by Hans Fallada
He drank more brandy and flung himself onto his bed; he was beginning to doze.
In his half-sleep it seemed to him as if Batzke came into his room. He just suddenly stood there, a dark and sinister figure in the middle of the room; he did not look round, he sat down in a chair as though the room were his own, reached for the bottle and drank, took a cigar out of the box, looked at it contemptuously, snapped it in half and lit a cigarette.
Kufalt wanted to get up and tell his visitor to behave himself. Indescribable anger and bitterness came over him, but he could not shake off his lethargy . . .
‘I must be dreaming,’ he said to reassure himself.
Batzke had got up. He paced up and down the room for a while. Then he drew aside the green screen, from behind which Kufalt had noticed him, and stood in silence by Kufalt’s bed. He gazed down at the sleeping man.
Slowly Kufalt opened his eyes. Batzke stared steadily down at him.
‘So you’ve come at last?’ said Kufalt heavily.
‘Aren’t you rather drunk?’ asked Batzke. ‘That won’t do; you can get drunk afterwards.’
‘I don’t think,’ said Kufalt, sitting on the edge of the bed, ‘that we’ve got quite as far as that.’
‘Now listen,’ said Batzke; ‘I’ve been thinking this business over. It can be done. But I want to do it without you. You’d be no use.’
‘What do you mean, without me?’ said Kufalt. ‘I put you up to the job and I want my share. You said yourself that a job like that didn’t come along every year.’
‘Who’s talking about the job, fathead?’ said Batzke angrily. ‘We’ll discuss that later on. I’m talking about bringing it off.’
‘Well, and what about it?’ said Kufalt.
‘I don’t want you with me. If I take it on, it’ll be a big show. It’ll be in all the papers. I’ll be a big number. And I’m not going to have you messing it up.’
‘Of course I won’t mess it up, Batzke,’ said Kufalt eagerly.
‘You mess up everything,’ said Batzke. ‘I know you from prison days. Always nosing around, always sneaking to the governor; talking’s your line. I’m not saying,’ he added more mildly, ‘that you’re not on for a nice little bit of embezzlement, or fraud on women, like your old landlady here, where there’s no guts needed nor presence of mind—you’d be quite up to that sort of thing. I’m sure you’ve been raising money that way . . . ’
Kufalt was silent for very shame. He did not dare say that even this compliment was an exaggeration; he could not admit to the honest way in which he had earned his money.
‘ . . . But,’ continued Batzke inexorably, ‘you must keep your fingers out of this job. I admit it’s a first-rate tip. I tell you what, I’ll throw back your four hundred marks for it, though I’ll need money badly for the job.’
‘Certainly not,’ said Kufalt.
‘I don’t want to be mean,’ said Batzke, his voice becoming quite touching. ‘After all, we were in jug together a pretty long time. If I bring this business off you shall have another four hundred marks.’
‘You’re crazy,’ said Kufalt angrily. ‘A hundred and twenty thousand marks, and eight hundred for me, when I put you up to the job? You can’t mean it!’
‘Who’s crazy?’ said Batzke, who had also lost his temper. ‘What’s all this about a hundred and twenty thousand marks? Do you suppose any fence would pay us the shop sale price?’
‘No; but half of it, at least,’ said Kufalt emphatically.
‘You don’t know what you’re talking about,’ said Batzke contemptuously. ‘I’ve been making some inquiries this morning. Diamonds are very difficult to get rid of, especially a packet like that all at once. They’ll have to be sent abroad; to Amsterdam or London. And the settings are worth nothing. If we get five thousand marks in all that’ll be a great deal, and I’ll need at least four men to help.’
‘And you don’t need me?’
‘What for? To smash the window? To grab the tray? To go into the shop and get them to show you the whole tray full of rings, and them not smell something fishy at once? Or make a getaway at 100 kilometres an hour? What do you really propose?’
‘I mean to be in it whatever happens,’ said Kufalt bitterly. ‘It’s no good, Batzke, I know you too well, you want to do me down; and five thousand marks is rubbish, you ought to have said fifty thousand.’
