A Small Circus

by Hans Fallada

  He used to be convinced there was no intruder, and that Padberg was imagining things. He has spent hours wandering restlessly through the complex, not least to tire himself out for the day ahead, and never found anyone.

  But last night there was a light, Padberg saw it, and really saw it too, that was clear from his expression.

  So there is someone else around, some other ghost haunts this place besides him, someone cleverer than he is, otherwise he would have seen him by now.

  Thiel ponders. He has enough time to ponder, God knows. Now he remembers that Padberg said early on that he had seen the spy at work and how he was always gone as soon as Padberg set foot in the building.

  Either he has someone looking out for him . . .

  But that thought straight away confuses Thiel. The ancient building has too many entrances and exits. There would need to be ten lookouts, and even then there would remain the possibility of being surprised.

  Or else there’s some mechanism, some light or bell signal that warns the man. The whole building is full of wires, after all.

  Then there’s nothing for it but to hide in the editorial office himself, to hunker under the desk all night long.

  But Padberg has already tried that himself.

  So once again, Thiel prowls around aimlessly, through the dark corridors, up and down the unlit staircases, into the front rooms illuminated by the street lamps on the marketplace, into the typesetters’ room, whose skylights catch a glimmer of the never-completely-dark August sky, into the garden, which to his eyes is almost bright.

  One time, when he’s about to take the stairs from the dispatch to the editorial rooms on the second floor, something happens: he opens the door on to the staircase in that insane, silent warren of a house, and he hears in the dim distance, very softly, a bell.

  For a split second Thiel stands motionless.

  Then he races up the stairs, tears open the door to the editorial office . . .

  His truncheon is held aloft over his head . . .

  But there’s no one in the room. Along the walls are the broad bands of light from the street lamps. To Thiel’s night-accustomed eyes the room is bright as day. And it’s empty.

  But the door let into the opposite wall is swinging! It’s still swinging gently!!

  Thiel knows: a moment ago there was someone in here. He was here.

  He goes over to the desk.

  The desk drawer is open. Empty. Stacked up on top of the desk are its contents: being gone through, half gone through.

  Thiel puts them back in the drawer. He’ll not be back tonight.

  ‘Well, never mind, next time,’ Padberg comforts him.

  ‘Yeah. Or the hundredth time, but I’ll catch him.’ Padberg is happy.

  ‘And where’s the bell?’

  ‘Genius, I tell you! How I had to look for it! Over the stove there’s a cleaning vent in the chimney breast. That’s where it is. It’s pure chance that I happened to hear it at all.’

  ‘You left it there, though?’ asks Padberg, concerned.

  ‘Of course! It’ll still ring, but not for me any more. I switched it off. There’s a switch there, so you can turn it off during the day.’

  ‘All right then!’ says Padberg. ‘Happy hunting!’

  ‘Cheers!’ answers Thiel, and his stuffy loft doesn’t seem so bad any more.

  VI

  When Max Tredup came home late that night—yet again—it wasn’t from any bar or steamy embrace.

  He had gone up late to the town hall; he knew the mayor often sat in his office deep into the night, just because he was too lazy to go home, as people said.

  But the mayor wasn’t there, the mayor had left. The mayor had left instructions to leave the letter with him, Secretary Piekbusch. Tredup wasn’t ready for that, he had to ask the secretary for an envelope—a crested envelope with the Altholm arms on it—which he then addressed to Mayor Gareis and marked personal.

  Then, as he was going, he watched as the secretary tore open the envelope.

  After the fevered chase, there came lassitude, after the excitement of hope, the more familiar position of despondency. It was one thing slapping his wife around at lunchtime—he was desperate to get his hands on the safe keys, it was all in the heat of battle, he was following secret instructions from the mayor. But in the evening, following Piekbusch’s contempt in the anteroom, the way home stretching out ahead of Tredup, the blows became what they were: a piece of wretched behaviour with consequences he was afraid of.

  Tredup didn’t go home.

