by Hans Fallada
“Yes.”
“When was the last time you inspected the dump?”
“Three days ago. Tuesday.”
“Everything all right then?”
“Yes.”
“Had you set up secret marks?”
“I could see by the state of the ground that it had not been dug up since.”
“Are your people trustworthy?”
“Completely.”
“Do you think that anyone could have watched you while the arms were being buried?”
“That—no. Otherwise I would have shifted the dump at once.”
“Did anyone come in the neighborhood of the sentinels during the concealment?”
The Lieutenant was trying to consider what reply would be helpful to him. But the questions followed one another so rapidly, the observant eye was so cold, that he replied hastily, without reflection or weighing the consequences: “Yes.”
“Who?”
“Herr von Prackwitz and his daughter.”
“Did you know them?”
“Only by sight.”
“What did you tell them?”
“I sent them on.”
“Did both go forthwith?”
“Yes.”
“They asked for no explanation of what was taking place on their land?”
“Herr von Prackwitz is a former officer.”
“And his daughter?”
The Lieutenant was silent. This is like the police, he thought. Only criminals are questioned in this manner. Is there a spy in our section then? I heard something of that kind once.…
“And the daughter?” persisted the fat man.
“Said nothing.”
“You weren’t otherwise acquainted with her?”
“Only by sight.”
That look, that damned penetrating look! If only he had an idea what the fellow really knew! But, like this, one was groping in the dark completely. A single reply might have exposed him as a liar. And then … And then? Nothing more!
“You are certain that neither of the pair spied on your dump later?”
“Absolutely certain.”
“Why?”
“I should have seen by the ground.”
For the first time Herr Richter joined in. “I think we can be certain of Rittmeister von Prackwitz and his daughter. As a matter of fact they are now in town. I saw them go into The Golden Hat.”
“We could question them,” said the fat man thoughtfully, not removing his ice-cold glance from the Lieutenant.
“Certainly, question them! I’ll come with you at once. Come along, we’ll go,” almost shouted the Lieutenant. “What’s up? Am I a traitor? Have I blabbed? Come with me, you, Herr Policeman! Yes, I’ve just come from The Golden Hat; I was sitting there at a table with the Rittmeister and his daughter; I have—” He broke off, looking at his tormentor with hatred.
“Yes, what have you?” asked the fat man, quite unmoved by this outburst.
“I beg you, gentlemen,” cried God’s Pencil imploringly. “Don’t misunderstand the situation, Herr Lieutenant. There is no desire to offend you, but we have reason to believe that an arms dump has been betrayed. A car from the Entente Commission has been seen there. As yet we don’t know which dump is in question; we are inquiring of all the gentlemen to whom one has been entrusted. There is always the possibility that this is the reason for the peculiar behavior of our comrades opposite.”
The Lieutenant drew a deep breath. “Inquire, then,” he said to the other; and yet he felt that even that breath had been seen.
“You were speaking of The Golden Hat,” said the fat man impassively. “You said ‘I have’ and stopped.”
“Is that really necessary?” exclaimed Herr Richter in despair.
“I had some port with the Rittmeister, perhaps I was going to say that. I don’t remember now. Why don’t we go there?” he cried again, this time not desperately but in defiance, carrying on that game with death which had already been decided, however, as he well knew. “I’ll be pleased to go. It doesn’t matter to me. You can question Herr von Prackwitz in my presence.”
“And his daughter,” said the fat man.
“And his daughter,” repeated the Lieutenant, but in a low voice.
There was a silence, oppressive and lengthy.
What do they want, he thought in despair. Do they want to arrest me? They can’t do that. I am not a traitor; I have not lost my honor yet.
The fat man, without any embarrassment, whispered in Herr Richter’s ear, on whose face was seen once more, but intensified, an expression of disgust. He appeared to be in disagreement, to be rejecting something. Suddenly the Lieutenant remembered a former comrade from whom the colonel had torn the epaulettes in front of the regiment. But I don’t wear epaulettes, he thought forlornly; he can’t do that to me.
He looked across the room—it was ten paces to the door and no one stood in the way. Hesitatingly he took a step in that direction.
“A moment,” commanded the fat man roughly. His ice-cold eye saw everything, even when it was turned away.
“I answer for the dump with my honor,” cried the Lieutenant, beginning to tremble. The two men turned their faces to him. “And with my life,” he added, not so firmly.
It seemed as if the fat man made a slight negative gesture with his head, but Herr Richter said briskly: “Good. Good. Nobody mistrusts you, Herr Lieutenant.” The fat man was silent. No muscle of his face moved, but it nevertheless said: “I mistrust you.” I don’t want to be judged by you, thought the Lieutenant, not your way.
“May I go now?” asked the Lieutenant.
Herr Richter looked at the fat man, who said: “A couple of questions more, Herr Lieutenant.”
Hasn’t the fellow any shame? thought the young man in despair. I wish to God I was on the street. But he did not move and replied: “By all means”—as if it were of no consequence to him.
And it started again. “You know a farm bailiff, Meier from Neulohe?”
“Slightly. He was proposed. I turned him down.”
“Why?”
