A Small Circus

by Hans Fallada

  Three minutes later, the telephone goes in the editorial offices of the Chronicle.

  ‘This is Manzow. I want to talk to Herr Stuff.—Stuff, is that you? You son of a bitch, you let Gareis know that I gave you the letter from the district president. You are the biggest bastard in the whole of Altholm.—Shut up. I don’t care what you do. I’m going to sue you for blackmail, you yellow journalist! I will talk to Gebhardt, I will complain about you to him. From this day forth, you’re finished in Altholm! You low-down bastard, you.—Shut up, I tell you. I’m not talking to you any more. Bye!’

  Two minutes later, the phone goes at the News.

  ‘This is Stuff. Get me Gebhardt, please.—Herr Gebhardt?—Yes, Herr Gebhardt, Manzow’s just called me. Somebody or other told Gareis that Manzow was the source of the letter.—Yes, the letter in question.—No, I haven’t mentioned it to anyone.—No, definitely not.—No, I have not blabbed. I haven’t drunk a drop in ten days.—Trouble? I wouldn’t make trouble for myself.—Exactly, I must have been spied on. There must be a spy in the office.—No, no, I’m sure the telephone’s safe. But if you could call Gareis? Someone has to stop Manzow from creating too much havoc.—You know, havoc. Herr Gebhardt, there’s havoc being created all the time. It’s hard to know what he’ll try and do.—Yes, I think that would be best.—Yes. Thank you. Good evening to you, Herr Gebhardt.’

  Ten minutes later, the phone rings at Mayor Gareis’s.

  ‘Here’s the News. Gebhardt.—Yes, in person. I’ve just seen what Stuff has got up to, Herr Gareis. I’ve been away.—No, I’m furious. Can we talk?—No, I have something else in mind.—Tomorrow morning at eleven? That will be fine.—I quite agree. Things need to calm down. Good evening, Herr Mayor.’

  5

  Another Creak

  I

  Thiel wasn’t able to sleep by day in his garret. Even though he lay down naked on his pile of rugs in the corner, the sweat was breaking out of him in streams. And then there was the stench from the toilet next door, worse than ever.

  He was shattered. This waiting around was exhausting. No one came, but he heard thousands, tens of thousands, every hour. They came through the sleeping, restless, creaking, unlit house, creeping here, creeping there, laughing with big white faces lit up by the street lamps, or lurking in corners, perfectly still, their faces in the shade.

  These nights robbed him of his sleep. When he heard the flush next door, he felt tempted to get up, bang on the door, tear open the dormer window, yell out into the street: This is the Stolpe Bomber! Ten thousand marks for the first man up the stairs!

  Late in the evening—the typesetting machines had stopped rattling and the building was getting quieter—he had suddenly fallen into a dead sleep.

  Now he has the feeling of having been startled awake. He sits up and listens.

  It’s completely dark, and the building is quiet.

  He strikes a match and looks at his watch: almost midnight.

  He pulls on a pair of trousers, and on the chair by the door finds the plate of food left him by Padberg, and a bottle of Moselle.

  So it seems Padberg has been by and not woken him, the wretch. Another twenty-four hours in which he won’t get to speak to a soul.

  Thiel eats hastily and keeps listening at intervals. The house seems alive, waiting for him with all its rooms, the machine rooms still filled with the movements of people who are permitted to live, whereas he wanders around like a ghost.

  Then he feels his way down the steps into the garden.

  First the garden, the air, the stars, the green. He’s brought his Moselle with him, and drinks it there, on a spot of muddied lawn.

  Then he gets up again—he will remember later that he felt particularly glad and alert and cheerful—and goes into the machine room. There in a lean-to are a couple of shower stalls. He gets under one of them and showers.

  Now he feels great. He picks a hooked wire off a nail and teases open the drawer of a desk. That’s where the master mechanic keeps all kinds of personal junk, including cigarettes, so he helps himself and lights up, even though he has some of his own.

  Who cares if the master mechanic rants and raves a bit if there are some missing, they are all comrades here. Let them suspect one another, a little suspicion within the Party will keep the dialectic from going stale.

