Iron Gustav (51 page)

She looked at her master with helpless anxiety.

‘Eva,' said Heinz, took her by the chin and turned her white, forlorn face towards him so that she had to look at him. ‘Come with me, Eva. Don't do what he wants. All he wants is wickedness, he's wicked; tell him to go. You can live anywhere. I promise I'll get the fare today to Leipzig or Cologne – wherever you like. Don't forget he's blind. He can't follow you.'

Eva did not stir. It was impossible to tell whether his words had had any effect.

The blind man on the sofa nodded. ‘Brainy, your brother,' he said kindly. ‘Brainy! Didn't get it from you, you tart! Chap's right, I'm blind – so clear out.' He sat there screwing up his helpless mouth, as though that were his laughter. Suddenly he shouted: ‘Clear out, fool. I can't follow.'

Eva drew back from her brother. ‘You're not to abuse Eugen,' she muttered. ‘I'm going with him, Heinz. I'll stay with him.'

‘Will you?' sneered Eugen Bast. ‘Thank your brother for it, Evchen. He's brought us together again. Say “Thank you”, stupid.'

‘Thank you, Heinz.'

‘Don't hang about then, get ready. Yes, brother-in-law, I was going to let her go. She's too much of a bloody fool, your sister. An' now that she's taken up shootin'! … I'd have milked her a bit every month, so as to keep her on the jump, jus' to ginger her up in her profession like …'

‘Eva,' begged Heinz, ‘please come. Go with me to the police – it won't be as bad as you think; the judges will realize that you couldn't help it, it was he who made you. A year or two in prison, with nobody there to torment you as he does, and then you'll be free, you can start afresh …'

There was no reply. As if she had heard nothing his sister went on
packing. Eugen Bast spoke, however. ‘Well, when you was standing next to me, brother-in-law, with your beetle-crushers on mine I thought to meself, well, what's wrong with having a girl to look after me, eh? The other blind men have got dogs. Well, I've got the sister of the young gentleman who's exercising himself on my plates o' meat. I bet that'll please the young feller when he sees his sister making herself useful …'

‘You hear,' cried Heinz, ‘you hear how wicked he is? Eva, he'll torture you to death!' At these words she shot a penetrating glance at him. What had she once said, in the beginning? Either he dies through me or I through him. Was that her hope?

‘Young feller,' said Eugen Bast, ‘don't talk such drivel! Me wicked? I'm the best-natured sod in the world. You find another chap who'd let himself be shot in the dial like me, with me blinkers gone – and not a hard word.' He passed a hand over his face, exploring his wound. ‘The rest tell me I'm no longer a beauty an' I used to be quite the good-looker. Well, she made a proper job of it, so I shouldn't even see me lost looks, what, Evchen? That was yer sense of humour, what?' He laughed.

A moan from her. The blind man turned his head. ‘Come here!'

She came, she stood before him, she gazed on the terrible face.

‘Tell yer brother – am I handsome in your eyes or am I ugly?'

‘Handsome,' she whispered.

‘Still fond o' me? Still love me? Out with it!'

‘Yes.'

‘Tell him.'

‘I still love you, Eugen.'

‘Show yer brother – gimme a kiss!'

She bent over the blind man, and Heinz Hackendahl no longer saw them … He saw himself with Tinette, and Tinette looked good – but if what looked good was good, as the ancient Greeks said, she was as ugly as Eugen Bast. He saw his own enslavement, his own masochism. Once more he was humiliated, once more felt his own shame.

‘Eva!' he begged.

With her lips touching the dark-grey scar, she looked at him – a quick look, almost a smile. A soul in torment. It will pass, her smile
seemed to say. Pain passes just like pleasure. In the end, when it's all over, it doesn't matter what's happened to you. Pleasure or pain …

No! no! he thought. I don't …

Eugen Bast pushed her away. ‘That's enough of acting,' he said. ‘Get ready. And you, young feller, you c'n go straight to the police – we'll be here for quite a while. They c'n come an' fetch us if they like. But you take it from me that yer sister'll be in quod just as long as I am. I'll see to that, an' so will she. An' when she comes out, say in ten years' time, then she's goin' to have a life of it – what she's got now is heaven compared with it. You can depend on that, young feller.'

