After Midnight

by Irmgard Keun

  We reached the Mainz Road. It was officially lined the whole way down by SA men, who always look broader than usual on these important occasions. Mostly they don’t have anything much to do these days, and go about looking as if they’ve shrunk a bit. Kurt Pielmann and Herr Kulmbach, for instance, resent the fact that there isn’t a campaign on any more. Today, however, they could form an imposing cordon, which puts new life into them.

  A thin, grey man with a bicycle was going on angrily about not being allowed through. He had finally got a new job, he said, and he had to be on time. Unpunctuality could mean bad trouble for him. And even if his employers did realize he couldn’t help being late, they might still be angry with him. Life’s nearly always like that: you put difficulties in a person’s way, and a slight aura of something dubious and unpleasant still clings to him whether it is his fault or not. “Look, be reasonable, will you?” a fairly high-up SA man, drinking coffee from his flask, told the thin, grey cyclist. “Don’t bleat on like that! Just you be thankful to the Führer for his high ideals!”

  “That’s right,” said the thin, grey man, “the Führer gets to have the ideals and we get to carry the can.” His voice was trembling; you could tell his nerves were worn to a shred. The people who’d heard him were struck dumb with alarm, and the SA man went red in the face and could scarcely get his breath back. All at once the grey man looked utterly broken, extinguished. Three SA men led him away. He didn’t put up a struggle.

  His bicycle was lying on the ground. People stood around it in a circle, staring in nervous silence. It shone dully in the rain, and had a subversive look about it; nobody dared touch it. Then a fat woman made an angry face, flung her arm up in the air in the salute of the Führer, said, “Disgusting!” and kicked the bicycle. Several other women kicked it too. And then the cordon opened and let us through.

  The Esplanade café is diagonally opposite the Opera House. It has pansies flowering outside it in summer time, and its customers are nearly all Jews. Gerti and I ought to have gone on down the Bockenheim Road, but there was a cordon blocking that road off too, so we went into the Esplanade. The first thing I did was phone Liska, who said that was all right, she’d make a bite of supper, and Betty Raff could lend a hand too. Gerti rang her mother. Her mother said Kurt Pielmann had come from Würzburg and would be meeting her in the Henninger Bar about nine this evening.

  Kurt Pielmann’s in love with Gerti and wants to marry her. His father has put a lot of money into Gerti’s parents’ shop. If he takes it out now, the business will fail. You can’t help understanding them and seeing their point. I persuaded Gerti to keep the date with Kurt Pielmann. She can be friendly to him, after all; that doesn’t mean she has to marry him, and she certainly does not, not have to kiss him. With a man like that, all she has to do is say she’s glad there are people like him around, and she’d like him to tell her about National Socialism and introduce her to a wonderful world of ideas. And she isn’t mature enough yet to be the lifelong companion of a National Socialist and old campaigner, but she would like to improve her mind until she is, and the way he can help her is by sending her constructive literature. The likes of Kurt Pielmann will be sure to send her the constructive literature, if only because then he can believe he’s read it himself. I know about this sort of thing through my father, and Aunt Adelheid, and a good many other people too. They find reading far too much of a strain, far too boring. You can bet your sweet life they haven’t read Mein Kampf from beginning to end yet. Not that I have either. But they’ve bought it, and glanced at it now and again, and in the end they believe they’ve read the whole thing.

  Heini once said, “People either buy a book and don’t read it. Or they borrow a book and don’t give it back, and still don’t read it. Or they give it back without reading it. But they’ve heard so much about the book, and gone to all that trouble buying it or remembering to return it, they really do feel they know it inside out. So they’re familiar with the book without ever having read it.” This way, he said, thousands of Germans had read Goethe and Nietzsche and other poets and philosophers without going to the bother of really reading them. Look at it like that, and our Führer has something in common with Goethe.

