by Hans Fallada
“How do you mean, your father didn’t know?” he asked. “He was talking about the letter, wasn’t he?”
Thus his first words to her were a cold suspicious question, the sole reply to her stammering appeal.…
But she was happy to have him speak to her again; she pressed his hand, that bony cruel hand, and spoke rapidly. “Papa was talking about a quite different letter! I wrote to you again, about the arms, because the forester had seen you burying them. And the letter was intercepted. Don’t look so terrible, Fritz! Fritz! The arms are still there.… I haven’t done anything wrong, Fritz. Please.…”
She had spoken louder and louder, and now he put his hand over her mouth. From behind their newspapers the civilians had emerged to observe the scene with embarrassment, indignation or amusement. At his table the Rittmeister moved as if in sleep. “Let my daughter alone,” he murmured. And believed he had shouted this. The waiter had taken a step toward the couple and now stood unable to make up his mind whether to interfere or not.…
The Lieutenant, however, now understood everything: the absence of the officers this morning, the broken-off communications with the Reichswehr.… He perceived that the whole Putsch, this action which had been prepared for months, was endangered—and he was to blame! No, she was.
His hand still on her mouth, he whispered in her ear: his hatred for her submissive face flamed higher every moment. “You,” he whispered, “you’ve brought me only misfortune. I loathe you. I wouldn’t want you even if you were smothered in gold. You make me sick. I shudder when I think of your whining. I could tear myself to pieces when I think that I once touched you. Do you hear? Do you understand?” He spoke louder, for her eyes were closed and she hung as if lifeless from his arm. “You have ruined everything for me with your cursed filthy love. Listen, you!” He was shaking her. “Listen well. If the weapons are still there, then I’ll take care to get killed tomorrow. But if they’ve been found, I’ll shoot myself this afternoon—because of you, do you hear? Because of your magnificent love.” Triumphantly, full of hatred, he watched her. For a moment he grew confused; she hung so lifeless on his arm. But he still had something else to say to her, even though the waiter was shaking him roughly by the shoulder. In her ear he whispered: “Visit me this evening, do you understand, darling? There! I’ll look nice. All your life you shall think of me lying there—with a smashed skull!”
At her scream everyone started up, rushed forward.
The Lieutenant looked around, as if waking up. “There, take her! I don’t need her anymore,” he shouted to the waiter and released the girl so suddenly that she fell to the ground.
“Hey, pick her up at least, you!” yelled the waiter furiously. The Lieutenant, however, was already running from the inn.
V
The Lieutenant, he did not know how, had reached his small hotel; to stand in his room looking at the distempered walls and listening to the babble downstairs in the bar. “Be quiet!” he shouted with a face distorted by fury; but the bawling continued. For a while he listened, seeming to hear Violet’s humble, imploring voice. The whimpering of a slave! Damnation! He pulled himself together, drank a glass of stale water, looked round and noticed the pieces of field-gray uniform hanging up. He could not make up his mind how he would go “there,” whether in uniform or in mufti. For a long time he considered which would be more correct, but could not decide.
“Life’s a curse,” he said, sitting down. But now he could not keep his thoughts on the question of what to wear; it occurred to him that he had been ordered to go with his men at nine that evening to fetch the arms from the dump. There was no compulsion for him to have a look at the place beforehand. If the arms were gone, well, it was just as bad at nine in the evening as at midday—he need not have known about them. The Rittmeister and his daughter would keep their mouths shut, for dirty linen wasn’t washed in public. Scornfully he grinned at the thought of how dirty for the daughter this linen was.
“What a swine I am! What a swine!” he groaned, though he did not really mean it. In the end he was no lower than life had wished him to be. There he sat, head in his hands, the Don Juan of villages, the mysterious Lieutenant Fritz, as swift to act as to love. Flesh and hair, the smell of powder and the hot taste of long kisses—that had been his life—the smooth, cool stock of a weapon in his hand, the smooth, cool limbs of girls under their clothes, the blaze in the sky from a village set on fire—but also the eternally consuming flames in his body. Cold-bloodedly he could set on fire the farm of a Haase, if it suited him, but he could also spring into a blazing stable to fetch out the horses. That was the man he was, and he could not be any other.
