A Small Circus

by Hans Fallada

  How can Gareis have gone off on holiday! How can he be lounging around in his flat! If he saw me like this, surely he would come and help me.

  Still running, he tries to think how Gareis would tackle the problem: would he be running like this, for a start? That fat pig, sitting around at home. He would chat them up, he would schmooze them and soft-soap them . . . I don’t schmooze. I don’t like it . . .

  Behind his boss runs Sergeant Maurer. What a load of nonsense! he thinks. Frerksen always messes things up. Where are all the others? Is it going to be left to the three of us to . . . ? Schmidt is off the pace too. Well, it doesn’t matter. Those stubborn so-and-sos. We’ll collar their flag.

  And Sergeant Schmidt, fat and sweating fantastically, miles behind. Of course me, of course I have to run. All the rest of the guys are loafing on the Burstah, only I’m running to catch my death. Longbones Maurer can do it with his ten stone, but not me at double that. I must do something about my weight. Maybe a lemon diet . . .

  Suddenly Frerksen has broken through to the front of the march. Not looking round, he charges up to Henning, grips the flagstaff, cries in a breathless voice: ‘I hereby confiscate your flag! Do you hear me, I’m confiscating your flag!’

  Henning barely listens to him, he grips the flag in front of his chest with both hands.

  ‘The flag is ours!’

  The little group at the head make to halt, but the procession is on the move, and they keep going. The next rows want to see what the commotion is about, the flag is waving, everything overflows, a crush through which Sergeant Maurer can barely force his way. He reaches instinctively for the flagpole that Frerksen is holding, the flag sways violently, tips, falls. The scythe jangles on the paving stones.

  Frerksen gets a shove in the back, half turns round, two burning eyes glower at him, two fists are raised, a voice threatens him: ‘Get your dirty paws off our flag!’

  Another jolt. A blow. Many blows on his shoulder. There is Maurer, he is yanking at the flag, which Henning just still has a hold of. Frerksen stumbles over someone’s outstretched leg. Maurer is lying on the ground, the flagpole still in his hands, still with Henning and three or four farmers holding on to it too. Half the flag seems to cover him.

  What’s keeping Schmidt? What’s keeping the regular police? This is going wrong, thinks Frerksen. Blows keep landing on him.

  He backs hard into the men besetting him, finds he can breathe at last, takes the opportunity to unsheathe his sabre . . .

  A hand clasps his arm, he looks into the livid face of the man who chased him away from the flag-bearer a moment ago. Padberg orders him: ‘Put that thing away, man!’

  They tussle for it. Frerksen tries to free his arm, to deliver a blow. All these faces, so hate-filled, and up in the windows, those others full of curiosity. The man twists his wrist, the bones crack: the sabre jangles on the ground. He briefly sees it shining underfoot, then a boot treads on it, a leg obscures it from vision.

  Frerksen manages to free his hand. He reaches into his holster. Over there stands a flushed-looking Maurer. ‘Draw side arms!’ shrieks Frerksen with breaking voice. ‘Out of my way!’

  Somehow a road opens in front of him, he stumbles along, half blind behind his slipping, fogged-up glasses, wheezing with exertion. Now he’s on the opposite pavement, people let him pass. Their faces look abashed when they look at him . . .

  He leans against a wall . . .

  Maurer joins him. ‘That didn’t work. There’s not enough of us.’

  ‘Where’s Schmidt?’ pants the commander.

  ‘Someone got hold of him some time ago at the back. Here he comes now. Ah, he and Perduzke have arrested someone, they’re taking him back to the station.’

  Above the procession the flag, the black, fluttering flag, now reappears. The scythe is bent, but still the flag waves. And the procession wends its way.

  IV

  ‘Let me go!’ shouts Farmer Rohwer excitedly. ‘You must let me go! You struck me, and I want to bring a complaint against you with your authorities.’

  ‘You need to calm down first,’ says Perduzke mildly. ‘Drink a glass of water back at the station.’

  ‘I don’t want your effing water. You have no right to detain me.’

  ‘Did you see how he almost broke my arm on the lamp post?’ says fat Schmidt to Perduzke. ‘Boy, this isn’t the first punch-up you’ve been involved in, is it?’

