A Stranger in My Own Country
Page 4
So the sight of a policeman, putting me in mind of that edict, gave me a certain feeling of security: at least things would be conducted with a semblance of ‘legality’. (In the next two hours I would find out just how much this ‘legality’ was worth.) The policeman was very polite and proper: ‘We have to conduct a search of your house, Mr Fallada, a complaint has been lodged against you. Give me your keys!’
‘Be my guest!’ I replied, and handed them over. I was reassured by the courteous tone, but knew better than to inquire as to the nature of the complaint. ‘Ask too many questions and you’ll get too many answers’ – or none at all, and that’s certainly true when dealing with court officials and anything to do with them.
We processed solemnly into the house, my little boy, who had been following everything that happened with big blue eyes and without a sound, and Teddy still holding on to my hand.
For a moment Mrs Sponar peeped round an open door in the hall. There was a burning look in this evil woman’s eyes, and the way she looked at me made me feel distinctly ill at ease. Although I didn’t know it at the time, I was right to feel that way: she thought she was seeing me for the last time in her life. We climbed the stairs, and in the kitchen I saw my wife busying herself with the dishes. She was a little pale, but there was no clattering of plates as she worked. I sent the boy in to her, and the policeman said: ‘For the moment you are not allowed to have any contact with your wife or anyone else.’ I nodded. ‘And now you can start by showing us where you keep your correspondence!’ Which I did.
I have always been proud of the good order in which I keep my private affairs, and my double-entry bookkeeping would not put a professional accountant to shame. My correspondence is clearly filed in alphabetical order by addressee. I unlocked the cupboard where it was kept. The first folder they took out was not the letter A, but the letter S. ‘Aha!’ I thought to myself. ‘This early-morning visit is all about Mr von Saloman! Who knows what that adventurer with his hard-line Communist brother has been up to this time – and now I’m in trouble too because of it!’
But they didn’t find a single letter to or from Mr von Saloman, who was someone I’d only ever spoken to.
But that didn’t discourage them, even if it was initially a disappointment. They went through the correspondence folder by folder, and when they had finished that they started on my books. They took every book and shook it out vigorously, which didn’t do the bindings much good. I didn’t have very many books at the time, but there were still a good few – so it took them quite a time. Every now and then they would trot across to their gold-braided leader and show him a book that had caught their attention, such as the book of memoirs by Max Hölz35 – Vom weissen Kreuz zur roten Fahne [From White Cross to Red Flag] – or Marx’s Das Kapital or an issue of the journal Radikaler Geist.36 But the leader shook his head. He was not interested in such trifles: he was after bigger game. I rightly took that to be a bad sign. This wretched Mr von Saloman had doubtless been planning another little putsch of some kind, they’d been keeping him under surveillance, and that’s how they knew about his visit to me. Well, whatever: they wouldn’t find anything in my house! Incidentally, the policeman took no part in this house search. He just stood by and watched, looking pretty bored, and let the brownshirts rummage about by themselves. After searching for a whole hour, all they had to show for it was a piece of paper they had found in my work folder for Jailbird. Written on the paper next to a small drawing was the one word ‘Maschinengewehr’ – ‘Machine gun’.
