Wolf Among Wolves

by Hans Fallada

  Wolf Among Wolves

  First published as Wolf Unter Wölfen by Rowohlt, Berlin, 1937M

  © Aufbau-Verlagsgruppe GmbH, Berlin 1994 (Published with Aufbau;

  “Aufbau” is a trademark of Aufbau Verlagsgruppe GmbH)

  First translated into English by Phillip Owens and published by G. P. Putnam’s Sons, New York, 1938

  This restored, unabridged edition © 2010 Melville House Publishing Additional translations by Thorsten Carstensen and Nicholas Jacobs.

  Afterword © Thorsten Carstensen

  Melville House Publishing

  145 Plymouth Street

  Brooklyn, NY 11201

  www.mhpbooks.com

  First Melville House Printing: April 2010

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Fallada, Hans, 1893-1947.

  [Wolf unter Wölfen. English]

  Wolf among wolves / Hans Fallada ; translated by Philip Owens ; this unabridged edition restored with additional translations by Thorsten Carstensen and Nicholas Jacobs ; afterword by Thorsten Carstensen.

  p. cm.

  eISBN: 978-1-935554-89-9

  1. Germany—History—1918-1933—Fiction. 2. World War, 1914-1918—Social aspects—Germany—Fiction. 3. Germany—Social conditions—1918-1933—Fiction. 4. Germany—Economic conditions—1918-1945—Fiction. I. Owens,

  Philip. II. Title.

  PT2607.I6W613 2010

  833′.912—dc 2010001949

  v3.1

  A Word to the Reader

  The author has been reproached by some readers of his novel Once We Had a Child for making his hero, Johannes Gäntschow, such a brute. He has read this complaint with some astonishment, for as he wanted to portray a brutal man he could not depict a kind one. To avoid similar complaints the author warns in this preface (which can be glanced through in a moment at any bookstore) that Wolf Among Wolves deals with sinful, weak, sensual, erring, unstable men, the children of an age disjointed, mad and sick. All in all, it is a book for those who are, in every sense, adult.

  Another not superfluous observation is that this is a novel, and therefore a product of the imagination. Everything in it—characters, events, places, names—is invented, and even if time or place should seem to point to a definite person, the novel is nevertheless only invention, fancy, fiction, story.

  While not aiming at a photographic likeness, the author wished to picture a time that is both recent and yet entirely eclipsed. It behooves the rescued not altogether to forget past danger, but, remembering it, to appreciate doubly the happy issue.

  H. F.

  A Note on the Text

  Philip Owens’ translation of Wolf Among Wolves was published by Putnam’s in New York and London in 1938. For reasons that are not entirely clear, the book was heavily edited in translation: hundreds of passages, including entire paragraphs, were edited out the first English edition. This new edition restores the novel by comparing the abbreviated English edition with the original German text published by Rowohlt Verlag in September 1937. New passages have been translated by Nicholas Jacobs and myself and added to Owens’ impressive original.

  THORSTEN CARSTENSEN,

  New York University

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  A Word to the Reader

  A Note on the Text

  Part One—The Unquiet City

  One Awake in Berlin—and Elsewhere

  Two Berlin Slumps

  Three Hunters and Hunted

  Four An Oppressive Afternoon in

  Town and Country

  Five The Storm Breaks

  Six It Is Still Sultry after the Storm

  Seven Full Moon on an Oppressive Night

  Eight He Goes Astray in the Night

  Nine A New Start to a New Day

  Part Two—The Land Afire

  Ten The Peace of the Fields

  Eleven The Devil’s Hussars Come

  Twelve The Quest Fails

  Thirteen Lost and Forsaken

  Fourteen Life Goes On

  Fifteen The Last Does Not Bemain Alone

  Sixteen The Miracle of the Bentenmark

  Afterword

  Part One

  The Unquiet City

  Chapter One

  Awake in Berlin—and Elsewhere

  I

  A girl and a man were sleeping on a narrow iron bed. The girl’s head rested in the crook of her right arm; her mouth, softly breathing, was half open; her face bore a pouting and anxious expression—that of a child who cannot understand why it is sad.

