Iron Gustav (23 page)

‘There's a war on,' said the captain coldly. ‘Tens of thousands of fathers have had to sacrifice their sons – and you're kicking about your horses!' He looked at Hackendahl again and then said, more amiably: ‘Well, go away now. You an ex-serviceman, complaining!'

Hackendahl clicked his heels and went. That appeal could still produce the desired effect. Rabause followed with the three horses. Never had the grey looked so depressed.

Not
till he returned home did Hackendahl discover how much the military authorities were allowing him for his horses – a hundred and fifty marks apiece. But he had paid Eggebrecht five hundred, yes, six hundred marks even. These are peacetime prices, he thought, staring at the warrant. In peacetime this would be called confiscation of property; in war we just have to sacrifice it.

For a long time he sat down and thought about it. It couldn't be changed – no, not any more. He wanted to kick himself. He really had become like iron.

Pulling himself together, he went down and paid off the cabmen. ‘You can knock off for good,' he said. ‘This business is finished.'

No flinching, no sign of weakness. There had been one such sign on the mustering ground – the blow was so sudden. But now no one should hear him complain any more, not even those at home. He would take life as it came.

‘Listen, Rabause,' he said. ‘From now onwards I'll drive one cab and you the other. We'll always rest one of the horses – one's always sure to be ill out of the three.'

Rabause looked at him. ‘Yes, Governor,' he said. ‘I will. We'd better take the money home. There'll hardly be any cabs left in Berlin after this inspection.'

And his boss said, ‘You were absolutely right back then. The stable was too big. But I don't want to build anything new. I must see that I sell this whole show. Then we'll set ourselves up somewhere quite small. That would be good too, wouldn't it, Rabause?'

‘Don't I know it, boss!' said Rabause. ‘When the children were still little – what a time that was!'

‘Indeed,' agreed Hackendahl. ‘Perhaps we can do it like that again.'

Perhaps …

Gustav Hackendahl had returned to his former occupation. In a driver's blue greatcoat and shiny top hat he took his place on the cab ranks.

The other cabmen, when they first saw him behind his melancholy
grey, called out: ‘Well, Gustav, doing another chap out of a job? You want to get rich quick, you do!' And among themselves they said: ‘No one drives well enough for him. Well, what's it matter? He'll soon have enough in this weather with only swedes in his belly.'

By and by, however, when they saw him out in all weathers, not declining the meanest fare, and it got about that he was working with only two cabs, they said: ‘And he used to be at the top of the tree. But you have to say this for him – he's not chucking up. Old Gustav's really iron.'

Hackendahl let them talk. He accepted this changeover from prosperity to daily worry as equably as he endured bad weather. If a fare wanted to go all the way to Reinickendorf he merely said: ‘Yes, we'll do it, sir, but please don't get impatient.' And he let the grey trot with an occasional walk as rest – the fare might complain as much as he liked but Gustav showed no impatience.

‘If you was a horse, sir, you wouldn't hurry on the feed you'd get nowadays. Thank yer stars you haven't got to tote the cab along with the grey inside it, sir. It might have happened like that.'

The fare would laugh. And a laughing fare is a satisfied one. Gustav Hackendahl too was not dissatisfied – he took everything as it came, resigned to his setback in life and resolved to become a driver again. When he had risen in the world he had taken care to speak good German so as not to shame his family, but now he began to speak like a true Berlin cabby – fares liked to hear it. Everything had to be done the right way. He still insisted on this, at home with wife and children and in the stable. In big things one can adapt oneself, be amenable; in small things – one must keep to the rules.

So he sat on his box and saw without being seen. No townsman notices a driver. The cabby waiting for a fare is as much a part of Berlin as an advertisement pillar or the gas lamps. And thus it came about that Hackendahl sat on high and saw Eva approaching. She should have had better eyes than most people for a driver, her father being one, but her head was lowered and she did not see him. She wasn't even looking at the dark-complexioned young man talking so eagerly with her.

Moping … like the grey, thought Hackendahl. She's been hit all right.

