Tales from the Underworld

  Might I have a cigarette after all, Your Honour? I’ll pay you back once I’m out, promise. And you will let me out, because I didn’t pinch that bike, may lightning strike me!

  You serious, Your Honour? Well, I’ll try not to take it amiss. I understand, you’re worried about losing your job, and if I had such a cushy one as you, then I’d hang onto it too for all I was worth, and not give anyone else a look-in!

  All right, all right, I’ll go on. Where was I? Oh yeah, they’d just claimed that I was to go and do some apprenticeship in Paderborn, after Easter. But I’d been listening at doors, and so I knew I was a burden on them, and I was onto them, and Mum had been to talk to the social worker, and at Easter I was going to an institution in Paderborn, that’s what they actually had me marked down for. Only I was careful not to let on, and I played the dummy and that I believed them. But I wasn’t going to go into one of those places where you just get cuffed all day long, and get given piss-and-water soup, and hear bad words and sent out on a life of crime.

  I thought a lot about my König father, and wrote a letter to my aunt in Zurow, asking if she had an address for him. And after a while, I gets a reply from her which I didn’t really expect, and I learn that my father is in Thurow, which is in Mecklenburg, and is a foreman. And I might as well go see him, because blood was thicker than water and he’d surely take me in. That made me happy, and I let Mum and her feller talk all they wanted. I was just waiting for an opportunity to take a bit of food on board and some money, because it was winter, end of January, and it was bitter cold, and I didn’t want to run away empty-handed. But there was nothing in the house, every day my father took Mum for every penny she had, and I didn’t dare go in the woods neither, because the gamekeeper said he would give me a load of buckshot up the arse if he saw me there again.

  Well, my mother had got in the habit of stealing from about Christmas on, because she was never able to get enough money to keep my father happy. One time she took me with her; she wanted me to climb down the cellar of a dairy and pass the pats of butter to her. My father had been along the night before and loosened the window bars. Anyway, I smelled a rat, I was convinced Mum was angling to get me caught, so I refused to go down, she had to do it, while I stayed outside and she passes me the butter. It all went tickety-boo, and I picked up five marks from her, which I drank away with my girlfriend. That was the night we happened to set fire to the haybarn we were sleeping in, with our cigarettes, not meaning to, Your Honour, just because we was so drunk. We managed to escape though, and no one suspected us neither, because in the ashes of the barn they found the charred remains of an old tramp, and so they said: stands to reason it was him. And there’s every chance the old feller liked a smoke, Your Honour.

  Why are you always writing stuff down, Your Honour? There’s no call for it. This is all old stuff that no one can prove against me anyway, if it comes to it I’ll deny everything on oath, and anyway it was in another province, not here in Mecklenburg, so it’s none of your beeswax! You know, you don’t scare me, Your Honour, I know my rights, and the bicycle which is your concern, I didn’t steal that, as I’m about to explain, Your Honour!

  A day or two after this, my mum comes along again and says I’m to go and do another job with her tonight, this time a grocery. I didn’t fancy it, so I take the afternoon off, and hole up with my girl, so they couldn’t find me that night. That proved I was sharper than the rest of them, because that was the night my mum got herself caught, and they beat her up before shoving her in the pen. And they came for my father and all – I just happened to be out at the time, or maybe they’d of taken me in as well. The next morning, when I come home, it was all empty and deserted, and I thought to myself: the time has come, my son, for you to clear off and look for your natural father! Before I went I turned the whole place upside down, but I couldn’t find more than just a couple of spuds and a crust of bread. Of her rags, there was nothing that would have fetched a mark piece from an old Jew, that was what my newest father had reduced Mum to!

  I set off. I knew I had to make for Sternberg and then Güstrow, that’s what the map at school said. It was a long way, and it was very cold, it had snowed and it looked like there was a lot more to come. I had nothing but rags on, but that didn’t matter to me. I wanted to find my father and my sister, I wanted to live in a proper family and become a proper person. That’s the truth, Your Honour, I’ll swear it on the blood of Christ.

