Once a Jailbird

by Hans Fallada

  He tried to walk back the way he had come. But he could not find it; the snow had drifted across the road.

  ‘It will be quieter in the forest. But the snow will be lying deep. Eighteen kilometres to go! I’m crazy, wasn’t I all right in Berlin? As soon as I get into the forest I’ll take the thousand-mark notes out of my wallet and hide them about me somewhere. Then they’ll only find the change out of the hundred, and they’re welcome to that.’

  He moved on against wind and snow. The alcohol flamed up in him, he steamed with warmth. The snow was pleasantly cool against his face.

  Then a sudden stillness fell, he had reached the shelter of the trees. Only a few steps further. There stood a clump of firs by the side of the road, he would hide behind it; he plunged into a snow-drift in the ditch and struggled through it onto firm ground. When he reached it, he did not begin by shaking the snow off his clothes. He put a foot on a heap of stones by the roadside, and hastily untied his bootlaces. His boots were good ones, with long waterproof uppers, and the foot inside was dry and warm. Carefully he eased the flattened thousand-mark notes—there were unfortunately only three left—between sock and skin, made sure that they were lying neatly and securely, and pulled the boot on again.

  Then he stood up. He took a long swig from his bottle. He was now quite calm and confident. They would never catch him, none of them. He would be one too many for them. He had only to step out briskly and they would never catch him up.

  And so began his journey. It was more difficult, but also easier than he had thought. He saw and heard no more of the two men; but the snow lay terribly deep, in great drifts beside the paths, into which he sank up to the armpits. He slipped so often off the road that finally, when he felt the ground giving way beneath his feet, and himself sliding into the ditch, he flung himself in the opposite direction and usually recovered his footing.

  From time to time he cleared the snow off a milestone and flashed his lamp onto the figures. He made only slow progress. He did not do more than about three kilometres an hour. It was a good thing he had the brandy with him, but even so he would not catch the early train at Quanz; besides he must first go to a hotel there and sleep and sleep.

  When he threw the emptied bottle into the snow, he still had four kilometres to go. He could not reach Quanz before eight. For the last bit of the way he was merely staggering forward, though the road was now outside the forest and swept by the wind almost clear of snow.

  Then he found himself sitting on his bed at the Eagle at Quanz; the room was icy, and the stove, just lit, smoked. He kept on stumbling and falling asleep; but he knew he must undress, he could not sleep in his wet clothes. His limbs were stiff, and his bones congealed.

  He peeled off his sock . . .

  He stiffened and stared dumbfounded. Then his fingers came to the aid of his eyes. They found a soft mass of paper-pulp, almost colourless—paper that had been rubbed for eight hours between a moist foot and a sock.

  Three thousand—his last money, the last proceeds of his crime. He flung himself onto the bed and lay as he had fallen, his mind a blank. A little later, he ordered some cognac to be brought up to his room, and hot red wine with cloves and sugar.

  For three days he stayed in bed, drinking all the time, until the money in his wallet was spent. Then he made his way to the police station in Quanz, a small town of three thousand inhabitants, and gave himself up. All was at an end.

  All this had really happened to him, more than five years ago. And it had passed over Kufalt’s dreaming vision on many many nights during the first months after his arrest; that night march through the forest, and the moment when he had picked the pulped notes out of his sock. That had been the worst shock of his life. It had broken his pride for ever, and destroyed all his self-esteem. He was no use, even as a criminal. He would never tell that story, he always said he had squandered all the money, including the three thousand.

  Later on the dream had come less often, but it still returned from time to time. And it had come last night. The new life was beginning, the old chains were clinking.

  But it was noticeable that the dream had changed; one trifling detail had altered.

  He remembered exactly: last night too he had put his foot on the stone by the roadside, unlaced his boot and taken it off. Only . . . it was not the three thousand-mark notes that he had slipped into his sock, it was a hundred-mark one . . .

  It was the hundred-mark note!

  II

  Willi Kufalt sat there lost in thought. He fingered his sock doubtfully. ‘I really ought to give it back to the instructor. But I can’t do that. I’d sooner tear it up.’

