by Hans Fallada
“But what if he hadn’t won?”
Now it’s his turn to feel superior to the woman. He smiles as he says, “Listen, Hetty, it’s clear you don’t know much about racing, and I know all there is to know. And if I say Adebar to win, and put 50 marks on him…”
She interrupts him. She says angrily, “You gambled with my money! I won’t have that! If you want money, tell me—I don’t want you working for me just for bed and board. But you don’t help yourself out of the till without my permission! Understand?”
The unwontedly sharp tone completely unhinges him. In a plaintive tone—she knows he is about to burst into tears, and she is already dreading the tears—in a plaintive tone he says, “How can you talk to me like that, Hetty? As if I were just your employee! Of course I’ll never take money out of the till again. I just thought it would make you happy if I made some money so easily. I was sure he would win!”
She doesn’t even respond to such nonsense. The money is secondary to her; what matters is the breach of trust. If he thinks she’s upset about the money, more fool him! She says: “And you simply shut up shop here, so that you could go and bet on the race?”
“Yes,” he says. “You would have had to shut it, if I hadn’t been there!”
“And you knew you were going to shut it when I went away this morning?”
“Yes,” he says, stupidly. Only quickly to correct himself, “No, I mean no, otherwise I would have asked you for permission. It only occurred to me when I passed the little bookie’s shop on the Neue Königstrasse, you know. I read the odds as I was passing, and when I saw Adebar at such long odds, that decided me.”
“I see!” she says. She doesn’t believe him. He already had it in mind before he walked her to the subway. She recalls him sitting over the paper for a long time this morning, and doing some calculations on a scrap of paper even when the first of the day’s customers were in the shop. “I see!” she says again. “So you just go for a stroll in the city, when we’ve agreed that because of the Gestapo, it’s best that you don’t go outside at all?”
“You let me take you to the subway, though!”
“We were together. And I told you then it was strictly an experiment! It’s not the same as running around half the day in the city. Where did you go?”
“Oh, this little bar I used to frequent earlier. No one from the Gestapo ever goes in there, just bookies and bettors.”
“Who all know you! Who can tell anyone who asks, We saw Enno Kluge at such and such a time!”
“But the Gestapo know I have to be somewhere. Only they don’t know where. The bar is a long way away—it’s over in Wedding. And there wasn’t anyone I knew there who would give me away!”
He talks enthusiastically and good-heartedly; if you listen to him, he’s completely within his rights. He doesn’t even understand how deeply he’s shaken her faith in him or what a struggle she’s having with herself. Taken money—to please her. Shut the shop—she would have done the same. Gone to a bar—but a long way away, in Wedding. The fact that she had feared for her love he failed completely to understand. It never even crossed his mind!
“Well now, Enno,” she asks, “is that all you have to say? Or is there anything else?”
“What else could I say, Hetty? I can see you’re cross with me, but it doesn’t seem to me like I’ve done a whole lot wrong!” And there they were, the dreaded tears. “Oh, Hetty, I just want you to be nice to me, like you were before! I promise to ask your permission before I do anything in future! Just be nice to me! I can’t stand it when you’re like this…”
But this time neither tears nor pleas could move her. There was something wrong about them. She was almost disgusted by the weeping man in front of her.
“I need to think about all this, Enno,” she said toughly. “You don’t seem to understand how much you’ve shaken my trust in you.”
And she walked past him to the kitchen, to see to the potatoes again. So, she had had her showdown with him. And what had been the upshot? Had she clarified the situation, or made a decision any easier?
Not a bit! All it had done was show her that this man had no sense of guilt, that he lied wildly when the situation seemed to him to demand it, and that he cared not a whit about who he lied to.
No, a man like that wasn’t the man for her. She had to finish with him. Of course she couldn’t put him out on the street tonight. He seemed not even to know what he was guilty of. He was like a puppy dog who has chewed up a pair of slippers and has no idea why his master is beating him.
