by Hans Fallada
The ways of clemency!
Chapter 68
ANNA QUANGEL’S MOST DIFFICULT DECISION
It was harder for Anna Quangel than it was for her husband: she was a woman. She longed for speech, kindness, a little tenderness—and now she was always alone, from morning till night, busy with the unpicking and rolling up of sackfuls of knotted string that were delivered to her cell. While she had been used to little in the way of intimacy and regard from her husband, even that little now struck her as paradise, and the presence of a mute Otto would have been a blessing under her present circumstances.
She cried a lot. The long, hard period in solitary had robbed her of the little strength that had suddenly come back to her when she had seen her Otto again and that had made her so brave and strong during the trial. She had been so cold and hungry in the chilly cell in solitary that the cold was still in her bones. Unlike her husband, she couldn’t improve her diet with dried peas, and she hadn’t learned, as he had, to divide the day into meaningful activities, a rhythm that allowed for change and something like enjoyment: an hour’s walking after work, or the pleasure in one’s own freshly washed body.
Anna Quangel had learned to listen at her cell window at night. But she didn’t just do it occasionally, she did it night after night. And she whispered, she talked at the window, she told her story, she kept asking after Otto, Otto Quangel… O God, did no one know where Otto was, how he was doing, Otto Quangel, yes that’s right, an elderly foreman, but still fit and healthy, such and such a description, fifty-three years old—someone must know!
She didn’t notice, or she didn’t want to notice, that she bothered the others with her incessant questions, her lack of restraint. Everyone here had worries of his own.
“Can’t you shut up, #76, we’ve heard it all before!”
Or else, “Oh, it’s her and her Otto again, Otto this, Otto that!”
Or, bitterly, “If you don’t shut up, we’ll denounce you! Let someone else get a word in!”
When Anna Quangel finally crawled off to bed late at night, she couldn’t sleep for a long time, and she had trouble getting up the following morning. The guard told her off and threatened her with further punishment. She was late getting started on her work. She had to hurry, and then she undid whatever good her hurrying did when she thought she heard a noise in the corridor and got up to listen at the door—for half an hour, an hour. She, who had once been calm, kind, and motherly, was so transformed by her experience in solitary that she got on everyone’s nerves now. And because the guards always had trouble with her, they were rough with her, and she would start quarreling with them; she would claim she was given less food than the others, and of poorer quality, and the most work. Once or twice she had gotten so heated in the course of these arguments that she’d started screaming, just screaming her head off.
Then she would stop in surprise at herself. She thought about the distance she had come to be in this barren death cell. She remembered her home on Jablonski Strasse, which she would never see again, and she remembered her son Otto as he grew up, his childish babble, the first troubles at school, the little pale hand that reached up to her face to caress it—the child’s hand that had grown in her belly, that her blood had made into flesh, flesh now long since consigned to earth and forever lost to her. She thought of the nights that Trudel had lain in bed with her, whispering, the young, blooming body next to hers, talking for hours and hours about the strict husband in the bed across the way, about Ottochen and their prospects for the future. Trudel, of course, was gone as well.
And then she thought of her work with Otto, their silent struggle waged over the past two years. She remembered the Sundays sitting together in the parlor—she on the sofa, he on a chair, writing—formulating sentences together, sharing dreams of spectacular success. Lost and gone, all of it, lost and gone! Alone in her cell, facing certain death, with no word of Otto, maybe never to see his face again—to die alone, to lie in her grave alone…
She paces back and forth in her cell for hours; it’s all more than she can bear. She neglects her work: the knotted twine lies there on the ground, she kicks it away impatiently, and when the guard comes in the evening, she has done nothing. There are harsh words for her, but she doesn’t listen—they can do what they want with her; why don’t they just put her to death right away, the sooner the better!
“Listen, I’m telling you,” the female guard says to her colleagues. “She’s going off the rails; you should keep a straitjacket ready. And look in on her regularly—she’s perfectly capable of stringing herself up. One day you’ll look in and see her swinging from a beam, and we’ll have nothing but trouble!”
