Iron Gustav (59 page)

‘Who's there? Tell me, boys! I know there's someone … What d'you want?'

And now the policeman proved to be not so old and dull as he seemed – he had an inspiration. Putting his hand into the pocket of his greatcoat he brought out something, holding it tightly so that it shouldn't clink.

Nevertheless the blind man had heard the friction of skin against greatcoat. He gripped his stick … In a surprisingly malignant voice he said: ‘If yer don't say what yer want I'll bash yer.'

(Querkuleit understood now why he had never heard the man's voice in the night – even now, pale with fury, he spoke only in a whisper.)

The policeman let the handcuffs clink.

‘Cops!' shouted Eugen Bast. ‘Arrest me!'

And he aimed his stick at the policeman with such sureness that the point struck the man's belly and he fell to the ground screaming. Eugen Bast, however, glided down the stairs with a dreamlike swiftness – Querkuleit, for all that he could see, was not able to catch up with him. The policeman, in such pain that he could not get to his feet, did one useful thing – he blew his whistle. (He could act now; a man who responds thus to the clink of handcuffs is no disabled soldier with a good record but – well, that would soon be investigated.)

The shrilling of the police whistle brought the whole tenement out. ‘Stop him!' shouted Querkuleit.

Suddenly the blind man met everywhere with obstacles. He tried to evade them, tried to beat them down, got confused, lost his bearings, stumbled, fell – and Querkuleit was upon him.

The blind man lay still, making no attempt to escape.

‘What do you want?' he whined. ‘A poor blind beggar. I've done nothin'. You frightened me.' But it was too late to play the innocent now.

The policeman had had enough; the man was a bit too determined and nasty to be a harmless beggar. He had seen the man's
reaction at the sound of the handcuffs. The policeman knew what he knew, and the rest was only a matter of patient, careful investigation … For even the best false papers only last as long as their owner is not under suspicion. Clever Bast soon grasped that: admit what must be admitted, once it's been proved three times over, but deny everything else. Blame all, in any case, on that stupid bitch Eva, escape oneself, and not let go of her for a moment.

Thus the surreptitious message. No directions as to the evidence to be given, only the words: when I whistle you kneel.

She was pacing her cell. She had been away from it a lot, what with being questioned by the magistrate and her brother's visit, but she was thinking neither of the questions nor her brother nor her own fate; what worried her was – did he whistle while I was out of the cell?

So much was she his slave that it never occurred to her how immaterial it was whether he had whistled or not, since he couldn't observe the effect of his whistle. And that she was really free at last. No, such a thought could not enter her head now.

She was just having her meal when the summons came to her across the courtyard, through the window – the shrill whistle.

Putting the spoon back in the dish, she went into the corner and knelt down, paying no attention to what the others might think or say. She knelt down, redeemed, almost happy – she was again in the hand of her lord and master – his creature, his! Once again, she knelt.

It hadn't been easy for Heinz to go to his father. He found the burden he had to carry quite enough and, what's more, there was what he had to report about his sister. No, it wasn't easy.

Old Hackendahl sat at the table cutting a stick and listening in silence to Mother's complaints about his night work being at an end. Look at the money it had brought in! Just as soon as they were once more beginning to live free of worry, it was finished. ‘But Father never tells me why he does something.'

‘Tomfoolery,'
was all the reply old Hackendahl made.

His wife took this personally and went on complaining in tears. Heinz however understood that his father was referring to his night work at Rude Gustav's. He became restless and would like to have spoken. Not for the first time, he thought that his mother complained a little too much and that his father showed rather more patience than he was given credit for. His mother had naturally forgotten how much she at first complained that his father would get used to drinking too much. His father had definitely not forgotten that, but didn't say a word to her about it. That was sensible of him, and patient.

Eventually his mother paused, and her son was able to report about Eva.

‘I always knew that would happen,' wailed Frau Hackendahl. The old man looked at his son, nodded, but said nothing. After a while he rose, paced the room and finally said: ‘Go and make some coffee, Mother.' Frau Hackendahl departed, slowly and crying, but she cried so easily and naturally that it was painful to see. She cried like that over every little mishap – over a burnt rice pudding, for example.

