by Hans Fallada
As for the Dolls’ own financial situation, it would have been desperate without Mrs. Doll’s diamond ring. Mrs. Schulz had managed to feed the Dolls for a week or two, but she couldn’t keep it up for longer than that — presumably owing to lack of money. She hadn’t said anything, but all of a sudden the white bread, decent coffee, and cigarettes stopped coming; instead of the mantra ‘Cheap at the price!’ the constant refrain that fell from Mrs. Schulz’s lips now was: ‘Dear me! The cost of everything these days!’
Then, one day, Mrs. Doll had said out of the blue that she intended to pawn her diamond ring — not sell it, she was too attached to it for that, but just pawn it. Doll had protested, but only feebly, because what other alternative did they have? They were just lying here, exhausted and ill; nobody was bringing them any money, but everything cost money — so there! Pawning was good, because it meant Alma could get her ring back again. One day, things would take a turn for the better, and they would be able to redeem the ring. (He knew very well that he was lying to himself and to her: there was not the remotest prospect of any turn for the better.) Mrs. Schulz was given the job of pawning the ring.
But the very next day she returned with the ring. She had found buyers for it, serious buyers who were prepared to pay handsomely, but nobody wanted to take it in pawn. Lending money was not a sound business proposition these days: you could earn more in a day on the black market than you could in a month from the interest payments on a loan. But there were people willing to buy the ring, and after a good deal of probing Mrs. Doll learned that twelve thousand marks had been offered for it. A good price, surely? But then it was a very fine ring: platinum setting, fiery white diamond, flawless, nearly one and a quarter carats.
In business matters, Mrs. Doll was always something of a surprise — not least to her own husband. She asked for the ring back. ‘No’, she said later to her husband, ‘if they’re offering twelve thousand, they can go to fifteen thousand, and they probably offered fifteen thousand anyway, and Schulz is planning to pocket the three thousand difference. No, I’ll get Ben to sell the ring for me; he’s much better connected than old mother Schulz …’
Ben! The ring was unquestionably Alma’s, a present from her first husband, and Doll had made up his mind to hold his tongue and not interfere in the matter of the sale. But now, briefly roused from his apathy and the stupor induced by too many sleeping pills, he expostulated: ‘Ben, of all people! The man who treated us so shabbily!’
‘That was just the two women!’ countered Alma. ‘Don’t forget, he was really pushed for time that day.’
‘He didn’t even have a cigarette for you!’ cried Doll.
‘We often don’t have any cigarettes’, replied Alma. ‘You leave it to me. You’ll see — we’ll get a much better price with Ben!’
‘Do what you like!’ And with that, Doll sank back into his apathy. ‘I just hope Ben doesn’t let you down again!’
As a result of this conversation, Mr. Ben turned up one day while the couple were still in bed, even though it was getting on for lunchtime. But Mr. Ben evinced no surprise; with greying hair but dark, fiery eyes, he kissed the young woman’s hand, examined the ring closely, declared that he knew nothing about precious stones, but would see if it was possible to get the asking price of twenty thousand marks. At all events, he would certainly get the best price for it that he could — Alma could count on him. After Mr. Ben had handed over fifteen hundred marks he happened to have on him, to meet the Dolls’ immediate needs, he disappeared again with the ring, kissing hands as he departed …
Whether Mrs. Schulz was annoyed or not that the ring had been taken away from her again (and with it, perhaps, a substantial commission), the fact was she had an excellent nose for money. Mr. Ben’s fifteen hundred marks had not been in the Dolls’ possession for more than a few hours before Mrs. Schulz showed up with a little notebook, and it turned out that she believed she had a claim on the Dolls that exceeded this fifteen hundred by a fair amount. The Dolls listened in astonishment as she reeled off an endless litany of cigarettes, coffee, sugar, salt, cakes, and potatoes. Nor had the partition wall been forgotten, re-erected by a tradesman ‘as a favour’ — a favour for which he had charged handsomely. From the very first day, every item had been carefully recorded, including everything she had made out was a gift from her, and for which she had unblushingly received their heartfelt thanks. Now it was all listed here as goods supplied to order — and not ‘cheap at the price’, either! Indeed, they had a lurking suspicion that Mrs. Schulz had not only charged them for the cigarettes and coffee she had supplied, but also for quite a few cigarettes that had never been smoked, and quite a few cups of coffee that had never been drunk …
Things might have come to a head on this occasion, with an almighty row that would at least have cleared the air, had it not been for the fact that neither of the Dolls could care less what happened to them. There was a brief eruption of anger — but even this took place only after Mrs. Schulz had gone (having dropped this bombshell, the good woman had had the good sense to withdraw and await the outcome from a distance) — and Alma swore they would never accept anything from old mother Schulz again, not so much as a single cigarette. So the fifteen hundred marks now changed hands again, and Ben was informed through Dorle that he needed to bring more money straightaway.