  ‘Do you think I’ll stand by while you beat me up? If you hit me, I hit back!’

  ‘I had to,’ wheezes the fat sergeant, endlessly sweating, ‘I had to call out “make way” several times. If you don’t move aside, then you’ll get a taste of my truncheon.’

  ‘How can I move, if everything’s chock-a-block? Were you able to move?’

  ‘If a policeman calls out “make way”,’ observes Schmidt sagely, ‘then you have to step aside. How you do it is up to you.’

  ‘The next time I visit your damned Altholm, I’ll have eyes in my arse, so that I can see you coming,’ growls the furious Rohwer.

  ‘Cool it,’ says Perduzke calmly. ‘When we get to the station, we’ll write it all down, and that’ll clear our heads.’

  ‘Look at that,’ one farmer says to another in the demonstration. ‘They’re arresting a Communist.’

  ‘The Red bastards won’t allow us our flag.’

  ‘Did you see, it disappeared for a moment. But now it’s back up and flying.’

  ‘The demo has police protection.’

  ‘There’s not much to protect! I’d like to see those Soviets tangling with us!’

  Through the mass of people, little Pinkus from the Volkszeitung eagerly makes his way.

  ‘Tell me, Comrade Erdmann, what happened a moment ago? I just missed it.’

  ‘I’m not rightly sure. There was some carry-on with Frerksen and the flag-bearer. Then there was some pushing and shoving, and a few blows. I don’t know what happened after. Look, there he is, leaning against the wall. Ask him.’

  Pinkus pushes his way through the crowd of onlookers. Against the wall, almost unnoticed in a corner, stands Frerksen, still panting, his empty scabbard in his hand.

  ‘What happened just now, Frerksen? Did I miss something?’

  ‘You, Pinkus? I’m confiscating the flag. It’s a provocation, a flag is not permitted.’

  ‘But they’ve taken the flag with them.’

  ‘I’m still confiscating it. Where are the reserves? I’ve sent Maurer for reserves.’

  ‘Where are the rest of your men?’

  ‘On the Burstah.’

  ‘Wait, I’ll send a cyclist.—And I’d have thought if you want to get hold of the flag, you should be at the head of the column.—What happened to your sabre?’

  Frerksen stands there. He has unbuckled his belt and is staring at his empty scabbard.

  ‘Where’s your sabre?’

  ‘They took my sabre off me, the bastards!—Wait, send the cyclist.’

  Frerksen looks around. He doesn’t altogether know what to do, but he must first get rid of the empty, laughable scabbard, symbol of a disgrace for the whole town.

  He stands in a shop doorway. Cautiously he tries the door and looks inside. The shop appears to be empty. Knitwear, wool, the tricoteuses of the French Revolution, Frerksen thinks mechanically.

  With a sudden jerk, he tosses the empty scabbard into the empty shop, he hears it jingle as it lands on the floor. He closes the door and sighs with relief.

  Then he gets going. He trots along beside the march, past indifferent, curious, familiar faces. The quiet, settled official is jogging through the town, his tongue hanging out like a dog’s. The flag, he thinks. The flag!

  V

  The commander runs through the town. Through the market square first, which the column of demonstrators has left almost bereft of citizens, then along the Burstah, always beside the march, stared at and smiled at, viewed with indifference and the subject of whispered comments. He hasn’t run like this
since he was a pup, his chest is heaving, his heart pounding. He can see very little through his dirty, fogged-up spectacles; he runs into people, bangs against them, and they jump, swear at him and stop when they see who he is.

  As far as the eye can see, farmers, a strange march, without rhythm, without music as yet. Walking side by side, in lines of eight abreast, but each one walks singly, slow, heavy, as though trudging through his own ploughed lea.

  They have no eyes for him. He’s still at the rear of the march, in the middle of the march, on a level with people who have no idea what’s just happened. Whoever happens to see him says at the most: ‘Look at the four-eyed cop! Wonder what his hurry is! We can look after ourselves.’

