by Irmgard Keun
“What was it like?” the old man asked in a hoarse, timid whisper. “No, don’t tell me,” he added, “don’t tell me anything, I know you’re not allowed to—nobody who comes out of there is allowed to say anything. They took my nephew too, my nephew who helps me in the shop, and they kept him longer than you. He keeps quiet about it. He hangs out the swastika flag—well, you have to. We have to go along with it all, we want to live. They’re stronger than we are, you can’t do anything against them on your own.”
And then the old man told Franz that the whole thing was Willi Schleimann’s doing. This man Schleimann was about forty years old and the father of a family, but he was always chasing strange women and girls who were nothing to do with him. He was tall and dark and well got up, and he wanted to make conquests of them all. He had an allotment in the Sülz district, of which he was very fond. He worked in it for the fresh vegetables, and because gardening is healthy and keeps you slim, and also because he could take girls to his allotment on summer evenings. He even used to shut himself up in his tool shed with women in winter. Besides this, he had a small tobacconist’s in the same street as Franz and Paul’s new shop, seven doors away. The business wasn’t doing very well, because Schleimann had other things on his mind and his wife always had to serve in the shop. She was a glum, sickly, embittered woman, and put the customers off. Well, a customer is not going to stop and wonder what’s made a woman nasty and unpleasant like that, why would he?
Schleimann was extremely nice to Franz and Paul at first. He went to the pub with them and gave them his expert advice on their shop. And he talked politics, saying things against the Nazis. He was in the SA, and found his uniform brought him more success than ever with women, and he was on the point of getting another pip when rumours began going around about him, to the effect that his grandmother had been Jewish. That meant he was flung out of the SA for the time being. The bit about the Jewish grandmother couldn’t be proved for sure, so after going to a great deal of trouble Schleimann managed to get back into the SA. But his position was now a dubious and uncertain one.
He wanted to do something which would bring him back into favour and good standing with the Nazis again, and he also wanted to stop Franz and Paul opening their tobacconist’s shop, so as not to have any competition in the street. So he went to the nearest Party office and informed on Franz and Paul for Communist intrigues and seditious language. It’s easy enough to get rid of any competition this way. Unless your competitors stand remarkably high in Party favour, they’ll at least get taken into custody for a while. And even if they’re let out later because nothing can be proved against them, a little business just starting up will naturally be ruined and has no chance of recovery.
In the case of Paul and Franz, Paul had indeed said all sorts of things against the Nazis, and Franz had agreed with him. They were both so trusting. Perhaps Paul really did go in for Communist activities, perhaps they really did find leaflets at his place—how shall we ever know? But Franz at least knew nothing about it; he has no talent whatsoever for politics. His only talent is for love and friendship, and he loved Paul.
The old antiquarian bookseller was telling him what the whole street knew, for Schleimann himself had boasted, in the pub, that he had been too clever for those bloody Commies, he’d done for them all right. And yet Schleimann too had been an active member of a now banned political party not long before the Nazis came to power.
We are sitting on the cold, wet bench now. A chill runs up my spine. “I killed him,” says Franz. I feel as if my brain has been numb and frozen, and is now gradually thawing out. I am beginning to understand, and to believe him. I want to hear more, more, more. I hear a tram going up the Bockenheim Road; is it the last tonight? I see the light go out inside a building, the grey, vaporous breath of all the sleeping people lies heavy on the city, it wafts over my hair, it settles with the light pressure of a veil on my shoulders. This is all so unreal. Am I still alive? Tunes are humming in my ears. I dream I’m hearing the music of Liska’s party.
I put my hand in Franz’s loosely clasped hands. They are his hands. It is all real, very real. Franz tightens his hands around my hand. He knows I’m here with him.
Franz listened to the old man. It was a cold, grey morning. When a ray of sun pierced the clouds like a sword, the old man hurried back to his own place, tottering along, without even giving Franz his hand. The pigeons were nodding and pecking. Was their hunger never satisfied?
