by Hans Fallada
And he lifts his hobnailed boot, but quickly puts it down again: he’s too unsteady on his pins to kick anything.
Borkhausen simply can’t cope with a tone like that. If he gets barked at, he curls into a frightened ball. He whispers back, “Terribly sorry, Herr Persicke! I was just looking to have a bit of fun with Frau Rosenthal!”
Baldur furrows his brow, thinking. After a while he says, “Stealing is what you came to do, you sonofabitch. Well, on your way.”
The words are crude, but the tone has something a little more gracious or encouraging about it. Borkhausen has a sensitive ear. So, with a grin that craves indulgence for the joke, he says, “I don’t do theft, Herr Persicke—at the most I might do some spontaneous reorganizing from time to time!”
Baldur Persicke doesn’t smile back. He won’t sink to the level of people like that, even though they have their uses. He cautiously follows Borkhausen downstairs.
Both of them are so preoccupied with their thoughts that they fail to notice that the Quangels’ door is slightly ajar. And that it opens again once the men have passed. Anna Quangel darts over to the balustrade and listens down the stairwell.
Outside the Persickes’ door, Borkhausen extends his arm in the “German greeting”: “Heil Hitler, Herr Persicke! And thank you very much!”
He’s not sure what he has to be thankful to him for. Maybe for not planting his boot on his backside and kicking him downstairs. He couldn’t have done anything about it, little pipsqueak that he is.
Baldur Persicke doesn’t return the salute. He fixes the other man with his glassy stare, until he starts blinking and lowers his gaze. Baldur says, “So you wanted to have a bit of fun with Frau Rosenthal?”
“Yes,” answers Borkhausen quietly, not looking at him.
“What sort of fun did you have in mind?” comes the question. “A bit of smash and grab?”
Borkhausen risks a quick look up into the face of the other. “Ach!” he says, “I would have given her a good beating-up!”
“I see,” Baldur says. “Is that so?”
For a moment they stand there in silence. Borkhausen wonders if it’s okay for him to go, but he hasn’t yet been told he can. He continues to wait in silence with his eyes averted.
“Get in there!” says Baldur Persicke, suddenly, in a thick voice. He points through the open door of the Persicke apartment. “Maybe we’re not finished yet! We’ll see.”
Borkhausen follows the pointed index finger and marches into the Persicke apartment. Baldur Persicke follows, a little unsteadily, but still upright. The door slams behind them.
Upstairs, Frau Quangel lets go of the banister and sneaks back inside her flat, softly letting the lock click shut. She’s not sure what prompted her to listen to the conversation between the two men, first upstairs outside Frau Rosenthal’s, then downstairs outside the Persickes’. Usually she does exactly what her husband says, and doesn’t meddle with the other tenants. Anna’s face is still a sickly white, and there’s a twitch in her eyelid. Once or twice she has felt like sitting down and crying, but it’s more than she can do. Phrases go through her head: “I thought my heart would burst,” and “It came as such a shock,” and “I felt as though I was going to be sick.” All of them had some truth about them, but also there was this: “The people who are responsible for my son’s death aren’t going to get away with it. I’m not going to let them…”
She’s not sure how she’s going to go about it, but her listening on the stairs might be a beginning. Otto’s not going to decide everything by himself, she thinks. I want to do what I want some of the time, even if it doesn’t suit him.
She quickly prepares dinner for him. He eats the lion’s share of the food they buy with their ration cards. He’s getting on a bit, and they always make him work past his strength, while she sits at home with her sewing, so an unequal distribution is perfectly fair.
She’s still wielding pots and pans when Borkhausen leaves the Persickes’ place. As soon as he’s on the steps, he drops the cringing posture he adopted in front of them. He walks upright across the yard, his stomach has been pleasantly warmed by a couple of glasses of schnapps, and in his pocket are two tenners, one of which should be enough to sweeten Otti’s temper.
