by Hans Fallada
‘And what did you say?’
‘Well, that his snoop photographer and security detail had just arrived, and . . .’
‘And?’
‘And that in five minutes, the whole building was going to be blown sky-high. You should have heard the sudden gasp on the line. I could smell his pants filling.’
‘And then?’
‘Well, as I was starting my motorbike to go over to yours, the militia were just setting off.’
‘Not bad. Not bad at all. But the newspapers will be full of it, and you know if there’s one thing we farmers don’t want it’s a stir.’
‘The newspapers? I’ll eat my hat if there’s so much as five lines about it in the newspapers. It’ll be some attention-seeker playing a practical joke . . . Or, no, that the whole thing was just a practice run to test the emergency services . . .’
‘Maybe so. But you should look after yourself, Georg, leave that stuff alone. We’re on to a good thing here, we don’t need the fuss.’
‘You don’t, true. But believe me, Franz, I don’t think we can pull the thing off without drama.’ And hastily, as Franz makes to interrupt him: ‘It won’t be anything to do with any of you. No one will know anything. I’ll do the whole thing myself.’
Pause. Then: ‘With a couple of others. Can’t manage alone. But you won’t know them.’
The farmer stands there. ‘Maybe you’re right. I won’t ask you, and I won’t get in your way. But . . .’—and here he raises his voice—‘if you’re lying in the gutter, I won’t lift a finger to help you. None of us will. This is about the cause, all right?’
Henning says drily: ‘I’ve never gone to anyone for help. Whenever anyone bested me, I took my lumps. End of subject.—When are you planning to run?’
‘I’m not going to run.’
‘It’ll be cushy as hell. I’ll put you on the passenger seat and run you up to Stolpermünde. You can spend two or three months crewing on a herring boat. At the end of that, so much will have happened that you can come back, no probs.’
‘But I can’t just disappear like that. The movement needs me.’
‘What use are you in prison?’
‘A lot of use. Maybe more use than I am outside. Let me tell you something: it won’t be a hick policeman that arrests me today, it’ll be the militia. Make sure the farmers know all about it. Call round the neighbouring villages, get everyone here who has legs. Tell messengers to make sure the whole district knows. Oh, Georg, imagine if they tied me up, imagine if they hauled me off in chains! Have a photographer here, and get the pictures printed in the next issue of the Bauernschaft!’
‘You’re right. This time, it will be the militia that comes for you.’
The farmer reflects. ‘I’ll be sitting in the room, cleaning my guns. Maybe they’ll send a young lieutenant for me, someone who’ll go crazy when he sees other people have weapons as well. Nowadays the entire militia is like that. They must be driven out of their minds! You have no idea how hard it is to get the farmers going. They work their jaws when they lose their livelihoods a beast at a time, but they knuckle under. It’s the feudal heritage, it’s in their blood. But if something like this happens, then maybe, just maybe, it’ll have an effect . . .’
‘You bet it’ll have an effect!’
‘One other thing, Georg. Have a word today with Rehder from Karolinenhorst, he’s taking over from me. Have some fellows from four or five villages ride all over the area on Sunday, announcing the breach of law. Let Padberg at the Bauernschaft find the form of words for you. They should call a Farmers’ Parliament and have a big protest meeting in Altholm. Then you should demonstrate outside the prison. I’ll hear you from my cell.’
‘I’ll do everything you say.’
‘And don’t forget, they need to have a collection for me. We need money. The Bauernschaft should call for an emergency levy. I need the best lawyer available. It has to be made a political case.’
‘I know just the man. I’ll talk to people in Berlin.’
‘The very best! Georg, I tell you, when they descend on me with their militia, when they cuff me and beat me up: it will be the best day of my life!’
IV
Henning only waited for Reimers’s arrest. Then he rode to Altholm to talk to Stuff.
By the time he gets there, it’s already dark, but he finds Stuff easily enough. Altholm has forty or fifty bars, Stuff is bound to be in one of them. He finds him in the third place he tries.
