Iron Gustav (3 page)

Jenny Williams, 2014

Iron Gustav
was first published by Putnam (London) in 1940. Starting with
Little Man, What Now
? in 1933, Putnam had published a Fallada novel every year. Fallada's popularity must be the only explanation for a British publisher bringing out a book by a writer – and one who was hardly known as any kind of dissenter – with whose country it was at war.

In view of the fact that Putnam had already substantially abbreviated Fallada's even longer novel,
Wolf Among Wolves
, also translated by Philip Owens, it is not surprising that its British publisher abbreviated
Iron Gustav
even more drastically, by some two hundred pages. Many of these cuts concern issues – the so-called German Revolution of 1918–19, the Occupation of the Ruhr, and mass unemployment (about which Fallada wrote most powerfully) – which had been used successfully by the National Socialists in their propaganda, and so were considered unwelcome reading during a war against Germany which had just begun.

These cuts mean that the book was substantially misrepresented when first published, and that this edition is more than a reprint with some cuts restored, but rather a completely new edition of this novel.

Philip Owens, born in 1901, was a writer, translator and editor, who formed part of the British literary avant-garde alongside figures like Jack Lindsay, Samuel Beckett, William Empson and Edgell Rickword in the twenties and thirties. Among other works, he wrote an experimental novel, much of it set in Berlin (
Hobohemians: A Study of Luxurious Poverty
(Mandrake Press, 1929)). Little wonder that he was such a brilliant translator of Fallada's low-life ambience.

Philip Owens was killed, serving in the Intelligence Corps, in the Greek Civil War in June 1945. I learned much from him.

More practically, I would like to thank Gardis Cramer von Laue for not only locating everything missing – as discussed elsewhere – from the 1940 translation, from single words and phrases to passages and whole chapters, but also for typing everything out, with its context, for the convenience of the translator. I also benefited from her native German and strong feel for the English language.

N.M.J.

Perhaps it was the grey mare, old Hackendahl's favourite, demanding its feed by dragging the halter chain through the manger ring and pawing the floor of its stable; perhaps it was the dawn replacing the moon, the light of earliest morning breaking over Berlin, which had awakened the old man. Possibly, however, it was neither the dawn nor his favourite grey that had awakened him at twenty minutes past three on the morning of 29 June 1914, but something quite different.

Struggling with sleepiness, the old man had groaned: ‘Erich, Erich, you won't do that, will you?' Then he had started up and gazed round the room. Slowly, perception returned to his eyes; over the carved shell of the marriage bed, with knobs on either side, he saw the sabre and helmet, from the time when he had been a sergeant-major in the Pasewalk Cuirassiers, hanging on the wall beneath his photograph, taken on the day he had left the service twenty years ago. He saw the faint gleam of the blade and of the golden eagle on his helmet, bringing memories which made him even prouder and happier than did the big cab-hire business he had since built up; the esteem that had been his in the regiment pleased him more than the respect paid him, the successful businessman, by his neighbours in the Frankfurter Allee. And, harking back to his nightmare, he said, now fully awake: ‘No, Erich would never do a thing like that. Never!'

Abruptly he set his feet on the sheepskin rug by the bed.

‘Are you getting up already, Gustav?' enquired a voice from the neighbouring bed, and a hand groped for him. ‘It's only three o'clock.'

‘Yes, Mother. Twenty-five minutes past three.'

‘But why, Father? They're not fed till four …'

He was almost embarrassed. ‘I've got a feeling that one of the horses might be ill.' And, to avoid further explanations, he plunged his head into the wash basin. But his wife waited patiently until he had dried himself. ‘You've been talking all night in your sleep about Erich, Father.'

Her husband suddenly stopped combing his hair, was about to speak, but thought better of it. ‘Really,' he remarked nonchalantly, ‘I wasn't aware of it.'

‘What's up between you and Erich?' she persisted. ‘I know something's the matter between you.'

‘Yesterday Eva was the whole afternoon at Köller's. I won't have it. People call it the “Café Cuddle”.'

‘A young girl wants a little life and Fraulein Köller's bought a gramophone. Eva only goes there because of the music.'

‘I don't like it,' emphasized the old sergeant-major. ‘You keep the girls in order and I'll look after the boys, Erich included.'

‘But …'

Hackendahl had gone, however. He had said what he had to say and in this house his will was law.

