Every Man Dies Alone (69 page)

The most perfectly constructed system is occasionally subject to malfunction. The People’s Court in Berlin, which had nothing to do with the people and to which the people were not admitted even as silent spectators, for most of its sessions were held behind closed doors—this People’s Court was an instance of a perfect system: before any accused person even set foot in the courtroom, that person was for all intents and purposes already condemned, and there was no indication that he or she had anything to hope for in there.

That morning only one case was scheduled: the one brought against Otto and Anna Quangel for treason. The public gallery was only one-quarter full: a few Party uniforms, a few lawyers who for inscrutable reasons had chosen to attend these proceedings, and the rest law students, who wanted to learn how justice deals with people whose one crime was to love their country more than the judges did. All these people had come by tickets to the proceedings through “influence.” How the little man with the white beard and the clever wrinkles around his eyes, how retired Judge Fromm had obtained his ticket was a mystery. At any rate, he was sitting unobtrusively with the others, a little apart from them, his face lowered, and regularly polishing his gold-rimmed spectacles.

At five minutes to ten, a guard led Otto Quangel into the courtroom. He had been put in the clothes he was wearing at the time of
his arrest: a clean but much-mended pair of overalls, with dark blue patches standing out distinctly from the faded blue of the garment. His still-sharp eyes slid indifferently from the empty seats beyond the dock to the spectators, lighting up briefly on seeing the judge, before he sat down on the bench for the accused.

Just before ten o’clock, the second defendant, Anna Quangel, was led in by a second guard, and there now occurred the malfunction referred to above: no sooner did Anna Quangel catch sight of her husband than, perfectly naturally, without hesitating and without looking at the other people in the room, she made straight for him and sat down next to him.

Otto Quangel raised his hand and whispered, “Don’t say anything! Not now!”

But there was a light in his eye that told her how glad he was to see her again.

Of course it was no part of the plan of this exalted establishment that the two accused, having been kept apart for months, should sit together and enjoy a cozy chat a quarter of an hour before proceedings began. But whether it was that the two guards were new at their job, or that the state attached but slight importance to this, the case, or that the two poorly dressed, ordinary old people looked so wholly unthreatening—whatever it was, the court made no objection to Anna’s choice of seat and for the next quarter of an hour left them to it. In the meantime, the two guards had got into a stimulating conversation about terms and conditions, some overtime pay for night work that they had been tricked out of, and a number of other unfair raids on their wages.

In the courtroom, no one—Judge Fromm excepted—noticed the malfunction. The attendants were sloppy and slovenly, and so no one picked up on this slip that worked to the disadvantage of the Third Reich and the advantage of the two traitors. A case against two old workers was of no great interest to anyone. Here, people were used to monster conspiracy cases with thirty or forty accused, who usually didn’t know each other but who in the course of the proceedings learned that they had all been involved in something together and were accordingly all sentenced together.

So, after looking around carefully for a few seconds, Quangel was able to say, “I’m glad to see you, Anna. Are you doing all right?”

“Yes, Otto, I’m better now.”

“They won’t leave us sitting together for long. But let’s make something of our few minutes. You know what’s coming, I take it?”

Very softly, “Yes, Otto.”

“It’s the death sentence for us both, Anna. There’s no other way.”

“But, Otto…”

“No, Anna, no buts. I know you tried to shoulder all the blame for everything…”

“They won’t sentence a woman so heavily, and maybe you’ll get away with your life.”

“No, no, you’re mistaken. You can’t lie well enough. You’ll only succeed in drawing out the trial. Let’s tell the truth, and then it will be over sooner.”

“But, Otto…”

“No, Anna, no buts. Think. No lies. Let’s be truthful…”

“But, Otto…”

“Anna, please!”

“Otto, don’t make it so hard for me!”

“Do you want us to lie to them? Quarrel? Put on a show for them? The simple truth, Anna!”

She struggled with herself. Then she gave in, as she always gave in. “All right, Otto, I promise.”

“Thank you, Anna. I’m very grateful.”

They stopped speaking, and looked down at their feet. Both were ashamed to have gotten so heated.

The voice of one of the policemen behind them became audible: “And so I said to the lieutenant, ‘Lieutenant, I said, you can’t treat me like that, I said, Lieutenant…’”

Otto Quangel concentrated. It had to be. If Anna learned of it in the course of the proceedings—which it was inevitable that she would—then it would be so much worse. The consequences were incalculable.

“Anna,” he whispered. “You’re brave and strong, aren’t you?”

“Yes, Otto,” she replied. “I am now. Now I’m with you again, I

am. What is it?”

“There is something, Anna…”

“What is it, Otto? Tell me, Otto! If you’re scared of telling me, that’s enough to make me scared.”

“Anna, did you hear anything more about Gertrud?”

“About what Gertrud?”

“Trudel, then!”

“Oh, Trudel! What about Trudel? No, I haven’t had any news of her since I was transferred into remand. I’ve missed her very much; she was so good to me. She forgave me for betraying her.”

“You didn’t betray her! At first I thought you did, too, but later I understood.”

“Yes, well, she understood, too. I was so confused during the early interrogations with that awful Inspector Laub, I didn’t know what I was saying, but she understood. She forgave me.”

“Thank God! Now, Anna, be brave and strong: Trudel is dead.”

“Oh!” groaned Anna, and laid her hand on her heart. “Oh!”

And, to get it all over with, he quickly added, “And her husband is dead as well.”

No words came for a long time. She sat there, with her head in her hands, but Otto sensed that she wasn’t crying, that she was still numb with the shock. Involuntarily he said the same words that Chaplain Lorenz had used when telling him: “They’re dead. They are at peace. They have been spared further pain.”

“Yes!” Anna said at last. “Yes. She was so fearful for her Karli when there was no news, but now she is at peace.”