  Gerti and I sat in the Esplanade while the place got emptier and emptier around us, quite deserted. All the Jews were leaving. Speeches came roaring out of the loudspeaker like a storm. The café was full of them: speeches about the Führer who would soon be here, about a free Germany, and about the enthusiasm of the crowd. Two elderly ladies came in, thin and neat, looking like spinsters of slender means, maybe small-town schoolteachers on a visit to the city. They ordered coffee and apple tart with cream. Just as they were about to start eating, the Horst Wessel Song came over the radio. The old ladies put their spoons down, stood up and raised their arms. You have to do that, because you never know who may be watching, who may denounce you. Perhaps they were afraid of each other. Gerti and I stood up too.

  The radio fell silent for a moment. A waiter came over and asked Gerti if she wanted to see it all from a balcony. Since we were stuck there, of course we did want. We went up and down in the lift with the waiter; all the balconies were crammed full of people. But in the end the waiter found a balcony where he could squeeze us in. He wasn’t interested in seeing anything himself.

  I was half sitting on a fat man’s lap; I couldn’t make his face out properly, but his breath was like a greasy, smelly ball that kept flying into my face. There were elegant ladies and gentlemen sitting behind us, keeping still and paying attention as if they were in a box at the theatre. Gerti herself said she felt as if we’d been given free seats for a show, only we didn’t really fit in, and we weren’t dressed for the occasion.

  Over to the right of the Opera House Square, where it’s almost like a park, a black sea of people had gathered, moving back and forth in slow waves. A dull sort of light shone over them. Several SS men were bustling about the cleared square in an excited manner, frantically waving their arms about. But still nothing happened.

  Now and then SS men carried fainting women out of the sea of people, so the wait wasn’t too boring for the spectators in the balconies.

  Then, suddenly, cars came down the road—fast and quiet as downy feathers flying. And so beautiful, too! I never saw such cars in my life before. So many of them as well, so many of them! All the Gauleiters, and high-up Party men accompanying them, drove up in those cars; it was splendid. They must all be enormously rich. When I think of Franz, and I imagine him living for a hundred years working from morning to night—always supposing he had work—and not drinking or smoking all that hundred years, doing nothing but save, save, save—well, I work it out that even in a hundred years he still couldn’t buy a car like that. Maybe in a thousand years. But who lives to be a thousand years old?

  I enjoyed seeing the beautiful cars; they looked like marvelous, shiny, racing beetles seen from above. And all the people down below, who must have been worn out with waiting by now, were enjoying themselves too, because something was finally happening, although only the people at the front of the crowd could see any of it.

  Shouts arose in the distance. Heil Hitler! The roar of the crowd came surging up, closer and closer, up to our balcony—widespread, hoarse, a little weary. And a car drove slowly past with the Führer standing in it, like Prince Carnival in the carnival parade. But he wasn’t as funny and cheerful as Prince Carnival, and he wasn’t throwing sweets and nosegays, just raising an empty hand.

  A little sky-blue ball came rolling out of the dark ranks of the crowd and into the street, making for the car. It was little Berta Silias, who’d been chosen to break through the crowd, because the Führer often likes to be photographed with children. But he can’t have felt like it this time. Berta was left standing there, a solitary little speck with a huge bouquet of flowers.

  The Führer had passed. Some SS men were kneeling round little Berta, lights were flashing, photographs were being taken. Well, Berta may get into th
e paper after all, even if it’s only with some SS men and not the Führer. That will be some small consolation to Frau Silias.

  Men who were currently famous were getting into position on the long balcony of the Opera House, with much ceremony, bowing politely to each other. They waved to the crowd too.

  They weren’t really doing anything of interest, but you were allowed to look at them.

  Gerti’s opinion was that you didn’t get much fun out of looking at these eminent men, the eminent men must get far more fun out of having all of us looking at them.

  On the other hand, there were ladies on our balcony in ecstasies because they could recognize one General Blomberg, and Göring too, because Göring had a touch of red on his jacket, and we all know from photographs that he likes to wear stylish suits. Though by now he’s really so well known he doesn’t need to make his mark by wearing striking clothes.

