by Hans Fallada
‘Of course it isn’t. She’s lying right and left. She’s under his thumb – you understand?’
‘That’s right,’ said the father’s favourite son. ‘She’s the true daughter of old Hackendahl. You saw the old man yourself this evening. He shouted and beat any sense of free will out of us. He’s the one to blame! I want to have nothing to do with the affair. I’m going to Brussels.’
‘I have to defend both him and your sister. And he wants the defence to blame everything on her.’
‘But that rests with you,’ said Erich, annoyed. ‘If Eva’s under his thumb she can hardly be held responsible.’
‘Quite,’ said the lawyer, smiling. ‘And in that case Herr Eugen Bast would reveal everything he knows about your family and, above all, drag you into the proceedings.’
‘So that if we want to have peace, Eva has to suffer?’
‘Right, my son.’
‘Nothing like a bit of blackmail?’
‘You understand perfectly, Erich.’
‘Perhaps Herr Bast wishes me to pay your fee into the bargain?’
‘Herr Bast knows that we’re friends and that you earn a good deal of money. As I said – an unmitigated scoundrel.’ Smiling, the lawyer looked at Erich. Erich was silent, ill-tempered. He was reducing the carbon dioxide in his champagne with a straw, lit a cigarette and was silent.
‘Well?’ asked the lawyer.
‘Oh, yes,’ said Erich, starting. He didn’t answer immediately but looked towards where the little naked girl was playing with a teddy bear. ‘She looks really very nice,’ he said eventually, upset.
‘You’re right,’ said the lawyer. ‘It’s one of those seldom instances when something looks better naked than clothed. And what do you think of our case?’
‘Oh, do just as you … you know, Herr Doctor.’
‘So I may say it by quoting the name of a famous novel – Arme Kleine Eva – Poor Little Eve.’
‘Everyone must help themselves.’
‘Understood,’ agreed the lawyer.
‘And since she herself wishes it …’
‘That’s so, that’s so.’
‘Six years’ penal servitude – it might change her perhaps.’
‘Undoubtedly – for the worse.’
‘Why do you sneer?’ said Erich furiously. ‘You’ve spoiled the whole evening for me. I was in a wonderful mood. What do I care about my sister and her Eugen? I want to get on. I don’t want people here in Berlin nudging and winking behind my back. I don’t want to be dragged into the gutter press. I’m not responsible for my sister!’
‘Of course you’re not,’ agreed the lawyer politely. ‘I seem to remember that old Jehovah once received a similar answer from Cain when he was looking for Abel.’
‘But I did not kill my sister!’ cried Erich angrily. ‘Let her get ten years – twenty if she likes. It’ll do her good and we’ll be left in peace.’
‘All right, all right,’ said the lawyer. ‘Now I’m much clearer about what I’m doing, and have got to know you much better, my dear Erich. In addition, I suggest,’ he said as Erich was about to vent his anger again, ‘that we change bars. I know one very nearby where I sometimes go to study.’
‘Waiter! We want to pay, please.’
§ VII
By the time both of them stepped into the street it was snowing softly and close to freezing.
‘No, no car,’ said the lawyer. ‘It’s only a step away. The fresh air will do us good. We’ve both drunk too much.’
‘I can still walk all right,’ contradicted Erich.
The lawyer made no reply and the two walked next to each other, each wrapped in his dark, alcohol-inspired thoughts. An overground train only occasionally glided over the iron arches of the Bülowstrasse. Otherwise everything was quiet. Barely a light burned faintly in the windows of grey, dead houses.
Suddenly Erich stopped, seized the lawyer by his lapel, and asked him angrily: ‘Why do you provoke me like this? Why do you force me over and over again to expose myself? I sometimes think you were never my friend … You’ve done this to me – do you still remember my room in Lille … You encouraged me to continuous humiliation! Why? I ask. Why? Why did you keep on at me till I told you to your face that – out of pure selfishness – I wanted my sister punished as much as possible? You already knew that! Is that friendship, or are you my enemy?’
