A Small Circus

by Hans Fallada

  VIII

  Night has fallen, a good, clear, moonless July night. Above the small, rather dispersed settlement of Altholm, a mile this way, a mile that, the sky is full of stars.

  You can see them, the stars, twinkling up above, and Gareis, still on his constitutional with Political Adviser Stein, looks up at them. ‘You must remember, Stein: follow the back axle of the Wain, and you find the Pole Star. And the three all together, that’s Orion’s Belt. You’ve always been a city boy, but my father took me in hand. We walked home across the country, from some slaughtering where he’d turned out to help. Being a barber in the country isn’t much of a living.’

  ‘Everything’s asleep,’ says the political adviser. ‘And tomorrow the battle resumes.’

  ‘Is that such a bad thing? It’s good to have to fight.’

  ‘Is it worth it?’

  The mayor stops. He pushes his hat back, and in the dark, his huge bulk seems to loom over his slight friend the political adviser. ‘Sometimes I wonder what you’re even doing in the Party? Is it worth it . . . ? Of course it’s worth it.’

  ‘Comrades can be just as pig-headed as anyone else.’

  ‘Well . . . ? Anyway, that’s wrong. They are dissatisfied, and dissatisfaction is more valuable than contentment.’

  ‘I think you’ll stand alone in the coming fight.’

  ‘Will I? I don’t think you know the workers. The workers will understand that I am fighting for them.’

  ‘For them? But it was just Frerksen making a hash of things.’

  ‘No. No. I won’t admit that. Not even to you. He was in the right.’

  And suddenly, very animated: ‘Stop! Look! See that!—It was a shooting star. Did you make a wish? Of course you missed it. I made a wish.’

  The political adviser: ‘What did you wish?’

  ‘I’ll tell you in a month. Or in six months.’

  ‘But you will tell me?’

  ‘Yes. I promise.’

  Tredup, too, trotting home from prison, is looking up at the stars. But he’s not interested in the constellations. He just wants to see the place where he buried his money, when he was walking home from Stolpe. Ideally, he would go there right now, in the middle of the night, and dig it up from under the pines near the sand dunes. And would leave Altholm, Pomerania and Germany, and go out into the world. Some part of it where he didn’t know the language, didn’t know the country, where no one will ever learn what happened to him . . .

  But he has Elise and the children.

  With an oppressed hunch, turning to check for pursuers, he creeps into his hot, smelly flat.

  Stuff is walking with lowered head. If he sees the stars at all, it will be their reflections in the water, in the pond, along which he is walking on his way to the pub. But he’s not thinking of them, he’s thinking of his new boss, his new wage, cut by a hundred a month (they finally ended up splitting the difference, and he gave up his expenses). He thinks about the muzzle they’ve slapped on him. Not being allowed to bite any more! Being prevented from snapping at the Red rabble by his cowardly boss. It would have been the best sort of end to his life, to be able to fight the good fight in good faith, used up, cynical old press warhorse that he is.

  But he’s not allowed to. He has to be tame, as always. Maybe a little jab occasionally, but having to kowtow to the Red majority in the town assembly . . .

  I’ll get you just the same! I don’t care what it costs me!

  He blinks up at a window that is still lit up through the shrubbery. Hospital, he thinks. Still busy dying and multiplying as ever. Wonder what the point is . . .

  The man lying under the blinking light doesn’t have any notion of dying. Henning lies, woozy with morphine, in dreams. He’s waving the flag again. It whooshes through the beautiful blue-gold day.

  And suddenly there are a lot of men there, the room is crowded with their shadows. That’s right, they’re standing guard over him, they told him he was lying there as a police prisoner. No clothes in the ward, nothing but the hospital gown on his body.

  But there’s no hurry as yet. When I’m ready, I’ll make a break for it, even from prison. They’ll have to tell Gruen to keep an eye on Tredup. It would not be good if they found out I was involved in the bombing as well.

  Gruen meanwhile is looking. He’s prowling around the town dumps, looking, a confused male witch, for three things: a tin can, a cardboard box and a broken alarm clock. He’s grinning like a loon, and the lick of beard on his chin is trembling and dancing.

