by Hans Fallada
The old man was thunderstruck; the situation was even worse than he had thought. In these namby-pamby times of peace there had sprung up a generation soft and pleasure-loving, which could squander but not earn; 1870/71 was too far off. And he recollected the murder of the Archduke yesterday. People were speaking of war, not a bad thing perhaps, since youth would then learn that life meant struggle.
‘So you would have thrown away eight hundred marks,’ he said contemptuously. ‘You, who haven’t earned eight in your life! Why, without your father you’d die like a dog in a ditch.’
The son shrugged his shoulders.
Hackendahl went, locking the cellar door and, when he got upstairs, he also locked the door leading to the passage – there was to be no more whispering. Disobedience must not be encouraged.
He went into his room. This time he took up his pen without hesitation and wrote in the cash book: ‘29 June. Stolen by my son Erich … eighty marks.’
Well, that was that! He pushed both cash and cash book into the drawer. They could be dealt with later – the most important matter was settled.
Going out, he donned his blue cab driver’s coat with the brass buttons and his top hat; in the yard the hackney cab stood ready, Otto holding the bridle of the mettlesome horse.
Hackendahl mounted the box, put the rug over his knees, settled the top hat on his head and took the whip. ‘I’ll be back at twelve. Take Kastor and Senta to the blacksmith’s – the foreshoes are worn out. You should have noticed that yourself. Gee-up, grey mare!’
He clucked his tongue, the horse moved off and the cab rolled out of the yard.
The whole house heaved a sigh of relief.
§ XII
Eva had stood on tenterhooks behind her bedroom curtains waiting for her father to leave, although she had not risked much, as she knew, by sneaking into his room while he was busy with Erich in the cellar. She had not been so foolish as to touch the money on the desk, knowing that the morning receipts had already been counted and that the little bags of money lying in the drawer were also checked of course; but when Father found out that not only eighty but two hundred marks as well were missing, he’d blame Erich. And it hardly mattered to Erich whether he was hanged for a sheep or a lamb.
She shrugged contemptuously, fingering the ten gold coins in her apron pocket – you had to keep your wits about you. Since making up her mind not to stay much longer in this cheerless house she had hoarded cash, as opportunity offered, taking small amounts, secretly pocketing some of the shopping money, pawning articles from her mother’s linen cupboard. Slowly but surely she was freeing herself from dependence on her father.
Was she going to be conscience-stricken over stealing from him? Not on her life! Father of his own free will wouldn’t part with a penny, always maintaining that he was saving for his children, but he could live to be a hundred and she almost seventy before she inherited anything. No, better a bird in the hand, so far as the cash box was concerned, especially when it stood wide open, as it had done that morning!
Eva pushed the swing-lamp – an old-fashioned oil apparatus converted to electric light – up to the ceiling. The higher she pushed it, the lower sank the counterweight, a brass Easter egg decorated with arabesques; this she took off its hook and unscrewed in the middle. Gleaming, her golden treasure lay in the interior which had probably once been filled with sand or lead.
She stared at it, breathless with happiness, enraptured by those twelve or fifteen large coins. Her father had a good, solid fortune – partly invested in the business and the house, partly in sound government securities – she reckoned it at rather more than a hundred thousand marks. But this wealth had no intrinsic value in her eyes. Father belonged to a generation that willingly earned and grudgingly spent. He amassed money and believed that his children also ought first to earn before they spent. But times had changed, or people had changed, or perhaps it was only the old law of ebb and flow operating – low tide after the high. The new generation wasn’t interested in money hoarded up; it was something dead, senseless, ridiculous even. Money was there to be spent; idle money was futile.
And thus the little hoard in the counterweight of the lamp, accumulated by a thousand shifts and devices, enchanted this prosperous man’s daughter. Leisurely she dropped the ten fresh coins onto the others, and their melodious tinkle enthralled her. More than sight or sound of money, however, was the thought of what it would buy – freedom and a silk dress, amusement and a new hat.
With a sigh of happiness she replaced the lamp and put on her Florentine straw hat in front of the tiny mirror which was all her father would permit, and went into the kitchen.
