Once a Jailbird

by Hans Fallada

  No bell in the morning. No weaving of nets. No feuds with other prisoners. No more gruel at midday. No polishing of cells. No worry whether his tobacco would last out. No warders. No stinking bucket, no prison slops to wear . . . his mind refused the thought.

  How tight his suit felt across the stomach. Indeed, he had actually to leave the trouser and waistcoat buckles undone; he had grown so fat on the watery diet. There had been times when he had gulped down two litres of gruel and a bit more as well. Against his stomach lay a watch, his silver Confirmation watch. He looked at it; eighteen minutes past eleven.

  The others had been out for four hours now—he cursed himself for not somehow getting Rusch to let him go with them. They had gone; and Bastel, the storeman’s orderly, had told him when he dressed that Sethe was out too. Early that morning they had asked him whether he accepted the penalty for insulting an official, and he had agreed. It would be added to his probation. After all, they were brutes here. Brutes. And brutes they all became. He had been a brute over the letter on the previous evening, and over the hundred-mark note, and many, many times during the past five years. And what was the point of it all? The straight game would have got him out at exactly the same hour—but with different feelings.

  Well, it was over now, anyway. From now on he would do what was right, and sleep in peace at night. No more trouble for him, never again. So long as he could get that hundred-mark note out. That was the last time he would do such a thing.

  Kufalt paced up and down, and back and forth. Today, too, the cell was very light. It was a glorious day outside. These last days the cells had been brighter than ever he remembered them for five long years. He hoped the weather would still be fine when he got out . . .

  This Home of Peace, though . . . The inspector had grinned so maliciously. Anyhow, he would get his money in full at the prison lodge, and if he could not stand the Home of Peace, he would just clear off . . .

  There was a scratch at the door. Kufalt was there in a bound. ‘Yes?’

  ‘Hello! Are you Willi?’

  ‘Well, of course, large as life.’

  ‘Didn’t recognize you in those fine togs. I’m the landing orderly. Have you got any soap in that bag of yours?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Leave me a bit, mate. Put it under the bucket. I’ll fetch it out of the cell the moment you’re gone.’

  ‘OK by me.’

  ‘Sure thing, Willi?’

  ‘You can look through the peephole. Here it is . . . ’

  ‘Hey, Willi, have you got any baccy too? You can buy some more at once. You might slip us a bit along with the soap.’

  ‘You scrounger!’

  ‘I’ve got another three years, my lad.’

  ‘That’s nothing. I did five, and Bruhn, who came out today, eleven.’

  ‘Oho! Bruhn! Haven’t you heard? The whole place is full of it.’

  ‘What? What’s up with Bruhn?’

  ‘He’s back already. He was outside for three hours, and now he’s back again.’

  ‘That’s a bloody lie! You don’t kid me, mate.’

  ‘The storeman told me himself. When they came out, first thing this morning, they started drinking straight away. Only Sethe went off by train. And one of them knew where the girls were. So they went along to the house. But the women were still asleep, and they wouldn’t let ’em in, being drunk. So they started a row, and the boss came along and told them to get out. So they chucked the boss down the stairs and out of his own house. And when the boss got back with the police, they’d got in among the girls. And the girls were all shrieking, as the cops came in, that they’d been raped and the doors had been broken in. Well, the boys had a hunger, sure thing! And now they’re all in the lock-up. And this afternoon they’ll be back in the clink till the case comes up, the storeman says.’

  ‘I don’t believe it. I don’t believe it on your life. I could understand the others, but not Emil Bruhn. No, not him.’

  ‘Look out! Rusch!’

  Kufalt leapt back from the peephole to the window. Outside he heard the chief warder cursing after the orderly.

  ‘Yes,’ thought Kufalt; ‘maybe. Emil Bruhn, poor silly fool. It’s always blokes like him that get it in the neck. Always quiet, never threw his weight about all those eleven years—and then gets into a mess like this because he’s glad to be outside. And even if you only get a couple of weeks’ stretch, your probation will have gone west and you’ll have to start all over again.’

  Willi Kufalt was afraid: he felt that the same thing might happen to him. It is hard for a man to get a grip on himself when he goes outside, there’s a trap round every corner . . .

