by Hans Fallada
“You’re a clever woman,” said Borkhausen, as he sat down at the table and accepted a cup of coffee. “And you’re tough with it. I wouldn’t have thought that of you the first time I laid eyes on you, last night.”
Their eyes met.
“Well,” Borkhausen added, “actually you were pretty tough yesterday too, shutting the door in his face as he was slithering about on his knees. I don’t supposed you let him in later either, or did you?”
A little blush suffused into Hetty’s cheeks at the pert suggestion. To think that yesterday’s horrid scene had had a witness, and such a repulsive one at that! But she quickly got a grip on herself, and said: “I expect you’re a clever man yourself, Herr Borkhausen, but let’s not beat about the bush. You’re here on business, I take it?”
“Maybe, maybe, who knows…” Borkhausen hemmed and hawed, a little intimidated by the speed with which the woman was moving forward.
“So,” Hetty resumed, “you want to buy a pair of canaries. I expect you’d then let them go. Because if they stay in their cage, it’s not much use to them…”
Borkhausen scratched his head. “Frau Haberle,” he said, “this thing with the canaries is over my head. I’m a simple man; you’re probably much more sophisticated than I am. I only hope you don’t trick me.”
“Nor you me!”
“How would I do that! Let me be perfectly open with you, with no more talk about canaries and such. I’ll give it you straight, the whole truth. I’ve got instructions from the Gestapo, from Inspector Escherich, if that’s a name you’re conversant with?” Hetty shook her head. “My instructions are to track down Enno. That’s all. Why and what for, I’ve no idea. I want to say this to you, Frau Haberle, I’m a perfectly straightforward, honest human being…”
He leaned across to her; she looked piercingly into his eyes. Then his look, the look of the straightforward, honest human being, wandered off.
“I was surprised by my instruction, too, let me tell you, Frau Haberle. Because we both of us know what sort of man Enno is, namely a dud, with nothing in his head except a bit to do with racing and a bit to do with women. And it’s this Enno that the Gestapo want, the political department and all, where it’s all high treason and off-with his-head. I don’t understand it—do you understand it?” He looked at her expectantly. Again their eyes met, and the same thing happened: he couldn’t hold her look.
“Go on, Herr Borkhausen,” she said, “I’m listening…”
“Clever woman!” nodded Borkhausen. “Damned clever woman, and tough with it. That episode yesterday with the man on his knees…”
“I thought this was about business, Herr Borkhausen!”
“I’m a good, upright German citizen, which you may be surprised to hear, given that I’m with the Gestapo. As you might think. That’s where you’re wrong, Frau Haberle. I’m not with the Gestapo, I just sometimes do odd jobs for them, that’s all. A man wants to live, isn’t that right? And I’ve got five kids at home, the oldest of them just barely thirteen. And I’ve got to keep them all fed…”
“Stick to business, if you please, Herr Borkhausen!”
“No, Frau Haberle, I’m not with the Gestapo, I’m an honest man. And when I hear that they’re looking for my pal Enno, and offering a sizable reward for finding him, and I know Enno from old times, and I’m his true friend—then, Frau Haberle, then I thought, Well, isn’t that something, they’re looking for Enno! The little worm. If I happened to find him, I thought, then I could tip him the wink, you know, Frau Haberle, and he can vamoose while there’s still time. And I said to Inspector Escherich, ‘Don’t you worry about Enno, I’ll catch him for you, because he’s an old friend of mine.’ And then I got the instruction and my expenses, and here I am with you, Frau Haberle, and Enno’s working in the shop, and everything’s coming up roses…”
For a moment they were both silent, Borkhausen expectantly, Frau Haberle reflectively.
Then she said, “You haven’t told the Gestapo anything yet?”
“Ooh, no, I’m in no hurry with them, they’ll only mess up my game!” He corrected this to, “Of course I wanted to tip my old friend Enno the wink…”
Once again they were silent. Finally Hetty asked: “And what sort of reward did the Gestapo offer you?”
