Iron Gustav

by Hans Fallada

  The same old maid opened the door, looked at him searchingly, and said, ‘Yes, I recognize you from the 1919 class, even if you haven’t been here for a long time.’

  ‘It’s bad times, Fräulein,’ said Heinz.

  ‘The Herr Professor has changed a lot. He’s lost his job since he had his accident. But don’t mention it. It only upsets him. And even if he doesn’t recognize you, he’ll be pleased. No, go straight in. You won’t disturb him.’

  Professor Degener was sitting at his desk with his head in his hands. His once flaming-red hair had now become quite grey, and as he raised his head and looked at his visitor, the latter could see an ugly red scar above his once fine, clear forehead; something also seemed to be wrong with one of his eyes. The eyelid hung deep and motionless over the eye itself.

  ‘Yes, Hackendahl. I remember you well,’ said his old teacher. ‘But I recall there being two Hackendahls – but, of course, you’re the other one. The other one … never visited me.’

  The old man chuckled. Some of his earlier humour was retained in these remarks, but only a very pale copy.

  ‘You know, Hackendahl – take a seat! You must answer a question. You’re older now and have made your way in life. I take it from the ring on your finger that you are married, and perhaps are now a father. You’re nodding. You’re feeding a family.’

  ‘Unfortunately not, Herr Professor. I’m unemployed.’

  The professor nodded in assent. ‘Yes, I’ve heard about it. Many people are unemployed. It seems to be the latest occupation – and no easy one, either!’

  ‘No,’ said Heinz Hackendahl.

  ‘Well, nevertheless,’ continued the professor, ‘you’ve made your way. You are something. Now tell me quite honestly, student Hackendahl, did what you learned with us help you at all? Has it helped you in your life? Does it still give you something?’

  He looked at his former student with his single Prussian-blue eye, the other eyelid lightly trembling. He didn’t want an answer yet, and continued to speak: ‘You see, I remember you very well. You were sufficiently open-minded. You tasted the tang of the Homeric world, and Plato was also not just a name to you. Now tell me, student Hackendahl, is anything of what you learned with us still in you? Does it help you? Does it give you pleasure?’

  Heinz Hackendahl had never thought about it. It was all so very long ago. Something strange and half forgotten only now slowly began to stir in him at the words of his teacher. However, the fact that he had first to think about it already provided an answer in itself. But it was an answer he was reluctant to give the old man.

  ‘You see, Hackendahl,’ the professor started up again. ‘I sit here a lot and think. No, I’m no longer teaching, since … since a long time. I’m also unemployed, but of course I’m an old man. My job is behind me. But I always have to ask myself: have I really done my job? I’ve calculated that I’ve introduced well over a thousand students into the world of Classical Greece. But did I really do so? So that something remained in them?’

  His chin was in his hand and his blue eye looked at Heinz Hackendahl as clearly and as alertly as ever.

  ‘No one could have done it better than you!’ exclaimed Heinz Hackendahl.

  ‘Your teacher is not asking you for grades, student Hackendahl,’ chuckled the old man. ‘Just tell me what you took away from those classes. Do you still sometimes think of your Homer?’

  ‘I live in such another world …’

  ‘So … you too,’ said the teacher, sad. ‘He doesn’t think of him, either. No matter how many I ask. You see, Hackendahl, when you get old, you begin to ask yourself: why have you actually lived? What have you achieved? So much out there cherished and valuable to us older people has collapsed, and every day yet more collapses … So I wanted to console myself, and said to myself: you have taught over a thousand young people. You have introduced them to a world of beauty, of manly heroes, of love and battle. But it has made no difference. That world meant nothing to any of you. It was a false consolation.’

  The professor no longer looked at his old student. He looked down at his desk, onto the worn-out green tablecloth, on which the work of a thousand students had lain. He’d read them, marked them, improved them, criticized them, encouraged them, and praised and blamed them. But nothing had remained. It was as if a child had made marks in the sand: the dew obscured them, the wind blew the sand away, rain washed the marks away. Nothing remained. It had all been just a game.