As he enters the parlor of the so-called lower ground floor apartment, Otti isn’t in a foul temper at all. There’s a white cloth on the table, and Otti is on the sofa with a gentleman unknown to Borkhausen. The stranger, who is by no means badly dressed, hurriedly pulls away his arm, which had been thrown round Otti’s shoulder, but there’s really no need for that. Borkhausen’s not particular in that regard.
He thinks to himself, Well, will you look at that! So the old bird can still pull in a john like that! He’s bound to be a bank employee at least, or a teacher, from the look of him…
In the kitchen, the children are yelling and crying. Borkhausen cuts them each a slice from the loaf that’s on the table. Then he has himself a little breakfast—there’s sausage and schnapps as well as bread. He throws the man on the sofa an appreciative look. The man doesn’t seem to feel as much at home as Borkhausen, which is a pity.
And so Borkhausen decides to go out again, once he’s had a bit of something to eat. He doesn’t want to chase the john away, heaven forfend. The good thing is that he can keep his twenty marks all to himself now. Borkhausen directs his strides toward Roller Strasse; he’s heard there’s a bar there where people speak in a particularly unguarded way. Perhaps he’ll hear something. There’s always fish to be caught in Berlin. And if not by day, then at night.
When Borkhausen thinks of the night, there seems to be a silent laugh playing around his drooping mustache. That Baldur, those Persickes, what a bunch! But they’re not going to make a fool of him, no sir! Let them think they’ve bought him off with twenty marks and two glasses of schnapps. He can see a time coming when he’ll be on top of all those Persickes. He just has to be clever now.
That reminds Borkhausen that he needs to find someone called Enno before nightfall—Enno might be just the man for the situation. But no worries, he’ll find Enno all right. Enno makes his daily rounds of the three or four pubs where the low rollers go. Borkhausen doesn’t know Enno’s full name. He only knows him by sight, from a couple of pubs where everyone calls him Enno. But he’ll find him all right, and it could be he’s exactly the man Borkhausen is looking for.
*Winter Relief Fund was a Nazi-organized charity collected during the winter months. Pressure to contribute was considerable, and armbands and pins were distributed for public display to identify donors—and thus, non-donors. Much of the money was siphoned off by the Party, and scholars have noted that it kept the populace short of extra cash and acclimated to the idea of privation.
Chapter 4
TRUDEL BAUMANN BETRAYS A SECRET
While it might have been easy for Otto Quangel to get into the factory, getting Trudel Baumann called out for a moment to see him was an entirely different matter. They didn’t just work shifts as they did in Quangel’s factory, no, each individual had to produce so and so much piecework, and every minute counted.
But finally Quangel is successful, not least because the man in charge is a foreman like himself. It’s not easy to refuse a favor to a colleague, much less one who has just lost his son. Quangel was forced to say that, just for a chance to speak to Trudel. As a consequence, he will have to break the news to her himself, whatever his wife said, otherwise she might hear it from her boss. Hopefully, there won’t be any screaming or fainting. Actually, Anna took it remarkably well—and surely Trudel’s a sensible girl, too.
Here she is at last, and Quangel, who’s never had eyes for anyone but his wife, has to admit that she looks ravishing, with her dark mop of curls, her round bonny face that no factory work was able to deprive of its healthy color, her laughing eyes, and her high breasts. Even now, in her blue overalls and an ancient darned and patched sweater, she looks gorgeous. But maybe the most captivating thing about her
is the way she moves, so full of life, every step expressive of her, overflowing with joie de vivre.
Strange thing, it crosses Otto Quangel’s mind, that a lard-ass like our Otto, a little mama’s boy, could land such a girl as that. But then, he corrects himself, what do I really know about Otto? I never saw him straight. He must have been completely different to how I thought. And he really understood a thing or two about radios; employers lined up for him.
“Hello, Trudel,” he says, and holds out his hand, into which she quickly slips her own warm, plump hand.
“Hello, Papa,” she replies. “What’s going on at home? Does Mama miss me, or has Otto written? You know I like to pop by and see you whenever I can.”
