by Hans Fallada
“Since last night.”
“Well, then she told you about the Heffkes. Just admit it, Frau Quangel, otherwise I’ll have her brought up, and in your presence I’ll keep on hitting her till she confesses.”
Anna Quangel shook her head again. “It doesn’t matter if I say yes or no, Inspector,” she said, “you were going to bring Berta upstairs anyway, and hit her. All I can say is that I saw Frau Heffke in the corridor yesterday…”
Inspector Laub looked at her with a sardonic grin. Abruptly he screamed, “You’re all shit! Shit the lot of you! I won’t rest until all you shits are in the ground! I’ve got to deal with you all! Orderly, bring Berta Kuppke upstairs!”
He spent the next hour beating and intimidating both women, even though Frau Kuppke admitted straight off that she had told Frau Quangel about Frau Heffke, with whom she had previously shared a cell. But that wouldn’t do for Inspector Laub. He wanted to know every word that had passed between them, when all they had done was complain. He, though, sensed conspiracy and betrayal everywhere, and went on hitting and questioning them for a long time.
In the end, a crying Frau Kuppke was carted back downstairs, and Anna Quangel was once again the sole beneficiary of Inspector Laub’s attentions. She was so tired now that his voice seemed to come from far away, his figure swam before her eyes, and his blows no longer mattered.
“So what happened to make your son’s so-called fiancée stop coming to see you?”
“Nothing happened. My husband didn’t want visitors.”
“But you admitted he had no problem with the Heffkes.”
“The Heffkes were an exception, because of Ulrich being my brother.”
“Then why did Trudel stop coming to the house?”
“Because my husband didn’t want her to.”
“When did he tell her?”
“I don’t know! Inspector, I can’t go on anymore. Couldn’t you let me rest for half an hour? A quarter of an hour?”
“Not until you’ve told me what I want to know. When did your husband tell the girl to stop coming to see you?”
“When my son died.”
“Well then! And where did he tell her?”
“In our apartment.”
“And what did he give as a reason?”
“Because he didn’t want to see any more people. Inspector, please, I can’t go on. Ten minutes!”
“Okay. We’ll have a break in ten minutes. What did your husband give as a reason for Trudel to stop coming?”
“Because he didn’t want to see anyone. We were about to begin with the postcards.”
“So the reason he gave was that he wanted to do the postcards?”
“No, he didn’t mention that to a soul.”
“So what reason did he give?”
“That he didn’t want to see anyone. Oh, Inspector!”
“If you tell me the real reason, we’ll stop for today!”
“But that is the real reason!”
“No, it’s not! I can see you’re lying! If you don’t tell me the truth, I’ll question you for the next ten hours. What did he say? Tell me the words he said to Trudel Baumann.”
“I can’t remember. He was so furious.”
“Why was he so furious?”
“Because I let Trudel Baumann spend the night in our flat.”
“But he didn’t ban her till the next day—or did he send her away immediately?”
“No, the following morning.”
“He banned her that morning?”
“Yes.”
“What made him so furious?”
Anna Quangel sighed. “I’ll tell you, Inspector. It’s not going to hurt anyone anymore. I had secretly hidden an old Jewish woman in our flat—Frau Rosenthal, who later jumped out of the window. That’s what made him so furious, and he threw Trudel out at the same time.”
“What was Frau Rosenthal doing, hiding in your apartment?”
“She was afraid, all alone in her apartment. She lived upstairs from us. They took away her husband, and she got scared. Inspector, you promised you would let me…”
“In a minute. In a minute. So Trudel knew you were keeping a Jew hidden in your apartment?”
“But that’s not against the law…”
“Of course it’s against the law! A self-respecting Aryan doesn’t take in a Jewish bitch, and a law-abiding girl would report something like that to the police. What did Trudel have to say about you keeping a Jewess in your flat?”
“Inspector, I’m not going to say anything anymore. You twist every word I say. Trudel didn’t break the law; she didn’t know about anything!”
