Iron Gustav

  ‘Well, Heinz,’ she answered vaguely. ‘Tired?’

  ‘Tired!’ he retorted irritably. ‘Tired from what?’

  She glanced at him, then continued her tidying-up without a word. And this silence annoyed him at first. He was right, wasn’t he? Why should he be tired? From hanging around in the streets?

  Gradually his irritation passed, however. He watched her. She had such a brisk way of moving about. How lovely her arm looked, putting away the plate! Yes, she was part of him, part of him for ever.

  ‘Irma, listen …’ he said.

  ‘Yes, Heinz?’ Again that glance.

  ‘Sit by me for a moment.’

  ‘Presently.’ And she went on with her work.

  He looked on patiently for some time, and then said: ‘Aren’t you coming?’

  ‘Oh, Heinz …’

  ‘What do you mean by “Oh, Heinz”? Don’t you want to sit with me any more?’

  She turned round. She was holding a spoon. Later on he remembered clearly that she had a spoon in her hand when she said: ‘We mustn’t.’

  ‘Mustn’t we?’ he asked slowly. ‘Not even that any more?’

  She shook her head, her lips pressed together. She was still looking at him.

  ‘But …’ he said after a while in a stricken voice, ‘but … we have up to now.’

  She did not look away. Probably she had forgotten that ridiculous spoon in her hand. Better than any word her gaze said that this was no whim but a resolution which had slowly matured within her.

  ‘But …’ He was struggling to think things over, to get them clear in his mind. ‘We have up to now … it was quite all right.’

  At last she spoke. ‘I can’t stand it any longer … I’m frightened to death every time, till I can be sure that … No, never again.’

  ‘Never again,’ repeated Heinz dully.

  ‘Don’t look at me like that, Heinz,’ she said passionately. ‘You know I’m fond of you and I love children more than anything – I can’t pass a pram without looking in it, you know that. I’d like to have children more than anything in the world, lots of them.’ She seemed to be looking at some bright, sunny house, a place of happiness enlivened by children. Then her eyes grew dim with pain. ‘But children you can’t feed,’ she said, ‘children where you have to run to the Welfare for their napkins … No. No. No.’

  And this triple ‘No’ stiffened her; her decision no longer to be a wife must be irrevocable. She looked at him. ‘I’m sorry too, Heinz,’ she said. ‘But I … I can’t help it. I’ve not made these times …’

  She seemed to wait for a reply, as though he could say something which would overcome all this despair, this stricken existence. Then she shook her head – it was not meant for him but for herself – said quickly ‘Goodnight, Heinz’ and left the kitchen. In her hand she still held the spoon.

  EIGHT

  The Journey to Paris

  § I

  First, old Hackendahl saw only curious black crowds swarming round the station at Wannsee. Flags fluttered – the new German and the French flags – and there were soldiers, music, and in addition a speaker now mounted the podium and spoke.

  Gustav Hackendahl could see it all very clearly from his cab. He could also see a female in black riding habit on the bay horse. From the distance at least, the female figure did not look very special, but the bay did look good.

  A nice little horse, thought Gustav – quite wasted on such a woman. He’d be something for my cab.

  ‘What’s goin’ on?’ he asked a taxi driver.

  ‘Eh, you seem to live on the moon nowadays, Gustav. That’s the woman what’s ridden from Paris to visit us. Yes, on that horse – I wouldn’t have cared to have been either the ’orse or that woman’s backside, but luckily they’ve both survived, and now they’re bein’ made a fuss of.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘Lumme, Gustav, they ought to get an electrician to look at your head. You’ve enough juice there to supply the whole of Berlin. They’re makin’ a fuss because she’s ridden from Paris, that’s why. All the way on horseback.’

  ‘That all? All this fuss fer that? Why, me and me Blücher could do it any day. An’ I’m nearly seventy! Just Berlin to Paris! We could manage that, too, couldn’t we, Blücher?’

  The taxi driver laughed. ‘D’you hear that?’ he said, turning to the other drivers. ‘Gustav’s goin’ ter drive ter Paris, for a bit of fraternizing.’

  ‘Yes, Gustav, why don’t you?’

