Once a Jailbird

by Hans Fallada

  Kufalt pulled a face. ‘It isn’t so easy.’

  ‘It’s perfectly easy,’ said Batzke. ‘By the Lübeck Gate one of us will give her a tap on the head, and the other pinch her bag, and bolt in opposite directions.’

  ‘That’s no good,’ thought Kufalt to himself. ‘He’d be off with the cash and leave me to be caught by the cops.’

  And he said: ‘I don’t understand, Batzke—when you’ve got a pocket stuffed with dosh.’

  ‘You just stop talking about my money!’ shouted Batzke angrily, and then, more calmly: ‘Well, then; yes or no. There’s plenty who’ll come in with me.’

  ‘I’ll have to think it over,’ said Kufalt.

  ‘Tomorrow’s Saturday,’ said Batzke.

  ‘Yes . . . yes . . . ’ said Kufalt meditatively.

  ‘Then it’s—no?’ asked Batzke.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Kufalt dubiously. ‘Seems a bit silly to me.’

  ‘Silly? Can’t do anything without risk.’

  ‘But not so much risk for so little money. I don’t want to do another stretch.’

  ‘But you will, anyhow,’ said Batzke slowly. He stopped and added: ‘If I choose.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ asked Kufalt in bewilderment.

  ‘That’s a crazy-looking bloke, that waiter,’ said Batzke irrelevantly.

  ‘Why should I have to do a stretch because you choose?’ persisted Kufalt.

  ‘Will you pay the bill?’ asked Batzke with a sudden laugh. ‘I’ll give you another of my notes.’

  ‘Of—your—notes—?’ Kufalt stared at him, wide-eyed.

  ‘Don’t you understand, you idiot?’ burst out Batzke. ‘They’re dud notes—inflation money; and you go and buy fifty cigarettes with one of them!’

  The scene that afternoon suddenly unfolded before Kufalt’s eyes. The wrinkled, flustered old woman with the cracked voice; in the back room the woman who had just had a baby, perhaps their last money—and what a dreadful risk he had run! Batzke had slunk off down a side street, the bastard. And if a salesman had been in the shop, who had been a little more wide awake, Kufalt would have been in a police cell at that very moment with a nice long stretch in front of him . . .

  But Batzke had just laughed in his face, he put all the change in his pocket without even forking out a share . . .

  ‘Batzke!’ shouted Kufalt, ‘I’ll . . . ’

  ‘Waiter! My friend’s paying the bill,’ cried Batzke, grabbed his hat, and before Kufalt could protest, he was outside.

  Kufalt paid three marks eighty.

  That left him seven marks fifteen.

  V

  On that eventful, fateful Saturday Kufalt woke up early, very early. He lay in his bed and thought; in that dirty, shabby room with the lumpy eiderdowns, on which hundreds must have slept before him, with or without their girls, for old Dübel did not mind—indeed she rather liked that sort of thing. He looked at the window, the dawn had surely come, but hardly any light found its way into that narrow yard. Suddenly he had a feeling that the sun was shining outside; he could not see it, but he felt its presence.

  He got up slowly, washed himself with great vigour and thoroughness, shaved carefully, put on clean underclothes and his best suit, and went out with his beloved Mercedes under its oilcloth cover. Outside, the sun was really shining.

  His first disappointment was that the pawnshops did not open until nine o’clock. No one could predict at what hour the old goat would appear at the Post Office. He took his place in the queue, many of whom had eiderdowns; one man had a pendulum clock under his arm. The people waited motionless and silent, all staring in front of them, all isolated in their own distress. Only when some newcomer joined the ranks did they throw a quick glance at him to see what he had brought to pawn. Then they stared ahead again.

  When the door opened at last, the proceedings were very quick.

  ‘Twenty-three marks,’ said the official, and as Kufalt hesitated, thinking of his hundred and fifty, he said at once:

  ‘Move on, please.’

  ‘No, no,’ said Kufalt, ‘I’ll take it.’

