Iron Gustav

by Hans Fallada

  Hackendahl blossomed out. The melancholy of old age vanished, his fame shone anew. He composed the couplet: ‘What Lindbergh accomplished with his aeroplane, Gustav with his cab brought equal fame.’

  But he was outdistanced by Grundeis, photographed sitting in Cab No. 7, with this caption: ‘How do you get from Berlin to Paris? Take a cab!’

  Laughter, cheers, excitement. Bouquets – two hundredweight of them – in the hotel bedroom. Present upon present. Souvenirs for Frau Hackendahl. Regiments of champagne bottles. A flight for the seventy-year-old in an aeroplane. He took part in everything with unquenchable good humour.

  How about something special? Something quite special?

  So, at a very convivial lunch was born the idea of a race between the oldest Berlin and the oldest Paris cab driver. The course to be three hundred metres long.

  Splendid!

  Splendid? There were doubts. Who would win? Who should? Susceptibilities were so easily hurt. Was the German to vanquish the Frenchman in the capital of France itself? Impossible! But was it permissible to defeat a guest of seventy years of age who had just performed so blameless a feat? Equally impossible!

  Endless deliberations. Schemes. Missions. And at last the solution, sealed by vows of strict secrecy, the opponents bound on their word of honour to arrive simultaneously at the goal.

  ‘Understand, Hackendahl, we can’t do it otherwise. Don’t embarrass us! Rein in Grasmus! Think of our ambassador … the French nation … there could be tensions which might harm diplomatic relations which have officially improved a little … Don’t you see?’

  Hackendahl understood. He gave his word of honour.

  The other gave his word of honour too.

  The Champ de Mars is roped off. In their thousands the spectators are kept in order by the police, including many students with their girlfriends. As the two competitors drive up in their ancient vehicles everybody breaks into a cheer. The one raises a black top hat, the other a white top hat. Then the two cabs draw up side by side. Hackendahl’s opponent has a long-legged white horse. Betting favours Germany …

  ‘You remember what you promised?’ Grundeis once more implores Hackendahl.

  ‘You should have talked ter Grasmus, Herr Grundeis. He’s frisky. They give him so much to eat and he’s hardly left his stable. I can barely hold him in.’

  ‘Don’t let us down, Hackendahl, I beg of you.’

  ‘I’ll do what I can, Herr Grundeis. You c’n depend on that.’

  Both drivers are handed a glass of champagne. They wave to one another. Reaching over from their boxes, they shake hands. Grasmus sniffs his rival, not so much out of curiosity as out of greed – he would like to eat the other’s garland. But the white horse flattens his ears and bares his long yellow teeth.

  Cheers.

  The starting shot rings out. ‘All right, off you go, Grasmus,’ says Hackendahl, holding the reins tight, so that the chestnut shan’t get away too quickly.

  The Frenchman is also holding back his horse. Each driver keeps an eye on the other so as not to get in front, but equally so as not to be left behind; the race couldn’t be slower.

  Laughter and shouts, cries of encouragement …

  I don’t trust him, thinks Hackendahl, his eye glued on the Frenchman. Later on he’ll sprint an’ I’ll win second place. Take it quietly.

  The enemy thinks just the same and thus there ensues a competition in slow motion.

  Cries … ‘Get on with it! Foul play! Put-up job!’

  Grundeis, red in the face, appears beside the cab. ‘Get on, Hackendahl, you’ll have to get a move on. Drive, man!’

  ‘I don’t dare. Once Grasmus starts …’

  ‘Trot, just trot, Hackendahl, I beg you.’

  ‘There he goes!’ A student has thrown his cap at the eyes of the white horse, which gives a surprising bound and then races forward at full speed.

  ‘Scoundrel!’ cried Hackendahl. ‘Cheat!’

  Grasmus now feels the whip. Hackendahl is standing up. ‘That’s certainly not the bet we took. We Germans are damned if we’ll let ourselves be beaten by you lot! Go on, Grasmus!’

  Blow on blow, from Hackendahl, from the Frenchman. Forgotten is the plighted word. The drivers urge on their horses, the people urge on the drivers. ‘Come on, Hackendahl,’ Grundeis shouts, ‘Germany to the fore.’

  And his antagonist, the other contracting party to a word of honour, shouts furiously in Hackendahl’s face: ‘Vive la France! En avant la France!’