‘Give me some money, Mother, I want to go shopping.’ Frau Hackendahl was sitting in a big chair before the fire, mechanically stirring a long spoon in a cooking pot. Everything about Mother was pendulous – stomach, breasts and cheeks, even her underlip drooped. At the window stood Otto nervously fingering his moustache.
‘What do you want to buy, Evchen? We’ve got everything we need for lunch. But you only want an excuse to go out.’
‘Not at all,’ said Eva, and her radiant mood changed to irritation at complaints so often repeated. ‘Not at all. You yourself said, Mother, we want fresh herrings this evening and potatoes cooked in their jackets. If I don’t get the herrings this morning they’ll be sold out.’
Neither statement was true. Her mother hadn’t thought of having herrings for supper nor would the Berlin market be destitute of them by the afternoon, but Eva had realized for a long time that it did not matter what her mother said – she would always give way if contradicted.
Nor was it different now. ‘I wasn’t making any objection, Evchen. For all I care you can go. How much do you want? Is one mark enough? You know your father doesn’t like you running around …’
‘Then Father must engage an errand boy.’
‘O Lord, Evchen, don’t say that. A strange lad prying about the house! You can’t leave anything about …’ She broke off, looking in embarrassment at the son silent by the window.
Eva spoke for him. ‘You mean because of Erich? Don’t be so silly. Father’ll look after him. He won’t let him out of the cellar till he gives in.’
‘But he can’t do that – it might be days or weeks,’ said the mother helplessly. ‘Do say a word, Ottchen.’
‘Did I take the money?’ said Eva and thought herself very clever. ‘We all have to swallow our own medicine. I can’t help him there.’
‘You were always like that, Eva,’ complained the mother. ‘You only think of yourself. You say that Erich took the money, but how much do you make out of the shopping?’
‘I …’ stammered Eva, thunderstruck at her mother’s not being so stupid as she had supposed.
But Frau Hackendahl’s slight show of spirit had already died away. ‘I don’t grudge it you, child. Why shouldn’t you have something out of life? But, Evchen,’ her tone became cajoling, ‘if I don’t tell about you, couldn’t you do something for Erich?’
‘I haven’t taken any money,’ protested Eva, putting it so to speak on record. ‘I don’t do such things.’
‘You know, Evchen, you’re your father’s darling. He wouldn’t mind so much if it was you who went into the cellar and let Erich out. Otto says the locks could easily be broken with chisel and hammer.’
‘Then why doesn’t our great Otto go into the cellar and free Erich? Why don’t you go yourself, Mother? You’re his mother, after all – I’d only be your cat’s-paw. And I’m not going to be. I don’t care if Erich sits there till he turns blue. That wouldn’t worry me at all.’ And here Eva threw a triumphant glance at mother and brother. ‘You’d better keep out of it,’ she said, picked up the shopping bag and slipped out of the kitchen.
The two who remained looked helplessly at each other, then the mother sank her head and began mechanically stirring her pot again.
‘And if he gets out, Mother, where will he go?’ asked Otto eventually. ‘He c
an’t stay here, can he?’
‘Perhaps he can stay with a friend for a bit, till Father quietens down.’
‘If Erich runs away, Father will never forgive him. He cannot stay with a friend that long.’
‘And if he found some work?’
‘He’s never learned to. And he’s too weak for physical labour.’
‘So that’s why we had children …’ Mother started up again.
‘Perhaps I’ll let him out,’ said Otto after a pause. ‘But if we don’t know where he’ll go … and we haven’t any money either.’
‘Look here,’ cried Frau Hackendahl, upset. ‘Here I am, the wife of a rich man, and would you believe that I’ve never had a single Reichsmark to myself? Never! Not in my whole marriage. But that’s your father, little Otto. What was he then – a mere sergeant-major. And it was I who brought him the whole coach business.’
‘What point is there in complaining about Father? He is as he is, and you are as you are, and I am what I am.’
‘Yes, and that’s why you sit there and do nothing, just staring into space. If you could you’d be sitting again at the trough with old Rabause, whittling away at a piece of wood. As far as you’re concerned the world could go to the dogs and your brother with it.’
