by Hans Fallada
“Nothing!” said the principal warder dully. “No note, no skeleton key, no money, no weapon—nothing to indicate escape or revolt. But it stinks of it. I’ve been smelling it for days. I notice things like that. Something is going on.”
“But why? What makes you think so?”
“I’ve been in prison over twenty-five years,” confessed Herr Marofke, and saw nothing objectionable in saying so. On the contrary! “I know my men. During the whole of my time of service three have escaped. For two of them I was not responsible, and as for the third, I had only been in service for six months—one doesn’t know anything in that time. But today I do know something, and I swear to you—those five have got something on, and until I get them out of my gang, my gang won’t be clean!”
“Which five?” Pagel had the impression that the principal warder was imagining things.
“I made a request for the following men to be relieved,” said Marofke solemnly. “Liebschner, Kosegarten, Matzke, Wendt, Holdrian.”
“But those are just our pleasantest, most intelligent and handiest men! Except for old Wendt—he’s a bit daft.”
“They’ve only got him in it as a safety valve. He’s to be their scapegoat if there’s any danger. Wendt is their forfeit, as it were, but the other four …” He sighed. “I’ve tried everything to separate them. I’ve redistributed them, none of them sleeps in the same room as the others, I don’t let them sit together, I show favor to one and treat the others severely, which usually makes them angry—but no, hardly do I turn my back when they’re together again, whispering.”
“Perhaps they just like each other?” suggested Pagel. “Perhaps they’re friends.”
“There are no friendships in prison,” declared the principal warder. “In prison everyone is always the other’s enemy. Whenever two stick together they are conspirators—for a definite purpose. No, it stinks; if I tell you that—I, Principal Warder Marofke—then you can believe it!”
For a while they were silent. “I’m going out to the men now,” Pagel said finally in order to get away. “I’ll keep my eyes open in case I see anything.”
“What do you think you’ll see?” said the principal warder. “They are tough lads—they’d make an old detective inspector sweat. Before you’d see anything you’d be lying there with a hole in your skull. No, I’ve thought it over. Since they’ve rejected my request, I’m going all out. I shall cause a mutiny at lunch time; I’ll shove salt in their food, literally; I’ll put so much salt in their grub that they won’t be able to swallow it. And then I shall force them to eat. I’ll taunt them and threaten them until they mutiny. And then I shall have my grounds; then I shall grab my five and send them back as mutineers. That’ll cost them another year or two in prison.” He giggled in scorn.
“Well, I’m damned!” Pagel was horrified. “But it might go wrong. Five men against fifty in that narrow room!”
“Young man!” said the principal warder, and he no longer appeared ridiculous to Pagel. “If you know for certain that someone wants to attack you from the back, what do you do? You turn round and attack him. That’s the way I am. I’d rather be killed from the front than from behind.”
“I’ll come over at lunch time with my gun,” said Pagel eagerly.
“You’ll do nothing of the kind,” growled the principal warder. “I’ve no use for an inexperienced chap in a business like this. One minute, and the nearest crook will have your gun, and then it’ll be Good-by, my Fatherland! Oh, dear no, you just run along now; I’ve got to work out my table order so that I have the loudest shouters sitting just under my truncheon.”
IV
A man’s settled conviction has something in it which can affect even his opponent. Broodingly Wolfgang Pagel rode along the old familiar way to the ninth outfield, where the potatoes were being gathered. Now and then he met a dray loaded with them and, getting off his bicycle, asked the driver what the crop was like. Then, before mounting again, he would casually add: “Everything all right out there?” A silly question. Obviously everything was all right, and the only reply one got from the driver was a vague mumble.
He rode on. It was no good letting oneself be influenced by those who saw ghosts everywhere.
It was a fine autumn day toward the end of September, and if the east wind was a little fresh, it was pleasantly warm in the sun and out of the wind; now that he was in the wood there was not even a breeze. Outfield nine, the remotest of all the areas of the estate, bordered on the long and the short side of the wood. Its other short side bordered on the Birnbaumer field. Almost soundless, except for the whirring chain, his bicycle sped over the forest paths. Of course everything would be in order there, but Pagel had to admit that the outfield, almost four miles from the farm, hidden in the woods and far from all inhabited places, offered the convicts a splendid opportunity.