Stuff is moody and laconic. Henning tries telling him about Tredup, but nothing seems to rile Stuff today. He drinks rapidly, and Henning has the feeling Stuff is not listening properly. His only response to the events in Stolpe is to say: ‘Silly buggers!’ He asks impatiently: ‘Is that all?’
Henning begins again. Talks about Reimers’s arrest. ‘I wasn’t allowed to be there for it myself, I wasn’t supposed to let anyone see me, but I watched from round the corner, and later on I asked people, and Frau Reimers.’
‘Well, and what went off! A common-or-garden arrest! And quite right too.’
‘Now hang on a minute: quite right too! Is there any danger of him attempting flight?’
‘Risk of collusion.’
‘When the pictures are lying there. What’s left for him to collude?—But never mind.’ Henning gives way. ‘What’s the point of us arguing about it?—A little after six they came, two detectives and a lorryload of militia. The scale of it! The government is making itself a laughing stock. All for one man. Well, I had done my bit. The village street was full of people. And more flocked along all the time.’
‘So it wasn’t just about one man.’
‘Oh, come on! We’re talking about peaceable farmers here. They might stop and look, but they’re certainly not going to take part.—The militia sealed off the farmyard with a chain. The detectives went into the house, along with half a dozen militia and their commander.’
‘Who was it?’
‘Think of it, we were hoping it might be a lieutenant. It was Colonel Senkpiel in person.—The rest of it I know from Reimers’s wife and workers. They walk into the room, there’s Franz—Reimers—by the table, with a gun in his hand. There’s another five guns laid out on the table. Apparently they got quite a fright. The young cops moved for their pistols, the old detectives took cover behind the stove.’
‘No one likes to get shot up if they can help it.’
‘It was six against one!’
‘Doesn’t change a thing.—And then?’
‘The colonel kept his cool. He made a joke, and sat down in an armchair. Reimers turfed him out, because he said he hadn’t invited him to sit down, and he demanded that everyone take off their hats and caps in his room.’
‘What nonsense. Soldiers taking off their caps!’
‘Precisely.—Well, the colonel started to get a bit testy, and the detectives asked to see a permit for all the guns. Reimers said: “That’s with Franz.”
‘“Who’s Franz?” they ask.
‘“That’s my secretary,” replies Reimers.
‘He’s to call him. But he says he can only fetch him in person. They’re not in favour of that, because they think he might do a runner, they want to get him themselves.
‘So where’s Franz?—In the loft.—What loft? The hayloft?—No, the loft.—Can he not call him?—If they think there’s any point in trying, he can.—Well, all right, try.
‘They all troop out into the yard, and then Reimers stands and yells at the loft: “Franz is to come down. The police want to see him.” Well, nothing stirs. Reimers yells till he’s blue in the face, he’s still cradling his gun in his arms, but nothing stirs.
‘“Might Franz possibly be asleep?”
‘And Reimers: He has no idea whether Franz is asleep or awake.
‘They want to send a man up to him. What door is it?
‘“The one in front of you when you get up to the attic.”
‘A militiaman climbs up, and crawls around, and comes ba
ck down: there was a padlock on the door. And Reimers acts surprised, didn’t they realize that you didn’t leave attics unlocked just like that?
‘It’s beginning to dawn on them that they’re being taken for a ride, and the kitchen girls, who heard the farmer call for “Franz” at the top of his voice, are peeing themselves laughing.
‘They go back inside with him, and ask him right out about this Franz fellow whom he keeps under lock and key.
‘“Well, my secretary, Franz.”
‘How come? You don’t just lock people up.—Oh yes you did. Why, that was precisely why they were come, the gentlemen.—Did he keep people imprisoned here?—Imprisoned? Can you imprison a secretary, a secretaire, a piece of furniture, painted red? Whom he’s called Franz ever since he can remember?
‘And it’s all true. Everybody knows Reimers has names for his different suits, for pieces of furniture, for his carts and bits of gear.’
‘Playing silly buggers! I don’t see how that’s going to help the farmers!’
