by Hans Fallada
The prosecutor sits there with ears pricked.
“High Court! Criminal action, or being accessory to such action, cannot be laid at the door of such a woman. You don’t punish a dog for catching rabbits on someone else’s land on his master’s instructions: this woman is not fully responsible for her role. For which reason also, she throws herself upon the mercy of Paragraph 51, Subhead 2…”
The prosecutor interrupts. The defense has once again disregarded the orders of the court, he yaps.
The defense denies this.
The prosecutor reads from his notes. “According to the stenographer’s records, the defense spoke as follows: ‘For which reason also, she throws herself upon the mercy of Paragraph 51, Subhead 2.’ The words ‘For which reason also’ make clear reference to the alleged insanity in the Heffke family. I invoke the judge’s ruling!”
Judge Freisler asks the defense attorney what the words “For which reason also” were intended to refer to.
The attorney explains that the words referred to arguments yet to be elaborated in his plea.
The prosecutor yells that no one can base an argument on things he hasn’t said yet. A reference can be made only to something already existing—it is absurd to claim that one might refer to things yet unsaid! The defense attorney’s words are mere prevarication.
The defense protested against the charge of prevarication. Furthermore, one might very well refer in the course of an argument to something still to be said; that was a widely used rhetorical ploy—Cicero, for instance, in the third of his Philippics says…
Anna Quangel had been forgotten; Otto sat there open-mouthed, looking from side to side at this Ping-Pong match.
A heated dispute was in progress. Greek and Latin quotations were bandied back and forth.
Finally, the court withdrew once more to consult, and Judge Freisler returned to announce to general surprise (for in the course of the learned argument, most people had forgotten what it was actually about), that on account of repeated violations the defense attorney was now barred from further speaking. The role of official state-appointed defense was transferred to Assistant Ludecke, who happened to be among those present.
The grizzled defense attorney bowed and left the court, looking more worried than ever.
Assistant Ludecke, who “happened to be among those present,” now got up and spoke. He didn’t have much experience, hadn’t been listening very closely, was intimidated by the court; moreover, he was in love at the time, and so was powerfully distracted. He spoke for three minutes, asked for mitigating factors to be taken into consideration (didn’t say what they were, and in case the court disagreed with him, he asked that his plea be disregarded), and then sat down, looking hot and flustered.
It was now Otto Quangel’s designated defense attorney’s turn to speak.
He got up, very blond and full of himself. He had not spoken in the trial thus far, had not taken a note, and the table in front of him was empty. During the hours and hours of the hearing, he had busied himself by rubbing together and examining his pink and beautifully manicured fingertips.
But now he spoke, his gown half open, one hand in his trouser pocket and the other economically gesturing. This attorney could not stand his client, he found him loathsome, stupid, ugly, and generally repulsive. And Quangel had done everything in his power to heighten the man’s revulsion by ignoring Dr. Reichhardt’s urgent advice and withholding all information from him—he needed no attorney.
So now Defense Attorney Stark spoke. His nasal drawl was in stark contrast to the words he used.
He said, “Rarely can we who are assembled here have been presented with such a specimen of human degradation as we have had before us today. Treason, prostitution, procuring, abortion, miserliness—is there a vice anywhere that my client does not exemplify or has not participated in? Gentlemen of the court, you see me unable to defend such a criminal. In a case like this one, I am obliged to lay aside the role of defender and join ranks with the prosecution, for whom I raise my voice: I say, let justice take its natural course. Varying the famous sentence, I say, Fiat justitia, pereat mundus! No mitigation for this criminal, who doesn’t deserve to be called a human being.”
With that the defender bowed and, to general surprise, sat down, carefully pulling his trouser creases up over his knees. He looked down attentively at his fingertips and began rubbing them together gently.
After a short pause, the judge asked the accused if he had anything to say for himself. If so, then he advised him to keep it short.
