by Hans Fallada
There they were, in front of a house on Ansbacher Strasse. The Hitler Youth kid was talking nineteen to the dozen to Kuno-Dieter, who was listening to him with his head down. When Borkhausen walked up, the messenger withdrew a dozen paces and let them confer.
“What’s going on, Kuno-Dieter,” Borkhausen began angrily. “How can you send me this stream of cheeky brats, who ask for money before they open their mouths?”
“No one does anything without money, Dad,” replied Kuno-Dieter equably. “As you well know. And I’m waiting to hear what I’m going to make out of this business—I’ve spent travel money…”
“Christ, it’s the same broken record with all of you! No, Kuno-Dieter, first you tell your father what’s going on here at Ansbacher Strasse, and then you’ll see what your father’s prepared to do for you. It’s not my style. This hustling doesn’t agree with me!”
“No, Father,” replied Kuno-Dieter. “I’m afraid you’ll forget to pay me later—money that is. I expect you’ll remember the slaps. You’ve already made loads of money from this business, and you probably stand to make even more, I’m thinking. Now I’ve been standing around all day for you, I want to see some money myself. I thought, fifty marks…”
“Fifty marks!” This impertinence took Borkhausen’s breath away “I’ll tell you what you’ll get. I’ll give you five marks, the five marks that beanpole over there asked me for, and you’ll be grateful for them! I’m not like that, but…”
“No, Dad,” said Kuno-Dieter, and fixed his blue eyes defiantly on his father. “You stand to earn a packet with this deal, and I’m not doing all the work for nothing, so in that case I’ll just refuse to tell you!”
“What have you got to tell me anyway!” sneered Borkhausen. “I don’t need you to tell me the little fellow’s holed up in that building. I can work out the rest by myself. Why don’t you go home and ask your mother to give you something to eat! You can’t make a monkey of your father, not yet! You pair of heroes!”
“In that case,” Kuno-Dieter said decisively, “I’ll go upstairs and tell him you’re watching him. I’ll give you away, Father!”
“You damned snotnose kid!” screamed Borkhausen, and swung at his son.
But Kuno-Dieter was already running, running into the side entrance of the house. Borkhausen chased him across the courtyard and caught up with him on the bottom step of the back house. He knocked him to the ground and began kicking him as he lay there. It was almost the way he had imagined it earlier on the sofa, only Kuno-Dieter wasn’t whimpering, he was furiously defending himself. That only heightened Borkhausen’s own rage. Quite deliberately he smashed his fist in the boy’s face, and kicked him in the stomach. “I’ll teach you!” he snorted, and a red mist swam before his eyes.
Suddenly he felt himself gripped from behind, someone was pulling his arm back. Something grabbed first one, then both of his legs. He looked round: it was that Hitler Youth punk, with a whole gang of youths, four or five of them, that had latched onto him. He had to lay off Kuno-Dieter, to defend himself against these louts, any one of whom he could have polished off with one hand tied behind his back, but who together might prove dangerous indeed.
“You cowards!” he roared, and tried backing against the wall to dislodge the boy who was clinging to him. But the others took away his legs, and he was down.
“Kuno!” he wheezed. “Help your father! Those cowards…”
But Kuno didn’t help his father. He had gotten to his feet, and it was he who first drove his fist into Borkhausen’s face.
A low rumbling moan broke from the man’s chest. Then he was rolling about on the floor with the boys, trying to press them against walls and steps, to crush them and get back on his feet again.
Now the only sound to be heard was the panting and groaning of the combatants, the smack of punches, the scraping of feet…they fought savagely and wordlessly.
An old lady coming down the stairs stopped in horror as she saw the wild scenes below. She clutched the banister, and called out helplessly, “No! Not here! Not in this house!”
Her purple cloak billowed out. Then she made up her mind, and launched a scream of horror.
The boys left off Borkhausen and disappeared. The man sat up and stared wild-eyed at the old lady.
“A whole gang of them!” he panted. “Setting upon a helpless old man, and my own son among them!”
