Once a Jailbird

  The chief warder looked, and waited. This was his hour. It was then he reaped his harvest; when the denizens of his kingdom said what they thought about each other, he collected his evidence against prisoners and the graded punishment system, and found the material for his reports. There was nothing that he did not know or hear; and in his office, the governor wrung his hands despairingly and cried: ‘Is there not one just man . . . ?’

  The instructor flushed purple, and swallowed: ‘Herr Rusch, if anyone deserves to be shopped . . . ’

  ‘Hey, what’s this?’ asked Rusch with a large and genial air. ‘You don’t mean our model lad, Willi Kufalt. Why, just look round his cell, do you know another like it in the place? It’s as bright and shining as an ape’s arse.’

  And Kufalt felt so confident that he too had a go at the instructor. ‘So I ought to be shopped, eh? You’ve got something on me, eh? Are you sworn in as an assistant official?’

  At this the nets instructor burst out in a fury: ‘You blackmailer! I tell you, Chief Warder . . . ’ And then, though his face was purple, he thought better of it and said: ‘You’ll be paid for your seventeen units, Kufalt; even if I myself have to give you the eighteen pfennigs at the gate the day after tomorrow. You’ll get them all right.’

  And he departed. The chief warder stood with an air of baffled wrath.

  ‘No letters for me, sir?’ asked Kufalt.

  ‘Letters? Letters? You’ll get your letters at the proper time. And you’d better not be so cheeky. The instructor is your superior. I shall write on your discharge sheet that your conduct was bad, Kufalt. Then you won’t even get into category two when you come in again.’

  So saying, he slammed the door before Kufalt could fly into a rage again.

  IX

  At eight o’clock category three had their wireless evening. It was pleasantly hushed in the building; two or three warders on night duty padded round in list slippers, quietly and cautiously opening the doors of the category three men’s cells, which had already been locked for the night. And the prisoners went softly down to the schoolroom. For nothing is worse in a prison than any noise at night. If the prisoners’ precious night’s rest is disturbed, the place becomes a pandemonium of shouts and yells and howls.

  The twelve men gathered in the schoolroom, where it was still fairly light, and the shoemaker was already busy over the receiver.

  ‘What’s on?’ asked Kufalt, but the shoemaker was still smarting from their encounter in the middle of the day, and did not reply.

  Batzke answered in his stead; tall Batzke, who trafficked in naked female charms and looked after the boiler room: ‘A Verdi opera. Want to listen?’

  ‘No, thanks. I can’t understand why they don’t put on something funny in the evening. They might remember the prisoners.’

  Batzke droned his usual refrain: ‘Why should they? They’re glad they don’t have to. They’re bloody glad to be rid of us—cattle, that’s what we are.’

  The wireless had started, and the pair strolled up and down the long gangway near the desks.

  ‘Got any tobacco? Hey Batzke, how do you get such good tobacco here? I’ve learnt a thing or two since I’ve been in, but you . . . ’

  ‘When you’ve done a fourteen-year stretch like I have,’ said Batzke, from the vantage of his thirty-six years, ‘you’ll know this shop even better than you do now.’

  ‘Not for me,’ cried Kufalt. ‘Sooner be dead.’

  ‘Don’t say that,’ said Batzke encouragingly. ‘You enjoy your time outside all the more.’

  ‘No, thanks, I’m running straight now.’

  ‘Don’t you try it,’ warned Batzke; ‘you’ll never keep it up. You’ll knock around for a few months looking for a job. And perhaps you’ll find a job, and sweat yourself to death to keep it. But then it’ll come out somehow that you’ve been in the clink, and the boss’ll put you on the street, or the other blokes—they’re always the worst—won’t work with a criminal. I’ve tried it all. And when you’re beat, and haven’t eaten for three days, and pinch something, and get caught, they say: “Just what we thought; good thing we threw that bloke out.” That’s what they’re like, and if you’ve got any sense you’ll listen to me, and won’t even start to run straight. You come along with me.’

  ‘But you get nabbed and back in the clink again.’

  ‘Not so easily, when you’ve had a rest and got a bit of money. It’s only when you’re starving and get the wind up, and have to have money, that you get caught. Of course they nab you sometime, but you’ll last out a bit if you’re with me.’

  ‘But aren’t there some that don’t ever come back?’

  ‘How many, eh? Look, how long have you been inside? How many have you seen come back in that time? Well, then! And those that don’t come back here are doing time somewhere else. But I shan’t do my next job in Prussia; I shall do a bit of housebreaking in Hamburg, and I’ll buy a plan of the place so as to make sure I don’t get over the border into Altona. Fuhlsbüttel is much better than Prussia, category two are allowed to play football.’