‘Well,’ said Batzke contemptuously, ‘it’s hopeless talking to a fool.’
And he turned to go.
‘I’ll drop the job.’ And he added, as he stood in the doorway, ‘There’s better tips, don’t you forget that.’
‘Right,’ said Kufalt. ‘But I promise you I’ll stand outside the shop every evening, and if you try to bring it off, I’ll squeal.’
Batzke turned quickly round. He looked at Kufalt angrily, raised his fist and walked towards him.
‘All right,’ shouted Kufalt wildly. ‘Knock me down. But that won’t help you. Not unless you kill me.’
‘Very well, Willi,’ said Batzke suddenly. ‘We’ll do it together. You go out this afternoon and get hold of a hard-baked brick. And you might get a paving stone too. And just think how to carry them so they’ll be handy, but can’t be seen. And we’ll meet this evening about half past ten at the Lattenkamp overhead railway station. There must be some nice new suburbs round about there. You can get some good practice.’
Kufalt was not particularly pleased with this prospect. He had envisaged himself as being the one to put his hand through the hole in the window and grab the tray of rings. But he was tired now, worn out by his quarrel with Batzke, though glad he had got his way.
‘Wanted to do me down,’ he thought; ‘the bastard. He hasn’t any luck! Five thousand marks. I don’t think! My share ought to be ten thousand at least. How am I to get a paving stone? You can’t just pick up a paving stone off the street and take it away! And hard-baked bricks—are there soft bricks? How am I to carry the things? What a nuisance . . . ’
‘Well, goodbye till eleven, Kufalt,’ said Batzke, who had been looking at him quizzically all this time; and a grin spread over his face.
X
At Tiedemann & Co.’s building yard, Herr Priebatsch was seated in front of a large ledger, busily making entries. From time to time he raised his head and looked at the great yard where tens of thousands of bricks, thousands of tiles, hundreds of cubic metres of sand, countless piles of timber and sheds full of cement awaited purchasers.
He noted that Gadebusch the builder’s cart was still loading, and that Lange the carpenter’s carter would, in a moment, stop at the sales office window; then, as was his wont, he looked towards the other end of his office and said, as was his wont, to the apprentice: ‘Would you be good enough to make out the invoices, Herr Preisach, instead of dreaming?’
The door of the sales office opened; instead of Lange’s carter it was a young, well-dressed, rather pallid man who entered, carrying a small case.
‘I beg your pardon,’ said the young man, apparently rather confused.
‘Not at all,’ said Herr Priebatsch. ‘What can I do for you?’
‘I wanted to ask whether you had any hard-baked bricks,’ said the young man.
‘Certainly,’ said Herr Priebatsch. ‘You have but to look out of the window. Fifty-four marks the thousand.’
‘And you keep paving stones too?’ asked the young man.
‘Basalt? Granite? Composition? Ironstone? Square? Round?’ replied Herr Priebatsch.
‘Well, really I hardly know,’ said the young man dubiously. ‘Perhaps basalt, and square—no, round, I think.’
‘And how many would you want? I would have to inquire about the price first,’ explained Herr Priebatsch.
‘Oh, not very many at present,’ said the young man awkwardly, looking at Herr Priebatsch.
‘Well, how many?’
‘Yes,’ said the young man, hesitating and looking at Herr Priebatsch with awkward deference.
‘The bricks could b
e delivered at once,’ said the manager helpfully. ‘As regards the paving stones, we would need at least a week for delivery.’
‘But I wanted one at once,’ said the young man.
Herr Priebatsch could not believe his ears. ‘One,’ he said slowly, and repeated incredulously: ‘One?’
It was so silent in the office that even apprentice Preisach awoke from his dreams and surveyed the customer.
Kufalt pulled himself together.
‘As a sample,’ he said hastily. And he added with sudden fluency, ‘The thing is, my father is going to build himself a house, and he wants a sample of the bricks first.’
‘The bricks?’ asked Herr Priebatsch very slowly.
‘And of the paving stones,’ said the young man.