  He had to wait a little while at the cashier’s desk, and when he got his money he ran, rather than walked, to a bicycle hire shop which he had discovered the previous evening. Here, too, there were difficulties. The man thought twenty marks too little as security for a brand new machine. Kufalt did his utmost to talk him round. Finally he deposited his registration card, and the pawn ticket, and then rode away.

  He had been used to bicycling, but it was not so simple, after six years, to steer a course through the traffic of a modern street. But he must do it, and do it skilfully. For today everything depended on speed, decisiveness and presence of mind.

  The Lübeck Gate (which is no longer a gate, but a square) is a very confusing place. Many streets lead into it, foot passengers hurry across it from all sides; you have to keep your wits about you. There are booths that break the view, and the passing trams hide the people on the opposite pavement.

  But suddenly—and Kufalt and his bicycle took cover in a flash—he saw a face looking out of the public lavatory on the other side of the square, a well-known face. And he knew that, although the clock showed fifteen minutes past eleven, he had not come too late.

  There he stood. He may have been thinking of many, many things, perhaps even of his childhood, when his mother had come into his dark bedroom after supper, bent down over his bed and said: ‘Pleasant dreams. But go to sleep at once!’

  There he stood, and the people hurried past; prison was very present in his mind, he knew he would go back there sometime. But when? That very afternoon? Or not for five years?

  Batzke’s head kept on popping out, his hard, evil face and blinking eyes peered like a watching fox across the street, and then vanished; once more Kufalt was free to jump on his bicycle and ride home. And then what should he do? Find some shelter, honestly and decently, beg, humiliate himself and yet die like a dog.

  Kufalt gripped his handlebars more firmly—how was he to know what this elderly bookkeeper looked like?

  He knew. There she came with a quick, angular stride, her brown skirt was a bit too long, she turned her toes in as she walked, her face was faded and very pale with the sickly pallor of office rooms. She wore a small felt hat and her hair was bobbed.

  She came, and his heart beat quicker and quicker, and he heard a beseeching voice within him say: ‘If only he might not have the courage, I could ride home—if only he might lose his nerve!’

  Nothing at all was noticeable in the first few moments. Batzke was behind her, he seemed to brush against her as he slipped past her, just as casual passers-by brush against each other in the street; then Kufalt heard the faint sound of a suppressed, bewildered cry. With a brown briefcase in his hand Batzke dashed down a side street, the woman suddenly burst into a shriek and people came running up. Kufalt merely saw the gathering throng, he could no longer see Batzke, and then, with a tremendous effort of will, he jumped onto his bicycle, a policeman’s whistle blew, motor cars stopped, a tram pulled up abruptly with a rasp of wheels, he pedalled across the square and down the side street; no Batzke. Down the next side street, straight on; no Batzke. Was it all to have been in vain?

  It was senseless to ride on. He must have encountered Batzke long ago. The game was lost. And yet he rode on. His mind revolted; he must take care the game was not lost, that it had not been in vain.

  Kufalt suddenly realized that what he had planned that morning was not to start a new life of crime; it was to have been the start of an honest, quiet little existence, in the small town back there, perhaps with a pleasant wife, and children in the years to come. Just a bit of working capital for the start—and this was to have been the start. He must see that it had not been in vain.

  He had reached a district of villas and apartment houses, the noise of the Lübeck Gate having long since faded into the distance. He was riding along the Maxstrasse and the Eilbecker Riede. And then, after about f
ifteen minutes, he came out onto a broad, wide road. It was the Wandsbeker Chaussee. He was barely five minutes from the Lübeck Gate. And there—at the fork of the Wandsbeker Chaussee and the Eilbecker Weg, where there was a small traffic island, and on it a police post, where all was quiet and at peace—he saw Batzke; yes, it really was Batzke. He braked, dismounted, surveyed him from a distance, and said to himself: ‘It’s no good, I’m afraid of him.’

  A constable went into the police post, glancing casually at Batzke as he entered, but Batzke did not mind; couldn’t a man stand here waiting for his girl, with a briefcase under his arm?

  Slowly and thoughtfully Kufalt leaned his bicycle against a tree and left it standing there; if it was lost it was lost, and anyhow if all went well it wouldn’t matter.