  ‘But I don’t want to start burgling—I’ve no guts for that sort of thing.’

  ‘No need to, my lad; I can see that myself. You couldn’t do much with arms like yours. But I’ve been looking for someone like you for a long time. You’re a scholar, you know grand words and a bit of English parley-voo, and that’s where I fall down. You don’t suppose I like smashing things up.’

  Kufalt felt flattered.

  ‘I’ve tried and tried,’ went on Batzke, ‘but I can’t get away with it. I had a go at the bogus marriage game, the risk isn’t much and you don’t need to pay out any money for the tarts, but do you think I could pick up one decent girl? I watched how it was done, on the racecourse and in bars, and I had my nails manicured—no good. The smart alecs got off with all the girls worth having, and I was left with a slavey or at best a housemaid with two hundred marks in the savings bank—no use to me.’

  ‘I could show you how to behave.’

  ‘That’s just it. I’m up to anything, I can split a safe with an acetylene burner as well as any man. But I only get the small jobs, it’s the others who get away with the big ones. That’s what riles a man when he understands his profession.’

  ‘But a man doesn’t need any education for burgling, Walter.’

  ‘You’ve no notion. I ought to be able to get into a club as Dr Batzke, or travel in a luxury train without the cops smelling what’s up at once, or run up the steps of a posh house so that the porter doesn’t dare to ask what I want—that’s where you’ve got to fill me in.’

  ‘I’m sure you know all that already. You’ve soaked up more champagne in your life than I have.’

  ‘Sure . . . but just soaked it up . . . and along with tarts. To drink champagne, and carry on a conversation with a real lady, and not start feeling under her blouse after the third glass—that’s what I want to learn.’

  They paced up and down. The others were talking, smoking, quarrelling, and two were playing chess in a corner. Verdi’s melodies were drowned by the din.

  Walter Batzke warmed to his theme: ‘We’ll have a fine time, my lad. When we come out now we’ll both have money and see a bit of life, I tell you. Do you know what you’ll do the first night?’

  ‘No. What should I do?’

  ‘Well, you don’t know much, do you! You’ll pick up a nice little tart in the Reeperbahn or the Freiheit and go along home with her. And when she asks about the cash, you slap your discharge sheet on the table and say: “It’s on you tonight, love. Send for some fizz!”’

  ‘She’d spit in my face!’

  ‘You’re clueless! The first night out of clink is free with all the whores in Hamburg. That’s a fact. You can believe me. They’ll all let you.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Word of honour. Well, and on the Sunday I’ll be out.’

  ‘Shall I come and meet you at the station?’ asked Kufalt.

  ‘No, better
not. I’ll have to go home first and see my old woman.’

  ‘I never knew you were married?’

  ‘I’m not—do I look it? No, I’ve got an old widow, about fifty, who can’t find another man, so I give her what she wants, and I get two fine rooms for it, and a bath, and good grub—all the very best, my lad. Perhaps you can come and live there, we’ll see—Harvestehuder Weg, Widow Antonie Hermann. She belongs to the big shipping firm, you’ll have heard of it?’

  ‘Do you think she’ll have waited for you all these years?’

  ‘Well, what do you think? Of course she’ll have got another bloke, and of course she’s no idea I’m coming out. But you know me, I don’t stand for any nonsense. I’ll just say to the bloke: “The Raven is back. Get out!” And when he packs his stuff, I’ll see he doesn’t get away with much of what he’s got out of her.’

  This amused Kufalt, and he grinned: ‘Won’t she mind?’

  ‘She? I know where the whip’s kept, and after I’ve given her a hiding she won’t look at anyone else.’

  Kufalt suddenly turned giddy; the smoke was thick, the evening muggy, the music of the opera came from very far away. The widow on the Harvestehuder Weg, the shipping business she owned, the whip, the Raven—it was a bit too much. But when a man’s done a five-year stretch, nothing seems impossible. A man goes through strange experiences in jail.

  So he made no comment, and said: ‘Where shall we meet? And when?’

  ‘I’ll tell you,’ said Batzke—‘we’ll meet at the Central Station—no, there are always so many cops around there, they all know me. We’ll meet at eight on the Town Hall Square under the horse’s tail.’

  ‘Where’s that?’

  ‘Under the horse’s tail? Ever been in Hamburg?’

  ‘Only a few days.’

  ‘There’s a statue of Kaiser Wilhelm on the Town Hall Square, on horseback. Everyone in Hamburg knows “under the horse’s tail”.’

  ‘Good. I’ll find it. At eight, then.’

  ‘Right. And put your best suit on. We’ll make a night of it.’

  ‘Sure. It won’t be my fault if we don’t.’

  ‘Nor mine.’

  X

  Through the sleeping prison, now almost dark, Kufalt crept behind the night warder in his socks, his slippers in his hand.