Instinctively he trod harder on the pedals, then, smiling at himself, put on the brakes. He must not let himself get nervous. The convicts had been working there over a week, without anything happening. What was the good, then, of hurrying just in order to get out there five minutes sooner? If nothing had happened in six working days it was not likely to do so in those five minutes.
He tried to imagine how something could happen. The convicts worked in the open field in four gangs of twelve and thirteen men. Ten paces behind each group stood the warder with his loaded carbine in hand, and in front of him, continually under his eyes, were the men on their knees. A convict might not even stand up without permission. And before he could take three steps he would be shot down. They all knew they would be fired on without warning. In theory, of course, it was possible that two or three might sacrifice themselves to obtain freedom for the others, and that once the warder had emptied his magazine, and before he could draw his pistol, the rest would be off. Actually, however, convicts were not self-sacrificing; each, you might be sure, was quite prepared to sacrifice anyone but number one.
No, it was not out here that things would happen, but in the barracks. Marofke was playing a dangerous game at midday, and Pagel resolved that he would at least be outside with his gun. Perhaps Marofke was venturing on this game for nothing, for illusions, phantoms …
Pagel rode on slowly, pondering. It was this habit of thought which distinguished him from many young people and most old ones—an independent, persistent brooding, a desire to understand. Not for him the beaten track, but his own path. In Neulohe everyone considered the principal warder to be a lazy, conceited ass; but that had no influence on Wolfgang Pagel, who was of a very different mind. When Marofke asserted there was something going on among his prisoners, it was stupid, however weak might be the ground for his opinion, simply to reply: Nonsense!
In one thing the principal warder could not be wrong. He himself knew nothing about convicts, but Marofke knew a great deal. They were very pleasant to Pagel, making little jokes and frankly telling him of their troubles in “stir,” and in the world outside. They made a harmless, if somewhat too friendly, impression. This impression, however, must be wrong. One realized that as soon as one thought about it. How could they be so inoffensive and friendly?
“Don’t let them pull wool over your eyes, Pagel,” Marofke had told him a dozen times. “Don’t forget they are convicts because they have all done something criminal. Once a crook, always a crook. There may be many in prison who got there because of misfortune or jealousy—but whoever’s in a penitentiary has always done something pretty low.”
Yes, and they make themselves look harmless. He was right; one must not be taken in. That was where Marofke was different from the other officers; he was always suspicious, he was not to be caught napping. Never for a moment did he forget that fifty dangerous criminals lived in what was, after all, an insecure harvesters’ barracks, and that if those fifty men ever escaped it would mean incalculable misfortune for their fellow men.
“But they will be out, anyway, in a month, in three months, in half a year,” Pagel had objected.
“
Certainly—but registered by the police, in their civilian duds, and with a little money to start off with. If they give us the slip here, however, their first crime must be in getting proper clothes—theft, burglary, assault.… Wherever they live they daren’t register, but must hide among criminals or prostitutes who don’t do a thing for nothing. And so they have to get money—theft, fraud, swindling, burglary, hold-ups.… Now do you understand what the difference is between release and escape?”
“Quite understand!” said Pagel.
Markofke was right and the others were wrong.
And the others were wrong also when they declared that, because he stayed behind, Marofke was shirking his duty. (The Rittmeister had said at once that he was a shirker.) But Pagel now understood what a numbing, indifferent occupation could be made of standing behind the gang of prisoners. Marofke was not stupid; he racked his brains; several times he had groaned: “If only I was back safe and sound with my fifty blackguards. At the beginning you’re glad to be outside in the fresh air; but now I go on counting, another six weeks, another five weeks and six days, and so on and so on, and most likely we shan’t get in your potatoes before the first of November anyway.”
