A Small Circus

by Hans Fallada

  It was broad daylight now, and she had still managed to trip over it. She lay there sprawled out on the grass as she had fallen, her black skirt rucked up, exposing black stockings and white undergarments.

  ‘She will have been crossing the yard to get schnapps from Krüger.’

  ‘Fritz took her a bottle at eight o’clock.’

  ‘She’s out cold.’

  ‘No, she knows what she’s doing, lying there in front of all those windows.’

  ‘Ever since her boy drank himself to death.’

  Suddenly everyone is speaking at once. They’re all staring out at the black patch of shadow.

  Stuff squares his shoulders, puts on his pince-nez. ‘This isn’t on. Come along, Tredup, we’re going to bring her in.’

  Wenk watches them go. He asks worriedly: ‘I wonder if this is right. The proprietor can see everything from his window.’

  The old maker-up hisses: ‘There’s something you don’t understand, Herr Wenk. If he sees his wife in that condition, he’s not seeing her.’

  Wenk goes off after the other two. Once in the yard, he senses heads being pulled back quickly from windows, wanting not to be caught indulging their curiosity.

  Tomorrow the whole town will know. All that money, and the woman’s grubbing around in the dirt. Now, if I had that sort of money . . .

  That’s life, thinks the advertising manager. The usual nonsense . . . It’s not the son drinking himself to death so much as the fact of everybody knowing he drank himself to death . . . Small town.

  ‘Come on, madam. Let’s get you sitting up.’

  A ravaged face—bloodless, yellow-grey, with hanging jowls—looks stubbornly up at the sun. ‘Turn the light off,’ she mutters. ‘Stuff, turn it out. ’S’night-time.’

  ‘Come along, Frau Schabbelt. We’ll have a grog together in the editors’ room, and I’ll tell some jokes.’

  ‘Swine,’ the drunk woman says. ‘Do you think I want to listen to jokes?’ Then, with sudden animation: ‘Yes, go on, tell me jokes. He loves jokes. I can sit by his bed now, he doesn’t get cross with me any more.’

  And suddenly, getting up, between the two men (Wenk follows after, holding the neck of the cognac bottle disdainfully between finger and thumb), suddenly she seems to be listening to something far away. ‘No more jokes please, Herr Stuff. I know my Herbert’s dead. But I want to be lying on your sofa with the phone ringing, and the radio reports coming in, and the newspapers coming hot off the presses. That feels a bit like proper life to me.’

  There’s a sheepish and chaotic return to work in the machinists’ room. No one looks up.

  ‘Don’t forget my cognac!’ the woman suddenly shouts.

  On the sofa she gets one more glass, and then she’s asleep, mouth open, jaws relaxed, passed out.

  ‘Who’s going to stay with her?’ asks Stuff. ‘Someone has to stay with her.’

  ‘Are you going to see the proprietor now?’

  ‘If you need to ask like that, you stay. Come on, Tredup.’

  They go. Wenk watches them go. Looks down at the sleeping woman, listens to the deputation set off, grips the bottle of cognac, and takes a deep pull on it.

  IV

  The lab is no modern laboratory of glass, bright and clean and airy, it’s the grotto of an eccentric inventor drowning in gear, ideas, rubble and filth.

  At a table covered with half-eroded linoleum sits a sort of gnome with white stubble, a fat, spherical creature, a red-lacquered dwarf. He has raised his weak, bulbous blue eyes to his visitors. ‘You can’t talk to me now. Do your stuff by yourselves.’

  Stuff says: ‘I’m just wanting to piss all over someone, Herr Schabbelt—with your permission.’

  The dwarf holds a zinc plate up against the light, checks it anxiously. ‘The autotype isn’t coming out.’

  ‘Perhaps the grid is too fine, Herr Schabbelt?’

  ‘What do you know about it? Clear off, I said! What’s Tredup doing, filthying up the air? Get out!—Maybe it is too fine. You’re not stupid, you know, Stuff. You could be right.—Who do you want to piss on?’

  ‘The Socialists.’

  ‘No. Fifty-five per cent of our readers are workers and junior officials. Socialists? No. Even if we are on the Right ourselves.’

  ‘It’s a good story, Herr Schabbelt.’

