The Drinker

by Hans Fallada

  “Sergeant Schulze, if you don’t mind, Sommer!” Schulze corrected me severely.

  “But I thought,” I continued furiously, “that you might take the trouble to set about catching this scoundrel immediately.”

  “That’s good,” laughed the sergeant ironically. “First of all, in your drunken stupor you have to hand over all your goods and chattels to some criminal, and then you yell for the police and expect us to say, ‘Dear, oh dear!’ and break our necks running after a handful of spoons for you. I tell you again, you don’t deserve anything better, and if it wasn’t that your poor wife has to bear all the burden of your stupidity, I wouldn’t lift a finger over this affair. But for your wife’s sake, Sommer—mark that, for your wife’s sake—I will, as soon as I’ve seen you safe in clink and made my report to the inspector. It’s still possible this bird hasn’t flown yet—perhaps he doesn’t expect us so soon. But now get on a bit faster, I’d like to hand you over before you get into any more mischief. One never knows what to expect from you. My God! I’m never going to be taken in again by such a fellow as you, in all my life. I used to marvel at what a clever man you were, but probably your wife did it all. How’s she ever going to forgive you for all the muck-up you’ve made of things?”

  With that, we went on, and did not exchange another word until we got to the police-court. Probably Schulze was inwardly busy with his report for the inspector, but I was truly deeply offended at all the unjust things which this low-grade policeman had said so rudely to my face. If the fellow couldn’t see that I had merely been ill, a helpless invalid at the mercy of a rogue, there was no help for him, he was a stupid fool. Anyhow, I certainly wasn’t. I had simply been ill, and still was.…

  28

  In the course of my business career, I had several times had dealings with the police-court, and I knew the lay-out of the place fairly well. But I had never before been in the part to which Sergeant Schulze was taking me now. We went through the whole building (it adjoins the district court) to a rather narrow inner yard which was shut off on one side by a high wall, and on the other three by tall buildings pitted from top to bottom with small, almost square windows, all protected with strong bars.

  “I’m going to live up there for weeks and weeks, perhaps,” I thought, and I was overcome by fear. I would have liked to ask my companion a number of things about the customs and regulations of such a prison, but it was too late for that now. Schulze pressed a bell-push, a huge iron door opened, and a blue-uniformed man greeted Schulze with a handshake and me with a cool searching look.

  “A new arrival, Karl,” said Schulze. “The papers will be coming this afternoon from the Public Prosecutor’s office.”

  “Stand over there!” said the man in uniform, and I obediently placed myself where he ordered me.

  The two policemen whispered, and looked across at me several times. Once I heard the words “attempted murder”—it did not seem to make any special impression.

  Then Schulze called to me from some distance, “Well, keep your chin up, Sommer,” and the door closed behind him; he had gone back into freedom, and I felt as if I had lost a friend.

  “Come with me,” said the man in uniform carelessly, and led me into an office which was quite unoccupied.

  “Turn out your pockets and put everything on the table.”

  I did so. It was little enough: a bunch of keys, a pocket knife, a rather dirty handkerchief.

  “That all you’ve got? No money? Well, hold up your arms.”

  I did so; and now he felt me up and down, presumably for any hidden belongings.

  “All right,” said the blue-uniformed man. “I’ll put you in Eleven for the time being. The governor’s not here just now. It’s the lunch-break.”

  I asked politely whether I might have some lunch too. I hadn’t had anything yet.

  “Lunch is over,” he answered coolly. “There’s none left.”

  “But I haven’t had any breakfast either!” I cried excitedly. Up till the present my appetite had not been very large, but now it seemed ravenous. I felt my rights were being violated; even a prisoner must eat!

  “You’ll enjoy your supper all the more,” he answered, unmoved. “Come on now!”

  He led me along a corridor, through an iron grill, up a stairway, through an iron door. I saw a long gloomy corridor and many iron-studded doors with locks and bolts, then again up a stairway, up another stairway, again an iron door—the man had to keep unlocking and locking all the time, and he did it all so casually … but my heart sank: all these doors that now lay between me and the outside world made me realise so clearly how trapped I was, how difficult it was going to be to get free again. From the very first moment I felt the truth of that saying which I was to hear often in prison: “Easier to get in than out.”