Clutching his pants with both hands, Otto Quangel said, “I have nothing to say in my favor. But I would like to thank my attorney for his defense. At last I understand what the law is for.”
And Quangel sat down amidst a general uproar. The attorney interrupted his fingertip-rubbing, got up, and added casually that he was personally and professionally finished with his client, who had once more given proof of what a hardened criminal he was.
It was then that Quangel laughed for the first time since his arrest, the first time in a very long time. He laughed with wholehearted gusto. The preposterous comedy of this gang of criminals branding everyone else as criminals was suddenly too much for him to take.
The judge attacked the accused for his unseemly mirth, and considered imposing further punishments on him, but then he remembered he had already burdened him with everything in his power. The only remaining thing he could do was banish him from the courtroom, and that struck him as counterproductive. He therefore opted for temporary leniency.
The court withdrew to consider its verdict.
Long interval.
As at the theater, most people went out to smoke a cigarette.
Chapter 65
THE TRIAL: THE VERDICT
According to standard practice, the two guards who were now in charge of Otto Quangel should have taken him down to a little waiting cell during the break in proceedings. But the court had almost completely emptied, and moving the prisoner up and down many corridors and flights of stairs—and he with his trousers forever slipping down—was a cumbersome process, so they took it upon themselves to disregard standard practice, and let him stay where he was, while they stood chatting a few feet away him.
The old foreman propped his head in his hands and sank into a doze. The seven-hour-long proceedings, during which he had remained riveted in concentration, had exhausted him. Shadowy images played in his head: the clawlike hands of Judge Freisler opening and closing; Anna’s attorney with his finger up his nose; the little hunchback Heffke trying to fly; Anna, pink-cheeked, saying “Eighty-seven,” her eyes as merry and serene as he had ever seen them; these and many others…many…others…
His head weighed more heavily in his hands—he was so tired, he simply had to sleep, even if only for five minutes…
So he dropped his arm on the table, and his head on his arm. He drew a deep breath. Five minutes of deep sleep, a little spell of oblivion.
But he awoke again with a start. There was something in the courtroom, still, that disturbed his longed-for rest. He stared all round the room, and his eyes came to rest on Judge Fromm, who was standing beside the railing of the public gallery, apparently gesturing to him. Quangel had noticed the old gentleman earlier—nothing seemed to have escaped his attention—but on such a crowded day he had paid little heed to his former neighbor from the house on Jablonski Strasse.
Now the judge was standing by the rail, motioning to him.
Quangel darted a look at the two guards. They stood about three paces away from him, engrossed in a lively conversation. Quangel picked up the words, “And so I grab the guy by the throat…”
The foreman stood up, snatched up his trousers, and shuffled across the courtroom toward the judge.
The latter stood by the rail, his eyes lowered now, as though he didn’t want to see the prisoner slowly drawing nearer. Then—Quangel at this stage was only a couple of steps away—the judge rapidly turned on his hee
l and walked down the aisle to the exit. But he had left behind on the railing a small white package a little smaller than a spool of thread.
Quangel took the last few steps, reached out, and grabbed the little package, concealing it first in the palm of his hand, then in his trouser pocket. It had a firm feeling. He turned round and saw that the guards hadn’t remarked his absence. A door shut at the back of the public gallery, and the judge was gone.
Quangel started to wander back to his place. He was excited and his heart was pounding. It was so unlikely that this adventure was going to end well. What had seemed so important to the judge that he had risked so much in slipping it to him?
Quangel was only a few yards from his place when one of the guards finally noticed him. He gave a jump, looked in confusion at Quangel’s seat as though to confirm that the accused wasn’t actually sitting in it, and then he almost shouted in alarm, “What are you doing wandering around?”
The other guard spun round, too, and stared at Quangel. They both stood there, rooted to the spot in bewilderment; it didn’t even occur to them to lead the prisoner back.
“I want to be excused, officer!” said Quangel.