But this time Mr. Ben let a few days pass before doing anything. And when he did finally show up, he claimed that the ring had not yet been sold. He was very sorry to have to tell them that prices for gold and precious stones were falling, and that it was a bad time to be selling. He did have someone in prospect, however, who might be prepared to pay the asking price — maybe not the full twenty, but certainly nineteen or eighteen thousand. At all events: ‘You know I’ll do whatever I can for you, Alma!’
Meanwhile, he had brought two thousand marks with him, an advance taken out of his own pocket, and not without considerable sacrifice — as he mentioned several times.
But for now, the Dolls’ boat was afloat again, the balance of their debt to Mrs. Schulz was paid off, and from then on Dorle took care of all the Dolls’ shopping.
CHAPTER SEVEN
A parting of the ways
In terms of days and weeks, the Dolls would have found it impossible to say how long they had been lying on their couch. At all events, it seemed like an eternity, a time when they were never fully awake, never attending to anything beyond the most urgent necessities of life.
The young woman’s need for injections of narcotics had increased in inverse proportion to the doctors’ inclination to dispense them, and the abscess on her upper thigh, which had never been treated properly, was getting worse. The doctors were becoming ever more insistent: ‘Either you get to hospital, or we stop treating you!’
The economic situation of the Dolls was also becoming steadily more impossible. Ben’s visits became increasingly irregular, and he brought less and less money with him. The ring had still not been sold, he still had to ‘make sacrifices’ in order to advance them sums from his own pocket, and the amounts got steadily smaller — first a thousand marks, then only five hundred. The state of the market in precious stones was just too bad. It was not advisable to sell right now; one would not even make fifteen, and maybe a lot less than that. But he would keep on trying, true friend of Alma’s that he was …
Until one day the young woman suddenly made up her mind and said: ‘I’m going to get myself admitted to hospital today!’ And a moment later she added: ‘But first I’m going to take you to your sanatorium!’
This time she really meant it. The young woman displayed an energy that she had not shown for days or months past. She sorted out some underwear and toiletries for her husband, and when he asked: ‘And what about you?’ she just replied: ‘Don’t you worry about me, I can take care of myself!’
If Doll had been a little more alert and not so apathetic, he would not have cea
sed to wonder at his wife’s sudden new-found energy; she even managed to get hold of their district mayor, and scrounged a car from him to drive her seriously ill husband to a sanatorium.