He spoke increasingly quietly but ever more excitedly, and continued to hold the lawyer by his lapel as if he wanted to close with him. Now the lawyer removed his threatening hands, adjusted his own coat and said, peacefully, ‘You really have drunk too much. Let’s go on.’
Erich was furious and wanted to contradict him, but controlled himself, because the lawyer said, ‘We’re nearly there. It’s a really nice bar. I don’t know if you know that kind of bar. As I said, I sometimes go to them, often in fact. I too have my little amusements …’ He smiled faintly. ‘You’ve just reminded me of your room in Lille … Yes, I remember it all now. You were a fresh young lieutenant and wore silk shirts … God, what a long time ago that all was. Yes, it’s a homosexual bar we’re going to.’
‘I’m not going into a homosexual bar!’ said Erich, almost shouting. ‘I’m not a homo.’
At first the lawyer made no answer. He was busy humming a song that was then all over Berlin – ‘We, thank God, are different from the others’. He hummed it proudly and triumphantly.
‘As far as you’re concerned, my dear Erich,’ he said, lowering his voice, ‘you’re on the one hand a sort of project of mine, and on the other a kind of hope. As hope, you must admit that I’ve several times cared for you like a father – that you owe your pleasant and fancy-free life in the first place to my efforts.’
The lawyer continued softly and smoothly in this vein. A raging anger rose in Erich, but something held him back from giving way to it; he wanted first to hear if the lawyer really imagined that he, Erich – no, it was impossible!
Worried, the lawyer now said: ‘In your momentary irritation, you accused me of tempting you down this path, from which one might infer that it does not please you. But, my dear Erich, I have to say that up till now you have found this path very pleasant. Yes, it’s only a little while ago that you were making currency speculations in Brussels, which very much looked as though you wanted to continue on such a notorious path.’
That lawyer! thought Erich, bitterly. That damned shyster – he twists everything into a hangman’s noose!
‘Well,’ continued the lawyer, more quietly and concerned, ‘I’m not saying no! People will say to me that a way can be found of initiating you into modern affairs. For the mark is going to fall, and fall very deeply, but one day it will stop falling. Such a day could be a gloomy day for you, my dear Erich, without me.’
The lawyer remained standing, gasping for breath. Snow hindered his progress and his vision. He took his spectacles from his nose, dried them carefully and said, proceeding slowly: ‘But such a clever and egoistic man as you, Erich, will not doubt the fact that other people can also be egoistic. Me, for example. You’ll have to pay your way; I’ve long expected you to admit that, and I don’t doubt that you’ll pay on the nail.’
‘I’ve already told you,’ answered Erich Hackendahl with a surly look, ‘that I’ll share the profits of this currency business with you … Otherwise …’
‘You’re an ass, Erich!’ said the lawyer quietly. ‘Even without you I earn more money than the comrades like. No, the bill … I’ve told you already where we’re going …’
‘I’m not a homo,’ Erich repeated stubbornly.
‘I’ve heard that it sometimes happens that one doesn’t want to pay a bill,’ said the lawyer, smiling. ‘Nevertheless one pays it – unwillingly. Unwillingly.’
He smiled again and looked at Erich attentively through his round spectacles, then: ‘I already said, you were a project. My project. When I made your acquaintance, if you remember, you had just levied a forced loan on your father and sist
er.’
‘I won’t listen to any more of this rubbish,’ Erich almost shouted. ‘I’ve paid it all back.’
‘Yes, and with my money. As I say. You were on the edge, but a fire – which was then going out in me – seemed to burn in you, a self-belief, a belief in others, in goodness, or in whatever it was, and I loved you because of that fire.’
‘So I was supposed to join the Social Democratic Party, was I?’ Erich mocked angrily. ‘You no longer believed in the party, but just exploited it, and I was supposed to be the dummy, was I?’
‘I gave you every opportunity,’ continued the lawyer relentlessly, ‘to go over to, let’s say, the light. But you insisted inexorably on the dark.’
‘You forced me!’
‘No, Erich. Who slunk from the trenches to the High Command?’
‘And who in Lille taught me to do a bit of malingering?’
