A Stranger in My Own Country

by Hans Fallada

  He nodded dutifully in reply and promised to do as I asked. When could he come and see me again?

  I said that I would let him know; nothing was decided as yet, and I needed to think it over carefully first.

  The coffee party was over, and my wife and I were walking in the garden. Neither of us felt entirely happy about the business. But still, it was worth good money to have peace and quiet and feel safe, and five hundred marks was not such a huge sum – the Sponars had cost me a lot more. I thought I should sleep on it – but would probably decide to go ahead.

  The next morning came, and I had a very early visit from Mr and Mrs Ritzner, accompanied by another man with a long face, glasses and a briefcase, who introduced himself as Mr Ritzner’s lawyer. He put his briefcase down beside him after taking a few papers out, and made a short, friendly speech. He was delighted that a generous benefactor had turned up who was willing to pay off Mr and Mrs Ritzner’s debts on reasonable terms. Their financial circumstances really were in the most deplorable mess. He had brought with him a list of all the Ritzners’ debts – and before I could recover from my astonishment and protest, he had pressed two sheets of paper into my hand. It was a very long list; I immediately turned the first page over and looked at the final total on the second page. I put the papers down and said indignantly that this was completely out of the question. I’d been told it was 500 marks at most, but this list came to nearly 2000! No, I was not prepared to do that and I wouldn’t be doing it. There was no point in discussing the matter any further.

  I handed the papers back to the lawyer, but he wouldn’t take them. Instead all three of them began entreating me not to take away their last hope. They begged me not to be the author of their misery! The only way out for them now was a bullet! If the school authorities got wind of these debts, he would lose his job. If Mr Ritzner had initially named a much smaller sum, it was not for any devious reasons, but simply because he had completely lost track of his spending! That surely couldn’t make any difference to me . . . While this assault was under way, I took a closer look at the individual items on the list. I now discovered that the famous debts incurred as a result of the wife’s illness made up only a tiny fraction of the total. What I found on the list instead were the new wireless set, along with the garishly grained chairs and the standard lamp with the conical shade – despite his debts, the man had simply bought whatever he wanted . . . And next to these I found the smallest items listed: here were five loaves of bread not yet paid for, a moderate shopkeeper’s bill not yet settled, ten bottles of beer bought on tick from the innkeeper – this man was just an irresponsible and habitual debtor devoid of conscience! My ‘No!’ became increasingly emphatic, and all political considerations were now cast aside. In the course of the conversation it slipped out that parents and relatives had already helped them out on two or three occasions, but in no time at all they were back in trouble again. I kept on saying ‘No!’. But they wouldn’t give up, they just kept on and on. It went on for hours. I rushed from the room in a rage and escaped into the garden, unable to stand their endless talk a moment longer. They just carried on talking to my wife. They were determined not to leave until I had said ‘Yes’, and I just couldn’t get rid of them. Sure enough, they didn’t leave until they got what they wanted. They wore me down. They talked me into the ground. And in the end I said ‘Yes’. I told them my terms. As far as the repayments were concerned, I was very reasonable: for the first six months they would not have to pay anything, after that he was to repay 50 marks a month out of his salary, and I wouldn’t charge interest. But, if Mr and Mrs Ritzner got into debt one more time, then the entire amount of the debt would become repayable at once – no notice, no ifs or buts; and in this event his own lawyer must cease to act for him and act for me instead, doing whatever was necessary to collect the debt.

  They agreed to everything, they would have accepted any terms just to get off the treadmill of permanent debt. I wrote out a cheque and handed it to the lawyer. He thanked me with the friendliest of smiles. I repeated my warning one more time: ‘But at the first sign of any new debt, you start acting for me!’

  ‘We will never get into debt again’, cried schoolmaster Ritzner, and raised his arm in his brown shirt.

  In the next few weeks my wife had much to do up in the village. She had set up a proper system of domestic accounting for Mrs Ritzner and went to check daily that everything was being correctly entered. Mrs Ritzner herself turned up out of the blue once and asked in some agitation how she should enter the proceeds from the sale of three eggs. It was all going swimmingly.