  Now he’s getting near the front of the demonstration. He’s had it in view for a long time now, unfurled in the wind and the movement of the march: black field with white plough and red sword. And the dull metal of the scythe above, kinked in two places, but still pointing up, a symbol of rebellion.

  This scythe, he thinks, impossible, I couldn’t let it pass, Gareis can’t have meant that. Besides, there is a local police ordnance by which uncovered scythes may not be carried into a built-up area. I must look up the paragraph before I talk to Gareis.—There they are . . .

  Through a gap in the crowd he sees the flag-carrier, and the bespectacled man next to him. Suddenly he seems to see one of them laughing to the other.

  They’ve seen me. They’re making fun of me. Because I didn’t get the flag. You wait, you!

  They haven’t seen him this time, the pair at the head of the march. Henning literally has both hands full with his flag, which he is carrying without a bandolier. It presses against his chest, he can feel the wind tug at it, sometimes it swings away from him a little.

  He looks up at it, sees the kinked scythe, and thinks: It looks even better now. After a fight. That wretched policeman! Thinks he can impound this flag, like it was a bowling-association banner or a KPD poster. He’ll be pretty fed up, I reckon.

  Padberg is busy with the speech he will give in the auction hall. He may well mention this abuse of police power in it, he thinks. It typifies the government of today. The Reds and the Nazis are given their heads, we farmers are placed under emergency law.

  VI

  Where the road to Grünhof intersects the Burstah there is a traffic post. The crossing is manned from nine in the morning until eight at night. The Burstah widens at this point. There is a small ornamental garden here, the Stolper Torplatz, with obligatory war memorial.

  Normally the traffic cop and naked war hero are left to contemplate each other undisturbed. Today, Sergeant Hart is looking down the Burstah, at the approaching procession. A quarter of an hour previously, some twenty of his colleagues led by Superintendent Kallene came by; they are to occupy the railway station and the streets from the station to the auction hall, which is the industrial part of town.

  Then, just five minutes ago, a cyclist raced up, sweating, and as he flew by he yelled: ‘There’s all sorts going on! The farmers and your mates are scrapping. I’m getting reinforcements!’

  And he was gone. Hart tries to imagine what happened: Have the police started something, or did the farmers? Or was it just a worker, pulling his leg?

  He wants to go and help, perhaps his mates are in a bad way. Who’s on duty at the market? Mechanically he waves a few cars on, and is happy whenever he can stand in such a way that he has the Burstah in view.

  There, a long way off still, he makes out an indistinct mass.

  A man with a loden hat and a chamois brush on it comes marching up in a hurry. His steel-tipped top-boots click along the paving stones. He charges up to Hart.

  ‘Sergeant, is this the way to the auction hall?—Thank you. Right. I’ll find my way.—Well, you’d best make yourself scarce like your colleagues.’

  Ten paces on: ‘Or else you’ll get a pasting, like your colleagues.’

  Twenty paces on, growling: ‘From us farmers! Yeah, farmers.’

  ‘Stop!’ yells Hart. ‘Stop right there! I order you!’

  He is about to set off in pursuit of the man, but two cars come along, he waves his arms, and the next time he looks around, the man with the chamois brush has gone.

  He didn’t go up to the station, surely! Otherwise I’d still be able to see him. Oh, I hope I catch you another time! Those shitty farmers. Giving us a pasting, you see if you’re not the ones who get pasted! Damned shitty farmers.

  Another man comes running along, staggering, with the last of his strength, straight for him. To his great astonishment, Hart recognizes his superior, Frerksen.

  ‘The reinforcements!’ he pants. ‘We need Kallene with the reinforcements. The farmers . . .’

  He stands there, no use for anything at all.

  ‘Yes, Commander, sir! I’m here on traffic duty. I think a cyclist has already been sent for reinforcements.’

  ‘Get them!’ yells Frerksen. His voice fails him. ‘Run, Hart, run. The farmers . . . The flag . . .’

  Sergeant Hart glances one last time at the pale, contorted face of his superior, and is already off at a run to the railway station. He wonders who has already been given a pasting today . . .

  Frerksen stands there, on the traffic island on the Burstah, spreads his arms, signalling to the traffic. If only they come soon, he thinks. The farmers are coming closer. Two, three minutes . . .