‘Right! When I saw that no fire burned in you, but only a tendency to laziness, dirty business and dirty pleasure, I wanted to see how far you would go – if there was at least some part of you which was worth something, a little fragment unknown to you … a little hope.’
‘Farewell, Herr Doctor!’ said Erich, but the lawyer did not stir.
‘I clawed my way up in the party,’ said the lawyer reflectively, ignoring Erich. ‘I went through the difficult years, when it was a crime to be a Social Democrat. We were heavily persecuted then, but that didn’t put us off. Back then I still believed in the good in mankind, in a better future, in progress, in the slow progress of human society.’
‘You’ve got a bit fat to be that much of an enthusiast,’ mocked Erich maliciously.
‘Oh, Erich, what an idiot you are! For the cunning chap you are, you really are too stupid. I’ve just been telling you about my getting fat, about losing my illusions so that I now only believe that mankind is bad. You were my last project, my last spark of belief. But unfortunately, my dear Erich, you’ve been a complete failure from the very first moment.’
The lawyer sighed. ‘If a debtor,’ he went on to say almost professionally, ‘cannot pay cash, we go for his material assets, as we jurists say,’ and was silent.
Erich looked at him, gloomily silent, his teeth biting into his lower lip. They were standing in front of a café, a rather dark café. It was the end of their journey. The lawyer went no further.
‘You must admit,’ the lawyer once again started to persuade the silent Erich, ‘that I’ve spared you for a long time – from my importunities, I mean. There was always the remote possibility that there was something, let’s say, decent about you. It was a very remote possibility. But since this evening … You must understand, Erich. What difference can it make to you? You can do me a favour for a change.’
Erich looked tensely at the lawyer’s imploring, bloated face. Then he said with venom: ‘Your cheeks are wobbling, Herr Doctor! Are you really so upset? Do you really think I would do that?’
The lawyer didn’t seem to have heard anything, and said simply, ‘I’ll take your sister off your hands and that oaf Bast, and you’ll be left in peace for a long time. I’ll make you into a rich man, Erich. It’s really only a trifle. Come on, Erich.’
And he clung onto him and wanted to pull him towards the café, desperately stroking his hand. ‘Erich, please … Just once! I’ve waited so long …’
‘Leave me alone,’ shouted Erich, freeing himself. ‘Don’t touch me. You want me to abuse myself in that way too!’ He looked at him, full of hate. ‘I’ll never do it, never.’
But that meant nothing to the other. He only saw his booty, the booty which wanted to escape from him and for which he had waited so long. ‘Erich!’ he shouted, and reached for his hand, gripped it and held it tight, no matter that Erich pulled away as hard as he could. Then the lawyer bent down and wanted to press his lips on Erich’s hand. Erich could already feel them.
For a moment he hesitated. Then he overcame his inhibitions and hit the lawyer hard on his lowered head. The latter hesitated, tried to stop himself, but then fell backwards onto the cobblestones in the snow with a pathetic groan.
Why don’t I go, thought Erich, and stared at the prostrate body. I shouldn’t have done that – I’m drunk. He can do me a frightful lot of harm … Now it’s too late … I’d better go.
And yet he stood there, staring at the figure on the ground.
The lawyer stirred, half sat up and looked around.
‘Oh, Erich?’ he asked. ‘Did I fall? Give me a hand will you?’
Mechanically Erich stretched out an arm and helped him up.
The lawyer stood up, wiped snow from his coat, and put his hand to his eyes: ‘I must have lost my spectacles. Will you look, Erich. They may not be broken.’
They were not broken. Erich found them and gave them back.
‘And if you could get me a taxi, Erich? There’s a rank just round the corner.’
The taxi, too, was found. Clumsily the lawyer got in and settled himself, while Erich stood hesitantly by the door. Ought he to go with him or not? He waited. But the lawyer said nothing. ‘I’m very sorry, Herr Doctor,’ said Erich in a low voice.
‘Goodnight,’ yawned the other. ‘One really shouldn’t drink such a lot. Fancy falling down in the street! Well, goodnight, Erich.’
‘Goodnight, Herr Doctor.’
The taxi moved away into the night.
