Iron Gustav

by Hans Fallada

  And, stopping outside the Widow Quaas’s shop, he bought up her entire stock of flags and streamers. ‘You’ll have ter pay, Grundeis. It’s expenses as per contract. Well, Frau Quaas, what about a dance like when Father-in-law married Mother-in-law?’

  ‘Herr Hackendahl, you, as a serious man …’

  ‘Not today. I’m travellin’ today. I’m goin’ to Paris. Heinz here? O’ course not! T.t.f.n! – always on the go. Say hello to ’im, and tell him to see things change around here by the time I come back. Irmchen gone ironin’? Works like a Trojan! You c’n give her my regards as well. No, I can’t wait any longer, I’m in a hurry ter get ter Paris. Fix those flags firmly, Red-top! They have ter last quite a while. An’ every town I come to I’ll buy a town flag as well. That’ll look attractive. You got to have a feelin’ for such things. Picture pos’cards! Who wants a pos’card of the mad cabby on his way ter Paris an’ back? For a few groschen? A few groschen for a bucketful of baloney and whatever goes with it!’

  ‘The man is beside himself,’ piped the widow.

  ‘Let’s get on,’ admonished Grundeis. ‘You want to reach Potsdam today.’

  ‘Brennabor, you mean, Red-top!’ said Hackendahl. But he went nevertheless.

  ‘Herr Grundeis,’ he said as they approached his home, ‘I do wish I’d got this business with Mother behind me. She thinks I won’t be able ter do it. You’ll never come back, she says – heavens, there she is!’

  Yes, there sat Frau Hackendahl by the kerb on a sack of oats which was to be taken aboard, so to speak, as iron rations for Grasmus. And there was quite a crowd round her. And behold! Five or six other cabs were waiting there too. It’s not as though it was the Red Town Hall. It’s just Wexstrasse in Wilmersdorf. And quite all right too.

  ‘Mother, what’re yer doin’? Here in the street an’ all!’

  ‘What’s it matter, Father, when you’ve brought us so into the limelight. There, eat something … Grasmus must eat, too, there’s no doubting that.’

  And Gustav Hackendahl, now a public character, sat in a corner of his cab and ate pigs’ trotters, sauerkraut and pease-pudding, while Frau Hackendahl in the opposite corner wept and entreated him to keep warm, have plenty of hot meals and not drink too much.

  ‘Oh dear, I shan’t see you again,’ she lamented.

  Now and then, Gustav interrupted his meal and sold postcards. Grundeis, however, sat on the box, notebook on his knees, composing his first verse. It was perhaps hardly a poetic sight; not quite the place for a sonnet, an ode or a tercet. But he felt he was alive, involved in something indestructible. The old married couple in the cab behind him, with their wine and food, and their worries and talk of sweet nothings … (Of course, they’ll cut out all my best bits!)

  Finally, it was already past three. The cab moved off, westwards out of Berlin, towards Paris.

  § X

  Cab No. 7 had driven through Berlin and was far away.

  Many had seen it pass, had laughed and pointed at it, and had almost immediately forgotten it. Hardly anyone who was there on that afternoon or evening would have said: ‘Did you see the old cabby who was setting out for Paris? The old chap’s certainly got courage.’

  The old chap certainly had. They had now left Berlin. Grasmus was trotting along happily. They were going towards Potsdam, and then were in Potsdam, at the police station, to have his arrival entered in his log. ‘You’ll soon be fed up with it,’ they laughed there. ‘Where are you putting up for the night?’

  ‘Here, you mean? I only stay in the best towns. I’m drivin’ on to Brennabor.’

  ‘Then you’ll have to hurry a bit – give your horse a bit of wellie.’

  ‘Will do, Chief Superintendent – and thanks very much. Here’s a pos’card; you c’n pin it up to prove you’ve had Iron Gustav here.’

  He drove on. Twilight, evening, then night fell. He crossed the River Havel and came to Werder. Only on a few occasions had he driven as far as this. Those had been prosperous times, when such a trip brought in twenty marks – and twenty marks had been worth something then. On the way home everyone would be drunk and you had to be careful not to get drunk as well, or you’d never bring your cargo safely back. Well, he’d always got back properly – so far!