Franz had been given his suit back. He had been given his wallet back too. Franz counted the money in it. He counted nineteen marks, seventy-five pfennigs. He leaned against the hideously daubed wall of his shop and ran his hand over the bare counter. He had bought it second-hand, but still in very good condition. Now, however, it had been hacked about with choppers. Perhaps they’d been looking for money, or Communist leaflets, or perhaps they just wanted to spoil the counter because it wasn’t spoilt yet.
Franz was filled with sadness. He was cold and hungry. He tried to think, but he couldn’t, so he gave up and let the sad waves of his misery sweep over him. He stood quite still, waiting for himself and whatever decisions his mind and heart would take. Then the soft, misty melancholy melted away from him, and he felt hatred in his body, hot and burning hatred, as if he had swallowed the sun.
Franz went to the main railway station. First because he was near it, and second because desperate people always feel drawn to railway stations. And third because Franz wanted to write me a letter which would get to me soon, though he didn’t think of that until he was in the station. And fourth because he was already fleeing from the consequences of a deed he had yet to do.
In the station post office he wrote me the express letter I got in the afternoon. I do love him—he thought of me, and then he entirely forgot me again. Women can never forget men quite so entirely. On the other hand, a woman can never be quite so steadfast as a man.
When Franz had written me his letter he went to a bar in Komödien Street, near the cathedral. He sat there eating liver sausage and drinking gin. He had seven gins.
“Just now Schleimann goes off to work on his allotment every afternoon,” the old antiquarian bookseller had told Franz. “He’s digging it over.” So Franz took a tram out to Sülz from Wallrafs Square.
He found the allotment. Factory chimneys rose into the air, dark and tall. They were a long way off, but they filled the whole view. The allotment gardens were a bleak wilderness of a valley among great mountains of rubbish. The waste ground was used for a tip, and the allotments had acquired walls made of ash, threadbare carpets, rusty pots and pans, boots without soles.
And in the shelter of these weird towers of refuse, strawberry plants grew, with dark green leaves. Later they would get bright, white blossom and fat red berries.
Runner beans, with fresh green foliage and small but bright red flowers in summer, clambered over dilapidated little arbours drenched with lingering, grey autumn mists and the dull, stale cold of winter without frost and snow.
The door Franz opened was rusty. All the allotments seemed to be an ocean of rotting cabbage stalks. Here and there, white snowdrops came creeping quietly out from under the rubbish. You didn’t see them creeping, just their whiteness.
Franz saw Schleimann. He was sitting on a rickety little seat in his arbour, right hand on the handle of a spade, left hand on the handle of a small hoe. The allotment felt like a graveyard where no one rested in peace, and it smelled of murder.
“You informed on me and my friend, Herr Schleimann,” said Franz, standing there in the arbour. A shiny brown box of face powder was lying on the floor like a giant beetle; a sweet and oily lilac scent filled the little place. “Bloody women!” said Herr Schleimann, smiling to himself, and he spat.
“You informed on me and my friend, Herr Schleimann,” said Franz again.
“Don’t you come bothering me, you stupid fool, get out of here, I’ve got other things on my mind,” snapped Schleimann, letting go of
his hoe and reaching for an opened, half-full bottle of schnapps that was standing on the floor beside him.
The schnapps flowed all over the floor. Franz’s hands had a firm and merciless grip on Schleimann’s neck. All the blazing heat of his hatred streamed into those hands, giving them immense strength. The spade dropped from Schleimann’s right hand.
Franz went back to the station. He didn’t take a tram, he went on foot. It was a long way.
Franz sat in the third-class waiting room, waiting for the train to Frankfurt. He was not glad or sorry. He felt no fear and no remorse. He had nothing to do now but wait for the train.
So that was it. He is sitting beside me, empty, burnt out. “Oh, Franz!” Telling his own story has not woken or warmed him. He is frozen. He feels no pain, no joy, he feels no remorse or fear, and he feels no love for me either.
“It’s a good thing if you did kill that pig, Franz!”
