Iron Gustav

by Hans Fallada

  Him. Always him! Nothing ever yet went right for him in this life. His motto seemed to be: ‘Grundeis versus Grundeis’.

  Dolefully he slunk through the dark and uneven streets of Brandenburg. Dolefully, timidly, he pressed the night bells at the hotels, waiting patiently and humbly till some half-awakened creature threw her ‘No, not here’ at him, when he would slink on to the next.

  Hopeless indeed. If there was a bench, he would rather sit on it, be sorry for himself, and patiently await the only thing of which he was certain – his own collapse.

  However, there was no bench. Instead, he happened upon a kind of nightwatchman, and this man informed him that the cab driver from Berlin had arrived and had been piloted by him to the Black Horse.

  ‘A lively old boy but perished with the cold. Just around the corner, sir. I’ll show you the way.’

  Rather miserably, Grundeis ambled after his guide. The whole thing must be a misunderstanding, or else his competitors must have sent another cab driver out. His man must at least be in Potsdam, if he hadn’t already fallen down a ditch in the road. He accompanied his worthy guide just so as not to disappoint him. He never even thought he would ever reach the Black Horse; he couldn’t possibly pull a fast one on the competition! It wasn’t remotely possible. Fat Willy from the evening paper was bound to be already there.

  From the porch of the Black Horse Grundeis heard roars of laughter.

  ‘The gentlemen are in splendid high spirits,’ remarked the head waiter, and chuckled likewise. ‘Our Berlin cab driver greatly amuses them!’

  Hardly waiting to press a tip into his guide’s hand, he burst into the bar parlour … and saw him sitting there surrounded by the local notables, an old man with a stately beard, his tanned face glowing with warmth and grog. ‘An’ I calls to the nag, me Blücher, Gee-up an’ the bloomin’ horse starts ter back, not half he didn’t, gentlemen.’

  And seeing him thus Grundeis felt the need to break out – he the only person who took a real interest in him – felt that he wanted to fling wide his arms and declaim: ‘O godly old man, vessel of my longing and hope, sail happily to harbour!’

  What he said was: ‘Well, Hackendahl, managed it after all? You must be the most iron Gustav of all Berlin!’

  § XI

  The old cabby was driving through Germany. April (wet, cold and stormy) had turned into warm, serene May. And the farther he got from Berlin, leaving behind the bleak, gloomy plains of the Mark, and approaching the merry Rhineland over the provinces of Saxony and Hanover, the more tempestuous and enthusiastic did his welcome become.

  In Magdeburg it had been regarded as little more than an attempt to set up a record, and a speedometer was presented to him and was attached to his cab so that this record could be established – the record-breaker, old Hackendahl, meanwhile wondering if Grasmus would stay the course. And in Hanover it had been an affair of endurance, nothing more. Rainstorms chilled and soaked him. Will I be able to stick it? was his secret anxiety. Gratefully he received the gift of a mackintosh.

  April, however, had turned into May. Dortmund and Cologne approached. People became more relaxed and happier. The record-breaking drive, the affair of endurance, became a triumphal procession.

  Criers went through the villages, swinging their bells and proclaiming: ‘Tomorrow the Berlin cabby drives through here on his way to Paris. Receive him, welcome him, honour him.’

  And they received, welcomed, honoured him. On that day no peasant took his team to the field, the schoolchildren were given a holiday and they and their teachers lined the road, waving flags, while small girls with nosegays anxiously repeated to themselves the verses they had learned to welcome the strange old traveller.

  Dusty, but covered with flags and decked with flowers, his cab rattled through the cheering village. The old driver sat on top. People waved to him and cheered him; more verses were recited, greetings pronounced and equine libations poured. Everyone felt highly honoured when the old man descended and took his meal at the village inn, while the chestnut, tied to a ring before the door, nuzzled an abundant feed of oats. They thought up special gifts for the driver. They couldn’t exhaust their surprises for him. During the meal, his cab would be thoroughly greased by the most respected of the villagers, and Grasmus newly shod at the smithy.

