Once a Jailbird

by Hans Fallada

  ‘And the kid?’

  ‘He’s a nice kid, Emil, I like him very much.’

  ‘Do they know about you?’

  ‘No, Emil.’

  ‘Are you going to tell them?’

  ‘Not yet, Emil.’

  ‘But you told me a bloke ought to tell at once.’

  ‘You never know how it’s going to work out.’

  ‘Then it’s not on the level!’

  ‘Yes it is.’

  ‘Then why don’t you tell them?’

  ‘I shall tell them sometime.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Soon.’

  Kufalt was shaving very carefully, which was probably why his answers were so curt. But now he had finished shaving and had tidied his shirt and collar and tie, he could begin to ask questions.

  ‘Are you still at the works, Emil?’

  ‘Eh—?’ said Emil with a start.

  Kufalt laughed. ‘What were you dreaming about, Emil? I asked you whether you were still at the works.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Emil briefly, and again was lost in thought. Then he said: ‘Supposing someone tells the Harders you’ve been in prison?’

  ‘Who’s likely to tell them?’

  ‘Oh, anyone—a warder, for instance.’

  ‘Warders are forbidden to tell, it’s a rule of the service.’

  ‘Well—an old lag, then?’

  ‘Why should he? He’s got nothing to gain from it.’

  ‘Perhaps he’d get a tip from old Harder for warning him?’

  Kufalt thought deeply; he thrust out his underlip, examined his face in his shaving mirror to see whether his chin was quite smooth, and thought.

  Emil Bruhn got no answer for some while.

  And when Kufalt did speak, the answer was not an answer, but a question: ‘Did you go and see the old man, Emil?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Emil.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘Bollocks.’

  ‘How do you mean, bollocks? Yes or no?’

  ‘Costs a lot of money.’

  ‘Did he say yes?’

  ‘I told him I had five hundred marks saved, that I could put down.’

  ‘And what did he say?’

  ‘He’d see what he could do.’

  ‘Then it’s all right.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because I haven’t got five hundred marks to put down.’

  ‘How much have you saved?’

  ‘Nothing at all.’

  ‘Why did you say you had five hundred?’

  ‘Because I think I can get them, Willi.’

  Kufalt put on his overcoat slowly and carefully, then he inspected himself in the mirror and pulled his jacket down a bit at the back. He picked up his hat.

  ‘Well, I’m off now, Emil.’

  ‘I’ll come a bit of the way with you, Willi.’

  ‘Do.’

  And they went, both wavering. Bruhn wanted to go on with it, but didn’t quite know how; Kufalt was funny, but surely he must have got used to it in prison: ‘Halves, or I’ll split’ was a sound principle, and a plain bit of business.

  Kufalt was furious and deadly sick at heart. Had he really ever liked little Bruhn? Yes, it seemed so, he had really liked him, and never, never would he have thought . . .

  ‘Look, Willi,’ Bruhn tried to explain; ‘I’ll have to get out of the works, it’s more than a bloke can stand, do you see?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Kufalt.

  ‘Otherwise something will happen.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Kufalt, thoughtful once again. ‘You’ve certainly got in wrong with the governor.’

  ‘Can’t you go and talk to him yourself, Willi?’

  ‘No,’ said Kufalt with emphasis. ‘I’m through with jail and everything to do with it—understand, Bruhn?’

  He stopped.

  ‘This is where I turn down the Lütjenstrasse, Emil. My future father-in-law lives at number seventeen. I dare say you know the shop, Emil.’

  But he did not move, he stood and looked at little Bruhn’s round, seal-like head.

  ‘And anyhow, I don’t give a damn, Emil. Hilde’s of age, and by the way, Emil,’—Kufalt bent forward and whispered mysteriously into Bruhn’s face—‘I’ve taken care that she’s fixed again, understand?’

  He looked hard at Bruhn, grinned, burst into a roar of laughter and hurried, without turning, past the half-dozen houses to the Harders’ door.

  ‘Man overboard, that’s all you can say,’ he thought.

  XXIV

  After Christmas the advertisement business became very quiet, and Kufalt had again to concentrate on subscribers, so as to get some money into the till. It was a bitter comedown. One advertisement brought him eight or ten marks’ commission with very little effort, and now he had to talk himself hoarse again for one mark twenty-five—four times out of five, to no avail.

