Iron Gustav

by Hans Fallada

  ‘Don’t bother,’ said Erich, annoyed. ‘It’s all too idiotic …’

  ‘Please do be nice, my dear. Here’s some real profiteering.’

  ‘A little more caution in public,’ advised the lawyer, Erich’s patron.

  ‘Do an ole man a favour,’ begged Hackendahl. No less persuasively the gentleman with the monocle chimed in. ‘And why not? Everybody’s profiteering now. The cloakroom attendants deal in cocaine, mothers deal in their daughters, daughters deal in silk stockings on the sly in the big stores – everybody’s in the game. And I really have something for you, Hackendahl. I can offer your four trucks Silesia at thirty-six.’

  ‘Oh, not now, Bronte.’

  ‘Silesia? What’s that stand for?’ asked old Hackendahl.

  ‘Can’t say. Potatoes, I think – there’s no need to know what you deal in … Well, Hackendahl?’

  ‘You don’t have to know? Marvellous!’ said the old man admiringly.

  ‘Do leave me in peace,’ said Erich furiously. ‘I’m in no mood now.’

  ‘Very well,’ said Bronte and was about to put away his pocketbook when a small, lively-looking man at the table called out: ‘Stop, Bronte! Four Silesias at thirty-six? I bid two at thirty.’

  ‘You bid two Silesias at thirty, I offer two at thirty-six.’

  ‘You offer two at thirty-six, I bid two at thirty and a half.’

  ‘You bid two at thirty and a half, I offer two at thirty-five and a half.’

  Across the table, the champagne bottles and the glasses they flung their mystic formulae to and fro, while all stared open-mouthed. At the nearby tables people turned round with a smile but their faces soon grew respectful, even grave. It was clear that business was being transacted – and business was a god.

  ‘I’d like to advise against,’ said the lawyer, smiling weakly. Then to Erich: ‘Quite right, my son …’

  ‘So that’s how money is made?’ marvelled old Hackendahl.

  ‘You bid two trucks at thirty-two and a quarter,’ shouted the man with the monocle. ‘I offer two at thirty-four and a half.’

  The girls goggled and then broke into a foolish laugh.

  Old Hackendahl was the only one who comprehended that this jobbing went beyond mystic formulae and profits, and had to do with the staple food of the poor. Potatoes, to which if necessary you only need add a bit of salt, and which are still nourishing. Many a day, till he had become buffoon at Rude Gustav’s, potatoes had been the only dish on the table at home and even then had been too dear. And, had it not been that the father was sitting there, Erich would have done the bargaining, Erich, his favourite once.

  The two were still yelling at one another, the rest intent on the struggle; the protagonists were now separated only by a half – half of what, the devil alone knew.

  Getting up, the old man threw a significant glance at his son and slowly went to the lavatory … There he waited. It was an ugly, stinking place. The only good thing about it was the clean water that ran lightly gurgling through the stand-ups. But that immediately became sewage water and filth. Everything clean in this life immediately becomes sewage and filth.

  He stood and waited. Then the door opened. But it wasn’t his son, it was someone else.

  Yes, Erich hadn’t changed. His hair was thinner, his face had become puffy – but otherwise there was no change. He had always been afraid to face his father. As a child he would slink off to bed and sham sleep when he had been up to mischief. The water gurgled and ran. The father waited.

  Well, it was at least good to know that his son couldn’t escape. This was the exit.

  Finally old Hackendahl returned. Five tables away he could see his son’s back – the lad had always cringed like that when he was afraid of a box on the ears … Tapping Erich’s shoulder, he said: ‘Well, young man, you had something to say to me, hadn’t you? Or shall we talk about it here?’

  The deal in margins seemed to have been concluded – all were laughing, talking, drinking. Nobody paid any attention to the pair, or hardly anybody.

  Erich turned towards his father and the two looked into each other’s eyes. Then Erich said quietly: ‘It’s useless, Father.’

