by Hans Fallada
There had been a time when she had supposed she didn’t love him and would never be able to love him. Now she was full of him, the air that she breathed was him, the bread she ate, the blanket that kept her warm, all him. And he was so near, a couple of corridors, a couple of flights of steps, a door—but in the whole world there was no one so merciful as to conduct her to him, even once! Not even the tubercular chaplain!
They were all afraid for their lives, with no one willing to risk making a serious effort to help her in her helplessness. Then suddenly there swims into her memory the morgue in the Gestapo basement, the lanky SS man lighting his cigarette and saying, “Girl! Girl!” to her, her search among the corpses after she and Anna had undressed the dead Berta—and now that strikes her as a mild and merciful hour, when she was allowed to look for Karli. And since then? Her beating heart locked up between iron and stone! Alone!
The door is unlocked, much more slowly and respectfully than the way the warders do it, and there is even a soft knock: the chaplain.
“May I come in?” he asks.
“Please, please come in, Chaplain!” cries a tearful Trudel Hergesell.
Meanwhile Frau Hänsel glares and mutters, “What does he want this time?”
And then all at once Trudel rests her head against the bony, panting chest of the priest, her tears are flowing, she buries her head in his chest and implores him, “Chaplain, I’m so afraid! You must help me! I’ve got to see Karli, just once! I’m sure it’ll be the last time…”
And the harsh voice of Frau Hänsel: “I’ll report you! I’ll report you right now!” while the chaplain strokes her head gently, and says, “Yes, child, you shall see him once more!”
She is shaken by an ever stronger sobbing, and she knows Karli is dead, that she hadn’t looked for him in the morgue for nothing, that she had had a foreboding, a presentiment.
And she wails, “He’s dead! Oh, Father, he’s dead!”
And he answers, giving the only consolation he can to the condemned woman, “Child, his sufferings are over. It’s harder for you.”
She hears it. She tries to think about it, understand what it means, but the light dims, then everything goes dark before her eyes. Her head slumps forward.
“Will you give me a hand, Frau Hänsel!” the chaplain pleads. “I’m not strong enough to manage her on my own.”
And then it’s night outside, night meets night, darkness meets darkness.
Trudel, the widowed Frau Hergesell, has woken up, and she knows that she isn’t in her cell, and she knows too that Karli is dead. She can see him lying on his narrow cot in his cell, his face youthful and small and shrunken, and she thinks of the face of the child she was carrying, and the faces merge into one another, and she knows that she has lost everything there is to lose in this world, that she has lost husband and child, and that never will she love again, never will she conceive again, and all because she left a postcard on a windowsill for an old man, and that this has annihilated her whole life and Karli’s with it, and there will never be sunshine and happiness and summer for her again, or flowers…
Flowers on my grave, flowers on your grave…
And with the intense pain she feels radiating out, chilling her like ice, she closes her eyes again and tries to return to night and oblivion. But night is outside, it remains there, it doesn’t enter her, but suddenly heat courses through her… She leaps up out of bed, she wants to run away from this ghastly pain. But a hand reaches for her…
It grows light, and once more it’s the chaplain who is sitting with her, holding her. Yes, it’s a different cell, it’s Karli’s cell, but they’ve already taken him away, and the man who was in here with Karli has gone as well.
“Where has he gone?” she asks breathlessly, as though she had just run here.
“I will say my prayers at his grave.”
“What good will your prayers do him? You should have prayed for his life, while there was still time!”
“He is at peace, child!”
“I can’t stay here!” says Trudel feverishly. “Please, let me return to my cell, Chaplain! I have a picture of him there, I have to see it right away. He looked so different.”
And as she says this she knows quite well that she is lying to the good chaplain, deliberately, to deceive him. She doesn’t own a picture of Karli, and she never wants to go back to the cell with Frau Hänsel again.
The thought rushes through her head: I’m out of my mind, but I must disguise myself well, so that he doesn’t know it… I just need to keep my madness hidden for five more minutes!
The chaplain leads her carefully on his arm out of the cell, down many corridors and flights of steps, back into the women’s prison, and from the passing cells she hears deep breathing—they are sleep-ing—and from others nervous pacing—they are fretting—and from still others the sound of crying—they are grieving, but no one has such grief as she does.
The chaplain is busy unlocking and then locking a door after her; she doesn’t take his arm again, and the two of them walk silently down the unlit passage with the dark solitary cells, where the drunken doctor has broken his word and not released the two sick prisoners after all, and then they are climbing many flights of steps to Block V, where Trudel’s cell is.
There on the top passage, a warder shuffles toward them, and she says, “It’s twenty to midnight, and you’re only returning Hergesell now? What kept you so long, Chaplain?”
“She was unconscious for many hours. Her husband has died, you know.”
“I see—and you took it upon yourself to comfort the young widow, is that right, Chaplain? Nice—nice! Frau Hänsel has told me you take every opportunity of throwing yourself at her. A nice comfort session at the dead of night is even better, though, eh? I must make a note of it in my log!”
But before the chaplain can get out a word of reproach for her foul insinuation, they both see that Trudel, the widowed Frau Hergesell, has clambered over the iron railing on the corridor. For a moment she stands there, gripping the railing with one hand, her back toward them.