  As in the villages so in the towns. Hackendahl’s entries into Dortmund and Cologne resembled the triumphant processions of victorious generals. Overnight the unknown cabby had become an almost legendary figure whose every word was greeted with laughter, whose every anecdote passed from mouth to mouth. In the city of Dortmund a hundred and fifty thousand people assembled in welcome and the entire police force was called upon to regulate his passage, notwithstanding which the traffic was brought to a standstill. And, so that the telephone girls could at least glimpse the old man from their windows, no calls were accepted at the exchange for two minutes. The local cabs provided an escort and outside all the inns stood landlords with foaming glasses of beer or bowls of wine. Inside the cab were gifts of cigars, wine, liqueurs, great cheeses, tubs of pickled herrings, while bouquets covered the back seat. One determined man suddenly drew a rope across the street so that the traveller had to stop outside his house.

  Old Hackendahl showed himself equal to everything. Grundeis was lost in amazement. He, the successful one, who couldn’t send in enough articles about the triumphant journey, watched a man even more successful. Such enthusiasm he would never have expected even in his wildest dreams.

  But not the self-assuredness of the old man either. He always did what the people expected of him, or at least the people were always delighted by whatever he did.

  When he went past Cologne Cathedral, and the people looked at him and expected him to do whatever he could, what in heaven’s name could an old cab driver do in front of thousands of people, when he drove past Cologne Cathedral? He looked at the cathedral, then at the crowd, at the cathedral again, and then the expectant crowd … then he stood up and waved his glossy top hat – mother’s milk jug – and shouted: ‘Long live Cologne Cathedral!’

  And everyone cheered. Everyone was delighted.

  However, when a publicity-minded iron factory solemnly presented him with four brand new horseshoes for Grasmus, he looked at them and then at Grasmus and at the boss in his frock coat, shook his head and said: ‘No, take ’em away. They don’t fit Grasmus. He needs much smaller shoes!’

  Then he pressed the iron shoes into the boss’s hand and drove off.

  And once more the people cheered and were again delighted.

  What did they see in him that made them so delighted, that in town and country they poured in to see him, and found everything he did so wonderful? They worked themselves into ever bigger displays. Why did they do it?

  Well, here was a man of seventy who had undertaken something which would not be easy for a man of thirty or forty.

  But it was not only that.

  Well, here was one of the last cab drivers. In his person a dying era travelled through the land. In him they cheered what their fathers had been.

  Certainly. But there was more than that in it.

  After prolonged hatred people were beginning to feel friendliness towards the ‘sworn foe’ beyond the Rhine, towards whom Hackendahl was travelling. He went to the French like a consoling angel, and they rejoiced in him – but that was not all. In him they were acclaiming their own indestructible will to live. This old man, from the middle of the last century, had been through it all. You only had to look at his face, lined like a ploughed field, repeatedly sown with new disappointments, worse defeats and bitter deprivation. But the eyes were bright, the lips ready. Whatever had happened had been unable to change him; he was truly Iron Gustav and had not forgotten how to hope. Even though ninety-nine of his plans had miscarried, the hundredth might still succeed. We travel. We laugh. We never give up hoping. Maybe we will fall into the mud one day, but we don’t have to stay there. We mustn’t give up if we do fall.
On we must go.

  Thoughts like these stirred the crowds to acclaim him.

  But how was he affected, the old man, who, from the quiet obscurity of a completely private life, suddenly found himself at the centre of a whole people?

  He did not lose his head. He was neither megalomaniac nor intimidated. He was far too sensible for that. He had never been a dreamer. ‘Lor, the people!’ he said. He didn’t understand them or their enthusiasm. On the sly he fed their bouquets to Grasmus and sold their gifts to the people he stayed with; and he never forgot about selling his postcards. Too often things had gone badly with him; now that he saw a last chance of scraping together a bit of money for himself and Mother he took it. One mustn’t be squeamish about making money out of anything that amuses people, and indeed it never entered his head to be squeamish. (And this in its turn pleased people.)