  ‘But old Blücher will suffer all right, Gustav.’

  ‘Cab’s better than on horseback.’

  ‘I’m ’earing Paris all the time. You do mean the Paris behind the Spandauer Krug, don’t you, Gustav?’

  ‘Still made of iron, is Gustav! They needn’t cast a statue of you in Paris, they’ll simply hoist you up on a pedestal as you stand, Gustav. You’ll last.’

  ‘I don’t know what’s got hold of you,’ said Hackendahl surprised. ‘What’s in it anyhow? I c’n do it if I wanted. An’ I’ve a good mind to, lemme tell you.’ He returned thoughtfully to his cab, climbed onto the box, and saw from a distance how the meeting proceeded. An escort of riders had come to welcome the French horsewoman; now they surrounded her as clouds surround the sun, and the procession set forth, led by bands. Everyone cheered.

  ‘I dunno,’ thought Gustav, ‘if they also have cabs in Paris. But if they do, it would be great to have fifty cabs altogether. It would be a change from those eternal cars which – whatever people say – look as though they’re missing something at the front.’

  And then three people hired him, and he had to follow the procession. He could hear them talking behind him. ‘I take my hat off to her.’ ‘Quite an achievement.’ ‘Yes, the French, did you see them – their phizogs pure yellow, but stuck up like anyfink.’

  And Hackendahl, as his black horse trotted along, thought: ‘They might’ve bin talkin’ about you, Gustav. Not that it’d be like the old times when I had a business – bit crazy p’r’aps – but it’d be a change from drivin’ others about – forty years of it. Yes, it’d be a change … and if I get to France, I could visit Otto. I dunno – sometimes I still think he wasn’t so daft after all, and he also knew something about horses.’

  So his thoughts went, always with the procession. And, hearing the cheers and seeing the welcoming throngs at the Brandenburger Tor, he said to himself: ‘Gustav, me bright lad, take a look at it! P’r’aps, who knows … ?’

  § II

  Yet he would never have seen the lady from Paris had it not been for his daughter Sophie, who had so arranged matters that he had gone back to his cab. He looked at the visit from Paris from a cab driver’s point of view, and began to think about it.

  She would not have been the calculating, unlovable creature she was had she not felt it a drawback – and the feeling grew – that she, mistress of a prosperous nursing home, had as father a cab driver. This the patients learned, not through the nurses – for she could have stopped that with a word – but through her father himself. He couldn’t spread the tale quickly enough that he was Iron Gustav, the oldest cab driver in Berlin, and that the Matron was his daughter.

  ‘Only she used to be thin as a lath – it was durin’ the war she blossomed out. As people say: one man’s meat is another man’s poison. Well, p’r’aps I shouldn’t put it like that. You’re a patient here an’ our Sophie has ter live on yer illness.’

  Sophie could not be certain whether this was merely an old man’s loquacity or pure malice, as though he wanted to pay her back or humiliate her. Whenever such remarks came to her ears she would take him to task, upon which he replied cheerfully: ‘But what of it, girl, what of it? I’m a cabby an’ you’ve got on in the world – that’s a fact, ain’t it? Or are you ashamed to be the daughter of a cabby? I can tell ’em I had a business with thirty cabs when you was born, if yer like. Wait a mo … No, when you was born I hadn’t got as many as that. But I can ask Mother so I c’n tell ’em the exa
ct number.’

  ‘You’re not to talk with the patients at all. You’re only to take them for a drive.’

  ‘Here, hold on! The patients talk to me! But I’ll do jus’ what you want, Sophie, I’ll keep me mouth shut when they start chattering.’

  ‘You know what I mean! If you like, say that you’re Iron Gustav, though I don’t consider it in very good taste. But to tell everybody that the Frau Matron is your daughter …’

  ‘I always say Fräulein Matron, Sophie. Or have you had a husband?’

  And so the quarrel would go on, Sophie growing more and more furious and the old man remaining as cheerful as ever. Senile gossip, self-importance, malice …

  Oh, how much she would have liked to get rid of him again! But it must come from his side. And she tried to do it by devious means. The patients were sent less frequently for a drive, while the carrying of coal, refuse and urinals – which he so much disliked – grew more common.