  ‘Germany!’

  ‘France!’

  ‘Come on!’

  ‘Faster, Hackendahl. Give it him!’

  How the old cabs jog and sway! With what courage they rush along, the horses straining at their harnesses, the drivers standing up flourishing their whips! The chestnut gains ground, the white horse slackens …

  ‘Don’t you see, you lying oaf!’ shouted Hackendahl angrily.

  Now they are neck and neck, the winning post at hand … The white horse has had enough, the chestnut’s going to do it, Germany will win the race …

  Crash!

  The two drivers, with eyes only for one another and not for the track, have collided. Wheel locked in wheel, they sway, are about to fall and save themselves by clinging each to the other.

  And so, thus embracing, they pass the winning post simultaneously, faithful to their pledge.

  § XIV

  Before Gustav Hackendahl again approached his native Berlin it was autumn. The reddish beard had turned grey; his top hat, white on its departure, was now entirely covered with autographs and stamps, and looked a dirty black. The man himself, too, was hardly recognizable. Full of amazement young Grundeis walked round him. ‘Gustav, man, how you’ve changed! You’ve become really slim.’

  ‘Two stone I’ve lost. Mother’ll go on about it. She never did like the idea o’ this journey.’

  ‘But it couldn’t have been the food, Hackendahl. You’ve been treated like a prince.’

  ‘The food! Oh, it’s the everlastin’ people! Lor’, Herr Grundeis, I can’t tell yer how sick I am of people. I don’t want ter see any more of ’em. Wherever I could I’ve gone round the other way. Always cheerin’ and always Iron Gustav … And what’s it amount to in the end? Nothin’! A flop!’

  ‘Now wait a minute, Hackendahl!’ Grundeis became energetic. The reception in Berlin, which was to be the climax, appeared in danger, so tired and bad-tempered, so worn-out was the old man. Grundeis therefore spared no pains. Hackendahl was just travel-sick and that was understandable. But he had achieved things – if he didn’t think so, let him have a look at the newspapers. The whole of Berlin was looking forward to welcoming him.

  ‘Lor, the Berliners, they always want ter see the latest. Show ’em a monkey painted green an’ they’ll run after it jus’ as they do after me.’

  ‘Rubbish, Hackendahl. You know quite well what you’ve achieved – the great things you’ve been able to do in the last months! And you won’t have to worry about your old age.’

  ‘Bother me old age. What do I care about it? I’ll be glad to be drivin’ me cab again. Properly – as I used ter. Incogniter, you know. I’m sick of cogniter.’

  ‘Hackendahl, old fellow, Iron Gustav, where’s your iron gone? Have a look in the papers at the programme of welcome; you’ll change your mind then.’

  Hackendahl shot an angry glance at him. ‘Don’t you talk about newspapers ter me. I’m on bad terms with newspapers. The stuff they write about me!’

  ‘What stuff? What have they written about you?’

  ‘Don’t let’s talk about it. But it knocked me properly.’

  ‘Well, what is it? Out with it, Hackendahl.’

  ‘I’m s’posed to have become too big a swell for a cab, I’m s’posed to have come back from Paris in a car, that’s what the dirty dogs have written about me. Not you, but the others. I’ll tell you how it was. I’d settled down to a beer an’ the boys didn’t want ter let me go. An’ so another dri
ver offered to take me cab along for me so’s I needn’t miss me drinks an’ we all followed later in a car. An’ now I’m said to be too stuck-up fer a cab. Me who was two hours in a car and over five months in a cab! That shows how hateful people are. You ain’t got the heart to do anythin’, it’s not appreciated anyhow.’

  Young Grundeis felt like laughing and crying over an old man who was not so much tired as suffering from wounded vanity. The old man was behaving just like a boy, he sulked. But this was no time for laughing or crying. The great reception in Berlin – for which they were keeping the front page open for him – was at stake. In his present mood Iron Gustav was capable of showing his iron will by sneaking off home, leaving the people to wait for him.

  So Grundeis talked with the tongue of men and angels, soothed the old man’s wounded vanity and at last succeeded in cheering him up, not with the lure however of the great honours in prospect, the bands, the banquet, the toasts, or the reception by the mayor, but with the reminder that his expedition would end up at the place he had started from, that town hall where an official had most unamiably stamped the first entry in the logbook. This thought consoled him enormously – it would be the finest event of the whole trip.