‘You’re very contrary today. But you must be enjoying it, you let me talk and talk.’
‘Enjoying it? Seeing as you’ve sat down at my table and refuse to go away?’
‘You can imagine how furious they were. Two men have to come forward and take his shotgun off him. And the rest of them have to reassemble the locks he’s just taken apart and oiled. And three men have to accompany him up to the attic and look over his shoulder while he goes through the secretary, drawer by drawer. Till he remembers his licence is downstairs after all, in his desk.
‘Then they tell him the gun licence no longer interests them. The weapons are being confiscated anyway. Not bad for a violation of a man’s civil rights, eh?’
‘If you say so,’ says Stuff.
‘But that’s what it is. Breach of civil rights. And then they start to question him, and they want to know who drove the straw cart. And he tells them they’d better ask Orsche. They’ve become suspicious by now, they’re not interested in Orsche, he just has to tell them what he knows. And he says: No, they’re to say what they know, and he can tell them which bits are true or not. Well, they don’t want that. And then they tell him that he’s under arrest, and has to accompany them. And he says, “I can’t right away. I first have to do my taxes. And I need to give the community chest into safe keeping.”
‘They’re getting madder and madder all the time. The whole village is packed with people, there are cars parked on the pasture, and photographers taking pictures. And Reimers is sitting at his desk, not moving a muscle. Why doesn’t he let them take care of the chest?—No, he doesn’t want to do that. It’s been known for money to go missing that way. Haven’t they heard about funds being embezzled in the army and the militia, and munitions being flogged off, and all the other scandalous stuff?’
‘Well, and . . . ?’
‘Well, and now you need to remember I can see it all happening before my very eyes. I wasn’t there, but this is how I see it. There are the militia sentries lined up along the wall and by the door, with their rubber truncheons in their hands, and their pistol holsters unbuttoned. And the detectives are standing there, and Colonel Senkpiel, and they’re foaming with anger. And if they had had him to themselves, in a private place, I tell you, they’d have broken every bone in his body. But outside there are hundreds of farmers—’
‘Call it fifty.’
‘Hundreds and hundreds. Not a woman among them, only men. The farmers didn’t allow any women to stand out there on the street. All silent, completely silent. And a chain of thirty militiamen. And inside there’s a man, just one man, and he’s been making monkeys of them for the past hour, and they’re helpless to do anything about it.’
‘You have a vivid imagination. But the militia and detectives are used to it, they’re dealing with bandits all the time.’
‘They were boiling with rage. The colonel was the colour of an aubergine.
‘“Come with us!”
‘“Call my deputy, so that I can give the chest into his keeping!”
‘“You’re to come along with us! If you don’t get up this minute, we’ll have to use force.”
‘And three men stand around him, one each side, and one at his back.’
‘And did he go?’
‘That’s when Reimers plays his trump card. He agrees to go with them, but first he wants to see the warrant for his arrest. And then it comes out that the detectives were leaving it to the colonel, and the colonel was leaving it to the detectives, and between them they haven’t got the bloody red form.
‘Then they start to quarrel among themselves, and the young fellows, the militiamen, are white with rage, and Reimers is sitting in his chair, hugging his knees with delight, and clapping his hands, and making “Tss! Tss!” noises to incite them against each other, and is generally dying of laughter.’
‘Well, and then? Did they finally pick him up?’
‘They went very quiet, and the colonel said the lack of a warrant didn’t matter. The arrest is lawful, and he has to go with them.
‘And he answers back that he knows the law in Germany, and he is entitled to see the warrant. And if they’ve messed up something, then they will have to be like ordinary civilians and do it all over again, in accordance with the proverb that says what you haven’t got in your head, you have to make up for with your legs.
‘And the colonel starts ranting and raving: he is to come with them.—He’s not coming without a warrant.—And they instructed him two and three times, but he didn’t get up. Then they grabbed hold of him, and pulled him up.
‘And then he screamed—and I tell you it went through me like a knife, as I stood out there on the bend in the road—he screamed: “Woe to justice in the land of Germany!” And then they cuffed him, and led him out to the cars in chains.