‘Gee-up,'
he said to his beast, clucking his tongue, and the cab slowly followed the pair. Sometimes Hackendahl saw the young chap from behind, and sometimes from the side; the grey was in full agreement about not hurrying. Hackendahl had been standing at the Alexanderplatz and now he was going towards the Schlesische Station. Well, we'll soon know, he thought.

Outwardly the young fellow did not look too bad, that had to be admitted. He was togged up to the nines and, as far as could be seen, his face too was not so bad. But on the whole Hackendahl disliked him. In the first place why was a chap with sound limbs walking about Berlin without a uniform? And, secondly, he had such a fat backside …

The two were walking quite sedately along the Lange Strasse. A lousy neighbourhood for a courting couple, thought Hackendahl. But the chap's lousy too.

What talking there was the young fellow did, Evchen hardly saying a word, but he too didn't speak much as he slouched along at her side. They haven't much that's new to say to one another, that's clear, decided Hackendahl. Once the young man touched Evchen's upper arm, maybe in affection, but from her start Hackendahl guessed it to be something else.

You wait! he thought.

They were now passing the not unfamiliar signs: boarding house or hotel so-and-so, rooms from 1.50 marks upwards, also by the hour. Hackendahl could not understand why they should go the whole length of the Lange Strasse merely to enter the kind of sordid den which could have been found equally well at the beginning. For this is what the couple did. The place into which they disappeared was called the Oriental Hotel.

All right – Hackendahl was in no hurry. He put on the brake, changed the For Hire sign to Engaged, climbed down from the box and buckled on the grey's nosebag in which, together with a lot of poor chopped straw, was a little good maize from that Romania which had very recently declared war on Germany. Taking a rug from the cab, he hung it over his arm. If you have to bring a lady something she has forgotten then you must have that something to bring her. Any fool knew that!

‘Well,
Gertie,' said Hackendahl winking at the landlady. ‘In what room are the two young people?'

‘Young people? What do you mean? No young people are staying here.'

‘Don't tell me that sort of yarn. The young people I brought in my cab!' And as the woman still hesitated, for even in wartime the police would spasmodically remember the laws against procuring, Hackendahl explained: ‘The girl left this in my cab,' indicating the rug which was not clearly visible in the gloomy entrance hall.

‘Give it to me,' said the old woman. ‘I'll give it her myself later on.'

‘Nothin' doin'! No, I must give it her myself, or later I'd be told you ain't ever seen me and my name's Nitwit.' And, calmly pushing the old woman aside, Hackendahl stepped in and inspected the doors …

‘Not there – here!' she hissed furiously. ‘Knock first, at least, you old fool.'

Hackendahl, however, had opened the door and gone in, casting a fleeting glance at the couple, but taking his time. With deliberation he locked the door, tried the handle and called out: ‘You keep quiet, Gertie, I'm in now.'

Then he turned round. ‘Well, Evchen?' His tone displayed no trace of anger.

Wide-eyed she looked at him. She stood by the foot of the bed; her coat was hung over a chair. She gave one glance at the fellow standing near the wall and then looked back at her father.

Hackendahl sat down leisurely in one of the red plush chairs, put the rug over his knees and smoothed it out. ‘Nice chairs,' he remarked after a pause, ‘but should be treated better.'

No reply.

‘Well, Evchen, if you don't want to begin I'll have to. Or have you anything to say?'

‘Oh, Father.' Her voice was low. Then it became a little firmer. ‘Talking won't help.'

‘Don't say that, Evchen, don't say that. Talking does help. Talking it over always does.'

An impatient movement.

‘If one doesn't want to talk about a thing, Evchen, then there's
something rotten about it. I don't have to come into a brothel to know that.'

‘Listen, old gentleman,' came the young fellow's impertinent voice – just the voice one would expect from such a rump, thought Hackendahl. ‘You come here and spread yerself—'

‘Shut up, my lad,' said Hackendahl without raising his voice or looking at him. ‘I'm talking to my daughter, so you keep your mouth shut. Listen, Evchen! You're right, what's there to talk about? Bygones are bygones. But it just so happens that my cab is below and you can come home with me right away. I'll drive you there in tip-top style, gratis and for nothing.'

