It Cannot be Stormed

by Ernst von Salomon

  ‘My word,’ said Hinnerk. ‘My word,’ and suddenly he understood, gave Ive a mighty clap on the shoulder and said again, ‘My word! Really?’

  Ive nodded. Hinnerk took up his basket and put it down again, and pushed his cap on to the back of his head.

  ‘Really?’ he said. ‘Only think, and I actually believed that it would never happen.’

  He was in his element now, and seized his basket and swung it up under his arm.

  ‘Tell us all about it,’ he said, digging Ive in the ribs. ‘My word, it’s taken you two years to think it over? Two years to get to it? My word. Well, we’ll forgive and forget. Tell us all about it,’ he said.

  They ambled along the street and across the square. From time to time Hinnerk set his basket down as though it were too heavy for him, but he did it absent-mindedly, for Hinnerk was in his element.

  ‘When, where, how?’ he asked. ‘I’m delighted, my word, I’m delighted. D’you know they’re doing a lot of cackling again about an amnesty and so on, and it seems as though Hellwig has really got things going. But I’ve never really liked it as much as I did when you used to go about the country polishing the bumbles’ doorknobs for them. And I always used to think: I’ll do it, I’ll do it alone. But you used to say: he won’t, and I thought you knew best, and you thought the time hadn’t come. And then I got anxious about you, for you—you were, you know—I thought, I thought Ive is so busy swimming with the stream—don’t be annoyed, for you were busy swimming with the stream. Never mind, you’re going to get to work now.’

  ‘Don’t forget,’ said Ive, ‘that the Party repudiates individual terrorism.’

  ‘What do I care about the Party?’ said Hinnerk. ‘What do I care about any party? That was all nothing; Communists or Nazis, a crew. Some of them are dirty dogs and the others are official. Now they are talking about a ban on uniforms. A ban on uniforms, my word, as though that had anything to do with it! And even if they do manage to get an amnesty, it’s always stuck in my gullet a bit, for really it’s damned sauce that an amnesty should be necessary at all. Anybody can pull off an amnesty. But to get them out— not everyone can do that.’

  A girl came round the corner.

  ‘I’m delighted,’ said Hinnerk.

  ‘Give me one,’ said the girl. She was very thin, very much painted and wore high, red, laced boots up to the knee.

  ‘There,’ said Hinnerk, taking two handfuls out of his basket. ‘I’m delighted, girl, I’m delighted, off you go.’ And he said: ‘But this is only the beginning, Ive?’

  ‘Yes, it is only the beginning,’ said Ive.

  ‘Of course,’ said Hinnerk, ‘and I know someone we can take with us. I know a fellow who’s been in the cells and knows the lie of the land. No, he’s all right, manslaughter over a girl; what do you imagine? He couldn’t come with us otherwise, we might get nabbed or something, and we couldn’t do that to Claus Heim. Claus Heim, he’s the only one of us who’s really stuck to his guns. We shall need a car, have you got a car? Never mind, I’ll nab one if necessary. D’you think I couldn’t?’ he asked excitedly,’ and put his basket down. ‘I’ll show you now that I can; wait a bit, there’s one over there, an Opel. . .’

  ‘Don’t,’ said Ive, catching hold of his sleeve, ‘there’s plenty of time for that.’

  ‘There isn’t plenty of time,’ said Hinnerk, walking unhappily beside Ive. ‘Soup isn’t good when it’s cold. This morning when I woke up I thought, it’s high time now that we set to work again, and I thought there’s no relying on Ive any more; they’ve got him well in tow. He’s joined the lickspittles. Next thing he’ll be going to the South of France or the Riviera, and, I thought, if he sews the button on his coat, then that’s the last straw. Have you. . .?’

  No, the button on Ive’s coat was still dangling.

  ‘Anyway, we are getting to work now,’ said Hinnerk. ‘The farmers have been swimming with the stream a bit too. Those were the times, eh, Ive, at the beginning. I used to think, we shall never have times like this again. Well, and now! Of course, it won’t be easy to get going again.’

  ‘No,’ said Ive, ‘it won’t be easy, but what we haven’t done, time has done.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Hinnerk, ‘the time is ripe. To set to work everywhere, but it’s still worth while with the farmers: in the country things grow out of dung, but here it only stinks a bit. What’s up over there?’

  Something was up over there. Suddenly people were walking more quickly. They were pushing their way in from the side streets. In the shadows, at the corners, in doorways they were standing. There was a commotion in the side streets. Whistles sounded along the fronts of the houses. Isolated shrieks were heard, as though one were calling out courage to the other. Hinnerk stood still and listened.

  ‘Communists,’ he said casually, ‘come on.’

  They went on.

  ‘You know,’ said Hinnerk, ‘we must talk this all over at once. I can get away from here any time. There’s nothing to keep me here, and if there were, it could whistle.’

  A flying-squad car dashed round the corner, and then another, and yet another.

  ‘Hullo!’ said Hinnerk. ‘But that’s how things are,’ he went on. ‘If I have learnt anything here it is that it’s up to us, Ive, up to you and me above all. For the others can’t do anything. They are tied, they have let themselves be tied. They are clinging to all sorts of things, particularly to their fancy that it had to be and that there was no escape for them. They are hanging, Ive, like flies on a fly-paper. Let them hang. It’s up to us who aren’t hanging. Who else can it be up to if not to us?’

