A Small Circus

by Hans Fallada

  The gentlemen confirm that they have.

  ‘The boycott is catastrophic, ruinous, it’s bringing the economy of the town to its knees, but no: a busted flush.—A cobbler might write such a report. It is in fact cobblers.’

  Suddenly Temborius is smiling again. ‘Well, I’ll fix it. I’ll even things out.’

  Very warmly: ‘Did you ever, Government Councillor, examine the legal side of the affair? How does the state prosecution office view the events?’

  ‘There will almost certainly be charges brought against some of the farmers. The leaders will be made an example of. Juridically these are the possibilities: Damage to property. Insulting behaviour. Actual bodily harm. Breach of the peace. Causing an affray.’

  ‘Well, that’s quite a bit to be getting on with.’ The president is far from dissatisfied. ‘No laughing matter if you’re a farmer. And you think convictions will be brought in?’

  ‘I do.—I should also like to point out that according to my information, the parties of the Right may well be bringing parliamentary questions shortly in relation to the events of Altholm.’

  ‘Correct. You are well informed, Schimmel. I too have my ministerial sources. You know, gentlemen . . . And in view of these forthcoming questions, I’m actually in favour of proceeding with all speed, for once.

  ‘The minister has not yet asked for the files. I am therefore still free to take decisions as I see fit. The minister’s reactions are not completely predictable, because unfortunately Herr Gareis too has certain . . . Well, just let me say I don’t completely understand the minister and his likes and dislikes. At least, we may be sure that he won’t reverse any previously passed decisions of mine. Therefore . . .’

  The gentlemen prick up their ears.

  ‘We will . . .’

  The historic significance of this moment is shiningly apparent in the face of the president. He holds a pencil upright in the air.

  ‘We will once again adjust, correct, compensate, conciliate, rub out the errors of the lower layer of government. For that, we mustn’t too closely identify ourselves with any position. We must be fair to everyone.

  ‘The feelings of the peasantry, the feelings of the townspeople, the feelings of all Pomerania are running against the Altholm police. But we will give the police confirmation that they behaved correctly, we will lend our support to central authority, we will not stiffen the necks of the rebels.

  ‘But . . .’ He smiles subtly. ‘We will slaughter a goat. Feast of reconciliation. Make a sacrifice. Purim, I believe your people call it, Chief Adviser?’

  The adviser smiles in turn.

  ‘This is what we will do. We say the police have acted correctly, but . . . There is a middle way. It’s all possible nowadays. Administration has become such a refined art. I’m not thinking of Gareis, Gareis still has some strength. But maybe that over-assiduous gentleman, what was his name again . . . ?’

  ‘Frerksen?’ volunteers Chief Adviser Meier.

  He is praised. ‘Correct! Well done!! Frerksen. Then, when we have soothed popular feeling by this sacrifice, then, gentlemen, we bring them to the table. Then, under my chairmanship, we will iron out some differences and effect conciliation.’

  ‘With the farmers too?’

  ‘By all means. We invite, first and foremost, the large agricultural associations, the representatives of the communities, the interest groups. If, say, we include three of those peasants among thirty others, rest assured they will follow the majority. We have plenty of experience of that.

  ‘Thank you for the moment, gentlemen. I must say, I feel rather optimistic. Not a facile optimism, no, not at all, rather an optimism based on mature experience. The storm has blown over, lightning has struck, hail has come down.

  ‘And at that moment we come along and put up a rainbow.

  ‘Thank you, gentlemen.’

  VIII

  The morning sun shines brightly into the front room of Stolpermünde-Abbau. It paints a broad band of light on the wall, just under the ceiling. And that golden beam, in which there are thousands of dust particles jigging and dancing, moves, slides down the wall, till it settles, just as broad and beaming, on the checkered coverlet.

  Then it brushes the pillow.

  The invalid becomes restless. He turns his head this way and that, but the light is everywhere. So he opens his eyes, shuts them quickly, opens them again.

  Banz sits up.

  It’s a slow process, his bandaged head keeps wanting to return to the pillows. In the end, though, the man is sitting upright and looking out into the room.

  He nods slowly when he sees where he is.