  Batzke was looking in a different direction. Kufalt came to within a few paces of him, then the tall, dark man turned his head and looked at his companion of the day before. Ohlsdorf cemetery, the dud notes and the supper bill.

  Batzke frowned and his face looked black enough to frighten anyone. And Kufalt was certainly frightened.

  Nonetheless, he knew that everything now depended on his tone of voice, on his demeanour, on what Batzke thought of him.

  He said, with a glance at the window of the police post, through which a constable could be seen: ‘Halves, or I’ll split!’

  Batzke looked at Kufalt. He said nothing. Kufalt watched him raise his free right hand, a huge carpenter’s fist—and then he saw something in Batzke’s face that gave him courage.

  ‘Look, mate,’ he said. He uttered the words in quite a friendly manner. Suddenly he realized that they stood on equal terms. He had got Batzke by the short and curlies. Batzke was naturally furious, but crooks devour each other; that is part of the game. It is a natural phenomenon; that’s all there is to it.

  Batzke said, also with a glance at the window of the police post: ‘But not here!’

  ‘Just here!’ said Kufalt.

  Batzke stood irresolute.

  A police car came dashing down the Wandsbeker Chaussee from the Lübeck Gate and stopped in front of the police post. A constable jumped out without so much as looking at the pair; what crook would be likely to take his stand under the direct shadow of a police post? Batzke was a cunning devil!

  And he proved it by opening the briefcase without further ado, fumbling inside it, extracting a crumpled handful of paper and giving it to Kufalt.

  But Kufalt had lost his nervousness. He smoothed out the notes, six fifties, and said with mild composure: ‘I said halves; let me look into that bag.’

  Batzke again hesitated. Then he once more plunged his hand into the bag. Again he produced a little wad of paper, this time eight fifties. He gave them to Kufalt and said: ‘But now that’s it, Willi; or I’ll chuck the whole business right here by this post. But first I’ll fix you so your own mother wouldn’t know you.’

  Now it was Kufalt’s turn to hesitate. For a moment he stood, looked at Batzke, who was shutting the briefcase, looked at him again, slipped the notes into his jacket pocket and said, with a laugh: ‘You still owe me the three marks eighty from yesterday, Batzke!’

  ‘So long,’ said Batzke.

  ‘So long,’ said Willi Kufalt.

  And they parted. Each in a different direction across the road, Kufalt towards his bicycle, which was indeed still there.

  ‘Hello!’ shouted a voice abruptly. ‘Hello, Willi.’

  They turned, and again approached each other.

  Batzke laid his hand on Kufalt’s shoulder and gripped him until it hurt. ‘But if you cross my path again in the near future . . . ’ he said.

  Kufalt shook off Batzke’s hand. ‘Till we meet again in the clink, Batzke,’ he said, and laughed.

  Then he walked to his bicycle, mounted and rode away. He had to hurry. In two hours at most he would have to get himself and his belongings out of Hamburg; Batzke might well change his mind. Kufalt was registered with the police so Batzke could find his address, and the backyards on the Raboisen don’t pay much attention to screams.

  He pushed with all his weight on the pedals.

  VI

  The little Schleswig-Holstein manufacturing town was a stopping place for express trains and possessed a canal harbour. It lay in the centre of a flat, treeless plain, a limitless expanse of fields, diversified only by the hedges that enclosed them—low ridges overgrown with bushes.

  It was a busy little town, of which the most prominent feature, more noteworthy than the churches or the factories, was the tall cement and red-stone structure of the Central Prison.

  It was a sight at which Kufalt did not greatly care to look. He was a sort of prisoner, who had come of his own free will back to the place of his imprisonment—whenever he turned a corner he ran into a warder who grinned and said: ‘Good day, Herr Kufalt.’ And he kept on catching glimpses of the walls, the brick battlements, the rows of little barred windows.

  We all come home to our own selves; always, in the end. There is no greater folly than the talk of a new life that is about to start. We are what we are and remain so. There he was, in his little room on the Königstrasse, on the outskirts of the town.