  But he was not so thrilled as they were. After all, he carried the responsibility of the journey and really was old. For one thing, the farther he went the closer came the frontier, a strange people, a foreign language – it secretly made him uneasy. But he didn’t breathe a word of this to anyone, including to the solidly red Grundeis. The more enthusiastic people were, the more impossible it was for him to go back.

  And he was already homesick for Berlin. He hadn’t ever left the city since his early adolescence. And the Berliners, their ways of thinking and talking, their streets and squares, the stands for the cabs, the police – all that had become the air he breathed, the nourishment for which he now longed. Once, when they struck up some Berlin hit song about Unter den Linden coming into leaf again, he had to run into Grasmus’s stable to hide his tears – he who could not remember ever having wept.

  But this passed, and what remained was the applause. He drove through it all. He was old; he looked at it from afar. Dimly he felt that it acknowledged the purpose in his life. Despite his descent from employer to driver, despite the failures with his children, the wrecking of his hopes, and despite the fact that they were young and he old, they cheered him, cheered him because he had carried on, because he was of iron, because he had never given in, even when things had gone badly.

  They had affirmed his life, and he theirs.

  They had cheered him – and he had driven on.

  And now he was nearing the border.

  § XII

  At Diedenhofen he, for the first time in his life, left German soil. And lo! There he was again, Grundeis, the young fellow from the newspaper. ‘Well, Father Hackendahl, today’s the day, what? Can I report that we’re crossing the border?’

  ‘Yes, why ever not? Of course! What the devil else?’

  ‘You’re not afraid? You won’t see me again before you have reached Paris!’

  ‘Afraid? Afraid o’ what? Nobody’ll bite me. But I have ter ask you ter buy me a curry-comb an’ a horse brush an’ charge it to expenses.’

  ‘Why, is it going to be as bad as all that?’

  ‘Lor no! But the last village where Grasmus an’ me put up for the night the pigs ate ’em. Scoffed ’em up, that’s the livin’ truth! You feed yer pigs in a damn funny way here, I told the people: if you ever slaughter that pig, I told them, you needn’t give me any of it.’

  Laughing, Hackendahl drove towards the little house with the French soldiers and Customs officers. There was no question of nervousness – he had shown that young man.

  ‘Bonjour!’ he said to the French, after long and careful preparation.

  They laughed. ‘Guten Tag,’ they replied. ‘Guten Tag.’

  Grundeis was watching from the barrier. And had immediately to intervene, for linguistic abilities were exhausted on both sides. Customs duty also was not so easy to arrange. A sum of money had to be deposited as guarantee that carriage and horse would leave France within six months at the outside. Undertakings had to be signed, and Iron Gustav shouted over the barrier, ‘If I kick the bucket before then you’ll have ter bring the cab back yerself, Grundeis.’

  ‘I’ll do it. But you’re immortal, Hackendahl.’

  And Grundeis watched the cab roll on into France. Grundeis was no longer a newspaper apprentice. He had shot up like a shooting star. Someone else must now write the little fillers …

  However, compared with what had to be achieved, little had been. Grundeis prayed fervently that the old man would reach Paris. The Paris reception, his articles about Paris, would outstrip anything ever written. If only we get to Paris! Please! Please! Grundeis begged fate, staring at the cab disappearing into the distance.

  Hackendahl drove on and on. One needn’t have worried. The people here were Lorrainers. They spoke German. They would understand him. None of the jubilant receptions that there had been in his own country of course – all took place in a minor key as if the war lived on here ten years after it had finished with greater might than in Germany itself, which was said to be the vanquished.

  Not alone in the faces of the inhabitants did Gustav Hackendahl see how much more present the war was from Conflans-Insray to Châlons-sur-Marne. For days on end his cab rolled over battlefields, through shattered villages, between unending cemeteries. Verdun. Once that name had been mentioned every day in the newspapers of the world; that place, Verdun, was etched in the hearts of all as the site of unparalleled striving and sacrifice. And now it was only a townlet of twelve thousand souls. But around the living still dwelled the dead. Five hundred thousand graves now threatened the dwellings of twelve thousand living souls.

  He drove on. Day after day. By now he knew that the black crosses were German graves, the white crosses the French. Cemeteries lined the roads. Wherever he looked the graves spread over hill and valley. And how many black crosses there were!

