Once a Jailbird

  But when Kufalt had finished, he stopped and said: ‘In the first place you will have to find an enlightened employer, who doesn’t object to robbery and murder. Very, very difficult. Yes, yes, I know, you’re going to tell me it wasn’t anything of the kind, but it stands so in the records, and that is what he served his sentence for and he never applied for the case to be reopened . . .

  ‘And then he would have to be kept during the long apprenticeship, when he was earning nothing. The Benevolent Fund would have to pay out fifty marks a month at least, for three or four years. That will be all the more difficult, as we don’t know how much money we shall have at our disposal next year, and whether there won’t be very many more needy cases.’

  Kufalt was about to make some objection, but the governor said: ‘No; let me finish. And then I would have to bring the whole matter before the Prison Board and, apart from other difficulties, I would have to persuade all the other officials that Bruhn was deserving of such very particular assistance. And really, my dear Kufalt, I don’t see much chance of doing so; not to mention anything else, that affair on the day he was let out of prison . . . ’

  ‘Oh but, sir,’ said Kufalt, ‘you know yourself that no one is normal on the day he’s discharged. Everyone is all worked up when he comes out. I was too.’

  ‘Yes,’ said the governor; ‘we know that of course. And that is why we did our best for him, to get the prosecution withdrawn. But it’s not a recommendation; you must admit that, Kufalt.’

  ‘When he was inside Bruhn never once got into trouble. And he worked harder than anyone.’

  ‘Well, we must see,’ said the governor. ‘If he really is as good a man as that . . . perhaps . . . But no, Kufalt, I really can’t take the responsibility of granting so much money to a person . . . ’

  ‘But he really deserves it, sir, he’s such a nice boy.’

  ‘Indeed?’ said the governor, suddenly speaking with great deliberation and emphasis, and looking very hard at Kufalt. ‘Indeed? A nice boy, is he? By the way, have you got a girl, Kufalt?’

  A blush spread over Kufalt’s face, slow but very red. ‘Yes, I have a girl, sir. And it’s not what you think, sir, at all. I won’t deceive you, four or nearly five years ago it was so, but never since then. That’s absolutely true, sir. I’m not appealing for him because he’s my pal in that way.’

  ‘Very well,’ said the governor. ‘Then why are you appealing for him, Kufalt?’

  Yes, why was he? Hurriedly Kufalt asked himself, and he did not know. What was it . . . ?

  And the governor went on: ‘You are no longer spokesman for category three, Kufalt. Just you let everyone speak for himself; Bruhn can perfectly well come to me alone, I understand what he wants, even if he doesn’t speak so fluently as you do, Kufalt.’

  And when he saw Kufalt looking so abashed, he added: ‘Yes, yes, I quite believe you; it wasn’t merely self-importance, there was friendship in it too. And now tell Bruhn to come along and see me in a day or two, Wednesday or Thursday at twelve. Goodbye, Kufalt. Another cigarette? Goodbye.’

  XIX

  In the dirty, squalid little hole where he slept, Bruhn sat at a bare, unvarnished table with his head on his arms, and howled. He raised his head, answered, ‘Evening,’ shamelessly displaying a red, ravaged face, glistening with tears—and went on crying.

  ‘Hello!’ said Kufalt lightly. ‘What’s up?’

  But at the bottom of his heart he was genuinely shocked, for he recalled that in all his five years in jail he had never seen Emil cry—on the contrary, the lad had always been jovial and cheerful; and prison is a pretty hard branch on the tree of life.

  He was now crying quietly to himself; the tears ran down onto the sleeves of his old field-grey working jacket until they were wet. He wept like a child, let the tears run down his cheeks and wailed: ‘Oh God! O-h-h God!’

  ‘What on earth is the matter, Emil?’ asked Kufalt.

  No answer but a groan.

  ‘Have you got the sack?’

  A burst of tears.

  ‘Is it about a girl?’

  ‘Oh-h-h! . . . ’

  Kufalt thought for a while, sat down on the edge of the bed near the table, laid his hand on Bruhn’s arm and said: ‘I earned a lot of money today, shall we go to the cinema?’

  For a moment the wailing seemed to stop, but then continued.

  Kufalt began to feel nervous.