  But actually it’s not about cigarettes. That’s not why he forced the lock. The master mechanic keeps a supply of dirty postcards as well. God knows what he does with them, sells them to his colleagues, or keeps them for his own delight if he’s an unhappily married man.

  At any rate, there’s a fresh bunch of them tonight, as Thiel sees by the light of another match. Then he retires with them under a table, whose top catches the light from outside.

  Half an hour later, he starts on his tour and goes through the garden, into the typesetters’ room, to dispatch. He’s no fierce guard dog tonight, he’s relaxed, even humming to himself a little.

  He opens the door from the landing to dispatch. The door that causes the little bell to go off in the chimney breast upstairs. And there it is, a very quiet, distant ringing.

  It occurs to him that he slept through the evening and forgot to unhook the bell, as he usually does. He stands there frozen.

  Upstairs he hears the sound of feet, quick male feet.

  In that same instant he bounds up the unlit stairs as fast as he can. He’s not thinking, he’s just reflexively racing upstairs, to catch the spy. As he runs, he clutches his truncheon, to have it ready to swing.

  The landing is pitch black. But there are yellowish glimmers through cracks in the door to the dispatch office. There are lights on inside.

  His momentum doesn’t let up. He opens the door. And the bright, quiet expanse of Padberg’s office greets him. The five overhead lights are burning, the desk lamp is on, the curtains are drawn.

  But there is no one there.

  Thiel looks across to the other door. It’s shut, and not swinging.

  He drops his haste; quietly, on tiptoe, as though in the presence of someone he shouldn’t disturb, he creeps into the room, towards the desk.

  The middle drawer is open, and is empty. Whatever was in it is stacked on top of the desk, for inspection. Two piles of paper, one on the right already perused, with the white backs of the pages facing up, the other, on the left, still awaiting inspection, the written surface facing up.

  Mechanically, Thiel reaches for the top page, picks it up, to scan it . . .

  And a feeling of extreme danger comes over him, a wave of fear, his heart starts beating painfully, even though it feels terribly weak . . .

  He is standing about a foot and a half in front of the curtains, which are now attracting his attention. From so close, he can see that the curtains aren’t hanging straight down, there’s a strange bulge in them, one might almost imagine there was someone standing behind them.

  Thiel looks down at the ground. The curtains don’t quite reach down to the floor. There is a little gap where they end. And in that gap is a pair of shoes, a pair of black, dusty man’s shoes, with the toes pointing towards him.

  Thiel starts to shake, everything is so ghostly. This unlit, rambling house, the night garden, the sleeping outbuildings, and in the midst of it all, like a room in a dream, a lit-up room, deathly silent. A man in front of the curtains and two shoes peeking out from under them. The man’s hand reaches for the curtains—they’re a russet colour—but it’s shaking so hard that he takes it back.

  Thiel stares at the bulge in the curtain.

  There is so much going on in him in those moments: happy childhood days, the clear and sober workspace in the Revenue Department, with the adding machine clattering away the whole time, an evening of skat with friends in a country inn, the faces of his three friends and card-playing partners, but above all Kalübbe’s foot seeming to hover over a brown-flecked moth on the dusty country road—and the foot being taken back.

  Thiel quietly sets the truncheon down on t
he desk behind him. He grips his right wrist in his left hand, and moves it, still shaking, to the curtain.

  His fingertips touch the material and his heart seems to turn over.

  He takes the curtain and peels it slowly back from the face that comes into view, a white, wrinkled face, snow-white, with a tangle of dark hair above it. Dull eyes look at him.

  Here is a man in the dark blue typesetter’s tunic. Slowly it dawns on Thiel that he has seen him once before, in the days after the bombing when he was still at work for the Bauernschaft. A typesetter.

  The two men look at each other, don’t move their lips, only look at each other, the spy and the bomber.

  The other man’s look is dark and somehow murky . . . and slowly everything drifts into a sort of dream to Thiel. He’s no longer sure if he’s the one who’s standing behind the curtain or the one drawing it aside. He stands there dimly, reaches into the dark, everything goes hazy . . .