  He had a clear sense of the new life that was now to begin. Something like the moonlight of the night before. ‘A clean break,’ he said to himself, ‘and a fresh start.’

  He felt in his sock . . .

  Then he let his hand fall. He stood up with a jerk and posted himself in watchful attitude under the window, as Chief Warder Rusch stepped into the cell.

  The section warder stood at the door.

  The chief warder did not look at the prisoner. First he inspected the bucket, then the inventory on the table, and then the arrangement of plates, brushes, boxes and tins of polish on the floor. Something must have annoyed him: he first jingled his keys, and then kicked the brushes apart with the toe of his boot.

  ‘Polishing brushes first, then clothes brushes,’ he commanded.

  Kufalt walked across the floor, bent down, and laid the brushes in the required order.

  ‘Learnt a bit, hey?’ said Rusch more graciously. ‘Pigsty days over, hey?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Kufalt, reflecting that he had here, for instance, learnt to wash his plate, and eat with his netting knife, a blackened stump of blade, merely to preserve the prescribed spotless sheen of the other objects.

  The chief warder walked towards the door. But there was still something: he stopped and looked meditatively at the cupboard. He passed a finger lightly along the edge of it.

  ‘Herr Suhm,’ he said, ‘give out notepaper. I’ll carry on.’

  The section warder disappeared.

  ‘This man Sethe,’ said Rusch, contemplating the ceiling; ‘will he appeal?’

  Kufalt reflected for a moment. He really did not know whether the old potato-peeler would accept his three months for insulting the chef, or whether he would appeal, for they were no longer on speaking terms. But he would rather not let Rusch know that.

  ‘I think he will, sir,’ he said.

  ‘Better not. Better not be a fool. Tell him to accept his punishment. Then with probation he’ll be out tomorrow. Otherwise—he’ll stay inside. Detention—and maybe other charges.’

  ‘Ha,’ thought Kufalt, ‘they think they’ve got him taped. Old Sethe’s done an eight-year stretch, and they know every day’s one too many for him now. That’s how they mean to get him.’

  And aloud: ‘I could speak to him at twelve this morning. But I don’t think it’ll be any good, sir. He’s sore with rage.’

  ‘Better not be a fool Accept it. Then probation. Otherwise—he’s in for another stretch.’ The chief warder paused. Then he said ominously: ‘And then . . . ’

  He broke off, very ominously.

  ‘Yes, and then,’ thought Kufalt. ‘I know what you mean. It isn’t at all certain Sethe would come out in three months. Those lice in the kitchen would set about him in the cellar, and a prisoner isn’t a witness. They’d knock him around so he could hear himself shout. Warders would turn the screws on him now and again—he’s pretty near boiling over as it is—until he said something silly. Insulting an official again. And if he gets violent—doesn’t matter whether he does or not; they’ll keep him inside till he’s fit for the madhouse . . . ’

  ‘Yes, it would be stupid to appeal,’ agreed Kufalt.

  ‘Of course,’ said the chief warder benignly. ‘Tell him so. Better report to registrar—he’ll be here today. Released tomorrow at seven.’

  ‘Yes,
sir,’ said Kufalt, knowing he would not say a word to Sethe.

  The chief warder nodded: ‘That’s right. Always were a sensible chap—except when you weren’t. Hurry up. Take you to the governor straight away. Keep your mouth shut.’

  The chief warder went to inspect some other cells and see if they were neat and clean.

  Kufalt didn’t move.

  See the governor before eight o’clock! His brother-in-law Werner had written. Perhaps his sister had herself come to fetch him. But it was one day too early for that. It was about something else, of course; about Sethe. Why had the chief warder said at the end, ‘Keep your mouth shut’?

  He would say what he liked to the governor. Governor Greve was the only man in the building to whom one could tell everything. He could not do much, his officers always overruled him, but he was a decent man, he did what he could. And he only wanted to do what was decent.