  By this time he had gone through all the tradesmen, who had been relatively easy victims. He now had to work his way down a street, from house to house. He never knew exactly what sort of people lived behind the doors at which he rang, nor what he ought to say to win their favour. As like as not a suspicious-looking female appeared on whom all his finest phrases would be lost; she did not even take down the chain but said, without listening, and slamming the door in his face: ‘We don’t want anything here.’

  But it might happen—indeed it had happened—that he picked up a subscription in a quite unexpected quarter, from some Red workman’s wife. Then, when he came round to the Messenger in the evening, the husband had already been there, making a terrible to-do and demanding his money back: they read their Socialist paper, not this filthy middle-class rag, and if he caught the windbag of a tout that had got at his wife he’d break every bone in his body. What a bastard, to talk a poor woman out of her wits!

  Kraft had mildly suggested that Kufalt should be a little less excessive in his canvassing methods, and Kufalt had asked indignantly whether Herr Kraft thought that people were overjoyed at the prospect of being able to read the Messenger?

  But then came the end of December, and the business in advertisements began to pick up again; for New Year’s Day itself Kufalt had actually collected two and a half pages. But he had taken a great deal of trouble, and in addition to everything else he had roped in all the toyshops with their fireworks and the china shops with their New Year’s plates. Finally, there were all the ‘Good Wishes’ and ‘Hopes for a Continuance of Esteemed Custom during the New Year’.

  There was a bittersweet smile on Kraft’s face as he again handed over 215 marks to Kufalt, not without the remark: ‘Easy come, easy go.’

  Kufalt did not care, for, in the first place, the stocktaking sales would soon be coming along and, secondly, he now had a proper savings bank account; and in spite of all the presents he had bought there were more than a thousand marks to his credit. No, not so easily gone!

  So Kufalt, scrubbed from head to foot, with clean linen and gleaming nails, went forth in holiday attire to the Harders, drank a few little glasses of mild punch, and was delighted when Frau Harder said at about half past nine: ‘Well, Eugen, time for bed now, we won’t wait up for the bells.’

  The old man grunted acquiescence and said: ‘But why don’t you kids go out for a bit? It does no one any good to be stuck indoors, and by this time next year you’ll be married and you may not be able to go out.’

  And he surveyed his daughter’s figure.

  Hilde vanished, and then reappeared wearing a bright, charming dress with a pale flowery design, and a pretty twisted gold necklet . . . ‘The girl looks really nice,’ said Harder, astonished. The pink in her cheeks had flushed almost to red, and she cheerfully kissed her father and mother. ‘All the best, sleep well into a happy New Year!’

  Then the two young people went out, and the two old ones watched them from the window.

  It was snowing slightly but a good many people were in the streets, and most of the shop windows were still l
it up. They first strolled about for a while; Hilde admired one curtain, and he another, until they finally agreed on a third. They looked into furniture shops, and it occurred to him that there was a delightful bedroom suite in the Helmstedtstrasse that he had always wanted to show her. So they walked all the way there, only to find that Schneeweiss’s, the shop in question, did not have its window lit up.

  But here they were not far away from the Rendsburger Hof, and Hilde asked Willi to take her in for a few minutes; she of course wanted to show him off to some of her former girlfriends.

  ‘That was where we first met, and I had my eye on you at once too. But you were staring at me so, I couldn’t appear to have noticed you. And do you remember how you ran after Wrunka and me, almost into the lavatory? “Some lad,” I remember Wrunka said. Come along, we’ll only look in for a moment, even if it isn’t so nice there . . . ’

  But he flatly refused, as people would certainly be rude and he would mind. He did not want her to be referred to in his presence as the girl with the baby, they would very likely taunt him with having been in prison, and Emil Bruhn was certain to be there. No, not on any account!

  Instead, he had in mind a little cellar café on the market square, the Café Zentrum it was called; its rather musty, shabby air had always somehow appealed to him, though for some reason he had never yet set foot inside it. But no sooner did he mention it to Hilde than she declined absolutely.

  ‘No, certainly not!’