He sits there in silence, head fallen forward on his chest—it will fall right off any minute now, it will fall into his lap. As a child I sometimes read stories about ghosts who carried their heads under their arms when they went out haunting. The red silk scarf flows over his bent neck like bright blood. Dear Mother of God, they will cut his head off, they’ll execute him. They executed some Communists in the Klingelpütz prison in Cologne. They screamed—I heard them. I was going to the cathedral on the Number 18 tram—what’s the street called? What is it called? … Unter-Sachsenhausen. Thank God I remember. Unter Sachsenhausen. I was on the Number 18 tram—why was I going to the cathedral? What did I want there? When the tram was driving past the side street where that dreadful prison stands, the Klingelpütz, we could hear the screaming. Screams that made the air shake with pain. “That’s the Communists being executed in the Klingelpütz,” said a young SA man standing near the tram driver. He sounded proud that he knew what was going on. I couldn’t make out how we could hear them all this way off. “I knew one of ’em, quite a young fellow he was, eighteen at the most,” said the tram driver. He sounded proud too. He drove on, and the screaming went with us. One man took his hat off in a gesture of solemn and devout respect, as you might at the funeral of someone much loved and well esteemed. He put it on again hastily, with a hand that shook, when the SA man gave him a sharp, suspicious glance. A child laughed, and its mother wept. One fat woman clutched her left breast with both hands, breath coming short, a desperate look in her eyes. The screaming still hung in the air, though we couldn’t hear it any more, but we could see it. We all saw it and felt it, and for a second we were united in fear and grief. For life had been taken, and we had been there. Then everything in the world was still. A young man got out of his seat, dropped to his knees and prayed. The SA man and the tram driver preferred to suppose he was mad, rather than have to rebuke him. They took great pains not to hear what he was praying. So we drove on to the cathedral, where we all got out.
Franz must get away. The thoughts are pulsing through my head, hard and well defined, coming thick and fast and very clear. Franz has killed someone. When you have killed someone you’re on the run, always on the run for the rest of your life. I’ll run with you, Franz, I love you, where can we go? What was that whistle? A policeman? Is he after Franz?
All is quiet. That—what was his name?—that Schleimann may not be dead after all. Maybe he was just unconscious. But never mind how they find him, unconscious or dead, they’ll be after Franz and cut his head off. He must get away …
Lore, Lore, Lore, oh, aren’t the girls pretty at seventeen or …
The gramophone is playing, I’m laughing, I’m singing, nobody must notice anything odd about me. Have I been missed? “Oh, Sanna, here you are—look, here’s Sanna! Oh, Susanne, isn’t life marvelous?” Liska is drunk; she kisses me. However, she’s acting a good deal drunker than she really is, so that she can behave how she likes. You have to be drunk before you can pretend to be drunk. She leans right over, to let Heini see down the neck of her dress. He isn’t looking.
I must have a word with Dr. Breslauer, a very quiet word. We have to get away to a foreign country, and I don’t know how to set about it. What’s the point of going to school if you don’t learn these vital things there? I’d like to take Franz something to eat, but there’s no time left for eating. Franz is waiting in the dark. I’ve locked him in the coal cellar; he mustn’t run away from me. “You’ve got to do as I say, Franz, because I shall kill myself if anything happens to you.”
We’re in the living room—where are all the others? In the hall-cum-taproom? It’s so dark in here; who put out the light? There are only three candles burning on the little table in the middle of the room. Heini probably happened to say he likes candles, and Liska thinks candlelight will make him passionate. “We are dying, we are dying, we are dying every day,” chants Heini. “Bit like a funeral here, eh, Frau Liska? Give me another drink, will you—thanks. Wonder why the schnapps is so warm?”
“Dr. Breslauer, when are you leaving for Rotterdam?” I’ve got to find out how you escape. “Whereabouts is Rotterdam, what country, how far is it to Rotterdam?”
Liska has gone to sit on the divan beside Heini; she puts her arm around his neck as if she’d strangle him in her despair. Where’s Algin?
Just for a moment, Heini gazes into Liska’s burning eyes, and he looks embarrassed and almost alarmed. Liska is crying, silently, without moving. Her face is fixed, tears flow from her open eyes. Heini strokes her hair, and Liska begins to sob quietly. “There, there,” says Heini, “what’s the matter, then, Frau Liska? Can’t turn life into a romantic opera, you know.”
