Once a Jailbird

by Hans Fallada

  He emphasized the words ‘at any time’.

  Kufalt looked at her as they went up, her lips moved, he didn’t understand what she wanted to say, but her face and her whole body were an unuttered prayer—please don’t!

  As they walked upstairs Kufalt noticed that the windows were glazed with beautiful designs: ground floor, Trumpeter of Säckingen; first floor, Lorelei. There was no second floor.

  The room with the reflector was the living and dining room. By the reflector sat a withered woman with skin so transparent that her face was almost blue.

  ‘Well?’ said Herr Harder, and there was menace in his tone. Suddenly Kufalt understood that this little man might have a heavy hand.

  The woman, her mother, half rose from her chair at the sight of the visitor and quickly sat down again when she heard that angry ‘Well?’

  He was not asked to sit down. They stood facing each other. Herr Harder said ‘Well?’, and Kufalt answered calmly (it was odd that he was so calm; he was by no means always calm when canvassing):

  ‘My name is Kufalt, Wilhelm Kufalt. I am at present employed as a canvasser for subscribers and advertisements on the Town and Country Messenger. I earn from two to three hundred marks a month . . . ’

  ‘Well, sir!’ roared the little man, advancing on him with blank fury in his eyes. ‘What has all this got to do with me? I’m not going to take in your filthy rag!’

  Kufalt drew a deep breath. ‘I ask for your daughter’s hand,’ he said.

  ‘What . . . ?’

  There was a long silence.

  The frozen woman at the window had turned and was staring helplessly at the visitor.

  ‘I ask for your daughter’s hand,’ he said once more.

  ‘Sit down!’ said the beard, looking at the chairs round the dining table and at the man in front of him. ‘Sit down, sir,’ he repeated decisively. And then suddenly leapt to his feet.

  ‘But if you’re trying to make a fool of me . . . !’

  ‘Eugen!’ said the woman in a warning voice.

  ‘What is your name?’ said Herr Harder, and sat down again.

  ‘Kufalt,’ said Kufalt; ‘but without an “h”, just “u-f “.’ And he smiled reassuringly.

  ‘Kufalt, yes. And what did you say you earned?’

  ‘Two to three hundred marks a month. But that can be easily increased.’

  ‘ . . . Easily increased,’ murmured Harder. Then suddenly: ‘How did you meet Hilde?’

  ‘Eugen!’ said the woman in a warning voice once more.

  ‘That is our affair,’ smiled Kufalt.

  Herr Harder ran his fingers through his beard, stood up, sat down again, threw a quick glance at his wife, at the door, and whispered, his head appearing to sink into his shoulders: ‘And you know—?’

  ‘About Willi? I do. Besides, my name is Willi too.’

  The hand in the beard stiffened. The little man stood up, planted himself in front of Kufalt and grew visibly taller and more menacing:

  ‘Then you are the blackguard—’

  ‘Certainly not,’ answered Kufalt quickly. ‘I’ve only been in the place six weeks. But I don’t mind.’

  ‘He doesn’t mind,’ said the bewildered glazier, looking appealingly at the window.

  ‘And now suppose we ask Hilde whether she agrees?’

  ‘Whether she agrees!’ shouted the little man. ‘I’ll soon show you!’

  He rushed to a desk, rummaged in a drawer, pulled out a sheet of spotless white cardboard, scrawled something on it and waved it triumphantly: ‘There!’

  ‘Closed for family reasons,’ read Kufalt.

  ‘I’ll put it up on the shop door at once,’ whispered the little man gravely. ‘And I’ll bring Hilde up with me.’

  XXI

  He had expected nothing, for he had not known that he would agree to this.

  She had stood there at the table, very pale, and when her father started to speak and she gradually understood what was happening, she cried out: ‘No! No! No!’

  Then she dropped heavily onto a chair, laid her head on the table and burst into a flood of tears . . .

  He stood at her side. He had not intended this, and he did not even now believe they would ever be married. No, it should not be said that he could wilfully hurt a human creature weeping so helplessly over her deliverance. But nothing would come of it, things always turned out otherwise. The Batzke affair would be brought to light, and how long, in a little town like this, could his identity be concealed? Oh, if only she were not so ecstatically happy!