The woman let herself sink back into the pillow with a sigh. Oh, yes, dear God. What a man! Stiff as a poker, and wants the children to have a life like his! He can talk – but I'll see to it that the children get their share of pleasure in life – Eva as well, and Erich too. Especially Erich.

And she was already asleep.

The father stood hesitantly for a moment in the gloomy hallway. From the stable below, he could hear the grey reproachfully clinking her chain, but he withstood the temptation to give his favourite an extra ration on the sly, and instead softly opened the door to his daughters' bedroom.

The two girls slept on, accustomed to their father making his
rounds by day and by night, exactly as he had done in the barracks when inspecting the dormitories to see that everything was in order. When Hackendahl had turned civilian and taken over his dead father-in-law's hackney carriage business, he had given up none of his military habits; drivers, horses and children had to toe the line as strictly as if they had been soldiers. The children were not allowed to have any life of their own, nor the kind of secrets that children love so much. Everything in the chests of drawers and cupboards had to be in its place, for Father was merciless about what he called order and cleanliness. ‘Father' – that was the sword that hung over the family Hackendahl. ‘Father' meant discipline, criticism, the sternest justice.

‘Iron Gustav' they called him in the Frankfurter Allee, a man as unyielding and stubborn as he was upright and irreproachable. Entering late in life a civilian world which seemed to him too soft, he had tried to inoculate his children with the principles by which (as he thought) he had attained success – and these were industry, the sense of duty, and obedience to the will of a superior, whether that superior be called God, Kaiser or the Law.

Old Hackendahl scrutinized the room. Over Sophie's chair hung a nurse's uniform, carefully folded; the starched hood with its Red Cross badge lay on the bedside table. Hackendahl sighed. His daughter, having come of age, had insisted on taking up nursing, although in his view this somewhat pious and anaemic child would have been better suited as a teacher. But Sophie knew how to get her own way.

‘If you positively won't give your consent, Father,' she had said in that quiet way of hers, ‘I'll have to do without.'

‘But I'm your father,' he had stormed, taken aback by such disobedience. ‘You're breaking the fifth commandment.'

‘Pastor Rienäcker,' she had replied, ‘tells me I have a call.'

‘God's call' – she hadn't been ashamed to talk like that to her father! And since when did one talk of God, the Omnipotent, as if one were personally acquainted with Him? One was too small to do that. Old Hackendahl regarded this earth as having distinctions of rank that were, so to speak, spatial; that is, the Lord sat on the very top and, far below, sat Hackendahl; everyone in between, whether colonel, judge of the supreme court or emperor, had his appointed place.

‘I only want what is best for you, Sophie,' he had said. ‘You're not strong enough for nursing.'

‘God will give me strength,' she had replied.

All right, all right! Mechanically old Hackendahl adjusted the ribbons of her hood so that they lay at right angles, although tidiness was more probably to seek in the clothes of his second daughter, the eighteen-year-old Eva, who slept on her side, her face hidden by an arm and her long, fair hair. Sophie, quite properly, had done up her hair for the night in two plaits, but Eva would say, ‘At night at least I want my hair free from the silly old bun!'

She was taking a liberty, but her father didn't say so. She looked so pretty without it, with her blonde ringlets framing her pale face. It somehow lit up his heart to see her lying there like that – a life in bloom, a mature girl, but still a child.

Still a child! Of course – he knew his Eva.

Remembering the confectioner's shop, that wretched ‘Café Cuddle' with its tinned music churned out from a great horn painted pink and gold, Hackendahl frowned. Yes, she had certainly gone there, but only because of the music from this new-fangled apparatus, and not because she was thinking about men or kisses …

Feeling his glance she flung herself, with the impetuosity which characterized all her movements, on her back, stretched and gave out a sound of ecstatic joy – just an ‘Oh!', but so happy. Then she looked at him. ‘Is that you, Father?'

‘Good morning,' he said slowly.

‘Good morning, Father. Listen …'

‘What is it? You should be asleep!'

‘Never mind, I'll go to sleep immediately. Father, do you know what time Erich came home?'

‘You mustn't tell tales, you know that.'

‘At one o'clock, Father! Fancy, one o'clock.'

‘Shame, Evchen, you shouldn't tell tales.' This was not said very firmly, however, for what he had just heard agitated him very much.

‘Shouldn't tell tales! When he's always telling about me! In the Café Köller they said he'd got a lot of money, Father.'