No, she had to give him a day or two’s grace, so that he could find himself new lodgings. And if he fell into the hands of the Gestapo—well, it wouldn’t be her concern. He took his own chances—and over a bet! No, she must free herself of him, she would never be able to trust him again. She must live alone, from now on till her death! And at that thought, she felt a chill.
In spite of the chill, she says to him, when supper is over, “I’ve thought it all over, Enno, and we must break up. You’re a nice man, and a dear man, but your view of the world is very different from mine, and in the long run we’re not compatible.”
He looks blankly at her, as she makes up a bed for him on the sofa, to lend credence to her words. At first he cannot believe his ears, and then he starts whimpering: “Oh, God, Hetty, you can’t mean it! When we love each other the way we do! You surely can’t want to drive me out onto the street, and into the arms of the Gestapo!”
“Ach!” she says, trying to calm herself with words of her own. “The thing with the Gestapo can’t be so bad as all that, otherwise you would hardly have spent half the day running around the city!”
He falls to his knees. He really does, he drops to his knees in front of her. Fear has made him mindless. “Hetty! Hetty!” he wails and cries. “Do you want to kill me? You have to keep me here! Where am I supposed to go? Ach, Hetty, won’t you love me just a little bit, I’m so unhappy…”
Wailing and crying, a little puppy dog whimpering with fear!
He tries to clasp her legs, he reaches for her hands. She breaks away, runs to the bedroom, and bolts the door. But all night she has to listen to him banging against the door, trying the handle, whimpering and imploring…
She lies there perfectly quietly. She summons all her strength so as not to give in, not to weaken in the face of her own heart and all the begging outside! She remains true to her resolve no longer to live with him.
At breakfast, the two sit facing one another with pale, weary faces. They barely speak. They don’t refer to their dispute.
But he understands now, she thinks, and even if he doesn’t go looking for a room today, he’ll have to leave my house tomorrow at the latest. I’ll tell him one more time, tomorrow at lunchtime: We must separate!
It’s true, Hetty Haberle is a courageous and decent woman. And the fact that she doesn’t put her resolution into effect, doesn’t put out her Enno, is no fault of hers, but the fault of other people, people she has yet to meet. Inspector Escherich, for example, and Emil Borkhausen.
*Horst Wessel was a minor Nazi activist murdered in 1930 in a dispute over back rent or politics—it was never determined. Nevertheless the Nazis made him a martyr, and a song he wrote—”Die Fahne hoch,” or “Raise high the flag”—was renamed the Horst Wessel Song and made into the official song of the Nazi Party.
Chapter 27
EMIL BORKHAUSEN MAKES HIMSELF USEFUL
While Enno Kluge and Frau Haberle were linking their destinies, however temporarily, Inspector Escherich had been through some rough times. He had declined to keep it secret from his superior Prall that Enno Kluge had promptly shaken off his shadows and disappeared without trace in the sea of the metropolis.
Inspector Escherich had meekly allowed all the abuse to rain down on him: he was an idiot, he was an incompetent, he should be locked up, the dunderhead who in almost a year hadn’t even managed to catch a stupid anonymous postcard writer!
And then, once
he had a lead, he let the fellow go, imbecile that he was! Truly, Inspector Escherich had aided and abetted treason, and that was the basis on which they would proceed against him if he failed to produce Enno Kluge to Obergruppenführer Prall within the week.
Inspector Escherich listened meekly to these attacks. But they had a strange effect on him nevertheless: even though he knew perfectly well that Enno Kluge didn’t have anything to do with the postcards and was unable to help him take a single step toward the apprehension of the real culprit, in spite of that the inspector’s interests were suddenly almost exclusively concentrated on the insignificant little Enno Kluge. It was too annoying that this insect he had meant to hold up to his superiors as a distraction had now slipped through his fingers. During these weeks the Hobgoblin had been especially busy: three of his postcards had wound up on the inspector’s desk. But for the first time since he had joined the case, Escherich took not the least interest in the postcards or their author. He even forgot to flag the sites where they were found on his map of Berlin.