“And there are still the turnips,” said Pagel spitefully.
One ought not to be spiteful to the man, however. He was no coward, as his plan for midday showed—a plan requiring a fair amount of resolution and courage. He might be a little unhinged, though; twenty-five years of prison service were enough to make any man queer. Not that one altogether believed this, however. The principal warder was a keen observer and a clear thinker, and Pagel decided to keep his eyes wide open today, and find out if what the other thought was correct or not.
And in five minutes events were to show him the value of his own powers of observation and the utility of an outsider among convicts.
He leaned his bicycle against a tree which, incidentally, was something the principal warder had severely forbidden (since a bicycle left unattended could assist a man’s escape), but this time Pagel’s carelessness had no further consequences. He crossed by the potato mounds toward the gang, which was working in a long column, the convicts sliding forward on their knees, digging up and collecting the potatoes. Four men, walking to and fro, emptied the full baskets into sacks, and returned them to the diggers. Behind the chain stood four officers in the listless manner of people who for ten hours a day fear something that never comes. Two had their carbines under their arms; two had them slung over their shoulders—Pagel noticed it because Marofke had forbidden this also. The convicts were just working down from the top of a small hill into a hollow bordered by older plantations of pine trees. This hollow was overgrown with weeds which, because of all the water collecting there, were still half green and made digging hard.
This the men shouted to Pagel at once. “It’s all rotten here, bailiff! We can’t get on at all. The potatoes are still quite green. Just to save tobacco!” As an incentive Pagel had arranged that a bonus in tobacco should be given for a fixed yield in hundredweights.
“We’ll see what can be done,” he shouted, going up to the nearest officer, whom he at once asked the question which was constantly on his tongue today: “Everything all right?”
“Of course,” replied the bored young assistant warder. “Why shouldn’t it be?”
“I was only asking.… Digging’s bad here?”
“I see Marofke’s been at you. He’s cracked! Always bleating and nosing around! I tell you, this detachment couldn’t be better off. And still he’s not satisfied! That’s overdoing it.”
“How overdoing?”
“Warder!” interrupted a prisoner. “Can I fall out for a minute?”
The warder looked first at him, then at the others. “All right, Kosegarten.”
The prisoner gave Pagel an amused, familiar look, stepped behind the row, and, grinning, unbuttoned his trousers. Squatting down he kept his eyes on Pagel, who half turned away so as not to have this spectacle before him.
“How overdoing?” replied the assistant warder. “Because Marofke wants to suck up to the director, that’s why. He’s sworn that he’ll take back every man to Meienburg twenty-five pounds heavier. ‘Even if we have to eat you out of house and home,’ he said yesterday; ‘I keep on grumbling about the food, they just can’t cook too well for us!’ ”
There was no time to reply to this denunciation, for dismay suddenly changed the warder’s face. “Halt!” he bawled, tearing the carbine from his shoulder …
Pagel swung round and saw the prisoner Kosegarten running off into the pine trees …
“Out of the way!” roared the warder, hitting Pagel heavily on the breast with the barrel of his carbine.
“Don’t shoot, warder!” shouted voices. “We’ll fetch him.”
The man hesitated a moment, and two, three more figures disappeared among the pines.
“Halt!” he shouted and fired.
The report sounded feeble beside the uproar of the prisoners. There was shooting now at the top also. “Form fours!” roared voices.
Pagel, seeing a fifth man running to the pines, set after him.
“Stand still, fool! How can I shoot?” bellowed the officer.
Pagel hesitated, threw himself down, and the bullets whistled over him. They could be heard pattering on the trees. Five minutes later the men were drawn up ready to march off, numbered, and the names of the missing ascertained. Five men. Their names were: Liebschner, Kosegarten, Matzke, Wendt, Holdrian.
Shrewd Marofke, thought Pagel, ashamed of his own stupidity. How often had the warder told him not to enter into conversation with officers while on duty! How damned idiotic he had been to run after a fugitive when two men had just shown him that such pursuit excellently covered up a flight!
