Once a Jailbird

by Hans Fallada

  The figure dashed across the street.

  ‘Come in quick,’ whispered Seidenzopf. The door opened, Seidenzopf pushed Kufalt inside, and shut the door again in Berthold’s face. ‘Disconnect the bell, Minna,’ roared Seidenzopf. ‘Berthold’s at the door.’

  The hall was dark, but not so dark that Kufalt could not see two female figures on a staircase leading to the upper floor: one the maid he had already encountered, and the other a voluminous, flabby creature, three steps above.

  From the latter came a tearful wail: ‘Father! You shouldn’t bring a man into the Home so late. He’s sure to be drunk, and he’s spent all his money on women. Nobody comes out of prison as late as this, Father.’

  Then the high, rasping voice of the squinting maid: ‘He’s not drunk, Frau Seidenzopf. He’s just come out of prison; he can’t look anyone in the face. His trousers haven’t got creased yet, so he hasn’t been with women . . . ’

  ‘Silence!’ roared the lion. ‘Get on with your work! Not another word!’

  The two figures vanished.

  Through the front door could be heard a pitiful whine: ‘Father Seidenzopf, where am I to sleep? Father Seidenzopf . . . ’

  ‘Hush!’ said Seidenzopf, nodding at the door. ‘It is sometimes our duty to let the voice of sympathy be silent . . . Come, my young friend.’

  Again the voice whined through the keyhole: ‘Father Seidenzopf, oh Father Seidenzopf . . . ’

  They went into a room that was still fairly light. The little man sat down behind a desk in a vast armchair, the sides of which stood out above his head like wings. Kufalt was permitted to sit down on the other side of the desk.

  ‘My wife, young man, hit the nail on the head,’ said the little man. ‘Where do you come from so late?’

  ‘From the Central Prison.’

  ‘But the Central Prison discharges at seven in the morning. You could have been here at twelve o’clock. Where have you been all this time?’

  ‘I . . . ’ began Kufalt.

  The little man sat up stiffly: ‘Stop, my young friend. Do not speak thoughtlessly. A lie soon slips out. You had much better say: I am ashamed to tell you, Father. Then we will be silent for a while and think how weak we, alas, so often are.’

  ‘I wasn’t discharged until twenty past one, Herr Seidenzopf.’

  ‘Father,’ corrected the other, ‘Father. I believe you, friend, but you had better show me your discharge sheet.’

  Kufalt took out his wallet, looked into it, picked out his discharge sheet and gave it to Seidenzopf.

  The latter was familiar with such documents, and merely glanced at it. ‘Good, you have spoken the truth. Still . . . no, leave your wallet on the table. We must have a talk about that. For the moment . . . ’

  The little man suddenly dashed to the window and hammered wildly against the glass: ‘Go away! Will you go away! Am I to call the police? Go away.’

  And Berthold’s pallid long-nosed face vanished.

  Seidenzopf beamed, and said: ‘He’s afraid of me, did you notice! Yes, we don’t put up with any nonsense here. We have to be stern with these unfortunates, stern but kind. And now for your affairs. Even starting at twenty past one you could have been here an hour earlier.’

  ‘I went to the Apfelstrasse in Altona first, and it took me a good hour to walk here with a heavy suitcase.’

  ‘Come round here,’ cried Seidenzopf. ‘Come round here. Look at your wallet.’ He had opened it, and was looking with an air of surprise into an apparently empty pocket.

  Kufalt, puzzled and expectant, saw nothing but an empty pocket.

  ‘Blow into it, man. Can’t you see the spider?’

  Kufalt could see none, but he blew.

  Seidenzopf sniffed. ‘You have been drinking, my young friend. Though not much. One glass, eh? Yes, but you must give it up entirely. Look at Berthold, such a clever man, a decent and religious man, but drinks. Three times he has signed the pledge at the Blue Cross League—I’m an officer of the Blue Cross, I came from them to take charge of this Home—and broken it each time. Yes, every time.’

  ‘You needn’t have gone to all that trouble to find me out.’

  ‘I dare say, I dare say. You’re an honest man. I can see that. You will, I am sure, be a pride and joy to us, and do us credit. Now about your money, you must let me look after it for you . . . ’

  ‘No. I want to keep my money.’

