Once a Jailbird

by Hans Fallada

  ‘Sit down, Kufalt,’ said Freese. ‘That’s Dietrich, I fired him on your account.’

  ‘Delighted,’ muttered Dietrich, with a slight bow.

  ‘Drunk,’ said Freese. ‘Sit down, Kufalt. Drunk as a skunk. Where’s your young lady?’

  ‘Ah, young lady; I understood that,’ muttered Dietrich.

  ‘Shut your trap!’ said Freese sternly. ‘We want nothing of that kind from you, please—or of any kind at all . . . What’ll you drink, Kufalt?’

  ‘A beer,’ said Kufalt.

  ‘Minna, a beer, and a treble brandy for the gentleman. Minna, that fellow’s going to be married, yes he is—have a good look at him.’

  Kufalt looked angrily at the great fat creature with the coarse red face who set his drinks before him.

  ‘Oh, so you’re the young man that’s got engaged to Harder’s Hilde? I’ve heard about it—oh yes, you hear all sorts of things.’

  ‘Hop it!’ said Freese, and she waddled obediently behind the bar.

  ‘A little pearl, isn’t she, Minna?’ asked Freese, who had not taken his eyes off Kufalt. ‘Don’t you like her? They all get like that, outwardly or inwardly, or outwardly and inwardly. Fat or thin, they all get like that, women do.’

  ‘Yes—hupp,’ observed Dietrich.

  ‘Shut your trap!’ roared Freese. ‘I’ll take you on again, I’ll take you on again with five marks’ advance cash down, just so I can fire you on the spot.’

  And Freese felt in his pockets for money.

  He found nothing.

  ‘Give me the twenty marks you owe me, Kufalt.’

  Kufalt looked at Dietrich, who blinked at him to refuse.

  ‘Hand over, my lad, I’ll stand another round.’

  ‘Don’t—you—give—it—back,’ said Dietrich laboriously, as though spelling out the words. ‘I—said—we’re—working—together—we’re working together.’

  Freese burst into a roar of laughter. He laughed until he shook.

  ‘Working together, inseparable, you two diggers, eh, what? Both digging in the same hole, hey?’

  He screwed up his eyes and laughed, so that his bloated cheeks positively quivered.

  Kufalt looked at him in horror, something within him trembled and he reached for his beer mug.

  ‘So you’ll take us both on?’ said Dietrich suddenly in his normal voice. ‘May we both work in your hole—work for the bankrupt old Messenger?’

  There was a harsh and angry ring in Dietrich’s voice.

  Freese had stopped laughing, and was staring at Dietrich.

  ‘You can perfectly well do with two canvassers,’ persisted Dietrich.

  Something in Kufalt’s skull was turning round. ‘I’ve drunk too much,’ he thought. ‘What are they really talking about? Are they talking about what they’re talking about, or aren’t they?’

  And again he listened to the pair.

  ‘In 1848,’ observed Freese with the utmost gravity, ‘Herr van der Smissen was mayor of our town. Herr van der Smissen was a real aristocrat, an honest, upright man, who wore the cleanest of clean linen . . .

  ‘The mob gathered in front of his house and began to throw all kinds of muck and garbage through Herr van der Smissen’s windows. The police succeeded that day in dispersing the mob. The mayor, who had not been present, did not return until late in the evening. Accompanied by one of the town militia, he walked in silence through the ravaged rooms . . .

  ‘In the dining room, on one of the end walls, hung a large oil painting of his wife who had died in youth, by birth a Baroness von Puthammer. A specially filthy and odorous fragment of muck had struck the lovely lady’s picture exactly on her snowy bosom . . .

  ‘The soldier, a certain Wilms, reported that the mayor had stood motionless for about five minutes, with an utterly expressionless face, in front of the outraged portrait. Then he went to a cupboard, took out a bottle of wine and a finely cut glass and placed them both before him, Wilms, with the strict injunction that he should spend the time drinking, while he—that is Herr van der Smissen—would meanwhile get something to clean the picture. Upon which the mayor walked with a steady step out of the dining room . . . Next morning his body, covered with slime and filth, was dragged out of the Trehne, which flows at the bottom of the mayor’s garden.’

  Dietrich’s head had long since sunk upon his chest and he was snoring. The cigar in the corner of his mouth had gone out after burning a circular hole in his shirt front.