“I didn’t like him. I thought him unreliable.”
“Why?”
“I can’t remember. That was my impression. I think he had a lot of affairs with women.”
“Oh, affairs with women … You thought he was unreliable because of affairs with women?” The unbending cold glance rested on the Lieutenant.
“Yes.”
“Could this Meier have observed the concealment of the arms?”
“Absolutely impossible!” declared the Lieutenant quickly. “He had been gone from Neulohe a long time then.”
“Oh! Gone away? Why had he gone?”
“I really don’t know. One would have to ask Herr von Prackwitz.”
“Do you think there is anyone in Neulohe who is still in touch with this Meier?”
“I have no idea at all. Perhaps one of his girls.”
“You don’t know them?”
“I beg you!” said the Lieutenant heavily.
“It might be possible, don’t you think … that you know the name of one or another?”
“No.”
“So you can form no conjecture how this Meier might have heard of the arms dump?”
“But he can’t know anything about it!” shouted the Lieutenant, bewildered. “It’s weeks since he left Neulohe.”
“And who does know about it?”
Silence again. The Lieutenant shrugged his shoulders furiously.
“Well, it has been stated,” said Herr Richter placatingly, “that this Meier was sitting in the car of the Control Commission this morning. But it’s not certain that it was he.”
For the first time the fat man betrayed annoyance, and glanced at the too-talkative God’s Pencil with irritation. The other, however, made an end. “We’ll let that be enough of questioning now. It doesn’t seem to me that much has come out of it. You know your instructions, Lieutenant. I shall expect you back in a hour’s time,
then. Perhaps you can learn what we haven’t found out here.” He made a sign of dismissal; the Lieutenant gave a slight bow and went to the door.
I am going to the door, he thought, remarkably relieved. Yet he was trembling lest the fat man, that terrible person, should say a word and detain him again.
But no word was spoken behind him; the uncomfortable chilliness in his back vanished, as if distance weakened the icy power of that glance. He saluted his comrades right and left, and by a great effort of will stopped at the door to light a cigarette. Then he seized the handle, opened and closed the door, crossed the taproom—and at last stood outside on the open street.
He felt as if he had been restored to freedom after a long excruciating imprisonment.
VI
Standing there he knew that never again would he return to Herr Richter in that room, would never make the awaited report, nor say comrade to comrade again. Honor lost, all lost! Yes, honor, which belonged to him in common with the other officers, had been lost. He had lied like a coward to escape the judgment of his comrades. But not because he feared death—he had already awarded himself death—but because he wanted to die in his own manner, so that she shouldn’t forget him.
Hands in his pockets, cigarette in mouth, he sauntered in the gently drizzling midday toward that outlying part of the town where were the officers’ villas. When he considered the matter, it was utterly foolish to take on himself this further humiliation of finding out from the maid Frieda what her employers had been saying, since he would never convey to Herr Richter the results of his investigation. Let them see how they would manage their Putsch themselves; he was only going to bother about his own affairs now.
As, apparently carefree and unbound by time, the Lieutenant strolled through the streets in his shabby clothes, entering a shop once and buying fifty cigarettes of a very much better kind than usual, there was a deep crease between his eyebrows, just above the bridge of the nose—a crease of intense brooding. It was, for a young man who throughout his life had preferred action to reflection, not very easy to understand what was really the matter with him, what he wanted and what he did not want.
Very surprising indeed was the thought of how indifferent he had now become toward that Putsch for which he had worked so many months, almost without money, denying himself everything that young men otherwise desire. Equally surprising was it how indifferent he felt at leaving his comrades, to whom he no longer belonged, and whose society had always been more important for him than the love of any girl.
He had had to endure a lot that morning, things he would normally never have borne, things which would have rendered him frantic: the wine thrown at him by the Rittmeister, the apprehensive queries of the contemptible Friedrich, Herr Richter’s hardly-concealed disgust, and, to cap all, the shameful examination by the fat detective. But all this too had lapsed from the mind of one who otherwise could not forget an injury for years, but who now had to coerce himself if he wished to remember anything at all of these recent happenings.
It is strange, he thought; I feel as if I am quite out of things already, as if I have really nothing more to do with this world, like a dying man when all fades round him. Yes, now I remember again. When people die, there hands begin to move restlessly about their bedclothes. Some say the dying try to dig their own graves; others that they are trying to find something to hold on to in this world. Is that what’s happening to me? Is everything withdrawing from me, and can I find nothing more on earth to hold on to? But I am no dying man; I am not the least bit ill. Is it that the cells in my body already know they must perish? Can death not only be annihilation through illness, but also the destruction of the body through thought? In that case am I really a traitor?
He looked around as if waking from a bad dream. He was on a large dismal ground stamped hard by the boots of many hundreds of soldiers, a yellow expanse of cheerless clay where hardly a weed ventured to grow. At the far end were the crude yellow barracks, surrounded by a high yellow wall topped with broken glass. The great iron gate, painted a dull gray, was shut; the sentry in steel helmet and with slung carbine was marching up and down to warm himself a little.