  The father looked into his son’s eye without blinking. He saw it, as a whole blue but with brown and green flecks, and round it he saw a face a little like his own, ageing and getting puffy. His son’s eye seemed so cold, so empty … there was nothing there, neither sadness, love, nor regret. For a moment the father’s image came to the surface, but the son only had to turn his eye, to look at a champagne glass, or a prostitute, and the father’s image was extinguished, as if it had never existed.

  The father removed his hand from the son’s shoulder. Walking backwards, keeping his gaze on his son (as if wanting his image to stay with him as long as possible), he went to the door. When the door closed, the son breathed a sigh of relief and grabbed a glass. Suddenly he had to laugh. Now it was all over! The old man would never pester him again … Erich, liberated, laughed and drank.

  § IV

  Old Hackendahl had left the Rude Gustav bar. He’d experienced much with his children, but not yet this. That a son should say to his father’s face, ‘It’s useless, Father’ – that was completely new. Now it had got this far. They didn’t creep like a coward in front of their father – that had been bad enough. No, now they said to his face that they didn’t want him any more!

  Old Hackendahl could well imagine that a son who had grown rich might be ashamed of an impoverished father; that was despicable but it was human. With Erich, however, it was not so much that he was ashamed. It was something far worse – his father was less to him than the wench with whom he was sitting or the waiter juggling with the empty champagne bottles under the table. With them he could talk but to his father he had nothing to say, nothing whatever.

  That was inhuman, that was little better than patricide. A play like that had had a long run in the theatre. The father clearly remembered reading about it on the advertising pillars when he stopped at his cab stand. So the whole world had been reduced to a play – to nothing but a mean travesty! You had to laugh at the very misery of it.

  Old Gustav, without noticing that the beast looked round at him very surprised, took the rug from his horse’s back. Blücher wasn’t used to his master driving away unaccompanied at that time of night. Where were the fares, then, for whom one had to go crabwise? The driver, however, clicked his tongue and the cab rolled on.

  The streets were still full of people, even though the crowd had begun to thin out a little. The police patrols untiringly asked them to move on. But these people were true Berliners; they stopped before the sign of each night haunt and stared. The signs were unlit, the places closed, there was nothing to see, but they waited in the hope that something might happen.

  And at last it did. Hackendahl was trying to cross the Friedrichstrasse. Seeing a gap in the throng of idlers, without thinking he said, ‘Gee-up!’ And Blücher, who knew his lesson well and thought it good fun, reared just enough to check the cab’s momentum and then began to push backwards and sideways, like a crab.

  Those standing nearby fled screaming; those farther away laughed and approached. Cars honked furiously. Hackendahl, cracking his whip, slapped the reins against Blücher’s quarters. ‘Go on, go on!’ he shouted. ‘What’s the matter with you? Go on, I tell you.’ But the black horse ignored these commands. He wanted to do his little trick. And when an obstinate horse starts backing, the driver on his box has a difficult job. He can put on the brake, he can use his whip; but if the horse insists on backing at all costs, he cannot prevent it.

  At this point the ever-helpful Berliners joined in – with the idea of taking the animal by the head – whereupon Blücher, fully prepared for this, reared up and pushed backwards with all his might – after which he lay down right in the middle of the crossing. It was the hour when the traffic was at its worst. Promptly everything came to a standstill, inextricably tied up in knots.

  �
��You foul beast,’ shouted Hackendahl at his recumbent horse. ‘You wait till I get you alone.’

  But that was not to happen so easily. A couple of angry policemen were pushing through the crowd, and one had already produced a notebook.

  ‘Your number’s up now,’ he said furiously. ‘We’ve had our eye on you for some time but we didn’t want to be hard on an old man.’

  ‘You cat’s meat,’ exclaimed Hackendahl, punching his nag in the ribs. Blücher, however, despite police and crowd, made no effort to get up. ‘I’ll skin you alive!’

  ‘What do you think you’re doing, acting like this in the rush hour in the middle of the Friedrichstrasse? Eh? Who’s going to straighten it all out? Come on, get your animal up. An old man like you, the oldest cabby in Berlin, playing the fool!’