  ‘What’s for dinner today, Mother?’

  And Mother herself went out to get some black pudding for the lentil soup, so that Hilde could stay with her betrothed. And two-year-old Willi was brought in and made to say ‘Papa’, and there was some sweet wine, Malaga at eighty-eight pfennigs the bottle, a really good, sound wine . . .

  But all the time, while they were eating and drinking and talking and laughing, Kufalt had a feeling that this was a dream; when she felt under the table for his hand, it was as if the chief warder would soon be knocking his key against the bell . . .

  But he did not, and Kufalt went on dreaming, and in his dream he said he would have to go back to the office so that the new subscribers would get their papers next morning, and for the first time he had got only five new ones . . .

  And, laughing in his deep bass voice, Harder the glazier, Lütjenstrasse 17, subscribed to the filthy rag, and so went back on his word. But he left his son-in-law without the one mark twenty-five: ‘I’ll deduct it from the dowry, Willi’ . . . and Hilde was allowed to walk back with him to the office . . .

  But there, when Kufalt excitedly told them what he had done and asked them to keep mum and give him a good reference—he would tell her himself at a suitable moment—there he was near to an awakening, for they both looked at him so oddly and Freese for no reason said: ‘Doesn’t the stove worry you? Isn’t it too hot?’

  But the dream continued, for Hilde was clinging to his arm, and in the meantime it had occurred to her that she had something to say, and she said it: ‘You are so kind! You understood, didn’t you, why I cried so, that time?’

  And the watch was handed over, and rings were bought at Linsing’s. And then the evening came, and the relations were there, and there was a very quiet and affectionate betrothal party, and many a side glance from Aunt Emma to Aunt Bertha . . .

  And at last he went home to his bed, and the dream was over, and he awoke and wept and said: ‘What have I done?’

  XXII

  But—in spite of all the tears—this December was the happiest and the most enchanting in Willi Kufalt’s whole life.

  One day Herr Kraft said to him: ‘I don’t know how it is, the Christmas advertisements don’t roll in as they used to do. You must get on to the advertisements, Kufalt.’

  And Kufalt got on to the advertisements.

  By eight o’clock in the morning he was knocking at the doors of the big shops—ready-made clothes, jewellery, underclothes, house linen, beds, cutlery, groceries, wines. He sold sixteenths and thirty-seconds of a page. Three or four times he sold a whole page, quite often a half; and on Saturday he had a reckoning with Kraft, and drew his 180 or 200 marks’ commission: ‘You earn double what Freese does, Kufalt. Not to mention myself.’

  Kufalt had indeed tapped into a vein of success, and prison training now proved to be not without its uses. In prison he had learnt to ask and keep on asking, he was not easily deterred by a refusal; in pestering the warders with all sorts of requests he had proved himself a persuasive wordsmith, and this now stood him in good stead.

  When he made it clear to Herr Lewandowski, the proprietor of a small general store in the northern suburb, that he could not possibly be outdone by his competitors, and that an eighth of a page was a scandal for so enterprising a business, while a sixth or quarter of a page would mean a doubled Christmas turnover—

  When he trudged on, surveying every window and reading every sho
p sign, and suddenly dropped in on a blind chair-caner, to whom he sold a sixteenth of a page, on the ground that everybody wanted their chairs mended for Christmas—

  When he appeared, panting, in the composing room at half past ten and, against the noisy protests of all the compositors, insisted that three-quarters of a page of fresh advertisements must go in (the paper came out at half past twelve)—

  And when he waited in quivering agitation for Fräulein Utnehmer, who brought in the opposition paper, and they all three leapt at the advertisement pages, and Kraft said reproachfully: ‘They’ve got a quarter-page from Haase and we’ve got nothing!’ and he answered crossly: ‘I was there first thing this morning, and the old prick told me he wasn’t advertising—I’ll go round to his place again this afternoon; but we’ve got Löhne and Wilms, and they haven’t . . . ’

  In those days he was possessed by an exaggerated sense of power and confidence. Prison was at last a matter of the past. Kufalt was fit and capable; no alcoholic ghost like Freese, with his jibes about the River Trehne, could prevail over him now . . .