And they call out, “Stop! No! Don’t do it!”
They dash toward her, hands reaching out to grasp her.
But Trudel Hergesell has already dived into the void. They hear a rush of fluttering air and then a thump.
And then everything is deathly silent, while the two of them, pale-faced, lean down over the rail and see nothing.
They take a step toward the stairs.
And in that instant all hell broke loose.
It was as though the prisoners had been able to see what had happened through their cell doors. First, there might have been a single scream, but it went from cell to cell and from block to block, from one side of the corridor to the other and across the central atrium.
And on its way, the scream was augmented by yelling, howling, shrilling, keening, raging.
“You murderers! You killed her! Why don’t you kill the lot of us, you butchers!”
And there were some who clung to their window bars and yelled it into the yard, so that the men’s wing awoke from its troubled sleep and likewise began to rage, scream, yell, wail, and despair.
It accused, it accused with one, two, three thousand voices: the beast screamed its accusation from one, two, three thousand muzzles.
The alarm sounded, and they drummed their fists against the iron doors, then battered the doors with their stools. Iron bedsteads were picked up and dropped. Tin plates were kicked around the floors, bucket lids banged, and the whole establishment, the whole of the gigantic prison, suddenly stank like a latrine many hundreds of times multiplied.
The riot squads got into their uniforms and reached for their rubber truncheons.
Cell doors were unlocked: click click!
And the ripe smacking sound of rubber truncheons on skulls was heard, and the roar of fury rose, mixed with the scraping of fighting feet and the high bestial yells of epileptics and the enthusiastic yodel-ing of idiots and t
he shrill whistles of pimps…
Water was splashed in the faces of the attacking guards.
And in the morgue Karli Hergesell lay perfectly still, with a child’s small and gentle face.
The whole thing was a wild, gruesome symphony, performed in honor of Trudel, née Baumann, and then the widowed Frau Hergesell.
Meanwhile she herself lay on the ground, half on the linoleum and half on the dirty gray cement of Block I.
She lay perfectly still, her small gray girlish hand half open. Her lips were flecked with blood, and her sightless eyes looked at some unknown world.
Her ears, though, still seemed to hear the wild infernal noise swelling and diminishing, and her brow was creased, as though pondering whether this could be the peace that the good chaplain had promised her.
In consequence of this suicide, it was the prison chaplain, Friedrich Lorenz, who was suspended from duty, rather than the drunken doctor. Charges were laid against the priest. Because it was a crime and the abetting of a crime to enable a prisoner to put an end to his own life: only the state and its servants were supposed to have that prerogative.
If a detective pistol-whips a man so badly that his skull is fractured, and if a drunken doctor allows the injured man to die, both are an example of due process. Whereas if a priest fails to hinder a suicide, if he allows a prisoner to exercise his or her will—that will is supposed to have been taken away—then he has committed a crime and must be punished.
Unfortunately—rather like Frau Hergesell—Father Friedrich Lorenz cheated justice by dying of a hemorrhage just as he was about to be arrested. A suspicion had arisen that he had enjoyed immoral relations with some of those in his care. But he had found, to use his own word, peace, and he was spared much.
This was how it came about that until the trial Anna Quangel did not learn of the deaths of Trudel and Karl Hergesell, because the successor of the good chaplain was either too fearful or unwilling to pass messages among the prisoners. He confined himself to the cure of souls, in those instances where it was explicitly requested.
Chapter 60
THE TRIAL: A REUNION
The most perfectly constructed system is occasionally subject to malfunction. The People’s Court in Berlin, which had nothing to do with the people and to which the people were not admitted even as silent spectators, for most of its sessions were held behind closed doors—this People’s Court was an instance of a perfect system: before any accused person even set foot in the courtroom, that person was for all intents and purposes already condemned, and there was no indication that he or she had anything to hope for in there.
That morning only one case was scheduled: the one brought against Otto and Anna Quangel for treason. The public gallery was only one-quarter full: a few Party uniforms, a few lawyers who for inscrutable reasons had chosen to attend these proceedings, and the rest law students, who wanted to learn how justice deals with people whose one crime was to love their country more than the judges did. All these people had come by tickets to the proceedings through “influence.” How the little man with the white beard and the clever wrinkles around his eyes, how retired Judge Fromm had obtained his ticket was a mystery. At any rate, he was sitting unobtrusively with the others, a little apart from them, his face lowered, and regularly polishing his gold-rimmed spectacles.
At five minutes to ten, a guard led Otto Quangel into the courtroom. He had been put in the clothes he was wearing at the time of his arrest: a clean but much-mended pair of overalls, with dark blue patches standing out distinctly from the faded blue of the garment. His still-sharp eyes slid indifferently from the empty seats beyond the dock to the spectators, lighting up briefly on seeing the judge, before he sat down on the bench for the accused.
Just before ten o’clock, the second defendant, Anna Quangel, was led in by a second guard, and there now occurred the malfunction referred to above: no sooner did Anna Quangel catch sight of her husband than, perfectly naturally, without hesitating and without looking at the other people in the room, she made straight for him and sat down next to him.