  He sat on a bench for a while, outside the town, in front of the playground. This was where the Circus Monte with its gypsy wagons had set up its little two-pole tent, from which night after night the oom-pah-pah music had sounded. Back then he hadn’t been able to tell Elise everything; today . . .

  He got up and went to the station. He bought a ticket for Stolpe, or more accurately to Stolpermünde. He wanted to get the thousand marks—the nine hundred and ninety marks—and give them to Elise, and say, everything’s all right now.

  He wanted to clear the air with Stuff. He would go to Gebhardt and say: Such and such is what the mayor offered me if I betray you to him. I’m just telling you for your information.

  Then, in Lohstedt, he got off and gave in his ticket.

  It was still too soon. Too soon to give Elise the money, to cut off his last escape route. For now there were other ways to bring her round: a bit of tenderness, a bit of attention, staying at home for an evening or two, a bit of bad-mouthing Stuff. And then some surprise: a bunch of wildflowers. Yes, that was the right thing, it didn’t cost him anything, and it also proved he hadn’t been in a pub.

  Later on, walking from Lohstedt to Altholm, through the deepening and quietening night, with the flowers in his hand and a breeze in his face, he grows milder. Something of the fear that always seems to occupy his heart dissolves. He tries to sing some of the songs he learned at school once, and they even come to him when bidden. Life’s not so bad.

  And, by golly, he has to bear it in mind that Elise is pregnant again. He must see that he gets the address from Stuff.

  How long ago was it? Right after his release from prison, which puts it four weeks ago, five. Perhaps still too early for the operation, well, but he could talk to Elise about it tonight, no harm in giving her a little hope and courage.

  Six miles from his beaten wife, a reconciliation seems easy enough. Once he’s in the yard, though . . .

  Well, he’s standing in the dark, it’s past midnight. The two windows to his room are open, the wind is tugging at the curtains, his wife still has a light on.

  He creeps closer, to spy on her. She’s bound to be sewing, darning something for him or the kids.

  No, she’s not sewing.

  She’s sitting by the cupboard, she has some paper in front of her, she’s writing something. He has a good view of her face in the lamplight.

  Oh, it’s a good face. It’s not for nothing that you spend years with one woman, have children together, sleep with her, and talk to her about money, or what to eat tomorrow, and if the film was good or bad.

  It’s the face for him.

  His heart feels soft. He quickly walks in.

  She hurriedly makes to push her writing away when she hears him. But then she remains seated, with her back to him, and she doesn’t say anything when he says hello.

  He feels a little shiver. It’s close in the room, and in spite of the open windows, there isn’t a good smell. He can’t get the children into the habit of walking across the yard to the outhouse at night, they prefer to use the potty, and Elise refuses to back him up.

  The cool, pure night air is a memory. Even so, he reaches over her shoulder, and drops the bouquet in front of her, on top of whatever she was writing.

  She stares disbelievingly at the flowers, she doesn’t seem to get it. Then she turns round and looks at him.

  He is sober. He has definitely had nothing to drink.

&nb
sp; She raises her head a little, her throat tautens, quietly she says: ‘Thank you.’

  Then, when she sees the change in his face, she remembers her writing. She makes a grab for it, but it’s too late. He’s already got it in his hands.

  It was chance that his eye happened to light on the envelope with the address. It was another chance that the address was so big, so legible, written in a deliberately childlike hand, that he could read it at two paces by the light of the oil lamp.

  But what sent his hand arrowing down at the letter was pure, deliberate malice.

  She sees it’s too late. He’s already reading it. She stands up, and leans with her back to the wall. Her head is lowered, she doesn’t even want to know what his face expresses while he reads.

  Once, as he mutters: ‘Oh, wonderful! Wonderful!’ she says quietly: ‘Think of the children, Max!’

  And, a little later: ‘I’d never have sent it, you know.’

  But it’s a pretty document that’s fallen into his hands. His bouquet happened to lie right across that precipitate of poison and cruelty, a few cornflower petals have fallen there, he blows them furiously out of the crease in the paper.

  ‘What in God’s name . . . ?’ he begins. He is still more puzzled than angry.