  Then he listens. The house is very quiet, the buzzing of flies is the only sound, hundreds and hundreds of flies. Again, the man nods.

  And listens further. Listens out into the yard. But there too everything is quiet. Not the clank of a cow’s chain, not a single footfall.

  All quiet.

  The man is set at ease. But there is one thing he still wants to know. There is a calendar hanging beside the door. If his wife has kept good order, it will have been kept up to date. Then he will know what day it is today. But the calendar is hard to see from the bed, Banz has to lean way out from the pillows. He blinks his eyes hard, the type on the calendar is so blurry.

  Then Banz loses his balance. His head strikes the side of the bed and then a chair leg, and the man is left lying on the ground at the foot of the bed. His head hurts, he fills a little sick, but Banz is grinning with satisfaction: it’s much cooler outside the bed.

  Now there is nothing for it but to wait for his wife to come. To go by the sun, it must be about eleven, he shouldn’t have more than an hour to wait.

  He still can’t read the calendar. He will try later on to drag himself closer to it, but not now, he is still too feeble. With astonishment, he realizes that he can feel flies walking around on his hands. He must have been ill for a long time for his skin to have become so soft.

  He lies there a while, drifting in and out of consciousness. When he wakes up again, the sunbeam is still at the head of the bed.

  He listens, and maybe it was the sound that woke him up: there’s somebody out in the yard. He hears the footfall distinctly. It’s not familiar to him, no farmer’s tread. There’s something hasty and stumbling in it. Not one he knows.

  Well, he’ll see soon enough who it is outside, if he stays alive long enough. If the fellow wants something, he’ll come in. Banz almost completely shuts his eyes, and peeps at the door through a crack in them.

  Sure enough, here he comes. The metal bell at the top of the door that rings when someone opens it sounds. The man is in the hallway.

  Of course he starts off by knocking on the door to the left. Strangers in the house always knock on the left, which is where the children sleep. Then there’s a knock on the middle door. The kitchen.

  Now he’s knocking on the door to Banz’s room, but Banz doesn’t dream of calling out ‘Come in!’ He’s lying there on a plate for a visitor, in his nightshirt on the ground, with his bandaged head against the chair leg, apparently unconscious. He’ll soon see what kind of fellow it is, if he comes in and sees all that mess.

  The door opens, and a squinnying Banz sees it’s someone in uniform, in a field-grey uniform. He tries to think what sort of uniform it is. Reichswehr? But that doesn’t have the red epaulettes. Then he sees that the man doesn’t have his sword-belt on. That means he’s not here on official business.

  Now Banz keeps his eyes clenched tight. Let’s see if he’s the sort of idiot who’ll be taken in by his seeming unconsciousness.

  The uniform, after standing in the doorway for a moment, walks into the middle of the room. He has a firm stride, as though to waken the sleeper, but Banz thinks: You tramp all you like. I can tell there’s something not quite right about your gait.

  The man stops, clears his throat, and says: ‘Hey!’

  Banz thinks: Well, ‘hey’ is something they all know how to say. Let�
��s see what else you know.

  Apparently the man at that instant has reached his limits. There is silence in the room. Only the buzzing and droning of flies.

  Wonder what he’ll do? thinks Banz, and he feels like blinking his eyes, but manages not to.

  The man takes another couple of strides closer to Banz. Then away again. Then a chair is moved, and the man sits down.

  Not so bad, thinks Banz. Just leaves me lying here. Well . . .

  The man rustles in his pockets, Banz hears paper. Wonder if he’s got a warrant? But those aren’t executed by the Reichswehr.

  A couple of unidentifiable sounds, then a match is struck—puff puff puff—and there’s a glorious smell of cigars.

  Son of a bitch, thinks Banz, and blinks his eyes. ‘Are you awake now?’ asks the man.

  ‘Depends,’ says Banz, opening his eyes wider. ‘I don’t exactly know you.’

  ‘You can’t know everyone,’ says the uniformed one, who also sports a yellow goatee.

  ‘You’re right about that,’ agrees the farmer.

  Pause.

  ‘What uniform is that, by the way?’ asks Banz.

  ‘That’s a prison-warden uniform,’ says the uniform.

