Iron Gustav (57 page)

The
lawyer stood up, wiped snow from his coat, and put his hand to his eyes: ‘I must have lost my spectacles. Will you look, Erich. They may not be broken.'

They were not broken. Erich found them and gave them back.

‘And if you could get me a taxi, Erich? There's a rank just round the corner.'

The taxi, too, was found. Clumsily the lawyer got in and settled himself, while Erich stood hesitantly by the door. Ought he to go with him or not? He waited. But the lawyer said nothing. ‘I'm very sorry, Herr Doctor,' said Erich in a low voice.

‘Goodnight,' yawned the other. ‘One really shouldn't drink such a lot. Fancy falling down in the street! Well, goodnight, Erich.'

‘Goodnight, Herr Doctor.'

The taxi moved away into the night.

An unending stream of people passed through the prison in Berlin-Moabit. Ten years ago, going to prison was still a disgrace. Now, in 1923, people said, ‘Can't be helped – tough luck!'

It had begun during the war. Almost everyone had procured butter by devious means, and potatoes on forage trips. Many didn't feel it was right, but the laws no longer seemed to fit the needs of daily life – most of them were drawn up before the war, after all. If a hungry, unemployed man stole, people considered it was not the same as when someone stole before the war, when no one needed to.

Honesty was also made more difficult, because dishonesty was so widespread. Black-market racketeers, born of the war and despised and hated during it, had almost become popular figures. The unhealthy-looking fat man with a briefcase in a big car was not so much despised as envied. The words ‘black market' came to sound modern – and not just the words.

‘Yes,' people said, ‘is it just racketeers who deal in the black market? What about inflation? Stock Exchange racketeers must be to blame for that. Why doesn't the government simply put a ban on the Stock Exchange? It's all a racket! Those at the top are behind the
inflation. They want to be rid of the War Loans, and swallow up our savings. And every week they cheat us of our wages!'

That's how people talked. Never in this period did they feel at one with their government, whether it was called the Scheidemann government, the Hermann Müller Cabinet, or Fehrenbach, Wirth, Bauer or Cuno. It was always ‘those at the top', who had nothing to do with them. ‘They just want to take their cut and do us down.' That's what people thought, and that's what they said.

A worker sweating in a factory could hardly suggest complicated theories about the Versailles Treaty, reparations, currency problems, the Occupation of the Ruhr, but he could understand only too well that his weekly wages, as high as the amount might sound, were only a fifth or a tenth of what he earned in peacetime. Well might people say: ‘Yes, we lost the war and must pay for it' – but the worker says: ‘Was it me? What about the racketeers, the war profiteers and the fat bosses?'

And anyway, what did it amount to – a bit of stealing, cheating, embezzling? It was an era of much more gruesome crimes, crimes the papers wrote about for weeks on end. Real crimes – murders, mass murder, people who slaughtered other people, made sausagemeat out of them and then sold the sausage …

At first it was still considered gruesome, but senses became blunted. In the end utterly shameless people came and even made a musical hit out of it. Soon they were singing it everywhere – in offices and in the streets – young girls and old pros outside the dance halls: ‘Just wait a little longer, and Haarmann will be with you, with his little axe …'

Was it surprising that the prisons filled up! They were like machines. They stopped and started, creaked and cracked, while grinding through ten thousand souls: paragraph such-and-such, sentence so-and-so. Settled. Next! Whether you feel guilty or I find you guilty makes no difference. The law has been broken. That alone decides.

Moabit Prison. Hundreds of cells and every cell holding four times, even six times the normal number. Throngs of people. A confusion of languages. All ages, all classes, all professions. Visiting rooms which were never free from shouting, weeping, reproaches,
quarrels … Minute clerks, advisers, detectives, examining magistrates, public prosecutors, their assistants. Senior public prosecutors and chief public prosecutors.

‘Come on, come on, we haven't got much time for you – seven minutes! I've still got seventeen examinations and two sessions, so will you plead guilty or not? It's all the same to me. Then perhaps you'd better stay here a little longer and think it over.'

