The Drinker (21 page)

48

It was a defeat, an ignominious defeat, and nothing could gloss over the extent of the defeat in my mind. I was unmasked as a liar, I had symptoms of de-alcoholisation and suffered from sudden morbid antipathies. Perhaps I thought of escape. Powerless and despairing, I lay on my bed, I could have wept for shame and regret. So much thought out, so many precautions taken, and I fall into every trap like a stupid brainless youngster! And it’s not at all true, what they think of me, I cry desperately to myself. I really don’t think of escaping, I really have had no symptoms of de-alcoholisation, or only in the very first two or three days, and then only very slightly, and if I had lied a bit about my consumption of alcohol, it was not with the intention of deceiving the doctor. He came here with a preconceived and bad opinion of me, an opinion which did not accord with the facts, and it was a duty, an act of self-defence, for me to destroy this preconceived opinion by any means at my disposal.

But I could tell myself what I liked, the fact remained that I had suffered a heavy defeat, that in the eyes of doctor and head-keeper I was just a flighty little criminal who tried to wriggle out of the consequences of his guilt by hook or by crook.

“Guilt?” I thought. “What is this great guilt of mine? That little threat—Mordhorst told me that for uttering menaces one got three months at most! That’s nothing, one couldn’t count that! But they make a gigantic affair of it, they shove one in prison and in this asylum, they take the ‘Herr’ off my name Sommer, they give me cabbage-water for food, and they third-degree me as if I’d murdered my mother and was the lowest of human beings; I’m sure, if I could only be allowed to talk to Magda for five minutes, I could convince her; together we could confront that ridiculous prosecutor with the jutting underlip and starting eyes, and the fellow would have to stop proceedings against me immediately. But,” I suddenly, painfully thought, “but it’s Magda’s fault as well! If she had had a little love and loyalty, as partners in marriage should for each other, she would have applied for permission to visit me long ago, she would have moved heaven and hell to get me out of this death-house! Nothing of the kind! Not even a letter has she written me. But I know how it is: she’s hand in glove with the doctors. They tell her I’m well looked after here and have nothing hard to put up with, and that is enough for her, she doesn’t give me another thought. She has got what she wanted, she can do what she likes with my property—that’s the most important thing for her! But just wait, one of these days I’ll get out of this place by hook or by crook, and then you’ll see what I’m going to do.…” And in a wild rage I submerged myself in fantasies of revenge. I sold the business behind her back and I gloatingly imagined to myself how one morning she would arrive at the office and in her—in my place at the boss’s desk, the young proprietor of the rival concern is sitting, smiling at her ironically: “Well, Frau Sommer, come to buy a little something from me? Ten kilos of yellow Victoria peas, perhaps? A kilo of blue poppy-seeds for the Sunday cake?”

She would go red with shame and anger and desperation, and I, hidden in the big filing-cabinet, would see it all, with an exultant heart. Or I imagined how, after my release from this death-house, I would wander out into the wide world, how I would roam through foreign countries as a beggar and a tramp, and only eventually, unrecognisable to anyone, I would return to my native town.

There I would beg for a piece of bread at the door of my own house, but she would sternly refuse me. Then in the night I would hang myself from the plum tree in front of her window, with a note in my pocket to say who I was, and that I forgave her all the wrongs she had done me.… Tears of emotion at my unhappy lot came into my eyes, and these fantasies, childish as they were, did something to comfort my heart.

My companions had chatted together until it grew dark, two of them, that is—the third, an elderly man with a handsome sad face and a wonderfully-modelled high forehead, had pulled the blanket over his head immediately. Now they had all long since fallen asleep. I congratulated myself on such quiet, decent sleeping-companions. I observed that night that they had got each other to use the bucket only for the lesser business, they reserved the other function for the daytime. I felt a mild rush of gratitude towards the artful doctor who had transferred me to such improved sleeping-quarters. I was convinced that I had been put in among the most irreproachable and sanest men in the whole place. A few days passed before I found that the elderly man with the beautiful forehead and melancholy face, who bore the unusual name of
Qual,*
was a killer who had murdered his cousin for money in a most bestial way. Now, through all the torments he had undergone, first during long years in prison and then in this place, his mind was utterly confused. With him, in any case, his name was his fate, you could see that in his face.