‘Why are you interested in machine guns?’ I was asked. ‘And what’s the meaning of this drawing?’ They had all clustered around me, listening intently. Written across their faces was a mixture of schadenfreude and curiosity – they thought they had got me. ‘Gentlemen’, I said with a smile, ‘as you can tell from the manuscript folder there, I am working on a novel about the fate of people who are sent to prison. To that end I have collected a good deal of material about prison life. And this ‘machine gun’ is part of that. But this is not a real machine gun: as you can see from the drawing, it’s eight prisoners who have got hold of a ninth prisoner, who’s made himself unpopular by stealing, say, and they’ve wrapped him in a blanket and are now about to beat him up in a particular way. They have a special word for this in the nick, they call it “machine gun” . . .’ I beamed at them. But in their faces all I saw was naked disbelief, and their leader screamed at me in fury: ‘Don’t try and pull the wool over our eyes! Do you think we’re going to fall for a pack of lies like that? Tell us right now where you’ve buried the machine gun, or I’ll start getting rough with you. I’ll come down on you like a ton of bricks, my friend!’ He glared at me threateningly. My heart sank as I realized I had no other proof if these men chose not to believe me. I was entirely at their mercy, and they had no interest in my innocence, since they were determined to find me guilty. But now, in my hour of need, help came from an entirely unexpected quarter: from a coarse, thuggish-looking man in a brown shirt. ‘No’, he cried, ‘that’s right! We once worked a guy over in the dormitory like that, and “machine gun” is what we called it . . .’ He broke off, cowed by a look from his leader, who probably thought it not quite the thing to be discussing the past history of an upstanding SA fighter in the presence of an outsider like me. ‘Fine’, growled the leader, and pushed the piece of paper into the cuff of his uniform sleeve – for possible use at a later date. ‘I’ll look into the matter later. But for now we need to search the other rooms.’ They did so thoroughly, but not overly skilfully. I was gratified to note that a house guest we had at the time, a Jewish lady, managed without much difficulty to evade these gentlemen by slipping from one room to the next. They never even saw her, despite the fact that the few rooms I had were fairly swarming with SA men. At one point I saw the lady sitting in a corner on the balcony. I signalled to her by blinking my eyes slowly, and she nodded back with a smile. I was glad they didn’t find her – for her sake and also, a little bit, for mine. Having a Jewish woman in the house would have been one more item on the charge sheet against me.
The search of the remaining rooms also failed to yield anything remotely incriminating. In sullen silence they then climbed up into the attic and proceeded to search through our empty suitcases and boxes. I stood by one of the attic windows, while the SA leader and policeman stood by the next one, deep in conversation. Suddenly I heard the policeman say firmly: ‘There’s not a shred of evidence against him. I can’t arrest the man.’
The SA leader replied heatedly: ‘But look here – we’ve received very definite information. You’ve got to take him in.’
The policeman put on his helmet and tugged at his belt. ‘I can’t – and I won’t’, he stated as firmly as before. ‘Then I’ll just have to arrest him myself!’ retorted the SA leader waspishly. ‘Do what you like. But I’m having nothing to do with it!’ replied the policeman, and left the attic. When he left the house, all ‘legality’ went out the door with him: so much for compliance with Göring’s edicts37 . . . Up until this moment I had looked upon the whole thing as a rather tiresome but amusing game: these fellows had nothing on me – I was innocent! But now I realized that this was beside the point, if they really had it in for me. I realized that I was in real danger, and that it would be better for me not to take the whole thing so lightly. It might be that I would need all my strength and courage to get out of this business in one piece!
I was taken back to my study and kept there, guarded by two SA men, while the others left, along with their leader. But when I looked out of the window I saw that an SA sentry had been posted by the garden gate that led to the street. Doubtless there was another one behind the house, on the side overlooking the Spree. I really did seem to be very valuable to them. I listened for any sound in the house: dead quiet everywhere. The waiting was torture. What had they got planned for me? Why were they leaving me here? I looked into the faces of my two guards – and thought it better not to ask. They had the co
arse faces of thugs, veterans of a hundred brawls at political meetings, where they drove home the words of their Führer with knuckledusters and chair legs; the vicious faces of ruthless men who were ready to smash heads in here – anyone’s head – if someone gave the word. I’ve always thought that this archetypal SA visage, which became a familiar sight after the Nazis had seized power, was perfectly epitomized in the face of Gauleiter Streicher,38 that intimate friend of the Führer and editor of the anti-Semitic paper Der Stürmer – a filthy rag, and far filthier than any muck-raking scandal sheet. Whenever I saw that man in a photograph, I felt the hatred rising up within me, a hatred that had absolutely nothing to do with politics. Those little piggy eyes, the low brow, the overdeveloped chin, and above all that thick neck with its six or seven rolls of fat: for me he was the embodiment of evil, the devil incarnate – so much so that I had taken to calling him ‘the Hangman’. My two guards had faces just like him, the kind of people who wouldn’t hesitate to grab a child by the legs and smash its head against the radiator of their car until it was dead. (This is what eye-witnesses later told me about the Führer’s praetorian guard, the SS, the elite formation that employed such methods to solve the Jewish question . . .)
