Iron Gustav

  He sighed heavily and pushed the gold into a heap again. He looked searchingly around the room, still unable to decide. Finally he called out, endeavouring to give his voice the old commanding ring: ‘Mother, where are you? I’m waiting.’

  ‘I can’t find the earrings,’ she called back. ‘And I forget where I put them. It’s years since …’

  ‘Hurry up,’ he urged. ‘I want to be at the Purchase Centre by twelve. They close at one.’

  ‘I’m looking. I won’t be a moment, Father.’

  In that moment he could have gone to Eva. He already had the doorknob in his hand when he heard Rabause shouting in the yard. Hackendahl went to the window. ‘What is it, Rabause?’ he asked. ‘Who’s there?’

  ‘It’s someone from Eggebrecht’s. But I said you had no time, you wanted to hand in your gold.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Herr Eggebrecht returned this morning with horses from Poland. But you would have to go there at once or they’ll be gone, like last time.’

  ‘I’m coming,’ cried Hackendahl in his old voice. Horses! For many, many months he had been looking out for some, unsuccessfully. ‘Mother, don’t bother about the gold now – or go there yourself if you want to. You know, the Reichsbank, Unter den Linden. I’m off – Eggebrecht has brought horses from Poland.’

  ‘Father! Father! You must tell me how much money you want for the gold and how many iron watch chains. Shall I take one for myself as well?’

  ‘Do what you like. I’ve no time now or the horses will go. I must have horses! Where’s my chequebook? Evchen, I’m glad you’ve come before I went. Eggebrecht has got some horses and I must go at once or they’ll be sold again. You’ll add your ring to the other things, you promise, don’t you? I have to fly now.’ And he hurried downstairs.

  § XVII

  ‘Listen, Evchen!’ said Frau Hackendahl, almost laughing. ‘Father’s running downstairs like a youngster. As soon as he hears something about horses …’

  ‘Horses come first with him.’

  ‘Let him buy all the horses he wants even if business is doing badly. You know, people are saying horse cabs are finished but it’s no life for Father without them – he was starting to drink. Well, that’ll come to a stop when he gets some more horses.’

  ‘Yes, so long as he has something to order about – horses, drivers, children – it’s all the same to him.’

  ‘Father was always like that, Evchen, even in Pasewalk when he was quite young. On leave, why, he was so unbearable, never still a moment, out of one room, in the other, all day long, measuring with a ruler where the bedroom rugs ought to be put. And our canary – but you wouldn’t remember him – Father would weigh out Hänschen’s seeds on the letter scales. He used to go to the post office specially.’

  ‘I don’t know how you stood it, Mother.’

  ‘Whatever do you mean, Evchen? How queer you are! Father’s always been very good – you wait till you meet other men. You always do nothing but complain because he’s a bit of a disciplinarian. But you shouldn’t complain about that – you’ve no reason to. You know you do as you like! But where’s your ring?’

  ‘I won’t give it up, Mother.’

  ‘And there’s no need to, either. Luckily Father’s gone off to Eggebrecht’s and I’m to take the gold. But I won’t do it myself – it’s too far for my poor varicose veins. You go and tell me what it’s like so that I can tell Father I’ve been. But you’ll have to hurry, though, and come back quickly.’

  ‘Yes, but Mother, I might just as well go to the bureau in the Frankfurter Strasse. Surely it’s all the same.’

  ‘No, don’t do that. The Reichsbank is the most important and Father won’t have less. If the rubber stamps on the receipts don’t show that we’ve—’

  ‘Then I’ll go to the Reichsbank.’

  ‘Well, get ready and go at once. And listen, I’ve said you needn’t give up your ring, I quite understand what that means to a girl but you ought to tell me more, Evchen. I can see quite well what’s going on. So you take care he marries you before anything happens. Father wouldn’t regard that as a joking matter.’

  ‘Oh …’

  ‘I know daughters would rather tell anyone other than their own mothers. But you’ll come and tell me all about it one of these days. Well, I’m not giving up my earrings either; they weigh nothing and Father won’t notice … And now look, promise me solemnly never to tell your father – I’m taking back three of the big gold coins and three of the small ones.’