  ‘Once a jailbird, always a jailbird!’

  Kufalt pondered. Then he took down from the wall the blue pamphlet of extracts from the Prison Regulations. He turned the pages for a moment, and read:

  ‘In the infliction of punishments, consistently with the strict enforcement of the penalty and the maintenance of discipline and order, efforts are to be made to raise the spiritual and moral level of the prisoners and to preserve their health and powers of work. The aim should be to train them to live an orderly, law-abiding life after their release. The sense of honour is to be fostered and strengthened.’

  Kufalt closed the pamphlet. ‘So that’s that,’ said he. ‘Oh yes, it’s all just fine! Everything is all right as it is! What are they thinking anyhow, these people?’

  XIV

  The time was quarter past one. Kufalt stood with his watch in his hand. He waited. His heart throbbed. Footsteps—they came nearer, they passed his cell. ‘If these scabs forget me, if they keep me just three minutes longer than my time!’

  Footsteps—they came nearer, they stopped outside his cell. A rustle of paper. Then the key was thrust into the lock, the bolt shot back, and Senior Warder Feder said wearily: ‘Come along, and bring your stuff, Kufalt.’

  He went out, and as he went looked back at the hall, towards the glass cubicle. There stood the vast building with its seven hundred cells; this had been his home for five long years. His landing orderly peered round the corner to see whether he could slip into the cell. Kufalt nodded to him.

  Then through the cellar corridor to the storeman. Here all was quiet. Something came into Kufalt’s mind: ‘Is it true about Bruhn, sir? That he’s inside again?’

  ‘I don’t know. I heard something, just shithouse talk, I dare say.’

  ‘He isn’t back again yet?’

  ‘No, he couldn’t be. He’d have to go before an investigating magistrate before he could be committed to prison.’

  They walked across the outer court. Senior Warder Petrow was standing by the lodge.

  ‘Come along, son; there’s a lot of money waiting for you.’

  In the lodge Kufalt signed his receipt.

  ‘Put your money away safe, you’ll need it. Wait, notes in your wallet. That’s a fine wallet; mind it’s always full! The rest in your coin purse, silver here, nickel here and copper here. And now come on, lad.’

  They stood under the archway. Petrow shot back bolt after bolt. Then he inserted the great key.

  ‘And now, forward march, and don’t look round. You mustn’t look back at the prison. I shall spit three times at your back, and you mustn’t wash it off, that’s for luck, so you shan’t come back again. Off with you!’

  The gate opened. Kufalt saw before him a broad square in blazing sunshine. The grass was green. The chestnuts were in bloom. Men walking; and women in bright clothes.

  Slowly and cautiously he went out into the light.

  He did not look round.

  3

  The Home of Peace

  I

  Firstly, Petrow had spat much too heartily on his overcoat, and Kufalt felt that everyone was laughing at him. So he hung the coat over his arm; the gobs were thus rubbed off, but no matter, he would never come in again.

  Secondly, as he looked back at the town from the train, he suddenly saw again between the
houses the steep grey concrete walls with their many barred windows—no matter. Anyhow now he was steaming away from the clink: he would never come in again.

  But in the train, when he thought it over properly, he found he had already done a lot of things all wrong. He had taken a taxi to the station because people stared at him, he could not bear the way they stared at him. And he had eaten dinner at the station though he had left his jail stew untasted. And ten cigarettes at six pfennigs, the sort the governor smoked. And a newspaper. And, worst of all, a glass of beer with his dinner, though he had forsworn alcohol. An utter waste of five marks ninety, the pay for sixty-three units of work. To earn it, he had had to stand and knot nets for sixty-three days, and at the start he had taken twelve or thirteen hours over a unit. In two hours he had spent the labour of sixty-three days: here was a fine beginning to his new life!

  He had not thought his voyage into freedom would be quite like this. He was now passing through sunlit countryside, very pleasant to look at, but had he time to look at it? There was much to worry about, as much as in his cell. And what would that Home be like?

  ‘Can any of you gentlemen tell me which is the right station in Hamburg for the Apfelstrasse?’