I was waiting two or three hours like this. I had no idea what was going on. Later I learned that the SA had problems finding a suitable car to take me away. It eventually arrived, though – the oldest vehicle I have ever set foot in, a decrepit, rattling conveyance from the year dot, which didn’t even have a starter motor, but had to be hand-cranked from the front. I was squeezed in between two SA men in the back of this ancient vehicle, whose upholstery was all torn and ripped, while the group leader sat up front and drove, with another SA man beside him. We set off in the direction of Berlin. I looked back at the house. It was a lovely spring day. The sun was reflected off the window panes, and if there was a face at the window looking out at me, I didn’t see it. I didn’t dare wave. But I noticed that the sentry on the garden gate had not been stood down after my departure, but continued to wander up and down the street. So were they now keeping my wife under guard too? My heart sank.
We rattled through the village, across open country between fields, and entered the forest, a monotonous expanse of scrawny young pines: a characteristic feature of this sandy region, amounting to nothing more than a bunch of thin poles topped with a bit of greenery.
The leader was now oddly courteous to me, constantly turning around (the car had a top speed of twenty kilometres an hour, no more) and inviting me to smoke if I wanted to, and even asking if we were not too cramped back there. The change in his manner made me uneasy. His friendliness seemed so forced, there was something about it that felt like fear; whatever it was, the man was very agitated. I was very much on my guard, and had the feeling: he’s up to something. Perhaps the moment of truth is at hand.
Suddenly the car stopped in the middle of the barren forest, the road was completely empty. The two SA men got out, as did the two men in the front. I stayed in my seat. I watched the four of them step to the edge of the road and relieve themselves. And then they stood there, while they lit up cigarettes and talked quietly among themselves. One of them tugged at his belt and pushed his holster more towards the front. I was getting more uneasy by the second . . . The leader crossed the road towards me. His voice sounded strangely low and agitated as he spoke: ‘Perhaps you’d like to get out? Please.’ His face was very pale. He went on: ‘We’ll be on the road for quite some time yet, and this old jalopy isn’t up to much!’ He tried to laugh.
I replied coolly: ‘Many thanks, but I don’t need to get out. But thanks all the same.’
He was insistent: ‘No, no, it really would be better if you did it now. Otherwise I’ll have to stop later when it just isn’t convenient. And this old jalopy is hard to get going again. So please!’ Now it sounded more like an order.
But as he was speaking, I kept seeing a headline that I’d recently read in a newspaper: ‘Shot while trying to escape.’ It all fitted: the quiet, empty road, the secluded forest setting – they would carry me into the house and tell my wife ‘Shot while trying to escape. We’re sorry that he was so foolish . . .’ No, they would just send her my things, with a note: ‘Shot while trying to escape.’ No apology necessary.
I said coolly: ‘Thank you, but I’m fine. I don’t need to get out. I’ll be all right for hours yet.’ His face flushed red with anger. He looked across at his men, who had stopped talking and were looking at us, still smoking their cigarettes. ‘Look, don’t make a fuss!’ he said brusquely. ‘You will get out now, I am ordering you. I don’t want any trouble from you!’
I looked straight at him. ‘And I am not getting out of this car!’ I cried, and dug my hands into the seat cushion. I shouted in his face: ‘You’ll not shoot me “while trying to escape”! If you want to shoot me, you’ll have to do it in the car! And even if the seats are all torn and ripped, people will see it!’
For a moment we gazed at each other in silence. His face was white as a sheet, and I dare say mine was too. Suddenly he spun round and shouted across to his men. ‘You lot, come over here!’ I gripped the seat cushion even more tightly, and my whole body was shaking. ‘I’m not letting them drag me out of here’, I thought to myself. ‘They’ll have to shoot me in the car.’ All I could think about now was making sure they shot me in the car. The fact that I would end up getting shot hardly interested me at all in that moment.