  Will you take it on your oath as a servant of the State?

  Of course I’ll take it on oath, Governor.

  The remand prisoner Tredup is adamant that you told him to shout to the farmers. He’s dreaming. I was down on C1, giving out water.

  On my oath. Definitely! The way they like you to swear on that constitution of theirs, no God about it, constitution . . . whatever they call a constitution . . . There’s the tin can.

  In their matrimonial bed, Commander Frerksen is holding his wife.

  ‘It was a terrible day, Annie. But I did right. I have everyone’s support.’

  ‘And Gareis? What did Gareis say?’

  ‘Gareis doesn’t count. Someone from the government, an agent, told me I put up a good show.’

  ‘What about the injured? Are they badly hurt?’

  ‘They’re all under arrest. Why should anyone feel sorry for them, they’re all troublemakers.—Is that you, Hans? What are you doing?’

  ‘I need to go to the lavatory, Father.’

  ‘Not in the middle of the night, you don’t. You should control yourself. All right then, on you go. But be quiet about it.’

  Thiel too is trying hard to be quiet, as he saws through the last of the bars in the cell window in the Stolpe detention centre. It’s not hard to get the message if you come upon steel files in the smoked herring you get once a week. Only it took him rather a long time to do the sawing.

  But tonight he’s almost there. The blankets, ripped up and knotted together into a rope, are ready on his bed. And once he’s on the farm, he’ll be at liberty again. He’s a long way from being sentenced for the bombing.

  Cautiously he removes the sawn-off bars from the corner—just enough to permit him to wriggle through—and lays them on the bed. He ties the rope to the remaining stump of bar, and hoists himself into the opening.

  He listens. His heart isn’t beating as fast as he thought it would, and his grip is dry.

  The night is dark. The streets are very quiet. Up above are the glinting stars.

  Yes, I was a junior official, who knew about nothing but figures. Suddenly I’ve turned into something completely different, and that’s fine too. But I’ll give Henning grief for leaving me in the lurch like this. If those files weren’t from him.—Let’s go!

  He grips the rope and abseils down into the dark.

  Also in the dark is Padberg, in a dark entryway opposite the Bauernschaft’s editorial offices. He is spying on the windows of his office, which are similarly dark. Or seem so. But twice already he’s caught the flash of a light, perhaps a torch, he’s pretty sure.

  The mole is rummaging around again. How did he get in? Surely not through the front door, or the back, which leaves . . . ? Over the roof or up from the basement! In that case he must live on the block, maybe in one of the abutting buildings . . . Ooh, wait!

  But he can’t remember where his typesetters live. Hang on!

  The fellow just missed a trick, a white beam brushed the ceiling, before vanishing.

  He’s fairly bold. Just as well I’ve got the copy for tomorrow in my pocket, otherwise something might have happened to it. I’m curious whether he’ll steal the hundred-mark note. If he leaves it, that would certainly mean something.

  Padberg shrugs his shoulders.

  There’s little point in hanging on here. If I unlock the door downstairs, he’ll disappear. But tomorrow, matey, tomorrow night I’ll be waiting under the desk for you.
r />   There’s another desk where a lot of work is secretly being done tonight. In the Altholm town hall, long since deserted, the door to the mayor’s office opens.

  A small shadow stands in the door frame for a moment, and listens. Then he creeps up to the desk, feels around it, and pulls out the top-left drawer. He gropes inside it. On the top is a piece of paper, foolscap. Thick paper folded in the middle, to fit into a long envelope. The hands continue to grope. There, under it, is the envelope, hastily ripped open, but the blind fingertips feel the wax that sealed it.

  ‘The secret orders,’ whispers the little man. ‘I’ve got them. Now you wait, Comrade Gareis, now we’ve got you where we want you.’

  Across the sleeping countryside a car drives slowly, jerkily, grinding. Sometimes when it stops, and Bandekow and Rehder talk about the route, they can clearly hear the surf breaking to the left.

  When the car left that morning, there were five in it: Padberg, Henning, Rohwer, Rehder and Bandekow. Where are they now?