  I had plenty of cigarettes, and at noon I begged for food, and got some too, a good ladleful of pea soup with potatoes and bacon fat, and in return for that I was supposed to chop some wood. I followed the fat geezer out into his yard, and I started chopping, and chopped well while he was watching. But before long it got to be too cold for him, and he went back indoors. I was going to run off, but I thought: take a little look and see if there’s not something here you can lift. I opened the kitchen door, and there was no one in the kitchen, I heard them next door in the dining room, gassing. In the table drawer I found two marks and thirty-five pfennigs, and on the table there was half a side of bacon that they’d cut some off of for the peas, and I put that in a rucksack that was hanging on a hook. I picked up a knife and a spoon as well, there wasn’t any bread, worse luck, but then I could afford to buy bread now. I was on my way out when I spotted a pair of nice leather workboots. They’d do me better than my wooden clogs, and I pulled them on right away. They were on the big side, but I thought I could stuff some straw into them to make up.

  Then I scarpered, and at the end of the village I hid in the woods in a place from where I could see the street. And that was smart of me again, because not fifteen minutes later they came down the road looking for me, with a dog and all. They couldn’t find me though, because there were so many footprints at the entrance to the village they couldn’t see which were mine.

  I didn’t move off till evening, and on this whole trip, which took sixteen days, I got to say I was lucky all the time, no constable nabbed me, I always had enough to eat and drink and smoke, and I didn’t get through my money neither. One time I went into a pub to get a bottle of beer. I stood at the bar for ages, and no one came. Quietly I pushed open the door to the back room, and there was the fat barman sprawled on the sofa snoring away for all he was worth. I didn’t hang around, but stashed all the schnapps into my bag as would go; and I emptied out the till too, but there weren’t more’n a couple of marks there. The barman woke up and almost caught me in the act, but I nipped round the front of the bar in time, and ordered a pint of beer. I paid him for it out of his own change, and I spent the whole afternoon sniggering to myself about the fat sleepyhead! He must have cursed me afterwards. I went off into the woods with my schnapps and found a foresters’ hut. There I called a rest day, which I’d deserved too, Your Honour, and I washed out my throat with schnapps, I tell yer!

  The next morning I wake up with a mighty appetite, I reckon it must have been the drink, and thought I had to have roast goose. For some reason I was dead set on roast goose that day, Your Honour! Then I slunk back into the village and I heard some cackling coming from a shed not far from the woods. I had such a hunger on me that I couldn’t wait for it to get dark. First I dug up a pit of spuds, and carried some back out to my hut. I found some dry wood too, I was dead set on making myself a feast! To keep going, I took the occasional nip from a bottle, I still had plenty left. In the afternoon – it wasn’t even beginning to get dark – I headed for the coop. I really was a bit crazy, because I didn’t pay any mind to the racket they was making, I just waded in, and sawed the head off the biggest one with my chopping knife, and tucked the carcass under my arm, and ran off into the woods – and there were the people already running out of their houses.

  I ran and ran, always away from my hut, in a big loop round the village. Once they got pretty close to me, and I thought: uh-oh, Felix, you’ve had your chips! Then I couldn’t think of any other way of getting out of it than dropping the goose, and that delayed them whi
le I got away. And I ran and ran some more, and sure enough, because I’d been running in a circle, I soon found myself back in the village. It was all dark and snowy and deserted, they were all off looking for me in the woods. I went straight back into the shed and killed another goose, and carried it back to my hut. It was far too dark by now, and snowing too hard for the people to have gone on looking for me. I roasted the goose on a stake over my fire, and baked some potatoes in the hot embers – I don’t think anything ever tasted so good in my life as that feast in the woods, Your Honour! I ate so much that I almost overslept the next morning, which would have been serious, because in their rage they would probably have kicked me to death, the stupid village farmers!

  But I just managed to get away, and I continued on till I got to Brüel in Mecklenburg. At that point I stopped thieving, because I was getting close to my old man, and I didn’t want to disgrace him right away. And I wanted to turn over a new leaf anyway. I didn’t need to go thieving, because I had enough of everything and could carry on as I was for a long time. Between Brüel and Warin it suddenly started chucking it down, but it was still freezing, so the road was a sheet of black ice. I slipped over in the middle of the road, and at that moment a car came along. The driver saw me fall over, and I was just barely able to roll out of the way. He drove on another ten yards and stopped. He asked me where I was heading, and I said, ‘Just into town.’ He took me as far as the Neukloster turn-off. Again, it was bitterly cold, I walked on, and came to Zurow, where my aunt lived with her husband who was a Polack. When I opened the door and called in ‘Anyone by the name of Gramatzki live here?’ my aunt threw herself round my neck and cried: ‘Felix, where have you sprung from? Do you remember when you were little and used to drink the ends of all the beer bottles?’

