Iron Gustav

by Hans Fallada

  There were some petty jealousies, of course, trifling quarrels, discussions about a vanished ball of string; and Fräulein Pendel and Herr Lorenz were surprised kissing behind a door. ‘Hello, hello, you’re sly ones! I suppose you call that imprinted matter!’ Followed by never-ending laughter …

  Heinz, having gained the appreciation of his bosses, was put in some sort of command over his undisciplined fellow workers and told to adjust disagreements, see that there was no idleness, and have the work done to time.

  ‘The entire northern territory including Hamburg by Saturday? Yes, we’ll be able to do that, we’ll get that done. Just let us have the directories as soon as possible; it’s the addressing which delays things.’

  For a while Heinz could allow himself, and was even encouraged, to hope that he would be taken on permanently, being industrious and responsible. But nothing came of it after all. ‘We’re sorry, Herr Hackendahl, you know how much we’d have liked to engage you, but our publicity campaign hasn’t been as successful as we hoped. No, don’t look so down in the month – as soon as we take on anybody we’ll think of you. Then you’ll definitely hear from us.’ (He never did.)

  That made two rays of light, but two rays of light don’t make a dawn. What money they had the Hackendahls spent on the essentials, rent and food – not on even the smallest purchases. Yet some were necessary. Underwear wore out, and shoes got into such a state that the cobbler said: ‘Well, young woman, what do you want me to do about ’em? The soles are gone and the uppers ruined but the shoelaces are still quite good. In your place I’d buy a pair of new shoes to go with ’em.’

  Married couples did their sums, but it’s well known that, however many sums you do, ten marks still remain ten marks, and doing sums doesn’t increase them. Undeniably, support for the jobless was increased, but it still wasn’t enough. Jobless support became unemployment insurance, dole offices became unemployment offices. ‘And that won’t be the end of it,’ grumbled the eternally dissatisfied.

  No, it wouldn’t be enough, no matter how many sums were done. Slowly at first, then with increasing momentum, the home deteriorated. Shirts became frayed and overcoats thin; broken crockery was no longer replaced, the gasman was an anxiety, the inspector who read the electric meter a terror. They got behind with the rent. It started with a small balance left over, which was settled the next time. Then one day this balance was left unsettled and soon they were a whole month in arrears.

  The landlord’s agent barely acknowledged them now and letters began to arrive from his office, polite at first and then sterner ones sent by registered post.

  ‘There’s nothing for it – we can’t afford to live like this,’ said Irma over and over again, putting out feelers. ‘It’s the rent that gets us down.’

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘we don’t want to be hasty. Perhaps I’ll find something soon.’

  Four weeks later Irma repeated her remarks on the subject of the rent.

  ‘Let the agent write if he wants to,’ said Heinz, annoyed. ‘He can go to hell. I don’t care what he writes!’

  But he did care. He suffered at not being able to fulfil his obligations, as the phrase so nicely goes, and took little consolation in the thought that others were not carrying out their obligations to him, by providing a chance to work.

  He made one last effort and became a travelling salesman. Like many of his fellow sufferers, he ran around with a little suitcase. In it were an air pump and a tub of liquid floor wax, as well as a few brushes. And he proceeded to spray wax on the floor of every housewife who allowed him to, and made it beautifully smooth.

  Oh, but only a few put up with it! And few of them wanted to go so far as to buy an apparatus. And of the few who did want to, even fewer had the money to pay for the thing. No, all this running about wasn’t worth it.

  ‘For goodness sake, leave it!’ said Irma. ‘You’re wearing your shoes out quicker than you can possibly earn with the stuff.’

  And he did leave it – with pleasure. He wasn’t cut out to be a salesman. It went against his grain to try to sell something to a woman who didn’t need it – who was certainly just as short of money as Irma. He often had a guilty conscience when he sold an apparatus.

  ‘What do you think? Should we give up the flat?’

  ‘I don’t mind – if you think we ought to.’

  ‘You know that the rent …’

  ‘All right! I said yes!’

  ‘It can’t be helped, Heinz. It’s also a sacrifice for Mother.’

  Naturally it was a sacrifice for her. Frau Quaas, that small, fragile, anxious woman, received the family and its furniture, which took up a lot of space in her not very large sitting room, although most of it went into the garret.

  ‘Now we’ll be able to manage. We shall save the rent and it’ll be much simpler when I’m cooking for Mother as well. She’ll let us have something over for it and we can buy a few things at last.’

  ‘First of all we must pay off the rent – I don’t want any debts. Certainly not with people who behave as if you were a scoundrel because you can’t get work.’

  Yes, things became a trifle easier for the Hackendahls. Irma served in the shop and Frau Quaas helped with the housework, turn and turn about. They were rather on top of one another; mother and daughter and child sleeping in one room, Heinz banished to the kitchen … A topsy-turvy existence, of course – a marriage without wedlock, the simplest kiss embarrassed by the mother’s presence; the women at work, the man sentenced to inactivity … a world upside down – but hardly more upside down than the world outside, the big world, the political world where – with much hue and cry – they were just initiating the Dawes Plan, whereby the debtor is lent money by the creditor, so that the former, without means, can better pay the latter.