  ‘Bruhn . . . Emil . . . are you ill?’

  No reply.

  Kufalt got up gravely. ‘Well, if you won’t speak to me, I’d better go . . . ’

  Pause; not a word of protest.

  ‘ . . . And I was going to tell you about my interview with the old man . . . ’

  That did it!

  With an abrupt snuffle the weeping stopped, Bruhn stiffened and sat up straight, blinked his eyelids, above which his white brows had turned an angry red, and said breathlessly: ‘Have you been to see him? Will he do it?’

  ‘Gently, gently,’ said Kufalt. ‘Do you suppose we could fix all that up in half an hour? The man must have time to think it over first.’

  ‘Then it’s no good,’ said Bruhn, and his face fell once more. ‘If the governor needs to think a thing over, it’ll always be no—I know that from the times he used to send for me.’

  And with a gesture of despair he was about to let his head fall onto his arms again.

  Kufalt caught him by the sleeve. ‘Stop, Emil, don’t start that again. You’ve got to go and see him on Wednesday or Thursday at twelve, he wants to talk to you himself.’

  ‘But there’s nothing more to talk about,’ said Bruhn sullenly. ‘Either he’s going to do it or he isn’t. Talk’s all eyewash.’

  ‘Now don’t be a fool, Emil,’ said Kufalt sternly. ‘Of course he must talk to you first. To begin with, he’s got to find an employer for you. That isn’t so easy; perhaps you can help.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Bruhn, sniffed, went to the washstand, opened the drawer, looked into it and muttered: ‘Has that bastard of a night-watchman taken my handkerchief!’ and used his sleeve.

  ‘That’s better!’ said Kufalt. ‘And then he’s got to arrange about the money. It would be no good if he started the business and then couldn’t give you any money after six months.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Bruhn sceptically, ‘he’s always got money when he wants it.’

  ‘No, he hasn’t,’ said Kufalt firmly. ‘You know what the boys are like: they want a new suit out of the fund, or boots, or they need tools, or there’s a trunk that has to be got out of pawn—no, he hasn’t always got money, he has to arrange for it.’

  ‘And when he’s got the money and found an employer—will there be anything else?’

  ‘Then the whole Prison Board has to agree that you are a fit and proper person.’

  Bruhn heaved a sigh of relief. ‘Well, if that’s all! There’ll be no trouble about that. No one’s got anything on me, not even the chaplain.’

  ‘We-ll . . . ’ said Kufalt slowly. ‘Think so? But surely you have . . . ’ Then he stopped. Why should he tell Bruhn? He would only start crying again.

  ‘What have I?’ asked Bruhn.

  ‘No, nothing. I only thought . . . Did you always go to church, then?’

  ‘Of course I did—and to Communion as well.’

  ‘Then it’s all right,’ said Kufalt cheerfully. ‘You go and see him tomorrow at twelve o’clock.’

  ‘I have to be in the works at twelve.’

  ‘But surely you can take an hour off?’

  Bruhn did not answer, and for a moment it looked as though he were going to burst into tears again. But he did not; the mood of gloom had passed and anger took its place.

  ‘Take an hour off . . . ? They’d chuck me out for good and all, and glad to do it. Just because I made the remark that a timber works would make a fine bonfire.’

  ‘Bruhn!’

  ‘Well, what of it? They’ve done me down all round. First they swindled me over my savings bank book
. They promised to take me on as a foreman at a foreman’s wage, and I do the job and get an unskilled wage. And they keep on knocking a bit off my wages, just because they think Bruhn can’t get another job, Bruhn’s been in prison—we can squeeze him all right.’

  And he looked bitterly at Kufalt—his friend—as though he were Herr Steguweit of the timber works, and into Bruhn’s gentle, watery blue, kindly eyes came an expression of fury—uncontrolled fury . . .

  ‘Well, so what?’ said Kufalt. ‘You’re used to all that long ago, Emil!’

  ‘I tell you I won’t stand it,’ burst out Bruhn. ‘Why should I work the skin off my hands and get less than a clumsy lout that can’t even knock in a nail! And just because I’ve been in prison, and never hear the last of it, though I’ve done my stretch!’

  ‘Why not go a bit slow?’ asked Kufalt.

