A Small Circus

by Hans Fallada

  ‘Oh, yes. Rather.’

  ‘I mean, of course, a financial interest. Are there many farmers among the subscribers?’

  ‘Not many.’

  ‘Then why? Why would you attack the farmers?’

  ‘I want to report on the scandalous methods of the police.’

  ‘My dear Herr Stuff! A newspaper should never be on the outs with the police!’

  ‘But it’s just the top echelon of the police. Which is Socialist.’

  ‘Yes, I know. But it’s still the town police, isn’t it? A town institution. Do you know, by the way, why the mayor went on holiday just now?’

  ‘He always goes at this time of year. It’s the anniversary of his wife’s parents.’

  ‘I see. So it’s not that he’s avoiding these clashes?’

  ‘No. Not at all. He had no sense of them being about to happen.’

  ‘All right. If you’re sure . . . ? So you think it was the Reds?’

  ‘The whole thing was masterminded by the Reds. And we have local elections in autumn.’

  ‘All right, Herr Stuff, go for them. But not too hard, well, you’ll know. We in the News will probably take up a wait-and-see position, we have too many readers among the workers.’

  ‘That’s the main thing, is it?’

  ‘No, no, not like that. But we have a lot anyway.’

  They look at each other, each smiling amiably. Then Stuff struggles out of his deep leather armchair, panting a little. ‘Well, I’ll go over and write my piece for the morning, then.’

  ‘Yes?—And one last thing, Herr Stuff: Officially we have nothing to do with each other, for the moment. I want our association to remain secret. Absolutely secret.’

  ‘If I need to talk to you—’

  ‘—then you come and see me in the evening, like now. No telephone, please. Word gets out.’

  ‘All right,’ says Stuff, and, already at the door, reaches out his hand to his new boss.

  ‘Right,’ Gebhardt says. ‘Oh, one more thing. We didn’t talk about the question of your remuneration. How could we forget!’ And he laughs, a little forced.

  ‘My remuneration . . . ?’ Stuff says in surprise. ‘Is there a question? I got five hundred from Schabbelt, and could write my own expenses claims.’

  ‘My dear Herr Stuff!’ Gebhardt smiles. ‘You must understand that that’s not on. That’s what finished Schabbelt.’

  ‘What? My salary did? That’s ridiculous.’

  ‘Not just your salary—please don’t be agitated—but the out-of-control costs of the business. Five hundred marks plus expenses. No, that’s absolutely out of the question.’

  Stuff’s mood has darkened. ‘So what is in question?’

  ‘Well, what shall I say? I’m really not a Jew, and I don’t want to starve you. I’ll go to the limit of what’s bearable, and even over. I say three hundred.’

  ‘Nonsense!’ says Stuff. ‘No chance.’

  ‘My dear Herr Stuff. Of course I’m perfectly happy to let you serve out your notice. That would be the first of October.’

  ‘I don’t have a contract with you! I can quit right now.’

  ‘There are so many literate young persons these days. Anyone can write. And most of the paper is correspondence anyway.’

  ‘All right, let’s cut to the chase,’ says Stuff. ‘What’s your best offer?’

  ‘I will go some way to meet you, Herr Stuff. My manager, Herr Trautmann, will be very unhappy with me, but I’m going to offer you three hundred and twenty!’

  ‘Five hundred!’ demands Stuff. ‘Plus expenses.’

  ‘You are no longer in the prime of youth,’ says Gebhardt cautiously. ‘And the Chronicle hasn’t exactly flourished under your editorship.’

  ‘People say,’ Stuff utters rather dreamily, ‘that your name, Herr Gebhardt, fits you rather well. Plays on “giving” and “hard” do rather suggest themselves.’

  ‘Three hundred and thirty.’

  ‘How would you like it, Herr Gebhardt, if I were to quit now? Your takeover of the Chronicle wouldn’t be a secret any more.’

  ‘That’s practically blackmail!’ yells Gebhardt. ‘Do you expect me to buy your silence?’

  ‘Excuse me,’ says a sleek voice from the doorway. ‘The camel seeks its path in the fog. I couldn’t find anyone to announce me. Good evening, gentlemen.’

  ‘Good evening, Mayor,’ says Stuff.