  She lay turned away from the man, who slept on his back in a state of utter exhaustion, his arms loose. Tiny beads of sweat stood out on his forehead and in the roots of his curly fair hair; the handsome defiant face looked somewhat vacant. In spite of the open window the room was very hot, and the pair slept without blanket or covering. This is Berlin, Georgenkirchstrasse, third courtyard, fourth floor, July 1923, at six o’clock in the morning. The dollar stands for the moment at 414,000 marks.

  II

  Out of the dark well of the courtyard the smells from a hundred lodgings drifted into their sleep. A hundred noises, faint as yet, entered the open window where a dingy curtain hung motionless. On the other side of the courtyard barely twenty-five feet away, a refugee child from the Ruhr suddenly screamed.

  The girl’s eyelids quivered. She raised her head; her body grew rigid. The child wept quietly, a woman’s voice scolded, a man grumbled—and the girl’s head sank back, her limbs relaxed, and she slept.

  In the house there was movement. Doors banged, feet shuffled across the court. There was noise on the stairs; enamel pails knocked against iron banisters; in the kitchen next door the tap was running. On the ground floor a bell rang out in the tin-stamping shed; wheels hummed, machine belts slithered.

  The pair slept on …

  III

  In spite of the early hour and the clear sky, a dull vapor hung over the city. The stench of an impoverished people did not so much rise to the skies, as cling sluggishly to the houses, creep through every street, and seep through windows into every mouth that breathed.

  In the neglected parks the trees let fall faded leaves.

  An early main-line train from the east approached Schlesische Bahnhof—the wreck of a train, with rattling windows, broken panes and torn cushions. Its carriages clanked over the points and crossings of Stralau-Rummelsburg.

  Rittmeister Joachim von Prackwitz-Neulohe—white-haired and slim, with bright dark eyes, retired cavalry captain and tenant of a manor—leaned out of the window to see where they had come to, and started back: a spark had flown into his eyes. “Miserable dust heap!” he muttered angrily, dabbing with his handkerchief.

  IV

  Fires had been kindled with limp yellow paper and matches whose heads jumped off or which stank. Bad coal or damp rotten wood smoldered; adulterated gas spluttered, burning without heat; blue watery milk warmed slowly; bread was doughy or too dry; margarine, softened by the heat of the flats, smelled rancid.

  The people ate their carelessly cooked food as hastily as they slipped into garments cleaned, shaken and brushed too often. Hastily they skimmed the newspapers; because of the rise in prices there had been riots, disturbances and looting in Gleiwitz and Breslau, in Frankfurt-on-the-Main and Neuruppin, in Eisleben and Dramburg, six killed and a thousand arrested and therefore public meetings had been prohibited by the government. The State Tribunal had sentenced a princess to six months’ imprisonment on the charge of being accessory to high treason and perjury—but the dollar stood at 414,000 as against 350,000 marks on the twenty-third. Salaries would be paid at the end of the month, in a week’s time. What would the
dollar be then? Would there be enough to buy food for a fortnight? For ten days? Three days? Would one be able to pay for shoe leather, gas, fares? Quick, wife, here’s another 10,000 marks. Buy something with it—a pound of carrots, some cufflinks, the phonograph record “Yes, we have no bananas,” or a rope to hang ourselves with—it doesn’t matter what. Only be quick, run, don’t lose a second.

  V

  The early sun was also shining upon the manor of Neulohe. The rye stood in the fields, the wheat was ripe, oats were ready, too. Across the fields a few tractors rattled, lost in the expanse of country. Larks were warbling and trilling overhead.

  Forester Kniebusch, bald but with his wrinkled brown face thickly bearded, left the heat of the open field for the wood. Walking slowly, he adjusted the rifle sling on his shoulder with one hand and with the other wiped the sweat from his brow. He walked neither happily, hurriedly, nor powerfully. He walked in his own way, the way he walked in his own forest—light-footed, soft-kneed, cautious, noticing every twig on the path, to avoid stepping on it; he wished to walk quietly.