“A thousand marks! It’s a load of money for such a worm as Enno, I admit that, Frau Haberle, I was startled myself. But Inspector Escherich said to me: ‘If you bring in that Kluge, I’ll pay you a thousand marks.’ That’s what Escherich said to me. And he approved expenses for me of another hundred marks, which I’ve got already. That’s on top of the thousand marks.”
They sat there pensively for a long time.
Then Hetty began, “I meant what I said about the canaries before, Herr Borkhausen. Because if I were to pay you a thousand marks…”
“Two thousand marks, Frau Haberle, among friends it’s always two thousand marks. And then the hundred expenses on top of that…”
“Well, if I was to pay you that, and you know Herr Kluge hasn’t got any money, and nothing ties me to him…”
“Frau Haberle, Frau Haberle, please! You’re a highly respectable woman. You won’t want to hand over your friend who was on his knees before you, to the Gestapo, and all for a little bit of money! Where I’ve told you that anything’s possible, with the high treason and the off-with-his-head? You wouldn’t do that, Frau Haberle, I know you better than that!”
She could have told him that he, the simple, decent German man, was in the process of doing exactly what she, the highly respectable woman, was not allowed to do, namely sell his friend down the river. But she knew that remarks like that were pointless, and didn’t impress such gentlemen.
And so in the end she said, “All right, but if I were to pay you two thousand one hundred, what guarantee is there that the canaries will be released from their cage?” When she saw him scratch his head again, she decided to be completely brazen. “Put it another way: What’s my guarantee that you won’t take my money and then go to Escherich and take his as well?”
“But I’m your guarantee, Frau Haberle! I give you my word: I am a simple straightforward human being, and if I make a promise, I keep it. You saw the way I went straight to Enno to warn him, at the risk of him doing a runner out of the shop. And if he had, my whole plan would be up the spout.”
Frau Haberle looked at him with a thin smile. “That’s all well and good, Herr Borkhausen,” she said. “But just because you’re such a good friend of Enno’s, you’ll understand why I have to have every reassurance of his safety. If I can even raise so much money.”
Borkhausen made a pooh-poohing gesture, as though suggesting that a woman like herself would never be short.
“No, no, Herr Borkhausen,” Hetty went on, because she could see he had no sense of irony, and that she had to be completely plain with him, “who is to guarantee to me that you don’t take my money now…”
Borkhausen got very excited at the prospect of receiving the dizzying sum of two thousand marks, more money than he had ever seen in his life…
“…and there’s a Gestapo agent standing outside the door, who will simply arrest Enno? I require other guarantees from you!”
“But there isn’t anyone standing outside the door, Frau Haberle, I swear! I’m an honest man, why should I lie to you? I’ve come straight from home, you can ask my Otti, if you like!”
She interrupted him in his excitement: “Well, what other forms of guarantee can you give me—other than your word?”
“There aren’t any! It’s a business, it’s based on trust. And surely you’ll trust me, Frau Haberle, when I’ve spoken to you so frankly!”
“Yes, trust…” began Frau Haberle vaguely, and then they both lapsed into another long silence, he simply waiting for her to decide, she racking her brain as to how to obtain at least a modicum of security.
In the meantime, Enno Kluge, content to mind the shop. He served the now more numerous clientele promptly an
d not unskillfully, even managing a joke every now and again. The first shock he had felt at the sight of Borkhausen had now dissipated. Hetty was in the parlor, talking to Borkhausen, and she would surely be able to sort it out. Meanwhile, the fact that she was sorting it out, that was proof, if proof were needed, that she was never in earnest about her threat to send Enno away. So he felt relieved, and in his relief he was able to crack jokes again.
In the parlor, Frau Haberle at long last broke the silence. Resolutely, she said, “All right, Herr Borkhausen, I’ve had a think. I want to make a deal with you on the following conditions…”
“All right… Go on, tell me!” said Borkhausen, avidly. He felt he was very close to getting his money.
“I will give you two thousand marks, but I won’t give them to you here. I’ll give them to you in Munich!”
“In Munich?” He goggled stupidly. “I’m not going to Munich! What on earth would I do in Munich?”