  It was inevitable that he thought of Otto, who had once been his son. He too had fallen here, was resting in this foreign soil … And he tried to recall the place. Many were the names impressed on his memory by the war communiqués – Bapaume, Somme, Lille, Péronne … But the name of Otto’s burial place he could not remember – if ever he had known it.

  Sometimes he stopped Grasmus and, climbing awkwardly from the box, over the ditch, went into one of the cemeteries, any one, and walked along the endless intersecting alleys, it did not matter which. Occasionally he was approached by gardeners who tried to discover what grave he was seeking, but he shook his head. His son had never been so dear to him that there must be an individual grave for him to find … All of them lying here were much younger than he when they had to die. He was infinitely older than them. And now they had become immortal, and he was still mortal. And he almost wanted to ask why?

  As he stood there, tourists came past him in droves, led by guides, speaking in all languages. And when he drove off again, the cab swaying along the grey ribbon of road, great charabancs raced past packed with English and Americans, their guides trumpeting through megaphones. In bands, or solitary, the inquisitive drifted by, the mourners, the vacant, the ones absorbed by their grief … The widow’s veil still caught the breeze, mothers still knelt at the graves of their sons.

  He drove on and on. He drove through ruins, artificially preserved ruins, because the tourists should have something to look at other than graves. On the signposts it says: ‘To the battlefields’. And, so that the mourners could stay near their dead, hotels had risen alongside the cemeteries, near ground that was still being combed for weapons and shells; and dead bodies were still being found, skeletons which entailed the further enlarging of the cemeteries. By the wayside squatted hawkers selling pencils, vases, and ashtrays made from cartridge- or shell-cases. Here there was no ploughing, sowing or harvesting done – for the dead supported the living, supported an entire province which lived on a war that was over and yet not over.

  Here the people did not prepare a joyous reception for Hackendahl. They scarcely looked back at the Berlin cab – they were used to the oddest figures, visitors from all over the world, sightseers from Australia, mourners from Asia, dark faces from Africa.

  In
the inns, Hackendahl had to muck in like any other visitor. It was often difficult to find a stable and food for Grasmus. He had to pay like everyone else.

  Frequently he met Germans and they nodded to him. Yes, one had read about the old man. And how long had he been on the road? Well done! Yes, and now they had to move on, they had to look for their dead. It was so difficult to find a particular man among all these graves so alike. Had he anyone here? A son? Yes, of course. Hardly a family had been spared. Had he found the grave? Well, he’d find it all right; the people here readily answered enquiries.

  However, he didn’t look for it any more. What did it matter now? thought Hackendahl. All graves look alike. Dead men were all alike. His sadness came from the infinite number whose courage and sacrifice had resulted in nothing but collapse, misery and strife.

  Slowly he drove on. Never before had he felt so old and worn-out as now, an old man still living amid the millions of young men long dead.

  § XIII

  On 4 June, two months and two days after his departure from Berlin, Gustav Hackendahl made his entry into Paris, and Paris, repeating the enthusiastic welcomes of Germany, received him like a prince. The jubilation of his journey through Germany repeated itself. The Parisians could not do enough to honour the old man. The streets were full to overflowing; the cab drivers hailed their Berlin colleague; the Paris students unharnessed Grasmus and pulled the cab in triumph through their city. Enthroned on the box was old Hackendahl and in the seat of honour at the back sat young Grundeis.

  Everything was joyous, vibrant, intoxicated. It wasn’t like that in Germany! Here, they didn’t greet an old man who had survived bad times without losing courage; here it was like a game between brothers. What was celebrated was the journey itself, and a foreign people. There were splendid banquets, some dignified, some lively; Grundeis had been hard at work. Reception at the Embassy, reception by the Anglo-American Press, addresses of welcome. And also light-hearted student feasts. The presentation of the Order of the Golden Horseshoe to be worn on a chain round the neck, with Grasmus permitted to stand in the large hall and look on, a many-course dinner of oats meanwhile served to him in a porcelain manger …