No, as a matter of urgency he had to lay hands on Enno Kluge again, and Inspector Escherich went to unusual lengths to get his man. He even traveled out to Ruppin, to Eva Kluge, prepared for all eventualities with a warrant for her arrest and his. But he saw pretty quickly that the woman had nothing to do with the man and knew very little of the life he’d led over the past few years.
What she did know she told the inspector, neither especially willingly nor exactly reluctantly, more with utter indifference. The woman didn’t care one way or another what had happened to her husband, what he had done or not done. The inspector learned the names of two or three bars where Enno Kluge had once been a regular, he heard of his love of betting and got the address of one Tutti Hebekreuz, who had sent a letter to the flat once. The letter had accused Enno Kluge of having stolen money and ration cards from her. No, on the last occasion she had seen him, Frau Kluge had neither given him the letter nor mentioned it to him. Only the address had stuck in her head; as a postwoman, or former postwoman, she had a keen eye for addresses.
Armed with this new knowledge, Inspector Escherich returned to Berlin. True to his principle of asking questions but not answering any, of never passing on information, he had not told Eva Kluge of the process against her in Berlin. So he didn’t come back with much, but it was a start, a sniff of a lead—and he was able to show Prall that he was doing something, not just sitting on his hands. That was all his superiors really cared about: something had to be done, even if it was the wrong thing, as the whole pursuit of Kluge was wrong. It was the waiting around that the gentlemen couldn’t endure.
Inquiries at Tutti Hebekreuz’s were unsuccessful. She had met Kluge in a cafe, and she knew where he worked as well. Once he had stayed in her flat for two weeks, yes, that was the case, and she had written to complain to him about the missing money and ration cards. But he had managed to clear that up on a later visit; it was another subtenant who had done that.
Then he had disappeared again without a word to her: some other woman, doubtless, that was Enno’s way. No, of course she had never been linked to him romantically in any way. No, she had no idea where he had moved to. But it wouldn’t be anywhere in the area, otherwise she would surely have heard about it.
In the two bars, he was known under the name Enno, yes indeed. He hadn’t been seen for a long time, no, but he did drop in from time to time. Yes, Inspector, we’ll not tell him you asked after him. We are law-abiding publicans who only serve respectable people who are interested in the sport of kings. We’ll let you know the moment he comes in. Heil Hitler to you too, Inspector!
Inspector Escherich assigned ten men to go around all the pubs and bookies’ premises in the north and east of Berlin, to keep asking about Enno Kluge. And while Escherich waited for their inquiries to bear fruit, the second bizarre thing happened: it no longer seemed to him out of the question that Enno Kluge might have something to do with the postcards after all. Too many curious coincidences clustered round the fellow: the postcard found at the doctor’s, for a start, and then the wife being first a Nazi, and then requesting to leave the Party, presumably because the son in the SS had done something she didn’t approve of. Perhaps Enno Kluge was much more cunning than the inspector had thought, perhaps he was involved in other affairs than simply these postcards. There was something he was trying to live down, that seemed almost certain.
This was confirmed by Deputy Inspector Schröder, with whom the inspector talked the whole case through in detail in order to refresh his own memory. Deputy Inspector Schröder also had the feeling there was something not quite right about Kluge, that he was sitting on something. Well, they would see, something was bound to come up soon. The inspector had a feeling, and his feelings rarely deceived him in matters like this.
And this time they really didn’t deceive him. During those days of anxiety and irritation, it happened that the inspector was told one Borkhausen desired to speak to him.
Borkhausen? Inspector Escherich wondered to himself. Borkhausen? Who the hell is Borkhausen again? Ah, I remember, that little snitch that would sell his mother for eight pfennigs.
Then, aloud, “Show him in!” But as soon as Borkhausen came in, he greeted him with the words “If this is about the Persickes again, I don’t want you here!”
Borkhausen eyed the Inspector truculently and said nothing. He gave every impression of wanting to speak about just that.
“Well, then!” said the Inspector. “Why are you still here, Borkhausen?”