  VI

  With a dignified smile, Gareis extends his plump hand to the two men, and Stuff makes the discovery that he’s not the only person to whom his new boss performs his fifth-former’s low bow. Again, he marvels at the thick black scrub on the man’s neck.

  ‘Fancy finding the enemy brothers under the same roof!’ exclaims the mayor, and looks from the sheepishly furious publisher to the sullen Stuff. ‘In the evening, we make our way . . . Perhaps a wider public would like to be informed . . .’

  ‘It was a perfectly routine conversation,’ says Gebhardt curtly.

  ‘It was very loud, and to my mind not at all uninteresting. Well, never mind . . .’ The mayor’s face changes, turns serious. Under the pockets of fat are clever eyes. ‘I’ve come at a good time, to find the representatives of the serious press conveniently closeted together. I seek you out to assure myself of your impartiality. You, Herr Stuff, struck my police commander today as potentially biased.’

  ‘Biased? Not at all.’

  ‘Well, call it what you like. You don’t care for him. But, gentlemen, reflect on what you’re doing before you do it. The police stand fully behind their actions. They enjoy government backing. And they also have the support of the working class—and Altholm is working class. So if you position yourselves against the police, you line up against your own town—the Vaterstadt, as you like to say in your pages—and hence against your own interests.’

  ‘It seems to me, Mayor, that you’re overestimating the importance of today’s developments. There’ll be a local top story tomorrow, and two or three brief notes to follow, in six months there’ll be some court cases—and there’s an end.’

  ‘I don’t agree,’ Stuff contradicts his owner. ‘The struggle is only just beginning.’

  ‘On what side will we find you, Herr Stuff?’

  ‘I’m just a simple editor,’ says Stuff.

  ‘An editor, of course,’ the mayor nods disapprovingly. And turning to the owner: ‘By the way, you did know that the magistracy has decided in its wisdom no longer to favour the Chronicle with its official announcements?’

  ‘No!’ explodes Gebhardt. ‘Schabbelt didn’t mention that to me when he sold up.’

  And Stuff, two seconds too late: ‘It wasn’t the magistracy that decided that!’

  The mayor smiles, the man understands. He turns his attention to Gebhardt, and on the other side, in the dark, is Stuff. ‘Well now, Herr Gebhardt, your newspaper refers to itself as proud and upstanding, and your readers are workers. I imagine you’ll be wanting to keep the town’s interests at heart in the way you talk to them?’

  ‘The town’s interests, yes, quite,’ says Gebhardt cautiously.

  ‘Which means . . . it’s so easy just now to yield to a certain populist . . . wildness. It’s important sometimes to oppose the tide of feeling. You will receive our official report tomorrow morning. I recommend you stick to that.’

  ‘We will certainly publish the report.’

  ‘I am most unwilling,’ the mayor says, ‘to lean on you in any way. But this is a contentious matter. I hope, but I’m by no means certain, that I’ll find you on my side. It’s not the side of the SPD, the Red side, the side of officialdom—as you may have supposed. It’s the side of law and order, of work and constructiveness. On the face of it, a simple enough choice . . .’

  The gentlemen stare ahead. The mayor looks sorrowfully from one to the other.

  Then he gets up, and says, in a different tone again: ‘All right, gentlemen, goodnight, goodnight.—If people are agreed, as you are, on the principle, then
they’ll end up agreeing on money too.’

  And already out in the corridor: ‘Don’t worry, Herr Stuff. I’ll find my own way out without a light. Anyway, someone might see you. Goodnight!’

  Stuff, to Gebhardt again: ‘Jesus Christ, the son of a bitch! The son of a bitch!’

  And Gebhardt, with a sour-sweet smile: ‘A bit prickly, the Red gent, wouldn’t you say?’

  VII

  Tredup had yelled and screamed from the prison windows till hands grabbed him from behind and pulled him down.

  He had been taken out of his cell into the detention room, which was called either ‘detention room’ or ‘padded cell’, depending.

  Every prison has two types of prison warden: those who moved Tredup really didn’t exist any more, at least not according to the regulations of the Prussian Ministry of Justice.