  She recognized me straight away, even though it was almost ten years since I’d lived with her. I had a great reception and a bang-up dinner. I gave them all the stuff I still had on me: my Polack uncle got the schnapps and the cigarettes, and my aunt got the foodstuffs, including the half a side of bacon that I still had. She was well pleased with me, and that night I was allowed to sleep in the same bed as my twelve-year-old cousin. My aunt went off laughing: ‘Don’t try anything, will you, anyway, you’re not old enough!’ Nor was I contemplating anything of the kind, my cousin’s flat as a board anyway. But the next morning my Polack uncle flew at me and hit me and chased me out of the house for trying it on. I’d just gone out to use the privy before breakfast when my cousin started crying and telling lots of untruths about me. But that wasn’t the reason my uncle threw me out, it was because they’d already taken everything off me that I had, and now they were too mean to even give me breakfast. I would have gone without lies and beatings, Your Honour, I’ve got my pride.

  I walked back to Neukloster, and hung around all day. I found a nice-looking villa that looked the part – I couldn’t very well show up at my real father’s empty-handed! That would have been a disgrace. In the afternoon I went out begging, I got plenty to eat, and I managed to lift a cook’s purse, but that only had a mark in it. I spent the night in a barn that had hardly any straw left in it, and it was so cold I couldn’t hardly sleep. But then I finally got to sleep, and almost missed the moment; by the time I got to the villa, it was already starting to get light, and there was a light on over the kitchen. I wondered for a moment whether I should risk it, but I didn’t feel like hanging around Neukloster for another day.

  So I climbed in through the laundry window, and everything went as smoothly as I could have wished for. I took my time breaking open the desk with a crowbar I found in the toolbox in the kitchen, while I listened to the cook tramping about overhead. She already had her shoes on. I looted over a hundred marks, a few delicacies, some nice stockings and put ready some cigars, a camera and some clothes on the landing for me to pick up on my way out, while I went looking for a suitcase. My rucksack was already stuffed, my pockets too. Unfortunately, when the cook came down the stairs, her eye lit on the things I’d put by, and then the light in the room, and she started screaming. I hurried out of the window. The engineer fired some buckshot after me out of the window, and I could hear it whistling past my ear, but not one bit hit me. I’d had to leave all the things I’d put by, which was a pity, but I’d done all right; I wasn’t going to my father as a poor destitute.

  I sat down in the train and rode via Warin and Blankenberg back to Brüel. From there I walked the two miles to Thurow where my natural father lives as a foreman. I open the door in the reapers’ accommodation and see a thirteen-year-old girl on a sofa, a nine-year-old on a chair, and a bony woman of thirty-nine or forty doing some sewing. I ask: ‘Am I right here for König?’ even though the reapers downstairs had already told me this was his place.

  The woman looks at me and says unfriendly-like: ‘Yes! What do you want with him?’

  I says: ‘Then I expect you’re my sister,’ and I walk up to the girl and give her a smacker on the mouth. Sophie was very pretty, and she had a lot more about her than my cousin, if you know what I mean.

  ‘I see,’ says the woman, ‘then I suppose you’re Felix Stachoviak?’

  ‘That’s right,’ I say.

  ‘I always expected you’d turn up sometime. Where’s your mother?’

  ‘Mum’s in choky, and she won’t be getting out any time soon,’ I reply. ‘Where’s Dad?’

  ‘He’s in the bedroom next door,’ says my sister Sophie. I went in, and there lay my father on the bed, fully dressed, gawping up at me. He’d probably just woken up.

  ‘Here you are, old fellow, have a ciggy,’ I say, and I hold out the pack. He stared at me stupidly for a while longer, but when I started to laugh, then he laughed too.

  ‘So you’re Felix,’ he says at last, and helps himself to one of my cigarettes. ‘How’s yer mum?’