“But she knew you were giving refuge to Jews in your apartment!”
“That wasn’t a bad thing!”
“We think differently. I’ll have a word with Trudel tomorrow.”
“Oh my God, what have I done now!” Frau Quangel cried out. “Now I’ve plunged Trudel into misfortune as well. Inspector, you mustn’t do anything to hurt Trudel, she’s expecting!”
“Oh, really, so you know that, after not seeing her for two years! How did you come to know that?”
“But I told you, Inspector, it was when my husband saw her in the street.”
“When was that?”
“That will have been a few weeks ago. Inspector, you promised I could have a break. Just a short break, please. I really can’t go on.”
“Just a bit more! We’re almost there. Who started talking, Trudel or your husband, considering there was bad blood between them?”
“There wasn’t any bad blood between them, Inspector.”
“Well, your husband told her never to show her face again!”
“Trudel didn’t mind about that. She knows what my husband’s like!”
“Where did they bump into each other?”
“I think it was in Kleine Alexanderstrasse.”
“What was your husband doing in Kleine Alexanderstrasse? You told me he just went to work and back.”
“That’s right.”
“So what was he doing in Kleine Alexanderstrasse then? Probably dropping off a postcard, ha, Frau Quangel?”
“No, no!” she cried out, and went pale with fear.
“It was always me that dropped the postcards! Always me on my own, never him!”
“I wonder why you turned so pale just now, Frau Quangel?”
“I didn’t turn pale. Well, if I did, it was because I felt faint. You said we were going to have a break, Inspector!”
“Soon, as soon as we’ve straightened this out. Well now, your husband is dropping a postcard, and he runs into Trudel Baumann? So what did she have to say about the cards?”
“She didn’t know about them!”
“Did your husband still have the card on him when he ran into Trudel, or had he already dropped it off?”
“He had already dropped it off.”
“There, you see, Frau Quangel, we’re slowly getting there. Now I just need to hear from you what Trudel Baumann had to say about the card, and we’re through for today.”
“But she can’t have said anything, because he had already dropped the card.”
“Think about it, now! I can see from your face that you’re lying. If you stick to your story, we’ll still be here tomorrow morning. Why are you so set on needlessly tormenting yourself? I’ll put it to Trudel directly tomorrow, that she knew about the postcards, and she’ll admit it right away. So why make trouble for yourself, Frau Quangel? I imagine you’ll be relieved to be able to crawl off to your cell. So, how about it then, Frau Quangel? What did Trudel Baumann say about the postcards?”
“No! No! No!” screamed Frau Quangel, jumping to her feet in desperation. “I’m not going to say another word! I’m not giving anyone away! I don’t care what you say, you can kill me if you like, I’m not saying any more!”
“Sit down,” said Inspector Laub, and struck the despairing woman a couple of times. “I’ll tell you when you’re allowed to stand. And I’ll tell
you when the interrogation’s over, too. Now let’s get to the end of Trudel Baumann’s role in all this. Following your confession that she perpetrated high treason…”
“I did not confess that!” cried the tormented, desperate woman.
“You said you didn’t want to give Trudel away,” said the Inspector evenly. “And now I’m not going to rest until I hear from you what there is to be given away.”
“Never, I will never tell you that!”
“Very well! But understand, Frau Quangel, that you’re being stupid. You should bear in mind that it will take me about five minutes to get what I want to know from Trudel Baumann tomorrow morning. A pregnant woman like her can’t endure very much. Once I’ve slapped her round a bit…”
“You mustn’t hit Trudel! You mustn’t! Oh God, if only I hadn’t told you her name!”
“But you did! And you’ll make everything much easier for her if you admit everything! Well, how about it, Frau Quangel? What did Trudel say about the cards?”