When the old lady screamed, a couple of doors had opened, and a few neighbors peered out and conferred in whispers while looking at the man sitting on the steps.
“They were fighting!” squeaked the purple lady indignantly “They were fighting in our respectable house!”
Borkhausen thought for a moment. If Enno Kluge was living here now, then it was high time he, Borkhausen, wasn’t here. Enno might appear at any moment, curious to learn what the commotion had been about.
“I just gave my boy a bit of a pasting,” he explained with a grin to the silent, staring tenants. “It’s all over. Nothing more to say. Everything’s okay.”
He stood up and crossed the courtyard back out onto the street, where he brushed himself off and retied his tie. Not a sign of the gang, of course. Well, Kuno-Dieter had it coming to him, that was for sure! Raising his hand against his own father, socking him on the jaw! Not all the Ottis in the world would be able to keep him off that boy now! No, and she would get hers too, for that bloody serpent egg she had planted in his nest!
While Borkhausen watches the house, his rage against Kuno-Dieter grows. It becomes almost insensate when he discovers that during the fight the louts have stole the entire roll of banknotes from his pocket. All he has left is a few marks in his waistcoat. Those little shits! He feels like setting off after them right now and making mincemeat of them, getting his money back!
And he charges off.
Then he remembers: He can’t go anywhere! He has to stay right where he is, otherwise he’ll lose out on the five hundred as well! It’s clear to him that he’ll never get his money back off the boys, the most he can do is try to rescue the five hundred!
Consumed with rage, he goes into a little cafe, and calls Inspector Escherich. Then he goes back to his observation post and waits impatiently for him to show. Oh, how wretched he feels! All the trouble he’s been to—and everything goes wrong. Other people, anything they touch turns to gold; a little squirt like Enno gets a woman with bags of money and a nice shop, a zero like that only has to put his money on a horse, and it comes in first, but not Borkhausen! He can try what he likes: it all goes skew-whiff. The trouble he had with the Haberle woman, and then he was so happy to have a bit of money in his pocket for once—and now it’s gone again! The Rosenthal woman’s bracelet—gone! That nice break-in, a whole shop full of linen—all gone! Whatever he lays his hands on turns to shit.
I’m a loser, that’s what I am, he says bitterly to himself! Well, as long as the inspector comes across with the five hundred! And I’ll murder Kuno! I’ll torture him, I’ll starve him to death. I’ll not let him forget this!
On the telephone Borkhausen asked the inspector to bring the money with him.
“We’ll see about that!” the inspector replied.
Wonder what that’s supposed to mean? Is he going to swindle me as well…? It’s not possible!
No, the only thing of interest to him in all this is the money. As soon as he’s got the money, he’s going to vamoose, he doesn’t care what happens to Enno! Not interested! Maybe he will go to Munich after all. He’s so fed up with things here! He just can’t hack it any more. Kuno—his own son—punching him in the mouth and stealing his money, unbelievable!
No, the Haberle woman was right: he has to go to Munich. As soon as Escherich brings the money; otherwise he can’t afford the ticket. Just as well there’s no such thing as an inspector who doesn’t keep his word! Or is there?
Chapter 31
A VISIT TO FRÄULEIN ANNA SCHÖNLEIN
Borkhausen’s announcement that he had run Enno Kluge to gr
ound in the West of Berlin had plunged Inspector Escherich into a quandary. He had answered reflexively: “I’m coming right over!” Then, once he was ready to go, he had second thoughts.
So there was the wanted man, the man he had spent the last several days hunting for. He just needed to lay his hands on him. Throughout the tense and impatient search, he had looked forward to the moment when he would get him in his grip; any thoughts of what he would do with him once he had him he had angrily put from his mind.
But that time was now at hand, and the question arose: what was he going to do with Enno? He knew it, he knew it with the utmost certainty: Enno Kluge was not the author of the postcards. During the search for him, he had been able to obscure that knowledge, he had even, in his chat with Deputy Inspector Schröder, discussed the possibility that Kluge was guilty of other things besides.