  Naturally there were some bright spots at times. Old Hackendahl would stop his carriage outside the shop, Otto would be placed in it and his father beside him, and then Blücher would trot off, with old Hackendahl cracking his whip for no other reason than that it amused the boy. They would drive three or four streets away, to keep Grandfather company to the nursing home.

  Then father and son would alight and slowly walk back, stopping in front of every shop – they had plenty of time – Otto prattling, with his small hand trustfully in the large one. A nice sight and a harmless deception! The child was still ignorant that his father did not rank just below the Lord, but was unemployed, an outlaw, a pariah.

  How much a pariah that same father was yet to learn when he next handed in his card to be stamped. The clerk scrutinized a piece of paper, and then Hackendahl’s face.

  ‘Herr Hackendahl? Will you please go to Room 357.’

  Heinz Hackendahl went to Room 357. When he was told to do a thing in this place he did it. He was only one of thousands without a destiny of their own or an individuality; he had long ago given up taking matters here personally. But on this occasion he was being considered as a person, for once.

  At the desk sat a scraggy, sallow man. What a funny head, thought Heinz. That really is what they call pear-shaped …

  ‘You are Heinz Hackendahl, your particulars are this and that, you have been unemployed for so long, living at such-and-such address. Is that so?’

  ‘Yes, that’s correct.’ But what was not quite so correct was that, though a chair stood available, no chair was offered him. But it wasn’t worthwhile getting upset about a trifle like that. Here one mustn’t get upset by anything.

  ‘What kind of a flat have you got?’ asked Pear-head (naturally you take against such a head, when it asks in such a stupid way. Otherwise, you would just think it a joke).

  Heinz thought he was being asked about his old one. No doubt the agent had complained about the arrears of rent. But those had been paid now and this he explained.

  ‘So you were in debt for rent and now you’ve paid up. Where did you get the money from?’

  That was the sort of questioning which made a man slowly angry. Heinz said t
hat unfortunately he had no other income than his unemployment benefit and he had paid his rent with that.

  ‘Fine. So previously the benefit wasn’t sufficient for the rent and now it is. How’s that?’

  ‘Because we don’t pay rent now. We’re living at my mother-in-law’s.’

  ‘All right then. You’re living at your mother-in-law’s. Costs nothing. What do you do there?’

  ‘Nothing.’ (That, unfortunately, was the trouble.)

  ‘Nothing at all?’

  ‘No – what else am I supposed to do?’

  ‘And suddenly you get so much money that you can pay your arrears? Did your mother-in-law give you the money?’

  ‘No, she can barely make ends meet. It’s only a small stationery shop.’

  ‘So she has a stationery shop. Perhaps you help her sometimes?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Think carefully before you reply. Do you work in the shop?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And get remuneration for it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘The remuneration needn’t be given in cash; it can consist of free lodging and food, you know.’

  ‘I pay my share of everything.’

  ‘Nevertheless you can meet arrears of rent.’

  ‘Yes, because a joint household is much cheaper than two separate ones.’

  ‘And you’re certain you don’t assist in the shop?’

  ‘Yes, I’m certain.’

  ‘You know that working while on unemployment benefit is prohibited?’

  ‘Certainly.’

  ‘You know you aren’t permitted to do any spare-time work whatever for remuneration?’

  ‘I know that. I’ve never …’

  ‘And that remuneration can of course be made in kind, as for instance the use of a flat?’

  ‘I’ve never …’

  ‘Are you acquainted with the penal clauses relating to unemployed assistance? Not only are you liable to deprivation of benefit but a charge may be preferred for fraud.’

  ‘But I …’

  ‘In accordance with the information before me you sold the informant on the fifth of this month about six o’clock in the afternoon three police registration forms for ten pfennigs; you were alone in the shop. The informant is ready to swear to his statement. Well?’

  ‘This is ridiculous … It’s too dirty for words. And you listen to accusations like that? You order me to come here …’

  ‘When you’ve stopped using abusive language perhaps you’ll give me a proper answer. Do you admit that the informant’s statements are correct?’

  ‘Tell me who the skunk is!’

  ‘You don’t even remember? Are you so frequently serving there?’

  ‘I don’t serve in the shop at all. There are two women there and they serve perhaps twenty customers a day. They can manage that between them.’

  ‘So in spite of the sworn statement you deny working while on benefit?’

  ‘Of course I do. It isn’t working if I go into the shop for once. I’m not taking work away from anybody. No doubt my wife was standing at the gas stove stirring a saucepan and possibly she said: “Go and have a look at the shop!” How can that be working while on benefit?’

  ‘The interpretation of working on benefit may be left to the magistrate. If it was as you say, why didn’t you stir the saucepan and leave the shop to your wife?’

  ‘Because cooking is a woman’s work and …’ He broke off.

  ‘… And serving customers is man’s work,’ concluded the other. ‘You see – our view entirely. So you left the cooking to the woman and did the man’s work, that is, serving customers. You admit that.’