§ VIII
An unending stream of people passed through the prison in Berlin-Moabit. Ten years ago, going to prison was still a disgrace. Now, in 1923, people said, ‘Can’t be helped – tough luck!’
It had begun during the war. Almost everyone had procured butter by devious means, and potatoes on forage trips. Many didn’t feel it was right, but the laws no longer seemed to fit the needs of daily life – most of them were drawn up before the war, after all. If a hungry, unemployed man stole, people considered it was not the same as when someone stole before the war, when no one needed to.
Honesty was also made more difficult, because dishonesty was so widespread. Black-market racketeers, born of the war and despised and hated during it, had almost become popular figures. The unhealthy-looking fat man with a briefcase in a big car was not so much despised as envied. The words ‘black market’ came to sound modern – and not just the words.
‘Yes,’ people said, ‘is it just racketeers who deal in the black market? What about inflation? Stock Exchange racketeers must be to blame for that. Why doesn’t the government simply put a ban on the Stock Exchange? It’s all a racket! Those at the top are behind the inflation. They want to be rid of the War Loans, and swallow up our savings. And every week they cheat us of our wages!’
That’s how people talked. Never in this period did they feel at one with their government, whether it was called the Scheidemann government, the Hermann Müller Cabinet, or Fehrenbach, Wirth, Bauer or Cuno. It was always ‘those at the top’, who had nothing to do with them. ‘They just want to take their cut and do us down.’ That’s what people thought, and that’s what they said.
A worker sweating in a factory could hardly suggest complicated theories about the Versailles Treaty, reparations, currency problems, the Occupation of the Ruhr, but he could understand only too well that his weekly wages, as high as the amount might sound, were only a fifth or a tenth of what he earned in peacetime. Well might people say: ‘Yes, we lost the war and must pay for it’ – but the worker says: ‘Was it me? What about the racketeers, the war profiteers and the fat bosses?’
And anyway, what did it amount to – a bit of stealing, cheating, embezzling? It was an era of much more gruesome crimes, crimes the papers wrote about for weeks on end. Real crimes – murders, mass murder, people who slaughtered other people, made sausagemeat out of them and then sold the sausage …
At first it was still considered gruesome, but senses became blunted. In the end utterly shameless people came and even made a musical hit out of it. Soon they were singing it everywhere – in offices and in the streets – y
oung girls and old pros outside the dance halls: ‘Just wait a little longer, and Haarmann will be with you, with his little axe …’
Was it surprising that the prisons filled up! They were like machines. They stopped and started, creaked and cracked, while grinding through ten thousand souls: paragraph such-and-such, sentence so-and-so. Settled. Next! Whether you feel guilty or I find you guilty makes no difference. The law has been broken. That alone decides.
Moabit Prison. Hundreds of cells and every cell holding four times, even six times the normal number. Throngs of people. A confusion of languages. All ages, all classes, all professions. Visiting rooms which were never free from shouting, weeping, reproaches, quarrels … Minute clerks, advisers, detectives, examining magistrates, public prosecutors, their assistants. Senior public prosecutors and chief public prosecutors.
‘Come on, come on, we haven’t got much time for you – seven minutes! I’ve still got seventeen examinations and two sessions, so will you plead guilty or not? It’s all the same to me. Then perhaps you’d better stay here a little longer and think it over.’
‘Cell twenty-three, Hackendahl, visitor for Hackendahl. Is cell twenty-three, Hackendahl, allowed to have visitors? Who is it? The brother? Are you sure it’s the brother? It’s a bad case. Has cell twenty-three, Hackendahl, confessed yet? Any danger of obscuring the facts at issue? Enquire from the examining magistrate.’
‘The examining magistrate begs to inform you of his recent death – he’s got to get four hours’ peaceful sleep sometime.’
‘I understand, I understand. But how we’re to get through it all I don’t know. All right, here’s the visitor’s permit for cell twenty-three, Eva Hackendahl, brother’s visit, let us say five minutes, nothing to be said about the case. Tell the warder that nothing is to be said about the case.’
‘I must remind you that not a word is to be said about the matter which is the cause of your being here on remand. Not even a hint. The first word, and your permission for visits will be withdrawn.’