Iron Gustav (50 page)

‘Eva must be at Olga's. She's only just gone,' said Heinz and looked at the lad without, so far, any suspicion.

He was about thirteen years of age and watched Heinz with a timid yet sullen expression. Then he grinned. ‘You her chap?'

‘Yes.' Heinz held out his hand. ‘Show me what you've got.'

The lad grinned again and shook his head. ‘What'll you give?'

Heinz was far from wealthy at the moment – as a result of his search for Eugen Bast nearly all Erich's splendid suits had vanished in fares and tips – so he offered a mark.

A shake of the head.

‘Two.'

‘Nix.'

‘Three marks.'

‘Fork it out,' said the lad, taking a slip of paper from his trouser
pocket. Heinz handed over the money and read what was written on the paper, which the other did not let out of his hand.

‘A hundred marks,' was written there, ‘or ashtray.' Nothing else.

What ‘ashtray' signified he knew from Eva, but this was not the same handwriting as in the first note. ‘Eugen hasn't written this,' he said. ‘Well, anyone can say that!'

‘I wrote it,' explained the lad. ‘But Eugen told me what to write.'

‘Why didn't he write it himself?'

Heinz seemed to have asked a silly question, for the lad grinned, evidently thinking himself very clever. ‘Gimme a hundred marks an' I'll tip you why Eugen didn't write it.'

Heinz looked thoughtfully at him. A hundred marks were absolutely out of the question – he hadn't got them. But in any case one thing was certain. Eugen Bast was alive. ‘Don't tell her you showed me that note,' said Heinz, snatching up his hat and coat.

‘Not such a mug. She got any dough?'

‘You must ask her yourself. I'm clearing out.' And Heinz went.

He had to wait a long time in a doorway opposite before the messenger shot out of the house like an arrow. Heinz tore after him. Had the lad suspected anything it would have been difficult to follow him; the chase went in the direction of the Oranienburger Tor, then down the Friedrichstrasse – Heinz on the other side of the street – past the station and across Unter den Linden.

There were many depressed-looking people about. No goods had yet appeared in the shops – Germany was still subject to the blockade. Yes, it had even been tightened up … But one thing was there in superabundance – poverty. Beggars lined the great thoroughfares, leaning against the walls, squatting on mats, hawking obscene postcards; nearly all of them were war-wounded or at least claimed to be such, if one went by the placards on their breasts. During the four long years of war, people had become accustomed to the sight of maimed men, otherwise anyone finding himself unprepared amid these horrors might well imagine himself in hell …

Armless and legless – trousers pushed up to show the thick purple or red scabs on the stumps – there they sat, the mutilated, those with faces terribly scarred and burnt, those with missing jaws – horror upon horror. The shell-shocked, groaning pitifully, shook heads or
arms; with perfect regularity a man in field-grey knocked the back of his head twice a second against the wall – a hundred and twenty times a minute, seven thousand two hundred times an hour – and the back of his head was one enormous wound. People saw it. The police saw it. The government saw it.

Although the dollar was already worth fifteen marks, instead of four marks twenty before the war, the word ‘inflation' was still widely unknown. People spoke of price increases. A pound of bread cost twenty-five instead of fourteen marks, butter three marks instead of one forty. However, apart from the rich, no one could buy as much food as he wanted, because all life's necessities were only available with coupons in very small quantities, so the price increases did not make themselves immediately felt. People would have been willing to spend more money, if only there had been more products to buy.

The government stuck to the fiction that a mark was a mark. The war-wounded received their small pension – but in fact they often received nothing at all because their reduction of income had first to be calculated. However, because the war-wounded also wanted to live and many could not work, they took to the streets. In groups of three, five, ten they went up and down the houses, sang in the courtyards, made music. Or else they sat at major crossroads, selling shoelaces and matches, or begged. The government and the police could only look on. They couldn't order people to starve in silence.

