by Hans Fallada
But while the bromide is dissolving in a glass of water, Enno Kluge says: “I don’t need anything. I don’t want to take anything. I’m not letting you poison me. I’d rather speak…”
“Well, then!” says the detective. “Didn’t I know you’d see sense, my son! Then tell us…”
And Enno Kluge wipes the tears off his cheeks, and starts to talk…
When he began to cry, the tears were real enough, because his nerves were shot. But even then, as Enno has learned from his dealings with women, it’s possible to think quite well while crying. And in the course of his thinking, it came to him that it was most unlikely that they were picking him up in a doctor’s waiting room over the break-in. If they really were shadowing him, then they could perfectly well have arrested him on the landing outside, or in the street; they didn’t have to let him stew in a waiting room for two hours…
No, this present business is probably nothing to do with the break-in at Frau Rosenthal’s. Probably it’s down to a mistake, and Enno Kluge has a dim idea that the receptionist, that nasty piece of work, has something to do with it.
But now he’s tried to make a break for it, and he’ll never be able to persuade a policeman that he did so merely out of nerves, because he loses his head at the sight of a uniform. A policeman would never believe that. So he has to admit something credible and checkable, and he has an idea what that should be, too. It’s bad to talk about it, and the consequences are unpredictable, but of two evils such a confession is certainly the lesser.
So when he’s invited to speak, he mops his face and starts talking in a reasonably steady voice about his work as a machinist, and how he’s been ill such a lot of late that they lost patience with him and want to stick him in a concentration camp, or else in a punishment battalion. Of course Enno Kluge doesn’t say anything about his habitual shirking, but he thinks the detective will get the picture anyway.
And he’s pretty much right about that: the detective sees what a specimen this Enno Kluge is. “Yes, Inspector, and when I saw you and the sergeant’s uniform, and I was just waiting to see the doctor, to get myself on disability, then I thought, My time’s up, and they’re picking me up to take me to a concentration camp, and so I scarpered…”
“I see,” the deputy inspector says. “I see!” He thinks for a while, and then he says: “But it seems to me, son, that in your heart of hearts you don’t really believe that that’s what we’ve come about.”
“No, not really,” Kluge admits.
“And why don’t you really believe that, son?”
“Well, because it would have been much easier for you to come for me in the factory, or at home.”
“So you’ve got a home to go to, have you, son?”
“Of course, I do, Inspector. My wife works at the post office, I’m a married man. My two sons are in the field, one of them’s with the SS in Poland. I’ve got papers with me to prove it all, the flat and the place of work.”
And Enno Kluge pulls out his tatty, beaten-up looking wallet, and starts pulling out papers.
“Never mind your papers for now, son,” says the deputy inspector, waving his hand. “There’s plenty of time for that later…”
He lapses into thought, and no one speaks.
Now at his desk the doctor hurriedly begins writing. Perhaps he will get a chance to furnish the little man, who is being chased from one fear into another, with a disability certificate. Problem with his gall bladder, he said, well then. In these times people need to help each other whenever possible!
“What’s that you’re writing, Doctor?” asks the deputy inspector, suddenly emerging from his ponderings.
“Medical notes,” the doctor explains. “I’m trying to spend the time usefully; I’ve still got a roomful of patients waiting to see me.”
“You’re quite right, doctor,” says the deputy inspector, getting to his feet. He has come to a decision, “I won’t detain you any longer.”
Enno Kluge’s story may be true, it most probably is true, but the deputy inspector can’t shake the feeling that there’s something else involved as well and that he hasn’t yet heard the whole truth. “Well, come on, my son! You’ll accompany me a little farther, won’t you? Oh, no, not to the Alex, only to our local station. I’d like to chat with you a little longer, my son, alert fellow that you are, and we mustn’t get under the doctor’s feet any more than we have already.” He says to the sergeant, “No, no need for handcuffs. He’ll come along willingly, bright boy that he is. Heil Hitler, Doctor, and many thanks!”