  ‘Well, tell it to me, then, Stuff. Wherever you can find room. But, Tredup, you’ve got to go, you reek of acquisition.’

  ‘I’m happy to do something else, if that’s all right by you,’ grumbles Tredup.

  ‘Rubbish! You enjoy your work. Get out!’

  ‘We need him here. Later on, with the story.’

  ‘All right, go and stand in the dark somewhere I can’t see you. On you go, Stuff.’

  ‘Do you know Police Superintendent Kallene? Of course you do. After the Revolution he was a Red. Social Democrat, Independent Socialist, whatever—anyway, he got his reward. The stupidest junior policeman got to be superintendent.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘When he got the job, he left the Party, returned his Party book, became what he had been before, a fervent Nationalist.’

  ‘And . . . ?’

  ‘Well, in the evenings he “superintends” the cleaners in the town hall. When the offices are deserted, Herr Schabbelt!’

  ‘And . . . ?’

  ‘Well, there are a couple of young women among them, easy on the eye. You can imagine, when they’re on their hands and knees scrubbing, you might get the odd eyeful—’

  ‘You may imagine that, Stuff.’

  ‘Well, of course, it isn’t just Kallene who gets ideas.’

  ‘Get to the point, Stuff. Who caught him?’

  ‘The Red mayor!’ cries Stuff. ‘Fatty Gareis in person. They were doing it on his desk.’

  ‘And . . . ?’

  ‘Now, Herr Schabbelt! What a question! Kallene’s got his Party book back.’

  ‘Interesting story,’ says Schabbelt. ‘But not for us. Maybe the KPD. Tredup can talk it up.’

  ‘Herr Schabbelt!’

  ‘I can’t help you, Stuff. You’ll have to try and fill your column with local news.’

  ‘But if we’re not allowed to shake things up! The paper’s losing class. We’ve been called a fish-and-chip paper.’

  ‘Who by?’

  ‘Isn’t that right, Tredup?’

  Tredup takes a step forward out of the shadows and affirms: ‘Bumf paper, the daily smear, swastika sell-out, shithouse squares. All under exclusion of the public.’

  Stuff chimes in: ‘Aunt from the cow-village. The bore on all four walls. Fart in a phone-box. Scandal sheet. The weevil. Read it and sleep.’

  Tredup again: ‘I swear, Herr Schabbelt. Only this morning, a potential advertiser told me—’

  The proprietor has gone back to his zinc plates. ‘So who is it you want to dump on?’

  Both together: ‘the Circus Monte.’

  And Schabbelt: ‘Well, if you must. To put the fear of God into the non-advertisers. And to reward you for the fine grid.’

  ‘Thank you, Herr Schabbelt.’

  ‘That’s OK. But leave me alone for the rest of the week. I’m busy.’

  ‘We won’t bother you again. Good morning to you.’

  V

  Stuff is sitting at his desk looking at the still-sleeping woman. Her face has reddened slightly, ice-grey bunches of hair are plastered over her head and hanging down into her face. He thinks: The cognac bottle is almost empty. When I sent Wenk out, he reeked of drink. Now he’s even stealing it from his drunk proprietress. I’ll get him, see if I don’t.

  Facing the woman again: I’ll make her a coffee, hot and strong, for her to drink when she wakes up. I’ll ring for Grete.

  He looks at the bell push by the door, and then at the blank paper in front of him on the desk. What good will coffee do? None at all.

  He twiddles with the buttons on the radio. A voice speaks up: ‘Achtung! Achtung! Achtung! This is the Social Democ
ratic Press service.’

  Ah, fuck it! I’ll write my column.

  He sits down, has a little think, and writes:

  Last night, a small circus by the name of Monte opened its tents on our municipal playground, and gave its first performance. The turns were not outstanding in any way, in fact they were barely mediocre. After the shows that our town was privileged to witness lately from the Circus Kreno and the Circus Stern, the items on the Monte bill of fare were pretty wretched, at best good enough to please children.

  He reads it back to himself. That’ll do for the moment, he thinks. The trainee wanders in. ‘I want this set up right away, Fritz. And tell the maker-up to set it as local lead. I’m going to the cop shop now, and then the local assizes. If there’s anything to come, I’ll phone. All right.—Oh, and tell Grete to make Frau Schabbelt a cup of coffee.’