  And when he now looked back, he saw a bright reflection of light over Berlin, as if light were shining from the clouds onto the town. Where he was driving, and also where he was driving to, was dark. But he knew that he was not only driving away from the light, but that he was driving towards another light, and one which was supposed to be even brighter than the one behind him.

  In Berlin only a few were still thinking of him …

  His wife sat at the window looking into the almost deserted street. The gas lamps were burning, and only a few people were to be seen. She had always been a tearful and discouraged woman but tonight she was utterly wretched. She sat in her chair, the hours crept on, and she would have liked to go to bed but she dared not, and grew more and more unhappy. Nothing was actually different from usual – Father had so often been out all night with his cab – nor was it the feeling that there was no man about the house. No, it was something sadder than absence or loneliness.

  When the ride to Paris was first mentioned she had thought him mad and had hoped that Heinz would manage to stop it somehow. Then when Father fell ill she had believed it would all fizzle out …

  And now it had come off, he had got his own way once more. During the whole of her married life she could not recall a single instance when he had not had his own way or she had not been compelled to yield. And that was something horrible, something utterly wretched. She did not reproach him – he had always been good to her – nor did she wish anything to go wrong with his journey; no, she grudged him nothing. Only … she would have liked to have had her own way once in her life. She had joined up with the children against him and had never taken his part, and yet he had always won. A hundred, no, a thousand times he had been stubbornly in the wrong, and yet he had always got his way. How had that come about? Life was unjust.

  She sighed. She sat there miserably, staring at the ever-emptier street. She hadn’t put on the light, and sat in the dark – sat for ever and a day in the front room and never switched the light on. She just couldn’t manage it.

  This was one person thinking of old Hackendahl on his way to Paris.

  Irma and Heinz were having supper. Otto, their child, was already asleep.

  ‘Father was here with his cab,’ Irma reported.

  ‘So what did he say?’ asked Heinz.

  ‘I wasn’t here. I was doing the ironing. He bought all Mother’s paper flags from her and decorated his cab with them.’

  ‘He was completely crazy,’ squeaked Quaasin, already in bed, from the next room, which lay in the dark. ‘He wanted to dance with me in the street! I’ve never seen him like that before.’

  ‘Well, he was as good as his word,’ said Heinz. ‘It was perhaps quite right that we let him have his way.’

  ‘Of course it was,’ agreed Irma. ‘Father’s at last happy again.’

  ‘But when he comes back? What’ll he do then? Will he go on driving his cab, and where will his happiness be then?’

  He broke off, deep in thought.

  Such were two other people who thought about old Hackendahl.

  The evening papers carried, of course, a short notice about the cab journey to Paris and back, so after all there were more than a few people still thinking about the old man. One or two of his former drivers: ‘Yes, Mother, that’s old Hackendahl, Iron Gustav we used to call him. I worked for him before the war … you remember? He had thirty cabs on the streets then and now he’s doing a thing like that. Well, you never know, do you?’

  Or Rabause, in charge of the horses belonging to a brewery. Though he was old now his memory was still good. There you are, he thought. He never stopped preaching to Otto about work and doing your duty, and now he plays the fool himself. If only Otto could know.


  Or his daughter Sophie, the Matron. Smoothing down the newspaper, she thought: thank heaven I’m only known here as the Matron. No one knows my name is Hackendahl. It was lucky I got rid of him when I did. Obviously it’s a symptom of senility. Heinz ought to look after him better; he ought to be in an institution.

  No, taking it all in all, if the old man had known in what manner they were thinking of him in the big city he wouldn’t have derived much satisfaction from it. However, things – whether small or big – are not achieved because of the belief others have in us, but only because of the belief we have in ourselves. If you believe strongly enough in yourself, others are bound to follow you. At some stage they will simply be there (and claim that they believed in you all along).