  My guide had stopped before an iron door with a white “11” on it. Behind this, then, I was to live. He unlocked the door, and beyond it appeared another door. This, too, he unlocked.

  “Get in,” said my companion impatiently, and I entered. From a narrow bed, a strange figure arose, a tall man of remarkable girth, with a bald head and spectacles.

  “A bit of company?” he asked. “Well, that’s nice. Where are you from?”

  I was so astonished to find that I had a room-mate in my cell that I only noticed much later that the turnkey had gone and I was finally and irrevocably shut in.

  “Sit down on that stool,” said the fat man. “I’m staying in bed for a bit. You’re not supposed to, but Fermi doesn’t say anything. Fermi’s the one who just brought you up.”

  I sat on the stool and stared at the man lying on the bed. Like me, he wore civilian clothes, a once-elegant suit from a good tailor, which was now crumpled and stained.

  “Are you a prisoner too?” I finally asked.

  “I should say so!” laughed the fat man. “Do you think I’d be sitting in this hole for fun?” He stretched, and gave a groan as he did so. “I’ve been stuck in this place eleven weeks already. But d’you think they’ve charged me yet? Not a hope. These fellows take their time, as far as they’re concerned you could rot before they’d stir themselves. What are you up for?”

  “The Public Prosecutor had me arrested for the attempted murder of my wife,” I answered with modest pride, and I quickly added, “But it isn’t true. Not a word of it is true.”

  The fat man laughed again.

  “Of course it’s not true,” he laughed. “There’s only innocent men in here—when you ask them.”

  “But in my case it really isn’t true,” I insisted. “I never tried to murder my wife. We just had a bit of a quarrel.”

  “Ah well,” said the fat man, “in time you’ll get it all off your chest. Everyone who isn’t used to clink starts to talk after a time. Only you want to be careful who you’re talking to. Most of ’em want to be the governor’s pet and they go crawling to him with everything—and then you’re for it.”

  He looked candidly at me with his little eyes through rolls of fat, and said: “You can talk quite openly with me. I’m the soul of honour. I’m ‘stickum’.”

  “What are you?”

  “Stickum, that’s what we say here for close-mouthed. I don’t squeal, understand?”

  “But I’ve really nothing to confess,” I assured him again.

  “Well, we’ll see about that,” said the fat man comfortably. “Perhaps you’ll be lucky, and the examining magistrate’ll be of the same opinion as you and won’t commit you for trial.”

  “But I was arrested by the Public Prosecutor himself.”

  “That doesn’t mean anything,” the fat man informed me. “First of all, tomorrow or the day after, they bring you up before the examining magistrate. He questions you, and if he decides in your favour, you’ll be free again.”

  “Is that really true?” I ask excitedly. “I can still get free?”

  “Of course you can. But it doesn’t often happen that way. Still, we’ll see.”

  And again
he stretched comfortably.

  I was intoxicated by the prospect of possible freedom so near at hand. I stood up and thoughtfully paced to and fro in the cell. If Magda gave favourable evidence on my behalf I would get free. And she had to give favourable evidence on my behalf, I felt. And even if she was still furious with me, she could never say I had tried to murder her. That was something I had never wanted to do. Dimly I remembered having said something like “Tomorrow night I’ll come and kill you,” but that was only drunken babble. It didn’t mean anything.

  “Listen,” said the fat man. “Don’t run up and down the cell like that. You give me the fidgets. Sit down quietly on that stool, but take the cushion off first, it’s my private cushion. You can’t lie down on your kip yet. The old man won’t bring you your straw-bag till tonight. God, how this stable gets on my nerves!” Then the fat man yawned heartily, let a terrible one go—I started with fright—groaned, “Ah, that’s better!” and fell asleep at once.

  I do not want to go on recounting in such detail the first days of my remand period. They were so agonising that one night I got up softly, went over to the fat man’s locker and took the blade out of his safety razor. I wanted to cut my throat. But I could not pluck up the courage. I tentatively made a small cut in my wrist, which only bled a little, but it calmed me. The will to live conquered, and that same night I put the blade back in the razor.