Because of that, he would not wait till evening to make certain of the arms dump. No, he would go at once, and if all was lost there, then he was lost too, exactly as he had told that damned girl. He knew well that to many he was a man of questionable honor, one used by the Major only because he was suited to certain missions; but he had his own sort of honor and did not choose to be dependent on the silence of a Fräulein von Prackwitz.
He jumped up, his irresolution gone. From the cupboard he took out a suitcase and burrowing beneath the dirty linen in it fetched out his pistol. The safety-catch was up, but it was loaded from that time before—he remembered very well—when he had driven that little stinking beast Meier in front of him. He threw his case down at his feet—he was indecisive, a coward!
No, he had had no luck with her; she was associated with nothing but tremulous figures. Cowardly Meier, Kniebusch the chatterbox, that scoundrel of a Räder, the idiotic father who thought it was the thing to throw wine in other people’s faces and was then prostrated by his own heroic deed. And the most tremulous of all, the girl herself, with her romantic pretensions to love. “I can’t live without you!”—when every man in Neulohe and in the world could have given her what he himself had!
There was a knock. Swiftly, before calling “Come in,” the Lieutenant slipped the pistol into the roomy pocket of his knickerbockers. But it was only Friedrich, the boots, come to announce that Herr Richter had sent round to ask if Herr Fritz would drop in on him at once.
“Yes, yes, that’ll be all right, Friedrich,” said the Lieutenant with the greatest ease, although in his heart he cursed.
Very punctiliously and with a firm hand he parted his hair before the mirror, attentively observed by Friedrich who, of course, was also in the plot, though only as a minor hanger-on. In the mirror the Lieutenant was watching the face of his rear-rank man; it was as if kneaded out of clay, a coarse face, with a shapeless nose. Nevertheless its expression was unmistakably anxious. He made up his mind. “Well, Friedrich, where’s it burning?” he asked with a smile.
Friedrich looked at the Lieutenant in the mirror and said hurriedly: “The town has been put out of bounds to the troops.”
The Lieutenant gave a superior smile. “We know all about that. That’s all right, Friedrich. Did you think they’d let the men into the town beforehand, so that they could get drunk?”
Friedrich nodded a slow agreement with his shapeless head. “I understand that. But Herr Lieutenant, they say—”
“Do you listen to what people say? Then you have to listen to a lot, Friedrich.”
“But—”
“Oh, shut up! It’s all rubbish. We people obey and do our job.”
“But they say a car from the Commission of Control stopped in front of the artillery barracks, Herr Lieutenant.”
The boots, this insignificant something, one of hundreds, did not remove his glance from a Lieutenant who must not lose his self-possession or show dismay. For a moment only did the young man close his eyes, no more than a blink; then he was again looking at himself and the other in the mirror. Thoughtfully he tapped his comb on the rim of the washbowl. “Well, and what else? Is it still there?” he asked.
“No, sir, it went away again.”
“You see, Friedrich!” explained the Lieutenant, reassuring himself too. “You see! It
stopped there and has gone away again, Friedrich. That’s all. The swine have to stick their noses in everything. Obviously they’ve heard something or other. It’s impossible, when thousands know about our affair, for there not to be a little gossip. They were trying to hear something, and they’ve had to go away again. Would they have left if they had really known anything?” He turned round, looking straight at his man. And whether it was the nearness of his glance or the effect of his words, he saw that he had convinced the boots.
“The Lieutenant is quite right. One oughtn’t to listen to what people say. One must just obey,” said the man.
The other secretly grinned. What a rotten business! See, here was one man persuaded out of about three thousand; and Heaven only knew what the others were being told in the meantime. For affairs like this one wanted a regiment of more or less deaf mutes.