  ‘But why? I only wanted to have a look at it.’

  ‘I won’t go inside such a place!’

  ‘But surely you can say why?’

  ‘A hole like that—and what everyone says about it?’

  ‘Have you ever been there?’

  ‘No, and I never will. Not even with you.’

  They were still standing at the corner by Schneeweiss’s, the furniture shop; it was dark and bleak and they were freezing cold.

  A man came by and, noticing they were having a dispute, he called out: ‘Hello, Lottie, isn’t he in the mood? Do you want me to help you get into his pants?’

  ‘Come along,’ said Kufalt hastily and hurried her away. The drunken New Year’s reveller shouted some filth after them.

  With her arm loosely slipped through his they walked briskly towards the centre of the town.

  ‘I should like to know,’ said Kufalt, emerging from profound reflection, ‘why you won’t go to the Café Zentrum.’

  ‘Because a decent girl doesn’t go to such a place.’

  ‘Don’t they? But such girls do go and dance at the Rendsburger Hof?’

  She flung herself away from him and cried despairingly—and she really was in despair: ‘Oh, Willi, Willi, why do you always torment me?’

  ‘Torment you?’ he said in amazement. ‘Always torment you? Because I want to go to a café with you?’

  He looked at her for a moment, her face twitched, her lips moved and she tried to speak. But she merely took his arm and said gently: ‘Please take me home.’

  ‘We’re not going home yet!’ he said in a bewildered tone. ‘If you really won’t go to the Zentrum, let’s go somewhere else. How about the Café Berlin?’

  She did not answer, and after a moment he noticed that she was crying quietly.

  ‘Don’t do that, Hilde,’ he said, looking round him apprehensively. ‘Please don’t.’

  ‘I shall be all right in a minute,’ she sobbed. ‘Let’s look into a shop window for a moment.’

  ‘But why are you crying? How am I tormenting you? Do tell me, Hilde darling, I don’t understand.’

  ‘Nothing, nothing,’ said she, smiling again. ‘I must just tidy my face a bit and blow my nose—’

  ‘But I really want—’ he persisted.

  ‘Please not,’ she said. ‘We want to be cheerful this evening.’

  And they were cheerful too. For in the Café Berlin there was an excellent Saxon comedian who spoke Saxon so well that he could actually be understood, and kept them laughing all the time, and a tap dancer with shaved armpits and white-powdered chest—and an older lady who sang very saucy songs . . .

  The place was in uproar, everyone laughing, shouting, drinking, cheering and throwing confetti; they were soon entangled in paper snakes, and sat still so as not to tear them. Then the band played a fanfare, and it was midnight. They shook hands ceremoniously.

  ‘A very happy New Year, Hilde, for both of us!’

  ‘The same to you, Willi! The same to you—dearest Willi.’

  They drank another small grog and Hilde’s cheeks began to glow. She began to chatter about her various little friends—what so-and-so had been up to, what a bad name another had and how a third thought a great deal too much of herself . . .

  ‘But I don’t envy any of them. I’ve got my darling Willi. And now I’ve got another darling Willi—two darling Willis . . . ’

  She laughed loudly. And though all this chatter and laughter was drowned in the general uproar, and hardly anyone looked at the couple by the wall, Kufalt was upset. What she had said about her two darling Willis might possibly be taken in two ways, and anyway he didn’t like the sound of her laugh . . .

  ‘Come along, Hilde, let’s go.’

  ‘But you can sleep it off tomorrow.’

  ‘We’ll go somewhere we can dance.’

  ‘Fine,’ she said. She laughed. ‘To the Rendsburger Hof.’

  Her eyes sparkled mischievously. ‘You’ve got another girl there you don’t want me to see, eh?’

  ‘And whom have you got at the Café Zentrum?’ he asked crossly.

  For an instant she was embarrassed, then she burst out laughing. ‘Jealous, my poor Willi? You needn’t be—I’ll always be true to you and never go astray . . . ’

  She sang the last words to a popular tune.

  The people round laughed applause. ‘Good for you, young lady!’

  ‘Come along, Hilde,’ he said. And he reflected that he had led her astray, and if he had, no doubt anyone else . . .