  Slowly—oh so slowly!—Thiel allows the curtain pleats to cover the face, he reaches for his rubber truncheon. Backing away, keeping his eye on the voluminous material, he leaves the room. At the door, he switches the light off. And then he climbs heavily and muzzily up to his garret.

  Once in his garret he lies down on his rugs and tries to think. But everything is far too obscure. The thought keeps coming to him: I’ve been a coward. I should have smashed him in the face with the truncheon. I’ve been a coward.

  And: If only I hadn’t taken out the dirty postcards! I was feeble! A coward!

  Suddenly he jumps up. He must have been asleep. But only for a second, he thinks.

  Now he hears through the whole building the sound of a key being pushed into the lock on the front door, then someone unlocks the door, and comes up the stairs, and it’s a familiar tread.

  Well, well, he thinks. Well, well. Here’s trouble.

  But there isn’t anything. He hears Padberg going into his study. Hears him fossicking around.

  No trouble?

  But the man must be there, the typesetter with the dark hair and the muddy eyes!

  No trouble!

  Is the typesetter not really there?

  Slowly Thiel climbs down the stairs. He feels incredibly tired and has a bad taste in his mouth.

  Padberg is sitting at his desk, smoking a cigar and stuffing papers into a briefcase. A suitcase is by the door.

  ‘Evening, guard dog,’ says Padberg in tip-top mood. ‘You were so fast asleep earlier I couldn’t face waking you.’

  ‘Evening,’ says Thiel.

  ‘Listen,’ Padberg resumes, ‘I have to go to Berlin right away. They’re thinking of getting up some sort of united front against the farmers. That dummy Temborius is bestirring himself. Maybe there’ll be some work for you to do again soon.’ And he mimes a throwing action with one hand.

  ‘Are you going tonight?’ asks Thiel.

  ‘Yes. Right now. The car will be here any minute. I’m getting a ride to Stettin, and I’ll catch the early train to Berlin.’

  ‘I see,’ says Thiel.

  ‘I don’t know when I’m coming back yet. It’ll be difficult with your meals. I’m thinking your being here without me will be a bit of a problem. Best thing would be if you set off right away for Bandekow-Ausbau and stayed with the count. You know the way, and the count knows you. Here’s fifty marks for you, just in case. But you won’t really need money.’

  ‘No,’ says Thiel. ‘What about here?’

  ‘Here? You mean, keeping an eye on the place?—There’s the car already. I have to go.—No, don’t worry about here. I’ve got all my important papers with me.—All right, I must go. Bye-bye, Thiel. Heil Bauernschaft!’

  ‘Heil Bauernschaft!’

  ‘Will you go now too!’

  ‘OK,’ says Thiel.

  ‘Well, bye-bye again . . .’

  II

  In the meeting room at District President Temborius’s there is a good atmosphere. Actually, a very good atmosphere.

  At a long green table, representatives of the rural and urban population of the district of Stolpe are seated together, chatting. At a cross-table thrones the president with his staff. He’s a different sort of president today, smiling affably, making little pleasantries, a good-humoured man, blessed with a light hand, who will resolve all difficulties.

  He has succeeded in doing what seemed hopeless, in bringing people from town and country round a single table.

  Admittedly, the city government of Altholm is somewhat weakly represented. Their noses, of course, are out of joint, and they have sent only Political Adviser Stein, in a passive, information-gathering capacity, because they are furious that the district president has shown himself more gracious and skilled than their Gareis.

  Well, but the town is present all the same: crafts with its guild masters, small business in the form of the weighty Herr Manzow, manufacturing with its syndic.

  The rural representatives are almost too many to be counted. There is the Agricultural Chamber, represented by an agricultural councillor, a couple of Agricultural College directors, two seed inspectors.

  There is the Agricultural Union, with two board members.

  The local farmers’ co-operatives have sent five men.

  There is the Water Meadow Cultivators, with two men.

  Country schoolmasters are represented, the country clerisy, country hospitality.