It seemed incomprehensible that they could all live by begging, that an impoverished nation preoccupied with its own troubles could every day provide money enough to make it worthwhile for each one to sit there. Of course, those were best off whose wounds were unique, that is to say, were the most horrible – and therefore had the most powerful effect on the passers-by.

And it was in front of such a uniquely wounded man that the lad had stopped. This man might have been young, but there was no means of saying; the whole face was an immense scar with terrible black edges running into each other like the frontier lines on a map. Of the lips there was hardly any trace; the nose looked as if burnt black; most horrible, however, were the shrivelled eyeballs without pupils.

The
beggar, leaning against the wall of a house, kept his face to the passers-by and, as if that and his placard (‘War-Blinded') were not enough, at regular intervals, without altering the pitch of his voice, or any accusation, he said over and over again the one word: ‘Blind. Blind. Blind. Blind …'

And in this word ‘Blind' there was something terrible, something more terrible than a lament – it was like the soulless ticking of a clock. The word seemed drowned in the street noises and yet people in a great hurry, in a very great hurry, stopped and put money into the hand held open against his chest.

Never a word of thanks did the man say nor was a sign given that he felt the money in his palm. Uninterruptedly he called: ‘Blind. Blind. Blind. Blind.'

Even now, when his messenger stood beside him whispering, he went on as if this word ‘Blind' were spoken without his being conscious of it, something automatic, like breathing or a beating heart. ‘Blind.'

Heinz crossed the road and stopped in front of that terrible face. He took no notice of the lad looking at him in terror, but said in a low voice: ‘Hackendahl.'

The scarred face, more ghastly than ever at close quarters, did not change; the burnt mouth continued its speech. ‘Blind. Blind …' But the lad's face was distorted with pain. He was trying to run away but could not; the blind man's foot was pressed down on his foot. Inescapable, agonizing.

And on seeing this Heinz Hackendahl knew the man to be Eugen Bast, Eugen Bast as Eva had described him, the tormentor whose sole response was to punish the boy without enquiring whether betrayal had been intentional or not. Eugen Bast the destroyer of Eva, and her victim – Heinz now saw the result of that shot.

Emotion akin to hatred rose in him. ‘Take your foot away,' he ordered, trembling with rage.

‘Blind. Blind. Blind,' said the man, his foot remaining where it was.

‘Take your foot away,' repeated Heinz. And, nothing happening, he placed his own foot on the beggar's.

‘Blind. Blind. Blind.'

Money rattled in the blind man's hand. People looked at the
terrible face, not at the foot. The coins were swiftly stowed away and the hand was out again. ‘Blind. Blind.' The foot remained where it was.

It grew obvious that this man would never give way; he would rather let his own foot be crushed. So Heinz withdrew his. Unmoved, the beggar went on with his ‘Blind … Blind', but a minute or two later the lad was released. He looked ill with pain, yet he uttered no sound, nor did he flee – and it seemed so easy to flee. It must be some nameless, indefinable fear which bound this lad to his tormentor, a fear mixed with strange hankering, the fear to which Eva had succumbed.

Heinz was young and inexperienced; he had no idea how to deal with a man like this – he had thought the matter quite simple. He would, once Eugen was discovered, threaten him with the police and penal servitude; then the fellow must soon realize that it would pay him to leave Eva in peace. But – here stood Eugen Bast and Bast had immediately made it clear that he was not to be threatened. He would always only behave as the evil in him told him to, even when he harmed himself.

‘Blind. Blind.' It went on and on …

What am I to do? thought Heinz in despair. Even if I fetched a policeman … I used to think it would do Eva no harm to be in prison a year or two. But as soon as she saw his face at the trial she'd fall under his influence again and try to get him off by taking the blame on herself … Eva was correct. Flight is her only hope. But in that case she'll drink herself to death. Would Sophie give her money? Sophie's sure to have some.

‘Blind. Blind.' Coins rattled, the hand went into the pocket, was held out again. ‘Blind. Blind.'

Oh, once upon a time Heinz Hackendahl had thought that life was quite simple. But, either life was much more difficult and dangerous than before, or he himself was useless. He was through with Erich, just managed to scrape through his Abitur, and again done nothing for Eva.

