Iron Gustav

  ‘Mother,’ he said a week later, ‘Heinz bin round?’

  ‘No, Father. Why?’

  ‘I dunno. There’s a smell of tobacco hanging about.’

  His wife thought for a bit, then it occurred to her that the gasman had smoked.

  ‘Well, tell him not to, Mother,’ remarked Hackendahl, ‘otherwise he’ll set our place on fire an’ we’ll be in the soup.’

  But he soon forgot about it. He was hardly ever at home except to sleep, and that not for long; he spent ten or twelve hours on the box according to what business there was, besides sitting near his horse for an hour and a half, morning and evening, watching him eat, grooming and watering him. Very often his wife brought his supper into the stable, in the old workshop belonging to the man who had hanged himself – he no longer recalled his name – where he liked to be when the streets had quietened down and another day had passed. Then, after giving the horse a last drink of water, he would go straight to bed, very fatigued indeed. But with old people fatigue like that doesn’t last – it’s more a weariness of life than a desire to sleep; after he had slept two, three or four hours, he would wake up, lying quite still so as not to disturb his wife. He simply lay there as he had woken up – not the worst thing to do, just to lie there. One could think about many things besides the journey to Paris, which was more a matter to brood over in daylight; at night he thought of past events, of projects successful and unsuccessful, of the children, of horses he had once owned, of drivers who had worked for him, of old Rabause; of his time in the army, of officers and men. And he could still remember many things about the home village he moved from to Pasewalk. He would like to have seen that village again. He’d wondered whether it wouldn’t be possible to go through it on the way to Paris, but decided it was hardly possible, as it was too far north.

  It’s a funny thing about a place in which you have lived for years – you know it as you do a suit worn for a long time; if there’s something in the wrong pocket it worries and irks you till you change it round. And here was old Hackendahl in his bed, the old familiar bed, which the same woman had made for him, wide-awake as so often at this hour, but aware that tonight there was something, he himself didn’t know what, that irked and worried him …

  He wasn’t thinking about the smell of tobacco for instance, or that his wife seemed suddenly unable to manage on her money – no, he wasn’t suspicious – he was merely restless and that was odd … Hadn’t someone coughed just then? Not coughed perhaps but cleared his throat, as you do in your sleep? It sounded exactly as if it were in the flat, say in the small room where Heinz used to sleep …

  It could not possibly have been in his own flat, but without listening any longer or waiting to make sure, he gripped his wife’s arm and shook her. ‘You, there’s someone in the flat.’

  His wife moaned and then replied quickly: ‘You’re imagining things, Father! You’re dreaming. Who can possibly have got in?’

  ‘There’s somebody here,’ he repeated stubbornly. ‘I know it. Who is it?’

  ‘Father, you’re dreaming. There’s no one. How could there be? There’s nothing to be got here.’

  ‘In Heinz’s bedroom – I know it as well as if I could see it. There’s someone in Heinz’s room.’ He was groping for matches to light the candle.

  ‘Father, Father, don’t make us unhappy. Yes, I’ve given someone a shakedown, I told him he could, but I’ll send him away tomorrow. Or I’ll go now – let me go – I’ll send him away at once, Father.’

  She began to weep, wept bitterly, clutching him …

  But Hackendahl was in no hurry to leave his bed now. ‘Who’ve you got in Heinz’s room, Mother, that I’m not to see or know anything about? Who can it be, Mother?’

  ‘It’s a lodger, I don’t know what he does. So’s to get a penny or two because I can’t make the money reach. That’s why, Father.’

  ‘You’re tellin’ stories, Mother, I can hear that all right. As if I don’t know when you’re tellin’ fibs! I knew it when you spoke about the gasman. That was a fairytale, but I didn’t bother.’

  ‘It’s true, Father, it’s only a lodger …’

  ‘You wouldn’t be tellin’ me lies about a lodger, you ain’t ever lied to me about money. It’s always bin for your children. Underhand dealin’s with them behind me back. I know who it is sleepin’ there.’

  ‘Father, don’t go. Do me this one favour and don’t go. Let him sleep, he needs sleep, he’s quite done-up.’