  But there is one person who does in some sort believe in the old man. She who had been his favourite, so pretty and so neat – though not for many a long day – she now sat in a tavern in the Alexanderplatz, not worrying tonight about earning money. That was not important. She had seen the notice in the newspaper and had been in the crowd that morning at the newspaper building; she had got a lad to buy her a few postcards. ‘The oldest cabby in Berlin – Gustav Hackendahl, called Iron Gustav … Berlin – Paris – Berlin.’

  Then she followed the cab to the Red Town Hall. She heard the car claxon serenade, and went beyond the cab to where the band playing music barred her way, and she heard it disappear at a trot. Her father had not seen her – but she had seen him and something akin to enthusiasm, akin to pride and confidence, had flamed up in her. Something that might have been expressed thus: it is all up with me but the old man is still alive; the old man is indestructible; he’ll rescue us all.

  God, how he sat up on that box with his great red-blond beard, how he laughed, cracked jokes with the young men, sold his postcards, and how he took the reins in his hands, and the horse responded immediately – he was inimitable, indestructible.

  He’ll rescue us all …

  Something of that sort; no excuse for herself, no self-pity – things had gone too far for that. She was used up, finished. In a few months’ time Eugen would be coming out of the penitentiary, a day for which she longed and yet trembled. At Brandenburg on the River Havel she would stand at the penitentiary gates hoping that he’d not reject her.

  He was blind, yes, and she had lost her looks; she had no hope that she could prevent him from discovering this. In spite of blindness he would sense that she no longer represented an income for him, but had her work cut out to earn her own living. Nevertheless she hoped he would accept her. Yes, he’d find some use for her, he’d think of some way to make her of value to him – till she became of no value at all.

  Well, it wasn’t so important either way; the end was probably not far off. But she had lived to know that, despite everything, the Hackendahls went on. Though the branch might be broken the tree itself had not perished but was green, and this thought consoled her.

  A man sat down at her table. He wasn’t welcome – not tonight – but she dared not offend him, since she owed a small sum to the landlord. The man treated her to a liqueur and a beer, then another drink; he wanted to get her going – he himself was in full swing. But it was money wasted; the girl didn’t liven up.

  ‘That’s my father,’ she said proudly, showing him a card.

  ‘Well, you’re lucky,’ he said, gazing foolishly at it, not quite understanding what all this was about – the tart and her postcard.

  ‘Let’s be happy!’ he shouted. ‘For the money I’ve got we may as well be more happy than sad. Come on folks, landlord! Chuck a groschen into the accordion! Come on, girl, get dancing!’

  And because she was still staring at the silly thing he tore it in two, upon which arose a fight, a screaming and a scratching, and yet more screaming when a policeman took them both to the station.

  This then was one other person who had thought of old Hackendahl on his journey. Not that it would have helped him much to know about it. Perhaps it was her thoughts, however, that made him, on entering Brandenburg, look up at the tall, gloomy walls of the jail, though Eugen Bast – his son-in-law so to speak – did not occur to him. Must be a hospital, he decided. Or was it a prison? Fancy a small town like that needing so large a prison! Well, you never knew. Everything dark already. I must make sure I get into town, otherwise I’ll find no place for me and Grasmus. And it’s damn chilly, like a cold day in May. My paws are frozen stiff. Oh, well. It will be warmer in Paris.

  And on he drove.

  There was one last person thinking of him, however, and this with all his heart and soul, full of the sincerest wishes for his welfare.

  Young Grundeis could have gone home at five o’clock. His article had been set up long ago and was already in the page; indeed he had read through the galley and, as was to be expected from the ignorance and envy of his beloved superiors, there had been cuts of course. So that he might very well have gone home.

  However, that was the one thing he could not do. He was too restless. He ran about the huge building, losing himself in dark, unused rooms; he disturbed night editors until they threw their blotting pads at him; he hung about the composing room hindering everybody; he got in the way of the men round the great rotary press which with a rush and a clatter was printing the morning edition, that edition which would serve up his first big article at Berlin’s breakfast tables. The first article signed by his own name, Grundeis, printed at the bottom.

  Didn’t it look splendid? ‘Grundeis.’ There it was in print.

  ‘Have you read it?’ he asked the foreman casually.