And later: “I could get this out of Trudel herself, but I feel like hearing it from you. And now I won’t stop till I have! It’s time you learned you’re not worth shit to me. All your vows to stop talking are crap. All your talk of loyalty and not wanting to betray people is just hot air. You’re nothing, all right? Now, Frau Quangel, do you want to bet that within an hour I’ll have heard from your mouth all that Trudel had to do with the postcards?! Bet?”
“No! No! Never.”
But of course Inspector Laub heard it, and it didn’t even take an hour.
Chapter 52
THE DOWNCAST HERGESELLS
The Hergesells were taking their first walk together since Trudel’s miscarriage. They followed the road out to Grunheide, then turned left down Frankenweg and followed the shore of Flakensee toward the lock at Woltersdorf.
They walked very slowly, and every so often Karl shot a look at Trudel, walking beside him with downcast eyes.
“Isn’t it nice in the woods?” he said.
“Yes,” she replied, “it’s nice.”
A little later he exclaimed, “Look at the swans on the lake!”
“Yes,” she answered, “the swans…” And that was all. “Trudel,” he asked in concern, “why won’t you talk? Have you lost all feeling for everything?”
“I keep thinking of our dead baby,” she whispered.
“Oh, Trudel,” he said. “We’ll have lots of children yet!”
She shook her head. “I’m never going to have a child now.” He asked anxiously, “Did the doctor say something to you?”
“No, he didn’t. But I can feel it.”
“No,” he said. “You mustn’t think like that, Trudel. We’re young, we can have plenty of children.”
Again she shook her head. “I sometimes think that was my punishment.”
“Your punishment! What for, Trudel? What have we done, that we deserve to be punished like that? No, it was just an accident, an awful, random accident!”
“It wasn’t an accident, it was punishment,” she said obstinately. “We weren’t meant to have a baby. I keep having to think what would have happened to Klaus if he’d lived. Hitler Youth or SA or SS…”
“Goodness, Trudel!” he exclaimed, startled by the pessimistic thoughts that tormented his wife, “if our baby Klaus had lived, all this Hitler stuff would have been over. It can’t last much longer, trust me!”
“Yes,” she said, “but what have we done to secure a better future? Nothing at all! Worse than that: we abandoned the cause. I keep thinking about Grigoleit and Baby-face… that’s why we’re being punished…”
“Ach, bloody Grigoleit!” he said irritably.
He was furious with Grigoleit, who still hadn’t called to pick up his suitcase.
Hergesell had already had to extend the checked-baggage ticket.
“I think Grigoleit must be in prison,” he said. “Otherwise we would have heard from him.”
“If he’s in prison,” she insisted, “then it’s our fault. We left him in the lurch.”
“Trudel!” he exclaimed. “I won’t have you think like that. We’re not cut out to be conspirators. We had no option but to give it up.”
“Yes,” she said, “but we’re cut out to be shirkers and cowards! You say Klaus wouldn’t have had to join the Hitler Youth. But if that’s right, and if he had been allowed to live, we have to ask ourselves: What would we have we done to deserve his love and respect? What have we done toward a better future? Nothing!”
“We can’t all play at being conspirators, Trudel!”
“No, but we could have done something else. If a man like my former father-in-law, Otto Quangel…” She stopped.
“Well, what about him? What do you know about him?”
“No, I’d rather not tell you. I promised him I wouldn’t anyway. But if an old man like Otto Quangel finds it in himself to oppose this state, then I think us sitting on our hands is pathetic!”
“But what can we do, Trudel? Nothing! Think of all the power Hitler has, and the two of us are nothing at all! There’s nothing we can do!”
“If everyone thought like that, then Hitler would stay in power for ever. Someone somewhere has to make a start.”
“But what can we do?”
“Everything! We could write appeals and put them up on trees! You work in a chemical factory, as an electrician you have the run of the place. You just need to adjust a lever, or loosen a screw on a machine, and many days’ work will be ruined. If you did something like that, and a few hundred others did the same, then pretty soon Hitler would start running out of armaments.”