But the guard is wrong: Anna Quangel is not thinking of hanging herself. What keeps her alive, what makes even this starkly reduced form of life seem livable to her, is the thought of Otto. She can’t just sneak away from here, she has to wait—perhaps there’ll be a message from him one day, perhaps they’ll even allow her to see him once more before she dies.
And then, one day in this endless succession of grim days, fortune seems to smile on her. A guard suddenly opens the door: “Come along, Quangel! You’ve got a visitor!”
Visitor? Who’s going to visit me here? I don’t have anyone who would visit me. It can only be Otto! It must be Otto! I can feel it, it’s Otto!
She glances at the warder; she would so like to ask her who the visitor is, but it’s the warder she always has arguments with, so she can’t ask her. She follows, trembling, not knowing where they’re going. She has forgotten that she must shortly die—all she knows is that she’s on her way to Otto, the only person in the whole world…
The warder hands #76 to a guard, and she is led into a room divided in two by steel bars. On the other side stands a man.
All joy leaves Anna Quangel when she sees who the man is. It isn’t Otto at all; it’s old Judge Fromm. There he is, looking at her with his blue eyes wreathed in wrinkles, and he says, “I wanted to see how you were, Frau Quangel.”
The guard on duty stands next to the bars. He looks at them both carefully, then turns away and goes over to the window.
“Quick!” whispers the judge, and pushes something through the bars to her.
Instinctively she takes it.
“Hide it!” he whispers.
And she hides the small paper-wrapped tube.
A note from Otto, she thinks, and her heart starts pounding again. She has gotten over her disappointment.
The guard has turned round and is looking at them from the window.
At last Anna finds words. She doesn’t say hello to the judge, she doesn’t thank him, she simply asks the only thing that still interests her in the world: “Judge, have you seen my Otto?”
The old gentleman moves his wise head this way and that. “Not recently,” he says. “But I’ve heard from friends that he’s doing well, very well. He’s keeping his chin up beautifully.”
He thinks for a moment, and adds, as though reluctantly, “I think I can greet you on his behalf.”
“Thank you,” she whispers. “Thank you very much.”
His words have triggered many sensations within her. If he hasn’t seen him, he can’t have a letter from him, either. But no, he spoke of friends; couldn’t these friends have conveyed a letter through him? And the words “He’s keeping his chin up beautifully” fill her with pride and happiness… And the greeting from him, the greeting passed through granite walls and iron bars, like a breath of spring! Oh lovely, lovely, lovely life!
“You’re not looking at all well, Frau Quangel,” says the old man.
“No?” she asks absently, a little surprised. “But I’m feeling well. Very well. Tell Otto. Please tell him so! Don’t forget to greet him from me. You will see him, won’t you?”
“I think so,” he says evasively. He is so scrupulous, the pedantic old gentleman. The least untruth spoken to this doomed woman pains him. She has no idea what ruses, what intrigues he has had recou
rse to in order to get permission to see her! He has had to pull all the strings he knows! In the eyes of the world, Anna Quangel is dead—and how can you visit the dead?
He doesn’t dare tell her that he will never see Otto Quangel again in this life, that he has no news of him, that he lied when he said Quangel sent her his regards, just to give this weak old woman a little courage. Sometimes it’s necessary to lie to the dying.
“Oh!” she suddenly says, with a little animation, and—lo!—her pale sunken cheeks show a little color. “Tell Otto when you see him that I think about him every day, every hour, and I’m sure we’ll see each other again before I die…”
The guard looks in momentary bewilderment at the elderly woman who’s speaking like a besotted little girl. Old straw burns fiercest! he thinks to himself, and goes back to the window.