  ‘No. Don’t,’ she says hastily. ‘Let’s not talk about it tonight, Max. If you like, tomorrow. You brought me flowers. Let’s try once more. I want to be the way I was before. Put it away now. I’ll burn it. I swear I’ll never write another one. You know I’d never have sent it anyway.’

  He doesn’t hear her. ‘How can you?!’ he says. ‘So cruel. Do you know that that’s blackmail, and you can go to prison for that? And Stuff would always have believed it was me. Everyone would have thought so. I’d have wound up in prison—’

  ‘No, Max, please, not now—’

  ‘I never said it was Stuff who got the girls to have abortions. You jumped to that conclusion yourself. It was somebody completely different who told me—’

  ‘Please, give me the letter.’

  ‘And do you know what the really low thing is? Not only would you have got Stuff and me involved in it, the girls would have suffered too. Because you wanted to extort five hundred marks from Stuff, they would have had to go to prison. Did that not occur to you?’

  ‘I was so angry,’ she murmurs. ‘And I wouldn’t have sent it. Even if Stuff deserves it.’

  ‘He doesn’t deserve it.’

  She says quickly: ‘He’s a bad man. He gets you to drink and visit girls. And you’ve stopped working. Wenk says you’ve completely stopped going after advertisements.’

  ‘You’re lying. Wenk didn’t say one word about that. I heard what you and he were saying this morning.’

  ‘And the way Stuff is with his girlfriends is beastly. To think that you wanted to take me to the same woman, to get our baby . . .’

  She shudders, and turns to look at her sleeping children.

  ‘What else! Do you want another baby? Haven’t we got both hands full with the two we’ve got?’

  ‘But we have money now. We can perfectly well afford a third!’

  ‘We have no money. The thousand marks that Gareis blabbed about seem to have gone to your head. But I don’t have them, and you won’t ever see them.’

  ‘You’re lying. You keep telling me such vile lies. It’s just like the lie about Stuff. First you claim it wasn’t him with the abortions, and then you tell me not to drag him and his girls into trouble. So you do have the money.’

  ‘I’ve got nothing!’ yells Tredup in a fury. ‘You’re so low! Always after money! You want to blackmail my best friend for five hundred marks, that’s how low you are.’

  ‘I don’t want money at all. I don’t want your thousand marks, and I don’t want Stuff’s horrible money either. But I know that until I have your thousand marks, I won’t have you either. As long as you’ve got them, you’ll think: I can always leave, and you don’t give a shit about us.’

  ‘That’s woman’s logic for you! You don’t want my money, but you do.’

  ‘That’s right! And if you don’t understand that, you don’t understand logic.’

  ‘And as for the five hundred from Stuff . . . Betraying my friend, getting innocent girls packed off to jail, yuck!’ and he spits.

  ‘Hey!’ she cries, with eyes blazing. ‘You watch it! I could tell you something.’ She stops. ‘No, I don’t want to. I’m not going to talk about it any more.’

  He mocks her: ‘Because you don’t know anything! But I tell you, if you ever write a letter like that again, if you ever mail one! That’s grounds for divorce. I’ll be out of here so fast. Any judge worth his salt will grant a divorce where the wife is so low.’

  ‘Oh?’ she says. ‘Oh? And if the man is so low? If the man goes out and sells photographs and betrays poor farmers so that they wind up in prison, I suppose that’s decent? And he doesn’t even give the money to his wife, he drinks it up and spends it on girls. Decent, eh? And I was never, ever going to send my letter. You, if you remember, did sell your photographs.’

  ‘That’s completely different,’ he says in confusion. ‘A press photographer has to sell his pictures to any interested party.’

  ‘Oh, it’s different, is it?’ she cries in a fury. ‘I can’t actually see the difference. But, of course, if it’s you doing it, it’s always different, isn’t it? Do you know what you are? You’re a traitor! You’ve already betrayed me. I’ve heard about how, when you’re drunk, you tell them what I’m like in bed. And—’

  ‘Enough,’ he says dully. ‘The children—’

  But she’s not hearing him now. ‘And I want my letter back. I don’t want you running around with it in your pocket, and some time when you’re pissed again, telling everyone what a mean wife you’ve got. Give it to me.’

