by Hans Fallada
And then the time came when carrying parcels would have seemed the pleasantest thing in the world, if they hadn’t gradually come to an end, the devil take it. Cruising along the streets, angling for a catch as he called it, Hackendahl would see one of his old acquaintances pushing a handcart with a few parcels or carrying his load quite easily under one arm.
‘Well, Erwin, how’s business? Never see you now. Don’t you have anything now to be carried?’
‘Carried? Stow it, Gustav. Carry, eh? Why, they can’t even carry us now. The boss has given me notice for the first.’
Bad news, sad news; no news at all finally. He saw them no more, the friendly office messengers with their unbelievably white and wide dancing trousers, creases ironed razor-sharp. They had disappeared. It was as if they had never existed.
Old Gustav began to feel very ancient, as though he with his horse and cab belonged to a vanished past, having experienced and outlived all. Now and then it happened that the station porters sent strangers to him so that he should tell them what Berlin had looked like twenty or thirty years ago, where they had built the Kaiser-Wilhelm Church, as the Kurfürstendamm church was called, which also signified the Wild West, with its day trips to the smart suburbs in smart carriages, and how his grey had once raced a motor car …
‘Yes,’ he would say, ‘it was all diff’rent then, everythin’s changed. Except me. ’Cause I’m of iron. That’s why they call me Iron Gustav.’
But he had changed nonetheless. He hadn’t stayed still; that wasn’t possible. He also swam with the tide; he was part of the people. He could not avoid what his people experienced; he had to live. And he was always thinking of Mother at home, waiting for him so anxiously, so very anxiously. Waiting, or rather dozing, on his box he often thought of his wife at home; if he was late she went to bed, but she never fell asleep till he came in. Then she would raise her head from the pillow and enquire anxiously:
‘Well, Father?’
‘Hello, Mother. All right?’
‘Any luck, Father?’
‘No, not today. Well, it’ll be all the better tomorrow.’
‘Oh, Father …’
It was so difficult to tell her that he had brought nothing home. Without her he wouldn’t have minded so much. As long as the horse had its fodder, he would have been quite satisfied with bread and bacon and a pot of coffee. But his wife was like a child. She thought she’d starve to death if they didn’t have one hot meal a day.
So, if he had had a good day for once, he kept back a part of his money to be able to give her something next day. Thus he exerted himself, tried to think of new fare opportunities, was restless, would not let go. Perhaps it was even a good thing that Mother was always there with her aches and pains. There were so many who simply keeled over. For them, it was no longer worth it. Just don’t bother – it’s all hopeless …
Old Hackendahl, however, went on persevering. He worried. If there were no longer enough passengers or parcels, he would have to make do with night work. Something had to be done; he must get money for Mother somehow.
And once again day was put aside for night. It was dark now when he drove to the West End, along gloomy, silent streets where the clip-clop of Blücher’s hoofs echoed hollow between the dimly lit houses. It was so quiet, so dismally quiet … The cab went at as slow a pace as the horse could manage, Hackendahl always on the lookout.
How times have changed, and us with them! Iron? Oh, yes – iron, in our behaviour, iron in our survival, iron in our will to live! Iron in our determination to bring Mother money home – the daily miserable five marks on a good day, but two marks fifty would also do.
The girls strolled along or stood at the corners alone, though sometimes they kept in twos and threes. They were not the expensive ladies who haunted the Tauentzienstrasse and Kurfürstendamm, the girls who were far above anything like a horse-drawn cab – these were the lesser lights, for a certainty no longer pretty, for a certainty no longer fresh; shop-soiled, as the saying goes; girls lying in wait for the shy birds or bent on ambushing drunks whom the night air had sobered sufficiently to make them understand what a girl wanted, or waylaying the slightly sozzled upset by that same fresh air – yes, that was the prey hunted here.
And when the prey had been caught, then it was not at all a bad thing to have old Hackendahl’s cab handy – good fun to drive behind a horse again; it pleased the gentleman in his present mood, and it was just as well for a girl if her gentleman could reach his destination quickly, for drunken people make very sudden decisions and another idea might occur to him at any moment.
