Once a Jailbird

by Hans Fallada

And then a wonderful thing happened. Dietrich, half drunk, jingling in his pocket the silver he had collected from the publicans’ union, produced a handful of money, counted out four five-mark pieces, thrust them into Kufalt’s hand, and said:

  ‘Never mind a receipt. We shall be working together.’

  And he disappeared, with the soft and cautious step of the habitual drunkard who knows he must be careful going down the stairs.

  VIII

  Emil Bruhn lived in the Lerchenstrasse, also some way outside the town, not far from the timber works, where he knocked nest boxes together on piece work, just as he had done in prison.

  He had a room with green-washed walls, of which he was not the only tenant.

  He shared it with the nightwatchman of a tannery, who went out about eight in the evening and did not come back until eight in the morning, an hour and a half after Bruhn left the house. They slept in the same bed. They had most things in common, and when there were disputes—and there often were—they were aired on Sundays, when the nightwatchman had his free night.

  Kufalt, who had been in the little town only a fortnight, knew all about these disputes. How the bastard never used his own soap, never hung up his clothes and came back drunk with a girl every Sunday evening and wanted Bruhn to sleep on the floor. ‘Just for a little while, Emil. We shan’t be long . . . ’

  Bruhn used to open his heart on all these matters. But Kufalt minded that much less than the presence of Krüger, who had formerly shared the room with Bruhn.

  Krüger had—fortunately—long since departed from the scene; he had pilfered from his fellow workmen. Pitiable, nasty, stupid little thefts of tobacco and cufflinks. He was now in jail once more, unlamented by Bruhn.

  If Emil Bruhn had altered in one respect, it was that young men no longer played any part in his life. He was now after girls, but somehow he never succeeded. Either he was too shy, or too forward. Or they guessed that there was something not quite right about him, and it came to nothing. And he ran around and ogled them with his kindly, blue, seal’s eyes, sweated his heart out in the dance halls, bought them two, or even three glasses of beer out of his pitiful little earnings, and then they let him down. They vanished into the night, or departed quite openly with other men, leaving Bruhn to watch them go.

  Perhaps that was why he had been so glad when Kufalt came back. A smart lad like Kufalt, always well dressed; they’d be sure to click now. The girls always went out in pairs. Well, Kufalt would take the pretty one—there was always a pretty one and a plain one together, but however plain she was, she had what Emil Bruhn wanted.

  He stood in front of his mirror and struggled with his white collar, and told Kufalt what fine girls would be coming to dance that evening in the Rendsburger Hof. He had such pathetic confidence in his friend, quite unaware that Kufalt’s luck with the girls was just as bad.

  ‘Isn’t it too dear?’ said Kufalt.

  ‘Dear?’ said Emil. ‘I do the whole evening on one glass of beer. But of course if you have to get the girls tight first . . . ’

  ‘There’s no question of that,’ said Kufalt.

  ‘Well then,’ said Emil, ‘I always said you had a way about you.’

  ‘And what did you earn this week?’ asked Kufalt.

  ‘Twenty-one marks sixty,’ said Bruhn. ‘They keep on deducting more and more, the swindlers, they know they can treat me as they like. They’ve told the foreman I was in for robbery and murder. And he’s only got to pass the word to the other blokes and I’ll be on the street. They wouldn’t work with anyone like me, if they knew about it.’

  He was standing in front of his mirror, having adjusted his collar and tie at last. He looked at Kufalt.

  And Kufalt looked at his young friend Emil Bruhn.

  In that look was the flicker of a fire gone out. A faint memory of old days, when they slipped each other notes by the orderly, when they stood under the same shower; when they made love.

  Here they were; together once again. They looked at each other. Life had gone on, much had changed, and above all they themselves had changed. But here was redolence of old days, the memory of close intimacy and of fulfilment, so ardently desired, so seldom achieved.

  No, they did not even shake hands now. Life had gone forward. It was another body than the one immured in prison walls, and a different desire to what it then had been. There were girls in the streets, skirts swirling round their legs, and rounded breasts . . . A fine life, or at least it should have been . . .

  ‘I suppose nothing was done about your savings bank book?’