  ‘An’ why’s he done-up? Why’s a swell like that have ter come crawlin’ to his mother when he usually puts up in a fine hotel?’

  ‘I don’t know, Father. Let him sleep! I’ll see to it that he goes. He’ll have gone by tomorrow night – I promise you that, Father.’

  ‘Why’s he got to wait till night? What’s he been up to?’

  ‘How should I know, Father? I haven’t asked him. He’s my child and I’ll not cast him out when he comes to me. Let him have his rest. I don’t want to know what he’s done. What he did to me, I’ve long forgotten.’

  ‘This ain’t a doss-house for crooks on the run. He was always a bad egg and he’ll take you down too.’

  ‘And suppose he does? I don’t mind, Father.’

  ‘He must go,’ said the old man, rising and taking the candlestick. ‘I’m not blamin’ you, Mother, an’ I’m not goin’ ter blame him either, so don’t worry. There was a time when I’d have raised hell about something like this but in those days I used ter think it’s an ill bird what fouls his own nest. Now I think diff’rently. They fouled my nest all right, and my proud life in the army, too. Now I just laugh at such stuff and don’t even look at it.’

  Standing there before his wife’s bed, candlestick in hand, old Hackendahl looked far from laughing, however. His fat face quivered, and his beard quivered too …

  ‘Let him sleep, Father,’ she begged. ‘Don’t hit him.’

  ‘Don’t be silly, Mother. Why should I hit a man thirty years old? That wouldn’t help us now. No, you stay in bed.’

  In his bare feet he crossed the passage and opened the bedroom door. Holding up the candle, he looked, he listened. Then he approached the bed …

  There, sleeping on his side, lay the son who had been closest to his heart and perhaps still was, in spite of everything. Had his wife stuck to it that it was a stranger Hackendahl would probably not have recognized him. A puffy sallow face, dark bags under the eyes, a worried frown above them, a chin covered with ugly bristles – a stranger’s face!

  The father bent over the bed, throwing the light on those sleeping features, searching for the face of the youth he had loved, the one who had been so much more spirited than he, admired, alert, joyous. But now what he lit up was only something troubled and miserable, stubborn, insistently transient and death-bound. This man slept as if he were dead … His grace and high spirits had died, no doubt, long since …

  The father straightened himself. He examined his son’s clothes. No, these were not the clothes of one who could go into a smart hotel – a month or two more and they’d be worn out … Item by item he examined them, looking at the shoes, feeling the join between the upper and sole, going through the pockets – all rather mechanically.

  The father sighed, then he picked up the candlestick and went out. His wife, sitting in bed, fixed her anxious eyes on him. ‘You needn’t worry, Mother,’ said he. ‘Still snorin’. Gimme your purse. Got any other money?’

  He went through his own pockets; he scraped together all the cash in the flat, even down to the small change which every cabman likes to carry on him. Then he went back into the other bedroom.

  The son still slept. Putting the money into one of the pockets, the father marched up to the bed, shook the sleeper’s shoulder and barked out in his old military voice: ‘Get up, Erich!’

  In the twinkling of an eye the son awoke. One saw that the tone of command spoke to every limb; the flight of fifteen long years had not caused his body to forget that imp
erious voice. His eyes blinked and as the waking man saw the dark figure with the light and grasped who it was that stood before him, fear showed in his face. Fear and terror.

  Thus the father at last saw the child’s face beneath that older face. He recognized his son by his fear, his cowardly, grovelling fear, his fear of punishment when he had been up to no good and his father admonished him for it.

  ‘Get dressed!’ ordered the father.

  The son obeyed. He did not hurry; the fear was wearing off. He had grown shameless and the shameless readily turn insolent when they realize that the other intends no harm.

  Thus it was not long before the son opened his mouth. But what did the former loved one say? What did he say?

  ‘Once you locked me in the cellar out of pure love, what, Father? And now you’re turning me into the streets out of love too, eh? You can’t get rid of me quickly enough, what?’

  Everything had become coarser, language and expression, thought and manner.