  A cyclist comes up the Burstah, from the market square. He brakes at the traffic island and dismounts. Frerksen recognizes him: it’s Matthies, KPD official, and royal pain in the bum.

  ‘Inspector,’ he says amiably, ‘Commander, rather. I wanted to bring you something. I found it. I’m bringing it to you . . .’

  And he hands Frerksen his battered, bent, fouled, naked sabre.

  Frerksen stares at it uncomprehendingly. He is standing on the traffic island. Already people are gathering, the farmers are coming. In front of him is Matthies, nasty smirk on his face, holding out to him his dirtied sabre.

  ‘Where shall I put it?’ asks Frerksen timidly and confusedly. ‘I don’t have a scabbard.

  ‘Put it away,’ he whispers. ‘Put it away somewhere, right now. There, behind the base of the monument. Put it there . . .’ And his eyes achingly follow the Communist, who, with ostentatious slowness, slopes the sabre over his shoulder like a rifle, grinning round at people in all directions, clambers over the low hedge, slowly and pleasurably sets his foot down in the geranium bed, walks on, treading the flowers to mush, before disappearing, with a mocking grin, behind the plinth, as though—with the policeman looking on—to relieve himself.

  I can’t take this any more, thinks Frerksen in despair. I can’t take this any more. It’s inhuman. More than I can stand. If only I’d left home just five minutes later. What’s keeping the reinforcements?

  VII

  They’re on their way.

  A score of blues are jogging over from the railway station. In response to the first confusing bulletins, Superintendent Kallene assembled all the men that were on duty in the northern part of town.

  But the farmers aren’t far either. A hundred yards, eighty yards off, the column in rows of eight abreast. The black flag in the van (still with no music), they are advancing.

  Superintendent Kallene makes his report, but Frerksen isn’t listening. ‘The farmers fell upon us, your colleagues have been beaten. Now the flag must be seized. It’s been confiscated. You, Soldin, Meierfeld, Geier, are responsible for getting the flag. The others will help.’

  Kallene surveys the short distance that separates them from the head of the procession. From the elevated traffic island, he jumps down on to the roadway. ‘Right, men! Go!’

  He raises his hands. Unarmed, he runs against the march, his men at his side, some already ahead of him. Some have taken the raised arm of their commander as a sign to draw their swords, and are struggling to run and—unusually—draw their sabres at the same time. Others have unhooked their truncheons from their belts and
are swinging them menacingly. Menacing, too, are the shakos pulled down low over their brows, secured by a chin band.

  Only the foremost of the farmers have seen the attack, and pause, and try to stop, but are pushed along from behind.

  Henning abruptly slows his pace. And in a feeling of mockery and obstinacy he raises the flag a little higher, pressing his back against those coming up behind. While he stands firm, they push through the line.

  The oncoming police see him melt away, the front line has closed over him already. Now he is behind the second, now the third row.

  ‘The flag!’ yells Frerksen. ‘I want the flag!’

  The first policeman to come up against the farmers is Geier. They are like a wall in front of him, a wall of threatening, indifferent, brooding, white and brown faces. Hands are raised against his upraised hands, sticks are raised; who can say whether for protection or assault.

  ‘Make way!’ he roars.

  The flag is billowing just ten or twenty yards off. He must get it. Where are his colleagues? Never mind, the farmers are yielding, his rubber truncheon is smacking against their upraised hands. Somehow a way is cleared in front of him, a short, open passage that he penetrates. And once again the man in front of him yields, melts away to the side. He can move on, he is closing in on the flag.

  From behind and to the side, something thumps against his shako, and then he is struck on the left shoulder.

  All the more grimly he lashes out at those in front of him. They’ll be taught to give in, those stupid farmers, those shits, those bastards, damn them! The flag . . .

  He rams his left elbow hard into the belly of someone. The man crumples over, others melt away, and press themselves harder against their neighbours. With one bound, half stumbling, half falling, the sergeant is up with the flag, reeling, he grabs for the flagpole, for a moment he is chest to chest with the flag-bearer, and with a shout of ‘Gimme that!’ he rips the flag to himself.