  I told him. He seemed to feel bad about her having come to such a pass. Then when we both went into the parlour, there was my stepmother already unpacking my rucksack what I’d put down there. That did not suit me at all. I had wanted to do my own unpacking and distributing. My sister and little half-sister was watching on, I had packed some really high-class undies. ‘This is all stolen loot!’ cried my stepmother furiously.

  My father didn’t seem to think that was so bad. He laughed. ‘Well, Felix,’ he asks, ‘where d’you collar this little load?’

  ‘Mum gave it me to take to you,’ I said.

  Father laughed again and gave me a saucy wink, I’d just told him Mum was in choky. ‘Well, then everything’s fine,’ said Dad. ‘Is that schnapps in that bottle?’

  ‘That’s cognac, Father,’ I said. ‘Shouldn’t we all drink a toast?’

  ‘Nothing’s fine!’ cried my stepmother again, she seemed to be a bit of a harpy. ‘There’s even a name-tag sewn into these smalls. What’s that say? Grahl – is your name Grahl then?’

  ‘No, but we had a teacher by that name in the village,’ I quickly put in. ‘She died, and Mum bought her effects, and lots more.’

  ‘So what’s the problem,’ said Father. ‘Let’s all drink to Felix here!’ We did so, but my stepmother didn’t want to join in, and she wouldn’t let me little half-sister drink either. My proper sister did. And she got to keep all the smalls I’d picked up, again stepmother and half-sister didn’t want none. My father got stuck into the schnapps, and I heard my parents arguing long into the night in the bedroom. My two sisters were in with them. I was on the sofa in the parlour. What they were quarrelling over was me. My stepmother wanted my father to send me packing right away, and my father refused. ‘Let him stay at least until his mother gets out of prison.’

  But my stepmother wasn’t having that, she said she’d rather leave the house herself than have me stay a moment longer. I was a thief and would only make trouble. Suddenly my father started laughing and fooling around with my stepmother. First I heard her scold him furiously, he was no better than his son, but gradually she give in, and I could go to sleep with an easy m
ind about my immediate future.

  To begin with, the following day didn’t look good at all. My father had gone off to work early, and I was left in the hands of my stepmother, who was constantly having a go at me. I had to wash under her supervision, with her claiming I hadn’t washed properly for at least four weeks, which wasn’t true at all, because I had, before I left home. Then I had to carry in wood, scrub the steps, clean the pigsty – in a word she was on at me all morning. When she caught me having a quiet puff in the corner of the pigsty, she confiscated all my cigarettes. The minute my sisters got back from school, though, there was dinner on the table, and dinner was good, I have to say that for my stepmother, my mother’s cooking wasn’t a patch on hers. After dinner, my stepmother went out to work on the estate herself, she seemed to be dead keen on money. My sister was supposed to go to Brüel and do the shopping, and I was to chop wood in the yard, and my half-sister was to do her homework and get supper ready.

  I saw my stepmother out, then my sister. I let her go for a bit, and then I set off after her. First, she was alarmed, but then I told her I didn’t take orders from my stepmother, and it wasn’t her fault if I happened to be going to Brüel as well. On the way there I told her lots of stuff about my free and easy life at home, and suggested going back to live with our real mother. We would have a much better life than under the eyes of her stepmother. Sophie promised to think about it.

  In the shops in Brüel there was quite a bustling scene, Sophie König was well known, and so no one kept an eye out for me. I was able to fill my pockets and by the end I had acquired more than Sophie had managed to buy. Since I still had plenty of money from my visit to the villa outside Neukloster, I bought a bottle of sticky liqueur and some cigarettes at a pub, and we set off home.

  Once there, we didn’t go indoors where our half-sister would have cramped our style, we went up to the hayloft. There I give Sophie some liqueur, and then I unpacked my treasures, sweets and biscuits, and a silk shawl for her, and apples and nuts and a little grater. I gave them all to her. First she tried to refuse, because it was stolen goods, but then I explained to her that people had equal rights, and that it was unfair that one man like the merchant had a lot, and I had nothing. She understood that. We emptied the whole bottle of liqueur, and kissed a lot, and I told her what a pretty girl she was, and I’d be sure to find her a good-looking swain in Glasow. She promised me she would run away from here, and go to Glasow to be with Mum and me.