A Small Circus

by Hans Fallada

  A pause. A lengthy pause.

  ‘Now, Herr Banz, I have some further questions for you. You’re calm now, aren’t you?’

  ‘I’m calm, Your Honour. It comes over me from time to time. But after, I’m as meek as a lamb.’

  ‘All right, Herr Banz, when you were walking down the Burstah and first saw the fighting, how far do you think you were from it?’

  ‘How far? Well, it could have been a hundred, two hundred yards.’

  ‘At any rate, you were standing by the war monument. By the “naked man”. And did you walk on?’

  ‘Yes I did, Your Honour.’

  ‘Why? If you see people fighting, isn’t it better to go the other way? Or did you want to come to anyone’s assistance?’

  ‘No, Your Honour. Not at all. I wanted to get a view of what was going on. There were always people in the way.’

  ‘So how near did you get? Ten yards, five yards, three yards?’

  ‘Not that near, Your Honour. But it could have been about ten yards.’

  ‘How were the police fighting? I—’

  ‘It was horrible, Your Honour. Simply horrible.’

  ‘I mean: were they standing with their backs to you, or facing you?’

  Banz hesitates. Then: ‘Some were like this, and some were like that.’

  ‘But the demonstration was just then facing you. They had come from the other way. So really the police should have had their backs to you.’

  ‘And that’s how it was with most of them.’

  ‘But not all?’

  ‘Not all, Your Honour.’

  A momentary pause. The judge is thinking.

  ‘Were you standing alone, Herr Banz, or were you with others?’

  ‘I was on my own, Your Honour.’

  ‘Were others standing very near you?’

  ‘I couldn’t say, Your Honour. Not very near.’

  ‘Why do you think a policeman went up to you when the demonstrators were standing on the other side?’

  ‘I couldn’t say, Your Honour. I don’t know what made the man walk up to me in particular.’

  ‘So you couldn’t say.—You told us earlier, Herr Banz, that the policeman called out to you: “You bastards, get out of the road!” What made him say “bastards”?’

  ‘I can’t say why the man referred to us as bastards, Your Honour.’

  ‘No, no, I mean, you were standing on your own. Why did he say “bastards”? He should just have said “bastard”.’

  ‘I don’t know why he said it, Your Honour. It’s just what he said.’

  ‘So you can’t think why he said it?’

  ‘No, I can’t, Your Honour. But he said it all right.’

  Again the judge stops for thought.

  ‘What did the policeman look like who shouted those words to you?’ he asks finally.

  Banz reflects. ‘He was a little guy. Scrawny little guy . . . There wasn’t much of him.’

  ‘But you’d recognize him again, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘I couldn’t say, Your Honour. My memory’s not what it used to be.’

  The judge thinks again. Then he goes back behind the table and says a few words to his deputy, Bierla. Bierla leaves the court.

  Banz watches him go nervously.

  The judge asks him: ‘You had a stick with you, did you not, Herr Banz?’

  ‘Yes, I had a walking stick.’

  ‘Could it be that you threatened anyone with your walking stick?’

  ‘Your Honour, please! As if!’

  ‘Or perhaps you just gripped it a little more tightly. You must have been tense—’

  The door of the hall opens. Led by Deputy Bierla, some twenty policemen walk into the room. They stand in two rows flanking the judge’s table.

  ‘I would like,’ explains the judge, ‘to clear up the present case of Banz, which strikes me as somewhat mysterious, and of obvious relevance to the assessment of the police action. As quickly as possible. These are the Altholm constables who are due to appear as witnesses this afternoon. If Herr Banz doesn’t find his man among those present, then we’ll summon the others tomorrow.—Usher, light please.’

  Suddenly the gym hall is radiantly bright. With white face, propped on his stick, Banz stands in front of the two rows of policemen. Once he glances quickly round behind him, but not to his defence counsel, rather to that corner where Councillor Röstel is sitting all alone, seeing as Chief Adviser Meier isn’t back from Stolpe yet.

  The judge comes out from behind his table again.