  On the whole, it was easier for me to get over my craving for alcohol than I had expected. I had not become a proper drunkard yet, I had given myself up to schnaps for a short time only, and had never seen white mice. I was greatly helped, during this weaning period, by the fact that on the third or fourth day I volunteered for work. I could not bear to sit brooding and inactive in my cell, nor could I stand the fat man’s company—his name, by the way, was Duftermann. I think I would have murdered him if I had been forced to spend twenty-four hours of every day in his company. He was nothing but an animal; a more flagrantly egotistic man I have never met. He had obtained for himself every privilege the law allows for prisoners awaiting trial—he had blankets and cushions on his hard straw-bag, a regular supply of tobacco, and food parcels, but he never gave a crumb away. In the first few days, when I did not have my own washing things in the cell, he forbade me even to use his comb. I was not once allowed to touch his mirror, and it was only unwillingly that he permitted me to use a sheet of his newspaper as toilet paper.

  “No, no, Sommer,” he would say. “Here it’s ‘God helps those who help themselves.’ Why should I start looking after you? What do you do for me? You only give me the fidgets.”

  That was another point on which I was driven nearly frantic. Everything I did upset Duftermann. I was not allowed to walk up and down in the cell: if, in the night, I turned on my straw mattress, he complained about his sleep being disturbed: if I wanted to open the little window for a moment, he shouted that it was cold on his bald head, and so we had to go on squatting there in the heat and the stink. But he allowed himself everything. He greedily wolfed the food parcels which his wife brought for him twice a week, sat on the bucket six times a day, behaved like a pig, and snored so loudly at night that it kept me awake for hours on end, at the mercy of my gloomy thoughts. If ever I hated a man from the bottom of my heart it was Duftermann. In the long time of trouble ahead of me, I was to lie down with much rougher folk, with labourers, with tramps even—but none of them ever let themselves go, so flagrantly gave rein to all their instincts, as this Duftermann did. By profession he was merely a property-owner, the son of a rich long-dead father who had left him several large houses and other real estate. Up till now, Duftermann had spent his life administering this property, and in the course of administering it, he had met with the misfortune that brought him to prison and caused him to become my cell-mate. As he denied nothing to himself and everything to others, and as he claimed the right to do whatever he pleased, he had set fire to one of his houses, whose dilapidated condition had nettled him for some time past, so as to cover the cost of rebuilding by the insurance money. In this fire, a woman and her child had lost their lives.

  Duftermann merely complained: “The damed fool! Couldn’t she run out in time like all the rest? No, the stupid idiot has to stuff some rubbish or other into a trunk first, and then the smoke makes it impossible for her to escape. How can I help it, if some old girl’s so stupid? The Public Prosecutor would like to make a rope out of it for me. But he doesn’t know Duftermann. I’ve engaged the best lawyers, and if everything goes wrong, I’ll have them give me Paragraph 51, be certified and live off my means in some nice little loony-bin.”

  Duftermann quite openly admitted his guilt.

  “Why should I tell lies? They caught me with the petrol can in my hand. There’s no point in denying it. Yes, if I were in your shoes I’d deny everything to my dying day. But like this—why I’m just certifiable!”

  He roared with laughter.

  “After all,” he continued in a tone of self-pity, “it was only my good nature made me do it. I’m just a good-natured fool. I couldn’t bear to see people going on living in such a tumbledown bug-ridden barrack of a place. I wanted to provide them with decent housing—and this is what my good nature gets me.”

  In this way, Duftermann drove me to volunteer for work; and I could be sure of his biting scorn, when of an evening I returned to the cell from work, with weary bones but quite peaceful at heart. He would greet me something like this: “Ah, here comes the model boy. Well, did you work hard? Did you suck up to that swine of a governor? The Public Prosecutor will give you just as long in clink as if you’d stayed here quietly in your cell. It’s creepers like you who spoil the whole prison. Your sort make it bad for the rest of us, they’ll make all work compulsory. But you wait, I’ll get you yet.”

  I hardly listened to his talk, and never addressed a word to the common fellow. Of course, this did not upset him in the least. He had the hide of a rhinoceros, and calmly went on talking whether I answered or not.