She didn’t speak for a long time, and Quangel didn’t press her, even though he sensed from some commotion in the hall that the court was about to go into session.

Softly Anna asked, “Were they both—put to death?”

“No,” Quangel replied. “He died from the aftereffects of a blow he received when they were arrested.”

“And Trudel?”

“She took her own life,” Otto Quangel said quickly. “She jumped from the railing on the fifth floor. She was dead on the spot, Father Lorenz said. She didn’t suffer.”

“It must have happened that night,” Anna Quangel suddenly said, “when the whole prison was in uproar! I remember it, it was terrible, Otto!” And she buried her face in her hands again.

“Yes, it was terrible,” Quangel agreed. “With us, too, it was terrible.”

After a while she raised her head again, and looked firmly at Otto. Her lips were still trembling, but she said, “It’s better this way. It would be so awful if they were both sitting here with us. Well, now they’re at peace.” And, very quietly, “You know, Otto, we could do the same.”

He looked at her firmly. And she saw in his hard, cutting glance a look she’d never seen before, a look of mockery, as though everything were just a game, the things she was saying, what lay ahead of them, and the inevitable finale. As though it weren’t worthy of being taken seriously.

Then slowly he shook his head. “No, Anna, we won’t do that. We won’t sneak away, like criminals caught red-handed. We won’t make their judgment any easier for them. Not us!” And, in a different tone of voice, “It’s too late for all that. Don’t they keep you in chains?”

“Yes,” she said. “But when the guard walked me up to the door, he took them off.”

“You see!” he said. “It wouldn’t work.”

What he didn’t tell her was that from the moment he’d been taken out of remand he’d been in handcuffs and leg irons connected by a steel rod. As with Anna, the guard had taken off these ornaments at the door to the court: the state wasn’t to be cheated of its victim.

“All right,” she said, adjusting to the idea. “But you do think they’ll let us die together, don’t you, Otto?”

“I don’t know,” he replied. He didn’t want to lie to her, but at the same time he was certain each of them would die alone.

“But they’ll execute us at the same time?”

“Yes, Anna, I’m sure they’ll do that.”

In fact, he wasn’t so sure. He went on, “But don’t think about it now. Just remember that we have to be strong. If we plead guilty, everything will happen very quickly. If we don’t lie and prevaricate, we might get our sentence as soon as in half an hour.”

“Well, let’s do it like that, then. But, Otto, if it’s so quick, then we’ll be separated just as quickly, and we might never see each other again.”

“I’m sure we will—just before it happens, Anna. That’s what they told me: we’ll be allowed to say farewell. For definite, Anna!”

“That’s good, then, Otto. Then I’ll have something to keep looking forward to. And now we’re sitting together.”

They sat together for only one more minute, and then the malfunction was discovered, and they were made to sit far apart. They had to crane their necks to see each other. Luckily, it was Frau Quangel’s defense attorney who discovered the mistake—a friendly, grizzled, rather worried-looking man who had been chosen by the State to defend her, as Quangel had stuck to his original position of not wanting to waste money on something as useless as a defense.

Because it was the attorney who had discovered the mistake, it passed off without noise or fuss. The two guards had every reason to keep their mouths shut, and so the judge of the People’s Court, Freisler, never got wind of the unpardonable thing that had happened. If he had, the trial would probably have gone on for much longer.

Chapter 61

THE TRIAL: JUDGE FREISLER

The president of the People’s Court, the senior judge in Germany at the time, Judge Freisler, looked like a cultured man.
^*
He was, to use the terminology of Foreman Otto Quangel, a distinguished-looking gentleman. He wore his robe with style, and the cap gave his head dignity rather than looking merely stuck on, as it can on some heads. His eyes were clever, but cold. He had a high, smooth forehead and a mean little mouth, and it was the mouth, with its hard, cruel, sensual lips that gave the man away: he was a sybarite who sought all the pleasures of this world and left others to pay the bill.

The hands with the long, knotty fingers were mean, too, like vulture’s claws, and each time he asked an especially hurtful question his fingers curled, as though to dig into the flesh of his victim. And his way of speaking was mean, too: this man was incapable of speaking
coolly and dispassionately; he always hacked at his victim, abused him, talked with vicious sarcasm. A mean man, and a bad man.

Since Otto Quangel heard who was going to try his case, he had spoken about it a few times with his friend Dr. Reichhardt. Clever Dr. Reichhardt had also been of the view that since the outcome was a foregone conclusion, Quangel should admit everything, and not cover anything up or lie. That would take the wind out of their sails, and they wouldn’t be able to go on abusing him for as long as they would have liked to. The trial would be short, and they wouldn’t even have to call witnesses.

It created a minor sensation when the judge asked how they pled, and both accused answered with a simple “guilty.” That “guilty” made them subject to the death penalty and rendered any further business superfluous.

Judge Freisler hemmed and hawed for a while, stunned by this almost unprecedented plea.

But then he recovered his grasp of the situation. He wanted his day in court. He wanted to see these two workers grovel, he wanted to see them writhe under his razor-sharp questioning. This “guilty” plea betrayed pride. Judge Freisler could see recognition of it in the faces of the spectators in the courtroom, some of whom were astonished, and others pensive. He wanted to strip the accused of that recognition. He wanted them to leave these proceedings without a shred of dignity.

Freisler asked, “Are you clear in your minds that you have just renounced your lives, that you have cut yourselves off from all decent people? That you are now a common criminal deserving to die, carrion that will be hanged by the neck? Are you quite clear about that? Now, are you still guilty?”

Quangel said slowly, “I am guilty. I did what it says on the charge sheet.”

The judge leveled his beak at him: “I want you to answer yes or no! Are you a common traitor, or not? Yes or no!”