  The boy wanders out. Stuff looks at the sleeping woman, and then at the cognac bottle. He picks it up, and drinks it dry. He shudders.

  I’ll go out on the piss tonight. A proper bender, he thinks. Intoxicate myself, get far away, forget. The most swinish profession in the world: local editor of a provincial newspaper.

  He looks glumly through his pince-nez and pushes off. First the police, then the assizes.

  PART I

  The Farmers

  1

  An Order of Attachment in the Country

  I

  At Haselhorst Station two men climb out of the train that goes from Altholm to Stolpe. Both are wearing town clothes, but are carrying raincoats over their arms and have knotty canes in their hands. One of them is dour-looking and in his forties, while his scrawny twenty-year-old companion looks round alertly in all directions. Everything seems to interest him.

  They follow the main street through Haselhorst. The roofs of the farmhouses peep through the green everywhere, some reed, some thatch, some tile, some tin. Every farm is its own world, ringed with trees, and careful to turn its narrow side to the main road.

  They leave Haselhorst behind them and walk along the rowan-lined avenue towards Gramzow. There are cattle standing at pasture in the meadows, red and white or black and white, idly looking round at the wanderers, slowly chewing.

  ‘It’s nice to get out of the office once in a while,’ says the young man.

  ‘There was a time I thought that as well,’ replies the older one.

  ‘Nothing but figures all the time, it’s too much.’

  ‘Figures are easier to deal with than people. More predictable.’

  ‘Herr Kalübbe, do you really think something could happen?’

  ‘Don’t talk rot. Of course nothing’s going to happen.’

  The younger man reaches into his back pocket. ‘At least I’ve got my pistol with me.’

  The older man suddenly stops dead, waves his arms furiously, and his face goes purple. ‘You idiot, you! You blasted idiot!’

  His rage deepens. He throws his hat and coat down on the road, and the briefcase he was carrying under his raincoat.

  ‘All right! Go on! Do your own thing! What insane stupidity! And a hothead like that . . .’ He is incapable of going on.

  The younger man has turned pale, whether from indignation, anger or shock. But he is at least able to master himself. ‘Herr Kalübbe, please, what was it I said to annoy you like that?’

  ‘If I so much as hear the words “At least I’ve got my pistol with me”! You propose to go among farmers with your pistol? I have a wife and children.’

  ‘But this morning the revenue councillor briefed me about the use of arms.’

  Kalübbe is dismissive. ‘Oh, him! Sits at his desk all day. Knows nothing but paper. He should come out with me on an actual attachment one day, to Poseritz or Dülmen or, why not, Gramzow, today . . . He would soon stop giving briefings!’

  Kalübbe grins sneeringly at the thought of the revenue councillor accompanying him on one of his attachment trips.

  Suddenly he laughs. ‘Here, let me show you something.’ He pulls his pistol out of his own back pocket, aims it at his colleague.

  ‘What are you doing? Put that away!’ the younger man shouts, and jumps to the side.

  Kalübbe pulls the trigger. ‘You see—nothing! It’s not loaded. That’s what I think of your sort of protection.’

  He puts his pistol away. ‘And now give me yours.’ He pulls the barrel back with a jerk and ejects one bullet after another. The young man picks them up in silence. ‘Put them in your waistcoat pocket, and hand them back to the revenue councillor tonight. That’s my briefing on self-defence, Thiel.’

  Thiel has also picked up stick and coat and briefcase, and hands them all silently to his colleague. They walk on. Kalübbe looks across meadows that are yellow with crowfoot, or whitish-rose with cardamine. ‘Don’t take it amiss, Thiel. Here, shake hands, no hard feelings.—That’s right. All of you cooped up in the revenue building, you’ve got no idea of what it means to be working out here.

  ‘I was pleased when I became a bailiff. Not just for the per diems and travel allowances, which I can really use, with a wife and three little ones. But also for being out here, on a spring day, when everything is green and fresh. Not just stone. You respond to it.

  ‘And now—now you’re the most shameful and disgusting blot on the State.’

  ‘Herr Kalübbe, you, who everyone praises so!’