  ‘Calm down, don’t worry; you won’t lose it all. You know what kind of guests we have here. We can’t be responsible if you keep it. We shall give you a receipt, of course, and if you want any, I’ll give it you. Right: 40 marks 77. I’ll let you have the receipt at once.’

  Kufalt looked angrily at his money. ‘But I need money, at once. I must buy some sock-suspenders and a pair of slippers. I’m not used to leather shoes and my feet hurt me.’

  ‘You’ll soon get used to them. I’ll give you three marks. But you’ll spend it carefully, won’t you? Three marks are hard to earn.’

  ‘I need at least ten marks,’ growled Kufalt.

  ‘Oh dear, oh dear! Are we millionaires? You can always have some more when the three marks are gone. I’ll let you have it, my friend. But when you have to go to Father Seidenzopf first, you will think twice about asking. And that’s how money is saved.’

  The little man was already at the cupboard; the wallet was gone.

  ‘If I had had any notion of this,’ thought Kufalt, quite dumb-founded, ‘I’d have hidden the stuff. You’re always going to get taken in by people like this.’

  ‘And now let us hurry up and sign the Home Regulations and the Typing Room Regulations, and then go upstairs and unpack and make your bed.’

  ‘Can’t we turn on the light?’ asked Kufalt, looking at the closely printed documents before him. ‘I would like to read what I’m signing.’

  ‘Do you want to read them all? My dear friend, what is the sense in that? Thousands of men have signed, you needn’t mind doing it.’

  ‘But I would just like to know what it’s all about. Please let me read them.’

  ‘And don’t lose your temper, dear friend. Of course, if you like. There is still light enough by the window.’

  There was no longer light enough by the window. Kufalt looked out onto the twilit street and the front garden. There crouched a figure, a pallid white-nosed creature, who grimaced at him. ‘There’s Berthold!’ he cried.

  ‘Where? The miserable wretch! I’ll have to have him removed by the police. My dear Herr Kufalt, please be so good as to sign your name at once. I must go down to the unhappy man, I cannot have a scandal. Our house must not attract attention, it must be a true Home of Peace. Ah—thank you. Shake hands, dear friend. You are now my son. May God sanctify your presence here.’

  ‘But the home is undenominational, isn’t it?’ asked Kufalt with a grin.

  ‘Of course it is. Quite undenominational. Minna, bring Herr Kufalt his sheets and a towel. Minna, this is your brother Kufalt. Kufalt, this is your sister Minna.’

  ‘Oh God—oh God,’ thought Kufalt.

  ‘Now shake hands both of you; but mind you don’t get too familiar. Kufalt, will you go upstairs now and choose your bed. You are at home here now. You will find a brother there . . . ’

  ‘He’s crazy, Father,’ said Minna, the maid in the Home of Peace.

  ‘Yes, he’s ill. Brother Beerboom is still ill, my dear Minna. His long imprisonment . . . ’

  ‘He asked me whether I would go out with him,’ said Minna with the squinting eyes.

  ‘Did he indeed? It was not necessarily improper for him to want to go out with you, but of course I will warn him. Go now, Kufalt, I must go and speak to our fallen brother.’

  A glance through the window revealed to Kufalt that brother Berthold had really fallen; he was now crawling on all fours through the front garden, with his hat between his teeth.

  ‘I must really ring up the police,’ said Seidenzopf at the sight of the crowd thronging against the r
ailings of the front garden. He threw open the window and said: ‘Don’t stand there gaping—go away. Aren’t you sorry to see a fellow creature so degraded?’

  A coarse voice shouted: ‘Don’t dirty your shirt, Woolly Teddy!’ Kufalt groped his way up the almost pitch-dark staircase.

  III

  In the passage above there was scarcely a glimmer of light. Kufalt was just able to make out a door. He turned the handle, and the door opened. A dark, apparently large room. Kufalt’s hands felt for the switch, found it at last, and the light came on, a dim sixteen-candle bulb set in a deep shade.

  Twelve beds arranged in exact alignment. Twelve shallow black cupboards. And a single oak table.

  ‘Not exactly luxurious—the jolly old Home of Peace,’ thought Kufalt. ‘The windows aren’t barred anyway. Otherwise it might be a prison. The beds are no better.’

  He then noticed for the first time that the sheets over his arm were prison sheets, blue and white check. ‘Must have cadged them from the Prison Department. Well, there’s no one living here. Let’s try the next door.’

  The next door was locked.