Yes, precisely—other things, not this. He hadn’t written the postcards! Not in a million years! If he arrested him and brought him back here to Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse, then nothing would keep his boss from interrogating Kluge personally, and then everything would come out, nothing about any postcards, but plenty about a deceitfully procured signature on a statement, that was for sure! No, it wasn’t possible to bring Kluge back here!
But it was equally impossible to allow Kluge to continue to roam, even under constant supervision; Prall would never concede that. Nor would he allow himself to be jollied along much longer, if Escherich suppressed the news that Kluge had been found. He had dropped a couple of pretty broad hints that he was ready to put someone else in charge of the whole Hobgoblin case—someone more diligent, more proactive. The Inspector couldn’t take the humiliation—and anyway, the case had become important to him personally.
Escherich sits at his desk, staring into space, gnawing at his beloved sand colored mustache. I’m in a trap, he says to himself. A bloody trap I’ve gone and made for myself. Whatever I do is wrong, and if I don’t do anything that’s the worst of the lot. I’m bloody stuck.
He sits there, thinking. Time goes by, and Inspector Escherich is still thinking. Borkhausen—bloody Borkhausen! Let him stay there and watch the house! He’s got all the time in the world! And if he lets Enno slip through his fingers, then I’ll rip his guts out, inch by inch! Five hundred marks, and can I bring them with me, please! A hundred Ennos aren’t worth five hundred marks! I’ll smash his face in, bloody fucking Borkhausen! What do I care about Kluge, I need the author of the postcards!
But then, while he continues to sit and brood, Inspector Escherich comes to a slightly different view of what to do with Borkhausen. At any rate he gets up, and goes to Accounts. There he takes receipt of five hundred marks (“paperwork later”), and returns to his office. He had thought of driving to Ansbacher Strasse in his official car and taking a couple of men with him, but he cancels the request—he doesn’t need a car or manpower.
It’s possible that not only has Escherich come to a different view of what to do with Borkhausen, perhaps he’s thought of what to do with Enno Kluge as well. Anyway, he takes his big service revolver out of his pocket, and instead pockets a light pistol, recently picked up in the course of a confiscation. He’s already tried it out, the little thing fits nicely in his hand, and it shoots straight.
All right, let’s go. The Inspector stops in the doorway, takes a last look around. Something odd happens: without meaning to, he makes a sort of salute to the room, he bids goodbye to his office. So long… A dark presentiment, a feeling he’s almost ashamed of, that he won’t see the office in quite the same way again. Till now, he was an official, someone who hunted human beings in the same way you might sell stamps: diligent, methodical, by the book.
But when he gets back to this room later tonight, or maybe even early tomorrow morning, he might not be the same official. He will have something on his conscience, something he won’t be able to forget. Something he alone knows, but all the worse for that: he will know it, and he will never be able to exonerate himself.
Escherich leaves his office, half-ashamed of his little histrionics. We’ll see, he says, to calm himself. It could all pan out differently. But first I’m going to have to talk to Kluge… He takes the subway, and it’s dark by the time he gets to Ansbacher Strasse.
“You do like to leave a man hanging around!” growls Borkhausen furiously when he sees him. “I’ve not eaten anything all day! Did you remember my money, Inspector?”
“Shut up!” snaps the Inspector, which Borkhausen correctly interprets as an affirmative. His heart begins to beat a little more easily: money in prospect!
“Where is he then, Kluge?” the Inspector asks him.
“I don’t know!” replies an offended-sounding Borkhausen, to anticipate possible remonstrations. “I can’t go inside and ask after him, when he knows me from before! My guess is he’s probably in the garden house at the back, but you’ll have to find that out for yourself, Inspector. Anyway, I’ve done my job, now I want my money.”
Disregarding this, Escherich asks Borkhausen what Enno’s doing this far West, and how he managed to find him.