  Algin sometimes has a visitor, a young actor who can’t get parts, who has to make a good impression by his appearance, so he wears very expensive ties, and pigskin gloves so bright you can see them a mile off. But Göring already has a part, in his own way. Then again, however, even established film stars can never let up—they have to keep showing their public the latest thing in fashion and elegance. I expect someone like Göring is obliged to think hard all the time, if he’s going to keep offering the German people something new. And men like that have to find time to govern the country as well. Personally, I can’t think how they do it all. Take the Führer: he devotes almost his entire life to being photographed for his people. Just imagine, what an achievement! Having your picture taken the whole time with children and pet dogs, indoors and out of doors—never any rest. And constantly going about in aeroplanes, or sitting through long Wagner operas, because that’s German art, and he sacrifices himself for German art as well.

  Well, fame always demands some sacrifices. I read that once in an article about Marlene Dietrich. They say the Führer eats nothing but radishes and rye bread with cheese spread. That’s another sacrifice to fame. Hollywood film actresses sometimes eat even less, because they mustn’t get fat. And they don’t drink or smoke either, so as to keep their looks. Liska sometimes diets till she’s quite ill, just to lose weight.

  I can well imagine our Führer wanting to have a particularly slim, handsome figure, what with being photographed all the time and appearing in newsreels and Party Congress films. And maybe he’d like to show up well in contrast to Göring, and Dr. Ley, and a number of other ministers and mayors, who have all got noticeably fatter. You can see that any day from their pictures in magazines.

  Anyway, there were these eminent men in the flesh, standing on the Opera House balcony. The balcony, with them on it, was illuminated; everywhere else was dark. The lights in the square had been turned off so that the Army would show to good effect. The Reichswehr men wore shiny steel helmets, and they were carrying blazing torches. They did a sort of ballet dance with these torches, to the sound of a military band. It was a tattoo, and also a historic moment, and it looked very pretty.

  The world was big and dark blue, the dancing men were black, moving all together—faceless, silent, dark figures all in time. I once saw some African war dances in an educational film. The African dances were rather livelier, but I did like the Reichswehr’s dance very much too.

  2

  THE CROWD HAD DISPERSED, THE EMINENT MEN had gone gliding away in their magical cars, the Army had marched off to the sound of the band. One abandoned torch lay smouldering on the ground, a faint glow in the dark night. Nobody trod it out.

  The street lights were turned on, and you could see again.

  Gerti and I ran into Kurt Pielmann right outside the Henninger Bar. He was in his SA uniform and a state of great excitement. It had been wonderful, he said, had we seen everything, couldn’t he just do with a glass of beer!

  He made Gerti sit down beside him almost forcibly, so that everyone in the bar would think she was his property. The place was getting fuller all the time. People always feel like a beer after something exciting. Big, fat Herr Kulmbach came in, sweating, all red and bloated, and asked if he could join us at our table, because he wanted company to discuss today’s events. We know him because he’s a waiter in the Squirrel, where we go quite often: I mean Algin, Gerti, Liska, and some other people we know.

  When we go there, Herr Kulmbach always gives us the best seats, and altogether he is really very nice. He’s seen the Führer four times already, but he never tires of seeing him again.

  Kulmbach’s parents have a small public house in the Taunus which the Führer used to patronize years ago. Kulmbach often tells us about it. His story is always slightly different, and the Führer’s visits have increased and multiplied at each re-telling. After a while you get to feel the Führer spent half his life in the Kulmbachs’ pub and couldn’t live without Herr Kulmbach, just as Herr Kulmbach can’t live without him. There’s no telling how much of this Kulmbach is actually making up. He’s an honest man at heart, and never short-changes you when you’re paying your bill. He’s an old campaigner too, and means to stay that way.