  ‘Yes, you fathers!’ said the son with a contempt either real or assumed. ‘Fine mess you’ve got us into. You could get children all right, but you couldn’t make men out of them, because you yourselves were lacking.’

  Every word a lie, every word cowardly and deceitful. The father’s fist itched, but he had promised his wife not to strike the boy. And he had no desire to reply – the other would only twist every word one uttered.

  But he did something, he blew out the light; and the son became silent. As soon as he could no longer see his father the old fear returned. Who knew what might happen now? He cursed under his breath. ‘What tomfoolery’s this?’ he asked. But he made haste.

  And it was just as if his father could see in the dark, for hardly had Erich put his hat on when a hand took him by the neck and pushed him into the passage. Erich offered no resistance. He could go now …

  But he was propelled past the front door and in the direction of the bedroom. It was in vain to struggle. The hand on his neck was like a vice; at the least resistance it gripped the harder.

  Mother had heard the noise. ‘Father! Erich! What is it?’

  ‘Say goodbye to your mother,’ whispered Hackendahl in his son’s ear. ‘And thank her, you understand? Politely! Properly!’

  Erich started to struggle but the old man’s hand tightened and the voice in his ear said still more threateningly: ‘Will you obey?’

  Erich cleared his throat. ‘I’m going now, Mother. Thanks … very much.’

  ‘Erich,’ she called. ‘Erich, my boy. Why isn’t there a light? Come and give me a kiss … Father, bring a light!’

  Father, however, brought no light. Cloaked in the darkness he pushed his son, his hopelessly unsuccessful, wretched son, up to the mother’s bed. ‘Do what she wants!’ he whispered. And again: ‘If you don’t, I swear I’ll call the police!’ He pushed his son down by the edge of the bed, and his son kissed his mother goodbye.

  ‘Oh, Erich, look after yourself, do! Don’t let them get you, see that they don’t, Erich. Goodbye …’

  She was crying. To the sound of her tears the son was taken out of the room, to the front door and out onto the stairs … There the hand released him and, before he had a chance to vent his spite in words, the door had closed between father and son.

  § IV

  The next evening old Hackendahl saw in the paper that the police had recognized in the street a criminal, one who had betrayed his country. No name was mentioned; there was nothing to indicate that this traitor was Erich Hackendahl, but his father – saying not a word to anyone – knew in his heart that it was he.

  For a few days he was worried that the police could come and ask after Erich, but all was quiet. Slowly rage and sorrow ebbed away. He was too old to be angry for long, so old that a vague grief hung about all he thought, said or did.

  However, during all this time, as the excitement over his son died down and the greyness of everyday life resumed, he thought more and more about the journey to Paris. For many, many years now he had been driving about Berlin, and suddenly he was tired to death of it. These miserable little fares – eighty pfennigs or one mark twenty, or at the most three marks to the Schlesische Station! No more than a dog’s cart worth, with a child’s pram, he thought suddenly.

  He wanted to drive into the country for a change, not always through the same cobbled streets; he wanted to see the fields he had worked in as a boy, see from the box how the men were at work with plough and harrow, sowing the seed, rolling the ground. Something like homesickness and wanderlust gripped him … He wanted to drive and drive further and further into the country. All the countryside is home to the country-born, the town never. Why go then to a certain village in the Pasewalk district when every village he drove through would somehow be native to him? In every village the people led their teams to the fields in the morning, rang the church bells at noon, stood before their cottages gossiping in the dusk. A girl clattered with her pails to the well. In the country it must be the same now as it used to be. Oh, how he would like to see it once more!

  Yes, he was sick of the town. He wanted to leave it, get away from the too familiar. Before facing that which no mortal can avoid, he wanted to do something new, something never done before. He had brooded so much about this journey to Paris that it no longer appeared strange. Heavens, people never stopped travelling; all his life he had driven tourists to the station – why shouldn’t he himself travel for once? What was there mad about that? It was quite simple. If he added up all the trips he had made in Berlin he must have driven the distance to Paris hundreds of times. Nothing out of the ordinary – as soon as you got used to the idea.