“It’ll have to be tonight, Trudel,” Otto Quangel says. “You see, the thing is…”
But he doesn’t finish the sentence. With typical briskness, Trudel has dived into her blue overalls and pulled out a pocket calendar, and now starts leafing through it. She’s only half listening, it’s not the moment to tell her anything. So Quangel waits while she finds whatever it is she’s looking for.
The meeting of the two of them takes place in a long, drafty corridor whose whitewashed walls are covered with posters. Quangel’s eye is caught by the one over Trudel’s shoulder. He reads the jagged inscription: In the Name of the German People, followed by three names and were sentenced to death by hanging for their crimes of treason. The sentence was carried out this morning at Plötzensee Prison.
Involuntarily he takes hold of Trudel with both hands and leads her away from the picture so that he doesn’t have to see her and it together. “What is it?” she asks in perplexity, and then her eyes follow his, and she reads the poster in turn. She emits a noise that might signify anything: protest against what meets her eyes, rejection of Quangel’s action, indifference, but then she moves back to her old position. She says, putting the calendar back in her pocket, “Tonight’s not possible, Papa, but I can be at your place tomorrow at eight.”
“But it has to be tonight, Trudel!” counters Otto Quangel. “There’s some news of Otto.” His look is sharper now, and he sees the smile vanish from her face. “You see, Trudel, Otto’s fallen.”
It’s strange: the same noise that Otto Quangel made when he heard the news, that deep “Ooh!,” now comes from Trudel’s chest. For an instant she looks at him with swimming eyes and trembling lips, then she turns her face to the wall and props her head against it. She cries, but cries silently. Quangel can see her shoulders shaking, but he can hear no sound.
Brave girl! he thinks. How devoted she was to Otto! In his way Otto was brave, too, never went along with those bastards, didn’t allow the Hitler Youth to inflame him against his parents, was always opposed to playing soldiers and to the war. The bloody war!
He stops, struck by what he has just caught himself thinking. Is he changing too? It’s almost like Anna’s “you and your Führer!”
Then he sees that Trudel has rested her forehead against the very poster from which he just pulled her away. Over her head he can read the jagged type: In the name of the German people; her brow obscures the names of the three hanged men.
And a vision appears before him of how one day a poster with his own name and Anna’s and Trudel’s might be put up on the wall. He shakes his head unhappily. He’s a simple worker, he just wants peace and quiet, nothing to do with politics, and Anna just attends to the household, and a lovely girl like Trudel will surely have found herself a new boyfriend before long…
But the vision won’t go away. Our names on the walls, he thinks, completely confused now. And why not? Hanging on the gallows is no worse than being ripped apart by a shell, or dying from a bullet in the guts. All that doesn’t matter. The only thing that matters is this: I must find out what it is with Hitler. Suddenly all I see is oppression and hate and suffering, so much suffering… A few hundred thousand, that’s what that cowardly snitch Borkhausen said. As if the number mattered! If so much as one person is suffering unjustly, and I can put an end to it, and the only reason I don’t is because I’m a coward and prefer peace and quiet, then…
At this point, he doesn’t dare to think any further. He’s afraid, really afraid, of where a thought like that, taken to its conclusion, might lead. He would have to change his whole life!
Instead, he stares again at the girl with “In the Name of the German people” over her head. If only she wasn’t crying against this particular poster. He can’t resist the urge to pull her shoulder away from the wall, and says, as softly as he can, “Come away from that poster, Trudel…”
For an instant she looks uncomprehendingly at the printed words. Her eyes are dry once more, her shoulders no longer heaving. Now there is life in her expression again—not the luster that she had when she first set foot in this corridor, but a darker sort of glow. With her hand she gently and firmly covers the word “hanging.” “Papa,” she says, “I will never forget that when I stood crying over Otto, it was in front of a poster like this. Perhaps—I don’t want it to be—but perhaps it’ll be my name on a poster like that one day.”
She looks at him hard. He has a feeling she’s not really sure what she’s saying. “Girl!” he cries out. “Stop and think! Why would your name end up on a poster like that? You’re young, you’ve got your whole life ahead of you. You will laugh again, you will have children.”