Otto Quangel raised his hand and whispered, “Don’t say anything! Not now!”
But there was a light in his eye that told her how glad he was to see her again.
Of course it was no part of the plan of this exalted establishment that the two accused, having been kept apart for months, should sit together and enjoy a cozy chat a quarter of an hour before proceedings began. But whether it was that the two guards were new at their job, or that the state attached but slight importance to this, the case, or that the two poorly dressed, ordinary old people looked so wholly unthreatening—whatever it was, the court made no objection to Anna’s choice of seat and for the next quarter of an hour left them to it. In the meantime, the two guards had got into a stimulating conversation about terms and conditions, some overtime pay for night work that they had been tricked out of, and a number of other unfair raids on their wages.
In the courtroom, no one—Judge Fromm excepted—noticed the malfunction. The attendants were sloppy and slovenly, and so no one picked up on this slip that worked to the disadvantage of the Third Reich and the advantage of the two traitors. A case against two old workers was of no great interest to anyone. Here, people were used to monster conspiracy cases with thirty or forty accused, who usually didn’t know each other but who in the course of the proceedings learned that they had all been involved in something together and were accordingly all sentenced together.
So, after looking around carefully for a few seconds, Quangel was able to say, “I’m glad to see you, Anna. Are you doing all right?”
“Yes, Otto, I’m better now.”
“They won’t leave us sitting together for long. But let’s make something of our few minutes. You know what’s coming, I take it?”
Very softly, “Yes, Otto.”
“It’s the death sentence for us both, Anna. There’s no other way.”
“But, Otto…”
“No, Anna, no buts. I know you tried to shoulder all the blame for everything…”
“They won’t sentence a woman so heavily, and maybe you’ll get away with your life.”
“No, no, you’re mistaken. You can’t lie well enough. You’ll only succeed in drawing out the trial. Let’s tell the truth, and then it will be over sooner.”
“But, Otto…”
“No, Anna, no buts. Think. No lies. Let’s be truthful…”
“But, Otto…”
“Anna, please!”
“Otto, don’t make it so hard for me!”
“Do you want us to lie to them? Quarrel? Put on a show for them? The simple truth, Anna!”
She struggled with herself. Then she gave in, as she always gave in. “All right, Otto, I promise.”
“Thank you, Anna. I’m very grateful.”
They stopped speaking, and looked down at their feet. Both were ashamed to have gotten so heated.
The voice of one of the policemen behind them became audible: “And so I said to the lieutenant, ‘Lieutenant, I said, you can’t treat me like that, I said, Lieutenant…’”
Otto Quangel concentrated. It had to be. If Anna learned of it in the course of the proceedings—which it was inevitable that she would—then it would be so much worse. The consequences were incalculable.
“Anna,” he whispered. “You’re brave and strong, aren’t you?”
“Yes, Otto,” she replied. “I am now. Now I’m with you again, I
am. What is it?”
“There is something, Anna…”
“What is it, Otto? Tell me, Otto! If you’re scared of telling me, that’s enough to make me scared.”
“Anna, did you hear anything more about Gertrud?”
“About what Gertrud?”
“Trudel, then!”
“Oh, Trudel! What about Trudel? No, I haven’t had any news of her since I was transferred into remand. I’ve missed her very much; she was so good to me. She forgave me for betraying her
.”
“You didn’t betray her! At first I thought you did, too, but later I understood.”
“Yes, well, she understood, too. I was so confused during the early interrogations with that awful Inspector Laub, I didn’t know what I was saying, but she understood. She forgave me.”
“Thank God! Now, Anna, be brave and strong: Trudel is dead.”
“Oh!” groaned Anna, and laid her hand on her heart. “Oh!”
And, to get it all over with, he quickly added, “And her husband is dead as well.”
No words came for a long time. She sat there, with her head in her hands, but Otto sensed that she wasn’t crying, that she was still numb with the shock. Involuntarily he said the same words that Chaplain Lorenz had used when telling him: “They’re dead. They are at peace. They have been spared further pain.”
“Yes!” Anna said at last. “Yes. She was so fearful for her Karli when there was no news, but now she is at peace.”
She didn’t speak for a long time, and Quangel didn’t press her, even though he sensed from some commotion in the hall that the court was about to go into session.
Softly Anna asked, “Were they both—put to death?”
“No,” Quangel replied. “He died from the aftereffects of a blow he received when they were arrested.”
“And Trudel?”
“She took her own life,” Otto Quangel said quickly. “She jumped from the railing on the fifth floor. She was dead on the spot, Father Lorenz said. She didn’t suffer.”
“It must have happened that night,” Anna Quangel suddenly said, “when the whole prison was in uproar! I remember it, it was terrible, Otto!” And she buried her face in her hands again.
“Yes, it was terrible,” Quangel agreed. “With us, too, it was terrible.”
After a while she raised her head again, and looked firmly at Otto. Her lips were still trembling, but she said, “It’s better this way. It would be so awful if they were both sitting here with us. Well, now they’re at peace.” And, very quietly, “You know, Otto, we could do the same.”