But the old man on the box saw to it that there was no delay. He knew all the accommodation addresses in the district, the distinguished boarding houses with night bells, the places that let rooms by the hour. In addition, unlike a taxi driver, he wasn’t afraid of having his vehicle stolen. He helped the girls out, rang the bell for them, supported their gentlemen upstairs – oh, the old cabby was a real sport! He knows Berlin by day and by night, knows how Berlin laughs and how it weeps – he’s not squeamish, he’s of iron …
‘Don’t worry, Gustav,’ the girls would say when the gentleman positively refused to pay for the cab. (Why should he? He hadn’t ordered one. And besides, what was he doing there at all?) ‘Don’t worry, Gustav, I’ll settle up with you tomorrow.’
Yes, those were his night fares, that was the money he took home to his wife. But of such things he never spoke to her.
Had he hoped that they might be spared him? He was spared nothing. He perhaps didn’t like it; in fact he definitely didn’t like it – putting drunken gentlemen to bed, and in what beds! But if he wanted to live, if he wanted to bring money home to Mother, he had no choice. He had to take what was offered – he had the choice between life and death. To die was open to him; at that time there prevailed in Berlin a certain joy in dying about which statistics were compiled. Suicide statistics. They showed that the very young and the very old were mainly affected.
But he did not want to die yet; above all he did not want his wife to die. So he had to make his living the best way he could, even if it were not a good living or a clean one – just a living.
No, he did not complain. He didn’t complain at all. He was now in his mid-sixties, not yet really old. Like almost everyone of this time, he had the vague hope of outliving it. One day, things had to be different, had to be better. Life couldn’t always be going downhill.
If anything worried him on his night drives through the sombre streets it was the thought of Eva. He would not like to meet her again, he on his box and she in the cab with a man. To have to drive Eva to some accommodation hotel would be the end of him. Father and daughter! As long as only he knew what sort of fares he took on nowadays, life was endurable – he alone could decide what rightly might be asked of himself. For someone else to know, however, and that someone a member of his own family, and precisely the one he had turned out of doors because of similar conduct – impossible! The thought of Eva worried him unceasingly and he would gladly have given up his night work on her account. But then there was his wife to think of …
The last time he had seen Eva was in the dock, when she hadn’t once looked at her father but only at her Eugen Bast. This fellow alone, obliquely opposite her, she had continued to look at. Her sentence must be up by now but he had no wish to see her again, ever.
But there came an autumn night, an October night, when a gusty, furious east wind drove the rain in sheets through the desolate town. Hackendahl had put the cover over his black horse but it was of no use – the wind slapped it continually against the creature’s flanks, and everything was dripping wet, so that there was nothing for it but to drive home, money or no money. Not a soul about.
He was already on his way back when he was hailed from a café. ‘Hi, driver!’
A gentleman in a raincoat ran towards him, glad to have found a conveyance. ‘Driver, here … I’ve got a lady with me who’s had as much as she can carry. Wel
l, we’ll manage. Not too expensive, you know.’
‘Righto! Six marks the night for you an’ the lady an’ you needn’t clear out too early next mornin’. But hurry up, my horse ain’t a champion swimmer an’ he might drown.’
The gentleman brought a girl out of the café and put her into the cab.
‘Come on, off we go!’
The father drove a daughter he did not recognize, who did not recognize him, to an accommodation hotel.
Life spares us sometimes, after all.
§ III
Three days previously old Hackendahl had been engaged by one of those servants who no longer exist – an old woman in a white starched apron and a cap with two white streamers down her back. On Thursday, punctually at ten o’clock in the morning, he was to wait outside No. 17, Neue Ansbacher, and drive her old mistress to a nursing home.
‘Righto, Fräulein.’
‘Don’t forget. Ten o’clock!’
‘Righto.’
The following day she got hold of him again – he hadn’t forgotten, had he?
‘All fixed up, Fräulein. Day after tomorrow. Ten o’clock in the morning. Seventeen, Neue Ansbacher.’
She was satisfied with his memory, yes. But was he a careful driver? He wouldn’t run risks with cars, would he? Her mistress hated cars. She had never gone in one. For over twenty years she hadn’t once been out of the flat. She was ninety-three.