  ‘So you’re in prison?’ asks Banz.

  ‘For life,’ replies the man, and laughs. A whinnying laugh. Just like a goat.

  Pause.

  The man says extenuatingly: ‘This is a Republic uniform, I know. Earlier, I used to be a naval officer. That was blue or white. In those uniforms we never starved. No, sir.’

  ‘No,’ says Banz.

  Pause. The flies drone.

  ‘Are you comfortable like that?’ asks the man.

  ‘You can leave me like this. It’s not bad.’

  ‘Must be cooler than it is in bed.’

  ‘It is that, too.’

  The man rustles in his pocket.

  Wonder what’s coming now? thinks Banz.

  The man produces a piece of paper.

  Is it that prison guards make their own arrests now? thinks Banz. They used to have militia to do that.

  ‘Here,’ says the man, and passes Banz a newspaper. It’s been read many times, he can tell, the folds are crumbling, and the front part is quite grey.

  It is a police announcement. The reward posted for information leading to the arrest of the Stolpe Bomber has been increased to ten thousand marks. The announcement comes complete with pictures. There is a margarine crate. An alarm clock. A tin can and some wires. All the things you need to make a proper bomb. And a detailed description of how it was put together. If you like, a recipe for home-made bombs. The police will have found some bits and pieces, and experts had reconstituted it. A good job.

  ‘A good job,’ says the man. ‘If you like, a recipe for how to make bombs. I must say, I think it turned out pretty well.’

  Banz prefers to shut his eyes again at this point. He knows nothing. He hears nothing.

  The man continues to chatter away: ‘I assembled all the stuff at the dump: boards and tin can and wires and battery and an alarm clock. With me, no one will be able to source the components.’

  Banz is fast asleep.

  ‘Then I studied clockmaking. My sergeant swore at me for taking his clock apart. But I learned a lot from it, and the one from the dump keeps good time. It’ll go off whenever I want it to. To the minute.’

  Banz is snoring by now.

  ‘And the battery’s easy enough to fix up. It’s so stupid just to throw them away. All you need is acid, and the glue at the top, you can get that. Then you load it up. You should see the lovely spark it strikes when my alarm clock goes off.’

  Banz is asleep.

  ‘Now all I need is something to fill the can with. But it won’t be that hard to find, what do you think?’

  But Banz is asleep.

  The uniform says: ‘I’ve thought about who to take out first: Gareis or Frerksen. Frerksen was the first to cut loose, and sicked the police on to the farmers, but Henning did say: “The son of a bitch is Gareis.”’

  Banz blinks.

  ‘Henning said: “If the high-ups aren’t in the mood, Frerksen has his tail between his legs.” It was Gareis who lured the peasants in. Henning says first he was all friendly, and allowed everything, just to get them demonstrating. So he gets some bodies to smash up, to make an example of them, because they don’t pay their taxes, and that business with the oxen.’

  Banz listens.

  The man explains: ‘Henning is still in hospital. And we have to stand guard outside the door. Because he’s a prisoner. That’s how I got to meet him.’

  ‘Why is Henning in hospital?’

  The goatee is all contempt. ‘Don’t you know? You really are a hick farmer! Don’t know anything about anything. Because Henning refused to surrender the flag they beat him up so badly in Altholm they crippled him for life.’

  ‘Right. I see,’ says Banz. ‘I think that was news to me.’

  ‘Henning is a hero,’ says Auxiliary Warden Gruen, proud to know such a hero. ‘He got thirty-one sabre blows on his arms and hands. The farmers all swear by Henning. And even in Altholm they know that the flag-bearer is a hero.’

  ‘A flag-bearer,’ says Banz, ‘stands and falls with his flag.’

  ‘That’s right,’ says Gruen. ‘That’s why he’s a hero.’

  ‘So he is,’ says Banz.

  Pause.

  ‘What about it, then?’ asks the uniformed man. ‘Do I break open the barn and get the stuff out? Or are you going to give me a key?’

  Banz reflects. ‘I don’t know if it’s still there,’ he says finally.

  ‘Of course it’s still there. Where else is it going to be? The others don’t want it, that’s for sure.’