We will go to Rotterdam. Breslauer is kind; Breslauer is rich. He will be in Rotterdam too in a few days’ time. “What hotel are you staying at, Dr. Breslauer?” I mustn’t say anything to him now, not yet, but I’ll go to his hotel in Rotterdam and tell him the whole story. He will advise us, he’ll help us.
When is there a train to Rotterdam? We must get away tonight. How late is it? Just on midnight … what? A train leaving at one in the morning? We must catch it. What else must I do, what else must I remember? We’ll need passports. Where’s mine? Nothing for it—I’ll have to steal Algin’s passport for Franz. How much money have I got? Oh, but you’re not allowed to take money over the border, are you? Only ten marks. So what are we going to live on? Liska has some diamond rings she doesn’t like, almost never wears. She’d give them to me if she knew what had happened, why I need them. I’ll take the rings with me. We can sell them, later. And I’ll write to Liska, explaining everything. I’ll leave her my savings account book to pay for the rings. I must take one of Algin’s suits for Franz, and a coat. I must pack a case. But they’ll miss me after a while, they’ll tell the police. I’ll leave a note on Liska’s bedside table, saying I have to go away, I’m in love, I’ll explain later. She’s sympathetic to anyone in love.
What else must I ask Dr. Breslauer, what else … oh, Heini’s talking to him. Heini’s hand is resting on Liska’s hair, as if he’d forgotten it. Liska is looking peaceful, almost happy. She dares not move for fear his hand will drop away.
“Yes, of course my life here’s hell,” Heini is saying, grave and calm, “but what would I do anywhere else? Without money or the chance of earning it? Without belief in God or Man, Communism or Socialism—without belief in change and improvement over the next few decades? I’ve loved mankind, I’ve spent over ten years writing my fingers to the bone, racking my brains, to warn people of the madness of the barbarism ahead. A mouse squeaking to hold back an avalanche. Well, the avalanche has come down, burying the lot of us. And the mouse has squeaked its last. I am old and ridiculous: no power or desire to begin all over again. Quite apart from the fact that I’ve never had an actual chance to begin all over again. I have said what I thought I had to say, in my own way, in my own words. There are plenty of others to say the rest of what I would have said for me. It’s no bad thing, in these times of the general inflation of language, for a man to take counsel with him
self and begin to hold his peace. I was a witty, humorous journalist. Can’t be a witty and humorous journalist in this country or anywhere else with screams from German concentration camps for ever in your ears. There have been too many atrocities. One dreadful day, revenge will come, and it won’t be divine revenge, it will be even more atrocious, more human, more inhuman. And that atrocious revenge which I both desire and fear will necessarily be followed by another atrocious revenge, because the thing that has begun in Germany looks like going on without any hope of an end. Germany is turning on her own axis, a great wheel dripping blood, Germany will go on turning and turning through the years to come—it hardly makes any difference which part of the wheel is uppermost at any given time. Over a hundred years ago, Platen complained of being sick unto death of his fatherland. Well, in those days you could still live in exile all right. It’s different today. You’re a poor emigrant. You’ll find any other country is smooth and hard as a chestnut shell. You become a trial to yourself and a burden on others. For the roofs that you see are not built for you. The bread that you smell is not baked for you. And the language that you hear is not spoken for you.
What should I pack? We’ll need everything, we won’t be able to buy anything. What will we live on? I can leave that old blue dress here. I’ll take the picture of the Virgin Mary. Shall we have a room where I can hang it? “For the roofs that you see are not built for you …” I’m afraid, I’m afraid. The magnolia tree is coming into flower outside my window; it’s so beautiful here in spring. My bed is soft and warm. I could lie in it and sleep tonight, tomorrow night, every night. My hands are shaking, my knees are weak with weariness. I feel sick, I’ll have to throw up. I’m not well, I’ve got a temperature, I can’t escape. Was that a ring at the bell? Perhaps they’ve already come to arrest Franz. Then I can stay here, it’s not my fault, I did all I could, all I could … Oh, I am a pig, a pig! God forgive me for my sins. I love you, Franz. Everything will be all right if we love each other and keep together. Perhaps we’ll die together. That’s better than living alone and sad and spiteful like Betty Raff. But we’re both young, why should we die?