  Oh, Chief Adviser Meier can be extraordinarily efficient, identifying in the most remote corners organizations that one might invite. Who else would have tracked down the Union of Pomeranian Poultry-Breeders, or the Rural Housewives’ Association? He did!

  And his paper on the juridical and legal bases for the actions of the police on the 26th of July was an example of measured care and delicate formulation.

  Almost better, almost more effective than the police-tactical reflections of Police Colonel Senkpiel.

  He himself, Temborius, has taken on the domestic political origins and implications of that day, not unsuccessfully, it seems to him.

  Everything aired in the most loyal, dispassionate way, no aggression, no vindictiveness. The stained-glass windows are open in the committee room, air and light flood in, in a way the whole world floods in, the people in the room seem to have the world in view. They would have willingly answered any questions, too, but everything had been so exhaustively treated that there were no questions.

  Now a pause has been called. Before moving on to point two of the agenda, the resolution of the boycott, the gentlemen are given the opportunity to confer with one another, under guise of a break.

  So the gentlemen hold a confab.

  Here, for instance, is Manzow with Dr Hüppchen, and today Manzow is a completely different man to then. He has a tricky tax question, and would value the doctor’s advice, but, no, of course he wouldn’t dream of getting it here and for free, he knows that even accountants need to make a living, haha!, and so he will consult the doctor in the course of the next few days. And—he allows it to be glimpsed—the syndic of the Retailers’ Association is getting on a bit . . . ‘Well, something else for us to talk about, dear Doctor!’

  Inevitably, Dr Hüppchen thinks a little emotionally of Gareis, whom he presumes to be behind these overtures. But in answer to his question as to Gareis’s whereabouts, he hears to his surprise the rather contemptuous: ‘Fatty Gareis! He’s long dead!’

  ‘Dead . . . ?’

  ‘Well, didn’t you read the letter from the district president? If that’s not dead . . . !’

  The honorary master of the Bakers’ Guild is standing with Bishop Schwarz.

  ‘This is all looking very auspicious, wouldn’t you say, Your Reverence?’

  ‘Oh, yes. Peace always wins out in the end. I’m sure we’ll come to some sort of understanding.’

  And Chief Adviser Meier has an astonishing experience—his boss, District President Temborius, gives him a little pat on the back.

  ‘Well done, Meierchen. There, you see!’

&
nbsp; Chief Adviser Meier isn’t altogether sure what he ought to see, but he smiles a gratified smile.

  ‘Didn’t I tell you once before that you’ll do well in Prussian administration? Why should all Jewish lawyers become barristers? We can use some of you in administration.’

  Adviser Meier stammers something.

  ‘I say,’ cries Temborius a little excitedly, ‘what’s that? Is that yours? Did you sanction that?’

  ‘No, I don’t know. I have no idea—’

  ‘Stamp it out! Stamp it out at once!’

  At the door to the chamber stands a youth, an ordinary common-or-garden youth of fourteen or fifteen years old, doling out newspapers.

  They are carefully thrice-folded newspapers, newspapers coyly hiding their mastheads on the inside. But the adviser is full of grim foreboding.

  He plunges towards the fellow, trotting half the length of the committee room, calling out: ‘Hey, you there! Who gave you permission to hand out newspapers here?’

  The boy looks up. He’s already given out most of his stock to the men at the meeting. The ones he still holds he tosses on to the ground, cries out a ‘Heil Bauernschaft!’ and leaves.

  The adviser stoops to pick one up. He can’t help it, the others are all looking, he opens out one of the parcels. And now it becomes apparent that it wasn’t just to conceal the masthead that the papers were so carefully folded. On the front page, in the middle, thickly marked out in red pen, is something, an open letter. Meier sees the name ‘Temborius’, he reads on, he is shaking in his shoes. He’s sweating.

  Oh, everyone else has already read this wretched open letter, it’s only his boss, District President Temborius, who stands there all alone, watching with furrowed brow.

  He will call him any second.

  Chief Adviser Meier walks with heavy tread to his boss. He can remember running around this building, a long time ago, a bomb was due to explode. To walk to his boss, to hold the newspaper under his nose, is harder.

  He puts it down.