They’re already in the doorway, and everything looks as though they really are leaving. But then the deputy inspector suddenly pulls the postcard, Quangel’s postcard, out of his pocket, holds it under Enno Kluge’s nose, and hisses at the bemused man: “There, son, read that back to me, would you! But quickly, no um-ing and er-ing, and no stumbling!”
He sounds very like a policeman.
But the deputy inspector knows, even from the way Kluge holds the card, the way his goggling eyes become ever less comprehending, and then the way he stumblingly begins to read—“GERMAN, DON’T FORGET! IT BEGAN WITH THE ANSCHLUSS OF AUSTRIA. THERE FOLLOWED THE SUDETENLAND AND CZECHOSLOVAKIA. POLAND WAS ATTACKED, BELGIUM, HOLLAND”—the Deputy Inspector is pretty sure: the man has never held the card in his hands in his life, has never read its contents, never mind being in a position to have written them. He’s far too stupid!
Angrily he tears the card away from Enno Kluge, says quickly, “Heil Hitler!” and leaves the office with his sergeant and his captive.
Slowly the doctor rips up the treatment form he filled in for Enno Kluge. There was no chance to slip it to him. A pity! But probably it wouldn’t have helped in any case, probably the man was so unequal to the complexities of these times he was already doomed. No help could reach him from the outside world, because there was no stability within him.
A pity…
Chapter 23
THE INTERROGATION
When the deputy inspector—in spite of his firm conviction that Enno Kluge was not the author nor the distributor of the postcards—when, even so, he intimated to Inspector Escherich that Kluge was probably the distributor of these writings, he did so because a wise inferior should never try to second-guess his superior. Against Kluge, there was a firm charge from the doctor’s receptionist, Fräulein Kiesow, and whether this had substance or not, was something the inspector could determine for himself.
If it had substance, then the deputy was a capable man, assured of the future benevolence of the inspector. If it remained unsubstantiated, then it merely showed that the inspector was wiser than the deputy, and the determination of this margin of wisdom on the part of the superior can be more useful to the inferior than any bravura of his own.
“Well?” asked the long, gray Escherich, striding into the station. “Well, Schröder? Where have you put your captive?”
“In the left hand corner cell at the back, Inspector.”
“Has the Hobgoblin confessed?”
“Who? Hobgoblin? Oh, I see, I get it! No, Inspector, but of course immediately after our conversation I had him booked.”
“Good!” Escherich praised him. “And what does he know about the cards?”
“I did,” the deputy inspector said cautiously, “I did ask him to read the card aloud. Just the beginning of it, really.”
“Impression?”
“I don’t want to presume, Inspector,” said the deputy. “Don’t be shy, Schröder! Impression?”
“Well, to put it no higher, I don’t think it’s very likely that he’s the author of the card.”
“Why not?”
“Isn’t the brightest. Also, incredibly timid.”
Inspector Escherich stroked his sandy mustache unhappily. “Not the brightest—incredibly timid,” he repeated to himself. “Well, my Hobgoblin is pretty bright, and certainly not timid. Then what makes you think he is the right man? Report!”
Assistant Schröder di
d so. He emphasized the evidence of the receptionist, and Enno’s attempted flight. “I had no choice, Inspector. Following the recent orders, I had to detain him.”
“Right, Schröder. Absolutely right. Wouldn’t have done it differently myself.”
Escherich felt somewhat re-encouraged by this report. It sounded a little better than “not the brightest” and “incredibly timid.” Perhaps a distributor of the cards, even though the inspector thus far had worked on the assumption that the Hobgoblin acted alone.
“Did you go through his papers?”
“They’re here. In general they confirm what he told us. I got the impression, Inspector, that he’s a bit of shirker, afraid of being packed off to the front, doesn’t feel like working, likes the horses, too—I found a whole sheaf of racing papers and calculations on him. And then some pretty plainspoken letters by shared women. One of those types, Inspector. But pushing fifty.”