  ‘Mother!’

  ‘That’s not underhand, Evchen. I don’t want them for myself – I want to put them by. They’re always talking about sacrifices but nobody knows what’s in store for us. Bread is already rationed. Sacrifice only holds good for us small people – nobody hears a word about what the bigger fry are doing. But you can guess. They won’t make the Kaiser have a bread card or ask whether he’s given up all the gold and silver plate in the Schloss … No, you’re right, child. Well, you’d better go now. And when you come back don’t run straight into Father, will you?’

  § XVIII

  There was a great clatter of hoofs in the cobbled yard and Frau Hackendahl poked her head out of the window, which she ought not to have done because Eva had not yet come back from the Reichsbank. But Hackendahl was thinking neither about gold nor the Reichsbank at that moment.

  ‘We’ve got our horses, Mother,’ he cried. ‘Now the business will buck up!’

  His wife stared. She had seen many a horse in that courtyard and whenever she went into town with Father he made her look at horse flesh. She therefore understood something about it. ‘Aren’t they very small?’

  ‘Small!’ Hackendahl was terribly annoyed. ‘Small! They’re not smaller than you are. Come on, Rabause, help me get them into the stables. We’ve work to do now. Small! She thinks that in wartime we harness elephants to the cabs …’ He swallowed hard. ‘I’m not coming in for supper,’ he shouted in another burst of anger. ‘You can eat by yourselves. I’ve work to do.’

  ‘Seventeen of them,’ said Rabause. ‘Well, we can put twenty cabs into service again and give the grey and the bay a rest – they couldn’t have stood it much longer.’

  ‘You’re right,’ agreed Hackendahl. ‘That’s what I thought. And the woman says they’re small!’

  ‘Not quite as big as our old ones, perhaps,’ hazarded Rabause.

  ‘Not quite as big!’ protested Hackendahl. ‘Don’t talk nonsense, Rabause. Proper ponies – that’s what they are. Russian horses, Polish horses – that’s the name for ’em. Small! Of course they’re small! They’ve got to be or else we wouldn’t have ’em – the army would have taken them.’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Rabause. ‘Ponies. I’ve seen this kind before, Governor, at the Circus …’

  ‘Circus! What a thing to say, Rabause! Circus – that’s as bad as my wife. This isn’t a circus here.’

  ‘I know, Governor. I only mentioned it.’

  ‘All right, I just thought you were harping on the same string as my wife. Rabause, it seems to me we shall have to alter the harness. It won’t fit these … ponies. I’ll have the saddler round at once. And we’ll have the blacksmith to alter the shaft irons.’

  ‘It’ll cost a heap of money, Governor, and then when peace comes and we get proper horses again …’

  ‘But it isn’t peace now, Rabause, it’s war, and I’m adapting myself to new conditions. I’ve been waiting and waiting for peace but I’m not waiting any longer. As far as I’m concerned there’s a war on, and I want to have something to do besides merely waiting. No, I’m glad that I’ve work to do again. And you’re glad too, aren’t you, Rabause? It wasn’t a life with only five broken-down nags.’

  ‘Yes, you bet I’m glad. We’ll be able to feed this sort of horse however much oats are rationed.’

  ‘That’s a fact, Rabause. And if oats get scarce they’ll manage with just hay. Eggebrecht says that in Russia they get nothing but straw. Not
that I’d do that, though. Work calls for food.’

  ‘They’ll be cheap that way and if only they were as cheap to buy, since they’re so small, Governor …’

  ‘Small! Now you’re talking just like my wife! I don’t understand you, Rabause. How could they be cheap when there aren’t any horses to be had? It’s impossible for them to be cheap. You just think a moment …’

  ‘No, they can’t be cheap, Governor, I can see that.’

  ‘They’re dear! So dear I nearly turned tail and came away without buying. But I changed my mind. If I didn’t buy them someone else would.’