‘Eva,' begged Heinz once more.

But she shook her head.

‘And now hop it, young feller,' cried Eugen Bast in a very different voice. ‘You're not wanted here. Every minute you stay here, I'll pinch your lady sister a bit harder … Eva, come here to me … Give us your arm … no, the thick part of your upper arm … So, young man; can you feel it, Eva … ?'

Heinz rushed out of the room. He fled, running faster and faster through the streets. He ran away from the terrible Tieckstrasse house, from the images it conjured up, from his own shame, his own disgrace.

Eventually he found a bench somewhere. He sat there for a long time, his face between his hands; it was still broad daylight. He let his tears run between his fingers – tears of pain, or sympathy – but above all tears of fury over his own helplessness, his cursed weakness …

I must be strong, he thought. If only I could change. I must change. Just to be sympathetic is only weak, cowardly. The world has to be changed – and for that you have to be strong!

Such thoughts went feverishly through his head. He imagined a future in which he was strong and capable of destroying Eugen Bast. Only gradually did he calm himself down. When he got up, a sympathetic soul had placed a groschen on the wooden bench beside him.

He looked at it for some time. Strange! On the same day he had seen Eugen Bast go begging, he himself was given money too.

He took the coin and threw it in a bush far away. No! No more gifts. By his own strength! Only by his own strength!

The National Assembly had repeatedly and uncompromisingly said ‘No' to a dictated peace. There had been thousands of protest meetings throughout the Reich. The speakers had shouted their ‘Nos' and the crowds had agreed with them.

Then a delegation was appointed to accept the enemy's peace conditions in Versailles.

But a simple delegation was not enough. The enemy demanded ministers, senior civil servants. So they were nominated and went to Versailles.

The people waited; perhaps things would not be as bad as they feared? Perhaps the enemy would show mercy?

With eighty members, accompanied by fifteen representatives of the German press, the German delegation arrived in Paris. They were almost treated as prisoners. No one was allowed access to them. They were allowed to go nowhere. Their base was a strongly guarded hotel. They made them wait eight days, like humble petitioners in a rich man's waiting room, until they were vouchsafed the terms whereby Germans confessed to being a convicted criminal and promised to be enslaved to the others for ever …

They left with a document of humiliation and made it public. Again the people shouted ‘No'. Again there were protest demonstrations. They exchange views. The hand that signed this treaty should wither. They ring up Wilson, the American President. They ask experts, they beg, they appeal, and even threaten a little. ‘Unacceptable,' they say and make counter-suggestions. The German Social Democratic Party unanimously declares itself against this dictated peace. But nothing changes. Opinions are exchanged in vain, the protests die away. Versailles is merciless: ‘There will be no negotiations!'

Suddenly the National Assembly says ‘Yes'. Those who just said ‘No' now say ‘Yes'. If the others don't give way, you must give way yourself. If the others insist Germany is guilty and denial achieves nothing, you can only plead guilty. Firmly united, the Social Democrats vote ‘Yes'. Firmly united, the Centre Party says: accept …

They make a few qualifications a few exceptions …

But
– ‘No negotiations' … is repeated.

Then, on 23 January 1919, the National Assembly declared its agreement with the unconditional signing of the peace treaty, its members solemnly assuring each other that they acted equally patriotically whether they voted Yes or No …

Two German ministers signed the peace agreement in the Hall of Mirrors of the Palace of Versailles. They had been led like prisoners through barbed wire, watched by a silent and gloomy crowd. When they returned, loud curses were heard. Stones were thrown and empty bottles …

Heinz Hackendahl went along the Grosse Frankfurter Strasse carrying two cases. One was light, containing all that he possessed of clothes, linen and shoes; the other was heavier, if not actually heavy, and held his books and whatever else of spiritual treasure had been accumulated during his school years. It was 1 July, and hot. The peace treaty had been signed two days before.

Passing the fence where his father's premises used to be, Heinz stopped at the gate, put down his suitcases and, full of curiosity, peeped into the yard. It seemed to have changed hands again. The great stable had been divided into garages, taxis stood in the yard and a driver was washing down his car.