Herr Priebatsch had a sudden idea, and as a result he flushed very red.
‘Sir,’ he began in a very soft tone.
‘The fact is we’re going to pave a yard,’ said the young man quickly.
‘Sir,’ said Herr Priebatsch. ‘If you’ve come to make a fool of me in my own office . . . ’
‘Just samples, I assure you,’ said the young man helplessly.
Herr Priebatsch began to shout.
‘Get out of this office at once! Either you’re a lunatic, or . . . ’
But the young man had fled.
XI
Shortly before seven Kufalt again jumped up from his sofa, on which he had been lying half in sloth and half in anxious expectation, looked into the bookcase, poured out the remains of the brandy into a tumbler, gulped it down, hurried to the nearest grocer’s shop and returned with a fresh bottle of brandy in his overcoat pocket.
He knew he had been drinking too much these last few days. But it was a kind of disease, or weakness. When he lay down after his hunt for bricks, the feeling had been strong within him to break free from all this, and lead a clean and decent life again. How good it had been to sit typing addresses in the Home of Peace, a clean job to which a man came freshly washed every morning. And now?
Absurd. In four hours he would be going out to smash windows, for practice. It was all nonsense. He must get out of it somehow. Why on earth didn’t he go alone to the Jungfernstieg, not for practice, and pluck up his courage at last? But tonight it was just practice—and tomorrow again just practice, perhaps, and just as often as that brute Batzke might decide. And constant bickering, and suspicion; and then what would be the result of it all?
He knew, but would not admit he knew, and so he drank some more brandy and lay down on the sofa.
Scarcely had he dropped into a doze, scarcely had he reached oblivion, than there was a knock at the door and Frau Fleege’s kindly, bird-like old face looked in and she called out, ‘Time for the theatre, Herr Lederer!’
He started up from sleep, and shouted: ‘Leave me alone, damn the theatre!’
The head withdrew; Kufalt was ashamed for a moment, and took another drink. He tried to go to sleep again, but in vain.
So he got up and paced up and down his room, hour after hour. He heard the old woman’s soft footsteps in the passage; he heard her creep to his door, to listen—he knew he had frightened that childlike, trusting heart, but was there no more to it than that?
It was not remorse, nor regret, nor resolution. It was just a process of walking up and down from one wall to the other: that he could do, that he had learnt how to do. Five paces in the cell; here it was eight. Here there were curtains; there, bars. That was the whole difference. At half past ten he would leave the house. He had been told to be at such and such a place about eleven. So he would leave the house about half past ten. Was it any different from the recreation period in prison? It was just the same.
Drink, and work up a lovely haze within him that dimmed his thoughts and senses. Drink again, until some radiant crimson sun rose in his brain and he began to believe what was not true—how it would be a good thing to go out, and he would make ten thousand marks, and this would be the last time, and he would buy himself a little shop somewhere in South Germany where he was unknown, and no one from these days would ever meet him. He would have a proper wife, and children, and never a quarrel . . .
His mind ran on and on. He had found an aim in life, the little panorama was unrolling—no need to think of this imminent ordeal. He wondered how he would invest his ten thousand marks; he considered how he would store his cigars; he calculated the possible profits of a tobacconist’s shop—that was the important point.
But at half past ten he promptly slipped on his coat, took the case with its absurd contents and departed.
That evening Batzke did not keep him waiting. Kufalt threw a sidelong glance at him; Batzke was clearly in a poor way. He was walking beside Kufalt through that bitter night in a thin summer overcoat.
He did not talk; he merely said, ‘Ah, there you are, let’s get along.’
And he marched off.
They walked quickly, and they walked a very long way. The streets, soaking in slush and dimly lit, were nearly deserted. They did not see a single policeman all the way, and only one or two passersby hurrying along.
Now and again they walked through fields or passed groups of allotments, and Kufalt’s heart grew lighter and ceased to throb.
But when they approached a block of houses, when they could distinguish the façades, and shops, his heart beat faster, for at any moment Batzke might stop and say, ‘Here we are!’
He found himself wishing they could walk on for ever, or that it were over, and they were already on their way home.