  Kufalt again thought of his hundred-mark note. But he didn’t finger his sock any more. He put away the inventory. ‘Pah! Fancy starting to be decent here! Nothing doing.’

  And he went on: ‘I’d have been a right fool to tear up that note. They’re all alike, outside as well as in. Sethe—they mean to do in the old man after his eight years in the clink. And I’m to start being decent? I don’t think.’

  The chief warder put his head through the door and said: ‘Come along.’

  III

  Kufalt was always specially glad to get out of the prison buildings and go ‘up in front’.

  He walked half a pace in advance of the chief warder, past the glass cubicle in the Central Hall. Here the scene was quite different; here were the large cells of the artisans, the shoemakers and the tailors, the lithographers and the librarian. Here the cell doors stood wide open, and the workers went in and out, to the lavatory or the instructor, carrying irons or strips of leather.

  But then came the great iron door.

  The chief warder turned the key twice; Kufalt stepped through the door, and stood in the office corridor. A bleak corridor, with whitewashed walls, the linoleum on the floor gleaming and spotless, and an endless line of doors. Kufalt knew them all: visitors’ room, schoolmaster, chaplain, another visitors’ room, the work inspector’s two clerks, governor’s anteroom and office, and senior warder of the postal service; and in the opposite direction on the other side—telephone exchange, police inspector, work inspector, steward, cashier, accounts inspector, doctor, Young Prisoners’ Welfare, conference room, investigating magistrate and Admission.

  Almost all these rooms he had entered, with requests or petitions, to receive reprimands, or to sign documents. Here had his fate been settled, his hopes raised or dashed.

  The police inspector had once kept on promising to visit him for three months, and never came; since when he had hated him. The schoolmaster had once given him twenty almost new magazines to take to his cell; indeed he had always been decent. With the work inspector he had had many conflicts, because their estimates of work done did not agree. On one occasion the steward had been a little too generous with supplies for two months, and at the end of that quarter the grub had been such that one could only think of hunger, hunger, hunger. The chaplain—there wasn’t much to be said about him. He was already over sixty, and had been in the jail for forty years; the chilliest Pharisee on this chilly earth.

  The governor, on the other hand—well, there was not much to be said about him. A splendid fellow . . . too kind perhaps, certainly too kind. His kindness had got him into much trouble, and he did not now have the courage to stand up to his subordinates, who always got their way in the end. Still, a decent sort.

  The chief warder knocked at the door. ‘Prisoner Kufalt,’ he reported.

  The governor looked up from behind his desk. ‘Very well, Chief Warder. You may go, I will send the man back myself.’

  This was extremely galling to the mighty chief warder, as Kufalt very well knew. Under the former governor he had always been present at every interview, and forcibly expressed his views. But the chief warder gave no sign of his feelings, turned and left the room.

  The governor was sitting behind his desk. He had a fresh colour, a couple of duelling scars on his left cheek, and blue eyes. His head was bald, and fresh-coloured like his face, pink towards the forehead and deeper red towards the crown.

  ‘Sit down,’ said the governor. ‘Cigarette, Kufalt?’

  He offered him the box; it was a kind that cost six pfennigs, as Kufalt noticed with awe. And then the governor gave him a match.

  His hands were very well kept, he was wearing an immaculate lounge suit, and his shirt cuffs were so neat and spotless that Kufalt felt hopelessly dirty and uncouth.

  ‘Well, it will all be over tomorrow,’ said the governor. ‘Now can I do anything for you?’

  Kufalt, in his present mood, would have gladly accepted anything the governor proposed, but he had no suggestions of his own, in spite of his need, so he only looked at the governor and waited.

  ‘What plans have you?’ asked the governor. ‘You must have some.’

  ‘I don’t really know. I think my relations will write to me.’

  ‘Are you in correspondence with them?’ And he added, by way of explanation: ‘I don’t read the post, you know. The chaplain is responsible for the censorship.’

  ‘In correspondence? No. During the last three months I’ve written them a letter on every writing day.’

  ‘And they have not answered?’

