by Hans Fallada
He’s smiling again.
Manzow pats him on the back. ‘There, you see, my lad. We look after you too, we’re going to get you a few new clients. Now, drink!’
Dr Hüppchen looks at him beseechingly. ‘But I’m not permitted to—’
‘Drink. That’s an order, Doctor. There now.—And now, seeing as we’re all drunk together, I want to suggest we make ourselves comfortable. Properly comfortable. What are we doing in full fig in this wretched heat? The girls look better without, too.’
And he starts slowly unbuttoning his trousers. ‘What are you waiting for!’
‘You’re right!’
‘Oh, Fatty Franz! You’re so sweet!’
‘Shirt off, Minna!’
‘Cheer up, Doctor! It’s all right!’
‘Shame is in the eye of the beholder.’
‘Will you look at that Betty, she’s not wearing knickers!’
‘Did you not notice that? What were you doing with yourself all evening?’
‘Well, how about it, then, Doctor?’
He stands there in his shirtsleeves. ‘I don’t really feel all that warm,’ he whispers.
‘Come on, man, come on! No hanging about, no excuses. Look at Toleis! What an athlete, eh?’
Someone starts singing: ‘Where’d you put my sabre? My sabre? My sabre?—In between your labia! Your labia! Your labia!’
A serious-looking Manzow walks up to the doctor. ‘Now, Doctor, no more stalling. You don’t want to spoil things do you? Everyone always participates with us.’
The doctor has sweat on his brow. He looks whey-faced.
One of the girls says: ‘Oh, won’t you let him go.’
The medical councillor slaps her down: ‘Who asked you, cow?’
‘I’m giving you your final warning, Doctor. You’ll bear the consequences!’
‘Come on, drink, Manny, it’ll get your courage up.’
And the girl gives him another glass of cognac. Dr Hüppchen drinks.
Then he starts undoing his buttons and taking off his clothes. The others pretend not to look, and don’t take their eyes off him.
Briefly he hesitates, then he pulls his shirt up over his head.
One of the girls squeals: ‘Oh, it’s adorable! Just like a baby’s!’
A roar of laughter goes up.
The women squeal, the men whinny, rumble, roar.
And the chorus sets up: ‘Where’d you put my sabre? My sabre? My sabre?’
Dr Hüppchen staggers, naked, into the door. Collapses. Lies there motionless.
The singing continues: ‘In between your labia! Your labia! Your labia!’
4
The Townies Fight—Each Other
I
Mayor Gareis asks cautiously: ‘Are you sure you haven’t imagined any of this? Dreamed it up when you were drunk?’
Dr Hüppchen in the big leather armchair says keenly: ‘Actually, I wasn’t really drunk. I felt very clear-headed, and then suddenly I was gone.’
Gareis tips his head from side to side. ‘It’s a ticklish matter. It can be difficult afterwards to tell when you were sober and when you were drunk.’
‘But they dressed me while I was unconscious. I’d never have dressed myself like that. My underpants were stuffed in my trouser pockets!’
‘Yes. Still, Doctor, I think all these are things you are telling me privately, not in my capacity as head of the police.’
Dr Hüppchen looks at the mayor stubbornly. ‘Police Commissioner—’ he begins.
But Gareis is quick to interrupt him: ‘You are a citizen of this town. You make your living here. Among just this class of merchants and business people. You think the main culprit is Manzow . . . ?’
‘Yes, Manzow instigated everything.’
‘Very well. Now you know that Manzow is a big wheel in this community. Don’t get excited, Doctor. I’m just stating a fact. Rightly or wrongly, he is a big deal here.’
‘And that’s why he should go scot-free—?’
‘Listen. I’ve heard all sorts of stories. The reason he’s getting away scot-free isn’t that—it’s because you need him. Imagine: You bring a case against him. Imagine: It goes before a judge. What’s to say the judge doesn’t see the whole episode as a drunken spree? All kinds of things take place on stag nights. And then the result: he’s acquitted. At the most, people will laugh at him: old Manzow, what a card, he knows how to have fun, he’s not uptight. Meanwhile, Dr Hüppchen is forced to move to a different town because he’s lost his clientele.’