The men slowly crossed the road towards the car, cigarettes dangling from their mouths, their eyes fixed on me. The moment of decision had come. But the decision turned out differently from what we had all been expecting. While we were engrossed in our altercation, a big car had arrived on the scene from Berlin. Now it came to a stop, and our own good doctor called out to me from the window: ‘Mr Fallada, what are you doing out here in the middle of nowhere?’
‘Oh’, I said, ‘I’m just going to the courthouse in Fürstenwalde with these gentlemen. Please say hello to my wife, and tell her that I am well.’
‘I’m glad to hear it’, said the doctor. ‘I’ll pass that on. I’ll wish you bon voyage, then!’ But he did not tell his chauffeur to drive on. The car remained stationary. My escorting party exchanged glances with each other. Now they came to a decision and got back in the car. The last man turned the hand crank and started the car. We set off, leaving behind the barren spot where I was supposed to die. I had a definite feeling that I was safe for the moment – if the sour and morose look on my companions’ faces was anything to go by. And then, when I cautiously turned my head to look back, I saw the doctor’s big car still there, as he watched us crawl away at a snail’s pace. The dear man had not driven on: back then, in Germany, people knew well enough what it meant when they saw a car with SA men inside and a civilian sitting between them!
We drove into the little town of Fürstenwalde. It’s only a one-horse town, a miserable, provincial little place with wretched cobbled streets, but I greeted it like the City of Zion on high, the City of the Redeemer: the humblest citizen, the children playing in the street, everything increased my confidence that now I was safe. The worst of the danger was past; back then even the Nazis were not quite ready to kill their opponents out on the street in broad daylight.
We stopped in front of the police station, and my leader disappeared inside with a couple of his minions. We had a long wait, and once again it seemed that not everything was going to plan with me. And it really wasn’t going to plan: even if Göring’s own stormtroopers were not following his edicts, other people were. After a while my leader reappeared with a blue-uniformed police officer, pointed at me and said: ‘That’s him. Take him into protective custody!’39
‘No, I’m not doing that’, said the policeman obstinately. ‘Without papers I’m not doing it.’
‘But I’ve told you already, I’ll get you the papers! I can’t leave the man running around on the loose in the meantime! He’s not going to wait for me! So just do it!’
They disappeared inside, and this time the negotiations were successful. When they reappeared, the blue-uniformed officer muttered: ‘All right, come with me.’ Before I followed him inside, I cast a last glance at the brownshirts. The several hours I had spent in their company had not deepened my fondness for them. I felt a pressing desire not to have anything to do with them or their like anytime soon – and preferably never again.
The cell they took me to was the scurviest and most disgusting hole I had ever been in in my entire life. I’m not even talking about the obscenities that covered the once-whitewashed cell walls from floor to ceiling, either scribbled in pencil or scratched into the chalky surface with a nail. I’m talking about the appalling standards of hygiene. The straw mattress, which was falling apart, the mouldy, flattened straw spilling out of it, the filthy floor covered with bits of dirt – it all pointed clearly to the fact that all was not well with the administration of the good town of Fürstenwalde – even under the Third Reich. When I gingerly lifted the straw mattress between two fingers, I uncovered swarms of bedbugs; alerted to their presence, I now saw their trails everywhere, on the walls, around the bed – wide, reddish-brown splats of blood or squashed bedbug corpses with their trails of blood tapering to a point behind them. But the worst thing about this disgusting place was the bucket in the corner. It was badly battered and hadn’t been emptied for a long time, so that a big puddle of faeces and stale urine had formed all around it. Although most of the window panes in the high-level window of the cell were broken, the air in the cell was thick with this hellish stench, which made it a torment just to draw breath. The act of breathing made you want to throw up at the thought of letting this filthy stench into your body even for a single breath. You couldn’t sit and you couldn’t lie down, and you couldn’t really pace up and down; there was just one small spot that was clean enough to stand on at least.