  ‘You’re right there.’

  ‘Between you and me, Rabause, but don’t tell my wife, I had to pay Eggebrecht more for those seventeen than I received for my twenty-seven good horses.’

  ‘Herr Hackendahl!’

  ‘Don’t let’s talk about it. Remember, you know nothing. But I shan’t think about the cost when my twenty cabs roll out of the yard again. I’ll just be glad. I’ll be thinking – now people are going to stare! Twenty cabs! And they’ll say: “Yes, old Gustav’s made of iron. You can’t get him down, any more than you can get Hindenburg down. He’s made of iron.” And that’ll cheer me up …’

  THREE

  The Evil Days

  § I

  In the night Gertrud Gudde, the dressmaker, was suddenly awakened by the winter wind, merciless towards all those who were insufficiently nourished and inadequately warmed. She shuddered, then snuggled down closer into her bed.

  But immediately she started up again and struck a light. Had she not been awakened by a cry from Gustäving? Jumping out into the icy cold, she went across to him. He was sleeping quietly, lying on his side, one bony shoulder – blue with the cold – peeping out of his shirt. Gently she covered him up. The child’s nose was too sharp; his little arms were as thin as sticks, looking as if there was hardly an ounce of flesh on them. She sighed. With a feeling of impotent resignation she once again tucked the blanket round the little body and returned to the warmth of her own bed.

  Trying to go to sleep again, for it was only two o’clock in the morning, she lay listening to the howl of the wind as it shook the windows – she might be living not on the fifth floor of a tenement in the great stone city of Berlin but far out on the plains where houses are exposed to the full fury of the storm. Vividly she remembered how the blustering wind would shake her parents’ house on Hiddensee, and how as children they would be in bed listening to the sound of the waves breaking on the shore, and how they could never forget that their father was out in his boat catching the herring off Arkona or flounders in the shallow waters. She remembered how they would whisper together about the all-absorbing little happenings in their lives, of the geese they tended or the amber they found; never a word was spoken of the father away fishing. A deep-rooted superstition forbade that. Nevertheless they thought of him all the time, and this seemed to give the storm a personal quality, as though it were an enemy who must not be informed where he was.

  The way had been long from that poor fisherman’s house to the crowded tenement in the East End of Berlin; from the timid child to the dressmaker who, hardly knowing fear, was utterly resigned to all that God sent her. An immense transformation. And yet, lying awake at two o’clock in the morning and listening to the wind, Gertrud Gudde experienced once again something of that early superstitious fear. She wished to go to sleep, not to think or to tell her fear to the storm. But sleep would not visit a heart so sorrowful, and the gloom of the cold night was within as well as without her.

  The wind outside her window, was it not the same that was now blowing over France? Did not the storm rage there also? As in the old days, so now – a man of hers was out in the darkness and cold; not her father this time but her lover, the father of her child.

  As it was, is now, and ever shall be! She buried her head in the pillows; she did not want to think. Thought meant anxiety – Otto hadn’t written for a fortnight. And she called to mind the times when a fishing boat was late, and wife and children – the whole village – waited for news of it. Boats could on occasion be driven from their course as far as Finland and a long time must elapse before word arrived. And often the villagers hoped and waited for those who had long been dead. Otto hadn’t written for a fortnight. And here she recollected that it was not Gustäving’s voice that had woken her. Another voice had called …

  In her sleep she had picked up a newspaper. Anxiously she had scanned it, page by page, and on every page she had seen only the innumerable black-bordered notices which, headed by the cross of the fallen, filled all the press – Killed in Action. Suddenly she realized that she had really been seeking the announcement – In loving memory of Otto Hackendahl, who made the supreme sacrifice … Terror-stricken she told herself: I couldn’t be looking for that. Otto is alive. He has just written that he’s been promoted to corporal … I won’t look at the names.