At some point, Doll awoke there from a sleep so deep that it had been more like death, without memories or dreams or any obvious sign of breathing … Still feeling completely dazed, he turned his head with an effort, looking around him for someone to ask where he was, and where Alma was. He had always felt her presence next to him in bed, now she was gone, and he was all alone. This discovery made him very agitated, and helped to clear the fog in his brain (from the sleeping pills) more quickly; he sat up in bed and looked around him …
The iron bedstead he was sitting in had once been painted white, but now the paint was chipped and battered; a blue check bedcover lay across his body. The room was very small, and contained nothing apart from this bedstead. The wall was painted to head height with green oil paint, and above that it was whitewashed like the ceiling, on which, very high above him, an electric light was burning. A section of the ceiling plaster had fallen off: he could see the exposed reed lathing and the boards to which it had been fixed …
For a moment, he sat and stared at all this. He had to think where he had seen this damaged ceiling before. Then he suddenly remembered. Suddenly he recalled the night of 15–16 February 1944, when one of the worst air raids he ever experienced went on for fifty-five minutes over Berlin. For fifty-five minutes bombs had rained down in the immediate vicinity of the sanatorium, and in the next block everything had been completely flattened by an aerial mine. They — the patients and the nurses — were sitting in a completely inadequate air-raid shelter that was half above ground, and they had seen the glow of the fires in every direction. When they emerged after the all-clear, all the glass from the windows in the rooms lay scattered across the floor, most of the ceilings had collapsed, and some time that night the piece of plaster up there on the ceiling had fallen off.
He now remembered it again very clearly; suddenly it was as if he could feel the horror and the fear of that night all over again. Suddenly he had the feeling that the siren could go off any minute, and force him down into the basement for another terrible hour of torment.
But then he remembered: it was peacetime now, peacetime … There were no more sirens going off. He could safely carry on sleeping in the sanatorium’s padded cell until the morning, the padded cell that Sister Emerentia just called ‘the little room’. But how had he, Mr. Doll, ended up in this little room? Had he been so disturbed? Had he been raving? Never once had he been put in here when he was staying at the sanatorium before! At least he wasn’t just lying on mattresses on the floor; they had left the bedstead for him, so it couldn’t have been that bad. And it was only now that he noticed they’d left the iron-lined door of the cell ajar, so he couldn’t have been in a very bad way.
Doll sat up gingerly on the edge of the bed. He still felt a little shaky from the sleeping pills, but he thought he would be able to walk if he leaned against the wall now and then. He automatically looked around for his slippers and dressing gown, but then he remembered that he no longer possessed such things. So he draped the bed cover around his shoulders, stepped out into the corridor, and walked along to the lobby.
As always, sitting in the big plush armchair by the light of the little auxiliary lamp, was the night nurse. For a while, Doll observed him from a distance. No, it wasn’t the nice Dutchman who had been on night duty here throughout the war, and who often enough had been dragging the last unwilling patients out of their beds and down to the basement even as the bombs were already falling. It was a nurse he didn’t know. Still— !
Doll gave a small cough and walked forward. The startled nurse woke from his semi-sleep, peered into the gloom, and then leaned back, reassured, having recognised Doll. ‘So, you’re awake, too?’ he asked. And then added: ‘Mind you don’t catch cold, walking around like that in your bare feet!’
‘No way!’ replied Doll, sitting down in a wicker chair opposite the nurse, and wrapping the bed cover around his legs. ‘I never get colds. I’m a tough nut. Once I lay for half a day on the red floor tiles outside the tea kitchen back there, in winter, and it did me no harm.’
‘Not my idea of fun!’ said the nurse. ‘What did you do that for?’
‘Can’t remember’, said Doll. ‘Probably to get some medication they wouldn’t have given me otherwise. Did you come straight after Simon Boom?’
‘Who’s that? Oh yes, I know who you mean: the Dutch night porter. No, I didn’t ever meet him. They got rid of him as soon as the war ended. I’ve only been here a few weeks.’
‘Are any of the old staff still on the ward? I expect you’ve heard that I was here quite often — I’m more or less a regular on the ward.’