‘Reimers went willingly with them through the massed ranks of farmers. And no one spoke a word, but they doffed their hats when he passed. And then they took him away.’
‘And what happened then? And what did you do?’
‘Me? I rode here, and told you everything that happened, and get no thanks from you.’
‘Thanks! You’re not about thanks, you came because you want something.—But never mind that. Only one question: Wouldn’t it have been smarter of you if you’d followed the militia to see if they didn’t pull over in some nice secluded place and give your friend a good going-over?’
Henning has turned pale. He leans over the tables, and his face is a map of wrinkles. ‘Dammit!’ he swears. ‘Damn me and damn my ancestors. I hope I get scabies and the big S for not having thought of that!’
‘You’re young,’ says Stuff, suddenly turning old and wise. ‘You think panache is everything. But in this business you need to work hard and think hard, and derring-do is actually crap. Everything you did today is crap. Your Reimers has something, it takes something to be as full of hate as he is, and to discipline himself and stay cool and make them lose their rag. I don’t want to hear him howling tonight in his cell for not just whacking them while he had them in front of him.—No, Reimers is OK, but you’ve got a lot to learn.’
‘But it was good that I called the president. Would Reimers have had the time to prepare himself otherwise?’
‘I don’t think a man like that needs much time to get ready. His hate is always on tap.—And your coming to me is crap as well. What am I supposed to do with your stories? They’re farmers’ stories, nothing for town people.’
‘I thought,’ Henning says quietly, ‘I thought you might come with me to Stolpe tonight. We have a discussion with the editors of the Bauernschaft.’
‘What do I care about the yellow journalists on the Bauernschaft! Altholm is an industrial town! Bring me material against the Reds, that’s another matter!’
‘But this is material against the Reds!’
‘Bullshit! This is against the government, against the State. Do you think my subscribers want to read about the house they’re si
tting in being about to collapse? You talked to me about the Baltic and Upper Silesia, but in fact you’re . . .’ Stuff curbs himself. ‘All right, you thought you could take advantage of me. Let me tell you something! I’ll be the one taking the advantage, if I can ever use you for anything. And I’d be doing you a favour. And that’s all for today. I’ve got a lot of things to do still. If you had an ounce of sense in your mind, I would tell you: Don’t do anything else today, this isn’t a good day for you. But you’re going to go on and do more stupid things.’
Henning bows, and walks out of the bar.
Stuff watches him go sadly, quickly drinks a glass of beer and a schnapps, and starts writing: ‘Incredible humiliation for the government.—The bomb in the presidium.—Police make arrest without warrant.’
He writes and he writes.
This is no good for the provinces, he thinks. But Berlin will take it. It’ll earn me at least a hundred marks. Nice kid, that Henning, may he remain so. Well, I’ll just phone my guff through to the night editors.
V
That night the housekeeper of District President Temborius doesn’t get home till half past midnight. She passed the evening in the cinema, where she met friends, and spent a couple of hours with them in the Café Koopmann.
Housekeeper Klara Gehl is a familiar and respected personality in Stolpe. Everyone knows she used to be a humble kitchen maid. Her efficient and tactful nature got her promoted so that she is now managing the big household of the bachelor Temborius. And everyone in town and country knows that the best approach to Temborius is the unofficial one through his housekeeper: while bureaucracy puts up one hurdle after another, Klara Gehl is still able to tease the odd trace of humanity out of him.
She was rather indiscreet in the café. She kept having to retell the story of how the practical joke this morning took effect on the district president, how he went to bed right away, gravely ill, and took at least three Pyramidon.
‘I made him sweat. He had to drink lime-blossom tea for me, and at eight o’clock I turned out the lights, and said I was going out. Otherwise he would have rung for me all evening.’
Now she’s on her way home, it’s half past midnight. But she’s not afraid, even though her way takes her through a largely unlit street of villas. There are trees lining the road, and the gardens and in some places the road itself are almost completely dark.