  Money clinked in his pockets, and when the Christmas business was over the New Year came along, with advertisements from bakers and wine merchants and restaurant owners organizing dances. And in January came the stocktaking sales, and so it would go on through a long and busy year, in which he would earn good money.

  But when the clock struck six he dashed home, put on his best clothes and sped through the streets on air, a free man. Then he went into Godenschweger, the butcher’s shop, and bought an anchovy and liver sausage for his mother-in-law, or ten Brazils for old Harder at the tobacconist’s, or a tin toy for the kid, and all the shopkeepers were extremely polite to him and said: ‘Good evening, Herr Kufalt. Thank you very much, Herr Kufalt.’

  He never visited his in-laws without bringing them a present, and old Harder might well say to his wife that the world these days was turned upside down; and that a girl like Hilde, who had run around with all sorts of men, should get a husband who earned such good money, and was so presentable as well, was really a sin and a scandal, and a violation of God’s commandment.

  But he liked his son-in-law, did old Harder, and the two of them spent the entire evening chatting away; the women sat in silence, sewing the trousseau. But Harder told him all about the various tradesmen, how he must ask Thomsen about his diabetes and admire the cacti in Lorenz’s shop window.

  He introduced him to the life of the town. He knew all the scandals of the last hundred years, carefully passed on from mouth to mouth. He could explain exactly why the young Lävens had had a feeble-minded child, Grandfather Läven having been involved with Frau Läven’s mother, who was born a Schranz . . .

  Kufalt was an avid listener to all this local history and anecdote; he lapped it all up eagerly, while Harder’s satisfaction with his son-in-law steadily increased. No, although Hilde had not really deserved it, he would see she had a proper outfit for her marriage, and yet . . . and yet . . . A dark shadow hung over old Harder’s mind. There was something wrong about this bright young man. He could not persuade his wily old self that a man like Kufalt should actually want to marry a girl with a child, especially when she wasn’t even particularly pretty. Great love? No, they weren’t as much in love as all that!

  In the twilight hours he sat and watched the two Willis, big and small, gambolling and rolling over each other on the carpet, laughing, fooling around, singing and playing horses—two children, two silly, high-spirited children. But the child cried, ‘Papa,’ and Kufalt heard, and did not mind or make a wry face—it was not right, there was something wrong.

  For many an hour at night old Harder lay in bed and brooded; he would have liked to get up and go across to the living room and bang on the table and shout: ‘In God’s name, tell me what’s the matter with you!’

  But he did not; he lay awake until he heard the door latch click, and the two of them go downstairs and the front door close. Perhaps she had really sent him away, but perhaps she had merely made the sound of locking the outer door and taken him with her to her little dark room in the yard, where she had been made to live since she had had her brat. It was all the same to old Harder, she would have learnt to take care of herself by now, and after all she was engaged—but the worst of it was that he was firmly convinced his son-in-law did go home, and not to her room; which was the most uncanny part of it all.

  He was right; she did not take him to her room, and if she did from time to time, it was merely to stand by the child’s bed, as they had done that first night, and look down at him. Hand in hand, her head on his shoulder, they made a picture straight out of a colour supplement; but outside the window hung the canopy of night, and the town was silent now, just as life was silent—patiently, so patiently enduring. Heart against heart, in the softly breathing night, and silence.

  ‘And now I must go home.’

  ‘Sleep well, Willi.’

  ‘Thanks—ditto.’

  A quick kiss and the tramp home through the bleak December streets, where the glass panes of the street lamps clinked as the wind caught them; and three or four schnapps at a bar, so that he might fall asleep quickly and not lie awake and think.

  And then, next morning, up and out again after advertisements, on the merry hunt for money, chattering and cajoling and standing about in shops and then, through the twilit streets, to Hilde . . .

  Father’s picture was all wrong, of what they said and did in the sitting room; they did nothing at all.

  On one occasion Harder asked his daughter how they had come to make such a noise and Hilde answered: ‘Willi was reciting poetry to me.’