  ‘The key’s hanging in the kitchen. Beside the butter churn. Unless my wife has pocketed it.’

  ‘All right,’ says the man, and he goes out.

  Banz hears him fossicking around outside, that same stumbling gait. When he hears it, he feels like saying to the man: Get lost, won’t you? But he can’t get up.

  Then the barn door bangs open. He even hears the sound of the padlock.

  Wonder if he’ll find the chest? thinks Banz. If he comes back and says, Where are the chests? I’ll lay him out.

  The door rattles again. The keys jingle again. The stumbling gait approaches.

  ‘I hung up the key by the butter churn. I’ll be on my way. Shall I lift you back on to your bed?’

  ‘Where’re you carrying it?’

  ‘I’ve got it loose in my pockets. It’ll attract less attention that way.—Shall I pick you up and put you back to bed?’

  ‘I’m fine as I am. Just go.’

  ‘I’m going.’

  ‘You do that.’

  IX

  It’s a radiant morning, and every bit as radiant, as bright and as round as the glorious August sun, is Mayor Gareis, stepping into Political Adviser Stein’s office in the ninth hour.

  ‘Top of the morning to you, Political Adviser. How’s it hanging? By golly, how dark and grim and anxious you’re looking! On a morning like this! Did you go for a stroll last night?’

  He doesn’t wait to hear the answer.

  ‘I was out and about in Berlin, I tell you, what a city! The work there must be there! I’d love to be unleashed on Berlin!’

  He stands there in trousers and waistcoat, swinging his great belly. He laughs.

  ‘The fools here say I want to be Oberbürgermeister. My God, maybe I do a bit, just to annoy that administrative genius of a Niederdahl. But be stuck here in Altholm all my life . . . ? I don’t think so. A cosy home with roses growing in the garden, and the same squalid horse-trading every budget . . . ? No thanks! It’s Berlin for me!’

  He drops heavily into an armchair, which quivers. ‘Or Duisburg. Or Chemnitz. Or some dormitory town outside Berlin that I could get moving. But Altholm? Altholm? Where’s the charm of Altholm?’

  ‘It seems to me,’ his adviser remarks drily
, ‘you can’t have visited your office yet.’

  ‘Nor have I, nor have I. And when I see your face, Steinchen, it makes me feel like skiving off and going to the country. What would you say to ordering the car and driving out to the seaside? Have a swim. Go and eat somewhere afterwards. There’s surely going to be some restaurant somewhere where they don’t know my face, and they’ll feed us, in spite of the boycott. And then slowly drive home in the evening . . .’

  ‘They’ve turned off all the lights here,’ the adviser remarks enigmatically.

  ‘Well, then, I’ll turn them all on again, Steinchen, I will. So. I take it some nonsense or other happened the day I was gone. It’s always the way, isn’t it? All I need to do is pack my suitcase in the afternoon, and people will start braining each other in the marketplace.’

  ‘I would go and have a look, Mayor.’

  ‘If I know I’m going to step in dog shit, why be in such a hurry? Is it the farmers?’

  Political Adviser Stein nods sorrowfully.

  ‘You know, the business with the farmers doesn’t interest me any more. I’ve really stopped caring about it. It’s dealt with. Steinchen, I’ve been to see the minister. We talked it through, my God, there’s a man, at last. I feel I can stomach the Party again, it’s not just bickering and deals, but people who want to get things done. Never mind how.—No, the farmers’ rumpus is over. The men of the Right will get their answer in Parliament, and it will be nice and clear, and they won’t ask any more questions. Political Adviser, the minister is giving us his backing.’

  ‘That’s as may be, but the district president isn’t.’

  ‘Temborius? The foldaway file? The stodgy legal gateau, dusted with dust? What does it matter what he wants, if his boss has decided?’

  ‘What if Temborius has got in there first?’

  The fat man leans way back in his chair, shuts his eyes, and twiddles his thumbs.

  ‘All right,’ he says slowly, ‘Political Adviser Stein, then we step in the shit with the full weight of our personality. What is it?’

  ‘Temborius has written. To the magistracy. And to you. The one to you is on your desk. But the one to the magistracy is enough on its own. Full of misfavour.’