by Hans Fallada
Old gaol-birds understand each other by a glance and a wink. They walk behind each other, they hardly move their lips, and something has already been slipped from one hand to the other. The prison officers gave Mordhorst far more freedom than me, for example. They shut one eye to him, he could do almost anything. Perhaps they were afraid of him because he knew so much, but I rather think they shied away from a clash with such a dangerous man. When he had been standing idle at the saw-bench for five minutes on end, and I had whispered: “Hey, get on with the sawing. The warder keeps looking over here,” Mordhorst did nothing of the kind. And when the prison officer finally came over to us and said: “Well, Mordhorst, that’s enough loafing, get on with it!”, he said heatedly: “Don’t I do enough for my thirty pfennigs a day?” (We got thirty pfennigs ‘wages’ a day, which was entered to our credit for the day of our release.) “Am I to work my fingers to the bone for that fat swine?” And he looked wickedly at the windows of the district court. The warder merely laughed and said: “You’ve got your rag out again, have you, Mordhorst? The Prosecutor won’t get any fatter or thinner from your saw.…”
But Mordhorst muttered: “I know what I know,” seized the saw-handle which I held out to him and we went on sawing, thrust after thrust, log after log, hour after hour.
They were good times, really, that we spent in the wood-yard. Today I think back on them quite gladly, however endless and heavy they appeared to me then. After the inevitable aches and pains which my unwonted labours caused me at first, my body soon became used to sawing, and the work helped me to bear much easier the symptoms of my dealcoholisation.
Spring was slowly changing to summer now, in the yard stood high fruit trees, apples and pears, into whose shadow we moved the saw-bench when the sun poured down too hot upon us; the saws groaned and shrieked occasionally when a chip resisted the blade, the clop-clop of the wood-cutter’s axes came to us monotonously; on the other side of the wall, unseen, children shouted at their games in the street. We took off first our jackets, then our waistcoats. Some worked quite naked to the waist, but I could never decide to do so. The hours flowed by, life glided along, I was imbued with a—deceptive—feeling of security and regularity. The time of dangers and disorders seemed over, and it appeared so easy to me to continue this life outside, a quiet peaceful life almost without future. Mordhorst and I softly talked of what we were going to get to eat this evening, and what the food had been like at lunch-time today—food played a most important part in our conversation, since like Mordhorst I got no food parcels, and had to rely on the prison diet even more than he. Moreover he was a better comrade than the pampered Duftermann. Every day he brought me something, some trifle that, outside, would have been of no value, an onion perhaps, which I cut up with a spoon and put on bread, or a cigarette and a match; then at evening, after lock-up time, when the building had fallen quiet, I would smoke my fag in comfort. Yes, I learned to smoke in prison, very much to the fury of Duftermann, who always filled the air with his cigar-fumes, and despised the smoking of cigarettes as womanly. But I let him go on talking, by that time I was completely indifferent to him.
Yes, Mordhorst, misanthrope as he was, helped me a great deal; he was an excellent adviser in my ‘case’ too, a better one than the lawyer who came to see me. Unfortunately, at the first hearing, I appeared before the examining magistrate without Mordhorst’s advice, and thus I made a serious mistake which I only realised later.
30
I had been in custody for three days, and I was not yet working in the wood-yard, when the head-warder Spittstösser appeared at my cell at four in the afternoon and said: “Come with me, Sommer. Put your jacket on and come with me.”
I walked behind the “chief”, and was at that time so inexperienced in prison matters that I politely asked: “Where are you taking me, officer?” I did not know then that a prisoner should never ask questions, that he never gets an answer, that he can only wait and see what fate—which may be a warder, or may be the Public Prosecutor—has in store for him. So I got the rather rude answer: “What’s it to do with you? You’ll find out.”
Over in the district court, the atmosphere of a real summer afternoon reigned; many of the room-doors were open and I caught a glimpse of tidied and deserted desks. It turned out that the sergeant of the court had gone to the post office, and so was not able to take me over from the charge of the prison officer. My custodian was in a hurry to return to his own building, and a slight argument ensued between a fat elderly woman clerk and my warder.
“I’m not here to look after your prisoners,” said the clerk angrily. “You always try that sort of thing. If one of them gets away, I’d be blamed for it.”
“Yes, but your sergeant doesn’t have to run off all the time, he knows full well the prisoner’s only been called over for interrogation.”
So the argument went back and forth for a while, neither of them would have me, till suddenly the elderly woman said, quite surprisingly: “All right, just for once I’ll do it. Herr Sommer won’t run away from me.”
With that, she looked at me with a friendly smile. So she knew me. I was set on a chair, and for the first time for days I looked again through an unbarred window, out on to one of my home town streets, and saw the children playing. One of the drays of the Trappe Beer Company rolled by. Trappe himself, who was well known to me and almost a friend, sat on the driver’s seat. Now a young girl, also a clerk probably, went through the room in which I had been put, saw me, gave me a friendly smile and said: “Good afternoon, Herr Sommer.”