  ‘Nothing,’ said Emil Bruhn. ‘They did me down, the bastards. But if I ever go back to the clink . . . ’

  ‘If you’re ready, let’s go,’ replied Kufalt.

  No, it was over. Another world and other companions, you cannot hold it, you cannot call it back; but over in the Königstrasse, here in the Lerchenstrasse, stands the lonely bed, with its brooding dreams and lonely satisfactions.

  Must it be always so?

  IX

  On one side of the smoky dance hall, from the ceiling of which still hung the paper garlands and lanterns of the Venetian night of the last carnival—on one side stood the girls, and on the other stood the lads.

  The girls wore the usual little factory girl’s short frock, and many of the men wore caps. Several were in shirtsleeves. When they wanted to dance they beckoned to a girl and the girl came across and stood before her man, who calmly brought his conversation to a close before he put his arm round her waist and moved off with her.

  Kufalt and Bruhn sat at a table and drank their beer. The other lads went to the bar between dances and drank a glass of schnapps or beer while standing up. Or they drank nothing—what had they paid thirty pfennigs admission for? The band played very loud and the girls joined in for all the popular songs. And when the dance was at an end, the young louts left the girls standing just where they were and joined their fellows.

  ‘Let’s go to a better place,’ said Kufalt.

  ‘A better place would cost a lot of money,’ said Bruhn. ‘And one woman’s as good as another.’

  Kufalt was about to make some reply when he saw her. She was quite tall, with a frank and cheerful face, a lively mouth and a snub nose.

  Her dress was perhaps a little prettier than those of the others. But perhaps Kufalt merely thought so.

  ‘Who is she?’ he asked Bruhn, with sudden eagerness, quite forgetting his suggestion that they should go.

  Bruhn, of course, could not at first make out whom Willi meant, but then he said:

  ‘Oh, that girl—she’s no good to you. She’s got a baby.’

  ‘How do you mean?’ asked Kufalt, puzzled.

  ‘Well, because no one will pay for the child.’

  ‘All the more reason—’ began Kufalt.

  ‘No, no,’ said Bruhn. ‘She won’t have anything to do with a man now. She’s had enough of that. She’s been beaten so often by her father, a glazier called Harder in the Lütjenstrasse, she won’t look at a man ever again.’

  ‘If that’s so . . . ’ said Kufalt slowly.

  And then he sat still and watched her. The music seemed to grow louder and louder, and from time to time she too danced and laughed. She was Hildegard, Harder the glazier’s daughter in the Lütjenstrasse. She had probably given him the slip that night. And he was Kufalt, from the Königstrasse, with no prospects at all. But he had a little money, and a decent suit—and now and again she glanced at him.

  When the girls went, he could run after them. Never mind if he made himself ridiculous, because they had not really gone away, only to the lavatory. He stood outside and waited, indifferent to all the laughter; the stranger in the neat blue suit, who went about with the little seal from the timber works, had fallen for a girl. Well, what was the harm in that? Some time, surely, a man must follow his fancies. The others had gone, and he watched her; she had a little habit of putting her hand to her hair and sort of holding her head while she danced. And
she had a child, she had already slept with other men. That would make it all the easier . . .

  . . . And the way she bent her head down to her glass, so that her hair tumbled all over her cheeks. ‘Go soon,’ a voice within him whispered, ‘so that I can speak to you . . . ’

  But she went on laughing and dancing and talking, and did not look at him, for now she knew that he had seen her . . .

  ‘Please go!’

  He was thankful for those solitary nights that made this possible; that it could come to him like this, as happiness, as the greatest happiness of all. And she could not say no; she would not say no. Let them laugh at him as they liked. Next Saturday he would dance with her, he would get a job and would marry her and they would have a child.

  Oh, Liese of a little while ago—what a different world!

  These were the small, badly lit, narrow streets of low houses. And the spaces of the sky above his head seemed deep—deep and very near. The wind whistled round the corners, and the two girls clung closer to each other. And he walked behind them. A pace or two behind them, and he had not yet uttered a word. They reached the Lütjenstrasse and she opened the front door and chatted to her friend for a minute or two, and he stood quite nearby, and a voice within him prayed that she might come to him.

  And the front door shut, and the other girl passed him and laughed and said: ‘You yob!’ and went on. And he stood there alone. It was very dark, and he was afraid of his own room.