‘No one can jump over his own shadow,’ said Otto undisturbed. ‘Because I’m the oldest, I was first and most in Father’s power. That’s why I’m as he wanted. I can’t change things.’
‘And I,’ cried his mother, really moved, ‘I’ve lived with Father longer than any of you. Most of his shouting he has done at me. But when a child of mine is in need, that’s when I stand up.’ (And she did so.) ‘And if no one else will help my Erich, then I will. You run, little Otto,’ she said, determined. ‘Bring me tools I can open the lock with. Then disappear into the stable yourself so that you’re not around and don’t know anything. I’m also afraid of Father – but not more than that, otherwise I wouldn’t want to live any more …’
§ XIII
Old Hackendahl had never allowed his fifty-six years to prevent him from occupying the box of his cab day in and day out, summer and winter alike. Admittedly he did not drive all and sundry, having no necessity to do so, but he drove certain regular fares, gentlemen who would use no one else to take them to their offices, banks or consultation rooms.
‘Nobody drives like you, Hackendahl. Always punctual to the minute and off at a good trot, no cracking the whip or fuss and, what’s more, no rowing with these new-fangled motor cars,’ some councillor of the Supreme Court would say.
‘Why should there be, Herr Kammergerichtsrat? Why make a row? I don’t demean myself with such benzine-stinkers, Herr Kammergerichtsrat. They’re nothing but death traps and in ten years no one will care two hoots for them. They’ll be out of fashion.’
Thus did Hackendahl speak with his regular clients, and as he spoke so he thought. He detested motor cars if only because, by their hooting, stench and lunatic speed, they made his best horses nervous. His fine grey would fall into a panic, take the bit between her teeth and bolt. And that was the sort of thing his elderly gentlemen fares did not like at all.
So that Hackendahl, arriving this morning at the Geheimrat Buchbinder’s villa in the Bendlerstrasse, was far from delighted to see a motor car standing at the door. The grey pricked her ears, grew restive and did not want to draw up at the kerb; indeed, Hackendahl had to get down from the box and take her head.
The chauffeur standing there grinned, of course. ‘Well,’ he jeered, ‘what’s up with the fodder-engine, pal? Ignition wrong? P’r’aps you’d like me to adjust the exhaust with a spanner, eh?’
Hackendahl naturally made no reply to chaff of that sort. He mounted the box again, stiffly taking in one hand the reins, in the other the whip, its butt on his knee, and looking as distinguished as any colleague from the Imperial stables.
The chauffeur eyed him critically. ‘Swell,’ he said. ‘First-class. Another ten years, mate, and you’ll be received at the Brandenburger Tor by the mayor as the last slap-up horse cab. And then they’ll stuff you and put you in the Märkische Museum. Or rather, in the Natural History Museum in Invalidenstrasse – right next to the big human apes from the jungle.’
Hackendahl turned purple and would probably have stated his views very forcibly had not Herr Buchbinder come out of his villa accompanied by a young man. Hackendahl touched his top hat with the whip.
‘Good morning, Hackendahl,’ called out the Geheimrat cheerfully. ‘This, Hackendahl, is my son, also a physician and …’
‘I know, Herr Geheimrat,’ said Hackendahl reproachfully. ‘I knew at once. I drove the gentleman to the Anhalter Station, Easter 1907, to catch the Munich Express, the 6:11.’
‘Of course. Yes, my good Hackendahl, there’s nothing wrong with your memory. But, Hackendahl, my son has grown into a man and he no longer wishes to have you drive him. He’s bought himself a car – my money, Hackendahl – and now he wants to go in it everywhere …’
‘He’ll get tired of it, Herr Geheimrat,’ said Hackendahl with a malicious look at the car and its grinning chauffeur. ‘When he has collided with a tree or made a few people unhappy, then he’ll leave off.’
‘Well, Papa,’ said the young man impatiently, ‘get in and in four minutes you’ll be at your hospital.’