  He went to the Party Rally in Nuremberg last year, and had a uniform and jackboots made specially for the occasion, at his own expense. He’s paying for them on hire purchase. That trip to the Nuremberg Party Rally was the greatest experience of his life, he says, he could spend hours telling you about it. Though all he actually does tell you is that the earth shook during the fireworks display, it literally shook. Yes, I’d have thought that was exciting too.

  And now Gerti has to go picking a quarrel with Kurt Pielmann in the most dangerous possible way, in front of fanatically National Socialist Kulmbach, of all people. Pielmann was so pleased with the Reichswehr a moment ago, and now Gerti is tormenting him by telling him she thinks they look better than the Stormtroopers. Of course Pielmann immediately says Gerti hasn’t got the ideological point of the Nazi World Outlook. This is what Party members always say when they’re annoyed. Gerti says right, she’d like him to explain the ideological point of the World Outlook. To which, of course, Kurt Pielmann says that if Gerti hasn’t got the point by now it’s no use explaining. Gerti and I have learnt from experience that this sort of subject only lands us in trouble.

  Kulmbach, sounding perfectly friendly, says it’s all a matter of the Führer’s personality. You only have to look into his eyes. What’s more, the Führer always does what he says he’ll do. And look at the way he sacrifices himself in his speeches! Goebbels’s speeches may be wonderfully keen and intellectual, but it’s the Führer who makes the emotional sacrifices.

  I kick Gerti under the table, but still she won’t shut up. She says didn’t the Führer once say all Jews smell of garlic? What she’d like to know is just how many Jews the Führer has actually smelt, that’s all. If you think a person is revolting, well, you don’t keep getting close enough to smell him. The Jews she knows don’t smell, anyway, and as for garlic, she is very fond of eating it herself. This upsets Pielmann no end. If Gerti can talk like that, he says, she is racially contaminated. Kulmbach tries to calm Pielmann down, saying he himself once knew a Jew who was a decent sort of fellow, and then he orders another round of kirsch.

  At this point, thank heavens, I’ve managed to get Gerti to come to the Ladies with me.

  One of the SS men from the next table followed us and asked, very politely, if Gerti could come and have a beer with him somewhere else, later, or if she was booked up for the whole evening, and maybe I’d like to come along as well, his friend would make up the party. Oh, come on, no need for us to be so chilly and off-putting! Had we seen the tattoo today? The SS man never took his eyes off Gerti. Unfortunately he didn’t look as smart as SS men usually do, because the SS have had a good deal of effort and exertion recently. When our troops moved into the Rhineland, they had to be on constant alert; we were expecting enemy aircraft any moment, and never thought the French would take it all so meekly. The French are an underhand lot, an
d might have been expected to defend themselves. We didn’t feel at all happy about it. But it was what the Führer wanted: he ordered in the troops, putting all of us ordinary folk in deadly danger almost without our knowing it. Perhaps we’re still in danger.

  I mean, it’s pure chance that poison gas isn’t eating my body away right now. The Führer doesn’t mind taking risks. He can say the word and declare war tomorrow, and kill the lot of us. We’re all in his hands.

  The SS man’s expression was grave and soothing, as if he’d saved us from something and would in all circumstances go on saving us. When he stopped talking for a moment, Gerti instantly did another frightful thing, just to get rid of him. She has this awful urge to be unpleasant to Nazis and annoy them. She told the SS man she was afraid she couldn’t date him because she was Jewish. Which is not true, and Gerti only said it out of fury, and contrariness, and what she’d had to drink. Of course the SS man immediately looked at us with chilly dislike. “Why didn’t you say so before, then?” he asked. Though he hadn’t let us get a word in edgeways. So Gerti suggested he should consult his Aryan blood and ask it why it hadn’t spoken up to tell him, the way Aryan blood is supposed to do. To stop the whole situation getting mortally dangerous, I said quickly, “My friend was only joking—your feelings were quite right first time, of course, and she isn’t Jewish, but she’s with her boyfriend this evening. He’s a Stormtrooper.” At which the SS man clicked heels in an exceedingly injured manner. “One does not joke about such things,” he said.