  They had seized him under the arms, and dragged him noisily along the corridors and up and down the stairs of the prison. They had contrived to do it in such a way as to produce maximum contact between his shin bones and the iron steps and railings. And at the end of the staircase, when there were just another ten or twelve steps to go, they had suddenly let the troublemaker go, and he had fallen over and over like a sack of potatoes till he struck the cement floor, where he lay still.

  Then they had ordered him to get up, warned him not to play-act, pointed out to him the consequences of his refusal, and finally, when nothing else helped, they had dragged him into the padded cell, tossed him on to the pallet, taken away his braces so he didn’t get any silly ideas, and left him on his own.

  Tredup had lain there for hours, in and out of consciousness. Once upon a time he had been impatient, yes, but decently enough accommodated in his cell. And then the queer goatee’d warden had persuaded him to call out to the farmers, which would secure his prompt release. Then the whole building had gone crazy, and then they had done this to him . . . They had broken him . . . So this was what prisons were like . . .

  Causing a disturbance, resistance to the power of the State, mutiny . . . Was there prison for that? Jail? How long for?

  Where he is now is a kind of birdcage, only with absurdly thick iron bars, half dark and with bare walls that give off an icy chill. Only a wooden pallet, made fast to a concrete base, no blanket, no stool, nothing.

  If I have to stay here a day and a night, he thinks, I’ll go crazy.

  A double bang on the door starts him up. A voice says something.

  ‘Yes, please?’ he asks in confusion.

  ‘D’yer need a shit!’ came the yell from outside.

  ‘What?—No. I don’t.’

  He can hear voices outside. Then keys jingle, a warden comes in, but he stands in the other part of the room, behind the bars.

  ‘Are you sure you don’t want to relieve yourself?’ asks the warden kindly. And to the prisoner in blue, who has stepped in holding a bucket: ‘That’s the way you’re supposed to ask. Not what you said.’

  ‘Bastard,’ grumbles the prisoner with an angry look. ‘Turning the whole prison on its head.’

  ‘That’s nothing to do with you,’ says the warden in clipped tone. ‘So, what about it? Do you want to try? We won’t be back till tomorrow morning. We’re not allowed to leave you the bucket here, because you played up.’

  ‘No, thanks. But if I could have a blanket? It’s really cold in here.’

  ‘Of course. You’re entitled to two. Bögge, will you bring them?’ And when the prisoner’s gone: ‘You’ve got this thing here on the wall. You just need to pull on it if you need to, at night.’ More quietly: ‘But only if it’s really urgent. The night shift doesn’t like to be inconvenienced. All right, here’s your blankets.’

  It’s quiet in the cell. Slowly it gets dark. Tredup tries to think of his buried money, and then about how he wants to get away from here, into a different future. Would the nice warden let him out for five hundred marks?

  Suddenly the ceiling light blazes on. The key jingles again. A fat man with a face like a bulldog steps in, followed by a warden, both in white coats.

  ‘Is this the fellow who made all that racket, then?’ asks the fat man. ‘He’s a play-actor, you can tell that a mile off. Give us your hand,’ he gruffs. ‘Through the bars!

  ‘Pulse is regular, a bit of a flutter now, of course. Scared, are we? Gotta suffer the consequences? Worries?’

  Again: ‘Why did you yell out the window?’

  ‘I don’t know . . . I couldn’t stand it any more . . .’

  The doctor, mocking, to the hospital orderly: ‘“Couldn’t stand it any more”! Wimp! Didn’t like it, no? We straighten out kids like you in nothing flat. We have a bit of fun with you . . .’

  And, much louder: ‘We’ll ream you out! Don’t give me your bullshit about being sick! I’ll get you stuck in a punishment cell! You’ll stay there.’

  To the warden, suddenly perfectly quietly: ‘Look at this wretch. Turns the whole prison upside down. He’s got tears in his eyes now. It’s a disgrace. Calls himself a German! It makes me want to puke!’

  The door clanks shut again. The light is switched off.

  Tredup lies in the dark, his face in the blankets, a sob welling up in his throat that only his fear keeps from bursting out.

  Is there no limit to what they can do to me? How will I ever be able to look another human being in the face? I can’t stand it here, I want to go home, to the little room on the yard, to Elise and the children.

  The way Hans put his little hand in mine, and grabbed hold of my finger. He trusted me. Who will ever be able to trust me again? It’s all finished.