The girl had not stirred, but it seemed to Hackendahl that she flung the swiftest of glances at the man.

‘You mustn't look at that chap, Evchen. Don't think of him any more. You shouldn't have anything to do with a man who takes a decent girl into a place like this, in broad daylight, too. You are a decent girl, Evchen, all my children are decent. All of them, you know that.'

He would have liked the fellow in the corner to have got saucy now, so that he could sock him one. But trust the fat-arsed pimp he was to know when to avoid trouble – he didn't as much as open his lips. And Evchen, his favourite daughter Evchen – she stood there without a word.

‘Well, come on, girl,' he said persuasively. ‘Put your coat on and come.'

She shook her head. ‘It's too late, Father.'

‘Too late!' He tried to laugh. ‘Don't talk like that, Evchen. How old are you, eh? You're twenty! There's no such thing as too late at your age.'

‘It's impossible, Father. I can't. He …' – she made a movement with her head – ‘he can send me to jail. I've stolen …'

Old Hackendahl turned very red, then slowly pale. He was on the point of going up to the young man – but he remained in his chair.

After a while he spoke, a little heavily. ‘All right, Evchen, you stole, then. I'd never have thought that any child of mine would ever say that to me and see me sit still. But times have changed. It really is war. I can't understand it, Evchen, I can't at all. Times must really have changed and me with them …' He looked at her helplessly. Then he
began again. ‘All right, then, I'm sitting here and you're there and you're a thief. In that case we won't go home, we'll go to the police station … I'll stand by you, Evchen. And you tell them of your own free will what this fellow knows about you. And then – well, you'll have to go to prison for a time …'

It was almost too much for him, then he pulled himself together and said: ‘I wouldn't have thought I could ever speak like this. But I'm not trying to excuse you when I say that even a decent person can go to prison – once. A decent person can make a mistake – once. Or have bad luck. That fellow there' – he pointed – ‘he's your bad luck. You can become decent again, Evchen.'

All this time she had been watching his mouth. Now she spoke. ‘And when all that lies behind me, Father, prison and all the rest, what's going to happen then?'

‘You'll come back to us then, Evchen. It's not our Eva who moons about not saying a word – and you used to sing so beautifully! No, my girl, everything will be the same as it was.'

‘Never,' she said, shaking her head. ‘It's too late. I've sunk too deep.'

‘Don't go on saying it's too late, Evchen. You're not twenty-one yet.'

‘And then – at home again … I know you, Father; you couldn't ever forgive or forget. You would always look at me askance even in twenty years' time.'

‘You mustn't say that, Evchen. I've forgotten about Erich …'

‘You see, Father! You think of Erich at once. You think, if the son's a thief why not the daughter too? You see, you can't forget anything.'

‘What are you talking about, Eva?' cried Hackendahl. ‘You know nothin' about me. Wasn't I nice to you just now? Did I throw your trouble in your face?'

‘But you are throwing it in my face now. No, Father. What would I do at home? Potter about the flat, make the beds and do the cooking. No, I couldn't do that again. All that's over and done with. It'd be nothing but a stopgap.'

‘Think, Evchen! Decent work is always good.'

‘And look what I've become through your decent work! Do you
think Eugen would have got me so easily if I hadn't got like this through being at home with you? Decent work indeed – it was always duty, obedience and punctuality – but it was all wrong, Father.'

‘No, no, girl! Don't say that. I worked honestly …'

‘And where has it landed you? You're now sitting on the box just as you did twenty years ago. But the horse you had in front of you then was better. And you don't know what's coming either. This isn't the end yet, by any means.'

‘No, Evchen, that's true. You're right there. To have a daughter who tells me to my face that she'd rather be in a brothel with her bully than stay at home with her father and mother – I'd never have believed it.'

He was on his feet – he had been standing for quite a while. Now he folded the rug over his arm and smoothed it out. ‘But, Evchen,' he said, ‘to ask me to play the pander to this pimp of yours, you can't expect me to do that either. It's better you go with him altogether. Fetch your things and then—' without meaning to, he suddenly bellowed: ‘and then clear out. Clear out!'