  ‘I admit nothing at all. All I said was that I might have given my wife a hand once or twice.’

  ‘All the same, these isolated instances occur so frequently that you are unable to recollect the incident in question!’

  ‘Are these legal proceedings?’ shouted Heinz. ‘This is ridiculous. Do you really think I want to lose the benefit and risk prison by selling ten pfennigs’ worth of goods?’

  ‘First of all control yourself. You’re shouting at me and that cannot be allowed. Take a seat and calm down.’

  ‘Yes, you offer me a seat now when I’m too excited to sit down.’

  ‘But why are you so excited? If you have a clear conscience there’s no need to get excited at all. Well, what’s the position?’

  ‘I’ve told you already.’

  ‘You deny having worked while on benefit but admit to serving in the shop. That is a contradiction.’

  ‘It isn’t. What I did wasn’t work.’

  ‘That is your opinion.’

  ‘Yes, it is.’

  ‘All right. You can go for the present.’

  ‘Really? May I? Don’t you want to arrest me on the spot?’

  ‘You may go.’

  ‘All right!’

  His anger had already almost subsided as he left. He no longer understood himself. Those people were nothing but pedants. Some wretch showed them a job offer and they immediately took action. They puzzled things out and were accurate, but inhuman. He’d already heard of such things. Someone had helped his sister move house – illegal work. Someone had dug up a bit of land for his mother – illegal work. Every hint of human helpfulness was suspect. It was no use getting upset about it – they had nothing on him – but it was unpleasant all the same.

  And it became still more unpleasant.

  That he now always had to sit in the front room or the kitchen and no longer dared go into the shop for fear of coming under renewed suspicion was bad enough – and that he always felt like a prisoner under secret surveillance.

  However, they tortured him further. They sent him from official to official. It transpired that his first interview had created an unfavourable impression. Pear-head had categorized him as ‘refractory’ – an undesirable quality. He should be flexible, not refractory. He would have to kindly prove his innocence, because they were clearly holding proof of his guilt, with his conviction in their hands.

  ‘Yes, my good sir,’ said a softer-spoken older official. ‘Even if everything had been as you said, it shouldn’t have been. As main provider, you should have avoided suspicion. And you didn’t avoid the appearance of working illegally.’

  ‘I never thought helping my wife would look like illegal work. There are thousands of unemployed who cook and clean while their wives earn a few pfennigs.’

  ‘You were in the shop – as salesman. That is different. Timing, Herr Hackendahl! You got the timing all wrong. If you’re paid by public services, you must always remember to keep up public appearances.’

  Those three ridiculous police registration forms in exchange for ten pfennigs: they had ended up making Heinz Hackendahl heartily sick. When called to such an office again, he could see his file lying there, gradually getting bigger and bigger. He would be going from one department to another. Perhaps he had already been to the police and the legal department, and his file was only not yet quite thick enough for a case against him being brought for fraud.

  In the end, Heinz Hackendahl had the feeling that his case was even beginning to bore the officials – as if they were only pursuing it because the file was there and none of them had had the courage to write ‘Case closed’ on it.

  No, all Heinz Hackendahl had learned was that he was nothing – a grain among millions. How the wheels took him was quite arbitrary. No one entirely survived such a mill. Some were only partially damaged, but some were totally ground down and fell like dust and ashes from the machine. They no longer existed.

  Sometimes, when he thought about his three police registration forms, he feared that this would one day happen to him – that he too would be totally crushed. In the end, nothing seemed to have come of the forms; the case seemed to have run into the sand. However, if he had really done something wrong, if he really had taken a five-mark piece from Sister Sophie for searching through her books, it would have been over with
him – ground to dust and ashes!

  He suffered for long under all the pressure and was deeply depressed. He didn’t want to do anything, to put his hand to anything, neither to clean his shoes nor help the boy into his overcoat; he wanted nothing. He was sentenced to a fate much harder than that of any criminal. A criminal could, indeed had to, work in prison. His hand shaped something even if it were merely a mat or a shopping bag. He, however, went about in the world with everything forbidden to him, a man who was not allowed to do a stroke of work. He had abilities and intelligence but he was forbidden to use these abilities; he might employ his intelligence only to brood with. Excluded from life, wait till you die. We’ll give you just enough to keep you going – quite a long time yet – until you die. To wait, that’s your occupation.

  His mother-in-law, Irma, his own mother, his father – they all tried to cheer him up.

  ‘Get along with you and don’t be such a fool. On Sunday I’ll take you and yer fam’ly for a drive into the country. The horse too ’ll like to see a bit of green again and not only the green seats in the Kaiserplatz.’

  ‘Yes, the seats – did you read, Father, that they’re to be forbidden to the unemployed? An application’s been made. They say we loll about on them and take up all the room.’

  Nothing could be done with him – it had become an obsession, this question of unemployment.

  § XV

  One evening towards ten o’clock Heinz was sitting in his shirt and trousers on the makeshift bed in the kitchen, watching his wife tidy up.

  ‘Well, Irma,’ he said, his eyes gleaming, perhaps because he had just yawned or maybe …