Heinz nodded. He was not depressed by these changes, even though they meant the end of all his father had been; old ways had to go if the new were to come. There was nothing to be depressed about in that. On the contrary it offered a consolation. Disgrace and shame passed away too. You can get up from the dirt into which you have fallen.

A car entering honked furiously – Heinz picked up his suitcases and walked on, turning into a side street, into a second one, crossing a couple of courtyards and climbing up five flights of stairs.

The nameplate – Gertrud Hackendahl, Dressmaker – was still on the door. For a moment he hesitated. It had been barely nine months since he was last here. But it seems an infinitely long time when he
considers everything he'd experienced since that evening – Erich and Revolution, Tinette and Irma, Abitur and Eva …

For a moment he hesitated. But then he pressed the bell firmly.

Gertrud Hackendahl opened the door: ‘You, Bubi?'

‘Yes, me, Tutti – but before I come in with my cases, I want to ask you if you will have me? Do you understand? I want to live with you. I've got a little job at the bank. Perhaps I can help you a bit with the lad … ?'

He'd said what he'd planned to say. But it now seemed weak and false. So he added: ‘And perhaps you can help me a little too, Tutti? We've got peace now … Perhaps you can help me. I think you are the only strong person in the family …'

She looked at him, then she shouted and didn't hide her pleasure: ‘Come right in, Bubi! – Of course you can help me – with the lad!'

And in he went.

Old Gustav Hackendahl – we mustn't forget that there also existed a young Gustav Hackendahl, Otto's eldest son, the old man hadn't even seen him – old Hackendahl was finding it more and more difficult to make one horse support two persons, namely himself and his wife. Formerly, before the war, one could even bring children up on the earnings of a single cab if only one chose the right stands and had a horse that inspired confidence.

But who thought of taking a cab nowadays? Couples did in the summer, and drunks at all seasons of the year, while there was also a certain demand at election time, when one could take old and ill people with a sensible dislike of motor cars to the polling station. But what did it amount to? There was nothing else doing nowadays – a horse couldn't even keep itself, much less two old people. Gustav Hackendahl had contracted the habit, as he rattled homewards through the Kaiserallee, of stopping at Niemeyer's, the grain merchants, so as to make sure of his fodder – the horse came first – and he thought it was the end of the world on the day he was forced to give six hundred marks for a hundredweight of oats that hadn't cost more than six before the war. But he had been paying six thousand now for some time and the world still went on, in accordance with the saying: the older the madder. With this difference that Hackendahl had long stopped buying oats by the hundredweight. ‘They can say what they like at Niemeyer's, Mother, I'll go on getting my twelve pounds of oats a day! The horse gets ten of 'em and that always leaves two over for the Sunday. I look ahead now.'

But even looking ahead didn't help. Often Hackendahl had to drive past Niemeyer's with his head averted, because he had no money, not a single person having stepped into his cab all day. Then
he would stand beside his horse in the former joiner's workshop and make up some feed out of a little hay and straw, while thinking of the old times when oats had been brought down from the loft by the hundredweight – his own oats from his own land – and how fodder master Rabause (whatever had happened to him?) would go through the stable with a full tub of fodder.

‘Good times, old boy, good times! Only realize now how good they were. No, I haven't got anythin' for you. You can push your muzzle against me – it's no good.'

Very well, in his old age Iron Gustav learned to cope with any situation. But it was no pleasure any more. Despite all efforts, things didn't go forward but resolutely backwards. What difference did it make if he took on a job or two for Niemeyer, delivering oats, hay and straw? No difference at all. Talk about a joke! – that is if you preferred a joke to tears – there was plenty of bread and plenty of butter now, oh yes, but the four-pound loaf cost twenty thousand marks and you had to put down a hundred and fifty thousand for a pound of butter! Such were the fellows who now ran the regiment. First nothing to eat; then no earnings with which to buy anything. That's what they were like. Somehow they got everything wrong.