  Henning beaten to a pulp and locked up, Rohwer arrested and in prison, Padberg gone off in a huff.

  Only two remain, but they have with them a third man. He’s lying in the back of the car, Farmer Banz, whom they managed to hide from the militia in the basement of the auction house. For the most part he lies there quietly, but sometimes he speaks, and then what he says argues how good it was that they didn’t leave him in the hands of the police.

  ‘We have to get the dynamite out of the barn . . . It’s not safe to leave it there in its present condition.’

  ‘I can take it,’ offers Bandekow.

  ‘Yes, perhaps. But not tonight. Tonight everything’s jinxed.’

  ‘Yes. So you say.’

  In the beam of the headlights, the cottage turns up. ‘I hope we can get your wife up without too much bother.’

  ‘And I hope she’s not too alarmed.’

  But the woman isn’t alarmed. ‘Are you just coming to collect it, or are you bringing him back?’

  ‘We’ve got him in the car, but . . .’

  ‘Is he alive?’

  ‘Yes. But he’s hurt.’

  ‘Can I put him to bed, or are the police after him?’

  ‘The police don’t know anything about him. Maybe later, but not now.’

  ‘You take hold of his feet.’

  She holds the hurt head in her firm hands. They lay him on the bed in the room.

  ‘Can we help with anything? Do you need money?’

  ‘Just go. I’ll get by.’

  ‘Best not send for a doctor.’

  ‘A “doctor” . . . ?’ she repeats mockingly. ‘I had all my children without a doctor. That little scratch? I’ll wash it out with cattle urine. And compresses against the fever. In another week he’ll be lifting potatoes.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘No, no, just go!’

  A man is dawdling along the Burstah, where only one light in three seems to be on. There is almost no one left on the streets, and so our man has the whole of it to himself. He strolls along the middle of the road, hands buried in his pockets, whistling to himself.

  The man stops at the traffic island on the Grünhofer crossing. He’s not quite so blithe and indifferent as he tries to seem. He looks closely at the street and the buildings, the patch of grass, the park around the monument.

  On a bench he spots a pair of lovers, in the shade of the bushes.

  He hesitates for a moment, thinks, but then he goes up to the monument anyway.

  They’ll not see anything. They only have eyes for each other, if that.

  This time, Matthies, the KPD official, walks circumspectly round the geranium bed, careful to tread only on the grass. Then he is in the shadow of the monument, behind the plinth. He reaches down and picks up the handle of the sabre.

  As I thought! He has too much to do, poor Frerksen, and forgot all about his sabre.

  He pulls it out of the ground and stows it carefully down one trouser leg. Then he secures the basket to his braces.

  There. I’ll get you home like that, no bother. And I’d like to see the look on your face, Comrade Frerksen, when we cart it around on our next jolly, with a placard: bloodhound frerksen.

  Matthies slinks past the lovers. ‘Can I have some too, girl?’

  The lovers, a dark knot, make no sound. ‘Go to it, my son. The world needs proles.’

  He disappears round the corner, past the News. The lovers take each other more firmly, under the starry canopy.

  PART II

  The Townies

  1

  The Origin of the Boycott

  I

  The sky slowly brightens with approaching morning.

  Behind the curtains, fluttered by the occasional puff of breeze, Max Tredup has been able to make out the darker shadow of the window-crosses all night. But now the darkness loses its edge and outlines merge. An early bird stirs outside and tweets once or twice, as if mistakenly, in the great pre-dawn silence.

  Tredup lies there perfectly still. He looks towards the window and tries to find courage to meet the approaching day. How is he to encounter people? With what expressions will they look at him, the released remand prisoner? Will Stuff shake his hand? Will Schabbelt throw him out?

  He tries to breathe regularly, so that Elise won’t know he’s awake. But she’s probably asleep. His shoulder touches her shoulder, they are lying on their sides, back to back, he can feel her heaviness, her warmth.

  If there is no other way, he will take the thousand marks and disappear with them. Find a job somewhere, in a newspaper advertising department or as a copy-writer. He will send Elise money. He can’t stay in Altholm.

  ‘Tell me about the thousand marks,’ says Elise.