The Lieutenant contemplated this picture. In him a sullen resolution was forming, something evil and very somber. He crossed the ground. Now I’ll see about it, he thought.
He stood right in the sentry’s way and looked at him challengingly. “Well, comrade?” he said. He knew the man and the man knew him; many times had the Lieutenant stood a round for him and his friends. Occasionally they had sat together, and once, when there had been a fight at a country dance, they had cleared the hall side by side. They were therefore very good acquaintances, but now the man was acting as if he did not know of any Lieutenant. In a low voice he said: “Be off with you.”
The Lieutenant did not move. He had become more sullen and addressed the sentry again, sneeringly. “Well, comrade, have you become so important that you don’t know me now?”
The man’s face did not change; he appeared not to have heard and marched past in silence. But after six paces he had to turn again and march back. “Listen, man,” said the Lieutenant this time, “I have nothing to smoke. Give me a cigarette and I’ll go away at once.”
The man gave a quick look to the left. The small door for pedestrians was open, showing part of a gravel path and the windows of the guardroom. Then he turned to the Lieutenant, whose face bore an expression of contempt, despair and anxiety hard to decipher. The sentry could make little of this face, but it held something threatening; otherwise he might possibly have dared to hand over a cigarette. As it was, he passed by without a word and about-turned at the sentry box. Some premonition led him to remove the carbine from his shoulder before approaching again.
The Lieutenant was possessed by a savage and reckless despair. It was now clear that the Reichswehr did not want to have anything more to do with them, that the sternest orders had been given not to associate with the outsiders. He was determined, however, that, whatever the circumstances, the man should enter into conversation. He wanted to quarrel with him and be taken into the barracks, if need be under arrest. Then he could ask the officer on guard what they had against them. And if he then heard something about an arms dump … Very well. All over. All—over!
It was a completely insane thought which was keeping him there in its power; as though the officer on guard would be inclined to give to an arrested person information which had been denied the comrades in liberty. But the Lieutenant was no longer rational. He had been quite right that his body’s cells could be infected by thought.… This time he let the sentry pass him unchallenged, but while his back was turned he lit a cigarette. Puffing away, he watched the man returning and enjoyed the astonished and slightly foolish expression on his face when he saw one who had just asked for a cigarette now smoking. The Lieutenant held out a second cigarette and said: “Here, comrade, a cigarette for you because you didn’t have one for me.”
The man came to a halt and said firmly: “Go away or I’ll call the guard.”
“I’ll go when you’ve taken it,” declared the Lieutenant.
The man looked at him, made no attempt to take the cigarette, but raised his carbine a little. “Do be sensible. Go away,” he said at last.
The Lieutenant also desired to win over the other. “Comrade,” he said, “take the cigarette. Oblige me and take it. So that I know you are still my comrade. There!” He held it toward him. “If you don’t take it, I’ll have to give you a punch in the mug,” he added threateningly.
The man scrutinized him, serious and watchful. He made no attempt to take the cigarette but waited to see what the other would do.
A sudden thought made the Lieutenant almost mad with rage. “Ah!” he shouted. “I can see you think I’m drunk.… I’ll show you how drunk I am!”
He dropped his cigarette and at the same moment hit out at the soldier’s face. But, Heaven only knew why, the Lieutenant, usually a very skillful boxer, had no
luck today. With a dull sound his fist struck the wood of the carbine stock, and a burning pain shot through his hand and arm. Then the butt hit him on the chest with great force and he tumbled over backwards. He felt that he would never be able to breathe again.
And as he lay there, battling for breath, with the sentry’s watchful eye on him as if he were a savage beast, and considered that he had not been arrested or taken into the barracks or fired upon, and remembered in the hundredth of a second that in his pocket there was a pistol with which he could pay back the shameful blow—then he was pierced by the thought that he had not only deceived his comrades about the betrayal of the dump and made fresh difficulties for them quite unnecessarily, but that he was also nothing but a coward. He was doing all this only to delay the journey to the Black Dale, to postpone the discovery of the truth, to steal a few more hours of life. His outer varnish disintegrated, colour seemed to peel off him; his whole existence seemed like the rotten carcass of an old wooden shipwreck. This is what you are! said the voice within him.
And while he lifted himself gropingly from the earth, while he walked on with aching limbs, taking no notice of the sentry, not even thinking of him—so completely had his new understanding extinguished all that had just happened—he could not help recalling again and again that summer morning in the wood when he had driven little Meier before him with a pistol. How he had despised the pitiful coward; what disgust had overwhelmed him at his entreaties! And now the anxiety was gnawing at himself: Shall I be as cowardly? Will I even have the courage to press the trigger? How will I die?
This thought grew ever stronger in him, and in a few minutes was completely dominant.
How will I die? Like a man or a coward? Will my hand tremble perhaps? Will I shoot myself blind, as little Rakow did? God, how he screamed!
He shuddered, gripping the smooth pistol stock in his pocket as if it could give him that self-confidence which had never failed him his whole life long and which now, when death was near, so completely deserted him. I must be quick, he thought desperately. I must go quickly to the Black Dale, so that I can make certain. How can I live when I don’t even know if I am courageous enough to die?