‘I’ll take care of her, Fräulein. I’m getting on for seventy meself.’
‘And I’m sixty-three.’
They smiled at one another, both very proud of the distance they had travelled in life.
‘But at ninety-three she shouldn’t be going out, when she ain’t used to it. It’s bound to upset her.’
‘But she has to go to the clinic – an operation. The Herr Geheimrat insists on it, otherwise she’d never be well again.’
‘Me, if I was as old as that I wouldn’t let them cut me about, Fräulein. I’d leave things as they are.’
‘But she wants it. She’s made up her mind. She wants to live till she’s a hundred and eleven – she says that’s a nice age to live to. Even as a young girl she set her heart on it.’
‘Well,’ said Gustav, ‘we old ’uns are another make from the tender young growths of today. They’d never be able to stand what we’ve bin through. We’re of iron.’
And with that he drove away.
The next day, being again reminded, he said:
‘I’m talkin’ against me own int’rests but I advise a private ambulance. You know, Fräulein, at ninety-three a cab’s goin’ ter shake you up a bit, an’ in an ambulance everythin’s rubber and springs.’
‘But she won’t have one. The Herr Geheimrat has ordered an ambulance for eleven o’clock but, just like her, she’s going an hour earlier in the cab. Secretly … She’s very tickled at the thought of outwitting the Herr Geheimrat.’
‘Must be a caution, your missis.’
‘Indeed she is! What she wants, she wants, and what she doesn’t want she won’t do. An ambulance is a motor car and she won’t have one. A car means petrol, she says, and petrol explodes if you light it. All cars will explode sooner or later, she says.’
‘Well, well,’ said Hackendahl, ‘can’t say I’d mind, though I haven’t much hope of it.’
And the next day the old woman of ninety-three took her first drive for twenty-one years.
From the porch of 17, Neue Ansbacher emerged an enormous armchair, an upholsterer’s triumph of bulge and curve, covered with a very faded velvet on which were seen embroidered birds – colibris and a great yellow and blue parrot. Two removal men were carrying the chair by means of straps while a third held the back. And behind him followed the house porter with rugs and pillows, and behind him in turn came the old servant who had a small travelling case in her hand – all these people looked half solemn, half amused.
In the chair was sitting a little old woman – such a tiny old woman, only a remnant of humanity – with hands no larger than a child’s and scanty white hair beneath a smoothly fitting cap of jet beads. Her small face was covered with a network of lines and wrinkles, the mouth had fallen, but her eyes still looked alertly at the world.
They were looking at Gustav Hackendahl now. ‘Yes, that’s a real Berlin cabman,’ said a very clear voice, contentedly. ‘You did well, Malvine. What’s your name, my dear man?’
‘Gustav Hackendahl,’ said Hackendahl, grinning all over his face and feeling like a young man again. ‘But people call me Iron Gustav.’
‘Iron Gustav! Do you hear that, Malvine? Yes, that comes from our old, our good, Berlin. But are you feeding your horse properly, my good fellow? He looks so thin.’
Iron Gustav preferred not to tell this old woman anything about his feeding difficulties, but he assured her that his horse got his daily twelve pounds of oats, only that his digestion was so bad because he had chewing problems: his teeth didn’t bite together properly.
‘Yes, his teeth! His teeth! And his digestion – with old age. Now earlier! Earlier!’ But the old woman immediately quietened down again. ‘All right, Malvine, give the horse its sugar then.’
And behold – everything had been anticipated – Malvine brought out the sugar from her apron pocket. ‘Three lumps now and three lumps more when you’ve taken us safely there.’ Then the old lady was piloted into the cab, in which she was firmly anchored with pillows and rugs, and Malvine got in.
‘Start, driver! But go slowly. I want to have a look round, I can’t bear the way they used to rush you.’
Away went the horse, walking slowly, and every time a car glided past the old lady cried out: ‘Disgusting!’ And, looking at the shops, she began to rummage in her memory. ‘A confectioner used to live there. You must remember, cabman. Dietrich. Yes, Dietrich was the name.’ She started back with a cry, however, when a big double-decker bus thundered past and it was quite a time before she enquired whether there were not any of the pleasant horse buses still in existence. Not now? Not a single one?