  A bit of popularity has its uses. The policeman was very young, couldn’t have had much experience, and was rather strict. When he rushed onto the scene, seething with anger over the idiot who – on that evening of all evenings – had brought about such an unholy mess, he had been determined to drag the driver to the guardhouse and charge him with causing a public nuisance, endangering public transport, and God alone knows what else.

  But the more he scolded the old man, who was patiently trying to deal with the horse, the more his anger diminished. He had of course already heard of Iron Gustav. Colleagues had pointed the man out and described how, before the war, he had had over a hundred cabs on the road and been quite rich, and how he was now on his last cab, as poor as a church mouse – almost a monument, a relic rescued from before the war, a reminder of the mutability of human affairs.

  Thus it came about that the compassion which his son had not shown him was shown by the policeman, who was a real Berliner from Pankow, and the real Berliner is only outwardly bumptious and aggressive; inwardly he’s quite different. Still cursing, the policeman had put his notebook back in his pocket and was now helping to push the cab – Blücher on his feet at last – and after they had shoved it a little way Blücher, changing his mind, not only let himself be pushed along but started to pull too, and the Berliners cheered.

  ‘Listen,’ said the policeman when the cab came to a stop in the side street. ‘Don’t do that again, you hear?’

  ‘Someone must have confused the old nag,’ said Gustav Hackendahl angrily.

  ‘Not a bit! Everyone knows you taught the old horse those tricks. But that’s enough of this, you understand. You’re Iron Gustav, aren’t you?’

  ‘That’s me, young man. But I don’t feel like me name tonight.’

  ‘Well, never mind,’ said the policeman almost kindly. ‘I’ve heard a lot about you …’

  ‘Yes, people talk.’

  ‘Not only from people, but from your grandsons. I live in the same house, except they’re in the second courtyard and I’m in the first. But from my kitchen I look straight into their bedroom.’

  ‘Well I never!’ marvelled old Hackendahl.

  ‘Yes. Other kids play at motor cars and chauffeurs, but your grandsons – you bet not! Always cabs. One of them the horse and the other the driver. First the big one in front and then the little one.’

  ‘You don’t say so!’

  ‘Yes. I just thought I’d out with it because I know you don’t go there at all, but it might please you to hear it, what with this business with the horse. But see that it doesn’t happen again.’ And the young policeman, having spoken the last words in a more official voice, strolled off. Hackendahl, however, when he and his cab came to a dark avenue in the Tiergarten, got down from his box, took the reins firmly in one hand and the whip in the other, and cried ‘Gee-up!’ And when the black horse, as he had been taught, began to move backwards, he thrashed him. And thrashed him again … For the animal had to learn that the days of walking backwards were at an end; from now on it would be – forward!

  The joyrides were finally over; they had anyway only been a bit of a racket. The days around the big round wooden table in the cellar were also over. It had horrified him to be the joker again at that table, where his son had disowned him. The old man had learned his lesson, and his old nag had also quickly learned its lesson, too; you would hardly believe how much a few blows can sometimes help.

  Then the two of them trotted wearily home together. And if Iron Gustav had not been so tired and exhausted, he would have been a bit surprised that he hardly felt either anger or pain over his lost son, only sometimes had the comforting thought: playing horse cabbies, why not? Ignore cars! Do cars need whips? The policeman never mentioned them. It would be a bit strange!

  § V

  Erich had to drink a lot before he could feel free again. The bearded old man who sat at his table, as if resurrected from his grave, had always stayed in Erich’s life, and now he knew for the first time to what extent. The old man didn’t visit him, he’d avoided him – but he had been there, in the villa in Dahlem, and in the inner-city office, among his employees. The grown man – the swift, ruthless business operator – had feared the hand of the old cab driver. The grown-up son had feared his father like a small child.

  Erich laughed, relieved, and had another drink.

  ‘Well, Erich,’ asked his friend the lawyer, ‘what’s the matter?’

  ‘Nothing,’ laughed Erich, drinking. ‘Just pleased, that’s all.’

  The other man nodded. ‘And what was the trouble with the cabman?’

  Erich leaned over the table, gestured with his head towards the empty chair, and whispered, ‘That was my father.’

