‘I don’t have my belt,’ Schlump said.
‘That doesn’t matter. If the guard asks any questions, we’ll say you’re ill and I’m taking you to the doctor.’
The guard, a good Bavarian, was easily fooled. They went from one mess to another and finally it was time for the racketeer to leave. ‘You’ll find your own way back,’ he said. ‘Don’t be caught without a belt.’ Schlump took the tram, and whenever he saw an officer get on he moved to the other side. He marvelled at this beautiful city with all its bridges. As he passed butchers’ shops full of meat and pies, he thought of home, where the shop would be empty save for a pink clay pig and the butcher sharpening his knife; where empty hooks hung sadly from beams; and where haggard women clutching their meat coupons thronged at the door. He passed bakeries giving off the sweet smell of fresh white bread, and thought of home, where his mother anxiously cut up the black bread into which potatoes, peel and all, had been milled.
At last he arrived at the station. The guard had changed; now there were Prussians standing there – Schlump didn’t want to get mixed up with that lot. He found a good place to climb over the fence, and at six o’clock in the evening – it was dark already – he went on to Charleroi. There he had to spend the entire night in the waiting room, which was also full of soldiers sleeping at tables or under benches. The following morning they continued on to Maubeuge, where he reported to rear echelon headquarters.
•
Schlump was first assigned to the main currency exchange office, where he was to be trained to manage an exchange bureau. To begin with he had to fetch the post and carry out other important duties. One day the captain, who in civilian life was a director at the Reichsbank, sent him and a Frenchman to Hautmont by horse and cart. Schlump sat on the coach box and rode cheerfully along the Maubeuge ramparts to Sous-le-Bois, from where they could see Hautmont below. Chatting to the Frenchman, he asked him what was in the sacks they were carrying.
‘Sugar, of course,’ said the man with the black moustache, sounding surprised. ‘Sugar for the ravitaillement,’ which was the supply point for the civilian population. Schlump was amazed that no one had told him that the exchange bureau dealt with sugar too. But the Frenchman just clicked his tongue. Aha, thought Schlump, and fell silent. As the days and weeks passed, he realised that everyone here, if they weren’t a complete idiot, was involved in deals of one sort or another.
After a month, shortly before Christmas, he was ordered to the exchange bureau in Maubeuge, which was right next to the main exchange office. He rarely saw the head of this exchange office; the man was permanently on the move, often travelling to Brussels, but there were also frequent trips to Cologne and Berlin. Mostly, however, you didn’t know where he was. A particularly reserved fellow, he wore an elegant uniform and went around in a magnificent fur, even though he was just a common soldier like Schlump.
The exchange bureau was managed by another man, who had the lovely name Schabkow. He looked like a tadpole with his big round head and watery eyes. Anyone taller than him could comfortably stare into his nostrils. He came from Breslau, but home was now Berlin, and when he laughed he revealed a cavernous mouth with a row of tiny pointed teeth, interrupted by plenty of gaps. He didn’t talk much, but sometimes told jokes that Schlump had to think long and hard about. For all these gags originated from the stock exchange, where they’d been thought up by men who were experts on human weaknesses. Schabkow had the most extraordinary luck with women, even though he was as ugly as a toad. There was a barber’s on the market square, where the barber’s ravishing young wife and her niece, a beautiful, even younger creature, worked. The entire garrison had been lathered by these soft hands, but none of them had struck lucky. Apart from Schabkow. The two women quarrelled over him, and could have torn each other’s eyes out, for both of them wanted to trim the toad’s beard.
One day – it was in the first week of 1918 – Schabkow came into the office brimming with joy. He invited Schlump back to his quarters for the evening, telling him quietly that there would be sekt and oysters, and that he’d be delighted if he’d do him the honour. Schlump arrived punctually. He was astounded by Schabkow’s comfortable quarters, and soon realised that a woman’s hand must be behind this, a woman in love. They sat down at the table. Schabkow had laid on a magnificent supper, with all those delicacies to be found in Brussels at the time. The toad soon became more animated; the sekt was taking effect. He started talking.