  29

  Well, I had volunteered for work. Splittstösser, the headwarder, issued me with a new blue jacket as my prison uniform, and with ten or twelve others I was taken into a yard, surrounded by high walls, where great piles of wood lay. Formerly we, too, had taken the firewood for our central heating—bought by the cord from the forestry people—to the prison, to have it chopped up. I had never given it a thought, who sawed and chopped my wood there. Now I myself stood for eight hours a day at the saw-bench, and opposite me stood an habitual burglar named Mordhorst, a man with many previous convictions. Together, for eight hours at a time, we pulled the two-handled saw through pinewood, beechwood and oak. A guard paced to and fro in the yard, watching to see that we did not do too much talking and too little work. Now I was sawing wood for the citizens of my native town, and this time it was Hölscher—the general merchant for whom we were working at the moment—who gave no thought to the fact that his old client Sommer was cutting his firewood for him. At first it disturbed me greatly that the fourth side of the yard was bounded by the district court building, and many windows looked down on me and my sawing arms in the blue prison clothes; but within a few days I had become accustomed to it and hardly turned my head when Mordhorst whispered: “The Public Prosecutor’s up at the window again, looking to see if we’re earning our keep. Saw slower, mate. When he’s looking, I’m not working.”

  Mordhorst was a small wiry man with a wrinkled embittered face and pepper-green hair. He had spent considerably more than half his life in prison. He took it so much as a matter of course, that he never mentioned it. He regretted nothing, he had no desire for a different life. He never spoke of his crimes, as a craftsman never speaks of his craft. Burglary was to him like sewing trousers to a tailor. I only found out from other prisoners that in the criminal world, Mordhorst was a man of high standing, who could crack the most modern safes, and who was well known for working without a mate, a lone wolf, a typical enemy of society. It only irked him that he h
ad got stuck in such a mudhole, as he called my home-town, more or less by chance. He was on his way to Hamburg, where he had a big job to do, and had got stranded here for a few hours, and in the night, being a little drunk and having nothing to smoke, he had broken into the tobacco kiosk in our market place, and they had caught him at it.

  “Just think of it, man,” Mordhorst would rage. “I’d got plenty of cash on me, I could have bought what smokes I wanted where I was staying. Just because I was tight! And for a little thing like that they’ll put me away for a five year stretch. It sends me up in the air, just to think of it!”

  To me it seemed all the same whether Mordhorst got five years’ penal servitude for a big safe robbery or a bit of tobacco pilfering, it was five years in any case. But I took good care not to say so aloud, for Mordhorst was a quick-tempered man, and he had startled me early on with his fits of rage when I, an inexperienced newcomer, had pulled the saw so clumsily that it jammed. Once, in a burst of temper, he had tried to hit me on the head with a piece of wood, and only the warder’s intervention had saved me.

  Then five minutes later Mordhorst had become normal and sensible again. I suppose it was the long years of imprisonment that had made him so wild and unrestrained. I am sure he had a worm gnawing in his brain, anyone who paces a cell year after year, just waiting for the day of release, of freedom, and knowing all the while in his innermost self that the longest stay in freedom is only a flying visit of a few months at most, to be followed again by years and years of bitter waiting—such a man cannot remain normal.

  I learned a great deal from Mordhorst. He knew everything about police-courts, reformatories and prisons. It was quite astonishing how well this silent little man, who seemed to have dealings with nobody, was informed about everything. He knew what kind of meat we were going to get on Sunday, and what the new occupant of cell 21 was supposed to have done. He knew the family circumstances, the salary, and the troubles of each prison officer. He could make a light for a cigarette with a trouser button, a piece of thread and a stone. He always had something to smoke, and something extra to eat, though nobody left any food parcels for him. He always had money in his pocket, which was strictly forbidden, he possessed a knife (also forbidden), and had some means of smuggling letters out of prison without being censored by the governor. He knew all the underground ways which open up in time in any human community, however strictly supervised it may be. I was always a novice to him, a mere babe. He passed on some of his life’s experiences, but never let himself be carried away into confessing anything to me. I was well aware that he treated the other prisoners differently.