Hüppchen stares straight ahead. ‘But it was so humiliating! So cruel! How can I bring myself to speak to the gentlemen now? I’m so ashamed.’
Almost gaily Gareis says: ‘Of course you can talk to them. You haven’t done anything humiliating, that was them. Why should you feel shame on their account?’
‘I suppose you’re right.’
‘So you came to see me in a private capacity?’
‘Yes. Right. Privately. Thank you, Mayor . . .’
‘Now just one second!’ The mayor waves the visitor down as he makes to stand up. ‘Don’t thank me yet, Doctor, because I’m about to give you a dressing-down. Because the one to blame for the whole thing is you.’
Dr Hüppchen is utterly bewildered. ‘Me . . . ?’
‘You live among middle-class people, and it’s among middle-class people that you want to make a living too. Then you too must be middle class like them. You don’t drink, you don’t smoke, you don’t eat meat. You see, Doctor, that’s not on. Not in Altholm. In Berlin or Leipzig possibly, but not in Altholm.
‘Recently, at a dinner, someone said to me: “What bastard here is drinking lemonade?” The bastard was you, and from his perspective the man was completely justified.’
Dr Hüppchen draws a deep breath. ‘My convictions . . .’
‘I know, Doctor, I know. But we’re not twenty for the whole of our lives, we want to earn money, we want to get ahead, we want to be something, achieve something.—Shall I tell you how I came to be elected mayor, with the votes of the Right?’
‘All right . . .’
‘It’s because I’m so fat. Because I’m a fat pig. It sets people at ease. If I was ten times as diligent, but thin, they’d all be screaming: a Red fanatic! A bloodhound!—And I’ll let you into another secret, namely why they’re all against me now. It’s because I go against the flow, because I won’t sacrifice Frerksen. They don’t understand that. They’ve had some trouble, and now they want their scapegoat. Someone has to be slaughtered. And because I won’t allow him to be slaughtered, they’re all now inveighing against me. That’s the way it is.’
‘Hmm. Perhaps you’re right.’
‘I know I’m right. And it may well come to pass that I’ll wind up in the same boat as you, that they’ll want to strip off my shirt as well, because I show myself to be different from them.’
The mayor puffs. Suddenly he smacks his hand down on the table. ‘But it’s all right to be different from them, dammit. It’s all right to push back against them. Otherwise the world would make no sense. So I’m keeping Frerksen.’
Gareis laughs. ‘Anyway, I have to keep him for the sake of the comrades. The prestige of the SPD is at stake. It’s one of the funny things about life that you don’t do the things you do because you like doing them or believe in them. No, there are often completely different reasons. Anyway, the ones to suffer right now are the middle classes, and the farmers are laughing. I expect they’re making things up even now—’
Dr Hüppchen butts in: ‘But the reconciliation was a flop! That’s what made them all go and get drunk last night!’
And he blushes beetroot.
Gareis says reflectively: ‘I was wondering all along about your strange company. So that was the Reconciliation Committee! And the farmers weren’t playing?’
Dr Hüppchen: ‘I spoke out of turn a moment ago. I gave my solemn vow to—’
And Gareis: ‘Taken care of, Doctor! You haven’t told m
e anything. And I’ll have a word with Manzow one of these days, tell him to leave you alone.’
‘Thank you, Mayor!’
‘That’s quite all right. Maybe I’ll be coming to you with something one of these days. Good day to you, Doctor.’
II
Secretary Piekbusch comes to answer Gareis’s bell.
‘Next to see you is the man from the Chronicle.’
‘Oh, Piekbusch,’ the mayor says slowly, fixing his secretary with an intent look, ‘The secret instructions haven’t turned up yet, have they?’
‘No. But I swear, Your Honour, that the second I put the telephone down, I laid them back in the drawer. I know that for an absolute fact.’
‘And you can’t remember what was in them either?’
‘No, not a thing. I was so excited at the time . . .’
‘If they said what I think they probably said, then it’s really only the farmers who have any interest in them.—All right, send Herr Tredup in!’