  The last door led into a lit room where a man was lying on a bed. The man raised his head, looked at Kufalt and said: ‘So you’ve turned up at last, you old jailbird, have you? About time too. How long was your stretch? Has Woolly Teddy left you any money? Got any schnapps in your bag? Have you been among the girls to get the smell of prison off you?’

  ‘Good evening,’ said Kufalt.

  The man got up and laughed awkwardly. He was thick-set and of average size, with a grey leathery skin, dark dull black eyes and curly black hair. ‘You must excuse me. I was trying to be funny. Here we are, in a state of golden freedom, as they call it. My name is Beerboom . . . ’

  ‘And mine is Kufalt.’

  ‘My father is a university professor, but he doesn’t know me now. Eleven years in prison, for robbery and murder. I’ve got a little sister, she was a sweet child; she must be a big girl now. Have you got a sister?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Is that so? I’d so much like to see mine again. But I’m not allowed. If I came anywhere near my father, he’d report me to the cops at once—and goodbye to my probation. If I get on your nerves, by the way, there’s another room behind, you could sleep there if you like.’

  ‘I’ll see,’ said Kufalt. ‘Are we the only people here?’

  ‘Yes. I’ve been here for two days. I thought I would be the only idiot to go into this shop of my own free will. Well, I think I’ll doss down again. There’s still half an hour till supper.’

  ‘I’ll just go and have a look,’ said Kufalt, to the further room.

  ‘Don’t mind me. I understand, I understand everything. Besides I usually cry for an hour before I go to sleep. It would disturb you. In the clink I used to get beaten for it by the others in the communal cell, but I can’t drop it. Nice name Kufalt—reminds me of one-fold—simplicity, and three-fold—Trinity. By the way, what does Trinity really mean?’

  ‘Something to do with the Holy Ghost. I don’t know either. And now I’d like to have a look . . . ’

  ‘Go right along then man, Kufalt, Holy Ghost. Don’t you mind me. I always go on like this when I see a new bloke. I picked it up in prison. You don’t need to listen. I don’t listen either . . . ’

  ‘Right, then, I’ll go . . . ’

  ‘Have you noticed their monkey-tricks with the windows? Worse than in prison. There aren’t any bars, but the panes are small and you can open them only ten centimetres. And the frames are all iron. There’s no slipping round to see the little girls at night, don’t even think about it. Father Seidenzopf has taken care of that.’

  ‘Well, I’ll go.’

  ‘Do. You’re just as much a bloody fool as I am. When I cry in the evening, I always think there can’t be another idiot like me. But there are. There’s you, for instance, hanging around here . . . ’

  ‘I’m off,’ said Kufalt, with a laugh.

  The room behind was just such another dismal place—four bare walls, four shallow cupboards, four empty beds; Kufalt chose the furthest, against the wall. He threw his bag on the bed and opened it. The cupboard door was open, and there was no key. The lock was a useless tin affair that could be easily picked with a bit of wire. Kufalt tested it.

  ‘You can stick the cupboard door with spit,’ said a voice from the next room. ‘You don’t need to worry about your things. If I pinched any, I wouldn’t get them out of the house, the squint-eyed girl’s always on the lookout . . . ’

  ‘And you wanted to go out with her?’ asked Kufalt, putting his shirts away in the cupboard.

  ‘Why not? A skirt’s a skirt. So she told Woolly Teddy. All right, my girl, you wait; I’ll rub your nose in something, so I will . . . ’

  Kufalt unpacked. ‘That bloke’s done for,’ he thought. ‘He’s crazy. Eleven years in high-security prison, that’s pretty well skinned him, he’ll never be any use again.’

  He went on unpacking. The other man suddenly appeared in the doorway; he had slipped noiselessly down the passage in his socks. ‘It wasn’t real robbery and murder. I did in my lieutenant, and when the pig was on the floor, I suddenly remembered I hadn’t enough money to scarper. Nice things you’ve got, I must say. They gave me a lot of muck when I came out, my own things were all rotten from being kept so long. Cotton shirts—and the suit, what sort of suit do you call this? Off the peg, thirty marks. But the chaplain, the bogeyman, couldn’t stand me. Will you sell your socks? I like them. What do you want for the lilac ones?’

  ‘No, I won’t,’ said Kufalt; ‘but I’ll give them to you. I don’t much care for them.’