‘You see, young man, I haven’t always had it so good. I’ve spent much of my life hungry’ – he was about thirty years old. ‘I travelled through Switzerland with a rumbling stomach and without any money – at the time your mother would have still been holding you up to stop you from peeing on your shoes. I went to the Somme and was badly wounded in the stomach. I’ve been through many schools, young man, but I always think of my father, who taught me more than all those schoolmasters put together. I was fourteen years old and the following day I was supposed to start an apprenticeship with a Jew who’d just emigrated from Galicia. My father – he’s dead now – was a barber, but his shop was full of children, I was the tenth, and he couldn’t make it a success.’ He took a swig of sekt from the bottle.
‘You seem to have a good head on you. Listen, boy, I’m going to let you know the precious advice that my father gave me.’ He swallowed another dozen oysters and took a good gulp. ‘There’s only one thing in life worthy of your respect, my son, and that’s money. Better to go into the world with a big bag of money than a big brain. The man who’s born poor and dies rich dies honourably. For he’s praised and eulogised, and the poor whisper his name in awe. Now listen carefully, I’m going to tell you the secret: All men are wretched. They’ll all lick the hand that feeds them. It is more blessed to give than to receive. See to it, therefore, that you are sometimes a giver. Fear nobody. They’re all worse than you, unless they’re poor. Be suspicious of everyone, watch them like a hawk, but never let on that you know them. Always act as if you have no feelings. For death is to no avail. Good and evil are feelings too. Save up your feelings for the evening. Only the poor have pangs of conscience, which is why they’re betrayed and sold.
‘When you need the help of men, flatter them sincerely and modestly, but never forget that you are lying . . . If someone is in your way, turn to his wife. Pay her a clear and direct compliment, but look her in the eye. Remember that every woman, even the ugliest, has one feature that is beautiful. You must find this feature. You must tell her. She’ll know that you’re not lying, and she’ll be for ever grateful to you. She’ll remove all the obstacles from your path and you will become a rich man. And when you have come into money, never forget to be pious and to give to the poor.’
That evening Schlump arrived back at his billet blind drunk.
•
It wasn’t long before Schlump was getting in on deals too. He had a Frenchman who sold him bed sheets. This good man had hoodwinked his compatriots into believing that the Germans were about to start requisitioning all bedclothes because they were building new military hospitals, and the poor people gave him their last treasures for peanuts. He brought them by the dozen to Schlump, and Schlump shifted them on to the head waiter of the restaurant car that travelled every day between Cologne and Imperial Headquarters. They were large pieces of material, woven for French beds, in which nobody ever sleeps alone. They must not have been washed more than once. The head waiter gave him eight marks per sheet, and then had to tip the railwayman who delivered the stuff. He hid the sheets below the seats in second and first class, where officers sat with red stripes on their trouser legs, then passed them on to the big department stores in Germany. They were brightly coloured, and soon our good girls were proudly running around in their new fabrics without any idea that their clothes were already well acquainted with love.
Schlump dealt in schnapps that he got from the garrison mess and for which civilians would pay higher prices. He didn’t touch the goods himself. They w
ere delivered to him one day in return for cash, and the following day someone came to fetch them in return for cash. Little by little he accumulated money and lived a fine life. He bought flour, sugar and butter, and every week he sent a package home. One day, however, he had the chance to become a rich man at a stroke.
Schlump had in the meantime been transferred to Hautmont to run the exchange bureau there. One day a soldier appeared who’d crept straight out of the trenches. He unstrapped his kitbag and took out a large, heavy parcel. Unwrapping it carefully and laboriously, he placed a heap of beautifully neat and tight packages on the table containing brand-new locally issued banknotes. Staring at Schlump, the soldier slapped his thigh and let out a loud, triumphant laugh. ‘I found it,’ he said. ‘Give me half a million of German money for it, then you can keep the stuff.’