Tredup walks in. In the doorway he begins to speak: ‘I wanted to thank you, Mayor. I heard you came to visit me in prison—’
He breaks off. The mayor looms massive and tall behind his desk, not extending his hand in greeting, not offering him a chair. He says gruffly: ‘That was in the past, Herr Tredup. But what vile things are you doing now on the Chronicle? Cutting deals with the farmers? Whipping up feeling against the town? Anyone who attacks his own friends from behind in a fight is both a coward and a traitor. Tell your friend Stuff I said so. And make a note of it yourself.’
‘Mayor, please! It’s nothing like that—’
But the Mayor will not be placated, he remains angry. ‘Pah, nothing like that! Bogus readers’ letters, just to whip up feeling. Talk of police terror and bloodlust. Sir, I’ve read your articles on police terror aloud to the entire police force. There, I told them, that’s the Chronicle, your pals, your mates you go drinking with, make up your own minds. They really ought to know better, but instead they go wittering on about police bloodlust!’
‘But Mayor, Stuff had to do it! When the whole press was against the police, Herr Gebhardt said . . . You know Herr Gebhardt is the new owner of the Chronicle?’
‘Yes, I know. What did he say?’
‘He sent Stuff on ahead. Your readers, he said, like that sort of thing. And that way we can give the Socialists a good smack. Come election time, some of that will stick.’
‘Did you personally hear Gebhardt saying those things?’
‘No, not personally. Stuff told me.’
‘There’s too much gossip about you, Tredup. You can’t be everywhere at once. You’ve started drinking too. I would quit that if I were you.—Now sit down.’
They both sit.
Tredup says quietly and modestly: ‘I’ve also joined the SPD, Herr Mayor.—My sympathies are with you. It’s unfortunate I make my living on the other side.’
‘I see! You’ve joined the SPD, have you? How wonderful. Maybe they can do something for you one day.—Now tell me about those readers’ letters.’
‘The readers’ letters are genuine! Stuff didn’t make those up! The latest one, the open letter, I got from a farmer who came round to give it to us.’
‘Is it still there? Could you show it to me?’
‘I don’t know. Stuff will have it if it still exists.’
‘And what was the name of the farmer?’
‘Kehding, I think it was. Yes, Kehding.’
‘And where was he from?’
Tredup hesitates. Then: ‘I can’t remember. I think perhaps it didn’t say on the letter.’
‘But he will have told you where he’s from. You see, that’s where you go wrong, all these half-measures and half-truths. It’s no good.’
‘But I really don’t know the name of the place.’
‘Well, get me the letter.’
‘I’ll try. If I can get it, I definitely will.’
‘Just do it, all right?’
Pause. The mayor, with wrinkled brow, looks down at his feet.
‘Ah well,’ he finally says. ‘In the end a newspaper man follows the numbers. If your readers like that sort of thing. And did they like it?’
Tredup says proudly: ‘We sold thirty-five copies at the station.’
‘I see. That’s not so very many, is it?’
‘We usually sell two!’
‘Then it is a lot,’ confirms the mayor. ‘And the subscribers?’
‘Oh God, the subscribers are used to it. They’re all old people. It doesn’t matter what we print, they’re always going to like it.’
‘Are they all old? We don’t have seven thousand old people in Altholm.’
‘Seven thousand? Do you believe it’s seven thousand? We don’t have seven thousand subscribers!’
‘I don’t believe anything. I just heard that the Chronicle goes fishing with a document that says they have seven thousand subscribers.’
‘There is such a document,’ Tredup agrees eagerly. ‘I sometimes use it myself to try and hustle for advertisements. But it must be at least three years old. And we’re losing sixty or eighty subscriptions a month.’
Gareis does some mental arithmetic. ‘Then that would mean you only had around four thousand five hundred subscribers?’
‘Yes. No. I don’t think we even have that many. I once had a look at the books, when Wenk—who’s our managing editor—was away on holiday. I couldn’t see more than four thousand.’
‘I see. Well. I suppose all newspapers play these games, some of them are subtle about it, some less so. Of course not the major newspapers, but the small and middle-sized ones. There’s nothing to it really. Who was it who issued the confirmation? Was it a notary?’
‘Yes, it was Herr Pepper on the marketplace. But back then everything was still legit. It was true at the time.’