“It’s not that I’m afraid, Herr Lieutenant. Only I’m so glad to have a job again at last, and the boss told me he’d throw me out if I joined in the Putsch.” The Lieutenant made a gesture. “But I shall join in, Herr Lieutenant,” Friedrich said hastily. “I’ll bring also the two sporting guns of the boss’s, as commanded. If everything goes all right tomorrow, he can chuck me out. Only, Herr Lieutenant, you’ll understand that if it had been absolutely hopeless … It’s no joke to be out of work.”
“No, no, Friedrich,” laughed the Lieutenant, clapping the man on his shoulder. “It’s O.K. That I guarantee—with my life.” Well, he had said it, he wanted to have said it like that; it was all bloody well the same, especially now. Should he be sorry for this fool? All were trying to cover themselves, the cowards.
“Thank you very much, Herr Lieutenant,” said Friedrich, beaming.
“So you see, comrade,” laughed the Lieutenant graciously, “never say die! Just think how pleased your boss will be the day after tomorrow that you joined in for him.” His tone changed. “Oh, and Friedrich, is my bike ready? I have to make another trip shortly.”
“Yes, of course, Herr Lieutenant. But first you were going to Herr Richter.…”
“That’s right,” said the Lieutenant, and left the room.
He strolled along, smoking. In the lavatory he quickly pushed back the safety catch and saw that there was a cartridge in the barrel. Then, with the pistol ready and gripped inside his trouser pocket, he went to Herr Richter. It was a strange thing; since he had heard about the Entente Commission’s car his mood was a hundred times happier. If all those condemned to death felt as cheerful as he did, then all the drivel about the death penalty was utter nonsense. It was possible that a few minutes at Herr Richter’s and things would explode. He with them!
Everything was quite friendly there, however. A crowd of discharged officers sat around Richter, some in mufti, some in threadbare uniforms without distinguishing marks. The Lieutenant knew them all. With an abrupt greeting he went at once to Richter, who was whispering with the one stranger, a genuine civilian.
Richter himself really looked like a civilian. Tall, dark, the young colts called him “God’s pencil” among themselves; he was always writing everything down—it was certain that the fellow had never smelled powder. The Lieutenant couldn’t bear him; and probably he could just as little bear the Lieutenant. He now signed to him brusquely to wait at a distance and went on whispering with the fat civilian. The Lieutenant turned round and in a bored way contemplated the room.
It was the back room of a public-house, dreary and discolored; and something dreary and discolored also appeared in the men there. It was revolting that he too should have to stand and wait with them. He fingered the pistol in his pocket; Richter’s first words would tell him whether those men knew something about him or not. Two or three words of the fat civilian’s reached his ear. He could not exactly make them out, but one word might have been “Meier” and the other “spy.” To be sure, there were many Meiers in the world, but the Lieutenant was convinced immediately that only one Meier could be intended. The swine had been born to make difficulties for him. Why hadn’t he let him roast in that forest fire which he had started? This was the result of a man’s good deeds! Actually it was stupid to wait any longer. Everything was plain and decided. Out and finish with it! Why let himself be insulted as well?
He considered where the lavatory might be in this place—but that would only make trouble for his comrades. He must go somewhere farther away, somewhere in the wood, in the undergrowth—no, the best place would be where he had promised her. She must not be let off that!
“Herr Lieutenant, please.”
He breathed freely again. Perhaps only a respite, but yet a little time longer to draw breath, to be himself, to have a future. Attentively he listened to Herr Richter explaining that since early that morning every communication with the Reichswehr had been broken. No one could get into the barracks, no one came out; officers were not to be seen on the streets. Telephone calls brought only evasive chatter.…
Ah, it was clear now how uncertain is all preparation. They were a handful of people, the remnants of Freicorps that had long been officially dissolved, together with a Landsturm of a few thousand men—strong if the Reichswehr joined them and, if it opposed them, a ridiculous mob. One had firmly counted on the Reichswehr. Naturally there had been nothing official; one had had the fullest comprehension of the difficulties which the comrades faced. From the debris of the army, from the ruins of revolution, a new army had to be created under the suspicious eyes of late enemies who were still hostile. Those outside were more than willing to take all the risk. The discharged officer had spoken with the one in service; the first had talked, the other had listened. “Yes” had not been said, but neither had “No.” But one had been given the feeling—if we only carry out our job, they will not be against it.