  Student Hackendahl looked at his old teacher and said: ‘Herr Professor, we who are now unemployed, we often think as you do: why are we actually living? We aren’t allowed to do anything. When I stand in the dole queue – that’s somewhere, Herr Professor, where we have to go every day in order to prove that we really are not working. Because that is now our only duty: to do nothing. So when I’m among the others at the dole queue, it feels to me as if I’m always growing older immeasurably fast. It is so difficult to explain – as if I were still young, but ageing at an infinite rate. And between the two there is nothing – no achievement, no pleasure, only an incomprehensibly fast ageing process.’

  ‘Just like me,’ murmured Professor Degener. ‘I didn’t want to grow old either, and suddenly I was, and noticed I hadn’t yet done anything.’

  ‘In this situation, your time at school,’ repeated Heinz Hackendahl, ‘seems infinitely far away, as if it had never really been. However,’ he said, and laid his hand gently over the thin, white, blue-veined hand of his teacher, ‘if I don’t think of the Iliad and no longer of Antigone, I have always thought about something that you once said to me. When things were going very badly for me, you once said: “You can fall into the mud, but you don’t have to lie in it.” And another time, when I was making big plans, you said: “Healthy cells first, otherwise the body can’t be healthy.” ’

  The professor shook his head, dissatisfied. ‘Just expressions, Hackendahl. Anyone can tell you that. It’s nothing. It has nothing to do with Classical Greece and my life’s work.’

  ‘Yes, of course, Herr Professor, one can perhaps hear such things everywhere. But they don’t work everywhere. They don’t help if just any person says them. But because you said them, they help me.’

  The professor continued to be dissatisfied. ‘Oh, Hackendahl, just because things were going badly for you then, and your heart was open, it worked. It was nothing to do with me. You can say “Honesty’s the best policy” a hundred times and no one will listen. But if you say it precisely to someone planning something dishonest, it will work. No, it has nothing to do with me.’

  And once again he leaned his head on his hand.

  ‘You say you absolutely didn’t help me, Herr Professor. But you did so nevertheless. If it didn’t matter who our teacher was, if instead of you another could have taught us our Greek subjunctives, why did we still always come to you – always rely on you? Homer I might have forgotten for a while, but I never forgot Professor Degener. It was the same for many.’

  ‘Almost no one comes any more,’ said the professor. ‘The doorbell hardly ever rings.’

  However, just as he said that, the doorbell rang and Hoffmann, one of Heinz Hackendahl’s class comrades, entered. He was taller, larger and had some scars on his face, but was easy to recognize all the same.

  They greeted one another, and Heinz Hackendahl said: ‘Listen, Hoffmann. Herr Professor insists that he was just an ordinary teacher. And he still maintains that it made no difference if the trainee teacher – Lieblich, Liebreich or Liebling, or whatever he was called – or he took the class.’

  ‘Oh, rubbish,’ laughed Hoffmann in his deep bass voice. ‘We’d better not say that. Do you remember how angry we made him, and had to go to his classroom to apologize? You insisted, Herr Professor!’

  ‘You must have behaved very badly.’

  ‘It was sheer cheek – really disgusting cheek!’ said Hoffmann, assuming the old language of school without any difficulty. And the two of them quickly took up school talk,
and the professor joined them after a while, turning his back on the present.

  The elderly maid came in with tea and cakes. A little concerned, the teacher looked for a cigarette weak enough not to harm the young. He also greatly surprised student Hoffmann by now admitting to him, after years and years, that the teacher had known very well that the examinee Hoffmann had copied his exam paper from another’s. ‘But I didn’t want to fail you, Hoffmann. It was the very lowest Abitur grade, with minimum demands. You would never have managed a normal exam. You were always a very lazy person, Hoffmann.’

  All three of them were much amused, including the old teacher. He no longer worried over what he had actually achieved in life. That is in general a very tricky question, and now it was even trickier.

  Later, Hoffmann and Hackendahl went home together. ‘Wait a moment! I’ll take you,’ said Hoffmann. ‘Where do you live, Hackendahl?’