  In spite of all his caution, however, at a turn in the path he met a procession of handbarrows emerging from behind a thicket. Men and women. Their barrows were loaded with freshly cut wood; not branches, only solid trunks were good enough for them. The forester’s cheeks flushed angrily, his lips trembled, and his faded eyes lit up with a gleam of their bygone youth.

  The man with the leading barrow—Bäumer, of course—gave a start. Then he went on. The barrows of stolen wood clattered past with hardly a yard to spare, the people looking straight in front or aside as if the forester were not there, motionless, breathing heavily.… Then they disappeared behind the thicket.

  “You are getting old, Kniebusch.” The forester could hear the voice of Rittmeister von Prackwitz.

  Yes, he thought gloomily, I am so old that I would gladly take to my bed and die. He thought it and walked on.

  He was not to die in his bed, however.

  VI

  Alarm bells were shrilling in Meienburg Penitentiary, the warders ran from cell to cell, the governor was telephoning the Reichswehr for reinforcements, the staff were buckling on their pistol belts and seizing rubber truncheons. Ten minutes ago No. 367 had thrown his bread ration at the warder’s feet, screaming: “I insist on having bread, regulation weight, and not this damned plaster pulp!”

  And this had precipitated the uproar, the riot. Yells, shouts, wails, singing and howling came from twelve hundred cells. “Grub! Grub! We’re starving!” The little town of Meienburg crouched beneath the shining white walls of the penitentiary. That uproar penetrated into every house, through every window. And there came a frightful crash. A thousand prisoners had beaten their stools against the iron doors.

  Warders and orderlies ran through the corridors, trying to calm the rebels, unlocking the cells of the well-behaved prisoners. “Be reasonable … nobody in Germany gets better food … the dollar … the Ruhr … harvest crew will be organized at once and sent to the big estates. A packet of tobacco every week, meat every day … for the well-behaved.”

  Slowly the noise died down. “Harvest crews … meat … tobacco … good conduct.” The news trickled into every cell and calmed the rumbling stomachs with hopes of repletion. And there was the prospect of the open sky, perhaps of escape. The last of the rioters, those who were still goading themselves into fury, were dragged by warders to the solitary confinement cells. “Well, then, see if you can live without the plaster pulp.”

  The iron doors crashed to.

  VII

  In Countess Mutzbauer’s apartments in the Bayerischen district of Berlin, the lady’s maid Sophie was already awake in spite of the early hour. The room which she shared with the still-sleeping cook was so narrow that, in addition to the two iron beds, there was space only for two chairs, and she had to write her letter on the window sill.

  Sophie Kowalewski had beautifully manicured hands, but they guided their pencil awkwardly. Downstroke, upstroke, pothook, comma, upstroke, downstroke … Ah, she would like to say so much! How she missed him, how slowly time went, still three years to wait and hardly six months gone! But Sophie, daughter of the overseer at Neulohe, had not learned to express her feelings in writing. If Hans had been with her, if it had been a question of talking or touching, she could have expressed anything, have made him mad with a kiss, happy with an embrace. But as things were …

  She looked into the distance. How she would like to convey her feelings to him through this letter! Out of the windowpane a reflected Sophie stared at her, and involuntarily she smiled. A dark curl or two fell loosely over her forehead. Under her eyes, also, the shadows were dark. She ought to be using these hours to sleep thoroughly—but was there time for this when everything faded away, everything decayed before it was completely clear? Live for the moment, then. Today you were still alive.

  However tired she might be in the mornings, her feet painful, her mouth stale from the liquors, the wine, the kisses of the night before, by evening she was again attracted to the bars. Dance, drink, and riot! There were plenty of gentlemen, flabby as the 100,000-mark notes, each fifty times a maid’s wages, stuffed in their pockets. Last night, too, she had been with one of these gentlemen—but what did it matter? Time ran, flew, galloped. Perhaps in the repeated embraces, in the features which bent over her, greedy and restless as her own, she was looking for Hans (now in prison).… But he, shining, swift, superior to them all, had no counterpart.