“We’re going to go to the post office now, you and I,” she continued, “and I will draw a postal order for two thousand marks, payable to you in the main post office in Munich. And then I will see you to the station, and you will board the next train to Munich, where you will pick up your money. At the Anhalter Bahnhof, I will give you another two hundred marks for the journey, in addition to your ticket…”
“No!” Borkhausen exclaimed angrily. “I’m not doing that. I’m not agreeing to something like that. I’ll get down to Munich only to find out you’ve canceled the order at the post office!”
“When we go, I will give you my payment receipt, and then it won’t be possible for me to cancel it.”
“And Munich!” he cried. “What’s the point of Munich! We’re honest people here! Why not here and now, in the shop, and have done with it? Munich and back will take me at least two days and a night, and by then Enno will have gone God knows where!”
“But Herr Borkhausen, that was what we had agreed, and that’s what I’m giving you the money for! The canary isn’t to stay in his cage. Enno’s supposed to get a chance to hide somewhere. That’s what the two thousand marks are for!”
Borkhausen didn’t really have an answer to that, but sullenly he said anyway: “And I get a hundred in expenses as well!”
“You’ll get them as well. In cash. All at the station.”
But not even that could sweeten Borkhausen’s mood. He remained sullen: “Munich! I’ve never heard such nonsense in my life! It was all so simple—and now Munich! Why Munich, for Christ’s sake? Why not just say London and have done with it, so I can go there when the war’s over! It’s all messed up! It could have been so simple, but no, you wanted to go and complicate it! And why? Because you have no trust in your fellow men, because you’ve got a suspicious mind, Frau Haberle! I was so straight with you…”
“And I’m being straight with you! Those are my terms, and nothing else!”
“Well!’ he said. “Then I can go.” He got up and picked up his cap. But he didn’t go. “I’m absolutely not going to Munich…”
“It’ll be an interesting trip for you,” Frau Haberle urged. “It’s a pretty route, and there are supposed to be good things to eat and drink still available in Munich. The beer is much stronger than ours here, Herr Borkhausen!”
“I don’t drink,” he said, less sullen now than pensive.
Hetty could see that he was struggling to find some way of taking the money and still handing Enno over. She went over her plan again in her head. It seemed good to her. It would get Borkhausen out of the way for at least two days, and if the house really wasn’t being watched (which she would check as soon as possible), then that was enough time to move Enno somewhere.
“Ah, well,” said Borkhausen at long last, and looked at her. “And you’ll do it no other way?”
“No,” said Hetty, “those are my terms, take it or leave it.”
“Then I guess I’ll have to accept,” said Borkhausen. “I can’t just kiss two thousand smackers good bye.”
He said it mostly to himself, for his own justification.
“Then I’ll go to Munich, I suppose. And you’ll take me to the post office now.”
“In a minute,” said Frau Haberle thoughtfully. Now that he had agreed, she was still a little dissatisfied. She was certain he had some new scheme. She needed to find out what it was.
“Yes, we’ll go in a minute,” she repeated. “Just as soon as I’ve got myself ready, and closed the shop.”
He objected immediately: “Why would you close the shop, Frau Haberle? You’ve got Enno here to mind it!”
“Enno’s coming with us,” she said.
“Whatever for? Enno’s got nothing to do with our arrangement!”
“Because I want him there. Otherwise it could be,” she added, “that at the very moment I’m handing my money over to you, Enno will find himself being arrested. Misunderstandings like that do occur, Herr Borkhausen.”
“But who’s going to arrest him?”
“Well, the spy outside the door, for example…”
“There isn’t a spy outside the door!” She smiled. “You can check, Frau Haberle, look at all the people. I haven’t got a spy outside the door. I’m an honest man…”
“I want to keep Enno with me,” she insisted. “That’ll make me feel safer.”
“You’re so stubborn!” he cried furiously. “All right, Enno’s coming with us. Now get a move on!”