Standing beside his horse, Hackendahl would rack his brains, wondering how he could manage to earn a little more money. He moved the dead butt of his cigar from one corner of his mouth to the other. His wife's appearance was a real mess. The clothes hung off the woman as if a beanpole had been dressed as a scarecrow. Mother simply must put a little flesh on her bones. This starvation was a misery. During the war there had been a certain equality in starvation; everyone had gone hungry, or at least it looked like it. Starvation had been regulated by law and by coupon – one had, so to speak, been able to accommodate hunger to circumstances. But now people were starving in an utterly haphazard way. The shops had plenty of goods, for those who could buy them, but people went past the sumptuous windows without even looking, or if they did it was only to ask themselves what they had done to have to starve. Was their guilt greater than that of the gluttons? But such questions didn't help much, and poor people queuing up with flat-wagons on
hire didn't help at all. People slaved away for a half a day, and when it came to being paid, they were told: ‘It's not exactly convenient today. Come back on Friday when Maxe brings his pay packet home.' The hell with it! If any money was there on Friday, it was only a few farthings, worth only a crumb.

Sometimes his wife said, ‘Go to the children, Gustav. Sophie and Erich are bound to be doing well. They won't let their old parents starve, I'm sure.'

But no, in this matter Gustav was of iron. Rather than go to his children he'd prefer the workhouse. Things had got to the point where he could grin about himself, about his children, about the whole world. He, the former sergeant-major of the Pasewalk Cuirassiers, had brought up five well-fed children. But the five children, all of them better educated than their father, couldn't feed the two parents. That was what he was grinning about.

‘Well, it's the way of the world, Mother. An' it's no good me changing it. Sometimes I see Erich rushing past the Zoo in his car. But he don't see me! And he's quite right. What's the good? Here's me in my old moth-eaten coat and there's him in a nifty sealskin what d'you call 'em – well, it don't go together and God didn't mean it to. No, Mother, you be glad that they've left us in peace. We ain't dead of hunger yet and we'll manage somehow. And Heinz still comes …'

Yes, Heinz still came. He came regularly once a week to supper, because his father was at home then, and he brought his own food, which was the proper thing to do when visiting nowadays. And what he brought was so ample that it left enough over to provide his parents with their lunch on the following day. Which must be accounted to his credit, seeing that he himself was far from prosperous. With sorrow his mother saw that he was still wearing the same overcoat in which he had left home four years ago.

But, in reply to her questions, he would laugh and say: ‘I'm getting on all right, Mother, don't you worry. We old people can manage. The main thing is to look after the children.'

‘Fancy you concerning yourself about the Gudde's brats, Heinz!' (To Frau Hackendahl Otto's wife was always the Gudde, even though
she had to some extent forgiven her, once just by sending her some cutlery.)

‘They're marvellous kids, Mother. You let them alone. Life wouldn't be any good without them. With them there, you know why you do all the work.'

‘Shush! Your father!'

But here things had improved a lot. One could now venture a word or two about the grandchildren; in fact old Hackendahl would sometimes mention them himself, even though in a far from friendly way.

‘Ain't one o' them really got a hump, Heinz? You're kiddin'. Even if the hump's not visible, it's there inside 'em – I'll eat my hat if it ain't.'

‘Then eat it, Father!' smiled Heinz, and went on talking about it, no matter how much Mother signalled him to stop. It wasn't easy to upset Heinz these days, twenty-two years of age as he was, but calm and collected, and as set in his ways as an old man.

‘No, I can't tell you, Father, what's going to happen to our currency. I'm only a bank clerk, you know. Probably the mark will go on falling and the dollar rising, especially now that the French want to occupy the Rhineland.'

The old people said nothing.

‘And what am I going to feed my horse on?' asked the father after a while.

Heinz reflected. He knew that it was not so much a question of feeding the horse as of feeding two other beings. ‘I'll tell you next time, Father,' he said at last. ‘Perhaps I'll find something.'

But the next time he came his father was out, which was just as well since he hadn't found anything in spite of all his endeavours. But – to make up for that – his father had. His mother was very worried and stressed. ‘You'll see, Heinz, it'll only end up with Father going on the drink again, just as he did when Otto was killed.'

But Heinz had confidence. ‘Father's quite right! You'll see, Mother, he'll earn something, and he's suited to the work. And don't worry about the drink. Father's far too proud ever to become a drinker.'

