by Hans Fallada
Noisily the door of the Geheimrat’s room opened. “Who’s bellowing in my house? In my house I do the bellowing!”
“Herr Geheimrat, please go to the office at once. Five convicts have made off.”
Upstairs a servant girl laughed hysterically.
“And because of that you want me to go to your office?” the Geheimrat beamed. “Do you think they’re going to come in order to look at me in your office? I told you at the time—get respectable people! Now I suppose every night I and my wife must look under the bed with a revolver as a torch.”
“This is Neulohe Estate,” said Pagel on the phone. “Neu-lo-he! On behalf of the administration of Meienburg Penitentiary I want to—”
“It’s all right!” came an equable voice at the end of the wire. “We’ve already heard from Meienburg. Who’s speaking? The bailiff? Well, you seem to be up to some fine larks. Couldn’t you have kept your eyes peeled a bit more? Now listen. Ring off, and in the meantime I’ll inform your exchange, and when it rings again it’ll be the exchange giving you all gendarme stations in your district. All you need say to them is: ‘Five convicts escaped; send every man to Neulohe—and jump to it.’ Do this as quickly as you can, all our lines are engaged; the frontier’s not thirteen miles off.…”
The Geheimrat had gone with his granddaughter to the office, nevertheless. Young Pagel went on telephoning; the servants were running about quite brainlessly. Sometimes one stood by him, panting, watching him and reading from his lips a message which was always the same. What crazy faces women can make when they’re frightened, he thought, himself genuinely excited, too. A little upset and a little unhappy. Is the lady upstairs in tears? She must already be fearing for her bit of life. And while he went on repeating the same old warning, he was able to hear in what different ways people reacted to it:
“Donnerwetter!”
“You don’t say so!”
“Just when I’ve got rheumatism in my leg!”
“But what are convicts doing in Neulohe?”
“Is there a reward offered?”
“Well, well! But there, today’s Friday! It would happen when my wife’s cooked a chicken!”
“Anyone can ring up and say he’s speaking on behalf of police headquarters! Who are you, anyway?”
“What do you think, Inspector—boots? Or can I come in drill trousers?”
“Five’s bad!”
And the appalling remark: “The one they may kill, perhaps in the next ten minutes, is alive and hasn’t heard anything yet.” Something rather gruesome arose from these words—guilt and complicity.
Pagel, telephoning, was considering in what way he had failed in this affair. Not in much, only in trifles. Where so many of the experienced had failed, no reasonable person could reproach him, the inexperienced. Wolfgang Pagel, however, who only a few months before had been so prepared to condone all his own transgressions—Wolfgang Pagel now thought otherwise. Or rather, he felt otherwise. Was it the work in the fields, or recent events, or was it the mention in Minna’s letters of him becoming a man? What did it matter if others had trespassed more? He didn’t want to have to reproach himself in any degree.
The gendarme stations were still on the line, the telephone rang constantly, there was the same message, the same cries of anger, of astonishment, of action. And all the time he could see the five men in convict garb, crouching like deer in some concealed corner of the woods, without money or weapons and of no great intelligence, but with one thing which did distinguish them from ordinary people: they had no inhibitions to stop them from doing what they wanted.
Wolfgang Pagel reflected that, not long ago, he had thought with pride, “I’m not tied to anything. I can do what I want. I’m free.…” Yes, Wolfgang Pagel—now you understand, you were free, unfettered like a wild animal. But humanity is not about doing what you want, but rather about doing what you must. And while he went on with his calls, thirty, fifty, seventy of them, he could see the healthy powers of life about to do battle with the sick; and suddenly the jokes about the Devil’s Hussars appeared unsavory and the convicts’ song impudent. Fifty, a hundred gendarmes were mounting their bicycles; making from all directions for one goal—Neulohe. He saw the officials in the police administration at Frankfurt. Telephones were ringing in dozens of police stations; there was the tap-tap-tap of Morse. In customs posts on the border, officials were putting on their caps, buckling up their belts with great care, examining their pistols—death was about!