“Very good, very good,” said the inspector, but really it was pretty lousy. Neither the author nor any possible distributor of the cards would have much to do with women. He was pretty certain of that. His hopes began to fade again. But then Escherich thought of his superior, Obergruppenführer Prall, and his senior superiors all the way up to Himmler. They would make life pretty hellish for him if he didn’t have some sort of lead. Here was a lead, or at least a strong accusation and suspicious conduct. You could follow such a lead, even if in your heart of hearts you didn’t think it was the right one. No one suffered. What did a good-for-nothing like that matter anyway!
Escherich stood up. “I’m going down to the cells, Schröder. Give me the postcard, and wait for me here.”
The Inspector walked on tiptoe, and gripped the keys in his hand so that they wouldn’t rattle. Very gently he slid open the spy hole and looked into the cell.
The arrested man was sitting on a stool. He had his head propped in his hands, and his eyes directed at the door. It looked for all the world as though the man was staring into the lurking eye of the inspector. But Kluge’s facial expression indicated that he saw nothing. The man did not flinch when the cover was pushed aside, and his face had nothing taut about it, as was usually the case with someone who feels he is being observed.
He was just staring into space, not thinking, merely drifting, and full of gloomy presentiments.
The Inspector at his peephole now knew for a certainty: this was neither the Hobgoblin himself nor any sort of accomplice. He was just a plain and simple mistake—whatever the evidence against him, however suspicious his behavior.
But then Escherich remembered his superiors. He chewed his mustache, and thought about how long he could drag out this thing, till it was established that he had the wrong man. He mustn’t make a fool of himself.
Abruptly he unlocked the cell and strode in. The prisoner had jumped at the sound of the key turning in the lock, first staring in confusion at the visitor, then making an attempt to get up.
But Escherich pressed him down on the stool.
“Don’t get up, Herr Kluge, don’t get up. It takes a lot of effort, and at our age we have to be sensible.”
He laughed, and Kluge made an effort to look amused too, out of pure politeness, and he achieved a miserable-looking smile.
The inspector folded down the bed from the wall and sat down. “Well, Herr Kluge,” he said, and looked alertly at the pale face with the weak chin, the strangely thick-lipped mouth, and the pale eyes that were continually blinking. “Well, Herr Kluge, and now tell me what’s on your chest. I’m Inspector Escherich of the Gestapo.” He carried on talking gently, even as he saw Kluge shrink back in terror at the word. “There’s no need to be afraid. We don’t eat babies. And you’re just a baby yourself, I can see that…”
At the ghost of sympathy conveyed by those words, Kluge’s eyes immediately filled with tears, his face quivered, and his jaw muscles worked.
“Come, come!” said Escherich, patting the little man’s hand. “It won’t be so bad as all that. Or—is it?”
“I’m lost!” cried Enno Kluge in despair. “I’ve had it! I don’t have a medical note, and I have to go to work. And now I’m sitting here, and they’ll put me in a concentration camp, and I’ll go to the wall, I won’t last a fortnight!”
“Come, come!” said the Inspector again, soothingly. “The thing with your factory, that can be sorted out. If we arrest someone, and it turns out that he’s a law-abiding individual, then we take the trouble to see he doesn’t suffer any adverse consequences. You’re a law-abiding individual, aren’t you—Herr Kluge?”
Once again, Kluge’s jaw worked, and then he decided to make a partial confession to this sympathetic gentleman. “They say I don’t work hard enough.”
“Well, and what’s your view, Herr Kluge? Do you work hard enough?”
Once again, Kluge thought. “I get ill such a lot,” he said pathetically. “But they just say this is no time for being ill.”
“You’re not always ill, are you? Well, and when you’re not ill and you work—do you work enough then? What’s your view of that, Herr Kluge?”
Again Kluge made a decision. “Oh God, Inspector,” he wailed, “so many women want a piece of me!” It sounded equally miserable and vain.
