by Hans Fallada
Here the sorely tried little man vanished; without batting an eyelid he left the famous cab driver to guard his hamper. And the people rushed past. They were in a hurry to catch their trains, they bumped into Gustav Hackendahl, but they did not look at him – they had practically forgotten him already – forgotten the famous Iron Gustav.
The Last Chapter
The Beer Glass
It started when he was helping his wife to tidy up the flat. The place was really inconveniently crowded by presents from all over the world, which the two old people untied and unwrapped and put away, and there was many a thing there that ought to have pleased Mother, yet did not.
‘Do look, Mother,’ said old Hackendahl. ‘It’s really a handsome beer glass the Pasewalk Cuirassiers have sent me with the barracks painted on it. You c’n almost see the room where I used ter live when you met me. Nice, ain’t it?’
‘Put it away, Father,’ she said. ‘What’s the good of that to us? Nice! Why, the monkey in the Zoo thinks the carrot nice you push through the netting, but all the people want is to see how a monkey eats a carrot.’
‘You mean me, Mother?’ asked Hackendahl. ‘Are you comparin’ me with a monkey an’ this beer glass with a carrot?’
‘Don’t start an argument, Father. I feel so strange in the head. I’m all confused. And then you go and talk of monkeys.’
‘It’s bein’ in all day, Mother. You never go out now. Wait a mo, I’ll harness up Grasmus an’ we c’n go for a quiet drive in the Tiergarten. Now we c’n afford it, we may as well.’
‘You do what you like, Father. I’ve always done what you’ve wanted, you can’t deny that. For once I’d like …’
‘Well, what, Mother? I c’n see you’re not feelin’ well …’
‘Get out of the cab, Father. You won’t do anything I’d like, you never did.’
‘Well, speak up, Mother. What d’you like? I’ll do it if I can.’
‘You won’t do it, Father.’
‘Course I will. What is it?’
‘Well, then – throw away that old beer glass from Pasewalk.’
‘What, the glass the Pasewalkers sent me! Mother, yer can’t really meant that. Yer can’t be feelin’ well. Shall we go fer a drive? Would yer like to, Mother?’
This sort of thing happened many times but the little trips into the fresh air did not cheer her up, and when he did her bidding for once it counted nothing against the many occasions when he had had his own way. Waking up in the night, the old man would stretch his hand out to the other bed. It would be empty, and by its coldness he could feel that it had been empty for some time.
Then he would rise, get a light and look for her. As often as not she would be sitting in the dark, sitting on the bed from which he had driven Erich. Or standing in the kitchen at the sink, with the tap turned on so that the water dripped over her hand.
‘Come, Mother,’ he would say gently, ‘come back to bed. You’ll get a chill.’
And readily enough she would go and lie down.
‘What makes yer wander about like that, Mother?’ he said in the end, having blown out the light. ‘You still in a rage with me because of the journey ter Paris?’
‘Something’s pressing against my heart and then it rises. Then it comes down again and I think it’s Otto. Do you remember Otto, Father?’
‘I do, Mother. I remember him perfectly.’
‘Sometimes I think it’s only me who remembers we’ve had children and that I brought them up just like the other children – and now they’re gone and nobody remembers anything about it, nobody at all.’
‘Only Otto is dead, Mother. All your other children are alive.’
‘And why I let the water drip on my hand … no, Father, I can’t explain it to you … I don’t know myself. But I can’t get away from the feeling that they’ve given Otto a bad coffin made of rotten wood, Father, and the rain’s dripping on his face. And so I hold my hand in between so that I can do something for him, Father.’
After a long while old Hackendahl said: ‘You must have dreamed it. Otto’s at peace, he sleeps soundly, Mother. There’s no rain can disturb him.’
And a little later: ‘Tomorrow I’ll fetch the doctor, he mus’ give you a prescription. You’ve got water in yer legs, Mother. That’s pressin’ against your heart and gives you all those ideas which are out o’ the natural. You mustn’t take any notice of them.’
‘Just as you like, Father.’
So the doctor was sent for and confirmed what old Hackendahl had said – there was water in the legs and it was rising. He prescribed drops which helped for a while, and when they were of no further avail, then he tapped the water. That gave her some relief, and when the young people came (as they did rather frequently now), she couldn’t recount too often how much water the doctor had taken away – it became a little more every time.
‘Well, Father, what d’you think?’ said Heinz one day in the passage, on his way out.
The old man shook his head and looked at his son. But he said nothing.
Heinz made up his mind. ‘Shall we look in again after supper, Father? The doctor thinks …’
‘Leave me alone with her,’ whispered the old man hoarsely. ‘What’s got to be done with Mother I’ve got to do, you understand? You children never think that she was a girl once and me young wife. You always think of her as Mother.’
He was gazing fixedly at his son, his eyes gleaming as though they were about to fill with tears. But those old eyes would not weep whatever the circumstances. ‘I’m seventy, Bubi, but when I think what she was like as a girl!’ And he pushed his son out of the door. ‘Leave me alone with her when she dies. P’r’aps it’ll come back to her too, what she once was.’
She was sitting up in bed, struggling for breath. Her eyes were wide open, empty eyes, and she was gabbling to herself about many, many things.
He tried to take hold of her hand which she kept on withdrawing. ‘Mother!’ he begged. ‘Auguste!’