  And then one day some people in the village told me that Ritzner had bought two pigs to fatten up from the livestock trader – but not cheap piglets like we buy, but a pair of good solid barrows weighing over a hundredweight. Suse and I debated for a long time whether this purchase constituted a breach of our conditions forbidding him to get into debt again. There was no way the Ritzners had paid for these pigs; we knew their financial circumstances too well for that. So they must have bought them on credit, and the question was: was that allowed? Everyone in the countryside needs to keep one or two pigs for slaughter, and if it is too late in the season for piglets to be fattened up in time for slaughter . . . There was a case to be made for them, certainly, and so we decided not to make an issue of it. The strange thing was that from then on my wife no longer felt compelled to go up to the village in the evenings to check on the Ritzners’ bookkeeping; and Mrs Ritzner apparently had no more questions for my wife regarding entries in the accounts. We didn’t exactly avoid each other, but we only spoke if we happened to meet by chance. And chance didn’t bring us together very often.

  Then one day the bookkeeper of the village electricity cooperative called on me – a painter and decorator by trade, but not the one I’ve already mentioned, who was a Party member, but another one who also lived in our village. He wouldn’t come straight to the point, but seemed to be sounding me out with various questions – was it true what people were saying, that I had paid off the Ritzners’ debts, that they were entirely in my hands, etc., etc. But he finally got round to the thing that was troubling him: Ritzner, who was of course chairman of our village electricity cooperative, had acted in that capacity to buy twenty hundredweight of briquettes in our local small town and charge them to the cooperative’s account, and had then had them delivered to his house. The invoice had been sent to the bookkeeper that day, he had driven straight into town to lodge a furious complaint, and that’s when he learned of this sequence of events. He took the view that this was actually fraud, since a village electricity cooperative had no need of coals, and what did I now propose to do about it? What indeed? Mr Ritzner moved in mysterious ways. He was no longer running up debts in his own name, but in the name of others – and that was actually much more worrying. I finally made up my mind, went to see his lawyer and told him what had happened. He said this was definitely a breach of our agreement, he was no longer prepared to represent Ritzner, and he was now at my disposal. He advised me to proceed with caution, however, and counselled against direct legal action. Ritzner was a Party member and a member of the SA, so this was really a matter for the Party to deal with. (Yet again, the special rights enjoyed by Party members!) He advised me to take my case in the first instance to the local Party office in our local small town.

  And so I did. There I encountered a young man with pointed features, who was somewhat astonished when I said my name. He had probably not expected to make my acquaintance on Party premises. I explained the matter to him. He said it was probably all just tittle-tattle and gossip. He said he would look into it at some point. I said, somewhat tartly, that since a crime had very likely been committed here, something rather more than looking into it at some point was required. I told him my car was outside, and if he would care to get in and come with me we could clarify the matter in fifteen minutes. He was a very young man; an older and more experienced Party member would have sidestepped my i
nvitation and sorted the matter out on the quiet. But this young man let himself be persuaded and got into the car with me. We drove to the bookkeeper’s house and inspected the invoice. Ritzner had been asked to join us. He entered the room and freely admitted to having placed the fraudulent order. He said he was at his wits’ end. He had no money in the house – he was being eaten alive by debts. So the wretch was up to his neck in debt again. I became angry and accused him of breaking his word to me. I told him I would do whatever was necessary to get my money back, that I would have his furniture seized and impounded. He replied abjectly that their furniture had been pawned long ago. A teacher’s salary was just too meagre, and his wife had had to go to the doctor’s again. He cut a pitiful figure, truly the most pitiful that I ever saw in a brown shirt. They were not cowards, as a rule. But this man was a coward. A great strapping fellow, but without an ounce of backbone. The local Party branch leader was just as disgusted as I was, but he still tried to mollify, mediate and talk me round, in the interests of the Party.