The inspector tutted amiably and shook his head, as though this were really quite a problem.
“That’s not good, Herr Kluge,” he finally said. “At our time of life we don’t like to say no, do we?”
Kluge merely looked at him with a watery smile, happy to have met with a little understanding from this gentleman.
“Well now,” said the Inspector, “and how are you off for money?”
“I have a flutter now and again,” Kluge admitted. “Not often and never very much. Five marks tops, and then only if I’ve got a certainty, I swear, Inspector!”
“And how do you pay for those avocations of yours, Herr Kluge, the women and the horses? If you don’t work much?”
“But the women pay me, Inspector!” said Kluge, almost a little offended at so much incomprehension. He smiled conceitedly. “Because I’m so dependable!” he added.
It was at that moment that Inspector Escherich finally laid to rest the notion that Enno Kluge had anything to do with the composition or distribution of the postcards. This Kluge was just not up to something like that; he didn’t have any of the qualifications. But Escherich still had to interrogate him, because he had to work up a statement about this interrogation, a statement for his superiors, that would keep them quiet, a statement that kept Kluge under continued suspicion and justify further steps against him…
So he pulled the card from his pocket, laid it in front of Kluge, and said casually, “Do you know this postcard, Herr Kluge?”
“Yes,” said Enno Kluge right away, before abruptly correcting himself: “I mean, no. I was given it to read aloud earlier, just the beginning. That’s all I know of the card. God’s holy truth, Inspector!”
“Well,” Escherich said, a little doubtfully, “Herr Kluge, if we understand each other on such a major question as your work and the concentration camp, and since I will go personally to your bosses and straighten things out for you, surely we’ll be able to come to terms on such a trifle as your card!”
“I’ve got nothing to do with it, nothing at all, Inspector!”
“I don’t, Herr Kluge,” said the inspector, unmoved by these protestations, “I don’t go as far as my colleague, who takes you for the author of the card and is inclined to drag you in front of the People’s Court and you know what then—Off with your head, Herr Kluge!”
The little man shuddered convulsively, and his face turned ashen.
“No,” said the inspector soothingly, and once again laid his hand on the other man’s. “No, I don’t take you for the author of the card. But it’s a fact that the card was lying in the corridor, and you did go out there suspiciously often, and then there’s your panic, and your attempt to run away. And there are good witnesses for all of this—no, Her
r Kluge, it’s better you tell me the truth. I don’t want you to plunge yourself into destruction!”
“The card must have been posted from outside, Herr Inspector. I’ve got nothing to do with it, God’s holy truth, Herr Inspector!”
“From where it was lying, it can’t have been posted from outside. And five minutes earlier there was nothing there, the doctor’s receptionist will testify. During that time, you went to the toilet. Or do you want to claim there was someone else in the toilet, or outside the waiting room?”
“No, I don’t think so, Inspector. No, I’m sure there wasn’t. If it’s a matter of five minutes, there can’t have been. I wanted to go out for a whole while, and that’s why I kept an eye open to see if there was anyone in the toilet.”
“Well, then!” said the inspector, apparently highly satisfied, “you said it yourself: only you could possibly have laid the card on the floor!”
Kluge stared at him again with terrified-looking eyes. “So since you’ve admitted that…”
“I haven’t admitted anything, nothing! All I said was that no one went to the toilet during the five minutes before I did!” Kluge was almost shouting.
“Now come, come!” said the inspector, shaking his head disapprovingly. “You don’t want to retract a confession you’ve only just made—you’re far too sensible a man for that sort of behavior. I would have to note the retraction in my report as well, Herr Kluge, and that sort of thing doesn’t make a good impression.”
Kluge stared at him in despair. “I didn’t confess to anything…” he whispered in a dead voice.
“We’ll come to an agreement about that as well,” said Escherich calmly. “Now why don’t you begin by telling me who gave you the card to drop? Was it a good friend, or an acquaintance, or someone who approached you on the street and offered you a few marks?”