  ‘I’ve tried it,’ said Bruhn more calmly. ‘But I can’t, it isn’t in me. I’m a grafter, I have to get on with the job and do it.’ He took a breath. Then, ‘No; I got at some of the lads, and we did our jobs so that complaints kept on coming in—a nail was sticking out, a board was loose or a door wouldn’t work. And when they came along and started bleating about all the stuff coming back and what were we up to, we said we couldn’t do any better for that kind of wage, and mistakes were bound to happen when we had to turn the stuff out so quick . . . ’

  ‘Well, and then . . . ?’

  ‘The fat cats!’ said Bruhn contemptuously. ‘They put an inspector on the job, though the pittance they paid him would have been all we wanted. He looked over the stuff and kept on throwing it out as not up to standard.’

  Bruhn snorted with fury.

  ‘Go on! Go on,’ urged Kufalt.

  ‘Well, so then I made sure that everything was absolutely shipshape. Not up to standard, eh? Just you wait, my lad, says I. And when it was all brought out and ready for despatch, I went along at night, every third or fourth night, with two or three of the lads—and we mucked the stuff up again.’

  ‘The things you get up to!’ said Kufalt.

  ‘Why wouldn’t they treat me properly, eh? What would you have done, Willi?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Kufalt. ‘Go on. That wasn’t what you were crying about?’

  ‘No; but the blokes of course thought I was in it somewhere, and the lads that helped me, well—they were a rotten lot, of course—and one of them split. And because they knew I said a timber works would make a fine bonfire, they fixed it so that I would have to chuck the job in myself.

  ‘And when I came along this morning and showed Stachu how he always nailed the roofs on too loose, he waved his hammer at me and shouted that he wouldn’t be spoken to by a bloody murderer—the lousy Pole. And when I’m quietly doing my own job, someone asks what the time is, and whether the murderer won’t take a look at his pocket watch. And in the midday interval they stole my tools and I had to go around all afternoon looking for them and couldn’t do a stroke of work, and had to listen to them saying they didn’t fancy working with a murderer. And the foreman said every man had to look after his own things, and the firm couldn’t be responsible . . . ’

  Bruhn was silent and glared into vacancy.

  ‘Make an end of it then, Emil,’ said Kufalt. ‘There is no sense in staying on. You will have enough to live on for a while. And perhaps the governor will be able to fix you up, and then the others can go to hell.’

  ‘No, Willi, no,’ said Bruhn slowly. ‘You don’t understand. Are they to be always in the right, and I in the wrong? If I go, then!’

  He was silent.

  ‘But if something comes of this business with the governor, you’ll go, won’t you?’

  ‘I often think,’ said Bruhn, ‘that we’re done for. It seems sometimes as if something is going to turn up, but it never does.’

  He went on in a more subdued voice: ‘And then you think of prison, where no one accused you of anything, and you got your grub, and were glad to work . . . ’

  ‘Now that’ll do, Bruhn,’ said Kufalt warningly. ‘Perhaps you’ll be working with a carpenter in a few weeks, and laughing at these lousy nest boxes.’

  ‘And what if it’s just the same with the carpenter . . . ?’ said Bruhn slowly. ‘They’ll smell a rat when they see a man of twenty-nine coming in as an apprentice, won’t they?’

  XX

  The Lütjenstrasse lies in the centre of the city; Kufalt needed to cross it four or five times every day on his rounds. He actually crossed it ten or twelve times.

  A reflector had been fixed on the first and only storey of the sixwindowed house. Every time he passed, Kufalt thought, ‘Perhaps she’s looking into it this very moment and sees you.’

  Then he stopped in front of the glazier’s shop window and for the thirtieth time he gazed at the showpiece, ‘Fighting Stags’, displayed as being suitable for the autumn season. Couldn’t she make a sign to him? No, she remained invisible.

  The lady’s watch in his briefcase, wound up every morning and then carefully wrapped up again, ticked in vain. No opportunity . . .

  But he came again and again. It was now December and the stags were replaced by a picture called ‘Little Sister’s Christmas Dream’; but his visit was always in vain. The watch would have been such a fine present on the day after the event; but now, ten days later, it looked like an attempt to establish a claim on her and carried an unpleasant suggestion of remorse, or bribery, or surrender.