  Then the door opened and the bookkeeper, who had been out of the room for a while, came back in and said in a loud and agitated voice that the children had just noticed that their school savings moneybox had been broken into, and that thirty marks were missing. Schoolmaster Ritzner turned very pale and said falteringly that he’d had to give the postman thirty marks that morning, but he would put the money back by the evening. And then the wretch began to cry . . . The local Party branch leader asked me and the bookkeeper to leave the room. We were only too glad to do so. We stood for a while chatting outside the door, and imagined the judgment that was now being visited upon the teacher for the sake of the Party, we pictured him hounded from office, disgraced . . . ‘He’s finished!’ we said. In my mind I had written my money off. And the days passed, and turned into weeks, and nothing happened, at least nothing as far as anyone could tell from the outside. Schoolmaster Ritzner continued to teach his pupils – despite the theft of school savings – and remained in post as chairman of the village electricity cooperative – despite the briquettes fraudulently charged to its account. And he carried on wearing his brown shirt; only a party such as this could so brazenly and shamelessly fly in the face of general disapproval. I had instructed my – formerly his – lawyer to write to Ritzner and ask what he could pay back. All I got by way of reply was a consolatory letter saying the schoolmaster’s debts would probably be taken over by somebody else, and I would get all my money back. Then one day I received a visit in my study from two more of the Führer’s acolytes. It’s never what I would call a welcome sight, but on this occasion they were all smiles. They had come to inform me that the National Socialist Teachers’ Association had taken on Mr Ritzner’s debts in their entirety, and that the sum advanced by me earlier was now available again – that is to say . . . I looked expectantly at the young local Party branch leader, wondering what this last little proviso portended . . . Well yes, he said, still smiling broadly, the thing is, I had only got my money back thanks to the efforts and the intervention of the Party. I was a wealthy man, for whom such a sum was a mere trifle . . . I could see where they were going with this florid oration, the Chancellor’s beggars; the Party could never get enough money. But this time I was not prepared to be milked for the Party. I quickly replied that I was not by any means a wealthy man, and that a sum of nearly 2000 marks was anything but a trifle to me, but in view of the unusual circumstances I was prepared to be generous . . . The smile on the face of the local Party branch leader became even broader . . . You gentlemen, I continued, came here by car, so you will have seen for yourselves what a dreadful state the roads in Mahlendorf are in. The parish was poor, and therefore I agreed to make the whole sum available, in its entirety, to the parish of Mahlendorf for road improvement works. The local Party man was taken aback for a moment, but then carried on smiling. He made the best of a bad job and thanked me for my gift. ‘But here’, he went on, ‘is someone else who would like to talk to you, and he has some serious worries . . .’ And he pointed to the man from the SA, who had some sort of gold braid as a mark of his seniority. ‘Yes’, said he. ‘My dear Mr Fallada, you know that the Party rally is coming up very soon, our unit is very short of money and needs all kinds of things for the march to Nuremberg. You have given money to many people, so why not be generous to us too, and make a donation to my SA unit? If you do, then my unit will never forget you.’ Ingratiating though this last remark was, I couldn’t help thinking that it concealed a double meaning. I decided not to bother with a refusal or horsetrading, nor did I ask any questions, but quickly wrote out a cheque for 500 marks. He looked slightly disappointed, but he took what he was given. ‘We’ll use it to buy knapsacks’, he said. They left. I never saw them again, I never heard from them again. I hope they used the 500 marks to buy knapsacks. Shortly afterwards the young local Party branch leader attempted suicide; but his accounts were said to be in order. I don’t know the truth of it – it was impossible to get to the bottom of these things. But my efforts to help out a village schoolmaster in a small way after he had got himself into debt ended up costing me a good 2500 marks, including additional costs. But at least – I hear my dear readers ask – the parish of Mahlendorf now has a decent road from the village to the local small town. Well no, dear readers, is my answer to that. The road is as bad as it always was, if anything it has got a little worse since then, if such a thing is possible. When they were ready to start work on the road, and the farmers were supposed to bring in loads of gravel and chippings, as it was winter and their horses were standing idle in their stables, they said: ‘What are we doing, improving the road for Mr Fallada? It’s all right as it is – it was good enough for our fathers and it’s good enough for us!’ And rather than lift a finger to improve the road, they left their horses to kick out and break their legs in the stable from too much energy, and went on loading their carts with a third of what they could have carried on a properly made-up road. So I dare say the money is still sitting in the savings bank account of the parish of Mahlendorf, if it hasn’t been used in the meantime for other ‘more Party-specific’ purposes. I never liked to inquire. But what became of schoolmaster Ritzner, the school savings thief whose debts were taken over for the sake of the Party? After a decent interval of time – in case anyone should think it had anything to do with the goings-on related above – he was transferred and given a teaching post in another parish, while his place here was taken by a Mr Stork. Not that Mr Ritzner had been moved on to a lesser position; the new job was actually something of a promotion. But it didn’t help him at all, because he was incapable of changing; he remained the same old incorrigible, reckless debtor, beyond all sense and reason. And the day came again when he didn’t know where to turn for money, only this time he really couldn’t find a single person to bail him out. So he went and hanged himself. His wife, who was just as bad as he was, found him in time and cut him down. The first thing he did, when he was just about able to breathe again, was to slap his wife around the face for saving him. Soon afterwards he lost his teaching job – I don’t know what became of him then.