  ‘Don’t stand around here, Herr Grundeis,’ the man shouted. ‘Read it? You expect a damned lot for the measly wage you pay. It’s bad enough having to print your bourgeois rot without expecting us to read the muck into the bargain.’ For the foreman belonged to another party, unfortunately, and only printed his adversary’s stuff holding his nose.

  So young Grundeis wandered on, thinking about the old man who, when Potsdam would have been quite far enough for the first day, intended at all costs to reach Brandenburg. Through the dark streets his own career and success were now bowling along in that cab, and should anything happen to the old man, however undeservedly, then he, young Grundeis, would certainly never be given another chance, not in this firm.

  He pictured old Hackendahl falling ill (he had just been ill anyway) or run into by a car (such accidents happened every hour) or drunk (he had a suspicious-looking nose) or losing a wheel (the consequences would be endless) or transgressing some traffic regulation (and landing himself in jail instead of Paris) or the horse getting colic …

  The more he cursed himself for his folly in imagining all this instead of spending the evening comfortably with a glass of beer and his colleagues, the more restless and lunatic he became. Why had he been fool enough to choose so exceptionally villainous a profession and, on top of all else, afflict himself with this damnable Paris expedition? Why couldn’t he simply say: fate, do your worst?

  He rumpled his hair, he rattled the change in his pocket; as if hounded by furies he rushed through corridors and rooms, and when he thought how long it would be before Herr Hackendahl had the grace to complete his journey, and that during all those days and nights he would be in this same state of anxiety – then he really felt he was going mad.

  Be calm, he told himself. Calm down, my lad. A reporter has to keep cool. A newspaper man must be able to take notes at a murder without turning a hair. You show too much excitement, Grundeis. You must cool down.

  He went into the editorial office, rummaged (how pleased they’ll be in the morning!) among piles of manuscripts, picked out one, read half a page, said ‘Bilge!’ – took the next, read ten lines, and said ‘Tripe!’ The third he opened not at all, but groaned with anguish: ‘Oh rot, oh bloody rot! Who’d be able to stand it?’ But this time he didn’t mean the manuscript … he had let that drop – and it had fallen into the wastepaper basket into which, as is well known, manuscripts never fal
l in well-ordered newspaper offices. Leaping up, young Grundeis – leaving the light on of course – rushed out.

  Ten doors further along he looked for a timetable. Those words of his: ‘Who’d be able to stand it?’ had given him the hint that there wasn’t the slightest need for him to stand it; at this hour there was bound to be a train to Brandenburg (Havel).

  And of course there was. Like one distraught, although he had plenty of time, Grundeis rushed into the street and jumped into a taxi. ‘Potsdamer Station,’ he panted. Greatly impressed, the chauffeur reached the station in four minutes. Obviously the fare was on his way to a deathbed.

  Grundeis ran to the booking office, raced up the stairs, stormed a still-empty train, settled himself in a compartment, jumped out again, went for a drink, bought a newspaper, jumped in again, out again, bought some fruit, jumped in again, out, in … And at last the train departed.

  For an hour, for nearly an hour and a quarter, he sat imprisoned in this confoundedly slow train stopping at every station, Potsdam included. He had told Hackendahl not to go beyond Potsdam tonight, but age of course never listened to the wise counsels of youth; the man had set his mind on driving to Brandenburg – overdoing it the very first day! Gloomily he stared at his ticket. It told him that the distance between Berlin and Brandenburg was sixty-two kilometres, and he had arranged with the stubborn old fool to drive on an average thirty-five kilometres a day. His life’s happiness had been entrusted to an idiot like that!

  He was gripped by a feeling of profound despair. Everything was bound to go wrong. Everything he ever touched went wrong for sure. Already at school, his fat teacher had told him: ‘Grundeis, you only have to know something and it’s definitely rubbish.’ And when his mother dressed him in his white suit with the blue sailor collar, and put him on the revolving piano stool so that he was sure not to get dirty before going out, who tried to make the stool go round, and did so till the wooden thread ran out and he fell to the ground with stool, tread and white suit?