  She reaches for it. He holds on to it.

  Now she’s really fighting for it. He holds both her wrists in one hand, and in the other he holds the letter. Suddenly she dives at him with her teeth, and with a cry he lets go of her wrists.

  She reaches for the letter, but he hits out at her. They stumble through the room, bumping into furniture, the children are crying.

  The letter, crumpled in his hand, no longer holds him back. He punches her three or four times with his closed fist. She screams and falls down.

  The door opens. The greengrocer who owns the house, and one or two neighbours, appear.

  ‘I’m not having any more of this, Herr Tredup. I’ve had enough. You’re always coming home drunk and having rows. I want you out of here on the first.’

  The woman stands up and walks over to the door. ‘Get out of here. This is no business of yours. And we’re not accepting your notice. The housing department gets to decide whether we stay here or go somewhere else. Isn’t that right, Max?’

  ‘Yes, Elise,’ he says.

  VII

  District President Temborius gets up.

  ‘Thank you for coming to see me, gentlemen. I found what you told me very distressing. It will be checked, and I can only ask you to bear with me until that time. Patience, patience and more patience. But I think I can fairly tell you now, without being indiscreet, that not only here, no, but in the highest places, eyes are being directed at Altholm, and that steps are being considered—grave steps.

  ‘Again, thank you, and please be patient.’

  Temborius bows. Next to him, leaping up, the two other members of the Stolpe government also bow: Government Councillor Schimmel and Chief Adviser Meier.

  The representatives of the financial and business life of Altholm are a little dilatory, but even they manage the getting-to-their-feet-and-bowing in reasonable time. The whole table bows and sways like a rye field in a high wind.

  Then the Altholm delegation take their departure.

  The president watches them go, one hand on the desk, the other clutching a medallion on his watch-chain. Chief Adviser Meier is stacking files, and Government Councillor Schimmel is scanning
book spines on a shelf.

  The door closes, and all three relax.

  ‘Well, that was that,’ says the president, sitting down. ‘I must say, I’m not surprised. Not at all.—But please, gentlemen, won’t you stay a little longer?’

  The other two sit down.

  ‘We have concerns. Concerns,’ says Temborius, and it’s quite clear that he is not unhappy with the concerns that are pressing on him at this hour. ‘The lower reaches of the administration make mistakes. Then the people come to us. And it’s up to us to make things better. But I think I can see the way of atonement and conciliation.’

  ‘Certainly,’ remarks Government Councillor Schimmel, ‘Gareis has made mistakes.’

  ‘Gareis!’ And after a pause, a little louder: ‘Gareis! Chief Adviser, what did I tell Mayor Gareis when he came here before the demonstration? Tell me!’

  ‘That he would need the militia,’ Chief Adviser Meier hurriedly replies.

  ‘Yes. I said that as well. But that’s not what we’re talking about just now. What did I say in this very room, Chief Adviser?’

  Meier racks his brain. His boss has said quite a lot of things in his time, after all. ‘That the farmers were aggressive.’

  ‘Yes, dear Chief Adviser. I also said that.—But it’s important to separate the essential from the inessential. What did I—? All right then. I said the demonstration must be banned. Did I not say that? Did I not call for that? Repeatedly? Using all the authority of my office?’

  ‘Yes,’ the adviser says hurriedly. ‘You called for it again and again.’

  ‘Exactly. I called for it again and again. And now that the car’s lost its way, does the man come to me? Has he turned to me for help? No. The representatives of commerce come to me. He’s back in Altholm, writing a report. Nothing else. And what a report, at that!’

  The gentlemen stare into space. Their boss feels a need to talk, very well, let him.

  ‘What is in the report? The boycott is a busted flush. Its effects are barely noticeable.—Well, gentlemen, you’ve heard the representatives of the town, have you not?’