  When he stepped out of the door and walked away from the city he was met by the November wind, and the swirl of leaves, and the bleak, interminable roads that led somewhere that was just the same. And the mouldering reek of the ditches, laden with death and decay; and solitude, that gets one nowhere; all, all was as it had been: a futile life, without hope, without courage, without patience.

  He sat there in his room on the Königstrasse; it was a good, lower-middle-class room; Bruhn’s was worse. Bruhn had a workman’s room, a mere sleeping place. But Kufalt’s was adorned with mahogany and plush and knick-knacks and pictures; a list of addresses lay beside his machine, and he was typing letters. A great many letters for a man who hardly saw a single person, about ten or twelve; he finished the last, signed it, slipped it in its envelope, stamped them all, all local letters at eight pfennigs, and then put on his coat and hat. He picked up the letters and stood in the doorway.

  It was eleven o’clock in the morning. He had, in a sense, done his day’s work. The beggar’s daily task of hopelessness; and a man cannot be always sleeping, nor can he be always brooding. A man has his troubles, even though he is a man of means, with more than four hundred marks still in his wallet.

  He stood in the doorway and hesitated. It did not matter in the least whether these letters were posted at midday or in the evening, when it was already dark, nothing would come of them. It did not matter in the least; but there was little Emil Bruhn, always so concerned for his friend Kufalt, who had said the evening before: ‘The clergy, try the clergy, they must do something for you.’ He had emphasized the ‘must’, and Kufalt was to meet Bruhn that evening, and Bruhn would ask whether he had remembered the clergymen and applied to them. Bruhn was a persistent man; Bruhn would never leave him be until Kufalt had done what he thought he ought to do. So Kufalt had to leave his room at eleven o’clock in the morning and get the addresses of the five or six clergymen who were to be found in the little town.

  Kufalt still stood in the doorway and hesitated. Suddenly he made up his mind. He went to his trunk and opened it; in it was the one reply he had received to all his letters of application. It was from a man by the name of Malte Scialoja. He was the chief editor of the bigger local paper. The chief editor of the other paper had not answered. Even so, it was not a very promising answer. However, he had better go and see the man. Kufalt read the letter. It was not long, only a few lines; it ran:

  Dear Sir,

  Distressed as I am to learn of your sad story, I do not think I can do anything to help you. The testimonial from your prison governor is certainly excellent, but you must yourself realize what a responsibility it would be for a managing editor to take you onto his staff. However I should be glad to see you any day between eleven and one.

  Yours faithfully.

  Kufal
t sighed as he read the letter. ‘Hopeless,’ he whispered; ‘utterly hopeless. But when I get the addresses I might go and see this bloke too.’

  He held the twelve letters of application in one hand; with the other he slipped Malte Scialoja’s note into his pocket. And then he went out into the street.

  Malte is a Low German Christian name, Scialoja is an Italian surname. The man who bore both these names was the famous Holstein author, a man devoted to his native soil, who wrote books about peasants, whose speech was the Low German dialect that he himself preferred to use. The story was not as complicated as might be supposed. A hundred years before, an Italian sailor had put down roots in one of the little harbour towns on the coast. He had married a Frisian girl, and it was his grandson who sat behind a desk in the editor’s office, shuffling papers, listening to the wireless and really doing nothing. He was no more than an advertisement for the paper, astutely engaged by the proprietor for this purpose. Once a week, on Sunday, a sapient article by him appeared in the vernacular.

  But he was an important man. He had to be handled with kid gloves by everyone in the editorial department; the people believed in their dreamy, enraptured author. The public wanted him. There he sat among his papers, though he really might as well have sat at home. He listened to the great linotype machines rotating; at half past twelve the evening edition was ready; but that was no affair of his. For that, the little reporters had written their little pieces; and they were no affair of his.

  Scialoja was a pale man with faultlessly parted dark hair, wearing an alpaca jacket. He listened to the dance music, read a few lines from the manuscripts in front of him, and then contemplated his nails. He was a great man, and quite aware of the fact. It was not a simple matter to live the life of a great man. It carried its obligations. That he had always understood.

  There was a knock at the door of his office. He growled: ‘Come in.’ He always growled, ‘Come in.’ He did not like to be disturbed. He was a very busy man, with an intense and active inner life.