  ‘Yes, them indoors! If a farmer comes to see you, or if ten farmers come to see you, it’s the same thing, it’s a farmer in town. And if they ever get really insolent, as you term it, then there’s plenty of you around. Behind the glass screen. And with a direct line to the police up on the wall.

  ‘But here, where we’re walking now, the farmer’s been sat for a hundred years, for a thousand years. Here it’s us that don’t belong. And I’m all alone in their midst, with my briefcase and my blue cuckoo stamp. And I am the State, and if things go well, then I will take with me just an edge of their self-esteem, and the cow out of their byre, and if things are rough, why, then I make them homeless at the end of a thousand years of their occupation.’

  ‘Can they really not pay?’

  ‘Sometimes they can’t, and sometimes they won’t. And of late they really haven’t wanted to.—You see, Thiel, there have always been a few rich farmers, who did really well for themselves, and they don’t see why they should be reduced to gnawing on a crust. And they don’t run their businesses in a rational way . . .

  ‘But what do we know about it? It’s none of our beeswax. What do we care about the farmers? They hoe their row, we hoe ours. But what bothers me is the way I walk among them dishonestly, like a hangman from the Middle Ages, who is despised, like a harlot with her parasol on her arm, that they all spit at, and with whom no one will sit down at a table.’

  ‘Hold it! Stop!’ calls Thiel, and he grabs his colleague by the sleeve. In the dust is a butterfly, a brown peacock butterfly, with trembling wings. Its antennae are moving gropingly in the sunshine, in the light, the warmth.

  Kalübbe pulls his foot, which was already hovering over the creature, back. Pulls it back and stands still, looking down at the living brown dust.

  ‘Yes, there’s that as well, Thiel,’ he says in relief. ‘God knows you’re right. There’s that as well. And sometimes you manage to stop your foot in mid-air.—And now I’ve got one thing I want to ask you.’

  ‘What’s that?’ says Thiel.

  ‘Just now you showed restraint, and I was the wild one. Maybe we’ll swap roles in the course of the day. Then you must remember you will have to endure any insult, any scorn without reply—have to, you hear. A good bailiff doesn’t press charges for offensive behaviour or foul and abusive language, he just collects. You must never raise your hand, even if the other guy does. There are always too many witnesses against you. In fact, there are only witnesses against you. Will you remember that? Will you promise me?’

  Thiel raises his hand.

  ‘And can you keep your promise?’

  ‘Ye
s,’ says Thiel.

  ‘All right then, we’re going to Farmer Päplow in Gramzow to auction off his two oxen.’

  II

  It’s a little before eleven. It’s still morning, and the two revenue workers have shaken hands on the road to Gramzow.

  The Krug at Gramzow is full to the rafters. All the tables are occupied. The farmers are sitting over beer and grog, and schnapps glasses are in evidence too. But it’s almost silent in the public bar, you hardly hear a word spoken. It’s as though everyone was straining their ears to listen to the back.

  There are more farmers sitting in the back bar, round the table with the crocheted cloth, under the walnut clock. There are seven of them round the table, and an eighth standing by the door. On the sofa with a glass of grog is a lanky fellow with a creased, angular face, cold eyes and thin lips. ‘All right,’ he says from his sitting position, ‘you old-established farmers of Gramzow, you’ve heard Farmer Päplow’s complaint against the decision of the tax office in Altholm. Those who support him raise your hands, those who are against him leave them down in impunity. All do as you think right, only as you think right.—And now, cast your votes.’

  Seven hands go up.

  The lanky, clean-shaven man gets up off the sofa. ‘Open the door, Päplow, so that everyone can hear. I’ll announce the decision of the farmers of Gramzow.’

  The door swings open, and at the same moment the farmers outside get up. The lanky man asks a white-bearded farmer standing by the front door: ‘Are the sentries posted?’

  ‘The sentries are posted, Headman.’

  The tall man asks in the direction of the bar and the little weasel of a landlord: ‘And are there no womenfolk in the vicinity?’

  ‘No womenfolk, Headman.’

  ‘Then I, District Headman Reimers of Gramzow, announce the decision of the Farmers’ League, duly arrived at by their elected representatives:

  ‘The tax office in Altholm has ruled on the 2nd of March against Farmer Päplow, to the effect that he has to pay four hundred and sixty-three marks in back taxes from 1928.