‘Yes, my boy, I know that. But in half an hour I have to operate and if I get palpitations from your excessive speed, or if my hand is trembling …’
‘Word of honour, you’ll think you’re in a cradle, you won’t notice the speed. If there’s something new in surgery you certainly try it …’
‘I don’t know,’ said the old gentleman doubtfully. ‘What do you think, Hackendahl?’
‘As you wish, Herr Geheimrat,’ said Hackendahl formally. ‘If I may speak, however, in eight minutes I can get you to the hospital – and nothing ever goes wrong with me or ever did.’
‘Well, Papa, if you want to take your cabby’s advice about cars …’
Old Hackendahl had had a good deal to put up with that morning but ‘cabby’ was almost too much. By the mercy of heaven the Geheimrat said at once: ‘You know quite well, my dear boy, that Hackendahl isn’t a cabby. And now I’ll make you an offer – I’ll go with Hackendahl and you can go in your car alongside us and I’ll watch your little craft from my anchorage and if it’s not too stormy you may drive me back home.’
Geheimrat Buchbinder had spoken quietly but firmly. The son’s tone was somewhat annoyed. ‘As you like, Papa.’ He turned towards his car.
The old gentleman pulled the rug over his knees and settled down comfortably. ‘Now drive slowly, Hackendahl. In any case he’ll at once catch us up with his twenty or forty horse-power.’
Hackendahl was glad to get this order because the grey had been indignant for some time about the horror standing just in front, and the chauffeur had begun to jerk the starting handle. Dense little clouds, blue and stinking, issued from the exhaust right in the grey’s face.
‘Gently, Hackendahl, gently,’ shouted the Geheimrat, who had almost been flung off his seat. ‘Drive slowly – you’re to go slowly, Hackendahl, we don’t want any racing here.’
Nor did Hackendahl; but it was a pity the grey did not feel like that too. The excited creature was galloping down the Bendlerstrasse. She turned so sharply into the Tiergartenstrasse that the wheels grazed the kerb. Then, rather less furiously, but still foaming at the bit, she passed the green expanse of lawns.
‘You must be mad, Hackendahl,’ groaned the Geheimrat.
‘It’s the grey. She hates motor cars.’
‘I thought you only had quiet animals.’
‘So I do, Herr Geheimrat. But when something like that is exploding and stinking right in her face …’
‘Then drive slowly. In no circumstances are you to try to race it.’
Hackendahl looked cautiously round – not a sign of the car. Couldn’t get the old tin to move, of course! Well, the Geheimrat should see for himse
lf which was the more reliable – a decent horse or a machine. And he grinned.
At a goodish trot they drove down the Siegesallee.
‘Lots of people,’ remarked the Geheimrat.
‘That’s the fine weather.’
‘And the excitement! Have you read about the murder at Sarajevo, Hackendahl?’
‘Yes, Herr Geheimrat. Do you think there will be war?’
‘War! Because of the Serbs? Never, Hackendahl! You’ll see, they’ll give way. There won’t be a war.’
In the distance sounded a horn. Hackendahl heard it and the grey heard it too, laying back her ears.
Hackendahl took a firm grasp of the reins. ‘I believe your son’s coming, Herr Geheimrat.’
‘So he got the thing going after all. Well, no racing, please, Hackendahl.’
Nearer and nearer sounded the horn, almost uninterruptedly, a screech and a warning. But to the horse it was pure alarm. Trotting faster, she flung her head from side to side … Slowly the green monster came alongside, reached the driver’s box, the grey’s hindquarters, her head … She reared in the shafts, the cab seemed to stop a moment, and then the horse bolted.
‘You’re not to …’ came the Geheimrat’s voice.
Parallel with the horse ran the motor car, clattering, honking, smelling. Although Hackendahl looked straight ahead between the grey’s ears, keeping an eye open for any obstacle, he was still conscious of the chauffeur’s sneering face. That fellow mustn’t see a sign of weakness.
They had gone round the Victory Column without disaster when a new danger was sighted in the form of a spike-helmeted policeman, to whom the wild chase and galloping horse were highly displeasing. With a thick notebook in one hand, the other raised aloft, he stepped into the road for the purpose of putting a stop to these breaches of the traffic regulations.