The prisoners were buzzing with excitement or they were very gloomy and silent; the warders agitated, morose and furious.
“You, Herr Pagel, go like hell and tell Marofke the whole stinking mess. My God, what a row he’ll make, how he’ll curse us! And he’ll be right—compared with him we’re idiots. Well, it’s all over with the harvest gang. Back to Meienburg this afternoon! Tell Marofke it’ll be a good two hours before we come along. We shall march round by the open fields; I won’t risk taking the lads through the woods. Now off with you!”
Pagel jumped on his bicycle and sped through the woods.
V
For the next three or four hours, Neulohe was buzzing and humming like a beehive before the queen leaves. Only here the leaving had already taken place—and not by the queen!
“I thought so,” was all that the principal warder said before flinging himself into the office to ring up the prison authorities, followed by a perspiring and breathless Pagel.
“You ought to have been a bit more careful with your people,” said Studmann angrily.
Conceited little Marofke, however, spent no time in justifying or clearing himself. “We must get them today before they’re out of the woods, or we’ll never get them!” he told Pagel. He did not so much as attempt to say, “I told you so.”
While the warder was telephoning, Pagel whispered to Studmann, astonished to find that what he himself had most at heart was to defend little Marofke. Little Marofke, however, thought quite otherwise. He had only two ideas: to lead the remainder of his party back to Meienburg without further loss, and to catch the fugitives as rapidly as possible. Clearly he was getting a frightful dressing down on the phone, but he did not wince, he made no reference to his rejected application. What alone interested him was what was going to happen now.
“There’s a man for you!” said Pagel.
“If he’s such a fine fellow, he shouldn’t have let them get away first,” Studmann muttered.
The principal warder hung up the receiver. “Herr von Studmann,” he reported in a very frigid and military manner, “the harvest gang at Neulohe will be withdrawn today. Warders for the removal of the men are coming at once from Meienburg. I should like to have
ready at, say, three o’clock, two teams for the conveyance of effects. I myself will go to meet the gang and bring it to the barracks.”
“You yourself? Oh, really!” said Studmann bitterly. “And what about our potatoes?” He could foresee evil consequences.
Marofke ignored the thrust. “Will you, Herr von Studmann, get into touch with the forester, and perhaps the owner of the forest? In the next half-hour we must ascertain from the forest map where the fellows are likely to be. When exactly did they get away, Herr Pagel?”
“Round about half-past ten.”
“Well, we know the place; a plan must be drawn up—thus, they may have got as far as this, or here they have perhaps hidden themselves. Gendarmes will come, fifty, a hundred, perhaps soldiers, too. By evening it’ll be a real hunt.”
“Charming!” said Studmann.
“I myself will be back as soon as possible. You, Pagel, go at once to the Manor and ring up police headquarters in Frankfurt. They will give you instructions. Afterwards you will have to ring up all gendarme stations in the neighborhood.… The Polish frontier has to be watched and the way to Berlin cut off. The phone here is to be only for incoming calls, no out-going calls here at all; inform the post office of that.”
“My God!” cried Studmann, infected at last by the little man’s energy. “Is it really so dangerous?”
“Four of the men are relatively not dangerous,” said the principal warder. “Souteneurs, swindlers and cheats. But there’s one, Matzke—he wouldn’t worry about murder so long as he got clothes and money. Well, gentlemen, let’s get started.” And he shot out of the office like a rocket.
“Off, Pagel!” cried Studmann. “Send the old gentleman to me!”
Pagel ran through the park. Passing Fräulein Violet, who said something, he called out: “Convicts escaped!” and ran on. Pushing aside old Elias, who let him in, he ran to the phone in the hall. “Hello, hello. Exchange. Police headquarters in Frankfurt-on-the-Oder. Urgent. Urgent. No, at once. I’ll hold on.…” In the doorways appeared frightened and astonished faces. Two housemaids looked at each other. What’s the meaning of that queer look? he thought. Then Violet came into the hall. “What’s up, Herr Pagel? The convicts?”