Death! Five men capable of anything! And at a time when there seemed no unity anywhere, when everything was rotten and in collapse, at that moment life was at least united against one thing—death! Life was blocking all the highways; its eyes were everywhere. Police stood on the roads leading into the big towns, inspecting every passer-by—a scarf, a trouser leg might betray something. The slums, the dens where criminals hide, were being more closely watched than ever, and in the small towns the police were going into the alleys behind the houses, where they opened on to the gardens and yards.
Along the main roads they were warning pedestrians, drivers of carts, and truck drivers. A whole region between the Polish frontier and Berlin had come into movement. From the great presses in the printing works flowed police notices, proclamations and personal descriptions; these by this afternoon would be stuck on walls and billboards. Officials were examining the files of Liebschner, Kosegarten, Matzke, Wendt, Holdrian—from the report of former crimes hoping for hints of possible new ones, trying to divine fresh clues from the old. Where would this man try to go? Who were his friends? Who wrote to him while he was imprisoned?
Perhaps life no longer had its former strength and soundness; so much had been overthrown in recent years that life itself was sick. What it was now doing was possibly to a great extent only habit. The machine creaked and groaned—but it still revolved. It reached out once more—would it lay hold?
VI
How long had Wolfgang Pagel been at the telephone? An hour? Two hours? He didn’t know. But when he left the Manor he saw the first results of his telephoning. Bicycle after bicycle stood against the office wall; gendarmes were in groups near the door and by the roadside, smoking, talking, some laughing. And more were coming, met with a “Hello” or expectant silence or a joke.
In the office they were graver. Maps were spread over the table; tensely Frau von Prackwitz, the old Geheimrat and Herr von Studmann examined them. A gendarme officer was pointing at something. At the window stood Marofke, pale and downcast. Obviously things had fared ill with him.
“The Polish frontier, Poland—quite out of the question,” said the gendarme officer. “So far as we know, none of the five speak Polish; and Poland, anyway, is no field for criminals of their type. I’m convinced they mean to make their way as quickly as possible to Berlin. By night, of course, and on footpaths. All but one of them, pimps, swindlers, frauds. It’s Berlin that attracts such fellows.”
“But—” began Marofke.
“Don’t interrupt, please,” said the gendarme officer sharply. “Undoubtedly they will lie low in the woods till night. I’ll try to catch them there with some of my men, although it’s pretty hopeless—the woods are too large. Our chief job is to keep our eye on the smaller roads and the isolated villages at night. That’s where they’ll attempt to pass and get clothes and food.… We might possibly catch them tonight even; they’ll still be in the district.”
“Only don’t tell my wife that, my dear sir,” said the Geheimrat.
“If there’s any place between here and Berlin which is absolutely safe from the scoundrels, it’s Neulohe,” said the gendarme officer, smiling. “That’s certain. We’ve got our headquarters here! No, it’ll be bad for the isolated villages; we’ll have to watch those. And solitary farms—but we’ll warn them! And even if we don’t catch a glimpse of the five, we shall still know roughly where they are. I imagine about thirty miles a night on the average—at first less, then a bit more. If they have to stop much for f
ood it will be less again. I assume the first night they’ll go north rather than west, so as to avoid this disturbed region. Though, to be sure, Meienburg’s that way.” He turned to Marofke. “Has any of them connections in Meienburg? Relatives—a girl—friends?”
“No.”
“What do you mean, no?” asked the gendarme officer in sharp reproof. “Don’t you know, or haven’t they any connections?”
“They haven’t any,” said the warder angrily.
“That is, as far as you know,” sneered the gendarme officer. “But you don’t know very much, do you? Well, thank you. We shan’t need you any longer, principal warder. Report to me before you leave with your detachment.”
