Iron Gustav (31 page)

How dark and threatening grew the faces! The police themselves did not like the business. They too had children who went hungry and they understood how the people felt; they said no more than was essential, they heard nothing that they need not hear. A cursed business.

‘You're stealing from our kids to fatten your own, you bloody fat pigs, you!' a woman screamed.

But the police heard nothing.

Gertrud clung to her husband's arm – how grim he looked! Just as though he would commit a murder. For the sake of twenty eggs and a bit of butter. Desperately she patted his hand. ‘Please, Otto, please – don't make me unhappy.'

He glanced at her. ‘We'll walk straight on. I want to see whether they'll stop a man from the Front …' And they did.

‘Please open the cardboard box. What have you got in it?'

Otto walked on, pretending he did not hear.

‘Now be reasonable, Corporal.'

‘You should be ashamed of yourselves!'

‘Orders are orders, you know that.'

‘If I'm not to have them, you shan't, you hounds,' shouted a woman – and egg after egg smashed on the platform.

‘Come, Tutti,' said Otto, ‘give him the bread. And here's a parcel of eggs and butter, Sergeant. Good evening.'

Silently they went home. In a low voice they told Gustäving: ‘Nothing!'

For a long time they sat in semi-darkness in the cold flat, both hungry, both discouraged.

‘Otto?' she said timidly.

‘Yes, Tutti?'

‘Shall we try again tomorrow?'

He was surprised and remained silent. He knew very well how she hated these trips and only went with him most unwillingly. And now?

‘But why now, Tutti?'

‘Because I have the feeling you want to go again now. And because I will only ever do what you want.'

‘Good, we'll go.'

He said nothing else.

But both felt this was happiness. There was nothing better. A union forged by common sorrow in a time when almost everything else was falling apart.

So next day they set out again and this time luck really smiled on them. At a farm from which they had already been sent away the woman suddenly noticed Otto's regimental number.

‘Good God, you belong to our boy's regiment. Ingemar Schultz – there are so many Schultzes, that's why we called him Ingemar. Do you know him?'

Otto did. They were asked in, and as honoured guests they sat down to table, while Otto related what he knew of Ingemar Schultz, which was not much, because Ingemar belonged to another company. To the ears of the parents, however, the few words came as a divine revelation. For the corporal had seen Ingemar only nine days previously and had spoken with him.

So he and his wife got all they wanted – just as much as they could carry, even a whole side of bacon. And at the door the mother called after them her most cherished wish. ‘In spring we're applying for Ingemar to come home for the sowing. You'll put in a good word for him, won't you?'

‘That's not quite right,' said Otto, as they turned away, ‘to be bribed to do something underhand.'

‘Oh, you're a proper Berliner,' cried the delighted Tutti. ‘Always grousing about something. We people from the Hiddensee don't complain …'

‘I'm from Pasewalk and Pasewalkers don't complain either,' he answered, and they both laughed.

And now they had to fear the police control. But that night no one looked at their parcels – hate and despair were being sown in the hearts of people at some other railway station. They didn't feel safe, however, till their fabulous wealth was stored in the kitchen; in vain Gustäving tried with his ‘One … two … seven' to count the eggs. Full of excitement, he watched his mother frying them in real bacon fat, and potatoes to go with it – potatoes fried in fat, not in coffee grounds. And from this cooking arose a glorious unknown smell, a fragrance which outvied the loveliest scents of flowers. It gave Gustäving the patience to wait till the food was ready.

‘Do you like it, Otto? Do you, Gustäving? Don't bolt it, son. This is a great treat. Just this once. From now on Mummy will have to be terribly economical again, to make all the good things last. Oh, Otto, something decent to eat again … Those ghastly swedes!'

Half an hour later Gustäving started to vomit. In agonizing pain his stomach rejected the good, the nourishing food.

‘Nothing agrees with him now,' wailed Tutti in despair. ‘At last we've something that will do him good and he can't retain it. Oh, Otto, our child is half starved, and I've really given him everything I can.'

‘We made a mistake, Tutti. It was much too rich to start with. It couldn't possibly agree with him. We shall have to go slowly with the boy. Anyhow, we'll take him to the doctor tomorrow.'