  It was not for a while that he discovered that there was a yard behind the house, that the yard door was not fastened, that he could get into the yard, and that a light was still burning in a window on the ground floor.

  And, however it happens, well, once in a while a man’s courage rises. He softly scratched on the window pane, and then tapped gently, and again a little louder. The window opened; she was at the window. And a voice said softly: ‘Yes?’

  ‘Oh, please!’ said Kufalt.

  And the window shut again, and it was dark. And he stood there, in that strange yard, and suddenly he looked up, in his solitude he looked up. And he saw the stars; they came so strangely near and seemed so full of meaning. And a hand was in his. And a voice whispered: ‘Come.’

  Again there was a light in the room, but it was not her bed that he saw. It was the child’s bed, and the child was asleep. He was lying huddled up, with his knees under his chin, just as he may once have lain in his mother’s womb. And his cheeks were rosy, and his hair all tousled over his forehead . . .

  Both of them looked down at the child.

  And then they looked at each other.

  ‘Oh, dear, dear face!’

  He raised his two hands and laid his fingertips against her cheek and drew her head to his. He thought he could hear the blood murmuring in her veins. They looked into each other’s faces, and her eyelids quivered over her brown eyes; and her face came nearer and grew larger.

  Gone were the stars, gone was the night and the solitary vigil in the yard. The face of such a girl could stand for a whole world. Mountains and valleys and deep, deep lakes of eyes . . .

  Oh, dear, dear face!

  There was her mouth—but it was firmly closed. It did not yield to the pressure of his lips.

  Suddenly her shoulder slipped away from him, and then her face. The child was still asleep. There they stood, in a strange world.

  ‘Go,’ she said, and led him by the hand across the yard into the street.

  And he went home.

  Thus it began.

  X

  There were many things you could not mention to Emil Bruhn. In prison their comradeship had seemed complete—but now there were many things of which you could not speak.

  ‘Where did you get to last night?’

  ‘I was so tired and it was so boring . . . ’

  ‘Oh yes—because Hildegard Harder went away.’

  ‘Her, indeed!’

  ‘And you let yourself be called a yob by a girl like Wrunka Kowalska from the tannery?’

  ‘Rubbish,’ said Kufalt. ‘Rubbish!’

  And as Bruhn said no more, he went on: ‘Nothing doing with the clergymen. They say they can’t help and tell me to go to the Welfare Office. As if I didn’t know that!’

  ‘Yes, and you never even got into her room.’

  ‘Look, Emil, I’ve been thinking about your situation,’ said Kufalt, taking an interest. ‘That timber works of yours is no good in the long run. And you’re a first-rate carpenter . . . ’

  ‘I certainly am,’ Emil agreed. ‘When a man’s done eleven years in the carpenter’s shop in prison . . . ’

  ‘Suppose you passed your journeyman’s test, and got a job with a good employer, in Kiel or Hamburg, where no one knows anything about you?’

  Bruhn again grew surly. ‘And the money, my friend, the money for the test, and all the time when I shan’t be earning anything? . . . No, you made a right fool of yourself before the whole town yesterday. I shan’t go out with you again in a hurry.’

  Could he tell him? Yes, he could; after all, he had been to her room at night, after twelve . . . But the child’s bed, and that dear face that had come so close to his . . .

  ‘Supposing I went to the governor, and talked to him about you?’ said Kufalt. ‘There’s a fund for discharged prisoners. And it couldn’t be better used than in getting you a decent job.’

  ‘It would be no use,’ said Emil, rather mollified. ‘The whole Prison Board will be against you.’

  ‘Well, I’ll go,’ said Kufalt. ‘I’ve always got on with the old man. You’ll soon see!’

  For Emil the past night was forgotten, and the friend with whom he had been anxious to show off, and who had allowed a Polish girl to call him a yob without smacking her face for her pains . . .

  ‘If I could get to be a carpenter journeyman,’ said Emil dreamily. ‘You’ve no idea how sick I am of this job. For eight years I’ve been making nest boxes. I know every hammer-blow. But if I could make a cupboard again, or a table, with the legs properly dovetailed . . . ’

  ‘I’ll tell the governor,’ said Kufalt. ‘But it will be some time till it’s fixed up.’