  And yet it must be given to her!

  The following day, and the day after that, he had been sorely tempted to put the glaziers on his list, but he postponed them again and again. Kraft had already said: ‘You seem to have forgotten the glaziers?’ But how, in her presence, could he possibly produce his little speech about subscriptions, and hear her old bullying father merely growl out No.

  ‘Aren’t you going to try the glaziers?’

  ‘Yes, tomorrow.’

  But tomorrow there were some bakers left . . . There was one baker, by the name of Süssmilch, a young man with a smooth and mealy face and thick black eyebrows, who kept on making appointments for Kufalt to call. ‘I would be very glad to subscribe to your Messenger, but I’m not quite convinced. Perhaps you could think of another really cogent reason, and come back on Friday . . . ?’

  Kufalt knew very well he was being fooled; but at the end of his round he found himself quite glad to call on Süssmilch again. The baker shuffled sleepily out of his bake room covered with flour, his bare feet in floury slippers, and said: ‘Well, young man, do you think you can convince me today?’

  ‘The best reason is my receipt book,’ said Kufalt. ‘Look how many bakers have ordered our paper today again!’

  And Süssmilch looked and rubbed his face and Kufalt thought, ‘I really might be standing in Harder’s shop.’

  No, Süssmilch did not give an order this time either; he certainly would have done, but that day he had to pay for his flour. However, by Tuesday he would perhaps have collected enough money to be able to order the paper; ‘Till Tuesday, then, young man.’

  Therewith the baker shuffled sleepily back into his bake room and Kufalt trudged back to the office, carefully avoiding the Lütjenstrasse.

  There would certainly have been enough money for two cinema tickets; besides, Freese had told him he could just walk into a cinema and take his fiancée too. He had only to say he came from the Messenger . . . A fiancée, how so? He thought that Kufalt had made a mental note about the River Trehne. A fiancée wouldn’t make the water any warmer . . .

  Drunk again, he had not started writing yet, though the prescribed total of six new subscribers was exceeded nearly every day; but there was plenty of money for two cinema tickets.

  ‘Little Sister’s Christmas Dream’—the jack-in-the-box on the edge of the bed. How fine he was. He had a real nutcracker face like Kraft. The shop door was fitted with an opaque pane in the middle; round it were brightly coloured bullseye panes with red, blue and yellow glass knobs . . .

>   Heavens, what was all the fuss about? He had been into many shops and houses, why didn’t he dare enter this one?

  Here he was at the nearest corner, by the co-operative shop, and though he kept on urging himself forward, it was no good . . .

  Was he to carry this damned sixty-seven-mark watch around with him for ever, or should he use it to get himself another girl?

  But she was so sweet!

  About turn! Quick march, into the storm of bullets, bombs and shells; perhaps she can see you in the reflector, don’t shake your briefcase, it won’t do the watch any good . . .

  Well, however hard you try, you will only stop dead outside ‘Christmas Dream’, or bolt past to the office . . .

  ‘Only five today, Herr Kraft. But I’ll do the glaziers tomorrow, without fail.’

  Had he passed it? No! Yes! No!

  How the bell clanged. He flashed into the shop like a comet. Well, well; Harder, the daughter-beater, looked quite different from the way he had imagined him. A little man with a paunch and a black beard, almost like a brother to Woolly Teddy . . .

  ‘Yes, what is it?’

  ‘I represent . . . ’

  At that moment he saw her in profile at the far end of the shop. She was busy, she did not look up, her face was very pale.

  He pulled himself together, otherwise he would never finish his sentence.

  That pale and stricken face . . . ‘Never, never again.’ We know not what we do. We never know what we may do.

  He pulled himself together.

  ‘Herr Harder—glassware?’

  ‘Yes—what is your firm?’

  ‘Might I speak to you in private for a moment?’

  ‘My daughter won’t disturb us.’

  ‘In this case I’m afraid she will!’

  ‘Very well, go upstairs, Hilde.’

  ‘Couldn’t we go upstairs? What I have to say can’t very well be said in the shop.’

  ‘What is all this? I’m not buying anything.’

  ‘It’s quite private.’

  ‘Hilde, look after the shop,’ said the little man. ‘You can call me at any time.’