On a good day in these bad times, Father Hackendahl found a travelling customer, with long legs and teeth like a horse, at the Zoo Station. The man, who immediately planted his feet on the front seat of the cab, while leaning back on the back seat, demanded to be taken round town by Iron Gustav. ‘What did you say? Two hours, ending up at the Schlesische Station at twelve!'

It was a dream fare, a boon – a real blessing, an Englishman – no, as it turned out an American, who wanted have a look at Berlin as he passed through. Under Hackendahl's guidance, he took a thorough look; in other words he tried Berlin's beer, wine and schnapps very thoroughly. And if at first he entered a local bar like a quiet American, with a ‘Just a moment, please', the more he approached the centre of town and the eastern part, the more its sociability embraced him, and Father Hackendahl had to accompany him no matter what kind of place he entered.

He was a great fellow, with a face as white as snow, completely unaffected by alcohol, with long, flaming-red hair. Over there, in his alcohol-dry home country, he must have developed a manic partiality for bottles. He couldn't be without them even for short stretches in the cab. He put them in his coat pockets, he piled them up on the front seat, and he surveyed them with bleary-eyed but good-humoured looks, shaking them tenderly. And when they glugged, drinking from the bottle, he laughed.

It was a lucky fare, but a difficult one. It was lucky that at least the old nag didn't have a taste for alcohol. (They once tried to quench his thirst with cognac, but he refused.)

By some miracle Hackendahl really was in time for the twelve o'clock train from the Schlesische Station. But the American insisted that ‘my friend Gustav' went up to the platform. So they were both carried up the station stairs, each by two porters, in a state of heightened and enhanced jollification.

The pain of parting came with the arrival of the train. They embraced each other, and a porter picked up Hackendahl's bowler from under the train. Another porter held his whip, while the two
other porters propped up the parting friends. America invited Gustav Hackendahl to go with him a bit of the way, till Warsaw. And if it hadn't been for another porter, who kept on reminding him of the old nag, he would perhaps have done so. As a parting present, the American received a bottle of Mampes bitter schnapps from Hackendahl's coat pocket, as did each of the porters – which they then had to give back, because the compartment looked much too cheerless and lonely without them.

In turn, the American emptied out all his German cash, and Gustav even got a genuine American ten-dollar note. After the station master had made a to-do about the to-do, he was so tipsy himself that he gave the signal to depart two minutes late. Then the train got under way, with a large pair of brown shoes hanging out of a first-class compartment, went round a curve as it left the station and disappeared – towards the border, Warsaw, Moscow and certainly numerous glasses of schnapps.

Meanwhile, the porters carried poor Iron Gustav down to his cab, put him in the corner, wrapped him warm with blankets, hung the old nag's nosebag round its neck, and kept a watchful eye on the carriage the whole afternoon. Because the Schlesische Station was then a real vulture land, and vultures notice every corpse, especially if it has an American ten-dollar note in its pocket.

It was in this state that Gustav Hackendahl awoke, after undisturbed sleep, with a well-rested, if slightly numb, head. Yes, it had been a real inflation fare, he thought on his way home, a fare normally only paid to the wretched autocars. But of course it was only an exception, and would remain one, and ten dollars would not last three hungry mugs for ever. No, from that alone Gustav could not feel so happy. He shoved his cigar (genuine American) from one end of his mouth to the other and wondered and brooded over why he actually felt so happy.

He remembered he had had an idea, and sometimes his brain flashed far away from it, but he didn't get any further. When his brain so registered, he noted that it had to do with the fact that he was Iron Gustav. However, that was pure nonsense, because everything had to do with the fact that he was Iron Gustav. Without him everything would stop – as far as he was concerned anyway. If I'm
dead, everybody's dead, he thought comfortingly, for it was a very pleasant feeling.

The old nag trotted on happily – down Lange Strasse, Warschauer Bridge, across Alexanderplatz, through the Königstrasse to the Schloss. Gustav had actually wanted to go home via Unter den Linden and the Tiergarten, but in the end he pulled on the left-hand rein and went ‘the back way'. He went zigzag hither and thither, round corners and back round corners. And the more corners Gustav negotiated, the clearer his head became, and when he stopped in front of the cellar bar in Mittelstrasse, he remembered what a splendid idea he had had in the middle of his intoxication, and nodded fondly and familiarly at the sign outside.