She shakes her head stubbornly. “I’m not going to bring children into this world to be cannon fodder. Not while some general can say ‘March till you drop!’ Papa,” she goes on, clasping his hand firmly in hers, “Papa, do you think you can carry on living as before, now that they’ve shot your Otto?”
She looks at him piercingly, and once again he tries to fight off the alien influence. “It was the French,” he mumbles.
“The French!” she shouts indignantly. “What sort of excuse is that? Who invaded France? Come on, Papa!”
“But what can we do?” Otto Quangel says, unnerved by this onslaught. “There are so few of us, and all those millions for him, and now, after the victory against France, there will be even more. We can do nothing!”
“We can do plenty!” she whispers. “We can vandalize the machines, we can work badly, work slowly, we can tear down their posters and put up others where we tell people the truth about how they are being cheated and lied to.” She drops her voice further: “But the main thing is that we remain different from them, that we never allow ourselves to be made into them, or start thinking as they do. Even if they conquer the whole world, we must refuse to become Nazis.”
“And what will that accomplish, Trudel?” asks Otto Quangel softly. “I don’t see the point.”
“Papa,” she replies, “when it began, I didn’t understand that either, and I’m not sure I fully understand it now. But, you know, we’ve formed a secret resistance cell in the factory, very small for now, three men and me. A man came to us, and tried to explain it to me. He said we are like good seeds in a field of weeds. If it wasn’t for the good seeds, the whole field would be nothing but weeds. And the good seeds can spread their influence…”
She breaks off, deeply shocked about something.
“What is it, Trudel?” he asks. “That thing with the good seeds makes sense. I will think about it. I have such a lot to be thinking about now.”
But she says, full of shame and guilt, “I’ve gone and blabbed about the cell, and I swore I wouldn’t tell a soul about it!”
“Don’t worry, Trudel,” says Otto Quangel, and his calm is such as to immediately help to settle her agitation.” “You know, with Otto Quangel a thing goes in one ear and out the other. I can’t remember what you told me a moment ago.” With grim resolve he gazes at the poster. “I don’t care if the whole Gestapo turns up, I don’t know anything. And,” he adds, “if you want, and if it makes you feel more secure, then from this moment forth, we simply won’t know each other anymore. You don’t need to come tonight to see Anna, I’ll cook up some story for her.”
&n
bsp; “No,” she replies, her confidence restored. “No. I’ll go and see Mother tonight. But I’ll have to tell the others that I blabbed, and maybe someone will come and see you, to see if you can be trusted.”
“Let them come,” says Otto Quangel menacingly. “I don’t know anything. Bye, Trudel. I probably won’t see you tonight. You know I’m rarely back before midnight.”
She shakes hands with him and heads off down the passage, back to her work. She is no longer so full of exuberant life, but she still radiates strength. Good girl! thinks Quangel. Brave woman!
Then Quangel is all alone in the corridor lined with posters gently flapping in the draft. He gets ready to go. But first, he does something that surprises himself: he nods meaningly at the poster in front of which Trudel was weeping—with a grim determination.
The next moment, he is ashamed of himself. How theatrical! And now, he has to hurry home. He is so pressed for time, he takes a streetcar, which, given his parsimony that borders sometimes on meanness, is something he hates to do.
Chapter 5
ENNO KLUGE’S HOMECOMING
Eva Kluge finished her delivery round at two o’clock. She then worked till four totting up newspaper rates and surcharges: if she was very tired, she got her numbers muddled up and she would have to start again. Finally, with sore feet and a painful vacancy in her brain, she set off home; she didn’t want to think about everything she had to do before getting to bed. On the way home, she shopped, using her ration cards. There was a long line at the butcher’s, and so it was almost six when she slowly climbed the steps to her apartment on Friedrichshain.
On her doorstep stood a little man in a light-colored raincoat and cap. He had a colorless and expressionless face, slightly inflamed eyelids, pale eyes—the sort of face you immediately forget.