And soon she became confused, no longer recognizing the streets they were driving through. Wasn’t Hackendahl going the wrong way? Here there used to be a promenade and water. ‘The lakes can’t have gone as well. I can still see the children splashing about.’
Ah, the children whom the old lady saw were probably long dead and their children in turn had stopped splashing about and were themselves being driven to hospitals. The cab drive to which she had looked forward with so much pleasure proved too much for her after the first ten minutes. Indoors she had been able to think that the old Berlin still lived. Now everything was changed – the streets, the buildings, the shops. Different people everywhere. And suddenly it must have dawned on her how old she was, how very old. Her world had long since passed away and she alone was left – terribly alone.
Closing her eyes she asked to be driven faster, so that she could be put to bed. A bed doesn’t change as a town does; everywhere and at all times it is alike. And the old woman longed for hers. When the cab drew up at the clinic the bearers couldn’t bring the stretcher quickly enough; driver, horse and sugar were utterly forgotten. Thus she vanished, the weeping Malvine behind her, and Gustav Hackendahl had to wait some time before a nurse came to fetch the rugs and pillows and other things.
‘You’re to go to the Matron’s office for the fare, driver,’ said the nurse.
Grumbling, old Hackendahl descended, took the bit off the black horse and put on the nosebag. Then he went to the office. The Matron was looking out of the window. She turned round, a stately, determined woman. His daughter Sophie.
‘You, Sophie?’ he said. ‘That’s funny … I have to drive a half-dead woman so as to see you again. Curious how things turn out between parents and children.’
‘I saw you draw up outside, Father,’ she said coolly. ‘That’s why I called you in. I could have sent the money out just as well. How’s Mother?’
‘Yes, it’s you all right, Sophie. You haven’
t changed. Cold-hearted an’—’
‘I didn’t make myself, Father.’
‘Is that meant for me?’
‘Don’t let’s quarrel, Father. How’s Mother?’
‘How should she be in these times? The main thing is we have enough to eat.’
‘Things not going too well? Yes, I can see that from your horse and cab. And by looking at you, Father, too.’
‘No need to tell me that. I do me best. Gimme me fare, four marks fifty. I may be in a bad way but I don’t have to stand an’ listen to me daughter preachin’. I don’t need you, but you needed me once.’
She considered him with her cold eyes. ‘I needed you as every child needs its father, no more and no less. But we won’t talk about that. Let bygones be bygones.’
‘That’s what you say. I still see you children as when you were little. But you don’t want to know that. You want always to have been grown up.’
‘I still remember being small; I dream of it sometimes. Not good dreams. I’ve only been satisfied since I stood on my own two feet. I’ll never be completely satisfied. It’s as if something was lacking, Father.’
‘I was never unkind to you, Sophie. I did what I could.’
‘Yes, and so did I,’ said she. ‘Well, Father, I’m Matron here and have a share in the place and do pretty well – if you like I’m in a position to do something for you and Mother …’
‘I don’t want yer money.’
‘I wouldn’t give you money. Money helps no one. But what about moving here with Mother? Downstairs there’s quite a nice little flat and you could attend to the central heating and the boiler.’
‘No, Sophie, I’m a cabby and a cabby I’ll remain. I’m not becoming a porter in me old age.’
‘Well, consider Mother a bit.’
‘Mother’s satisfied if I’m satisfied. I’ve always bin able to earn a crust of bread.’
Not in the least offended, Sophie looked at him thoughtfully. He, the father, was perhaps stubborn and embarrassed but she, the daughter, was quite cool, cold … Yet perhaps she was not so much at her ease as she seemed. Confronted by the old man in his stained and patched greatcoat, seeing his tanned and bearded face, something troubled her – not love, far from it – something more like duty or pride. If she no longer saw him, if she no longer knew of him, it wouldn’t worry her. She could build up a private clinic, really up to date, a good place of work, a secure income and, above all, a meaning to her life – a world in which she would give the orders, to carers, to nurses, and to the sick – she, who had for so long been ordered about.