Schlump was struck dumb. These really were the new banknotes that the French cities issued to pay for their citizens’ wages and food. He picked up a note, marked five francs, and examined it. There was no doubt about it, this was genuine paper money. He abruptly put the note back down and said, ‘You can take the whole lot away with you again. No one will give you anything for it.’
‘What?’ the other man shouted. ‘Why ever not?’
‘It’s missing the mayor’s signature and the town hall stamp. Maybe the money was forgotten when the town was evacuated. It’s not worth a bean; you might as well give it to the rag-and-bone man.’
The soldier picked up a note, looked at it closely, and threw it on the ground. Then he grabbed his kitbag, put it on his back, and left. At the door he turned round and exclaimed, ‘You’re crooks, the lot of you, damn it!’
Schlump picked up the banknote, gathered everything together, and put it at the back of his room. Then he started pondering the matter. Surely something could be done! The truth was that there were large quantities of money in circulation, issued by towns that had long vanished from the face of the earth. Schlump pondered and pondered. In the evening he went to see a friend of his, an architect in civilian life, who was supervising the foreign workers laying new railway track.
That night they started working feverishly. His friend made a stamp and Schlump focused on the facsimile of the mayor’s signature. After a hundred attempts they finally got it right.
During the nights that followed they stamped and stamped until they sweated. The half-million had been stamped and signed! But how were they going to get the money in people’s pockets?
In his exchange bureau, Schlump was to continue to take in German money and give out French, but keep back the falsified notes. It would have been dangerous to give out half a million of counterfeit money, especially new notes. Schlump’s friend had a better idea. Every week he had to pay the workers laying track for the railway. The wages were paid in French local-issue notes, which he frequently obtained from Schlump at the bureau in exchange for German money. So Schlump was to give him the falsified notes and he’d receive genuine marks in return.
And that is what happened. They played this trick a few times until one day a report came from command headquarters that large quantities of falsified money were circulating in the district. The paper notes themselves were genuine; just the signature was fake.
Worried, they destroyed the remaining money and kept their heads down. A few days later a gendarme arrived, rifled through everything, but found nothing. He accepted a schnapps from Schlump and then vanished again.
The matter was forgotten. The two men had ten thousand marks each. Schlump put a few hundred-mark notes in an envelope and sent it home. The rest he sewed into his coat.
•
Schlump would often stand outside the door of his bureau, watching the comings and goings in this small town. He saw the clean, well-fed rear-echelon officers pass by with their shining gaiters, casually and elegantly greeting the poor wounded who leaned humbly against the walls. He recalled the words of his last German teacher, who had fought in the Franco–Prussian war. This ancient, white-bearded man had been called out of retirement because of a lack of teachers. Just before they were dismissed from their final German lesson, he had told them, ‘Well, boys, I don’t think you’ll ever have to go to war. But just remember one thing: you will be called upon to be leaders of the German people. And being a leader means being a role model. If the leaders are diligent then the people will be diligent. Which spells progress for the nation. The prosperity or despair of a nation depends on the moral conduct of its leaders. A leader’s responsibility is huge. And woe betide a nation whose leaders refuse to make greater sacrifices than the rank-and-file man. Just as the rider must first look after his horse, so the leader must first look after those who look up to him. The leader must go on even in hunger and adversity, for then the troops will die for him.’ Shortly afterwards the old man died himself. Schlump felt a little uneasy when he thought of this, and started to whistle a soldiers’ song.
Now the penal company marched past, the second-class soldiers without cockades on their caps. They looked pale and unkempt, and wore sad expressions. ‘A cigarette, comrade, a cigarette!’ they begged as they went past. Schlump always tossed them a few ciggies. One man stood out from the others, a wan lad with an innocent, childish face. Why is he here? Schlump wondered. Those poor devils were forced to work hard, and in return were given poor rations and no pay. They returned every evening exhausted and filthy, in tatty uniforms without any overcoats. Each time the wan boy was on the outside of the formation, so he always marched right past Schlump. Schlump often slipped him a roll or some salami. He would have loved to know what the poor lad had on his conscience.