  Freese had spoken in the monotonous drone of a professional guide, and when he had finished he said in quite a different voice:

  ‘Well, here’s to you, Kufalt, we haven’t got as far as that yet, have we?’

  ‘Why did you tell me that?’ said Kufalt bitterly. He cursed himself for coming to the place, he cursed himself for not being able to go away, he cursed himself for going on drinking and he cursed himself for talking to Freese at all.

  ‘That is,’ said Freese, ‘a section from the history of this town, on which I have been working for the last forty years. The section will be entitled “Victims of the Trehne”.’

  ‘But I shan’t be in it, you rogue!’ shouted Kufalt in a sudden fury. ‘You want to drive me to drown myself, don’t you? But I won’t, I certainly won’t to please you, even if you do chuck dirt at my girl!’

  He stopped in sudden shock. There was no need for Freese to point to Dietrich, and lay a warning finger on his lips.

  Suddenly there rose in Kufalt’s vision the lovely tall-windowed mayor’s house behind the linden trees, past which he had so often trudged on his rounds. He thought he could see the broken panes, the star-shower of glass splinters tinkling onto the grass, the dark dining room lit by a single candle—and a long slender hand, with the thick blue veins and round yellow flecks of age, lifting the candlestick. From the shadowed wall came the radiant face of the lovely young woman, her slim white neck, her glorious shoulders, and now . . . and now . . .

  ‘Do you see it?’ shouted Freese. ‘Do you see it?’

  It was another face. ‘Come with me, come just once,’ said two agonized, beseeching lips.

  The moment was passed, the chance was thrown away. What a fool he had been. The respite that was his had fled for ever . . .

  No hand held up the candle now, it was very dark, a darkness that only gradually lifted . . .

  ‘Had a little doze?’ asked Freese. ‘You shouted while you were asleep . . . He’s right off.’ And he pointed to Dietrich.

  ‘I’m going,’ said Kufalt, staggering with weariness.

  ‘Wait, I’ll come with you,’ said Freese. ‘You’ll never find your way home in that state.’

  He looked doubtfully at the sleeping Dietrich. ‘I might tell Minna she’d better take him to bed with her,’ he muttered.

  Suddenly he began to grin. ‘Wait a moment, Kufalt, and you’ll see something.’

  Kufalt tried to get away. He held on to the back of a chair, made a grab with his other hand at the nearest table, missed it, and made another attempt.

  Freese soon reappeared with a piece of cardboard through which he had drawn a string. He blinked at Kufalt with malicious glee, as though he had a great joke in store for him, and approached Dietrich.

  He propped him up in his chair.

  ‘Sit up, you drunken pig,’ he shouted. ‘Sit straight.’

  Dietrich opened his eyes, but they closed again; he gurgled once and then fell asleep. But Freese had already hung the placard round his neck. ‘There, can you still read?’

  Scrawled in printed letters with charcoal stood the words: ‘Violator of Girls’.

  Kufalt’s vision first went black, then red. It seemed as though his hand was swooping down upon a beer mug which immediately went whirling in the air . . . He heard fat Minna’s shriek:

  ‘Look out, Freese . . . !’ And he heard Freese’s nasty chuckle . . .

  Then the gurgle of running water.

  Arm in arm with Freese he stood on the bank of the Trehne, the dawn h
ad broken grey and cloudy, the sallow, oily stream rippled against the planks of the factory yard, and he heard Freese say: ‘The Trehne rises at Rutendorf, under the Galgenberg, it receives the waste water from thirty-six tanneries. Famous for its dissemination of the anthrax germ . . . The Trehne . . . ’

  But all was a confused and spectral memory when he awoke in the afternoon.

  He had dreamed it all, surely he had dreamed it all; but the New Year had started with a very bad dream.

  7

  Collapse

  I

  December, with its light clear frost, had gone, and January had come in its stead, bringing rain and bad weather. Regretfully Kufalt replaced his smart black overcoat with a shapeless yellow mackintosh.

  December had been the most successful month in Kufalt’s life. January set in with a series of disheartening failures. The stocktaking sales were still far off, they did not begin until 21 January, and no one wanted to take the Messenger.