  Back in those days I had another visit from the SA, which was just amusing to begin with, but ended up being thoroughly annoying. Anyone who has read my novel Wolf among Wolves will perhaps remember the figure of the little bailiff Negermeier, or Black Meier. Well, the portrait of this Black Meier is drawn pretty much from life,152 apart from all those extra bits of pure invention that we book writers feel we must put in for the sake of effect. He had been a colleague of mine back in those dim distant days when I was still an agronomist myself, and I have to say that for all his eccentricities he was a good and loyal friend. He showed me just how good and loyal he was by remaining my good friend even after reading Wolf, not taking the least offence at this highly distorted portrayal. I had not heard from him in ages, when an ancient, open-topped car drove into my yard and five or six SA men got out, one of whom I recognized, to my astonishment, as little Black
Meier. In the course of his chequered career he had now became an SA man as well, and therefore, obviously, a dyed-in-the-wool acolyte of the Führer. I invited the party into the house, regaled them with food, drink and cigarettes, and the two of us began by taking a trip down memory lane. ‘Do you remember, the old forest ranger – ?’

  ‘And what about the time old Aprilpeter153 threw you out of the hayloft, and you had to pack your bags on the spot?’ ‘And that same evening he was downing a bottle of wine with me!’ We laughed heartily. Eventually we got round to talking about this trip he was on with his friends, which I couldn’t quite fathom. Basically it seemed to be just a joyride in a borrowed car, which had taken them up as far as the island of Rügen. Now they were on their way back to their SA barracks in Brandenburg. On the whole it seemed as if the trip had been a source of endless amusement. They joshed and nudged each other, and some of their shared memories reduced them to helpless mirth. Most of the allusions were obscure to me, not helped, perhaps, by the drinks that I had dispensed so lavishly. What I was seeing now was the other side of the coin. These men were blissfully happy and drunk with a sense of their own power. For the last few years they had been fighting for the cause while their Führer stood on the threshold of power, only to be turned away repeatedly. But now they had become the masters. They felt like little kings. Nothing seemed beyond their reach now. The humble life of an SA man was just a transient state for them; soon the Führer would be handing out jobs to his loyal followers – and they would not go away empty-handed. They would not be slow in coming forward – oh dear me no! They had served their time in punch-ups at political meetings! ‘Do you remember the cop who was hitting us right in the face with his rubber truncheon? If we ever see him again, he’ll wish he’d never been born! Just you wait!’ They laughed again. ‘And that time a Communist knocked you off your bike with a soda water bottle filled with sand? I came along just in time, otherwise you’d have been toast!’ More laughter. And they blithely told us what an easy time they had of it in their barracks, with no duties at all, a real cushy number! ‘When we’re lying in our beds in the dormitory at night, nobody can ever be bothered to get out of bed and turn off the light. So we just grab our pistols and fire away until the light bulb’s shot out!’