  ‘Poetry?!’ cried Harder; and again he wondered how his daughter could be such a monstrous little liar.

  And yet Hilde had spoken the truth; Kufalt had really been reciting poems.

  The hut in the park on that wild November night lay far behind them, a shameful memory that they must not dwell on. Here they were, sitting in a real, respectable, well-warmed room, side by side on a sofa, like a real engaged couple; he told her what he had been doing that day, all about Freese and Kraft and Fräulein Utnehmer, the shorthand typist, whom he had again seen out with another man. But he soon exhausted his material; he had already used most of it for his father-in-law’s benefit.

  And when they had talked about their future home, and how they would furnish it—one and a half rooms and a kitchen—there was nothing left to say.

  Side by side they sat in silence on the plush sofa, hand in hand; he very stiff and straight, with his eyes turned towards the lamp, she longing to fall on his shoulder and be loving.

  Then he kissed her once or twice and said in an encouraging voice: ‘Yes, dear, it’s nice to be sitting like this, isn’t it?’ He tried hard to think of something to talk about; her bosom was so near—he could have done what he would with her in that moment. But no, the little hut was an affair of the past. Their object now must be order, respectability and a steady income. An open, upright life—moreover he did not want to be put to shame by Harder, Freese and Kraft. He had breathed again when she indicated that nothing had happened on that occasion; so they would not marry before Easter in any case. If anything did happen, they would all count nine upon their fingers and say: ‘Aha, that’s why!!’

  No; that should not be why!

  She was very pale, with dark rings under her eyes; it was quite clear she understood nothing.

  Once she did burst out: ‘Willi! Willi! Why do you want to marry me? Just because I didn’t come again? You don’t love me a bit.’

  But he soothed her, he rocked her in his arms, he told her he was acting for the best and one day she would understand it all.

  Then they relapsed into silence, side by side, the lamp burned noiselessly and again they did not know what to talk about. And then his boyhood came back into his mind.

  It fitted in with this homely room, this decorous betrothal. It fitted in exactly with this passage of his life: his offence,
and trial, and imprisonment—all were blotted out. Where the old life had stopped, he now started it again.

  Poems indeed, but not only poems. They would often sit together and hum a song, quite softly, so as not to disturb the parents in the bedroom: ‘Oh ye far-off valleys, oh ye heights . . . Little Anne of Tharau . . . Who hast thee, thou lovely forest . . . ’

  Their faces lit up, her little foot in its shabby slipper tapped out the rhythm, the drawn curtains were so white and peaceful; then he said: ‘Now let me sing by myself . . . ’ And he sang ‘Beatus Ille Homo’ and ‘Gaudeamus Igitur’ . . .

  His few school years were his once again; and her eyes never left his face.

  Then came Christmas Day, and the betrothed pair duly stood under the lighted tree, and little Willi at their feet duly played with a toy railway. Herr Harder gave his son-in-law a calf-leather wallet with a bright new pfennig inside it on which he had spat three times, ‘so that your money will never run short’; and Frau Harder gave him a scarf.

  There was nothing from Hilde, but Hilde smiled, her cheeks were flushed with happiness, and all was so astonishingly peaceful and secure, with the sugared Christmas cake and carp stewed in beer, as though there were no world of perils, nor crime nor misery nor prison; nor men who had been in prison.

  XXIII

  Was it strange that in such happy times as these Kufalt hardly thought of little Emil Bruhn; indeed, he kept out of his way?

  He never went to see him, and when Bruhn visited Kufalt he was always either out or hurriedly changing his clothes and on the point of going out again.

  Once, however, shortly after Christmas, Bruhn had plumped down into the plush armchair and watched Kufalt change his clothes. He looked even smaller and rounder than usual, but very worried. Kufalt remembered that stress led to overeating for some people, and Bruhn was clearly one of them.

  ‘Is it true you’re going around with Harder’s Hilde?’

  ‘Yes, Emil.’

  ‘That you’re properly engaged to her?’

  ‘Yes, Emil.’

  ‘On the level?’

  ‘On the level, Emil.’