  ‘No, I’ll take you,’ said Hackendahl. ‘I’ve got time.’

  ‘As far as time goes, I’ve masses,’ said Hoffmann. ‘I did my exams exactly two and half years ago, but must wait another two and a half years for work. Or perhaps five.’

  ‘So you’re unemployed too?’

  ‘Of course, what else? From what I gather of our class, all are unemployed. Yes, Hackendahl, my son, three or four years of study, and then nothing more.’

  ‘I studied for three years, too.’

  ‘But then you were able to find some work after all. We always prepared ourselves for life and its work, and just when we were ready for work, there was none. And what were you doing? Already married and a father? You managed it! I, however, on the other hand …’

  ‘You could do that any day.’

  ‘Don’t be silly. How could I? I’ll have you know,’ said Hoffmann, shuffling his arms and legs about, ‘this is the only decent suit I’ve got left. I only wear it on solemn occasions like a visit to Professor Degener, or for completely unsuccessful job applications. My other pair of trousers – well, my old woman says they are irreparable.’

  ‘Just like us!’ exclaimed Heinz Hackendahl. And he was undeniably almost happy that things were no different for the qualified academic.

  ‘Only that you can go on the dole,’ said Hoffmann. ‘Our trouser bottoms have holes in them too, but of that we are proud. However, we don’t consider it good form to go on the dole.’

  ‘A pair of academics are on the dole with us,’ explained Hackendahl.

  ‘Ah, well,’ said Hoffmann, ‘they’re pioneers. The day will soon come when the noble fathers will say: I’m not forking out any more for that lot.’

  ‘You thought it would be a bit different, didn’t you?’

  ‘Thought what?’

  ‘The whole kaboosh – life.’

  ‘Of course, naturally … It’s a shithouse.’

  ‘Yes, a shithouse!’

  ‘Of course, a shithouse!’

  And for a few minutes they enjoyed saying shit to one another. It wasn’t just a word for them, it really was – shit.

  Later they talked about their old teacher, Professor Degener.

  ‘What sort of a disaster was that?’ asked Heinz Hackendahl. ‘Do you know anything about it, Hoffmann?’

  ‘Of course. Didn’t you hear? A perfect story – fits well into the general shit.’

  And Hoffmann told how Herr Professor Degener, a man who, after all, was against all demonstrative expression of his emotions, nevertheless – given the occasion – would hoist a black, white and red flag on his balcony. This balcony – as normal in the city – had a neighbouring balcony, whose owners were not for that flag, but preferred the red flag.

  As the Reichstag was also in disagreement over the colours of the German flag, and a regime had been overthrown because of it, and Herr von Hindenburg personally intervened, but without success, because feelings were already too embittered – because, therefore, the whole German people were involved in fighting about a flag, the neighbouring balcony occupier didn’t see why he shouldn’t have his own such fight. He forcibly took the black, white and red flag from the professor’s balcony onto his own, and destroyed it.

  The professor, more of a quiet academic, but not without spirit, had thus far not considered flags very important, but the abuse of flags he considered very important. He therefore replaced the broken flag with a new one, and kept watch.

  However, an old teacher is in no better position than his youngest student. He must be as punctually in school as he. When at midday the professor left school, he had to accept that not only had his flag disappeared, but that a red flag had now replaced it.

  Professor Degener had had a humanistic education, and was therefore of the opinion that, even in the worst people, there was something good, which it was his duty to cultivate with kindness.

  The professor gently folded up the alien flag, allowed himself the liberty of putting it back on the neighbouring balcony, and set off to buy himself another flag for himself. However, he had now got so excited that he bought a bigger and better flag than before – one that was not so easy to destroy.

  By the time he returned, the red flag was once again waving over his threshold. But this time, the neighbour was also standing on his balcony looking angrily at the professor. The latter had thought little about him. Now he looked at him – a large, indeed massive man with dark eyes.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said the professor gently, and started to undo the ribbons that tied the flag to his balcony rails.

  ‘Leave the flag alone,’ said the neighbour threateningly.