The three of them then set out. For a long time they sat in the overcrowded waiting room. Every chair was occupied and people leaned against the walls – grey-faced, tired, hopeless people. Mostly women. And almost all with their children.

This was not the waiting room of some fashionable practitioner in the West End – this was a panel doctor in East Berlin. Those who sat there were not turning over the pages of magazines; it was more like a large family assembly. Everyone talked with everyone else; all had the same worries …

‘If only he would prescribe something for my child. The boy's fainted twice.'

‘He prescribes all right – it's all the same to him. Everything's the same to him.'

‘Don't say that! The man has a heart of gold. “You ought to go to hospital and have a real rest,” he told me.'

‘And did you go?'

‘How could I, with five kids at home?'

‘You see, what did I say! What help is his heart of gold to you, then?'

‘Prescriptions are not enough,' began another woman. ‘He prescribed milk for our Granny but it wasn't granted. He's got superiors over him.'

‘An old creature like that! Why should she get milk when the young are starving?'

‘You don't know what you're talking about. Our Granny gets an old-age pension of twenty-eight marks a month. That's a great help with the housekeeping. We'd like her to live to be a hundred.'

From another corner came a whisper, ‘… and if you can get a smoked herrin', take the skin an' the tail an' the head and all that's left over, chop it very fine and fry your potatoes in it. That makes 'em tasty. You've no idea how much fat there is in the skin.'

‘I'll remember that. We only ever licked the skin. But roasting potatoes with it is better …'

‘And you can cook swedes with the skin on – tastes delicious.'

‘Just don't mention swedes! My mother-in-law made a swede pudding on Sunday, with raspberry juice. I vomited the whole lot up. The very smell of swedes makes me retch…'

‘Are you pregnant or something?'

‘For God's sake, please don't say that! I've already got four. No, it's because swedes just don't agree with me.'

‘Each to his own! Without swedes we'd all have starved long ago.'

All was quiet again.

Then a woman said thoughtfully, ‘They cleaned out a baker's yesterday morning in the Landsberger Allee …'

‘That can't be true – I live in the Landsberger …'

‘Yes, it is. I saw it with my own eyes.'

‘How'd it happen?'

‘Well, usual way. A woman said: “What, that bit of bread's supposed to weigh 930 grams? No, you weigh it, mister!” He didn't want to and suddenly they all shouted: “He gives short weight” – and so he had to weigh it.'

‘Go on. Was it short?'

‘Yes, thirty grams. And he apologized and gave her an extra slice, over a hundred grams. Well, I'd have taken it, I'm not too proud, but …'

‘So it was you who made the fuss?'

‘Me? Who's talking about me? I saw it, I said.'

‘Go on, tell us, young woman. It's nobody's business who it was. There are no spies here – only poor people like yourself.'

‘I should hope not. Well, listen, when he tried to apologize he made a mess of it, he's the bossy sort, won't admit he's in the wrong.
So they all turned on him and said what they thought of him. And, what with the excitement, a few of them reached over the counter for their bread.'

‘Go on! Do tell me quickly – I'm the next!'

‘Well, the baker like the old fool he is, when he saw them doing that he rushes into his back parlour where he's got the telephone and phones for the police. That's where he made his mistake! Two or three at once went behind the counter and turned the key so he couldn't get out. And then he got what for. The loaves were swept off the shelves and thrown to us and in less than three minutes the shop was cleared, no bread, no customers.'

A deep, an almost devotional, silence.

‘Can't you hear – next!' called the doctor impatiently behind the door.

A woman rose reluctantly and disappeared into the surgery.

‘I wish I'd been there,' said another, sighing. ‘But no such luck for the likes of us.'

‘Well, and what about me?' asked the narrator. ‘I was there and I'm no better off than you.'

‘How much bread did you get?'

‘No decent person should ask such a question,' said a red-faced woman severely. ‘That sounds like a spy.'

All fell silent and sank into themselves a little, thinking about what they'd just been told. Tutti thought about it, too. She wondered if, had she been in the shop, she would have taken a loaf as well. And with a shock she said to herself, yes, she would have taken one – she would have stolen! She would preferred to have paid – it wasn't the money that mattered to her, it was the food. And if she couldn't get it any other way, she would steal too. Without a bad conscience! Or perhaps with a bad conscience? It didn't matter. She would have stolen.