For days on end he would remain silent and then from time to time he would talk in a high cheerful voice (yet almost toneless, and quite without resonance) of many things; of the parching Sun-god, of the glass house on Mont Blanc where the next Ice Age would be spent, and of horse-chestnuts and acorns which were becoming edible because of some fancied reversal of sap. By this means, the authorities would be in a position to give better food, at no cost at all (as with all of us, Qual’s thoughts, though confused, circled incessantly round the subject of food). At other times, Qual would fall silent again, irritable and quarrelsome, and then everybody kept out of his way. He had the reputation—probably quite unfounded—of being a cold-blooded murderer who would kill a man for a single word. I think this reputation was entirely unjustified.

*
Qual
, in German, means Torment.

I liked the murderer Qual. It made me sad when they took him off to the annexe one day, to the death-cell where most of us will end our lives. He died of tuberculosis, the deadly scourge of this death-house.

My second cell-mate was the orderly Herbst. At first I struck up a kind of friendship with him, but it soon went to pieces when he found there wasn’t the slightest thing to be got out of me. Herbst, a young fellow of twenty-five, who had already been in this place five years and formerly had served a two-year sentence in a reformatory, was really a butcher by trade. He was a big sturdy fellow with a long fat face, almost dead staring eyes, and sandy hair which he brushed and combed for at least a quarter of an hour every morning, to the keen, but prudently suppressed, anger of the rest of us, because he was always standing in our way in the narrow cell. Herbst’s beard was a flaming red, before it came under the clippers of a Saturday (the clippers were a shaving machine used in place of the forbidden razor-blades). This gave rise to many unflattering remarks about the character of our mess-room orderly, remarks that unfortunately were only too just. Herbst was utterly unscrupulous in the way he allowed himself to take tobacco, food, soap, fruit, on the sly from all sides—without ever a thought of giving anything in return. The man who gave him a whole handful of tobacco one day, would the next day be refused a few crumbs to chew on.

I soon learned to watch keenly whose plate the orderly filled most amply. In a place where hunger rules pitilessly, the man who serves the food enjoys an easy superiority. Of course it was strictly forbidden, by rights, for the orderly to serve out the food himself, that was part of the keeper’s duties. But the keepers had to do a great deal of running about, and in any case they did not care. In this place an angel from heaven could come down and dish out the food and there would still be complaints. So everything went its old way, and all the time orderly Herbst got fatter on it. His best business was done with cutting and spreading bread. I have already said that a keeper was supposed to supervise this, but Herbst availed himself of the keeper’s every momentary absence to steal bread, margarine, jam. Since all these articles were carefully weighed out so much per head, he was obliged to shorten our rations accordingly. But if he only took ten grammes from each of fifty-six men, that meant he had already acquired more than a pound of bread, and on a pound of bread a man can eat his fill! The bread he thus obtained, the fat man either ate, or exchanged for tobacco when he needed some badly, but generally it found its way to his “friend” Kolzer, whom I have already briefly mentioned as being one of the two youngsters who trailed a whiff of corrupt love among us older men. Kolzer was not a whore like young Schmeidler, who sold himself to anybody, he was faithful to his friend Herbst. Herbst ruled him with a rod of iron, often beat him whenever he had, in Herbst’s opinion, committed some stupidity or other, but he fed him to bursting point and kept a watchful eye on him. Kolzer, a big strong youngster with ash-blond hair, had a not unhandsome face, which however gave an impression of stupidity and lifelessness. He was very feeble-minded, and could neither read nor write, but under the tireless efforts of his friend, he had at least learned to play Lotto. Yet, however undeveloped Kolzer’s mind might be, the youngster knew very well how to assert himself in our block, and in particular, how to avoid work for long periods. He always had small unpainful injuries or slight temperatures that made it impossible for him to work. On this account, a perpetual ill-humour prevailed among the patients, and they felt just the same towards Schmeidler.

