Once a Jailbird
Page 46
It was clear that her lodger was in trouble. That was why he was drinking. That was why he had spoken to her so roughly. That was why, when they had been talking, he suddenly sat as though he had ceased to listen.
Frau Pastorin Fleege was perhaps the most innocent little bird in the great aviary of Hamburg, but at least she knew that this big-boned, dark friend with the evil eyes boded no good to her lodger. And she decided that she would, with great care and tact, bring the conversation round to the subject that very afternoon, and warn Herr Lederer of the bench on which bad boys are made to sit.
But unfortunately the lodger stayed out that afternoon. He did not return as usual for his afternoon sleep, and the Frau Pastorin would certainly have been horrified if she had seen him in a tawdry room on the Steindamm, sitting on Ilse’s bed.
After Kufalt had slept, after all his satisfaction that the practice night was over, it had suddenly occurred to him that he still had reason to be afraid.
He had remembered that Ilse had left him in a bad temper, that she had threatened him, and that although she really knew nothing, at that moment the slightest thing might be dangerous. There was danger for him everywhere.
So he sat on her bed, and Ilse was not by any means so stupid that she did not know what had brought him there; and because she knew this, she kept on evading the matter on his mind. She had so much to talk about: the Café Steinmarder, and her want of money, and her little friends, who all earned more than she did, though they didn’t deserve to, and ‘By the way, Ernstel, aren’t you going to give me ten marks today? I’ve seen such a lovely bag at Klockmann’s.’
Kufalt was not going to part with ten marks without something in return.
‘You could try to find out,’ he said cautiously, ‘where Batzke really lives.’
‘Will you give me ten marks if I tell you?’
‘Do you know?’
‘You needn’t give me the ten marks otherwise.’
‘All right. Only five, though.’
‘I won’t get the bag for five marks.’
‘Can you tell me his proper address?’
‘Of course I can!’
‘OK. Here you are. Where does he live?’
She leaned back and laughed. ‘He doesn’t live anywhere.’
‘How do you mean—he doesn’t live anywhere?’ asked Kufalt angrily.
‘Don’t be such a fool,’ she sneered. ‘He hasn’t got a place of his own. A different girl has to take him home every night. And if they ask for money, he beats them.’
‘Give me back my ten marks,’ said Kufalt furiously. ‘You said you knew his address.’
‘I said I knew where he lived. And that I’ve told you.’
‘You give me back my money.’
There was, of course, another quarrel. Reconciliation was out of the question, and there was naturally no chance of allaying his fears. Ten marks gone, and another quarrel. He went home.
When he got home, old Frau Fleege stopped him on the landing and whispered: ‘Your friend is waiting for you inside and drinking your brandy. Oh, Herr Lederer . . . ’
She looked at him with imploring eyes.
‘That’s all right, Frau Pastorin,’ said Kufalt hastily. ‘I’ll see you again later.’
And he went into his room. There sat Batzke, dark as night; the words stuck in Kufalt’s throat, and it was all the trouble in the world to say innocently: ‘Well, Batzke, any news?’
‘Yes,’ said Batzke, ‘read that.’
And he handed him a newspaper, indicating a passage with his finger. Kufalt read:
‘In the Lokstedt district last night both the large plate-glass windows in a new shop were broken by two men with a brick and a paving stone. The culprits escaped unrecognized. In connection with this case there is an interesting statement by the manager of a building yard to the effect that yesterday afternoon a young man appeared in his office and, on the pretext of wanting samples, asked for a brick and a paving stone. The police do not yet know whether there is any connection between these two events, but they are following up a definite lead.’
Long after Kufalt had read the extract, his eyes remained on the paper.
‘Well?’ he heard Batzke ask, and the voice sounded like the rumble of an approaching storm.
‘Yes?’ asked Kufalt in reply, and tried to look at Batzke. But he did not quite succeed.
‘Listen,’ said Batzke. ‘Just you tell me where you got the stones for last night.’
‘At the harbour,’ said Kufalt quickly. ‘Off the barges.’
‘Ah,’ said Batzke; ‘so you’re not the young man that asked for samples?’
This time Batzke’s eyes were not to be evaded. The pair looked at each other for a moment, and another moment. A sudden impulse of defiance and resistance rose to the surface of Kufalt’s mind, and then passed. Batzke stared unblinking; Kufalt lowered his gaze, laughed hysterically and said, ‘I wouldn’t be such a fool . . . ’
‘Oh,’ said Batzke slowly, ‘you wouldn’t be such a fool?’
A long pause followed.
Then Batzke said quietly: ‘I won’t be such a fool either. It’s off, Kufalt.’
He stood up and, without looking at Kufalt, took a cigarette out of the box on the table and lit it; Kufalt watched him intently. He felt that he must jump up and say something; but Batzke had walked to the door and his fingers were on the latch; then he turned.
‘Shit,’ he said, spat, and went.
Kufalt sat staring at the door.
XIII
‘The police are following up a definite lead.’