  Silence. Kufalt was already afraid that none of them would answer, that he had not spoken loudly enough, when the man in the corner let his paper drop and said: ‘Apfelstrasse? You must change at the Central Station, and then go on to the Berliner Tor.’

  ‘Pardon me,’ objected the man next to Kufalt. ‘That’s not correct. There’s no Apfelstrasse there. Where do you think it is?’

  ‘Of course it’s there. It’s just by the public baths . . . ’

  ‘I am afraid this gentleman has misdirected you,’ observed Kufalt’s neighbour. ‘You must get out at Holstenstrasse. The Apfelstrasse is quite near there . . . ’

  A short fat man said decisively: ‘This gentleman is right, and that gentleman is right. There is, in fact, an Apfelstrasse in Altona and one in Hamburg. Which one do you want?’

  ‘I was told Hamburg.’

  ‘Then you must go on to the Berliner Tor and change at the Central Station.’

  Silence reigned.

  Suddenly Kufalt’s neighbour began again: ‘Where do you want to go in the Apfelstrasse? People often say Hamburg, and they really mean Altona.’

  ‘Excuse me, the gentleman said Hamburg, so he must get out at the Berliner Tor.’

  ‘But was the address expressly given as Hamburg? Or were you just told to go to the Apfelstrasse?’

  ‘I really don’t know. I’m going to relations.’

  ‘And how did you write to your relations: Hamburg or Altona?’

  ‘Er, I have never written. Someone always wrote for me—my mother.’

  Kufalt’s neighbour had a pimply face and blinking eyes. Moreover, he smelt unpleasantly when he bent over Kufalt.

  ‘You want to go—to that place?’ he whispered.

  ‘How do you mean? What place?’ said Kufalt.

  ‘That’s all right, I know. And I advise you to get out at Holstenstrasse, that’s where it is. Otherwise you’ll have to lug that suitcase of yours halfway across Hamburg.’

  ‘Yes, thanks. I don’t know. I’m going to relations in Hamburg.’

  ‘Oh, if they’re your relations . . . ’

  Kufalt cursed himself for having started this conversation. He picked up his newspaper.

  ‘If I were you, I’d go to the Halleluja Brothers in the Steinstrasse.’

  Kufalt unfolded his paper.

  ‘It costs only four groschen a night there, too.’

  Kufalt read his paper.

  ‘If you like, I’ll carry your bag.’

  Kufalt paid no attention.

  ‘I’m not going to do a bunk with it. I’ll carry it, even if you want to traipse to Blankenese.’

  Kufalt got up and went to the lavatory.

  II

  ‘Apfelstrasse?’ asked the policeman, surveying Kufalt. ‘Yes. Down this street and the second on the right.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Kufalt, and walked off. ‘He stared at me too. It must be my yellow complexion. I wish I looked a bit different, I can’t speak to anybody . . . ’

  Apfelstrasse. He had been told No. 28. ‘City Mission Club-House. Bedrooms across the yard. Bed: Fifty pfennigs.’

  Was that it?

  In the doorway stood a fat man with a forbidding face. Kufalt approached him nervously. The man was wearing a curious kind of cap. Even before Kufalt had reached him he shouted out: ‘What do you want at this hour? The bedrooms aren’t open till seven.’

  ‘What can be the matter with me?’ thought Kufalt nervously. ‘I’m as decently dressed as ever I was, and yet they all stare at me.’ He replied: ‘I don’t mind about that. I only wanted to ask if this was the Home of Peace.’

  ‘Home of Peace? Well, you can call it that if you like—this evening. Tomorrow you’ll call it something quite different.’

  ‘The Home of Peace is a home for the unemployed. Is this it?’

  ‘No, it isn’t.’

  ‘Can you tell me where it is, then?’

  ‘How on earth should I know?’

  The man retreated into the doorway and Kufalt went back into the street. It was useless to inquire further. This was certainly No. 28. The Home must be in Hamburg. He took a tighter grip of his trunk and departed once more in the direction of the station.

  In answer to Kufalt’s ring at the bell, the door was opened by a girl in a blue apron, young, but very unwelcoming. She glared at him—at least, she squinted violently, Kufalt could only assume that she was glaring at him. ‘She’s prison rescue, no fear,’ thought Kufalt, ‘so I’ve found the place all right.’

