telephone, asked for the lawyer’s secret number, and half a minute later he heard the sound of the familiar soft, slightly ironic voice in his ear.

  ‘Hello, Erich. Yes, I was thinking about ringing you – Yes, of course, we did have rather a lot. In those places they doctor the drinks too – Quite right, for days on end I thought I was poisoned – Yes, I can hardly remember … A dim idea that we went on somewhere … My doctor says methylated spirits would have that effect – And the champagne actually cost ten dollars! Crazy! Really? That’s splendid – Indeed? Brussels? Why Brussels, by the way? Do you particularly want to go there? Not particularly? You have no particular connections there then? – Only from the war; yes, of course, I understand, I understand … Wait, Erich, you got half an hour to spare? I might have a suggestion to make. Magnificent! In your hotel? Splendid. Well then, I’ll be in the bar in half an hour – So long, old chap. So sensible of you to ring me up.’

  Smilingly Erich replaced the receiver … Everything OK now with the old fox; memory a bit off, fuddled with methylated – all right! Let him come, that was the main thing. You wouldn’t be yourself, Herr Doctor, if you didn’t want to earn a few pounds, dollars, Norwegian kroner.

  And in the small but cosy hotel bar took place a memorable conversation. Never had the lawyer been so paternally benevolent or Erich so tractable and filial. There they sat – a young and enterprising businessman, not badly off, on the eve of departure to try his luck in the wide world, and the experienced politician ready to assist his protégé a last time with advice and help. Oh yes, he was definitely against Brussels; as a money market it was not in the first rank. The great things took place in the city of Amsterdam, where gigantic battles were now being fought over the mark. ‘And the mark, we’re at one there, is to be your main field of activity. I could regularly give you tips by means of a very simple code which we can arrange together.’

  The waiter brought their sherry cobblers. ‘The pegging of the mark is to be your task, my dear Erich,’ said the lawyer raising his voice.

  Both gentlemen smiled a little and thoughtfully stirred their drinks.

  ‘No,’ said the older man, ‘have a look at Brussels by all means but Amsterdam is the place for you, if only on account of the still very strong hatr
ed of the Germans in Brussels. In Amsterdam I could give you a cordial introduction to my friend Roest the banker.’

  This time the consumption of drinks was kept within very moderate limits, but the lawyer handed his young friend a little parcel to take to Amsterdam – his share in the business. ‘I am participating with you to the extent of this sum; you can dispose of it in accordance with my advice.’ And no small amount! The lawyer however remained gentle and modest. ‘Let me in on your deal when you think fit … No, that’s all right. An ordinary receipt. I have one prepared … A loan, that’s the simplest way … Participation and share in profits had better remain a verbal agreement. I trust you completely … How are you going to get across the frontier? Wait, let me think.’ He thought. ‘Postpone your journey for a day. I think it can be arranged for you to travel as a special courier for the Foreign Office. You understand – diplomatic bag.’

  Both smiled again.

  ‘I would prefer, however, to send the receipt when I’m safely over the frontier with the money,’ said Erich, modest but firm.

  ‘As you like, my dear Erich, as you like. You shall run no risk. I rely entirely on you. Anyway, you’ll be needing my information about the mark. We’re dependent on each other, isn’t that so?’

  This time both looked serious, both pondered, both finally nodded. Gravely.

  The deputy then proceeded to expand on the prospects of the Ruhr uprising and the Cuno government. He was against the latter. ‘It will fall: what can a government do nowadays against the Social Democrats, the strongest party? It must fall.’

  ‘And the Ruhr uprising?’

  ‘If you lose a war, you shouldn’t make a fuss. The French demanded a lot, and we endorsed it. We should have given way on this too. The Ruhr uprising will fall as well.’