Otto's thoughts were similar. Here we are, like a ring surrounding Germany – but is it still Germany that we're defending? Everything's completely changed. These are no longer the same people who cheered in 1914.

Or is it their real face that now clearly shows itself? Hadn't Lieutenant Ramin said as much in the shell crater – that we no longer had
faith? No ideas? It wasn't bread that this woman had taken – Otto understood that. Hunger always hurts, but it hurts a mother much more if she watches her children starving. That's a primal feeling, before which all barriers fall … No, it wasn't the bread … But it was this: that Otto, wherever he had been this fortnight, and also in the days before in the trenches – had never actually heard what the war was actually about – exactly what were they defending?

Germany? This wasn't Germany! No enemy could starve a people more or make them more miserable. You couldn't rob these people of the slightest hope – they've got none left. What, then, was he defending? The All-Highest War-Lord, the Kaiser? Yes, recently he had been at the Front, quite near anyway, not more than a hundred kilometres. And he had the exhausted and bleeding troops paraded before him, and been very gracious …

Oh God, that wasn't the thing anyway! The Kaiser was a great personage – no doubt he too was probably the victim of his own limitations. He knew nothing, nothing whatever, about his people. But they, the people – what about them? What were they fighting for? Why were they suffering in this way? Why were things so bad? There has to be a reason! A whole people can't simply go under and go to ruin, for some other people to appear, flourish and be happy for a while, and then also go to ruin. That was impossible. It couldn't happen. Even he could see that. If that were the case, it would be a thousand times better not to fight or defend yourself at all, but walk away with a hand grenade!

There
must
be a reason. Suffering all this for nothing is impossible. And if Lieutenant Ramin, I and my comrades don't yet know the reason, that doesn't mean that there isn't one. If the face of pre-war prosperity has been transformed into a grotesque visage of hunger, then behind it there is perhaps another face …

Somewhere there are people who know, said Otto to himself. It must be so. And if no one now knows, and if I never find out myself what I'm actually fighting for, my boy will find out in the end …

And he looked at the four-year-old Gustäving and said to him – but only he knew what he meant by it – ‘Things will be better for you, Gustäving.'

Then the doctor opened the door: ‘Next!'

He was a rotund little man with a weary, lined face. ‘Hurry up,' he said. ‘What is it – the boy? Of course, it would be. And you don't look too flourishing yourself, young woman. Insurance card? That's all right. No, I don't need to examine the child. It's malnutrition. Do you know, my dear soldier, I'm not supposed to use that word, malnutrition; at least, I've had it conveyed to me that I shouldn't make use of it with my patients. But I do – and why? Not because I want to sabotage the measures taken by the government. On the contrary. But I use it because I'm utterly tired of beating about the bush …' He was writing, rubber-stamping, writing.

‘Half a litre of milk per day, 30 grams of extra butter, say 150 grams of wheaten bread. But you won't get all I prescribe, so I'll put down 200 grams … Yesterday,' he continued writing and rubber-stamping without stop, ‘I had 180 patients. This morning by ten o'clock I'd over thirty … that's just in consultation hours … Then there are visits … And I'm always writing … I don't treat sick people any more! I'm a machine, that's all, a machine which applies for extra food and writes prescriptions … And I was once assistant to Robert Koch! But that won't mean anything to you – you have your own troubles.'

More writing and rubber-stamping. ‘Vomits, you say? But that's very sensible of the boy. If a man gets too much of a thing he rejects it. Excellent! Why should he have to digest the whole lot? He'd only die of it. Bacon and poached eggs, potatoes fried in fat, and a little tummy brought up on gruel – no wonder he vomits! Have you any idea, soldier, how the world is going to vomit over this war?' The doctor gave a start. ‘Excuse me, I shouldn't have said that. I oughtn't to say many of the things I do but I talk on and on – out of sheer exhaustion. Last night I got just one and a half hours' sleep, and not proper sleep at that. The last of my sons is at the Front. Three have been killed already. Well, that won't interest you; it hardly interests me now … Here are your prescriptions. Take them away, and wait outside with the boy. I'd like a few words with your wife.'