‘How does she look?' asked his father, stopping in front of Heinz.

‘She's changed a lot. She looks old and done for.'

‘Is it the same fellow? Bast he was called, Eugen Bast.'

‘Yes.'

‘Then nothing can be done. I saw the chap once.'

‘I also saw him once,' said Heinz. He closed his eyes, and the blind man, who had let her kiss his gruesome scars, stood in front of him again. Ghastly! ‘Have you seen him since he was blind?'

‘Blind? Is he blind now? That's God's punishment on him.'

‘Eva fired and blinded him.'

‘Eva? Then perhaps she can still be helped, after all.'

‘No. Less now than ever. She hasn't the power to stand up to him.'

‘You're right, yes. Will you keep an eye on her?'

‘Certainly.'

‘Good. And will I have to make a statement?'

‘Yes.'

‘But what am I to tell them?'

‘Everything, just as it happened.'

‘Just
as it happened?' Iron Gustav laughed. ‘That'd be difficult, Bubi. I dunno how it happened, I don't know why it's like that with my children. Why do you think it is, Bubi? Aren't you worried sometimes that you'll be the same?'

‘No, Father, I'm not worried any more – not at all. I was worried once.'

‘Well, there you are!'

‘I sometimes think that it got like that for my brothers and sisters only because they are so much older than me. They had the impact of everything, not just the inflation, like me. I know so little about the war, and hardly anything of the peace. The peaceful time before the war was particularly bad, Father.'

‘Oh, nonsense! Things were good in peacetime. It was a golden period.'

‘But all that's not true, Father! It might have looked like gold, but it was merely gold plate. It wasn't genuine. It rubbed off as soon as it was used.'

‘None of it rubbed off with me.'

Heinz could have contradicted him. He thought of his father's affluence, which had been ‘rubbed' away. He thought of the children's love, something not to be had on command, which had also been rubbed away. And he thought of the iron in his father, which was getting softer and softer – ever diminishing, the more often he referred to it. But what would be the point?

‘Well, I'll look in on Eva from time to time,' Heinz said.

His father was still deep in thought, and said: ‘Back then, it was easier for an old man to manage things for himself – but not any more, no longer!'

He looked at what he had been carving and his eyes grew more animated. ‘Any case, I do what I like these days, I don't bother about anythin' now, whether it's the law or me children or the pastor preachin' – I follow me own ideas … Heinz, what's this goin' to be?' And he held the stick up.

‘I don't know, Father. A whip? But it's too small …'

‘You wait another five minutes, my boy,' said Hackendahl in his old autocratic manner. ‘I'll put a handle on it and a lash … Is it true that they like playing at being cab drivers?'

‘Quite
true,' said Heinz, suddenly understanding. ‘Wouldn't you like to take the whip yourself, Father? They're really very nice kiddies.'

‘What, you're ashamed to be seen carrying a child's whip? – I'll put two knots in it. I s'pose you'll be able to crack it.'

‘I think you'd show them better, Father.'

‘Rubbish! Once is enough. To have been taken in once is enough. And it happened to me four times. You're all right, Heinz. I don't count you …'

‘They're nice little chaps, they really are. In your place I'd have a look at them.'

‘But what did I say to you, about being taken in? There's no way that I'll do that.'

‘It would really be the right thing to do, if you brought it to them, they'd enjoy it.'

‘I've nothing to do with Gudde's children!'

‘But her name's been the same as ours for a long time now, Father. She's called Hackendahl.'

‘When she got the kids her name was Gudde.'

‘I don't understand why you've suddenly gone all moral about her, Father. We're not the clergy.'

‘Otto was a softie and she's a hunchback. No, I don't want to see the children. If I want to give my heart to anything, I go to my horses.'

‘Otto was only like that with you …'

‘So it's all my fault, eh?'

‘He wasn't a softie out there at the Front. And for you to reproach a person for not having a straight back, that's not like you at all, Father.'

‘All hunchbacks are false,' said the old man stubbornly.

‘Nonsense, Father. You could just as well say that all red-haired people are no good.'

‘They ain't. Judas had red hair. P'r'aps he was a hunchback too, only we don't know.'

‘A person who can bring up a family alone in times like these …'

‘Did you say alone? Then what are you doin' there?'