No matter what a man might think, the words remained. He could tell himself a hundred times over that in the vast city of Hamburg it was impossible to find a young man who had stood for three minutes in a builder’s office and asked a few silly questions. He could tell himself again and again that he had no intention of leaving his comfortable quarters with the widow Fleege; but he woke at night and listened to the wind outside the window, and listened towards the door and thought he could hear whispers and shuffling footsteps in the passage, and the words were still there: ‘The police are following up a definite lead.’
He was still living with the widow Fleege; but he must really find some sensible occupation to drive these words out of his mind. He had too much time to brood and torment himself and drink.
For a few days he had still kept up appearances in front of his landlady, and had gone out in the evening as though he were going to the theatre. He sat in a cinema and then walked down the Jungfernstieg, stopped at the jeweller’s shop and looked at the rings. They seemed to be a part of his existence. There they lay, sparkling in the strong light, as though he had acquired a claim over them in all the many nights when his thoughts had circled round and round them; and then the sight of them began to pall. And he grew weary.
It was over. Even Batzke would not take the risk now. There stood the words: ‘The police are following up a definite lead.’ And if one of them did risk it, the other would give him away at once. No; it was over.
He had grown weary, and one day he told the old lady in a rather hesitant manner that he had lost his engagement at the theatre and must now look for another job. But ‘You needn’t worry about your money yet. I still have plenty.’
‘But, Herr Lederer,’ the old woman had said, ‘I wasn’t thinking of money. I am so sorry you are out of work, and if you do get into difficulties, I have a little money saved. I would like to help such a steady young man as you are.’
And she had taken him into her room and given him some of her thin peppermint tea, and little old-fashioned aniseed cakes that tasted somehow of one’s childhood; and she had told him how, when her husband was a young curate, he had lost heart because he had got stuck at three successive preaching tests. But his luck had then changed, and he had got that lovely rectory in the Wilstermarsch. She was sure that that was what would happen in his case and he would get a much better position; he must be patient.
He accustomed himself to taking long walks that lasted all day. Every day he went a different way. Once he went to the Apfelstrasse and had a look at the Home of Peace. He passed it several times but saw no one in the windows. He half thought of going to Woolly Teddy and begging to be taken back into favour, to type addresses for the rest of his life.
There would be sure to be some sort of Beerboom living in the house, an even feebler wreck than himself. And he would cease to be alone in his utter, hopeless desolation.
But next day he did not go to the Home of Peace; he stood outside Herr Jauch’s typing agency, and considered whether he should not march in with a superior air and engage someone to take down letters for him, at four marks an hour. He composed some wonderful business letters during the night. He would dictate all manner of orders, instructions, acknowledgements and complaints, and dazzle them all with his newly won greatness.
But he did nothing of the kind. With aching, weary feet he trudged through the slush to some little tavern, or fried-fish shop, or potato-fritter vendor, swallowed a hasty meal for sixty or eighty pfennigs and reckoned up that he could live for three or four months at least before he would need to make a move.
But these cheap meals were the merest self-delusion. And so were his calculations, for all his fear of life had passed. Life had become indifferent, grey, grim and hopeless, and all was at an end. He could of course go back to the little town and look out for Hilde Harder and tell her everything, but what would be the use?
There was nothing more to say. For him, there was nothing more to do; and a hoarse, drunken voice whispered: ‘The Trehne rises at Rutendorf, under the Galgenberg . . . ’
Then, for a time, things improved. Kufalt discovered a lending library; he lay in bed all night reading and drinking and slept almost the entire day. And he got up only in the evening about seven and dashed round to the library to get two or three new volumes before it closed.
But in the end, novels lost their power to stimulate him. He dozed over them. He could no longer imagine himself as the hero and he wandered aimlessly through the streets, the eternal streets and avenues, until night fell; then he gulped down tots of brandy in little drinking holes, hurriedly, as though he were really in a hurry, and ran out again. Tonight he would walk round the inner and the outer Alster to tire himself out. But he was never really tired.
And yet it was not on a walk through deserted avenues at night that he, for the first time in those disastrous weeks, did something. It was in an ordinary street, where he might any moment have met someone, or even run into a policeman.
It happened quite unexpectedly. Later on he was sure that there had been no such purpose in his mind. Perhaps he had drunk a little too much. Possibly that was it. He had been somewhere in Eilbeck or Hamm. He could never afterwards remember exactly where it had first happened.
It was late at night. A woman or a girl was walking in front of him, and the street was deserted (not that he noticed that).
Suddenly he found himself close to the girl and whispered in her ear, ‘Well, Fräulein, how about it?’
She turned round angrily and said something silly, such as ‘Leave me alone or I’ll scream’. Something like that.
‘All right, scream,’ he had said, and suddenly punched his fist into her face, grabbed her handbag and bolted round the corner.
How she shrieked!
Oh, well, let her shriek. He did not much mind. He had heard people shriek quite differently in prison. And there had been nothing he could do to help them either.
We must all help ourselves. That was why he was now safely round the nearest corner. He felt warm and well at ease, and he took a bus home. At last he had done something; that night he slept soundly.
It was without doubt a shabby little bag, his first bag. But had he done it for the bag? Seven marks twenty, two keys, a crumpled handkerchief, a cracked mirror. But he still had five hundred marks at home. What were bags to him!