“Sure, and the second time I did it, they’d haul me off and execute me!”
“As I say, we’re cowards. We only think about the consequences for us, not for everyone else. Look, Karli, you’ve been excused military service because your job is so important for the war effort. But if you were a soldier, you’d be risking your life every day, and would find it perfectly natural.”
“Oh, the Prussians would find me a cushy job in their army!”
“And you’d let others die in your place! As I keep saying, we’re cowards, we’re worthless cowards!”
“Those damned stairs!” he started in. “If you hadn’t had your miscarriage, we would have had such a happy life together!”
“No, it wouldn’t have been happy, not really, Karli! From the moment I knew I had Klaus inside me, I always wondered what would become of him. I wouldn’t have been able to bear it if he’d extended his right arm in the Hitler salute, and I wouldn’t have been able to look at him in a brown shirt. The next time there was some victory to celebrate, he would have seen his parents hang out the swastika bunting, and he would have known we were lying. Well, at least we’ve been spared that. We weren’t meant to have our Klaus, Karli!”
He walked along beside her awhile in grim silence. They were on the way back now, but they had eyes for neither lake nor woods.
Finally he asked, “So you really want us to get involved? You want me to do something in the factory?”
“I do,” she said. “We must do something, Karli, to stop us feeling so ashamed of ourselves!”
He thought awhile, then he said, “I can’t help it, Trudel. Slinking around the factory sabotaging machines just isn’t in me.”
“Well, think of something that is in you, then! You will. It doesn’t have to be right away.”
“And what about you? Have you thought of something you’d do?”
“Yes,” she said. “I know of a Jewish woman in hiding. She was supposed to be put on a transport already. But the people she’s staying with are bad people, and every day she’s afraid she might be betrayed. I’m going to take her in.”
“No!” he said. “No! Don’t do that, Trudel! The way we’re spied on, it’ll come out right away. And think about ration cards! She’s not going to have one! We’re not going to be able to feed an extra person on our two cards!”
“Don’t you think?
Don’t you think we can starve ourselves a bit, if it means saving another person from death? Oh, Karli, if that’s the truth of it, then Hitler will have an easy job. Then we really are all dirt, and whatever happens to us will serve us right!”
“But people will see her with us! You can’t hide someone in a tiny flat like ours. I won’t allow it!”
“I don’t think I need your permission, Karli. It’s my flat as much as yours.”
A quarrel broke out, the first really bad quarrel in their marriage. She said she would just bring the woman back while he was at work, and he told her he would throw the woman out of the house.
“Then why don’t you throw me out while you’re at it!”
They went as far as that. Both were angry, provoked, aggressive. They couldn’t set the thing aside, no compromise was possible. She was desperate to do something against Hitler, against the war. In principle, he was too, but it mustn’t carry any risk; he wasn’t willing to run the least danger. The thing with the Jewish woman was just mad. He would never allow it!
They walked home in silence through the streets of Erkner. Their silence was so dense, so thick, that it seemed harder and harder to break. They were no longer arm in arm, but walked side by side, not touching. Once, when their hands happened to brush, each quickly pulled back, and then they increased the distance between them.
They didn’t see the large car parked in front of their house. They walked up the stairs and didn’t notice that at every door they were met by curious or angry glances. Karl Hergesell unlocked the door and let Trudel in first. Even in the corridor, they didn’t notice anything. Only when they saw the little stout man in a green jacket standing in their parlor did they give a start.
“Hello?” said an indignant Hergesell. “What do you think you’re doing in my flat?”
“Allow me. Detective Inspector Laub, from the Gestapo, Berlin,” the man in the green jacket introduced himself. He had kept on his little huntsman’s hat with the badger brush.
“Herr Hergesell? And Frau Gertrud Hergesell, née Baumann, likes to go by Trudel? Excellent! I would like to have a few words in private with your wife, Herr Hergesell. Perhaps you could wait in the kitchen, if you don’t mind.”