But while the guard growled, “Well, kindly ask, the next time! You don’t just go shuffling off by yourself!”—while the guard was still talking, Quangel suddenly thought that he didn’t want to be any better off than Anna. Let them announce their verdict without the presence of the two principals—it would spoil their fun. He, Quangel, wasn’t in the least curious; he knew what was coming. But he was curious to learn what the judge had slipped him.
The guards had come up alongside Quangel and taken his arms, while he held up his trousers.
Quangel looked at them icily, and said, “Fuck Hitler!”
“What?” They were stunned, didn’t believe their ears.
And Quangel, very fast and very loud, “Fuck Hitler! Fuck Göring! Fuck Goebbels, you piece of shit! Fuck Streicher!”
A punch on the jaw prevented him from continuing with this litany. The two policemen lugged the unconscious Quangel out of the court.
And so it came about that Judge Freisler ended up passing sentence on the two accused in absentia. In vain had he ignored Quangel’s insulting behavior to his defense attorney. And Quangel was right: Freisler didn’t enjoy passing sentence without being able to look into the faces of the accused. He had thought up such fine insults.
Freisler was still speaking in court when Quangel opened his eyes in his cell. His chin hurt, his whole head hurt, he could barely remember what had happened. His hand slid into his trouser pocket. Thank God, the little package was still there.
He heard the footfall of the sentry in the corridor, and then it stopped, and there was a quiet scraping sound from the door: the peephole cover being slid aside. Quangel shut his eyes and remained stretched out as though still unconscious. After a seemingly endless interval, there was a second scraping sound, and then the renewed footfall of the sentry…
The peephole was shut; the sentry wouldn’t be looking in for another two or three minutes.
Quangel reached into his pocket and pulled out the little package. He slipped off the thread that tied it and unfolded the piece of paper to find a glass vial. On the paper was a typed note: “Cyanide, kills painlessly in seconds. Hide it in your mouth. Your wife will be similarly provided for. Destroy this note!”
Quangel smiled. The good old man! The lovely old man! He put the note in his mouth, chewed it until it was sodden with spittle, then swallowed it.
He gazed curiously at the vial, with its clear contents. Swift, painless death, he mused. Oh, if they knew! And Anna provided for as well. He really does think of everything. Good old man!
He put the glass vial in his mouth. After trying various places, he found he could best lodge it in his cheek beside his jawbone, like a plug of tobacco—many of the workers in the furniture factory had chewed. He felt his cheek. No, there was no bump there. And if they did spot something, he would crunch the glass and swallow before they could take it from him.
Quangel smiled again. Now he felt really free. Now they had no more power over him!
Chapter 66
THE DEATH HOUSE
The death house in Plötzensee is now Otto Quangel’s home. The solitary cell in the death house is his last address on earth.
Yes, he is in solitary now. There are no more cell mates for those sentenced to death, no Dr. Reichhardt, not even a “dog.” The only companion for those sentenced to death is Death: that’s the way the law wants it to be.
From the ghosts in the cells there isn’t a sound to be heard. The condemned are so quiet! Brought together from all corners of Europe: Germans, French, Dutch, Belgians, Norwegians, some of them little more than boys, and good characters, weak characters, bad characters—every temperament is represented, from sanguine to choleric to melancholic. In this establishment, distinctions are blurred, for everyone is so quiet; these men are no more than shadows of their former selves. Only rarely does Quangel hear someone sobbing at night, and then silence, silence… Silence…
He has always loved silence. These past few months, he has been forced to live a life against his own bent: never alone, continually forced to speak, when more than anything he hated speech. Now for one last time he is allowed to return to his own type of life: silence, patience. Dr. Reichhardt is a good man, he learned a lot from him, but now, so close to death, it is better to be without Dr. Reichhardt.