  ‘Now, Herr Banz, let’s walk along the row together. Look at each gentleman in turn. The one you’re looking for may not be among them at all. Not all the police are here present. I will exchange a few words with each of them, so that you hear their voices as well—’

  ‘Your Honour, I’ve seen them all, you can send them away, my one isn’t present.’

  ‘Your Honour!’ shouts the giant Soldin from the second row. ‘Your Honour! That’s him! That’s the man who knocked me down with the handle of his stick. Stop . . . !’

  The judge has been sent tumbling into the row of policemen. Banz has leaped back, and is running towards the table where Councillor Röstel is. The councillor steps out to meet him, but gets a blow from Banz’s stick. Behind the table is a door that leads to the schoolyard. Banz tears it open, crosses the yard, into the school building (there are militiamen at the front gate) . . . The whole room is in confusion, all are pressing towards the doors, witnesses rush away. The prosecutor yells: ‘The defendant! Constables, keep an eye on the defendant!’

  There is pandemonium.

  VII

  For one moment, Banz stands on the wide school stairs, catching his breath back. The steps look tempting, but Banz knows that’s a trap. In ten or fifteen seconds, they’ll be combing the building for him.

  A little set of steps to the side leads down into the basement, and Banz runs down them. They end at an iron door, open, luckily. And still better, with the key in the lock. Banz takes it out, goes through the door into the dark basement, and locks it from the inside.

  He leaves the key in the lock.

  The dark passage leads straight on, with many doors off to either side. Banz walks straight along, towards a core of warmth he can feel ahead of him. Then he finds himself standing in the boiler room. Under both large boilers there is fire. The water hums. Of course, they’re already heating, to keep the gym warm. Next door is the coal cellar, and on the other side planked off from the wood store is a sort of closet with a chopping block and an axe hanging on the wall.

  And not just that. Here are washbasins, jug and soap, a piece of mirror is up on the wall, and from a hook hang the blue overalls of the heating man, begrimed with coal dust.

  Banz takes off his jacket and waistcoat, he pulls the baggy blue ones over his own, and puts on the jacket. Then he goes through his pockets, puts everything in them bar watch, penknife and money with the clothes, and bundles them up.

  Ideally he would consign it to the flames, but he’s upset about the jacket, which is almost new.

  So he stuffs the whole thing down the back of the coals. Maybe he’ll be back here one day, or else someone will find it who can use it. There’s no need to go far for dirt in a coal cellar, so Banz rubs his face and hands, takes another look at himself in the mirror, grabs a coal scuttle, and cautiously opens the window.

  It’s all below pavement level, at the top of the light-vent is a grille that isn’t secured.

  The hardest thing is to climb on to the pavement without being noticed. Once he’s out, he’s three parts safe.

  But getting out discreetly seems impossible. Feet tramp almost incessantly overhead. Banz gets bored waiting, so he walks back down the passage—he can hear them working on the iron door—looks inside the various side rooms, and eventually finds the bicycle cellar.

  Here he has what he wants: a door that leads out, a set of steps up into a little patch of grass and flowers, and best of all: a solitary bi
cycle. It must be the janitor’s.

  Banz leaves the coal scuttle, but takes the bicycle, quickly unlocks the door, pushes it up the incline to the street, and as soon as he’s on the pavement, he hops on to the saddle.

  There are enough people running around, Banz sees militiamen and constables wherever he looks, but they must all be struck with blindness. They have a vision of Banz as he stood before the judge’s table, and don’t even see this blue-clad collier.

  In short order, Banz is on the Stolpe Road. He knows that he can’t use his disguise and bicycle much longer. They’ll soon notice there’s some gear missing, and in another fifteen minutes all the rural cops for miles around will know, and they’ll send cars and motorbikes to hunt him. He can’t cycle much more anyway, his flight from the hall took it out of him, his whole sick body is packing up, he has moments where he feels so dizzy he can hardly keep hold of the handlebars. Five minutes later he parks the bike behind a bush and sits down next to it. He’s only a little way out of Altholm, just after Grünhof, but he can’t go on. Let the bastards catch him! He’ll take his knife and make an end, big deal.