“We’re in no great hurry,” she said. “The Munich train doesn’t leave till noon. We’ve got a lot of time. And now will you excuse me for fifteen minutes, I have to get myself ready.” She looked at him, sitting at the table, his eye on the window through to the shop. “And one more request, Herr Borkhausen. Don’t talk to Enno now, he’s got plenty of things to do in the shop, and anyway…”
“I’ve got nothing to say to that idiot!” Borkhausen said irritably. “I don’t talk to fools like that!”
But to please her, he got up and sat down facing the parlor door and the window onto the courtyard.
Chapter 29
ENNO’S EVICTION
Two hours later, it was all over. The Munich express had rolled out of the departure hall of the Anhalter Bahnhof, with Borkhausen on board in a second-class compartment—an absurdly puffed up, swaggering Borkhausen, who was traveling second class for the first time in his life. Yes, Frau Haberle had generously bought the spy an upgrade to second class on his request, either to keep him sweet or else because she was so relieved to be rid of him for at least two days.
Now, as the other people who had seen off passengers slowly made their way out past the barriers, she said quietly to Enno, “Hold on, Enno, let’s sit down in the waiting room for a minute, and consider what to do next.”
They sat down with the door in view. The waiting room was half empty, and for a long time no one came in after them.
Hetty asked, “Did you pay attention to what I said to you? Do you think we were followed?”
And Enno Kluge, with his familiar irresponsibility returning as soon as the greatest danger was over said, “Bah! Followed? Do you think anyone would take instructions from an idiot like Borkhausen? No one would be that stupid!”
She had it on the tip of her tongue to say that in her view Borkhausen with his wiliness and suspicion was considerably more intelligent than the feckless little coward seated beside her, but she didn’t. She had sworn to herself while getting dressed this morning that the time for reproaches and criticism was past. All that remained to be done was to get Enno Kluge to safety. Once that was accomplished, she never wanted to see him again.
Full of the envy that had been gnawing at him for the past hour, he said, “If I was you, I would never have paid that guy two thousand one hundred marks. And two hundred and fifty in expenses on top of that. And a rail ticket and upgrade. You gave that bastard son of a bitch two and a half thousand marks! I’d never have done that!”
She asked, “What would have happened to you if I hadn’t?”
“If you’d given me the two and a half thousand instead, you should have seen how I handled it! I tell you, Borkhausen would have been happy with five hundred!”
“But the Gestapo had offered him a thousand!”
“A thousand—don’t make me laugh! As if the Gestapo tossed around money like that! At a little stoolie like Borkhausen. All they had to do was give him an order, and he’d have had to do just what they wanted, at five marks a day! A thousand here, two and a half there—he really has plucked you, Hetty!”
He laughed mockingly.
His ingratitude upset her, but she didn’t feel like arguing with him. Instead, she said curtly, “I don’t want to talk about it any more! Do you understand, I’m done!” She looked at him until he lowered his pale eyes. “Let’s think about what to do with you now.”
“Ach, there’s plenty of time for that,” he said. “He won’t be back before the day after tomorrow. We can go back to the shop. We’ll think of something before he gets back.”
“I’m not so sure. I don’t want to take you back to the shop, or if I do, then just to get your things packed. I feel uneasy—do you think we were followed after all?”
“I tell you we weren’t! I know more about these kind of things than you do! Borkhausen couldn’t afford to pay anyone, he doesn’t have any money!”
“But the Gestapo could have set someone on him!”
“And so the Gestapo spy stands and watches while I put Borkhausen on the train to Munich! Don’t be silly, Hetty!”
She had to agree that his objection made sense. But she remained uneasy. She asked, “What happened with the cigarettes?”
He couldn’t remember. She had to remind him how as soon as they left the house, Borkhausen had looked around everywhere for cigarettes—he absolutely had to have some. He had asked Hetty and Enno for some, but they were out, Enno having smoked the last of his during the night. Borkhausen had insisted on having some, he couldn’t stand not to, he depended on his early morning puff. He had hurriedly “borrowed” twenty marks from Hetty and called out to a youth who was playing around on the street, making a lot of noise.