‘Cell twenty-three, Hackendahl, visitor for Hackendahl. Is cell twenty-three, Hackendahl, allowed to have visitors? Who is it? The brother? Are you sure it's the brother? It's a bad case. Has cell twenty-three, Hackendahl, confessed yet? Any danger of obscuring the facts at issue? Enquire from the examining magistrate.'

‘The examining magistrate begs to inform you of his recent death – he's got to get four hours' peaceful sleep sometime.'

‘I understand, I understand. But how we're to get through it all I don't know. All right, here's the visitor's permit for cell twenty-three, Eva Hackendahl, brother's visit, let us say five minutes, nothing to be said about the case. Tell the warder that nothing is to be said about the case.'

‘I must remind you that not a word is to be said about the matter which is the cause of your being here on remand. Not even a hint. The first word, and your permission for visits will be withdrawn.'

‘I don't want any visitors. Who is it?'

‘Come along, no nonsense. The permit's already been granted. Come on!'

‘Who is it?'

‘Your brother, I think …'

‘Eva!'

‘Heinz!'

Silence …

(Nothing is to be mentioned about the case.)

‘How are things with you?'

‘Better, thanks.'

The official raised his head. Was that an allusion?

‘Can I do anything?'

‘No, thanks. I have all I need.'

‘And money, too, Eva? I would see if … I'm in a job now.'

‘No,
thanks. I need nothing.'

Silence. Both agonized over what they should talk about. No mention to be made of the case. And yet the case was the only topic they could talk about. How empty life had suddenly become! In this bare, shabby visitors' room, with a wooden barrier in the middle and an official looking wearily at the clock to see how the five minutes were progressing, all that existed was Eva's case. All other human relationships had vanished – they no longer existed, gone! Only the thing they were not allowed to talk about remained.

‘I've been living at Tutti's for the last four years. Did you know?'

‘Yes – no, I haven't heard. I've not been out of the house for a long time – months.'

The official lifted his head, looked sharply at them and tapped the desk with his pencil. He was not a fussy man but everything was possible; the prisoner's statement that she had not been out of the house for months might be a hint to the brother about building up an alibi.

Once more the conversation froze; brother and sister looked at each other. The once so familiar faces had grown strange. What was there to say between them?

‘Tutti's boys are so big now. You knew that she had two boys? Otto is six and Gustav eleven; splendid little chaps. They always keep us cheerful.'

‘I can well believe it.' Timidly she went on: ‘How did you know?'

He understood her at once. ‘I was asked to go to the police station – to make a statement.'

The official tapped admonishingly.

But she: ‘Do our parents know?'

‘Up to last Saturday they didn't. Shall I go there?'

‘Yes, please. Tell them … tell them … no, don't say anything.'

Silence again. If only these interminable five minutes would end. I couldn't help her when she was at liberty. How can I help her in here?

‘Would you like me to get you something to eat? Biscuits or fruit? Or would you like some cigarettes?'

‘No, thanks. I need nothing.'

The official got up. ‘Visiting time over.'

Very quickly: ‘Goodbye, Eva, keep your end up.'

‘Goodbye,
Heinz.'

‘Oh, God, Eva – fool that I am – have you a solicitor?'

‘You must go now. Visiting time is over.'

‘Yes, I have. Don't bother about anything. And don't come again. Never again!'

‘You're to go now, do you hear?' said the official.

Eva, almost screaming: ‘Tell our parents I'm dead, that I died long ago – nothing is left of their Eva.'

‘Stop that! You never come out with anything till the very last moment. Listen, if you do that again when I've said “Time's up”, I'll report you and you'll get no more visitors at all.'

‘I didn't want any visitors. I've told you that already.'

‘Then you should have shut up. But to start shouting when it's too late – you all do that. Oh, stop talking. Go back to your cell!'