  The lawyer raised his dark bushy eyebrows in polite surprise. ‘Interesting,’ he said with a thin smile. ‘And?’

  ‘I beat him,’ Erich blurted out. ‘Usually it’s the children who are beaten by the parents; this time it’s …’ He stopped. ‘I’m speaking metaphorically, of course.’

  ‘I understand,’ said the friend. ‘I understand completely, Erich. But you’ve done nothing out of the ordinary. There’s an old proverb to the effect that a child treads on its mother’s lap to begin with, and later on her heart … And fathers are very like mothers after all.’

  Again the lawyer nodded. Through the haze of cigarette smoke in front of Erich’s eyes and the haze of alcohol behind them, the terrifying spectacle of the nodding head and laughing face of his friend appeared to be approaching.

  However, nothing at all terrifying happened, but the lawyer just said, ‘Should you therefore unexpectedly experience some remorse, Erich, remember that you’ve only done what a hundred per cent of children do … Your health!’ He raised his champagne glass in greeting. Erich returned his greeting, and both drank.

  The night seemed to vanish in a whirl of intoxication, of girls, of laughter … Never before, felt Erich, had he been caught up in a vortex of pleasure so ecstatic. They all let themselves go, shrieking with laughter, riotously merry – oh, how they got going on that night of the Ruhr Occupation! They linked arms – there was no dance band in that pit of a cellar, so they made their own music. Swaying to and fro, they sat round the table roaring out the beautiful, the witty, the daring songs of that delightful period: ‘We’re boozing away Granny’s cottage’,‘Who rolled the cheese to the station?’,‘Well, if you can’t, let me!’,‘Yes, we have no bananas’.

  ‘What’s he want, the rude fat landlord in the red waistcoat? Iron Gustav? No one’s iron to us. We can just squeeze you with our bare fists. We’re not to make a noise or the police will hear us? Let them! They should pay attention to us. We’re above all the police, paternal police, official police – whatever! We are the past, present and future members of the Reichstag of the united German people. I’m to shut up, Herr Doctor? Of course I’ll shut up. I won’t make things difficult for you. Of course we’re not members of the Reichstag! Do I look like one? I haven’t even got a tummy – or almost not! I’m a profiteer!’ And Erich began to sing:

  I’m a bit of a crook and my flag is the national colours, black, red, gold,

  And even if my goods go bad,

>   Fifty per cent I make on all you’ve had.

  What’s this? They had pulled him down from his chair; the waiter was standing beside him with a coffee; the man with the monocle held a hand over his mouth. ‘Be sensible, Hackendahl. What’s the matter with you? You haven’t been drinking as much as all that.’

  Yes, what was the matter with him? He wasn’t in an alcoholic haze but a victory haze. He had shown himself, his father and the whole world that one had to be bad in order to succeed. Everything he had been told earlier about goodness and love was a lie. In this world you had to be bad – and this was the only world there was! The bad flourished, the good went to the wall. In that case the bad was actually good, and it was only the bigwigs and moneybags who taught the stupid people that they had to be good, the result being that people have for a long time had a very bad time on this earth!

  In triumph he looked at his paternal friend. Then he suddenly took his hand away from his mouth and shouted. ‘One must be bad – that’s the secret!’

  ‘Only being bad is not enough, either,’ smiled the lawyer. ‘The prisons are full of people who believed in such a precept. You’ve got to be clever, Erich, too.’ And without turning round, he gestured with his head towards the back door. ‘There, listen to the magic effect of your really rather horrible song.’

  Erich looked. Policemen were now standing at the door through which his father had gone. Rude Gustav, rude no longer, pale and submissive, was bowing to them. What were the police doing here? Erich gradually began to think. They can’t want me for anything at all … They’ll never want anything from me. I’m too clever for them. Bad and bad again, just as he’d said …

  ‘Drink your coffee,’ said the lawyer, and Erich did. The others at their table were now standing a little apart, sometimes looking at the police and sometimes at Erich. ‘His damned shouting’s got us into this mess,’ he heard Bronte remark.