  ‘No, not yet.’

  ‘Are they in a good position?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘If no answer comes—it may still come, of course, but if it doesn’t—would you go to your relations?’

  ‘No,’ said Kufalt, quite taken aback. ‘No, certainly not.’

  ‘Ah. And you want to settle down to work?’

  ‘I would prefer,’ said Kufalt hesitatingly, ‘to go to a place where I wasn’t known. I thought of Hamburg.’

  The governor wagged his head. ‘Hamburg . . . A large city . . . ’

  ‘I’m fed up with all that sort of thing, sir. It doesn’t attract me any more.’

  ‘The temptations of a great city? Ah, well, Kufalt, I don’t believe in them either. Or rather, they’re exactly the same in a small one. But unemployment is naturally worse in Hamburg. Have you no one there who would help you? Here, perhaps I could . . . ’

  ‘No, please, not here. All the faces . . . ’

  ‘Very well. Perhaps you’re right. But what are you going to do there? Have you thought of anything?’

  ‘I don’t yet know. I couldn’t go back to bookkeeping or cashier work. And I couldn’t get a job very easily, with a gap of five years in my papers . . . ’

  ‘No,’ agreed the governor; ‘probably not.’

  ‘But I can still use a typewriter. I might buy a machine, and type addresses by the hundred? And later on start a proper typing agency? I can type very well, sir.’

  ‘You have no machine? Have you any money?’

  ‘Only my pay for prison work.’

  ‘And how much is that?’

  ‘Three hundred marks, I think. And could you have it paid out to me all at once, sir? So that I won’t have to collect it from the Welfare Office every week.’

  The governor looked doubtful.

  ‘I’ll be very careful, sir,’ begged Kufalt. ‘I won’t waste a penny. I would so hate going to the Welfare Office.’ And he added in a low tone: ‘I want to be through with all that.’

  The governor was easily moved. ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘That’s settled. I’ll see that what is due to you is paid out in a lump sum. But, Kufalt, you will have to live out of those three hundred marks, for two months perhaps, or even three; you won’t be able to buy a typewriter.’

  ‘By instalments, surely?’

  ‘No, not by instalments. You can’t reckon on a steady income, your addresses scheme might go wrong. What then?’

  ‘My relations . . . ’

  ‘Let’s le
ave them out of it entirely. What would you do then?’

  ‘I—don’t—know.’

  The governor’s voice grew more and more emphatic: ‘And how long is it since you have done any typing? Five years, isn’t it? Not for more than five years. Well then, you’ll find it pretty hard at first, and you won’t get through much.’

  ‘I can quite well type a hundred addresses an hour.’

  ‘You could. But you can’t now. You tell yourself you’re in good health, you have done twice your job of net-making here, and you’ll manage all right outside. But there has been nothing to distract you here, Kufalt, and outside you will have all sorts of worries and temptations. You are no longer used to mixing with other people. And then the cinemas, where you can’t go, and the cafés you can’t afford. It will be very difficult for you, Kufalt; and the difficulties are going to start now.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Kufalt. ‘Yes.’

  ‘You have been in here a long time, Kufalt. How many have you seen come back?’

  ‘A great many.’

  ‘You will have to be stronger than all of those. You will often think that it isn’t worth the trouble—what’s the good? I shall never make my way again. But a great many do make their way again. You must be very firm with yourself, Kufalt, very firm.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said Kufalt obediently.

  The prevailing colour in the room was a quiet brown. The windows were not holes in the wall, they had curtains, white muslin curtains with delicate green stripes. There was a proper carpet on the floor.

  ‘You are like a sick man who has been a long while in bed, you must first learn to walk, step by step. When a man’s been in bed for a long time, he must have a stick to support him, or someone to help him along. Another cigarette? Good.’

  The governor waited a moment. ‘You are thinking now: “Let the man talk, I shall be all right.” But—it—is—very—difficult. Until you have found your feet outside—you have never been without a settled wage, have you? I thought not. Before you have got used to things, all your money will have gone. And what then?’