  ‘All right, hand them over if you’re such a fool. At first my sentence was “off with his head”, then life, then fifteen years. And now they’ve let me out after eleven years. And no good conduct at that, and no influence. And yet out I got. Why? Because my case stinks, it stinks to Heaven. If I went to the Reds and told them about it . . . ’

  ‘But you’re out all right.’

  ‘Under police supervision. Loss of civil rights for the rest of my life. Not that I care a damn about civil rights; but I’d like to get my own back on the chaplain. He’s coming here in a month’s time, the chaplain from the high-security prison. Did you know they’re going to celebrate the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Home of Peace?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘They’re robbers in this place. That slippery eel, Seidenzopf, he’s a robber; but that slimy water-snake, Marcetus the pastor, he’s ten times worse, and worst of all is that egg-headed brute Mergenthal, who runs the office. They live on our blood. That’s why the grafters have set up this show here, and called it charity, just to sponge off our work. I could tell you a thing or two . . . ’

  ‘But you’ve only been in here two days?’

  ‘What’s that matter? Shall we smoke? It’s against the rules, but they won’t turn us out as long as there are so few people in the Home. Blow the smoke out of the window like we did in prison. As for telling you a thing or two—well, I spot things sometimes—the pastor says: “Get on with it”; or Seidenzopf says: “You’re a liar.” Then when I lie in bed in the evening and cry, it all goes round in my head, I see through the walls, and I cry because I’m so sorry for myself.’

  ‘But you’ve got over that now.’

  ‘Oh no, I haven’t. I’m right in it, my lad. It’s just started properly. If I leave here I shall have to go into some lunatic asylum, or back to prison, there’s nothing else. Just listen to that row. Let’s listen at the top of the stairs. Don’t chuck your fag out of the window, it’s the back garden below, and that squint-eyed goat will find it in the morning . . . ’

  A wild disturbance was going on below. Seidenzopf ‘s deep booming bass, Minna’s shrieks, Frau Seidenzopf ‘s tearfully high-pitched protests, and an intermittent and imploring voice . . .

  ‘Leave this house,’ shouted Seidenzopf, ‘of which you are unworthy . . . ’

&n
bsp; And the imploring voice cried: ‘Take pity on me, Father!’

  ‘It’s that drunken brute, Berthold . . . ’ whispered Kufalt.

  ‘Who’s Berthold?’ said Beerboom.

  ‘It’s a breach of the peace,’ roared Seidenzopf. ‘One . . . two . . . three . . . ’

  A heavy fall.

  The women screamed: ‘Ohgodohgodohgodohgod.’

  Seidenzopf: ‘You can’t deceive me.’

  Frau Seidenzopf wailed: ‘He’s bleeding . . . ’

  And Minna: ‘My beautiful clean linoleum!’

  ‘Herr Beerboom! Herr Kufalt!’ roared Seidenzopf. ‘Will you please . . . ’

  In five bounds they were down the staircase. On the floor, in his shabby overcoat, his mouth open, pale, unconscious, with a bloodstained bruise on his forehead, lay Berthold.

  ‘My sons, will you kindly carry this poor wretch to your room? A wet compress is all that is needed for his forehead. Minna, give your brother Kufalt a towel . . . ’

  It is no easy task to carry an unconscious man, with limbs like lead and slippery as quicksilver, up a steep, badly lit staircase covered with glassy-smooth linoleum.

  ‘Let’s put him on the bed next to mine,’ said Beerboom; ‘then I can always sock him in the jaw if he wakes up in the night, and I shall too, good and proper . . . ’

  ‘I’ll make him a compress at once.’

  ‘Come off it, he doesn’t need a compress for a scratch like that. You should have seen how they knocked me about in the clink.’

  ‘Why have you got such a down on the man? He hasn’t done you any harm.’

  ‘I wish I were as well pissed as he is. It’s enough to make a man envious. The last time I was drunk was in prison, Christmas 1928. We drank furniture polish from the carpenter’s shop . . . ’

  ‘Good evening, kids,’ said the drunken man, sitting up. ‘I seem to have come down with a bit more of a crash than I meant. Well, it made Woolly Teddy take me in again, anyway. The pastor won’t half kick up a fuss tomorrow.’

  ‘Then you aren’t drunk,’ growled Beerboom. ‘It’s a bloody nerve to let yourself be carried upstairs.’