She fails to notice, and continues feverishly, “And tell Otto I have a nice cell all to myself. I’m doing fine. I’m always thinking of him, and that makes me happy. I know nothing can part us, not walls, not bars. I’m with him, every hour of the day and night. Tell him that!”
She’s lying, oh, how she’s lying, just to be able to say something good to her Otto! She wants to give him ease, ease that she hasn’t felt for a moment, not since she came into this building.
The judge glances across at the guard, who is staring out the window. He whispers, “Look after the thing I gave you!” because Frau Quangel looks so distracted, as if she’s forgotten everything in the world.
“Yes, I will, Judge.” And then, quietly, “What is it?”
And he, still more quietly, “Poison. Your husband has his.”
She nods.
The official at the window turns round. He warns them, “No whispering in here, otherwise that’s it. Anyway,” he consults his watch, “the visit’s over in a minute and a half.”
“Yes,” she says pensively. “Yes,” and suddenly she knows what to say. She asks, “And do you think Otto will travel anywhere—before his big trip? What’s your sense?”
Her face is full of such agonized unrest, even the thick-witted guard realizes that this is a conversation about something else. For an instant he thinks about stepping in, but then he looks at the aging woman and the gentleman with the white goatee, who, according to the form, is a judge—and the guard has a change of heart and looks out the window again.
“Well, it’s hard to say,” replies the judge cagily. “Travel’s a complicated business nowadays.” And then, very quickly, in a whisper, “Wait till the very last minute, and maybe you’ll see him one last time. All right?”
She nods once, twice.
“Yes,” she says aloud. “Yes, that’s probably the way to do it.”
And then they stand facing each other in silence, each suddenly feeling there is nothing more to say. Over. Done.
“Well, I think I’d best be going,” says the old judge.
“Yes,” she whispers back, “I think it’s time.”
And suddenly—the guard has turned round again, and with watch in hand gives them both a warning look—Frau Quangel is overcome. She presses her body against the bars, and with her head between the bars, she whispers, “Please—maybe you’re the last decent person I’ll see in this world. Please, Judge, would you give me a kiss. I’ll shut my eyes, I’ll imagine it’s Otto…”
Man-crazy, thinks the guard. About to be executed, and still only one thing on her mind. An old biddy like that…
But the old judge says with a mild, friendly voice, “Don’t be afraid, child, there’s nothing to be afraid of…”
And his old thin lips gently brush her dry, cracked mouth.
“Don’t be afraid, child. You have peace with you…”
“I know,” she whispers. “Thank you very much.”
Then she’s back in her cell, and the twine is a tangled bundle on the floor, and she paces back and forth, kicking it into the corners as on her very worst days. She has read the note, and understood. She knows that she and Otto now have a weapon, that they can throw away this wretched life at any moment, when it becomes too unendurable. She doesn’t have to let herself be tormented further; she can, if she wants, end it this minute, while there’s still a last bit of happiness in her from her visit.
She walks around, talks to herself, laughs, cries.
They are listening outside the door. They say, “She’s lost it now. Is the straitjacket ready?”
The woman inside doesn’t notice. She is fighting the hardest struggle of her life. She pictures old Judge Fromm standing in front of her, his expression terribly serious as he tells her to wait till the very last minute, and maybe she would get to see her husband one last time.
And she agrees with him. Of course that’s the right answer: she has to wait, be patient, it might take months yet. But even if it’s just weeks, it’s so hard to wait. She knows what she’s like. She will fall into despair again, cry for hours, be despondent. And they are all so rough with her, never a good word or a smile. The time will be hard to get through. She just needs to toy with it, with her tongue and her teeth, she doesn’t even have to mean it, just practice, and it will have happened. It’s so easy for her now—too easy!
That’s it. Sometime she will be weak and do it, and in the instant that she’s done it, the tiny instant between life and death, she will be sorry, more sorry than for anything in her life: by her weakness and her cowardice she will have robbed herself of the chance of maybe seeing Otto once more. He will be told the news of her death, and he will learn that she has stopped waiting for him, that she betrayed him, that she was cowardly. And he will despise her—he, whose respect is the only thing that matters to her in the whole world.