  Kufalt talked and talked—when he was allowed to talk. People listened, but they said he must know how short money was after the holiday, or they told him flatly that the Friend was better than the Messenger. The Messenger did not carry a quarter of the family notices that appeared in the Friend and that was what they mostly wanted.

  On some days he had six, seven, even ten or twelve failures in succession, and with failure came discouragement. Kufalt would stand for a good ten minutes outside a tenement of twelve flats without the heart to go in; he walked up and down the street and back again, while the drizzle froze him to the bones. It would be far more sensible to go home, sit by the warm stove, and doze . . .

  But here was the empty receipt book. At about four o’clock Herr Kraft expected his six new subscriptions, and he had such an offensive way of saying: ‘What, only two today? Only two?’

  And he rummaged among the papers on his desk.

  ‘Besides, of your new subscribers in December thirty-seven have cancelled their order. There’s really not much sense in canvassing . . . ’

  ‘Is that my fault?’ asked Kufalt indignantly.

  ‘No one mentioned the word fault,’ replied Kraft with equanimity, and went on turning over papers. ‘You’re getting nervy, Kufalt.’

  Although it was still uncertain what had really happened on New Year’s Eve, Freese was friendliness itself. Indeed, he was more friendly than usual.

  ‘Are you cold?’ he would say. ‘Well, there’s my faithful Fridolin in the corner, go and warm yourself—I’ve fairly stoked him up today. Besides, I’ve got a job for you.’

  He fumbled in the litter on his table.

  ‘It’s some write-up from the cinema. I haven’t looked at the stuff. Cut out twenty lines of the worst piffle. Here’s a fifty . . . ’

  And when Kufalt protested: ‘No, no, Kufalt; only death is free of charge, and then only for the dead. You put that fifty in your pocket: a day will come . . . ’

  Quite unchanged—with his odd allusions, his drunkenness, the rough exterior that hid none quite knew what.

  Unchanged too was Herr Harder in his admiration for Kufalt’s qualities; but Hilde was changed, and very greatly changed.

  No more eager kisses, hardly a yes or a no; no more poems, no more singing together.

  It was half past nine. Frau Harder gave the signal for departure, goodnight was said, and the betrothed couple were alone; and now, for appearances’ sake, he must stay at least half an hour longer.

  He got up, lit a cigarette and began to walk up and down.

  ‘What a stormy night,’ he said, stopped, and listened towards the window.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, went on embroidering a monogram, and did not look up.

  ‘It would be nice to stay here on a night like this,’ he said, with rather an awkward laugh.

  She did not answer.

  He waited a moment, and then began to pace the room again. He racked his brains, and finally asked: ‘Did the child eat his food better today, Hilde?’

  ‘No,’ she replied, and went on embroidering.

  He paced back and forward, wondering what to say, while the clock went ping-pang, ping-pang on the wall; at last a meagre question, and a barren yes or no.

  But, as the lamp grew dim, as he looked down at her dark bowed head, at the patch of white neck that gleamed between the edge of her hair and the red collar of her jumper; as he watched her and thought of what he was doing to her and what, perhaps—perhaps—he still might do, then he felt an urge to open his mouth, and his heart, and speak.

  ‘Hey, Hilde . . . ’

  She went on embroidering.

  ‘Listen, Hilde . . . ’

  He came close to her.

  She shifted along a little on the sofa. ‘Yes?’

  She went on embroidering and did not look up.

  He made another try: ‘Are you angry with me, Hilde?’

  ‘Angry? How should I be?’

  No, it would not come. It was not her coldness, her unresponsiveness that closed his lips—he was well aware that this came merely from wounded pride. No, there was something else.

  That evening, and the white bit of cardboard with the inscription on it, haunted him.

  ‘Why should I confess when she doesn’t confide in me? Her pride is hurt, I dare say, but still I have a right . . . ’

  Then, a little later: ‘But didn’t I know it? From the very first minute she called it a child without a father. Of course she’s in the right, but she could still . . . ’

  Feeble fool that he was, he let the moments pass and disappear. Nothing happened. He paced up and down again, puffing at a cigarette. After a long pause he said at last: ‘Are the pillows hemmed yet, Hilde?’

  ‘Not yet,’ answered Hilde.