“Those hefty young louts sit around the place while the worn-out old men have to do the work.”

That was indeed true, but Kolzer had a powerful mediator in the person of his friend Herbst who was constantly in and out of the glass box, and was the head-nurse’s trusted news-carrier. So Kolzer was fed on bread and jam, and as no man can ever isolate himself in this place, he was often surprised by other patients in the act of stuffing himself with stolen food.

“Kolzer was eating bread in the closet again today, that thick with butter!” (In this place, margarine is always called “butter”.) Then Herbst would be in a fury with the informer. Called to account by the head-nurse, he would declare that he had only given Kolzer the crumbs from the bread-cutting, perhaps there had been a broken-off corner of a slice among them, and Kolzer had scraped the margarine off the wrapping-paper.… Moreover, if these complaints went on, he would chuck the job up and go back to the factory. Let others see if they could fill his job better. He had—and here his voice took on a wailing, whining tone—he had always been decent and honest. But in this bandit-ridden place that was just what a man couldn’t be! No, he’d had enough of it, now he was going back to the factory.…

Then the keepers would speak soothingly to him, and he would graciously stay. He had his advantages: he looked after himself, he was clean, and he was quite unscrupulous about informing the keepers of everything. But to his comrades Herbst did not whine when he was informed on. In his rage against such accusations, he lost all self-control, he would scream at the others, white in the face, and he never forgave such insults to his “honesty”. He was devilish careful of getting into fights. Previously he had often been in the punishment cells on account of his brutal pugnacity, but the medical officer had made it clear to him that he could never reckon on release if he could not learn to control himself. And Herbst wanted his release at all costs. He had spent the seven most decisive years of his short life behind bars. Release was his great hope. For this release he had made the greatest sacrifice: he had voluntarily been castrated. Herbst had been sentenced for sexual offences against young boys, and he had been made to understand that he could never count on freedom unless he agreed to be castrated. For a year and a half the young man had wrestled with himself and finally he had consented. At the time when I was admitted, it was barely half a year, perhaps only three months since his castration. Already he was getting fat, his face looked puffy and unhealthily pale. His eyes seemed disconsolate. But he hoped for his release from day to day, the medical officer had endorsed his application, they all told him. He had steeled himself to this terrible expedient, this castration, and still he was not free. He waited from day to day, from week to week, but the longed-for decision from the Attorney-General did not come. Sometimes Herbst would rage: they’d properly done him, the doctor and the head-keeper, they’d fooled him all right! Now he’d got his testicles off, and for what? For nothing, except so that the high-ups could laugh at him!

Meanwhile, strangely enough, this castration had not altered his feelings for Kolzer in the least. Kolzer remained his friend as before, his only associate, his sugar-baby. He lived for him, he thought only of him. If the youngster had a slight temperature in the evening, Herbst would not take part in our bed-time conversations by so much as a word; he would pull the blanket over his head, but he did not sleep. Well, perhaps Kolzer noticed that in some ways Herbst’s feelings for him had changed, but we could see none of it.

Of everybody in the place, Herbst most hated a prisoner named Buck, a cobbler, a vain, stupid, conspiratorial fellow who had the same tendencies as Herbst. And when the cobbler had informed on young Kolzer one evening for illicit bread-eating, Herbst, probably driven off his head by his long, vain wait for release, fell on this Buck and beat him to pulp.

At the medical officer’s next visit, he was summoned before the doctor and informed that his release, which had already been granted by the Attorney-General, could not now take place, since by fighting in this way he had shown himself to be completely lacking in self-control. Along with the rest of the inmates, I doubt whether Herbst would really have been released, or whether this was not a pretext of the doctor’s to wriggle out of a promise, whose fulfilment had become very difficult owing to the Attorney-General’s attitude. In any case, instead of his longed-for freedom, Herbst first got fourteen days in the punishment cells, and then returned to his old job of orderly. He was a bad character and yet I had to admire the way in which he took this dreadful disappointment. He never said another word about release, he did his work as quickly, cleanly, and dishonestly as before, he lived only for the institution and its routine.