  ‘I’ve got plenty of time. I can wait,’ said Emil.

  ‘Right. Tomorrow, then,’ said Kufalt. ‘I must see how I can fit it in. I’ve got so many things to do tomorrow . . . ’

  ‘What have you got to do?’ asked Emil. ‘You’ve got nothing at all to do.’

  ‘I’ve got a great deal to do. I have to run around all day.’ He paused and coughed. He looked down the street, it was autumn weather, cold, windy and damp, about six o’clock in the evening; it was just possible that Hildegard Harder might be walking down the road.

  No, she was not. Kufalt added casually: ‘From now on, I shall be earning my ten or twelve marks a day.’

  ‘Balls,’ said Bruhn briefly.

  ‘What do you mean, balls! Nothing of the kind,’ said Kufalt indignantly. ‘I went to see Freese this morning . . . ’

  ‘Don’t know him,’ said Bruhn. ‘Never heard the name. And what did you have to slip him in advance for a job like that?’

  ‘Nothing,’ snapped Kufalt. ‘Not a penny. There was a lanky fellow came to see me first by the name of Dietrich. He wanted a security; and he wanted a quarter of all earned. Well, I soon put him in his place, and he lent me twenty marks before he went!’

  Kufalt burst out laughing, and so did Emil, though still rather mystified. Then Kufalt had to tell him about Dietrich. ‘A beer and a schnapps at the corner, and he thought he could get out of me the last money I had, the poor idiot . . . ’

  And Emil laughed too. ‘That was the stuff to give him. And then you went behind his back to Herr Freese?’

  ‘I did,’ said Kufalt, becoming noticeably curt. ‘And I am to canvass for subscribers and advertisements, and get the commission myself.’

  ‘Good for you, my boy!’ shouted Bruhn delightedly. ‘And if you go to the governor and bring that business off we shall both earn so much
money that we’ll be able to go to decent places where there’s decent women, and all the Wrunkas and Hildegards can go to hell.’

  It was at that moment that a voice nearby said: ‘May I speak to you for just a moment?’

  Embarrassed silence.

  Then Kufalt said: ‘I dare say I’ll come round this evening again, Emil.’

  ‘Right,’ said Emil; ‘and don’t forget the governor.’

  ‘Don’t you worry about that, my lad,’ said Kufalt.

  And his voice sounded unnaturally hearty.

  Then Hildegard Harder and Willi Kufalt walked towards the public garden, on the outskirts of the town, where it was dark.

  XI

  It was not for nothing that Kufalt had deliberately said little about his interview with Editor Freese. The Town and Country Messenger might well be a smaller paper than the Friend of the Fatherland, but Herr Freese was certainly quite as big a man as Herr Scialoja.

  There was no difficulty about admission, no waiting . . . ‘Go right through,’ said a tall, bony, horse-faced man, pointing to the door. ‘But it’s one of his bad days.’

  So Kufalt went through.

  There sat a fat, heavy, shabby man behind a desk; he had a greyish-white walrus moustache and wore a very pendulous pince-nez.

  On one side of the desk sat Herr Freese, on the other side stood Kufalt. Between them on the desk lay a litter of papers, beer bottles, a flask of brandy and glasses. Herr Freese’s complexion was grey, his eyes were red and angry.

  He blinked at Kufalt, opened his mouth as though about to speak and then shut it again.

  ‘Good morning,’ said Kufalt. ‘Herr Dietrich suggested I should call.’

  Freese coughed and gasped a little, until his throat was clear enough for him to ejaculate: ‘Get out!’

  Kufalt reflected for a moment; he was no longer the Kufalt of a while ago, when he came out of prison with the hope that everything would be easy; he knew a man had to stand his ground and not be browbeaten, just as in prison—so he reflected, and then said: ‘As a matter of fact, I really came against Herr Dietrich’s advice.’

  He stood and watched for the response.

  Herr Freese looked at him angrily with his little reddened eyes. He coughed again and cleared his throat, then he looked at the brandy flask, shook his head gloomily, coughed again and said slowly: ‘You are an artful young man. But not quite artful enough for an old one like me.’ He broke off suddenly: ‘Don’t you find that stove a nuisance?’