  ‘Odd,’ said Ive.

  ‘What’s odd?’ asked Hinnerk.

  ‘Oh nothing,’ said Ive, ‘only somebody else said exactly the same thing to me.’

  ‘That’s not at all odd,’ said Hinnerk, ‘that’s how things are, and we should be scoundrels if we didn’t act accordingly—Hullo, look at the crowds. Over there.’

  Look at the crowds over there. There’s a fine bunch of policemen beginning to run all of a sudden. A shot sounds, very faintly, a pistol shot probably, and Hinnerk and Ive are on the spot. The Communists are howling and shrieking.

  ‘Come on,’ says Hinnerk, ‘the first thing we’ve got to do is to thrash out a plan.’

  ‘Yes,’ says Ive, looking at the dark masses and wondering what is happening. He walks more slowly.

  ‘There’s Schweinebacke,’ says Hinnerk casually. ‘There must be something up.’

  ‘Brodermann?’ asks Ive and stops. ‘Then I must. . .’

  He peers along the street.

  ‘Nothing, come home,’ says Hinnerk.

  ‘Leave me alone,’ says Ive, ‘Brodermann, I must see this.’

  ‘All right,’ says Hinnerk, and they wait.

  Everything is in uproar now. The police sweep round in a broad, dense swarm. A shot, and another shot. Shattering window-panes. Shrieks and whistles, one after the other.

  ‘Keep back.’

  ‘Move on.’

  The rubber truncheons are whirling. Carbines fly down from their shoulders. Barricades have been set up.

  ‘Just look at them,’ says Hinnerk. ‘Look how small they are. What’s the good of them, they won’t stop anyone. Oh no, against the flying-squad! Come on,’ he says, and then more urgently ‘come on.’

  ‘Leave me alone,’ says Ive. ‘Heavens, how they’re hitting out. And we stand here and look on? It won’t do, Hinnerk, it won’t do.’

  ‘All right,’ says Hinnerk. ‘Then I’ll just stow my rolls away. Here, in this doorway, but what does it matter about the old rolls now, anyway.’

  He flings the basket into a corner, giving it a kick as it rolls over, pushing the contents on one side with his foot. People rush past, young boys with distorted faces, shakos gleam, gaiters flash by. In raging fury the young men blunder on, but there’s no escape, the wall of police is approaching. And there is Brodermann. He, too, has a rubber truncheon in his hand. The wall of discip
lined, trained, muscular bodies in trim uniforms moves like a machine; here and there the line breaks slightly and closes up again immediately. And Brodermann is there.

  Ive sees no one but him. He hears no one but him. He does not know what Hinnerk is doing. He does not notice the fighting. He does not hear the shrieks and whistles and shots. Some one jostles him; he sways for a moment, and then regains his balance, his legs wide spread.

  ‘Get out,’ says Brodermann in a loud voice.

  Ive is silent and does not stir. Brodermann stands in front of him. Brodermann recognises him. Brodermann says: ‘Get out.’

  Ive looks into his face: there are the sagging cheeks, the clean-shaven chin. There is the silver-braided collar and the star on his shako; the straight, severe nose and the ice-cold eyes.

  ‘Get out,’ says Brodermann, sharp and tense. ‘Clear out of it—get out!’ and Brodermann raises his rubber truncheon. He raises it high above his head, and Ive sees the muscles in his wide face contract. Then Ive lets out and brings his clenched fist with full force crashing up on his chin and nose.

  XIX

  Brodermann telephoned at once from the police station to Schaffer. But Schaffer had an important engagement and could not get away. He managed, however, to get into touch with Pareigat. Pareigat came immediately. As he entered the room he saw at once the body stretched out on the floor. But the head was covered with a cloth. Brodermann was very pale. He stood beside the body, and it seemed to Pareigat as though he were trembling, just a little, and on his cheek, above his silver-braided collar, there were still traces of blood.

  ‘How senseless it all is,’ he said to Pareigat. ‘How senseless it all is.’

  But Pareigat did not agree with him. So he said nothing and, as soon as everything that was necessary had been done, he left the room without a word to Brodermann. In the ante-room some police officers were standing round, and one of them was telling his comrades all about it.

  ‘So then I got out my gun,’ he said, and added, ‘and he stood there.’

  And, an East Prussian farmer’s son himself, he said, ‘He stood there like a farmer. Like a goddamn farmer.’

  XX

  Announcement in the Berliner Tageblatt:

  ‘We understand that the young man who was killed on the occasion of the disturbances in the Kleiststrasse was the well-known agitator, Hans K. A. Iversen, formerly a Right Radical, and concerned in the struggle of the farmers. In the famous bomb trial in Altona he was acquitted in spite of the more than remarkable part he had played. Afterwards Iversen appears to have adopted democratic opinions. He was even said to have been converted to Catholicism but, to everyone’s amazement, he finally espoused the Communist Cause. He was the ringleader in the encounter of the Communist demonstrators with the police, and, since he assaulted a police officer in the exercise of emergency defensive measures, he received a fatal shot.’

  The end of a political romantic!

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