  ‘Not at all!’ answered the professor and went on untying. ‘Your views are not my views, so it would be a lie—’

  ‘Take your paws off!’ ordered the other man. ‘I’m not going to let this façade be defiled by your rag.’

  ‘You will have to admit,’ said the professor more directly, ‘that a forced opinion can only be a slave opinion. Precisely if you love your flag—’

  ‘Your rag makes me sick,’ said the fat man. ‘Wilhelm’s own rag!’ and he began to sing in a hoarse voice: ‘O Tannenbaum, O Tannenbaum – send the Kaiser out of town.’

  The professor had untied the flag, held it in his hand, and spoke more animatedly: ‘It’s dishonourable to make fun of someone who may be weak, but who was never bad. Please …’

  ‘Leave your rag alone, little man,’ said the fat man threateningly. I’ll show you who the weak one is!’

  Unflustered, the professor unfolded his own flag. The fat man reached from time to time across the partition wall and prevented the flag from being tied. Professor Degener stepped two steps further and tied it out of his range. The fat enemy took his own rolled flag and hit out with it at the other.

  ‘Stop that!’ said the professor and went to the end of his balcony.

  ‘That flag stays away!’ shouted the fat man threateningly, but it was only an empty threat: he was beyond reach.

  Professor Degener, who (erroneously) believed that the battle of the flags had been solved through compromise, went on quietly tying his flag. (The gentlemen of the Reichstag had fallen into a similar error when they invented the black-white-red ensign.)

  ‘Take your snot-rag away!’ shouted the fat man, but the professor carried on quietly tying.

  Now his enemy was boiling-mad. First he looked as though he was going to climb from one balcony to the other, but a glance down saved his life. So he took hold of a flowerpot and threw it.

  ‘Stop such stupidity!’ said the professor, turning round. He was not yet aware that a flowerpot is somewhat different from a snowball – that a cheeky schoolboy is less dangerous than an overheated member of a political party.

  The second flowerpot hit him in the face as he turned, and broke. The professor let out a sound of pain, not so much because he was hurt, but out of pity for his fellow men. Then he fell backwards.

  His enemy looked darkly towards the fallen man and murmured: ‘That’ll teach you to hang your filthy rag elsewhere!’ and disappeared.r />
  ‘Was he at least locked up?’ asked Heinz bitterly.

  ‘Of course not! The professor naturally didn’t take him to court. No, he’d had enough and didn’t want any more. He took retirement immediately. You can understand it well enough – if you lose the pleasure.’

  ‘Yes, he’s old, too. He got something out of life – but how about us?’

  ‘Yes, us … have we lost the pleasure too? But we already had!’

  ‘Yes, already. It’s true.’

  ‘Just think about it, Hackendahl. I’m now twenty-seven and getting a paunch and a bald head – and never earned a pfennig. But stop: I tell a lie! When I was seventeen and eighteen I earned five marks a week for coaching. But since then I’ve never had it so good.’

  ‘But better times may come, Hoffmann.’

  ‘Let’s watch out for them – if we can’t make them come any other way.’

  ‘But how?’

  ‘Yes, son, that is the question – how?’

  § XIII

  Periods of deepest depression alternated with periods of exhilaration.

  When Heinz felt depressed, attendance at the unemployment office became almost impossible. Going there he would meet the lucky ones who were on their way to work, briefcases containing sandwich boxes under their arms, and they would look at him vacantly, or perhaps find his coat very shabby. Then he would look bitterly at them. They were so much younger than he was. Every year saw a fresh crop of youngsters going to work, and a tormenting anxiety often seized him that he was getting old and would become unfit for a job, he who had only just started! Worn out – worn out by unemployment.

  Then he would reach the unemployment office and take his place in the queue, one of the many and increasingly more numerous unemployed.

  By now he knew certain of the regulars, feared the company of some and looked out for others. One, surely a very silly fellow, would say, beaming: ‘Well, mate, here we are again. Well, never mind, the worst of it’s over.’ He said this week after week, month after month, always with the same kindly but rather foolish expression, not to be shaken in his hope.