  ‘What do you want?’ said the girl in an indignant tone. ‘Why have you come so late?’

  ‘I am supposed to be received in the Home of Peace.’

  ‘I know nothing about that. You’ve wasted all your money and now you come here. Are you sober?’ She went up to him. ‘Stand back, young man, so that I can see whether you’re tipsy.’

  She pressed him back, step by step, until he was outside again, and then she slammed the door in his face.

  Kufalt was once more in the street, or rather in a railed and paved front garden.

  ‘Well, she’s a brazen hussy!’ thought Kufalt with interest, and looked up at the Gothic lettering of the inscription ‘Home of Peace’. ‘Can’t be much peace about a place if she runs it.’

  He heard her raucous voice through the front door. ‘Herr Seidenzopf, there’s someone there. He isn’t drunk. He’s carrying a bag. No—come down yourself, he’s outside in the garden.’

  Then silence.

  It was a suburban street, the Apfelstrasse in Hamburg. Thirty little two-storey houses, all like the Home of Peace, most of them with a neat garden and a tree and a shrub; and eighty five-storey tenements.

  There were many passers-by. Little people. Kufalt had the feeling that he did not need to worry if they all guessed how he came to be standing there, bag in hand, outside the Home of Peace. They knew what it meant, and they didn’t bother any more. He was not repelled by his reception, it was the best sort of reception from the world; there was a familiar ring to it; people also treated you like that in jail.

  Meanwhile he awaited the person called Seidenzopf.

  He appeared, as though in answer to a call. The door opened abruptly, a little man in a baggy black suit stepped quickly through it, and the door was shut once more.

  Herr Seidenzopf stood before Willi Kufalt; he looked rather like a Schnauzer, his face was so overgrown with woolly black hair, large pale nose and black beady eyes. His hair, however, was plastered over his head, and glistened with oil.

  Herr Seidenzopf surveyed the young man for a while in silence. Face and hands, jacket and trousers, shoes and bag, collar and hat—all were carefully scrutinized.

  The inspection apparently over, the little man cleared his throat, thereby revealing a surprisingly deep
bass voice. ‘I can wait,’ said Kufalt modestly.

  ‘Certainly, but the point is whether it would be any use. You have not been recommended to us,’ said the man. His voice was a leonine booming bass; a few children, who were spinning tops, gathered by the railings.

  ‘Yes I have. And the recommendation should have arrived. I signed it early yesterday morning.’

  ‘Yesterday morning?’ shouted the little man. ‘You understand nothing, you know nothing, you just stand there and say—you can wait.’

  ‘Well, so I can,’ said Kufalt, dropping his voice as the little man began to bellow at him.

  ‘Recommendations go to our chairman first, Herr Deacon Doctor Hermann Marcetus. They may possibly get here in four days; can you stand outside the door for as long as that?’

  ‘No,’ said Kufalt, who suspected that this was a promising reception.

  He reminded himself that Chief Warder Rusch used to adopt that sort of tone; a man did not make so much fuss unless he was going to help you in the end.

  ‘Well then, if you can’t wait as long as that, you’ll just have to apply very humbly, my young friend.’ Raising his voice, he went on: ‘There is no shame in humility, as you perhaps think; our dear Lord Jesus Christ was not ashamed to beg humbly of his disciples as well as of his Heavenly Father.’

  ‘I ask to be received into the Home of Peace this evening,’ said Kufalt softly.

  ‘There! And whom do you ask?’

  ‘Herr Seidenzopf, if I am not mistaken.’

  ‘Right. But you must call me Father. I am the father of you all.’ And in quite another voice, no longer addressed to the public in the street: ‘We’ll settle the rest inside. Not that I have accepted you yet, but . . . ’ And again in a booming voice, now directed towards the other side of the street: ‘There’s no sense in your hanging about here, Berthold. I saw you a long while ago. You won’t get a bed from me, and you won’t get any food from me—you’re drunk again. Go away!’

  The swaying figure in the shaggy overcoat across the street raised both its arms and yelled in a high falsetto: ‘Take pity on me, Herr Seidenzopf! Where am I to sleep tonight? It’s so cold in the parks.’