‘Blind, Blind …'

Heinz gave a side glance at Eugen Bast. He would have liked to clear off, throw the whole thing up; he had bitten off more than he
could chew. And yet something kept him there. He couldn't go away like that. It would mean losing all self-respect, all confidence in his own powers; he had the feeling that he would never get anywhere in life if he fled now without having carried out his task. He must do something.

While he was thus brooding and spurring himself to action the repetition of ‘Blind … Blind' ceased as if a clock had stopped. What was happening? Did Eugen Bast always go away in the mornings between eleven and twelve, just as the rush of traffic and pedestrians started? For Eugen Bast was certainly leaving. He had placed his hand on the boy's arm and, without Heinz being able to notice any communications pass between them, the boy now led the blind man away – Heinz following – down the Friedrichstrasse. Although they were just in front they paid no attention to him – even the boy never once looked round – nor did they speak. Obviously it was their custom to leave at this time.

Suddenly it occurred to Heinz that he could at least give Eva the news, and he retraced his steps. Should he ever want Eugen Bast he could always find him, though there would be little need for that now. For he was able to tell Eva that Eugen Bast was no dead man, no haunting ghost, but a beggar whom she had blinded. No need to tell her how terrible he looked; the thing to emphasize was how helpless he had been rendered through his blindness and how easily she might avoid him. And he would assist her to move again, with more precautions this time, so that she could live in peace from his threats; it was ridiculous to be blackmailed by a blind man. Ashtray indeed! Even if he were in the same room she could laugh at that. All she had to do was to walk out.

Heinz was suddenly sure of victory; his task was accomplished. He did not consider how readily he had given up trailing a man whom he had sought for weeks, nor did he remember that in Eugen Bast's presence everything had appeared hopelessly insoluble. No – away from Eugen Bast all was well. He wandered up the Friedrichstrasse again. About to cross Unter den Linden, however, he bethought himself that this was an inconvenient time to call on Eva, being the hour when the girls, always late risers, began to gather
in one another's rooms. It would be better to wait a while. Then he could speak with her alone …

So he went along Unter den Linden, through the Brandenburger Tor, into the Tiergarten. It was April. In spite of the devastation and neglect there was still some greenness to be seen in the park. Not all the turf had been trodden into slush. And though the flower beds were empty, Heinz in one corner discovered, half hidden under a bush, a few crocus blooms.

He knelt down beside them and saw that some were yellow, some blue and white, just as before the war. So there was something as it was before – these crocuses! People have changed; no one can be the same. But the flowers have remained. There was something comforting about this stupid thought – stupid, he thought, but comforting all the same. It was like the promise of the impossible – that people could also be the same as they were before. While looking at the crocuses Heinz thought briefly of Eva, and for longer of Irma. Had Irma – he tried to recollect – had Irma ever possessed a yellow or blue or white dress? Then he admitted that this was all nonsense, not worth the least thought, and that he only wanted to kill time to delay talking with Eva.

He sighed and stood up. He would have liked to take a flower with him, but it somehow didn't seem right. Not that he particularly respected the Tiergarten, which for many had long been the place for collecting firewood. No, he just didn't want to appear before Eva with a flower at that moment, which would have immediately made him think of Irma. So he went without a flower.

Thus it was that, entering Eva's room, he found someone had stolen a march on him.

There sat Eugen Bast on the chaise-longue, his fingers clutching the boy's arm as if he were about to march off at any moment. In no way did he give the impression of being as helpless as Heinz had imagined.

With a white face Eva looked up from the trunk she was packing, glanced at her brother, compressed her lips and went on with her work.

The blind man, hearing the door open, had turned his head to
listen. Once again he seemed not to receive any information from others. ‘Your brother, you whore!'

‘Yes, Eugen,' said Eva – and by her tone Heinz knew he had lost what little influence he had.

‘You got anythin' to tell your brother, whore?' said Eugen (and Heinz was frightened at the false amiability of that whisper).