She did not hear him. She did not even know he was there. All the others were, but not he. She wasn’t with him, she was with the others. In a high-pitched voice she cried out: ‘Evchen, is the soup ready? Make haste, Father’ll be coming up from the stables – Bring me another cup of coffee, he won’t notice it – Sophie, lay the table quickly. Get it ready before Father comes – Bubi, tell Erich to finish dressing, Father can’t wait.’
She hurried them up, she worried, she scrutinized the room, dim in the light of a solitary candle. She was back again in the Frankfurter Allee preparing the breakfast table.
‘Evchen, put the crusts so that Father gets one too. He always wants us to eat the hard bits. Let him try as well.’
‘Mother,’ begged the old man groping for her hand. But again it was withdrawn.
She was staring into the darkness towards a shadow. ‘Where’s Ottchen? Is he still in the stable? Ottchen is to come at once, I can’t bear it when Father shouts at him.’
She leaned back and closed her eyes, speaking now only in a whisper.
‘Mother! Mother!’
‘Are you there, Father? I see so badly. I must have been dreaming. Why had you only a candle burning? Put on the gas – you can spend a little money on me in my last hour.’
He climbed on a chair, lit the gas. But when he returned she was already wandering again.
‘He thinks he’s somebody because they blame him for being of iron. But he’s nothing at all. He’s done nothing. The way he ran my father down because of his slovenly stable and so on, and what kind of a stable has he got himself? Always making a row and ordering about – he thinks he’s someone then – but we’ve fooled him!’ She sat up in bed giggling.
‘Fooled him! All of us. The cab drivers and the children and me more than anyone. And then he thinks he’s somebody!’
‘Auguste, do listen! Will you listen?’
Awake now and alert. ‘Yes, Gustav?’
‘D’you remember how you got the first prize at the Cuir
assiers for the best-cooked luncheon? D’you remember, Auguste?’
‘Yes, Gustav, I remember. A fat cookery book it was, only somebody stole it right away. They were all so jealous!’
‘Auguste, d’you remember how at the ring-stickin’ you had the most rings on yer sabre? An’ how Colonel de Pannwitz danced the first dance with you? I was wonderful proud!’
‘Yes, Gustav, I remember that, too. I had on my white dress with the pierced embroidery and a blue silk scarf round my waist.’
‘An’ Auguste, d’you remember when you had Otto, an’ the midwife praised you because you didn’t make a sound?’
‘Yes, Gustav, yes. You sat beside the bed and held my hand. Give me your hand, Gustav …’
Yes, he had succeeded. He had managed it once again. He had summoned her back to himself, to their common youth, away from enmity and the shameful league with her children, the cab drivers, everyone else … And yet he knew that all she had just said about him were her real thoughts. He knew her.
But this he would not suffer. No one must die like that. And he summoned her back again and yet again. In that endless hour between two and three in the night some idea always occurred to him by which he won her back. Already the shades of death were settling on that old, weak face and the breath rattled in her throat, but he said: ‘An’ d’you remember, Auguste, yer little bird, yer Hänsecken? How he’d perch on yer finger but wouldn’t ever come ter me?’
Over. Finished. The End.
The old man rose, passed his fingers over her eyes, but he did not look into her face. Climbing on the chair, he turned off the gas. That left only the candle burning.
Without looking at his wife he went out of the room, taking the candlestick. He had seen many a man die, had looked in the face of many a corpse, and he knew how the features which show for a time traces of the death throes change once the struggle is over. Peace has come. Often a child’s face long vanished, oh how long vanished, looks out of the dead face.
It was then that he would see his wife.
He entered the small kitchen and started to search in the cupboard. Finally he found the beer glass and examined it by the light of the candle. It was a very nice glass indeed …
While he had been reminding Mother of all the old happenings of their youth in Pasewalk he had remembered this glass which the Pasewalkers had sent their famous fellow citizen; he had remembered that she had asked him to smash it. And that he had half promised to do so.
He looked at the sink. All he had to do was to strike the glass against the cast-iron basin and Mother would have had her way.
For a while he stood thus, glass in hand, seeing not the glass but his long, long years of married life. He was not thinking now about their youth, but of what had come later – many things – and how he had been always in the right. Even death couldn’t change wrong into right.
Iron Gustav shook his head. ‘It wouldn’t help you, Mother,’ he said quite loudly in the empty kitchen, ‘it wouldn’t help if to please you I smashed this glass so you could have yer way fer once. It’s a handsome piece o’ glass …’
Putting it back, he picked up the candle and returned to the bedroom, to look at his wife’s face.
THE END
THE BEGINNING
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PENGUIN CLASSICS
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First published in German as Der eiserne Gustav by Rowohlt Verlag 1938
First published, in an abbreviated edition, in English as Iron Gustav by Putnam 1940
First full edition published in 1962 by Aufbau Verlag in Hans Fallada: Selected Works in Single Issues, edited by Günter Caspar, Vol. VI
First published, in this revised edition, in Penguin Classics 2014
Copyright © Auf bau Verlag GmbH & Co. KG, Berlin, 2009
Translation copyright 1940 by Philip Owens
Newly translated material copyright © Nicholas Jacobs and Gardis Cramer von Laue, 2014
Note on the Translation copyright © Nicholas Jacobs, 2014
Foreword copyright © Jenny Williams, 2014
Cover photograph © ullstein bild/AKG
All rights reserved
The moral right of the copyright holder, the translators, and the author of the Note on the Translation has been asserted
ISBN: 978-0-141-96808-7