  ‘Grundeis, you’re right. I’d be a fool to let the fellow off. Snap at me about work an’ foolin’ around! I’ll show him. I pay rates and taxes, don’t I? Well, he’s livin’ on me, that chap. I’ll show him how to treat me. Yes, I’m lookin’ forward to seeing him.’

  § XV

  And it would indeed have been a pity if Hackendahl’s mood had deprived him of his Berlin welcome. The Berliners had read how their citizen had been received in Dortmund and Cologne, in Paris and Magdeburg, and they, of course, couldn’t be behindhand. Quite naturally therefore they overdid it somewhat. Three hundred thousand people, not one of whom would have dreamed of spending even a mark on the cab six months before, were on their feet for half a working day waiting for its driver, while the police were out in full force for the purpose of regulating traffic and keeping the crowds in order – it was really a fine sight. Old Hackendahl would have been sorry afterwards had he gone home by another route.

  As it was he drove right into the midst of it. The Charlottenburger Chaussee was black with people. At the Grosse Stern they formed a dense mass. Unter den Linden gave passageway only for one person and that person was Gustav Hackendahl.

  Along he drove, up Unter den Linden – everybody cheering him. In his wildest dreams, in the days of his prosperity, he could never have dreamed that his native town would ever cheer him thus.

  As he passed the French travel agency he stopped, made a gesture, stood up. The band ceased playing, he waved his top hat, then roared out: ‘Vive la France!’

  And they roared with him: ‘Vive la France!’

  Yes, cheers for the country which had received their fellow citizen so hospitably but, above everything, cheers for the fellow citizen. He’s a splendid old boy, one of us, a Berliner – we’re cheering ourselves when we cheer him. Magnificent, indestructible, immortal – we Berliners!

  And Gustav Hackendahl drove on, past the Schloss. In the Königstrasse the press became dangerous and if Grasmus hadn’t grown accustomed to crowds it might have been serious, but they got through safely and drove up to the town hall.

  In the same moment all the motor cars started their honking and wailing – this time no zealous Grundeis incited them to it, this time no indignant policeman interfered. Standing on his box, old Hackendahl’s voice accompanied their honking. He had no trouble in distinguishing the melody. It was ‘The man who in God’s favour stands’.

  Outside the town hall they were waiting for him. A mayor was there to welcome Iron Gustav and in a neat speech to honour this plain man of the people as a reconciler of two nations, and to present him with the ceremonial drink of the city.

  Gustav Hackendahl was used to ceremonial drinks. He drained the goblet. But when they awaited a speech in reply, he merely said: ‘Excuse me a bit, gentlemen,’ and hurried into the town hall.

  He ran along the corridors. Thank God he remembered the number of the room. Yes, he had his logbook in his pocket. Well, he wasn’t going to spare that fellow. You wait, me lad!

  Ah, here was the door. He rushed in. What’s this? ‘Where’s the chap who used to be here?’

  ‘Whom d’you mean? What d’you want? What’s the idea of rushing in like this? Lord, it’s Iron Gustav! I know you from the newspapers. Well, this is an honour, Herr Hackendahl. What can we do for you?’

  ‘I’d like to have me return to Berlin certified in this book. Yes, it’s full now. But I’d like the same gentleman who was here at the time o’ my departure. Isn’t he here now?’

  ‘Herr Brettschneider? Did you know him personally? Yes, a charming man … Unfortunately, Herr Hackendahl – influenza, you know – as long ago as May. He would come to the office – and six days afterwards, how shall I put it? – gone like that. A pity, don’t you think?’

  ‘A great pity,’ said old Hackendahl, deeming it a pity indeed that his opponent had decamped like that. A bitter drop in his cup of joy. The human heart is strange – the whole of Berlin was there to cheer him, yet he missed one dead Berliner.

  Then the drive went on. They were expecting him at the great newspaper building, where they wanted to celebrate the return of their successful traveller, which they duly did. Managing directors and directors, editors and sub-editors (among whom the now bright-red Grundeis now ranked), all were awaiting him, celebrating him.