  He drops off behind the bush.

  Not much later, and he comes to, chilled from lying on the ground. But he feels stronger, no longer thinking in terms of quitting. He thinks what farmers he knows hereabouts, but the only one who comes to mind is Cousin Benthin. It’s very doubtful whether he’d do anything to help, he’s really just a big girl’s blouse. Anyway, it would mean turning back to Altholm, and he doesn’t think he could face that.

  The street he can see through the sparse foliage is far from busy. It might be four in the afternoon, give or take. He’s been on the run for just an hour and a half. They won’t be looking for him here, they’ll be at the station in Stolpermünde, or waiting for him at his farm. Well, let them wait!

  A lorry trundles past doing an even forty. Packed to the gills with empty fish crates. It’s one of the lorries that ply from the herring fishing communities on the coast to Stettin.

  Perhaps the Stolpermünde lorry will be along some time?

  It’s the time the lorries are coming back from the fish market. Banz lets a whole string of them go by, because he doesn’t know the drivers. Then he realizes he’s been an idiot because for him a driver he doesn’t know is better than one he does.

  Banz thoughtfully pricks his back tyre with his knife, the air whistles when he pulls it out. Then he stands by the side of the road with his bike.

  When the next fish lorry comes by, he waves energetically, and when the driver shows no sign of slowing down—they all want to be home by six—he steps out into the middle of the road. The man brakes so hard that the lorry veers sharply towards the verge, and the whole pile of crates lurches.

  The driver, a man in his thirties, starts swearing at him: ‘You silly bugger, what do you think you’re playing at! If you finished up under my wheels, that’d be no more than you deserve!’

  ‘You can give me a lift to Stolpe,’ says Banz calmly. ‘As you can see, I’ve got a flat.’

  ‘What do I care about your goddamn tyres?’ the man curses. ‘You can walk, so far as I’m concerned.’

  ‘There’s five marks in it for you!’ says Banz, still careful to stand directly in front of the truck.

  ‘I’ve had offers like that before,’ the man curses. ‘We get to Stolpe, and you turn your pockets out: Sorry, mate, got no money.’

  ‘Here,’ says Banz, holding up a silver fiver. And he explains: ‘You see, my little boy’s got shingles, and I have to go see the wise women.’

  The man growls to himself. ‘Where’re we going to put your mount? You can see I’m full up.’

  ‘Throw it on top.’

  ‘You do it. And give us the fiver.’

  ‘Only if I can sit in front.’

  ‘What is it with you?’ says the driver, once the lorry is clattering along the road. ‘Do you really believe in those women? I thought it was only silly farmers do that.’

  ‘It’s not faith,’ says Banz. ‘I’ve seen it happen with my own eyes.’

  ‘Funny,’ says the driver. ‘I’ve never seen anything like that. It must take care to avoid me.’

  ‘They once blew away my shingles,’ says Banz. ‘They sit at your bedside, there has to be three of them present, and they take turns blowing in your face.’

  ‘I almost wouldn’t mind shingles, just to have it happen to me!’

  ‘I wouldn’t say that if I were you.’

  ‘And what are you doing, you going to fetch them home?’

  ‘No, I’m not. That would be much too expensive. I’m going to give them a photo of my little lad, for them to blow on this evening, and tomorrow the shingles will be gone.’

  ‘You could have mailed it, couldn’t you? Saved yourself five marks.’

  ‘Yes, and have them only blow for half an hour. No, I’m going to sit there and time them. They have to do it for two hours, or else the shingles will be back.’

  ‘Country living, eh,’ remarks the driver. ‘I’m from Stettin myself. They don’t know about rubbish like that there.’

  ‘No. You’ve got a health system. At least you know who’s killing you.’

  ‘You’re right,’ says the driver appreciatively. ‘Those panel doctors are no good. I had a swollen hand once . . .’

  And in half an hour they’re in Stolpe.

  ‘Where d’you want me to drop you?’ asks the driver.