So she knew me too, she was kind to me, although I was in custody on a charge of attempting to murder my wife. That elderly clerk had been kind also, she had said: “Herr Sommer won’t run away,”—they were all kind to me, the best proof that my prospects were good. Probably the examining magistrate would not commit me for trial, perhaps I would be free in half an hour. My heart beat strongly, joyfully.
Now an elderly man came into the room, a long, thin, grey-haired gentleman, who looked somewhat uneasy and distraught.
“This is Herr Sommer, Herr Direktor,” said the elderly clerk, and she nodded her head towards me.
“Is it?” said the elderly gentleman, with a slight cough (he was the head of the district court, I later found out). He looked at me for a moment with his tired, rather troubled eyes, and then gave me his hand.
“Come with me, then, Herr Sommer.”
Again nothing but friendliness, handshakes, being addressed as “Herr”; all this to-do utterly deceived me inexperienced as I was, I completely forgot that these were all my enemies only out to trick me, to sentence me, to keep me in prison.
I forgot the saying I had only just learned: “Easier to get in than out.” I thought that getting out was being made easier for me than getting in. I opened my whole heart to the magistrate, told him everything as it really happened, and later I was to find out what consequences my trustfulness had.
The head of the district court went before me into a comfortably-furnished office with many many books along the walls. I was placed on a chair in front of the desk, the magistrate sat behind it, a middle-aged lady appeared and put a large sheet of paper in the typewriter, the magistrate ran his hand through his hair, adjusted his spectacles, and said: “We’re very worried about you, Herr Sommer.” He coughed and said to the woman: “Take down Herr Sommer’s personal details.”
The questionnaire was easily enough answered; perhaps I gave Magda’s birth-date incorrectly (I was ashamed to admit that I didn’t know it for sure), and when I was asked whether my financial affairs were in order, I straightway said “Yes,” though I subsequently had serious doubts about this, because it seemed questionable whether Magda would be able to manage the business after my withdrawal of that five thousand marks. But I did not have the chance to rectify matters, for now the magistrate began to question me, or rather he took up a large closely-typed sheet, ran his hand through his hair again, adjusted his spectacles, coughed, and
said: “So you are held on suspicion of the attempted murder of your wife, Herr Sommer. What have you to say to that?”
At this stage, I had such trust in all the people around me that I quite naively cried: “For God’s sake, do they still maintain that I tried to murder my wife? I’ve never thought of such a thing in my life! I love my wife, and if I …”
“No, no, Herr Sommer,” said the head of the district court soothingly. “Of course, attempted murder is out of the question. It was attempted homicide, wasn’t it? You acted under stress, you were drunk, weren’t you?”
“But, Herr Direktor, I didn’t attempt to kill my wife at all. That was just drunken talk because I so much wanted the suitcase, because my wife is stronger than I am.”
“Well, well,” said the magistrate, and smiled thinly. “It probably was something more than a harmless scuffle. You’ve been drinking rather a lot recently, haven’t you, Herr Sommer? Tell me all you had to drink before you paid this nocturnal visit to your wife.”
So the interrogation slowly unfolded. I told everything just as it happened, I racked my brains in order not to forget a single bottle of brandy, I told the barest truth, and like a fool I thought I would manage affairs by truthfulness. But I insisted that I never had the intention of doing my wife any harm, I only wanted the things, I said. The magistrate coughed louder, he referred to the typewritten sheet, and said “I want to put your wife’s statement to you: Here: ‘He seized me by the throat, and tried to kick me in the abdomen,’ and here: ‘He whispered in my ear: I’m coming back tomorrow night to do you in!’ All this sounds like a great deal more than mere threats, doesn’t it, Herr Sommer?”
I was dumbfounded at Magda’s baseness, in putting things in this way. She might at least have added that she only took it for drunken talk: I tried to explain this to the magistrate, I pointed out to him that Magda had been very upset too, and in her excitement she had perhaps taken things far more seriously than they were meant. The magistrate nodded and sighed, he wiped his glasses, whether I convinced him I do not know.
Eventually he said, “Very well then, I won’t question you any further today, that will be enough for the first time.”
“So you won’t commit me for trial?” I asked with boundless joy. The magistrate coughed again.
“No, not exactly commit you for trial, as it were. Not exactly. You see, Herr Sommer, by your own evidence you were excessively drunk.”
“Not excessively drunk, Herr Direktor. I can stand a great deal.”
“You had,” continued the magistrate, correcting himself, “you had an excessive amount to drink, and there is a suspicion that at the time of committing the deed you were not in full possession of your mental faculties. What would you do if you were at home now? You would only start quarrelling with your wife again, you would only start drinking again. No, Herr Sommer, first you must get quite well again. First of all, I’ll send you to an institution where you’ll be under medical supervision and can get really well.…”
“Thank you, thank you, Herr Direktor,” I could have fallen on the old gentleman’s neck for his great kindness. Yes, for his great kindness.
31
Then I heard from Mordhorst two or three days later (they took their time over my transfer to the institution; in the court they all have plenty of time, except the prisoners for whom time passes so slowly)—well, I heard from Mordhorst that I had behaved like a complete idiot.