  Sophie Kowalewski, who had escaped to the city from the hard work on the farm, was looking for—she didn’t exactly know what—something that would grip her even more. Life is unique, transient, she thought, when we die we are dead for a very long time, and when we get old—even over twenty-five—men will no longer look at us. Hans, oh Hans.… Sophie was wearing madam’s evening dress and didn’t care whether the cook saw it or not. Just as cook had her pickings from the tradespeople, so she, Sophie, lifted silk stockings and underwear from her mistress; neither could throw stones at the other.

  It was nearly seven o’clock—so a quick finish. “And I remain, with passionate kisses, your ever-loving future wife, Sophie.” She did not attach any value to the word wife. She did not even know if she wanted to marry him, but she must use the word so that he would be given her letter in the penitentiary.

  And the convict, Hans Liebschner, would get the letter, for he was not one of those who had been put into solitary confinement for roaring too madly. No, in spite of being scarcely half a year in prison, he had been promoted to orderly against all rules and regulations. And now he talked with particular conviction about harvest crews. He could do so. Neulohe, he knew, was not far from Meienburg, and Neulohe was the home of a nice girl called Sophie.

  I’ll wangle it all right, he thought.

  VIII

  The girl had awakened.

  She lay, her head propped on her hand, looking at the window; the dingy curtain did not move. She believed she could smell the reeking heat from the courtyard. She shuddered a little—not from the cold, but because of the horrible heat and the foul stench. She looked at her body. It was white and faultless; wonderful that anything could remain so white in such a corrupt atmosphere.

  She had no idea what the time was; from the sounds it might be nine or ten, or even eleven o’clock—after eight the noises were very much alike. It was possible that the landlady, Frau Thumann, would come in soon with the morning coffee, and she sought, in accordance with Wolfgang’s wishes, to get up and dress decently and cover him up also. Very well, she would do it at once. Wolfgang had surprising fits of propriety.

  “It doesn’t matter,” she had said. “The Thumann woman is used to such things—and worse. As long as she gets her money nothing worries her.”

  Wolfgang had laughed affectionately. “Worry, when she sees you like that!” He looked at her. Such glances always made her tender—she would have liked to draw him toward her, but he continued, more seriously: “It’s f
or our sakes, Peter, for our sakes. Even if we’re in the mud now, we would really be stuck in it if we let everything slide.”

  “But clothes don’t make one either respectable or not respectable.”

  “It isn’t a question of clothes,” he had replied, almost heatedly. “It’s something to remind us that we’re neither of us dirt. And when I’ve struck it lucky, it’ll be easier for us if we’ve refused to accept things here. We mustn’t come down to their level.” He was muttering by this time. Again he was thinking how he would “pull it off”; lost in his thoughts, as so often before. He was often miles away from her, his Peter.

  “By the time you’ve brought it off I shan’t be with you,” she had once said, and there had been silence for a little while, till the meaning of her words penetrated his brooding.

  “You’ll always be with me, Peter,” he had replied, “Always and always. Do you think I’ll forget how, night after night, you wait up for me? That I’ll forget how you sit here—in this hole—with nothing? Or forget that you never ask questions, and never nag me, however I come home? Peter”—and his eyes shone with a brightness which she did not like, for it was not kindled by her—“last night I almost brought it off. For one second a mountain of money lay before me.… I felt it was almost in my grasp. Only once or twice more.… No, I’ll not pretend to you. I wasn’t thinking of anything definite—not of a house or a garden or a car, not even of you.… It was like a sudden light in front of me. No—more like a beam of light in me. Life was as wide and clear as the sky at sunrise. Everything was pure … Then,” he hung his head, “a tart spoke to me, and from that moment everything went wrong.”