  ‘What thousand marks?’ he asks, in bewilderment.

  So Elise was awake after all.

  ‘Is it as much as that? Gareis told me.’

  ‘Gareis doesn’t know anything,’ he stammers. ‘I’m supposed to be given some money. But I have no idea of when, or if it’s as much as a thousand marks.’

  ‘Turn round and face me, Max. Look at me. No, I don’t need to see you to know that you’re lying to me.’

  ‘Where would I have a thousand marks? You went through all my things when I was in prison.’

  ‘I did and all. You’ve tucked it away somewhere. You’re different now.’

  ‘I’m not different at all.’

  ‘What shall I give the children for their tea? The grocer’s wife makes a face when I keep asking her to put it on the bill.’

  ‘Maybe Wenk will give me an advance today.’

  ‘Ten marks. And I’m thirty-two in debt already. Where are the thousand marks? Why don’t you give them to me? You always used to give me any money you had!’

  ‘I haven’t got any. That’s all there is to it.’

  ‘Yes you do. What do you want? Do you want to leave us? What’s going to happen when the new little one comes?’

  ‘A new baby?’ he asks angrily. ‘First I’ve heard of it.’

  ‘You know just as well as I do that you got me pregnant today.’

  ‘I never. You’re imagining it, because you’re after my money.’

  ‘Yes, you did and all. What’s the point in you being careful for a year, and then you’re away from me for a week, and you come back and you’re crazy?’

  ‘Should I not have been careful in the last year?’

  ‘Don’t talk rubbish. You should either be careful all the time or forget about it.’

  ‘And if I really did get you pregnant,’ he says, slowly, feeling his way forward, ‘well, there’s a woman on the Kleine Lastadie who can get rid of it.’

  ‘How would you know that?’ she asks. ‘So I get to go to prison as well as you?’

  ‘She knows her business, the woman, she does it with water and a syringe.’

  ‘Who told you? Did they tell you about that in prison?’

  ‘No. Not in prison.’

  ‘Oh, so you knew
it before? So is that why you weren’t careful last night?’

  ‘I’m getting up now,’ says Tredup.

  ‘You’re staying put. You’ll only wake the children, and I’ll have their racket from five in the morning.’

  ‘You’ve changed, Elise.’

  ‘Of course I’ve changed if you have. Where did you put the money?’

  ‘I don’t have any.’

  ‘What are you going to pay the woman with, then? She’s bound to want fifty or a hundred marks.’

  ‘Twenty-five.’

  ‘So where will you get them from?’

  ‘I’ll borrow them.’

  ‘Who’s going to loan you twenty-five marks? No one!’

  ‘Oh, I’ll get them all right.’

  ‘Who from? I just want to know who from?’

  ‘Well, I expect Stuff would loan me them, for one.’

  ‘I see, Stuff. Fatty Stuff!’

  ‘Yes, Stuff. So?’

  ‘Then was it Stuff who told you about the woman too?’

  ‘No, it never! Someone else told me.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Not Stuff.’

  ‘I always had a feeling that Henni was getting big when Stuff and her were going together,’ says Frau Tredup. ‘Then all at once, she was skinny as a pine tree again.’

  ‘You women are good at imagining things like that.’

  ‘But then Stuff will have to give you at least a hundred marks, otherwise he could be in a lot of trouble.’

  ‘But I keep telling you,’ yells Tredup, ‘that it wasn’t Stuff! You’re mad, got it, mad, mad! You’re always on about money. Thousand marks, a hundred marks. It doesn’t stop: money, money, money!’

  ‘You’ll wake the children with your shouting, but you don’t care. They don’t hang on to your apron strings and wail because there’s nothing to eat. Miss Lange told me she’ll send Grete home the next time she turns up at school without underwear. The boys try to cop a look. Give me money to buy underwear for her.’

  ‘Yeah, yeah. Money, money, money. You’ll make me a proper son of a bitch. I’ll get some out of the safe, then, shall I? I’ll find a drunk to rob. I’ll send Grete round to Manzow on Calvinstrasse, because he gets a kick out of little girls. I’ll—’