He has established (based on what he learned from Dr. Reichhardt) a regular routine here in the cell. Everything at the prescribed time: careful washing, a few calisthenics picked up from his former cell mate, an hour’s walk in the morning and one in the afternoon, thorough cleaning of the cell, eating, sleeping. There are books to read here too; each week he is allowed six books in his cell. But he hasn’t changed as much as all that, and he never looks at them. He is not about to start reading in the twilight of his life.
But there is one other thing he has picked up from Dr. Reichhardt: while he walks he hums to himself. He remembers nursery rhymes and folk songs from his school days and before. They well up in him from forgotten depths, verse after verse—what a brain he must have, remembering those things after forty years! And then the poems: “The Ring of Polycrates,” “The Pledge,” “The Ode to Joy,” “The Erlking.” Only for “The Bell” he can’t quite remember all the stanzas. Maybe he never had them all memorized in the first place; he can’t remember now…
A quiet life, with work, as ever, at the core of his day. Yes, he has to work here too. He has to sort batches of dried peas and pick out the wormy ones, the broken ones, stray seeds of this or that, blackish gray balls of vetch. He likes the work; his busy fingers sort peas hour after hour.
And it’s good, too, that he’s landed this particular job, because it keeps him fed. The good days when Dr. Reichhardt shared his meals with him are now well and truly over. What they give him in his cell now is poorly cooked, watery swill—glutinous bread with potatoes to stretch it—and it sits heavy in his gut.
But the peas help. He can’t take many because they’re weighed, but enough to satisfy his appetite. He takes the peas and softens them in water, and when they’ve swelled up he drops them in his soup to warm them through, and then he mashes them. This way he improves his food, of which it would have been true to say Not enough to live on and too much to die on.
He senses that the warders know what he’s up to, but they don’t say anything. And the reason they don’t is not because they want to make life easier for the condemned man, but because they’ve witnessed so much misery it has dulled their feelings.
They don’t talk themselves, lest their charges should. They don’t want to listen to any complaints; there’s nothing they can do about them anyway. Everything here takes its rigid course. They are cogs in a machine, iron cogs, steel cogs. If an iron cog happened to soften, it would have to be replaced, and the cogs don’t want to be replaced—they want to be just
the way they are.
They don’t provide any comfort because they don’t want to. They are as they are, which is to say indifferent, cold, lacking empathy.
When Otto Quangel was first brought to this cell from the solitary confinement to which Judge Freisler had sentenced him, he thought it would be for a day or two. He thought they would be in a hurry to carry out his sentence, and that would have been fine by him.
But gradually he comes to realize that it can take weeks or months for a sentence to be carried out, even a whole year. There are people sentenced to death who have been waiting for fully a year, who every night go to bed and don’t know whether they will be rudely awakened by the executioner; any night, any hour—while they are chewing their food, while they are sorting peas, while they are slopping out—at any moment the door might open, a hand beckon, a voice say, “All right! It’s time!”
There is a monstrous cruelty in the way fear is spun out over days, weeks, months. Nor is it just because of some legal formalities: it’s not just pleas for clemency waiting to be settled one way or another that cause this delay. Some people say the executioner has too much to do; he can’t keep up. The executioner only works here on Mondays and Thursdays. All the other days, he’s on the road; his services are in demand all over Germany; the executioner takes his work with him. But how can it be that in the case of, say, two men sentenced for the same thing at the same time, one is punished seven weeks before the other? No, it’s a question of cruelty, of sadism, of barbarism. They don’t beat you up in this establishment, don’t torture you physically; here the poison is dribbled imperceptibly into you. They don’t want to let your soul out of the clutches of death for a single minute.
Each Monday and Thursday there is commotion on death row. The night before, the ghosts begin to stir; they hunker in doorways, shaking; they listen to the sounds from the corridor. The sentry is still pacing back and forth; it’s only two in the morning. But soon… Maybe today. And they beg and pray, Just these three more days, or these four more days till the next scheduled executions, and I’ll go willingly, but not today, please! And they beg and pray and cajole.