  But she read the names all the quicker. It was as if she were hungry for the name Otto Hackendahl – to find relief at last, a final decision after the endless, anxious wait lasting now already two years. The heavy black print of the papers confused her. The black crosses of the fallen seemed to jostle against one another. The wind howled outside the window … The boat is on the high seas, her father is on the high seas, and mother and children are alone in the house …

  What did the fisherfolk on Hiddensee believe? If a drowning man called to his wife, that cry would travel all the way to her and reach her even in the deepest sleep. To the living woman the dying man said: till we meet again.

  And now a cry had penetrated to a woman asleep, a cry had awakened her. At first she had thought it must come from the child. But it had come from him.

  And weep she could not. This fear had been too long with her. Nor did it help to know that it was the same for all other women. None who did not dream night after night of a man fallen, a husband, a brother, a son. It could not be otherwise, she told herself. What was in the mind all day came out in dreams at night. No special significance attached therefore to such dreams. She had experienced something similar a hundred times, yet she had always heard from him afterwards.

  Nothing availed her, though. And she knew that nothing would. It was the same for her as for all other women, sisters, mothers. This endless suspense must be borne until the postman once again delivered a letter from the trenches. Then, after a minute of relief, there would return those five hundred, five thousand, fifty thousand anxious minutes, the long torment.

  No, there was no help – she bore it as did other women. She cried aloud that it was unendurable and must end one way or the other, but there came no end and she continued to endure, continued because she had a child to care for and the acquisition of the barest necessities of life imposed ever-increasing duties on her; endured because she had letters to write to the Front, letters which must never seem lacking in courage; endured because only unceasing work enabled her to send him parcels …

  Each day confronted her first thing in the morning with a peremptory ‘You Must!’ – unable for one moment to relax or give way to her sorrow.

  Eventually Gertrud Gudde did go to sleep again, just as she did in the end with her worries almost every night. Twice more she was awoken by her dreams, and stared into the night with her usual anxiety, listening to the storm. The first time she had lain awkwardly, putting her weaker breast under painful pressure, and had then dreamed her most horrible dream, which she sometimes did, until it had suddenly become clear to her what the widely trumpeted expression ‘Suspected dead in a mass grave’ actually meant.

  She had lain with Otto under the others – alive under the dead, and had tried to crawl out … But how could people torture one another! And how could anyone with a heart say such a thing! She stared breathlessly into the dark and tried to push such horrible images out of her head.

  However, her third dream had almost been happy. She had sat next to Otto in a wood, green with spring, and he had ta
ken a long flute from the pocket of his field-grey coat and said, I’ve carved this – now I will play you something.

  He had begun to play when birds hopped out from every finger hole of the instrument. And they remained sitting on the flute and began to twitter and sing in time to his playing. It sounded unbelievably beautiful. She leaned ever closer to him, and in the end embraced him. Then he said: ‘But you mustn’t hold me too close. You know very well, don’t you, Tutti, that I’m dead and only dust and ashes?’

  And she did know, but only held him harder. And he disappeared in her arms, like a light mist passing from a wood in springtime. Far away, she could still hear his flute and the twittering and singing of the birds.

  Then she was awoken. Outside the windows, the storm was abating somewhat. The alarm clock showed half past four – time to get up.

  § II

  Freezing, Gertrud Gudde stood in an icy room looking longingly at the stove; if she lit it now she would have to freeze the rest of the day. No more briquettes were obtainable till the following week – she had used up too many already.

  Taking a newspaper, she crumpled it into a ball and thrust it in the stove. It did her good to see the flames produce their illusion of warmth. Then, when there was nothing but black paper left, she washed, slipped on her clothes and went to Gustäving’s bed. The child was sound asleep now but before she returned hunger would wake him. Taking a loaf of bread from the cupboard, she cut a slice with much thought as to its size; though it was so small it was still too large. This she tied with a piece of string to the bedrail.

  She smiled to think how pleased Gustäving would be with his gift. He was like his father; he would eat the bread with deliberation, chewing it thoroughly, although it was not the palatable and nutritious bread of peacetime but was made from potato flour, and some even maintained that sawdust and sand were to be found in it also. No need to believe that, however – war bread was bad enough as it was.