“Yes, sir!” The principal warder saluted and left the office. They watched him go but no one said a word of farewell. Not even Studmann. The Geheimrat started to hum “How swiftly, how swiftly, do beauty and greatness vanish!”
The gendarme officer smiled benevolently.
“He made a bad impression on me from the first,” said Frau von Prackwitz.
“Herr Pagel thinks differently,” observed Studmann.
“Excuse me a moment.” Pagel dashed from the office.
Through the crowd of gendarmes Marofke, looking neither to the right nor left, had passed with his ridiculous potbelly, his thin legs in irreproachably pressed trousers, his purple cheeks like the pouches of a hamster; he walked with such energy that his cheeks trembled at every step. But, if he saw nothing, he could not avoid hearing a gendarme ask in astonishment: “Who the devil is that chap?”
“Good Lord, he’s the one who let them escape.”
“Oh, so it’s because of him we’ve got to lie around in the woods at night!”
Without the slightest change of expression, Marofke passed on to the barracks, and sat down on the bench where, to the annoyance of the people of Neulohe, he had so often sat.
The barracks resounded with the noise of packing and moving. In angry, excited voices the warders were giving their orders: enraged, the prisoners answered back. Marofke didn’t get up. He knew there was nothing missing. Not a blanket had been exchanged for tobacco, no sheet torn up for wicks, not a spade forgotten in the fields; all in the best of order—except that five men were missing. And even if they were caught today, which he did not believe, that would not remove his disgrace. Five convicts had got away from him, and he was the cause of a detachment being withdrawn. That shame could never be removed. There was, of course, his report to the prison authorities. He had proved observant, had asked for the removal of those very five; even that, however, wouldn’t clear him. The same pen-pushers who had rejected his application would do their utmost to minimize its importance—it was absolutely groundless, arrangements for removal could not be made as a result of such applications, the men would have had every right to complain. If Herr Marofke had really mistrusted them so very much, why had he let them out of sight for a moment? He ought to have been beside them night and day, instead of entrusting them to an inexperienced assistant warder. Yes, they would put all the blame on him, and in addition there would be the reports from the farm management and the gendarme officer!
Marofke had been long enough in the service to know that he could not be pensioned off because of this affair; but he wouldn’t be promoted. And he had counted on that this coming autumn. Krebs, the head warder, was retiring at Michaelmas, and he had expected to get the post; he ought to. It was not vanity or ambition which made him wish for this advancement; it was something else. At home he had a daughter, a somewhat old-maidish creature of whom he was very fond; and she would have liked passionately to become a teacher. With the salary of head warder he might perhaps have been able to help her—now she would have to become a cook. Life was idiotic. Five men had run away because a young fellow chattered to a warder on duty, and therefore he wouldn’t be able to gratify his daughter’s dearest wish.
He looked up. Young Pagel had joined him on the bench; with a smile he was holding out his cigarette case and saying: “Idiots!”
Marofke would have liked to refuse. Yet he felt obliged to this young fellow for following him from the office, for letting everyone see him sitting beside a disgraced man. He means well, he thought, and took a cigarette. How could the other know what were the consequences of his foolishness? Everyone committed blunders.
“I’ll take care, officer,” said Pagel, “that it’s I who make the report to your administration. And it shall be of a kind to please you.”
“That’s nice of you. But it’s not worth while your spoiling your own position here, since it won’t help me much. But pay attention to what I’m now going to tell you. I won’t speak to anyone else; they wouldn’t listen to me anyway. Did you understand what the gendarme officer was saying?”
“I was only in there a minute, but what he said seemed clear to me, officer.”
“Good. Not for me, though. And why not? Because they’re the sort of things a man thinks of when he doesn’t know convicts. I’d be all right if Wendt and Holdrian only were at large. They’re stupid enough to carry out half a dozen bad burglaries and perhaps hold-ups, just for a little food and clothes on the way. Even if they do reach Berlin they’ll have let themselves in for six to eight years’ penal servitude, only to get there. But they’ll never do it. Every burglary will be a clue.”