  ‘Which way are you going? Out to Fiddichow? Then you can drop me in Horst. Those women live in Horst.’

  ‘All right then.’

  In Horst, Banz clambers out of the lorry. ‘If you want, we could have a drink together?’

  ‘No, thanks. You’ve had enough expenditure.’

  And the lorry disappears.

  Banz has a three-hour walk ahead of him from Horst to Stolpermünde-Abbau. But he’s not thinking of going straight to the farm, he just wants to get his money out of its hiding place under the pines. Then he’ll go on, either across to Denmark or along into Holstein. The farmers’ movement there is said to be pretty active. He certainly won’t let them nab him.

  He walks easily into the evening. He pushes his bicycle for quite some way, then he realizes it’s no good to him any more and he chucks it in a ditch. But in the next beech copse he finds a suitable sapling, a couple of inches around, and cuts it. Now he has a stick again, and walking is easier.

  He’s been walking off the road for a long time already, sticking to the edges of fields and footpaths, sometimes going for a quarter of an hour at a time over glebe land. But the direction is right, and even when there’s a night sky you can sense which way the sea is. By the time Banz first hears the sound of the waves, it’s already quite dark. He’s not quite sure where he is, but he senses that he needs to bear left. This is where the heathland abuts on the strip of coastal pine trees, and he keeps walking along the edge of the wood. He often stumbles over roots and stones as he gropes his way forward, and his fury at the Altholmers surges up in him again. It’s their fault, their doing, that he has to tap around out here like a mole.

  Suddenly he sees a light behind a corner of the wood, and it’s his house. He’s been stumbling across his own potato patch for the past fifteen minutes and not known it.

  The light must have some significance. Either the cops are there, or his wife has left it on as a sign to him that she’s ready. Why else would a light be on at this hour? But he has no plan to go inside, maybe he will later on. Because he’s hungry.

  Slowly he pushes into the pines. He walks very cautiously, careful not to snap a single twig. They can surely imagine that he won’t go barging into his own house, they must have set up spies in every corner of the woods.

  He takes a hundred paces. And another hundred. And a third. Then he stops and listens out.

  Something is wrong somewhere, he can sense that. Something is cracking, rootling, snuffling.

  He has another twenty paces, perhaps twenty-two, to
the hiding place.

  He stands and twists off one of his boots, and then the other. He knots the laces together and hangs the boots over his shoulder.

  Now he walks on quietly, step by step, holding his breath. It’s dark, yes, but the trees are still darker than the air between them. The pine-needle-covered ground is blacker still, but it has grey-white patches, where the rabbits have scuffed yellow sand out of their burrows.

  He stands by a tree and looks. He knows the tree he is leaning against.

  It’s four steps to the hiding place.

  The ground is dark, but there, where the hiding place is, is a big patch of turned-over sand. He knows that.

  And this patch—standing there still, he can see it—is sometimes there, and sometimes not. Something bulky and black is moving across it. Cracking, grubbing, snuffling, rootling.

  Like a bolt of lightning it comes to him: the police have already called. So they know for a fact that he won’t be back, and so that bastard Franz, the first opportunity he has, he hasn’t even fed the cattle first, has come to steal . . . and root up . . .

  The night isn’t so black. A whole fireworks display rattles off in front of him, everything is whirling and dancing, and at intervals there is the night sky again, before it is cloven by a blinding light . . .

  Ah, ah . . .

  For a moment it’s better. He’s upright, and the dizziness slowly leaves his brain, and the trunk comes to rest behind his shoulder.

  But then the thoughts are boring into his skull again, like ants swarming in the grey matter, and he sees Franz, the cunt-struck punter, snaring the girls with his father’s money, he sees the plump featherbeds and the plump, white limbs. He’s banging away, and his old man gets nabbed and hauled off to chokey, because the son is a lecher.

  There’s the red mist again, it lights a forest fire, cuts with knives, and drills with awls.

  Banz leans right back. In his hand he is carrying a stout, strong stick, a length of beech.