  Why did they have to take away my braces? I’d have to shred the blanket now.

  He must have dropped off, because suddenly there’s another man in the grey-green uniform at his bedside, shaking him.

  ‘Hey, you! What’s your name?’

  ‘Tredup.’

  ‘Come with me. You’re going to see the governor. Hold it, carry your shoes, you can walk in your stockinged feet. You’ve made enough noise for one day. No need to wake the others.’

  They walk quietly through the sleeping prison, with hundreds of doors, behind each one someone sleeping or waking.

  The warden shuffles along behind him in his slippers. ‘Up the steps,’ he says quietly. ‘Along the corridor.’

  I wonder what’s happening now, Tredup thinks in alarm. ‘Am I being punished? Couldn’t they have let me sleep?’

  ‘We’ve arrived.’

  The warden knocks on a door, a bright light behind it.

  ‘Well, go on in.—Put your shoes on first.’

  Behind a desk sits a large, clean-shaven man with a healthy complexion, a friendly expression and a bald, gleaming head. The room is very bright and clean. There are flowers . . .

  Tredup feels old, tired to death and soiled beyond belief.

  ‘I see. So you’re Tredup.’ The man looks at him for a very long time. ‘Tell me, Herr Tredup, what got into you this afternoon?’

  Tredup looks at the man for a moment. He’s not like the others, he thinks. And aloud: ‘Someone came into my cell, and told me there were farmers standing outside. And if I shouted for help, they would come and liberate me.’

  Governor Greve studies him intently, and his bright face seems to dull a little. ‘Were you asleep?’ he asks. ‘Did you dream?’

  ‘I wasn’t asleep.—Yes, I was, on second thoughts,’ says Tredup. ‘But it was a prison warden, a man with a little yellow goatee.’

  ‘A man with a little goatee,’ the governor repeats slowly. ‘How old are you, Herr Tredup?—You’re married, aren’t you?—With children?—Two. And all healthy?’

  ‘I wasn’t dreaming,’ insists Tredup. ‘The man with the goatee came in and told me what to do.’

  ‘All right, you weren’t dreaming. But if someone walks in and tells you to do something, do you always do it, without thinking?’

  Tredup stands there in silence.

  ‘After all, you’re in priso
n. You’ve been here for a few days? You’ve seen the walls and the locks and the wardens with their guns?’

  Tredup is silent.

  ‘Even if the fellow with the goatee beard really did talk to you about the farmers, what did you imagine happening? Did you think they would attack the prison and liberate you? How many farmers were standing under your window when you started shouting?’

  ‘I couldn’t see any. I just shouted.’

  ‘You “just shouted”. Without hope. Just because someone told you to?’

  ‘He told me I’d be freed.’

  ‘Yes, of course.’ The man suddenly lowers his gaze. Picks up some papers. Then, in a different tone of voice: ‘The reason I sent for you. The prosecutor’s office has agreed to let you go.’

  ‘Yes?’ asks Tredup fearfully.

  ‘Yes. The decree arrived tonight. And since prison seems not to agree with you, I thought I’d tell you right away.’

  ‘And I can . . . ?’ asks Tredup, falteringly. ‘When can I go?’

  ‘Tomorrow morning. Tonight. Whenever you like.’

  ‘Really? Even though I yelled?’

  ‘Even though. Yes, I’m thinking your yelling won’t have any terribly grave consequences.’ The governor picks up a piece of paper, looks at it with raised eyebrows, crumples it up and throws it into the wastepaper basket. ‘Do you want to go home right away?’

  ‘If that’s all right?’

  ‘We’ll manage. You’ll be able to come back and collect your personal items tomorrow.’

  ‘Thank you . . . thank you so much . . . I’ll never forget,’ whispers Tredup.

  ‘I’ll ring for the night warden,’ says the governor. ‘He’ll show you out.’

  A bell sounds quietly in the distance, followed by silence.

  ‘Incidentally,’ the governor says abruptly. ‘Mayor Gareis came to visit you a couple of days ago.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘I wasn’t able to accommodate his wish, but maybe you’d like to go and call on him now? He seemed to take an interest in you.—Warden, will you take this man to release. Zenker will still be around.—Goodnight, Herr Tredup.’

  And he holds out his hand to shake.