“What will they do, then?”
“Well, Matzke, Liebschner and Kosegarten are with them. Bright lads who think a bit more about what they do. Their idea is always: whatever we take’s got to be worth it. They won’t break into any farmhouse at the risk of a year in jug at least, just to find some plowboy’s old corduroy jacket, which they wouldn’t even dream of wearing.”
“But they’ll have to obtain clothes somewhere. They won’t get far in prison dress.”
“Of course,” said Marofke, putting his finger to his nose with that old superiority which looked so conceited. “And since they’re cunning and have thought of that, and because they’re prudent and don’t want to steal clothes, what follows?”
Pagel didn’t know.
“Someone will get clothes for them,” Marofke gently explained. “They have accomplices here in Neulohe, one or several. You can take it from me that hard-boiled lads like Kosegarten and Liebschner don’t take a powder without any preparation. It’s all been arranged, and because I didn’t find out how they arranged it—for it was done here by notes or signs, they couldn’t have done it in Meienburg!—because I’ve been stupid, it’s really quite right in the end for everyone to blame me.”
“But, officer, how could they, here under all our eyes? And who in Neulohe would have lent themselves to such a thing?”
The warder shrugged his shoulders. “If you only knew how cunning someone is who wants to regain his freedom! You yourself spend your time thinking of a hundred different things, but a prisoner is thinking all day and half the night about one thing only: how to get away. You talk about our eyes! We see nothing. When a convict goes out to work and starts to roll himself a cigarette and finds he has no tobacco and chucks the cigarette paper down in the mud, right in front of you, you march on with the gang. And three minutes later along comes another in the know and picks it up and reads what’s scribbled on it.… Perhaps nothing—it’s only folded in such and such a way, which means this and that.”
“It seems a little improbable.”
“Nothing’s improbable with them,” said Marofke, now in his element. “You just think of a prison, Pagel: iron and cement, locks and bolts, and chains too. And walls and doors and threefold supervision and guards outside and inside! Yet you can take my word for it, there isn’t a prison in the whole world which is absolutely shut. On one side an enormous organization, and on the other an individual in the middle of iron and stone! Yet time and again we hear that a letter’s gone out and no one saw it, that money or a steel file has come in, and no knows how. If that can be done in prison with all its organization, isn’t it possible out here in our unguarded wo
rk gangs, under our very eyes?”
“It’s always possible,” said Pagel, “that they could manage to write a letter. But there must be someone here also who is in league with them, who wants to read it.”
“And why shouldn’t there be someone, Pagel? What do you know about it? What do I? It’s only necessary for someone to be living here who was in the war with one of my lads. They’ve only to look at each other and the glance of my one says, ‘Help, comrade!’—and the plot is on foot. Someone here may once have been on remand, and my chap was in the next cell on the same business; and every night through the cell window they told one another about their troubles—the damage is done! But it needn’t be that. That would be an accident, and it doesn’t need to be that. Women are not accidents; everywhere and always they come into it.”
“What women?” asked Pagel.
“What women, Pagel? All women. That is, I obviously don’t mean all of them, but there’s a certain type everywhere which is as fond of such fellows as many people are of venison when it’s really high. They think a convict who has had time to rest himself is better than an ordinary man, is more knowing, so to speak—you understand what I mean. Women like that would do anything to get one in their bed all to themselves. Harboring felons and so on, they don’t consider that, they’ve never heard of it.…”
“There may be such women in Berlin, officer,” objected Pagel, “but surely not in the country?”
“How do you know, young man, what things are like here, or the women either?” asked Marofke, immensely superior. “You’re a nice chap, the only one who’s been decent to me here, but you’re a bit hazy. You always think things aren’t so bad after all, and that what’s eaten isn’t as hot as what’s cooked. Young fellow, you ought to have grasped early this morning that sometimes it can be even hotter.”