Borkhausen is obliged to give him a detailed report, and the Inspector takes notes on Hetty Haberle, the petshop, the evening scene on his knees: this time the Inspector writes everything down. Of course, Borkhausen’s report is not complete in every detail, but that’s not to be expected. No one can demand that a man admit his own humiliation. Because when Borkhausen reports on how he came to take money from Frau Haberle, he ought also to report on how it went missing again. He ought also to have reported on the two thousand marks that are now sitting in Munich waiting to be collected. No, no one can expect that of him!
If Escherich had been on slightly better form, he might have noticed a few inconsistencies in the stoolie’s report. But Escherich is still preoccupied with other things. Ideally he would send Borkhausen away, but he needs him a while longer, and so he says: “Wait here!” and goes into the house.
He doesn’t go straight through to the back but first to the concierge’s flat in the front house, and makes some inquiries there. Only then, accompanied by the concierge, does he enter the garden house, and slowly climbs the stairs to the fourth floor.
The concierge was unable to confirm to him that Enno Kluge was living in the building. The concierge is only responsible for tenants in the front house, not the people in the garden building. But of course he knows everyone who lives there too, not least because he allocates the ration cards to all. Some of them he knows well, some less well. For example, there is Anna Schönlein, who lives on the fourth floor, and in his view, she’s well capable of taking in a man like that. The concierge has his eye on her anyway, because all sorts of rabble are forever spending the night at her flat, and the post secretary on the floor below is adamant that she had the radio tuned to foreign stations at night. The secretary wouldn’t quite swear to the fact, but he did promise to keep his ear cocked in that direction. Yes, the concierge had been meaning to talk to the block warden about Schönlein, but why not the Inspector now. He urged him to start his inquiries at Schönlein’s, and only if it turned out that the man really wasn’t there, to ask on the other storeys. All in all, the people living in the garden house were decent enough.
“This is the one!” whispers the concierge.
“You stand here, so that she can see you through the peephole,” the Inspector whispers back.
“Now give a reason why you’ve come up, pigfood for the NSV or the Winter Relief Fund.”*
“Done!” says the concierge, and he rings the bell.
Nothing happens, and the concierge rings again, and a third time. All is quiet within.
“Not at home?” whispers the Inspector.
“I doubt it!” says the porter. “I haven’t seen her go out all day.” And he rings a fourth time.
Suddenly, without the two men hearing a sound within, the door opens. A tall, bony woman stands in front of them. She is wearing baggy, faded tracksuit trousers, and a canary yel
low jersey with red buttons. She has a thin, sharp face, splotched with red, as the faces of consumptives often are. Also, she has that feverish gleam in her eyes.
“What is it?” she asks curtly, and betrays no shock when the Inspector plants himself in the doorway, so that the door can’t be closed.
“I’d like a few words with you if I may, Fräulein Schönlein. I’m from the Gestapo. Escherich is my name.”
Again, no sign of shock; the woman continues to look at him with her fevered eyes. Then quickly she says: “Come in!” and leads the way into her flat.
“You stay by the door!” the Inspector whispers to the concierge. “If anyone tries to get in or out, shout!”
The room in which the Inspector now finds himself is a little messy and dusty. Ancient velvet upholstery with carved pilasters and ball and claw feet from the last century. Velvet curtains. An easel with the picture of a bearded man on it, a blown up color photograph. There’s cigarette smoke in the air, a few butts in an ashtray.
“What is it?” repeats Fräulein Schönlein.
She’s standing by the table, hasn’t offered the Inspector a seat.
The Inspector sits down anyway, takes a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket, and gestures at the picture. “Who’s that of?” he asks.
“My father,” says the woman. And again she asks: “What is it?”
“I had some questions I wanted to ask you, Fräulein Schönlein,” says the Inspector, and offers her a cigarette. “Sit down, have a cigarette!”
The woman says quickly: “I never smoke!”
“One, two, three, four,” Escherich counts the stubs in the ashtray. “And the room smells smoky. Have you got visitors, Fräulein Schönlein?”
She looked at him calmly, without panic. “I never admit to smoking,” she said, “my doctor has forbidden me to smoke on account of my lung.”
“So you don’t have any visitors?”