“Persicke’s took the radio off that Rosenthal woman, Inspector,” he said reproachfully. “I know it for a fact, I’ve been…”
“Rosenthal?” asked Escherich. “The old Jewish woman who jumped out of the window in Jablonski Strasse?”
“That’s exactly right!” confirmed Borkhausen. “And he stole her radio—that is, she was already dead, but he went in her flat…”
“Let me tell you something, Borkhausen,” said Escherich. “I’ve discussed this case with Inspector Rusch. If you don’t stop agitating against the Persickes, we’re going to haul you over the coals. We don’t want to hear one more word about that business, and least of all from you! You are the very last person who ought to be poking around in that business, Borkhausen!”
“But he stole her radio…” Borkhausen began again with that stubborn persistence that comes of blind hatred. “I can prove it…”
“Get out, Borkhausen, or I’ll have you arrested and carted down to the basement!”
“Then I’ll go to the police headquarters on the Alex!” said Borkhausen, offended. “The law’s the law, and theft is breaking it…”
But Escherich had moved on to something else, namely his Hobgoblin case, which these days preoccupied him. He had stopped listening to this idiot. “Tell me, Borkhausen,” he said, “you know a lot of people and you go to pubs a lot. Have you ever come across a certain Enno Kluge?”
Borkhausen, sensing business, said a little truculently: “I know someone called Enno. I don’t know if his other name’s Kluge or not. I always thought Enno was his last name.”
“Small man, slight build, pale, quiet, shy?”
“Could be the same man, Inspector.”
“Light-colored coat, checkered brown cap?”
“That’s my man.”
“Always sniffing around women?”
“I wouldn’t know about women. Where I saw him, you don’t get many women.”
“Likes to play the ponies—“
“That’s right, Inspector.”
“Favorite bars: the Also Ran and Starter’s Orders?”
“The self same man, Inspector! Your Enno Kluge must be my Enno!”
“I want you to find him for me, Borkhausen! Drop that stupid Persicke stuff; that’ll only land you in concentration camp if you pursue it! Find me Enno Kluge instead!”
“But what would you want with him, Inspector!” exclaimed Borkhausen. “He’s a real tiddler. Pathetic li
ttle squirt! What would you trouble yourself over such an idiot for, Inspector?”
“Never you mind, Borkhausen! If you help me land Enno Kluge, there’s five hundred marks in it for you!”
“Five hundred marks, Inspector! Ten Ennos ain’t worth that! You must be making a mistake!”
“Well, maybe I am and maybe I’m not, but that needn’t concern you either way, Borkhausen. You’ll get your five hundred.”
“Well, if you say so, Inspector, then I’ll see if I can’t get hold of Enno for you. But is it okay if I just point him out to you? I don’t have to bring him in, do I? I don’t like to talk to people like that…”
“I wonder what you two got up to together! You’re not usually so sensitive as that, Borkhausen! I’d guess you got into some mischief together in the past, and you’re trying to forget it. Well, I won’t meddle with painful memories. Off you go, Borkhausen, and find me Kluge!”
“Might I ask the inspector for a little advance first? No, not so much an advance,” Borkhausen corrected himself, “as some cash toward my expenses.”
“What expenses, Borkhausen? That sounds like a challenging proposition to me.”
“Well, I’ll need to ride around on the subway, and spend time in various establishments, and stand a round here and a pint there, you know, and it all costs money, Inspector! But I think fifty marks ought to cover it!”
“Of course, any time the great Borkhausen goes out, everyone’s just waiting to see the color of his money! I’ll give you ten, and now scram! Do you think I’ve got nothing better to do than talk to you all day?”
In fact, Borkhausen did think precisely that: that an Inspector had nothing better to do than pump people for information and get them to do his work for him. But he carefully declined to say so. Indeed, as he made his way to the door, he said, “But if I find Kluge for you, then you’ve got to help me with the Persickes. Those guys made me angry…”
With a single bound, Escherich was after him, seized him by the shoulder, and held his fist under his nose.