He said it with a touch of pride. This was a place where he had always gone when his overwrought nerves, never very strong, went completely to pieces. He’d gone through some difficult times in this place — bouts of depression when he had given up completely on himself, when he thought he was losing his mind — but always he had managed to pull himself together somehow. Suddenly, from one day to the next, he had declared himself fit again, and had gone back to his work …
He loved the place, but especially this ward with its long corridor leading to the toilets, echoing with the footsteps of patients at all hours of the day and night; this corridor with its rust-red linoleum, onto which so many white doors opened, but all without door handles — so they could only be opened by the nurses with their keys — and with big glass windows that allowed people to see into the room from outside, windows with glass so thick that even the most agitated patient could not smash it with a chair leg.
He loved the mysterious atmosphere that permeated the place after every ‘exitus’, the nurses standing around aimlessly, and repeatedly shuffling all the patients back into their rooms, since they were not supposed to find out about the death. It was always ‘unfortunate’ when someone in the sanatorium died, because all the staff felt that it reflected badly on them: people didn’t come here to die; they came to get well! And generally the management were able to smuggle a dying patient out shortly before the end, and transfer him to a city hospital.
He loved the ‘shock days’, when the patients were treated with Cardiazol or insulin, or given electric shocks. From his room he would suddenly hear the screams of the patients being shocked as they lost consciousness, which sounded exactly like the cries of an epileptic. And then a deathly hush would descend, as if those who had been spared didn’t dare move, lest they attract a similar fate.
He particularly loved sitting around — against the rules — in the ‘tea kitchen’, where nobody ever made tea any more but only washed up, and chatting for ages there with the nurse who had known him for many years … She gave him extra food whenever she could. He liked the woman, who was still quite young, still attractive, and had been living for twenty years now among these men who were slowly dying; despite the loss of all her illusions, she had retained her helpful disposition and mother wit.
And he loved the ward rounds, when the doctors came around in their long, spotlessly white coats; for them, each patient was just another case, which held no more interest for them once the illness had passed through the acute stage. He was quietly amused by these psychiatrists, who studied the slightest mood swings in their patients in minute detail, but for whom physical ailments simply didn’t exist. He loved these doctors precisely because the older and more knowledgeable they became, the more they seemed to resemble their patients, because they seemed to be so disconnected from real life.
He loved the walks in the little, high-walled gardens, which looked nothing like gardens at all, being places of the utmost dreariness. He loved the sudden eruption of noise out in the corridor, when an agitated patient was being hustled into the padded cell or the bathroom. He loved the whole building with its dense, stifling at
mosphere, its enveloping feeling of security, the life behind the narrow iron windows. It was like home to him.
‘Tell me’, he asked the night nurse Bachmann later, ‘why am I in the bunker? Was I that agitated? Did I smash something up?’
‘Not at all!’ replied the nurse. ‘You were as gentle as a lamb. But there were no rooms free when you arrived, so they put you in there.’
‘Were you here when I arrived? Have you seen my wife?’
‘No, you arrived before I came on duty, in the afternoon. I don’t know anything about it. You were pretty well drugged up, I think, but then they gave you something more.’
‘I see!’ said Doll. And then again: ‘I see!’ But he didn’t continue the conversation; he just sat there quietly, and drew the bed cover more tightly around him. He suddenly realised that he didn’t even know which hospital Alma had been admitted to. He couldn’t write to her, send her a message, or call her. He was alone: for the first time in ages, he was completely alone again, and suddenly he felt how weak he still was, and how unwell.
He stood up. Without even thinking about it, he began to walk up and down, the bed cover draped around his shoulders, just as he had spent many previous nights wandering up and down this long corridor, getting through the endless hours of insomnia.
And that was how the old night sister found him. She called out to him in her high-pitched old woman’s voice, with no regard for the other patients who were sleeping: ‘And here’s our very own Dr. Doll again! So how are you, Doctor? How do you like it in our little room?’ And with a little giggle: ‘Sister Emerentia has been having a little joke, putting Mr. Doll in the little room, our old regular! Well, you needn’t worry, Mr. Doll, we’ll get that sorted out. It’s just that we’ve had over two hundred notices of admission, and not a single bed free for weeks. So when someone turns up without any notification …’