  But if she was sly he was cunning; sometimes – a most unpleasant feeling – she felt that he saw through her entirely. Besides which, it grieved her frugal soul that the carriage and horse, bought out of her money, should not be fully utilized. So she made it a habit to be driven despite the fact that she would have much preferred to walk – she resembled those people in a restaurant who, having ordered food which they find they do not like, eat it because they have got to pay for it. In the same way she drove in the carriage from one shop to another, and these jaunts were pleasant neither for driver nor driven, since they were never quick enough for her, and the business of turning the carriage round was so cumbersome. People stared and said: ‘Look, there’s a carriage! Straight out of the Märkische Museum.’ This made her boil with fury, so that it became certain there would be a flare-up sometime.

  And it came, one morning when she had to go to the station. The carriage had been ordered for nine o’clock and old Hackendahl was punctual. But, as often happens in a big establishment when the head of it wants to get away, if only for a few hours, all sorts of things intervened at the last moment and it was twelve minutes past nine before she got into the carriage.

  ‘Twelve minutes past nine, Sophie. I don’t think we can make it. Better take the Underground!’

  ‘Of course we’ll make it. Just put the horse to it. You’ve got to make it. Away you go!’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘The horse must get a move on. Please hurry up, Father.’

  ‘All right, Sophie. But don’t blame me if we don’t make it.’

  ‘If you don’t, it’ll be to spite me.’

  ‘What are you sayin’, Sophie? You’re in a temper. Why should I try ter spite you? That’s not me at all.’

  And they moved off. And he really did drive like the real Blücher, keeping the horse to a steady trot. All went well at the crossings and he chose the quieter side streets; she had to admit he did everything possible to arrive on time.

  After a while he turned round and said cheerfully: ‘I believe we’ll do it. Yes, takin’ you out puts Blücher in a better humour than dragging a load of ashes an’ refuse.’

  ‘Drive on,’ she exclaimed irritably.

  ‘It’s still at red,’ he answered unruffled but started immediately the traffic light turned amber.

  Sophie watched him, annoyed because she had grudged the Underground fare, and because he had been in the right, yet though it was really almost too late, nevertheless he cheerfully tried to get her to the station in time; annoyed with herself, with him, the cab, its rattling, and with the whole world. Annoyed, too, because she still wasn’t rid of him.

  They had reached the Potsdamer Platz, with only a little way to go now. They would definitely come at the right time.

  ‘Yes, me an’ Blücher!’ beamed her father, turning round. In spite of herself she nodded.

  On the traffic tower in the middle of the square appeared the amber light.

  ‘Gee-up, Blücher,’ urged old Hackendahl.

  The black horse started forward, turned out of the Potsdamer Strasse into the square and trotted briskly amid the throng of cars and buses, cycles and lorries. In another moment they would be in the narrow street by the station.

  The horse began to slow down, wanted to stop.

  ‘Gee-up, Blücher, gee-up,’ shouted Hackendahl. ‘Get along, old boy.’ And over his shoulder anxiously: ‘Don’t say he’s goin’ to …’

  ‘Going to what?’ Sophie exclaimed furiously.

  But the black horse had already stopped, nearly causing a car to run into them. The chauffeur began to curse, a policeman ran towards them, a crowd formed – but the black horse stood tranquilly in the midst of all the turmoil and passed his water.

  Old Hackendahl cursed, the motorists cursed, the policeman cursed. Somebody took the black horse by the bridle and tried to lead it to the kerb. But Blücher stood like iron, and pissed away.

  For Sophie Hackendahl, a middle-aged spinster and Matron, it was like some terrible nightmare when one is standing quite naked among dozens of properly clothed people. There she sat, noticeable enough already in the only horse-drawn vehicle among so many cars, held up while the traffic drove on and the wretched creature passed its water. It seemed as if the splashing was never coming to an end, and when she glanced to one side she saw quite a stream … Around them were nothing except grinning, furious, jeering faces. And herself in her Matron’s uniform the cynosure of all eyes! But, unlike a nightmare, she wasn’t nailed to the spot. Oh, no, most decidedly she wasn’t.

  ‘Officer!’ she called to the policeman, ‘please help me to the pavement.’