A prison is a complicated edifice made secure a dozen times over by walls, locks, bolts and bars; a complex mechanism with officials to keep an eye on the prisoners and with senior officials to keep an eye on the officials; not forgetting clocking-in apparatus, regular and surprise inspections, the censorship of letters and prisoners spying on prisoners … A net skilfully woven, mesh upon mesh, so that nothing can slip through. Moreover the women's wing lies isolated from the men's prison. Yet twenty-four hours had not elapsed since the arrest of Eugen Bast and Eva Hackendahl, before a prisoner carrying round food had slipped a note into Eva's hand, the first warning from the blind master to his slave: even in prison you're not free.

That first day she had walked up and down her cell from wall to wall, from door to window, passing between her fellow prisoners as if she did not see them. This was permissible – hers being a serious case, she commanded their respect. Continually the door was flung open: ‘Hackendahl for examination.'

The others could wait for three days – no examining magistrate demanded them. She, however, was being asked for all the time.

A case has only to be
very
good or
very
bad … the stupid are easily
impressed. Eva impressed them: ‘What can have been eating her?' they asked. ‘She doesn't look like one of those.'

‘Idiot! It's just the ones who don't look like it who are the worst. I once saw a poisoner who looked just like my grandmother …'

‘No wonder, if your grandmother looked anything like you!'

Eva paced up and down. She accepted the respect of the others just as she accepted prison itself. It was outside her, far away, meaningless. Inside she was still cooped up with Eugen Bast, slave to a blind man. She had told Heinz the truth; it had been many, many months since she had last been out of doors. Eugen Bast had kept her like a prisoner. A professional blind beggar, he also accepted chairs for re-caning. He did not do this work himself, of course – that was her job – but it gave him a pretext to get into people's flats and spy out the land for his friends. No one ever suspected the poor blind man led by a small boy; yes, he was cunning, was Eugen Bast.

Monotonous as life had become for Eva, it was not so terrible as in the early years before she had got used to his sway, the years when she still dreamed of freedom and escape, dreams for which she no longer had the will. She had become dulled, she accepted everything. When he thrashed her she wept and said nothing; she cried for as long as he pulled her hair (which she found particularly painful – much more so than the beatings), but in the end he stopped both the beatings and the hair-pulling.

It was just this apathy which infuriated him constantly. He was not uninventive. Nobody could deny him a certain talent in the discovery of new torments, but they had ceased to have an effect on her – the dull bitch! Had she not been useful he would have thrown her out long ago; Eugen Bast, though, was not so young as he once was. Blind, he could not get around so easily. He had become fat, comfort-loving; appreciative of order, cleanliness, good eating. And these things she saw to, she who cost him no more than the food she ate and who, in addition, was reliable – no chatterer; without a word of protest, blinder than the blind, she refused not one task.

Eugen Bast himself could no longer take part in burglaries, or force girls to walk the streets for him, but after his first rage he had soon come to realize that the man behind the scenes fares very much
better than those who pick the chestnuts out of the fire. The blind man nosed out the likely cribs to crack and for this service he claimed a substantial part of the swag. Thus he became a fence and later one who financed his thieves. Eugen Bast had money, a banking account, and a safe holding the soundest foreign currencies.

He became a great man, did Eugen Bast. He became even greater. Once, when the boys had brought him a packet of letters instead of the expected securities, he stormed about the blunder and as a penalty reduced their share very considerably. Later he made Eva read these letters out to him. He lay on the bed and digested his meal, and made her kneel by the bed on a brush and read aloud. In that way he received all the pleasure he could wish.

Letters up till then had meant very little to Eugen; it was beyond his comprehension what one person could have to write to another on several sheets of paper. However, one gets as old as a cow and has still something to learn. Eugen Bast now understood that it was highly uplifting to listen like this to a She writing to a He on four pages.

She started every letter ecstatically, stupid with love and longing. But on the second page one came across piquant recollections, honeyed indelicacies – the lady knew how to get a gentleman going all right! Eugen Bast, who had never seen her, felt his own blood warmed by her active eroticism.