‘Ha. All right. Could you let me see the confirmation some time, Tredup?’
‘Not easily. Honestly, Mayor, I’d love to, but Wenk keeps it in his safe, and the only way I can get my hands on it is if a new client appears on the scene with a sizeable contract.’
‘Hindrances,’ says the mayor uncharitably, ‘all I get from you are hindrances and endless “if onlys”. Sometimes you have to be swift and daring, take a risk.’
‘I’m only too happy to try. Sometimes Wenk leaves the key in the safe when he goes out for a drink. But bringing it all the way to the town hall? Wouldn’t it do if I brought a copy?’
‘Copy! Copy! Well, all right, bring me a copy. But I want it today.’
‘Today? How do I know if Wenk will go out for a drink today?’ In haste: ‘But I’ll see, maybe it can be done.’
‘Well, just you go and see. See you this evening. If I’m not here, you can leave it with my secretary, Piekbusch.’
‘And you will think of me some time, Mayor, like you promised? If a job as a janitor should become vacant, or something? Now that I’m in the Party?’
‘Good day, Herr Tredup. I will think of you some time. Quite. Good day.’
‘Good day, Mayor. And thank you very much!’
III
Gareis beams all over his fat face when Manzow appears. ‘My word, Franz, take a look at yourself. You look as yellow-green as a forest in spring. Is it the drink that does that?’
‘No, it’s the anxiety,’ replies Manzow crossly. ‘Ever since your protégé Frerksen stirred up the pot, business has been awful.’
‘It always is in summer,’ says the mayor with equanimity. ‘Only difference is this time you’ve got someone to hang the blame on . . . Honestly, though, Franz, you shouldn’t drink so much. It doesn’t agree with you.’
‘Alcohol doesn’t do me any harm.’
‘If you were thin it might not! But with fatties like us, it always affects the heart. Every time I drink a pint, I worry.’
‘It’s every time I don’t that worries me!’
But Gareis doesn’t give up. ‘Honestly, Franz, you look terrible. It doesn’t agree with
you. You should quit.’
‘What, what?’
‘Well, the elections are in six months’ time. And the Red Nook isn’t exactly a respectable joint.’
Manzow gloops at him, but only quickly. ‘Damn the . . . Who was it this time . . . ? No sooner does a man take a breath than the chief commissioner knows . . . I tell you, Mayor, you shouldn’t use those whores as spies.’
‘You’re too wild, Franz. People gossip. Plus, who do you take with you? A driver, a young buck, for God’s sake! People are bound to talk!’
For a brief moment, Manzow seems very small. ‘God, I wasn’t thinking. I was so furious. It all went wrong. But . . .’ And already he’s starting to recover himself. ‘But you’re one to puff yourself up. I only have to say Stettin.’
Gareis is unmoved. ‘Stettin is Stettin, and Altholm is Altholm.—What made you so furious?’
‘Business, my God! The pedlars aren’t selling so much as a pair of bootlaces!’
‘So you want to go and celebrate that with a chauffeur, a medical councillor and an accountant? Has your business really taken such a hit with the farmers?’
This time Manzow is left speechless a little bit longer. Finally: ‘That’s not something the girls have told you!’
Gareis basks a little. Gareis brags a little. ‘Franz, I know everything. Here . . .’ he taps his desk, ‘is where all the threads meet. You only ever get to see a tiny piece. I see the whole thing.’
‘Now who was it who blabbed this time . . . ?’ ponders the wholesaler.
‘Incidentally,’ remarks Gareis, ‘how many sales do you think the Chronicle has?’
‘The Chronicle? I can tell you that precisely. I buy space there, after all. Seven thousand.’ Suspiciously: ‘Why are you mentioning the Chronicle?’
‘No reason. Just happened to come to mind.’
‘Has Stuff been talking? But Stuff doesn’t know anything. Stuff—Lienau, the medical councillor! That bastard wasn’t going to give us his word of honour.’
‘But what’s it matter to you how I know. The main thing is, I know the reconciliation is a busted flush.’
‘Rubbish! If Stuff carries a report of the farmers making monkeys of us in the paper, then I’m done for, then I’m fucking toast.’