  And after the many honours there everyone went to a banquet of pigs’ trotters, sauerkraut and pease-pudding – his favourite repast was set before Berlin’s famous citizen, on whose right hand sat a film star and on whose left sat his wife. Yes, they had dragged Mother to the banquet, Mother who no longer went out anywhere. Clad in a new silk dress, she welcomed her Gustav tearfully. ‘Thank God you’re back, Father. People are knocking the house down asking after you. And they’re all bringing things – the whole flat is full of paper and presents and cardboard boxes – where am I to put all the stuff? And yesterday, someone came who wanted to bring you a canary, some special breed, but I sent her packing. Who knows what she meant by it? “Who sings like a canary round here, that’s our business, not yours,” I told her. But I don’t think you’d do that, Father. People are sometimes so nasty!’

  But she was not the only one to make a speech that day. Director Schulze rose to his feet and gave an address which sounded as if it had been ordered from the same firm as the mayor’s. Next rose Iron Gustav, to announce the toast: ‘Berlin – Paris – Berlin. Thought out, done!’

  Cheers and applause.

  Further toasts, merriment, shaking of hands. Not only that. Opportunity was found to slip an envelope into old Hackendahl’s pocket. No need now for the old man to worry overmuch about making ends meet …

  It was night now and Frau Hackendahl was urging a departure, in anxiety about the flat and the many handsome gifts in it. There was a further argument too – they were bent on driving him home in a car, leaving somebody to follow on with Grasmus.

  But no. With his old stubbornness Hackendahl refused to go by car. His wife, yes, she could if she liked but he’d drive home in his cab.

  ‘Don’t be so silly, Mother. If I got back safe an’ sound from Paris surely I’ll be able to manage the little stretch to the Wexstrasse!’

  Naturally, he got his way. He saw her off and went to his cab. A couple of compositors helped him stow the garlands, the flags and streamers, the placard on the back of the cab, the presents, in one of the offices.

  ‘I’ll come an’ fetch that stuff sometime. I want to rattle home incogniter. A proper cabby. I’ve had enough o’ crowds.’

  He set forth. At first he looked warily at people, to see if they recognized him, but it was night and all were in a hurry; they hardly glanced at the cab rolling slowly along the street.

  How comfortable it was on his box. Nice to be driving through Berlin
once again as a real cabby. Click-click went the taximeter – it sounded so homely. It was good that he had made that trip to Paris, but best of all was to be driving again down the streets – the old streets he had driven down hundreds of times before.

  A policeman, whose profession gave him better eyes than the ordinary townsman, recognized Hackendahl and, remembering the honours of the morning, saluted him in army fashion.

  ‘Hey,’ called out Hackendahl, ‘that’s all over an’ done with. D’you want to do that ev’ry day when I’m plyin’ fer hire? I’d drop all that lardy-da if I was you.’

  And, very pleased with himself, he drove on. If they thought he was going to give up driving now that he had a bit of money they were mistaken. Driving was the finest thing in the world; that is, driving in Berlin as a genuine driver, of course.

  Now he had only one wish – and hardly had he framed it when it came true.

  ‘Hi, driver! Help me get this hamper in your cab. To the Zoo! I wanted to go by tram but they told me the basket was too big. But don’t make it expensive, driver.’

  ‘No, no, it’s not goin’ ter cost yer a fortune. Well, gee-up, Grasmus!’ And he drove to the Zoo very cheerfully indeed. His wish had been granted. Berlin had given him earnest-money that life would go comfortably in the future.

  Now and then he turned round and stole a glance at his fare. Didn’t he realize he was being driven by a famous man? But the fare, a weedy fellow much too small for his heavy burden, showed no awareness. Dejectedly he was staring into space, probably wondering how much the cab ride would cost him, and thinking how cheap the tram would have been. Well, he’ll get a surprise!

  It was old Hackendahl, however, who got the surprise.

  At the Zoo Station he helped the little man lift his basket out of the cab. Then he asked, proudly happy: ‘D’you know who’s bin drivin’ you? Well, you’ve bin ridin’ with Iron Gustav, you know, who made the famous tour from Berlin ter Paris an’ back.’ And the little man replied: ‘Oh, shut up! What do I care? Look after my basket for me, please, I must catch the train to Meseritz. Paris! The mere mention of the place! You just mind your own business! One mark twenty for just round the corner! Why, it wouldn’t have cost fifty pfennigs on the tram.’