‘You're not to go to the Café.'

‘But I'm so fond of whipped cream – and we never get any at
home.' She was watching her father shrewdly and saw that he was no longer thinking of her. ‘And now I'm going to sleep, I'm so tired …'

‘Yes, go to sleep. And don't tell tales, it's not nice.'

In the corridor he heard, more distinctly than ever, the grey stamping. It was just on four o'clock, feeding time. But first he would go to his sons' room.

Three beds, three sleepers, three sons. They could be regarded as wealth, and so the father had hitherto regarded them. Not now, however, not now! There was something else besides Eva's tittle-tattle that made Hackendahl stand on the threshold listening. Listening …

He had heard hundreds, thousands of people sleeping. So he was familiar with this oppressed breathing; he had heard it in the barracks, mostly on Saturday and Sunday nights after leave, but he had never before heard it in this room. Eva's words rushed into his mind. ‘Erich came home at one o'clock.' But he needed no one to tell him what a drunken sleep sounded like.

Although there was reason to complain about the way in which Heinz, the youngest (nicknamed Bubi), left his clothes lying around, and reason also to make the eldest, the twenty-four-year-old Otto, realize that his father knew he was not asleep – he lay much too stiffly – Hackendahl was now occupied only with his drunken son. Distraught with grief and anger, he stood by the bed of his Erich, his quick-witted boy … Erich was only seventeen but he was already in the second highest class at the grammar school; he was his parents' favourite, the most popular boy in his class, a favourite also with his teachers. But he was drunk …

The father stood there lost in thought, his foot on the bedside rug, if that's what it was; there was no time to look. He must watch his son's face, this much-loved face, and try to read its expression.

But the light was still dim, so he went to the window and turned back a corner of the curtain, so that the already bright daylight shone full in the face of the sleeping boy.

At the same time, the father's gaze met another's, that of Otto,
who looked at him darkly and a little troubled. Anger rose in Hackendahl, as if Otto had caught him doing something forbidden. And he completely gave way to his anger – you could do that with Otto. He was a milksop, apparently unmarked by either anger or love. Raising his fist as though to strike him, the father hissed: ‘Be quiet! Go to sleep at once! D'you hear?'

The son closed his eyes immediately.

For a moment, the father looked again at the pale, weak face with the thin beard. Then he turned back to his other son. But what had happened had changed him. Since knowing the eldest son was awake, he no longer felt alone in the room. The time for quiet contemplation was over. Anger, complaining and sadness had passed. Something had to happen.

Something had to happen!

First he bent down. Yes, he hadn't paid attention, but he had noticed the clothes thrown drunkenly about. It wasn't a bedside rug he'd stood on. And he began to pick up the clothes.

Something dropped out of the waistcoat pocket and fell with a clink.

First of all the old man hung the waistcoat in an orderly way over the back of a chair. Then he picked up the key. It was a completely ordinary key, a little key, the kind used for cupboards and drawers. It was still quite new. Even in the dim light the father thought he could make out the filing of the bit … and it was no industrial key but one made by a locksmith – nothing special.

The father stood absolutely still. As he held the little key in his hand, he felt he could hear time go by in seconds and minutes. It fell like heavy rain, obliterating all other sounds – all the sounds of life. And behind this veil, life itself became grey, colourless and distant …

Only a little key …

He no longer looked at his drunken son's bed. He didn't care if Otto was awake and watching him. When in great pain everyone is utterly alone. Nothing reached him any more.

With dragging feet and unseeing eyes the father went to the door, the key in his hand.

A little key!

In the passage Hackendahl again heard the grey, his pampered favourite, demanding its extra ration. No, things were not right, either with the horse or Erich or the master of the house. He, scrupulously just and conscientious, got up half an hour earlier to give the grey something extra before Rabause the head stableman arrived. His children all meant a great deal to him, but Erich with his coaxing could always in the end obtain what was refused the others. The father had never thought of this as unjust, since no one can command his affections, yet now he saw that it was not the proper way of doing things; it sinned against reason, human and divine. He carried the proof in his hand.

He carried it as though it were a magic key with a power as yet unknown and which had therefore to be handled cautiously. It was a magic key, opening Iron Gustav up to new knowledge. No father's heart can be completely made of iron. It is soil forever newly ploughed, some of whose furrows never disappear.