He constantly switched the case from one hand to the other. For a while he kept on, angrily reminding himself that Batzke had never once offered to carry it. Then he began to think of other things. It suddenly occurred to him that Batzke had done well to go to Fuhlsbüttel on an idle afternoon and look at the prison. Compared with this walk through the cold and wet, it had been a pleasant time. Lights out and a warm cell, and you crept under the blankets.
‘I’ve just been thinking,’ said Batzke; ‘there must be a certain tension in so large a piece of glass. Mind you don’t throw the stone, or it’ll drop among the stuff and very likely knock our tray over. Or it may only make a small hole. You must hold the stone as short as you can and hit from above, downwards. Understand?’
‘Yes,’ said Kufalt obediently, but feeling far from easy in mind.
‘And be careful not to put your fingers near the glass, or there’ll be blood and fingerprints, and you’ll have the cops onto you at once. Maybe the whole window will smash. I’ve never done this sort of thing. I ought to know, but I don’t.’
He muttered peevishly to himself. At last he said, ‘Well, we’ll soon see.’
Kufalt began to feel very unwell. ‘I’ve drunk too much,’ he thought, as his stomach began to sink within him.
They walked on and on. For a time they tramped along a country road with trees on either side of it. Then houses once more, long, white blocks of houses with flat roofs. And Kufalt knew the time had come.
Hardly twenty paces farther on they reached a corner where there was a shop. Two windows on one street and one window on the other; Batzke looked up and down the street and suddenly cried, ‘Go for it!’
Like a man compelled, Kufalt dropped his case on the snow, opened it, picked up the brick, holding it short, as ordered, so that he would not cut his fingers—and struck.
For a fraction of a second the window seemed to groan. Then it shivered with a crash, and the force of the blow seemed to drag the hand that held the brick out of his control . . .
He stood and stared at the window, in which there was now a gaping hole at least half a metre wide.
‘Not so bad, young feller,’ said Batzke, ‘for starters; and for such a cowardly bloke as you are, not bad at all. But you ought to have hit a bit lower. The tray doesn’t stand so high—now for the next!’
‘But, Batzke,’ began Kufalt in protest, for the crash still lingered in his ears . . . and wasn’t that a light over ther
e? . . . and there! . . . and there! . . . where there had been no light before.
‘Hurry up!’ cried Batzke. ‘Take the paving stone and throw it so it falls right through into the shop.’
And Kufalt did so.
Another crash, a clatter, the dull thud of the stone falling somewhere in the darkness of the shop, a rumble and then silence.
‘I thought so,’ said Batzke. ‘The hole’s too small.’
Suddenly a female voice shrieked out over their heads. ‘Help! Thieves! Help!’
‘Come on, man,’ said Batzke. ‘Take the case. Hurry! Now then, get a move on. There’s all the time God made before they get out of their beds onto the street.’
They departed side by side once more. The case was lighter now, and Kufalt too felt light. The block of houses lay behind them; Batzke was now leading. They seemed to be going farther and farther from Hamburg, out into the country.
Now they were no longer silent, they talked. Batzke was pleased. The great Batzke had admitted that he had not expected so much of Kufalt. After all, Kufalt would be quite useful. They might perhaps do the job together.
Kufalt was happy. He was gratified by Batzke’s praise. But mainly because the ordeal was over. The night when he would repeat what he had just done, on the Jungfernstieg, was still far away. Until then he was free, and with a mind at ease; Batzke would make all the arrangements.
And in the exuberance of his delight he invited Batzke to a glass of grog.
XII
Next morning Frau Pastorin Fleege’s lodger gave her no fresh cause for anxiety. On this occasion Herr Lederer slept soundly, as he usually did, until twelve o’clock, then appeared in a very cheerful and bright mood, asked for his breakfast and talked to her genially as he ate it, as was also his habit.
Shortly afterwards he went out. Frau Fleege then discovered the reason why she had been addressed so roughly the previous day. One brandy bottle stood empty in the corner, and a fresh one in the cupboard was already two-thirds gone.