What mattered to him were the anguished look, the fleeing form, the agonized shrieks; the sense that he was no longer the last and lowest of humanity. He too could trample on people and make them shriek.
Yes; but you really need not go out every evening, snatch a bag and hit a girl in the face. There is no need. But when you feel like it, then do it. And if the world has been looking grey and hopeless, it brightens up again when you strike the blow; all is well once more since others too can be made to suffer pain.
You, Willi Kufalt, can now sit in the Frau Pastorin’s room and talk to her about her cowshed and how, when the cow had her first calf, no one really knew what to do; and suddenly the calf was there, staggering about on spindle-shanks and making straight for the udder. But when, during the story, there’s a ring at the door and the gas collector comes, and the old lady has to pay him, you watch her take a key out of her basket, a small, single, smooth key. With it she opens the cupboard and takes out a sewing basket. She lifts out the tray and underneath—take note—is the money she keeps in the house, and a savings bank book.
While she is talking to the gas man outside, you get up calmly and quietly, your pulse does not even quicken, and you look: not much money, only about a hundred marks, but there are fourteen hundred marks credited in the savings bank book; and the authorisation slip that goes with it is neatly slipped inside. Then the old lady comes back, puts away the basket and locks it up, and you talk to her again and think to yourself that sometime, next week perhaps, or in two months’ time, you will take that money and the savings bank book.
And when you have got it and are gone, and she discovers that the money is missing, you will be sitting comfortably in a new room fifty streets away, with another landlady, and thinking that the world is once again a very good place.
XIV
The city is dark and grim. It is not light by day, nor is it dark by night. The moon is always slipping through the clouds, and bushes have branches like pointing arms, and you are not alone on your solitary walks, and every branch points to the trade that must be yours.
Behind your bed lies a trunk, made of some sort of imitation vulcanized fibre. And in that trunk are fourteen handbags. You often pick them up and try to recall each episode. But what is the sense of doing that? They were always the same; in the early morning, when you feel old and tired, it is so foolish to lie in bed, fingering the bags, and trying to call those faces back to mind . . . That one had a lovely painted mouth, and you dashed your fist into it, and broke the delicate little nose in senseless fury . . . In vain, in vain, this evening you must go out again. Faded memories. Again, and yet again, you seem to see the same peaked cap over the vacant youthful face, the face of a copper’s nark, when you leave the house.
The face under the peaked cap dogs you, and you slink away on your dark errand. But you are well aware that you are always wearing the same overcoat and hat, and that the police have fourteen descriptions of you and soon, very soon, you must cease your forays for a while because they are on your track. Peaked cap with a nark’s face beneath it . . .
You sit on your bed, your open trunk in front of you. Old Pastorin Fleege is busy in the kitchen with her little aniseed cakes. You run your fingers over the bags. Most of them are of artificial leather, but among them is a crocodile leather one, and one of white lizard skin. You like smelling those. They have brought you little, these fourteen handbags. A hundred and eighty-seven marks sixty in all. No matter; enough to buy a new overcoat and a new hat, and the peaked cap will disappear. And what will happen then?
Outside in the streets are girls and women on their way home. They come from sheltered homes, where people read in the papers about the clash of weapons in very distant worlds. And then you come and strike them in the face and snatch their bags. And the distant worlds come hurtling down on Hamburg, and they are hard and hot and merciless.
; A bell rings. Why is there always a bell ringing? He hears the old widow shuffling to the door. A voice asks, a voice answers; light steps cross the passage and he puts the bags away. But not quite quick enough: one is left behind and the door opens. Who is it?
Ilse. Ilse, of course.
‘Well, Ilse,’ said Kufalt.
‘Good morning, Willi,’ said Ilse.
‘Willi?’ said Kufalt. ‘My name’s Ernst.’
‘All right, Ernst then,’ said Ilse dutifully, and sat down in a chair. ‘Have you got any brandy?’
‘No.’
A pause. A long pause.
‘I suppose you’ve brought me my ten marks from last time?’ asked Kufalt finally.
‘What ten marks?’ she retorted.
‘Over that false address,’ he said.
‘I never gave you a false address,’ said she.
And they both relapsed into silence.
‘What do you really want?’ he asked finally.
‘That’s a nice bag,’ she said.
‘Like it?’ he asked.
‘How kind of you, darling,’ she said, and tried to kiss him.
But he evaded the kiss.
‘Why have you come?’ he asked again.
‘I wanted to know if you were still alive.’
‘You’ve taken your time,’ said Kufalt.
‘I didn’t like to come,’ she said. ‘You were so angry when you went away last time.’
‘And I’m not angry now?’ he asked.
Again a long silence.
‘Haven’t you got any cigarettes either?’ she asked at length.
‘I don’t think so,’ he said, and lit one.
‘Well,’ she said, ‘everyone knows his own business best.’
‘What do you mean?’ he said irritably.
‘Everyone must look after himself,’ she said at last, and flung one slim leg over the other, so that he could see a span of flesh between her stocking and the hem of her strawberry-coloured knickers.
‘It’s all Greek to me,’ he said.
‘Greece is not a bad place, when it’s a case of doing a bunk.’