  A deep sadness came over him. ‘What’s the sense of it all?’ he thought. ‘I’ve nothing in common with her, I don’t even like her. Then why? Just because she kept out of my way and I felt a bit of sympathy for her. Just the flesh, nothing but the flesh, it would be so much simpler with any other girl—and I don’t even need the flesh . . . If a man could get out and away from it all . . . It’s a bad business. If only he could start all over again.’

  ‘What are you thinking about?’ she asked.

  ‘Nothing in particular,’ he answered.

  But they did not dance after all, they ended up somehow in a little wine bar and drank another bottle of sweet wine. Hilde had been depressed, peevish, saucy, jolly and talkative by turns—this last bottle simply made her tired, dead tired, and her eyelids drooped. ‘Please take me home, Willi, dear.’

  She stood at the street door, almost staggering from sleepiness, clinging to his arm.

  ‘One more kiss, Willi. Oh, I’m so tired.’

  ‘So am I,’ he said.

  She seemed to rouse herself a little. ‘You’ll go straight home, won’t you—you aren’t going on anywhere else?’

  ‘Where would I be going at four o’clock in the morning? I’m off to bed at once.’

  ‘Honest?’

  ‘Honest to God,’ he said, and tried to laugh.

  ‘Will you give me your word of honour?’

  ‘Of course I’ll give you my word of honour. I’m going home at once.’

  She was silent; she seemed somehow dissatisfied, there was something on her mind.

  ‘Well, Hilde darling—’ he said, and gave her his hand.

  She flung her arms round him. ‘Oh, Willi, my dearest Willi . . . ’ She kissed him and whispered: ‘Come with me, Willi darling, the old people never go to my room . . . ’

  ‘No, no,’ he said, in a shocked voice.

  ‘But why not? I want you so much. Willi, I can’t bear it! What have you against me? I can’t wait till Easter.’r />
  ‘Think of the boy, Hilde. It wouldn’t do.’

  ‘Oh, he never wakes up till eight o’clock; that I know. Do come. Just once, Willi.’

  ‘No,’ he said firmly. ‘No, I won’t. Something might happen, and they’d all talk about us.’

  ‘They do that already. That doesn’t matter.’

  ‘No, I won’t do it. Be sensible, Hilde—think, it’s only a few weeks till Easter.’ He took her in his arms and soothed her. And he knew that every word he said was untrue. Something would happen. But what that was, he did not yet know.

  ‘Think how nice it will be then, all alone in our very own home, in a bright and cheerful room. By the way, I believe we can manage with the blue silk quilt instead of the eiderdown. Then we can laugh at the lot of them, and do exactly as we like; and it’ll all be so much nicer than secretly like this and feeling awkward with your parents. Now I can look them in the face.’

  ‘But you have!’ she cried in agonized bewilderment. ‘You have already, Willi—’

  They looked at each other.

  ‘Well, I’m going home now,’ he said shortly. ‘I think you’ve had a drop too much. Goodnight.’

  He did not wait for her goodnight; he did not wait until she disappeared across the yard.

  As he made off, although he did not turn, he had before his eyes an exact picture of her as she stood, staring after him with mortal terror in her face.

  XXV

  Of the rest of that night Kufalt had only a confused recollection, from the moment he clattered down the cellar stairs and barged into the Café Zentrum until the time when, arm in arm with his editor Freese, he stood in a deserted factory yard and stared as though spellbound into a grey, oily, sluggish stream, while Freese whispered mysteriously: ‘The Trehne rises at Rutendorf, under the Galgenberg; receives in our native town the waste water from thirty-six tanneries, famed for the dissemination of the anthrax germ . . . The Trehne . . . ’

  A spectral night. It was improbable enough when he burst into the café—just a plain tavern parlour, without a sign of debauchery or ribaldry—and looked about him, but could see nothing through the murk of cigar smoke, and a voice shouted from a corner: ‘Hey, Kufalt, you young bridegroom!’

  He followed the voice and found at a corner table, in familiar converse and crouching over their grog, Freese and Dietrich: Freese flushed and red, his matted hair straying wildly over his ravaged face, and Dietrich yellow and pallid, with dull, stupid, mouse-like eyes.