No, she must destroy this awful glass vial right away. If she waits till tomorrow it might be too late—who knows what mood she’ll wake up in tomorrow?
But on the way to the bucket she stops.
And again she starts pacing. Suddenly she has remembered that she must die, and how she is to die. She learned in the course of her window conversations at night that it isn’t the gallows that await her but the guillotine. They described it to her, how she will be made fast to the table, face down, staring into a bucket half filled with sawdust, and a few seconds later her head will fall into the sawdust. They will bare her neck, and her neck will sense the chill of the blade even before it comes down. Then the roaring in her ears will get louder and louder, it will be like the sound of the last trump, and then her body will just be a quivering something, the neck spewing thick gouts of blood, while the head in the basket might still be looking at the bloody neck, still able to see, to feel, to hurt…
So they told her, and so she has pictured it many hundreds of times to herself, and sometimes she has dreamed of it too. And now she can free herself of all these terrors with a single bite on a glass tube! And she’s expected to give it up, give up this deliverance of her own accord! A choice between an easy and a horrible death—and she’s expected to choose the horrible death, just because she’s afraid of weakening and dying before Otto?
She shakes her head: no, she won’t weaken. She can manage to wait until the very last moment. She wants to see Otto again. She endured the fear that always seized her when Otto went delivering the postcards, she endured the shock of the arrest, she endured the torments of Inspector Laub, she got over Trudel’s death—she will be able to wait now, for a few weeks or months! She has endured everything—she will endure this as well! Of course she has to keep the poison safe till the last minute.
She paces back and forth, back and forth.
But her new resolve doesn’t ease her. Doubt begins all over again, and all over again she wrestles with it, and again she decides to destroy the poison right away, on the spot, and again she doesn’t do it.
In the meantime, evening has fallen, night. They’ve come and collected the unsorted string from her cell and told her that for her laziness she will have her mattress taken away for a week and be put on bread and water. But
she hardly listens. What does she care what they say?
Her soup is on the table, untouched, and still she paces back and forth, dead tired now, unable to think straight, a prey to doubt:
Should I—shouldn’t I?
Now her tongue is playing with the vial in her mouth, without her even knowing, and without her wanting to, she rests her teeth on the glass gently, and cautiously, ever so gently bites down…
Hurriedly she pulls the vial out of her mouth. She paces and practices, she no longer knows what she’s doing—and outside the straitjacket is waiting…
Then suddenly, late at night, she discovers she’s lying on a cot, on bare boards, covered with the thin blanket. She is shaking with cold. Did she fall asleep? Is the vial still there? Did she swallow it? It’s not in her mouth anymore!
She sits up in panic—and smiles. There it is—it’s in her hand. She had it in the hollow of her hand while she was asleep. She smiles, rescued once more. She won’t have to die that other, terrible death…
And while she sits there shivering, she thinks that from now on she will have to fight this terrible battle on every day that dawns, the battle between will and weakness, courage and cowardice. And how uncertain the outcome is…
And through doubt and despair, she hears a gentle, kindly voice: Don’t be afraid, child, there’s nothing to be afraid of…
Suddenly Anna Quangel knows: Now my mind is made up! Now I have the strength!
She creeps to the door and listens for sounds in the corridor. The step of the warder is coming nearer. She stands by the facing wall, and then, when she notices she is being observed through the peephole, she starts pacing back and forth slowly. Don’t be afraid, child…
Only when she is completely sure the warder has passed does she climb up to the window. A voice asks, “Is that you, seventy-six? Did you have a visitor today?”
She doesn’t answer. She won’t answer again, ever. With one hand she clings to the dead light while she sticks the other one out, with the little vial in her fingers. She scrapes it against the stone wall and feels its thin neck snap. She lets the poison fall into the depths of the yard.