Heinz flushed crimson and this made him all the more angry, and his father was getting upset too.

‘Not
that I mean you have any dealin's of that sort with the Gudde …'

‘Oh, do shut up, Father. You just don't want to see them.'

‘You tell yer father to shut up?'

‘If you don't want to see them you needn't make a whip for them.'

‘Will you take it or won't you?' The old man held the whip out.

Heinz did not stir. ‘Take it yourself. Look at the boys for yourself. Softie and Judas! So that's how you talk about your children!'

‘The Gudde isn't my child.'

‘G'night, Father.'

‘G'night, Bubi. It's no good you being in a rage with me. I'm an old man an' I've always bin made of iron. No one can make me do what I don't want to.'

‘G'night, Father.'

‘G'night, Heinz … Heinz! I'll put the whip in the corner by the stove. When you've got over yer temper you can take it along sometime or other.'

‘I'll not touch it. Never!'

‘Blockhead! Never say never.'

‘I wonder who's the blockhead here.'

‘Why, you.'

‘No, you, Father.'

‘Who's not taking the whip, me or you?'

‘Who doesn't want to take it there? You or me?'

Half angrily, half ironically, they faced one another. But it was not a deep anger – there was too much fondness between them for that.

Frau Hackendahl came in with the coffee. ‘Why are you quarrelling again?' she asked plaintively. ‘I've made such a nice cup of coffee – and now you're quarrelling.'

‘No, we're not. But I must go now. Bye-bye, Mother.'

‘Oh dear, and the nice coffee!'

‘You and Father have it. I must be off.'

‘How d'you know that I want coffee now? That's just what I don't want. I'll visit me horse in the stable. He won't tell me to shut up.'

‘Oh, Bubi, how could you say that to your father!'

But Frau Hackendahl was already alone and the two disputants
clumping down the stairs side by side. In the yard they stopped and looked at each other. Heinz began to grin, while his father's lips also twitched.

‘Well, have you thought it over about the whip? Bring it down.'

Heinz laughed. ‘That's what you want, Father! Always having your own way!'

‘Well, and you?'

‘I'll tell you what – if you bring down the whip I'll present it to the boys from their grandfather.'

Hackendahl swallowed as if something were sticking in his gullet. ‘You wouldn't make an ole man traipse up and down like that, would you? No, you come up again and have the coffee. It'll please your mother.'

‘You fetch the whip down, or it'll stay here.'

‘All right, it stays here.'

‘All right. G'night, Father.'

‘G'night, Heinz.'

His son was already in the gateway when the old man called out: ‘Bubi!'

‘What is it now?'

‘Wait! I'll throw it down to you from the window. That satisfy you?'

Heinz thought for a moment. ‘Right!' he said. But as the father disappeared in the entrance hall he had to shout after him: ‘Old blockhead!'

This time Hackendahl kept his answer back till he was looking down from the window. ‘Here it is, you blockhead,' he cried. ‘Take care it don't fall in the mud now it's nice and white.'

The son caught it. ‘Well, so long, Father.'

‘Well, so long, Bubi. An' I ain't a blockhead. I'm made of iron, that's the truth of it.'

‘That's what you imagine but you're just simply a blockhead.'

‘Like you, you mean? No, iron's what I am.'

And with that the old man slammed the window so as to have the last word.

As always, when he had been at his parents', Heinz did not take the direct way to the station but made a detour past Frau Quaas's stationery shop, where he would stand for a while studying contemporary developments as seen in the window; at the moment popular songs on postcards, half sentimental and half indecent, were the rage. Into the shop itself, however, he did not venture – the Widow Quaas remained unmolested – since that letter saying: ‘I don't want to see you ever again. But for you to torment Mother too I think perfectly low-down. Your Irma.' Since then he had contented himself with standing in front of the shop and waiting about five minutes, no longer – for five minutes were long enough. Then he went. Sometimes he would think: it's silly of me to hang around here. I wouldn't be able to recognize Irma if I saw her. She was only a flapper in those days. But nonetheless he continued to go to the shop and even tried to imagine what Irma looked like now – a not unpleasant pastime when one had to stand about for five minutes.