“Look,” he said, “how could you act so barmy? The old buzzard was laughing up his sleeve at you when you unpacked one bottle of brandy after another. He was just having you on, kidding to be so friendly. You should have said, you should have sworn blind: I wasn’t drunk, I wasn’t drunk at all! I did what I did deliberately, I worked it all out! And why ought you to have said so? Because you run the least risk that way. Look, for homicidal intent you get six months, a year at most. You can do that on your head, and then you’re out, a free man again, and nobody can lay a finger on you. And what’ll happen to you now? First you go for six weeks’ observation in the asylum, to find out the state of your mind. Do you think the asylum is better than gaol? It’s much worse! All the trimmings are the same as here—grub, work, warders. But you’re not with people in their senses, you’re with a pack of loonies! And then the doctor makes his report and you get Paragraph 51 and proceedings against you are stopped. But they’ll declare you insane and dangerous and they’ll order you to be detained in the asylum, and there you’ll stay five years, ten years, twenty years, not a soul will give a damn, and among all those loonies you’ll slowly turn into a loony yourself. That’s probably what they want. From what you tell me, your old woman’s pretty keen on the business; that way she gets the business and everything else belonging to you. And there you are, shut away, just a poor loony, and if they give you a bit of cake and a plug of tobacco at Christmas you can consider yourself lucky.…”
So said Mordhorst, the man of experience, and at his every word a voice within me answered: “yes.” I had acted like an idiot, I had let them entice me on to thin ice and now I was in it up to the neck. From the very first I had guessed what Magda was planning, but I had forgotten it; I had not wanted to think about it any more. I had to some extent deceived myself that she was my wife, she used to love me, she would not betray me.… But she had betrayed me! She had been working to this end for a long time. First she had set the doctors on to me, then she had given this devastating evidence against me, in which she had treated all my drunken talk as something said in dead earnest.
And how had she behaved since I was put in gaol? Had she acted as a real wife should when her husband has met with misfortune? Had she made a single effort to get permission to speak to me, to visit me and so provide an opportunity for discussion and reconciliation? Not at all. I had written to Magda. I had written her a serious friendly letter; I was obliged to write to her, I needed a blanket for my straw mattress, a sheet and a pillow. I also needed a newspaper and something to eat. Oh yes, she sent the things I needed, but there was no food or newspaper in the suitcase. And she did not write a single line!
Now I was in gaol, now she let the mask fall, now she felt herself already the owner of my property, now she thought she’d have me put away for ever in a lunatic asylum!
But she was mistaken about me, I wasn’t giving up the fight yet! No, I was only just starting! I knew what I was doing, I wasn’t a child to be led up the garden by Magda’s “efficiency”, I had Mordhorst to advise me now, and I had the best lawyer in town, Herr Doktor Husten!
32
Herr Doktor Husten, whom I had previously known only by sight, was a man in his late thirties, an already stoutish figure, with the livid wrinkled face of a successful actor. He had not long been in practice in my native town, and had the reputation of being cunning, somewhat rash, and very expensive. In my business dealings, of course, I would never have engaged a lawyer of his kind, but for a criminal case like this he seemed the right man. I was called in from my wood-cutting to find Dr Husten waiting for me in the governor’s office. He had answered the summons of my letter almost at once. Dr Husten shook my hand somewhat emphatically, assured me in a deep voice, with much rolling of the R’s, that he was particularly delighted to make my acquaintance, and then turned to the governor with the playfully-phrased request that we might be shown to some comfortable place where we could have a confidential chat. The governor grinned, and ordered the warder to take us to my cell. The indignant Duftermann was chased out into the yard for a while to take a walk.
“Don’t you dare touch any of my things!” With these words, he went out.
Instead of concerning himself with my case, Dr Husten asked in a whisper who that rude, impressive gentleman was, and he nodded as I briefly informed him. “Ah, that’s who it is! I’ve heard of him. Who’s defending him?—the fellow’s rolling in money. One could make something out of his case.”
I was more interested to know what could be made out of my case, and rather irritated
, I reminded Dr Husten of this.
“Ah, your case!” He cried sonorously and in some surprise. “Your case is in splendid shape. I have already examined the documents. You’ll get Paragraph 51 and get off scot-free, just leave that to me, my dear Herr Sommer.”
I asked still more irritably: “And what happens after I get Paragraph 51?”
Surprised again, the lawyer cried: “What happens to you? As far as the criminal court is concerned, your case is absolutely closed. And personally? I suppose you will go to an institution for a little while, but that’s quite desirable for reasons of your health!”
“And how long will that little while in the institution be, Herr Dokter Husten?” I asked maliciously. “Five years? Ten years? For life?”
The lawyer laughed.
“Ah, some fellow-prisoner has been putting ideas into your head! For life! I never heard such nonsense! In your case there’s no question of that. You are a sane man in full possession of your mental faculties …”
“That’s exactly my opinion,” I answered, “and that’s why Paragraph 51 is out of the question for me. No, Herr Doktor Husten, I take full responsibility for everything I have done, and I am ready to bear the consequences.”