  I’ll just set out, he thought. It’s nothing special. Why not? Let ’em say I’m mad. The madder they think me the better; everybody’ll buy a picture postcard of a real loony.

  So from a vague idea was slowly formed a fixed resolve. Meanwhile he continued to ply with the cab all that winter. And whenever he came across a shop selling maps or globes he had a look at them and was surprised to see how close the two cities were. Why, it’s hardly any distance, he thought; I could cover it with me thumb. Dunno why they make such a fuss about it. Couldn’t take more than a week surely.

  And then there were the picture postcards; he’d have to enquire about those too. So he poked around till he discovered a small printer’s, the sort he could enquire of …

  ‘Picture postcards? Certainly! Thirty-five marks the thousand. With a minimum of five thousand, thirty-two marks. Caption? Yes, we can do that. What do you want? “Iron Gustav, the oldest cab driver in Berlin, drives from Berlin to Paris and back again.” Bit long, but we’ll do it for the same money. Are you Iron Gustav?’

  ‘That’s me.’

  ‘And have you thought what you’re doing at your age?’

  ‘I ain’t so old as all that. I’m not seventy yet. And what’s in it, anyhow?’

  ‘Maybe it’s all right. Only – have you got a permit? And you must have a passport. You can’t just cross the frontier as you like, not with a horse and cab. There’s such a thing as Customs duty, you know.’

  ‘Why, d’you think I’ll have to pay duty?’

  ‘And can you speak French? You’ll have to speak French. I mean, if you’re alone with a horse in a French village … What does it eat? Oats, of course, yes, but what is French for oats? Otherwise they’ll give your nag pickled gherkins. Not that they don’t taste good, eh?’

  Old Hackendahl was so preoccupied with all these unforeseen problems that he did not perceive the other was mildly poking fun at him. ‘Many thanks!’ he said, and made to leave the shop.

  ‘And what about the postcards?’ cried the printer, realizing too late that he had scared away a client with his leg-pulling.

  ‘I’ll sleep on it,’ said Hackendahl, going. He climbed onto the box and drove. He stopped at a relay and fed Blücher. He even found customers and drove them. Then he eventually came home, fed the horse, ate himself, and crept into bed – but he didn’
t sleep. All the time he was thinking and calculating.

  Four months it’ll take, he thought. That means I’ll have to leave Mother two hundred an’ forty marks at least. Well, two hundred’ll do. An’ fer me an’ the horse I need another five hundred – lodgin’s and stablin’ and food an’ feed. An’ then the duty. Blücher’ll have to have new harness. An’ the cab mus’ go to the smith an’ wheelwright or there’ll be trouble. So all in all I need a thousand marks. A thousan’ marks are ten thousan’ picture postcards at ten pfennigs each. On the other hand ten thousan’ postcards’d cost p’r’aps three hundred marks. That means I want one thousan’ three hundred marks, which means I have to sell another three thousan’ cards which’ll cost an extra hundred marks …

  Thinking over things in this way for days on end, he neither slept nor ate.

  ‘What’s the matter with you, Father?’ asked his wife.

  ‘Oh, nothin’! The spring I s’pose. Wakin’ up me rheumatism …’

  No, he did not breathe a word to her but he was beginning to realize he couldn’t carry out his plan by himself. Impossible to raise five hundred marks, let alone a thousand.

  We’ll see, he thought, we’ll see. Jus’ wait and see. It’s quite simple – only needs settin’ about it in the right way.

  After long deliberation he decided to ask the advice of a travel agency.

  § V

  Like everything connected to the journey to Paris, old Hackendahl carefully considered which travel agency he should consult. He was not in favour of the agencies at the railway stations. They only want to sell tickets, he thought. An’ if I ask ’em about me an’ me cab they’ll just pull me leg. And he didn’t want anything to do with the steamer agencies, either, which had such pretty little ships in their display windows. (I should buy one of them for me grandson, Otto, to play with.)

  In the end he chose one which was housed in the premises of a big newspaper. He had a feeling, not altogether mistaken, that this particular agency had something to do with the newspaper and that newspapers knew a good deal about the world.