One day he saw the wan boy huddled miserable and freezing by the sick bay, beside him a corporal with rifle and cartridge belt. Schlump went over and talked to the lad, who looked at him gratefully but said little. Schlump gave him some cigarettes and was keen to help. Gradually the boy warmed to him and told him of his misfortune. The words came out with difficulty; he often faltered, and Schlump had to work out a considerable portion of the story for himself. But he understood the boy, for his brown eyes talked more clearly than his ungainly mouth. And those eyes told him the following story.
‘I was born in 1900 in a small village in Brandenburg. I never knew my mother, and my father died a few years ago. He had me apprenticed to a cobbler, who was very kind and did the best he could for me. We cobbled together, forever watching out for who passed by on the village street. Every morning the schoolmaster came with his daughter to fetch milk from the farm. The girl was my age and had gone to school with me. But she always sat on the front bench and I on the back one, and we seldom talked to one another. I just kept staring at her from my bench at the back. I always wanted to sit next to her. I went to church every Sunday, but never summoned up sufficient courage, and so stayed at the back where I could see her pigtails. Whenever she passed us in the morning I felt happy the whole day long. “Good morning, Ilse,” I’d say (but nobody heard). “I hope you slept well. I dreamed of you last night. The two of us were angels and we played together.”
‘Once she brought us her shoes. I soled them. You can’t imagine, comrade, how beautiful her shoes were. In the evening I took them up to my room, put them on the chest of drawers, sat in front of it and started talking. We played together like children. In the morning I took them back down so my master wouldn’t notice. Later on, she came into our workshop and picked them up. “The boy repaired them,” my master said. She looked at me, laughed and said something I didn’t understand. I couldn’t utter a word, and my ears were pounding as if I were in a mill. Then she was gone, as were the shoes. In the evening I sat all alone in my room and howled like a little child. Don’t laugh at me, comrade, I wasn’t spineless in any other way. I’d walk fearlessly through the forest in the middle of the night, and I’d have done anything for her. But she kept passing our window every morning, and that was a consolation. Then came winter. I went for my army medical and was conscripted into the infantry. But we weren’t
called up yet.
‘I continued cobbling, and one morning the schoolmaster’s maid came with Ilse’s shoes, saying that Ilse was moving to the city, and that we were to put the buckles on her new shoes higher up. I was devastated. Ilse was moving to the city and she’d never pass our workshop again. She’d be taking her shoes to another cobbler! The master and I both adjusted her shoes, because it had to be a quick job. I took them up to my room again and couldn’t sleep a wink that night. Early the following morning she’d collect her shoes and at noon she would ride to the city with the peasants. No one, comrade, can imagine how I suffered that night.
‘At four o’clock I got up. It was pitch black and the windows had frozen. I packed up all my stuff, putting Ilse’s shoes right at the bottom, and left in secret. I was going to start out as a journeyman. I took my military papers with me.
‘I got work everywhere, because there was no one left to do those jobs. I wandered through Thuringia. Sometimes I would take out the shoes and set them before me. I kissed them; comrade, you won’t believe how I loved those shoes. Then I thought about how I’d wronged my master. He would have searched high and low for those shoes! I packed them away, beneath everything else. And I resolved never to take them out again. I made it to Hesse, and there I stuck it out with another master cobbler for a whole three months. The shoes remained at the bottom of my bundle; I didn’t unpack them.
‘But I always thought about the shoes. I thought about our village, I saw Ilse walking past. I saw the schoolmaster’s house, I saw the maid collecting Ilse from the city because it was holiday time. I couldn’t stand it any longer, comrade. I ran away again, at night and in the fog, those shoes in my hand. I begged my way, and weeks later, half-starved and in tatters, I came out of the spruce forest and steeled myself to go down into the village.
Schlump Page 17