  Nothing happened, except—if that could be called an event—that he called one day at No. 37 Wollenweberstrasse while on his rounds, tramped up the three flights of stairs and asked for Herr Dietrich . . .

  Yes, Herr Dietrich was at home and Kufalt was promptly admitted to his room.

  Dietrich was lying on a sofa fully dressed but without collar and tie, asleep with his mouth open. It was nearly noon.

  ‘Herr Dietrich,’ said Kufalt from the door.

  ‘Hello, Kufalt,’ said Dietrich, wide awake and sitting up with a jerk. ‘Have a brandy?’

  ‘I just wanted to return that twenty marks,’ said Kufalt, and laid the brown note on the table by the sofa.

  ‘There was no need to be in such a hurry! I suppose you don’t want a receipt?’ Dietrich had rolled up the note and put it into his waistcoat pocket. ‘Well, sit you down. Good Lord, man, you look frozen. Do you go canvassing in this weather? Which part of the town are you working at present?’

  ‘The north,’ said Kufalt. ‘Where the tannery workmen live.’

  Dietrich whistled through his teeth. ‘Pretty putrid, eh? If I were you I would stop at home and wait for stocktaking. You’ll ruin more clothes than the job’s worth.’

  ‘A mackintosh keeps most of it off.’

  ‘But your trousers!’ cried Dietrich. ‘And your boots! You must have a brandy at once. Or would you rather have grog? It’s soon made, my landlady’s got a gas ring.’

  ‘No,’ said Kufalt, with a shiver. ‘I’ve had enough of grog. I mean I can still smell your grogs from the other night.’

  And Kufalt felt he had been extremely diplomatic.

  ‘Well, cheers,’ said Dietrich. ‘And may our children prosper. One more? Right! It’ll do you good.’

  ‘Did you get home all right that night?’ persisted Kufalt.

  ‘When do you mean?’

  ‘New Year’s Eve, Herr Dietrich, from the Café Zentrum.’

  ‘Ah? You heard about that?’ laughed Dietrich. ‘Yes, that evening I did have one over the eight.’

  ‘I was there too, Herr Dietrich,’ said Kufalt with mild emphasis. ‘We even had a talk together.’

  ‘Were you there indeed!’ said Dietrich in astonishment. ‘Well, I’m blowed! Yes, I was pretty well
tanked that evening.’

  Kufalt reflected hurriedly. Was this assumed, or did he really not remember? He must at least have found the placard when he woke up. Or had Minna taken it off?

  And, as though Kufalt had given him a sort of cue, Dietrich went on: ‘Well, if you were there too, my dear Kufalt, I think it was pretty rotten of you to leave me in the lurch like that.’

  ‘In the lurch?’

  ‘As tight as I was. If my friend Kutzbach the butcher hadn’t found me, I might actually have gone to bed with Minna!’

  Dietrich was more than a match for him; and Kufalt gave up. ‘Well, I must be getting on. I’ve got no one in my book today.’

  ‘Have another before you go. You look awful. I wouldn’t try and canvass with a face as blue as that. You will? Right, a quick one for the road.’

  ‘By the way,’ he said with sudden gravity; two fingers disappeared into his waistcoat and produced the rolled-up brown note. ‘By the way—can you really spare this?’

  ‘Certainly,’ said Kufalt, confused. ‘I’ve done rather well lately.’

  ‘Well, if at any time . . . ’ said Dietrich. ‘Do regard me as very much at your service. Never forget that I have always felt the deepest sympathy for your difficult—hopeless—state.’

  Dietrich suddenly beamed all over his face. ‘Well, this has been a very pleasant visit, Herr Kufalt. If you ever feel like looking in again, I’ll always be glad to see you.’

  They shook hands, and parted.

  No, nothing was explained. Nothing had happened. The heavens were dark and lowering, fate might strike from any direction: Hilde, Harder, Stark, Dietrich, Freese, Bruhn, Batzke?

  And then fate struck from quite a different direction.

  II

  On that fateful Thursday, 13 January, Kufalt slunk gloomily back to the Messenger office at about half past four in the afternoon. He had been out and about for seven hours, and his haul was lamentable: two subscribers. Or really only one and a half, as the Widow Maschke, who had not been able to resist his insistent talk, had only paid sixty pfennigs; he was to call for the rest on the first of next month, when her money came in.