  ‘Certainly, Nurse. Come along. Bit unpleasant for a lady.’

  ‘Where yer goin’, Sophie?’ shouted old Hackendahl. ‘He’ll have finished in a moment. It ain’t his fault. Needs must …’

  She saw the people laugh.

  That evening all arrangements with her father were broken off – by her. She was sorry, but such an out-of-date vehicle, such an embarrassing situation – no, she couldn’t expect her patients to put up with it.

  ‘Nor you yerself. Nor yer cash box either,’ said her father. ‘Well, never mind, Sophie. You’ve bin wantin’ to get rid of me a long time. D’yer think I couldn’t see that? It was as plain as a pikestaff! Well, never mind, if I managed to bring you all up without help, I c’n feed yer mother without help. Only don’t think you can fool me. Even if yer nursin’ home gets as big as the Charité Hospital you’ll remain a nasty mean bitch. G’night, Sophie.’

  And from that time Hackendahl had turned cabman again. Not gladly, to be sure, but he was in the same position now as Blücher – needs must. And that was how he came to see the horsewoman at Wannsee Station.

  § III

  Business was better than it had been in recent years. People suddenly had money again, unemployment decreased – the effect of the foreign loans now raining down after a long drought, bringing luxuriant growth which flourished in abundance. The only question was how long this moisture would last. It was like a greenhouse; it only needed a cold wind … The very fact, however, that people did not trust in their good luck helped the cab drivers. Everyone was in a hurry to spend his money, it burned a hole in the pocket, one gladly parted from it. There was something to spare for a binge. Old Hackendahl and his Blücher had work again, not overmuch but enough.

  And it wasn’t so bad, to be able to take things a little easy after all his work for the clinic. Hackendahl no longer felt the old urge to earn money at all costs. Maybe it was age but he often sat dozing nowadays on his box, thinking: If there ain’t a fare today then there ain’t. I’ve managed all right so far an’ I don’t see why I won’t now. An’ besides, if I want to …

  With that his thoughts would stray towards Paris … Nothing tangible, no immediate intention, not even a plan – just a day-dream, the sort of thing a man imagines while telling himself: That wouldn’t be a bad thing to do … And makes no attempt to do it.

  Hackendahl had told his wife about
the horsewoman who had ridden to Berlin and told her story, and he added, ‘I wouldn’t mind doin’ that either.’

  ‘You’re mad!’ Mother merely said.

  ‘What’s that? Mad? D’you mean I can’t do what that Frenchie did?’

  ‘At your age, Father? You must have a screw loose.’

  He saw she hadn’t the least idea he meant it seriously, and it was this utter disbelief which egged him on. They all think I’m cracked, he thought. I’d like to have a chance of showin’ ’em.

  However, there was a big distance between thought and deed. It was soon obvious to him that he couldn’t simply mount his box and set forth. It would all have to be prepared beforehand and money provided for him and Blücher, and for Mother to live on when she was by herself.

  One day in a side street he saw a barrow on which an unemployed man was exhibiting the model of a mine. Getting down, he had a look at it, watched the tiny lamps flash, the little trucks run, the miniature hammers fall – a very fine bit of work. One couldn’t grudge buying a picture postcard of the thing.

  ‘Well, how’s business, young feller?’ he asked.

  ‘So-so. You scrape through. Brings in a bit more than the dole.’

  I ought to do somethin’ like that, he thought as he drove on. Sell picture postcards. The oldest cabby in Berlin. On his way to Paris an’ back. People’d buy, it’d amuse ’em …

  Thus bit by bit he approached his decision. But that didn’t mean an actual decision by a long way. Something else had to happen before so old a man could make up his mind, some impulse from without to set him in motion, something particularly sad or cheerful or at all events extraordinary …

  And this came …

  ‘Mother,’ he said, ‘I dunno what you’re doin’ with the money. We used to do all right on five marks a day an’ now all of a sudden it ain’t enough.’

  ‘Everything’s dearer, Father. The butter … meat …’ It was so long and tearful an explanation that Hackendahl gave up listening. What his wife said wasn’t important; the main thing was to make the money do, and that didn’t seem to be happening.