And then, out of the blue sky, a day before the event, this incomprehensible silence, utterly undeserved coldness, emphatic withdrawal, almost refusal. Herr Richter went on to represent urgently that this mystery must be cleared up at once and the shadow dissipated. One couldn’t lead people against the Reichswehr if it was to be hostile. He spoke very forcibly. The Lieutenant would surely understand what was desired?
With grave and attentive face the Lieutenant stood there. In the right places he nodded and said yes, but actually he heard nothing. Savage hatred filled him. Could so great and important a business be endangered through a little love-sick creature? Was everything to be in vain which hundreds of men had prepared for months, for which they had risked honor, life and fortune—all because a bitch like that couldn’t hold her tongue? Impossible! It couldn’t be. Oh, he should have said quite different things to her. He should have taken her by the hair and hit her love-filled face.
(But neither the Lieutenant nor his superior, now talking of treachery, arrived at the thought that a thing must indeed be rotten to be overthrown by the chatter of a fifteen-year-old girl; that it could only be an adventure without any life-giving spark of an idea; that they themselves were all trapped by the glittering and corrupt enchantments of a wicked age, and were thinking of the moment instead of the eternity beyond—even as the bank-note machines in Berlin were working only for the day and the hour.)
Herr Richter was silent. His talk at an end, he was hoping that this shady Lieutenant had understood him. But he merely looked questioningly at God’s Pencil, who therefore had to make up his mind to go further—a disgusting business for a decent person.
“I have heard,” he whispered with a cautious look at the fat civilian who still stood nearby waiting for something, “I have heard that you have the possibility of finding out a few … hmm … secrets. You are supposed to have some sort of connection.…” The disgust in his voice was so obvious that a little crimson crept into the Lieutenant’s cheeks. But he said nothing, only regarded his superior attentively. “Very well, then,” said Herr Richter impatiently, himself flushing. “Why beat about the bush? I ask you in the interests of the cause to make use of your connections, so that we can know where we
stand.”
“Now?” The truth was that the Lieutenant wished to ride past the hotel, see if the lordly Horch car was still there, and then go at once to the dump. If it was as he now almost expected it to be, then back to her at once and before her eyes do what he had promised. No, he wouldn’t touch her, but she should carry with her that picture—much worse than any other—throughout her whole life. She was so impressionable, she would never get over it; day after day with that picture, starting up at night from sleep—screaming—with that picture before her. Therefore the Lieutenant hesitated. “Now?” he asked.
The dark haggard man became almost angry. “When would it be, then? Do you think we have much more time to lose? We’ve got to know what’s going to happen.”
“I don’t think,” said the Lieutenant, retaliating for his blush, “that the young lady has time for me at the moment. She’s only a housemaid and will have to clean up now. And the cook bears me a grudge.” That’s the stuff, he thought. If they need me, let them stop being so genteel, and eat my dirt.
Herr Richter, however, had become quite cold and polite. “I am convinced, Herr Lieutenant,” he said, “that you can arrange the matter. I shall therefore expect your report here—inside an hour.”
The Lieutenant bowed, and Herr Richter was on the point of dismissing him when he caught a gesture from the fat man. “Oh, yes—one or two more questions, Herr Lieutenant, in another connection, with which this gentleman is dealing.”
The fat man advanced, with a curt greeting. He had been watching the Lieutenant during the entire discussion, but now he hardly looked at him. Without circumlocution, without a trace of politeness, he asked: “Neulohe is in your district?”
“Certainly, Herr …?”
“The arms dump in the Black Dale also?”
The Lieutenant threw an irritated questioning glance at Herr Richter, who with an impatient sign ordered him to reply.