  The warder opened the cell door and stood for a moment hesitating with his fingers on the switch. ‘You can go to bed without a light for once, Kufalt; otherwise in ten minutes I’ll have to go up four flights of stairs again. I’ve been sawing wood at home all day, and I’m dog-tired.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Kufalt. ‘I don’t mind. Goodnight, Herr Thiessen.’

  ‘Goodnight, Kufalt. Is this your last night?’

  ‘Last but one.’

  ‘How long have you been in?’

  ‘Five years.’

  ‘That’s a long time. Yes,’ continued the old man, shaking his head. ‘It’s a pretty long time. You’ll be surprised when you get outside. Five million unemployed. It’s hard, Kufalt, it’s hard. Both my sons are out of work.’

  ‘I’ve learnt to wait.’

  ‘Have you? Not in here. No one has ever learnt that here. Well, if I don’t see you again, Kufalt, all the best. You won’t find life easy, you’ll find it very hard. I wonder if you’ll stick it. Once a jailbird . . . ’

  The old man stood waiting, for Kufalt had almost finished undressing by the landing light.

  ‘You haven’t been a bad bloke, Kufalt, but a bit too easy-going. Hard-working, yes. And civil when you were treated civil. But you were always off in a temper when anything went wrong. And you took up all the shithouse gossip. Five million unemployed, Kufalt . . . ’

  ‘You aren’t exactly cheering me up, Herr Thiessen.’

  ‘You’ll be cheerful enough when you get out, the girls and the booze’ll do that for you—cheerfulness isn’t much. Just keep on remembering, Kufalt, that there’s about seven hundred cells in this building—they don’t care who gets inside. And we don’t care whom we turn the key on either.’

  ‘But everyone is different, Herr Thiessen.’

  ‘Outside, yes. But in here you’re all alike, you know that yourself, Kufalt. You find it out pretty quick. Well, get along to bed. I see you’ve pulled your bed down already; that’s what I like, only the decent blokes do that. There are others. The worst is Batzke, who takes down his bed from the hook at twelve o’clock at night and then slams it onto the stone floor so as to wake the whole building. Sleep well—your last night but one.’

  ‘Goodnight, Herr Thiessen. And thank you very much. For everything.’

  XI

  It was not dark in the cell. Moonlight shone through the window. Kufalt stood up on his bed, and pulled himself up to the metal sill. He could just get one knee onto the narrow sill, and he hung there, looking out into the night.

  It was very still. The bark of a dog and the tramp of the nightwatchman in the yard only made the stillness deeper.

  No; no stars. He could not see the moon either, only its radiance in the air. The dark, long, heavy shadows yonder were the walls, and the globed shapes above them were the chestnut trees. They were in blossom, but they did not smell. Chestnuts only smell from quite near at hand, and the smell is unpleasant, like the smell of sperm.

  But they would still be in blossom when he came out. He could walk under them when they were in bloom, he could visit them when their foliage turned a deeper green, when the first yellow leaves came, when the fruit burst, when they were bare of leaves, and when they bloomed again—he could always go and see them, he could go anywhere he liked, how he liked, and when he liked.

  He found it hard to realize. During five long years he had clung to that sill hundreds of times, always in danger of dragging the sill down or of discovery by the warder; and now all that was over.

  ‘Thiessen was talking rubbish,’ he thought. ‘He doesn’t understand anything any more; after all, a warder is a lifer too. As for his sons—I know for a fact that the youngest robbed someone’s till and would be in here if his father wasn’t paying it off. And his wages don’t amount to much.’

  He felt a craving for a cigarette and clambered down. As he groped in the darkness for his trousers, where he kept his tobacco, an unusual feeling suddenly came over him . . . he stopped . . .

  ‘I won’t,’ he said; ‘I won’t do it any more. The old bloke’s always been very decent to all of us. It’s like the night outside, it gets dark, the moon comes out, and then it’s light again, it’s all quite simple . . . ’

  He tried to clear his thoughts. ‘All these scams only make things harder; everything was much simpler when I just sat in my cell, before I was up to any of the old lags’ games. I must make things easier again. Otherwise I shan’t get through, I’m too weak, he’s right. Everything beats me. A bloke must make a clean start, it doesn’t matter how. Perhaps I’ll go to the chaplain tomorrow.’

  He rolled the cigarette and lit it. ‘I must stick it out, I’ll start the first thing tomorrow, I won’t look out of the window at five o’clock to see Batzke’s tart.’

  He sat in his shirt on the edge of the bed and stared into vacancy, desolate. The cigarette ash fell unnoticed on his spotless floor, patterned with the stars, and sun, and moon.

  2

  Release

  I

  Whether Kufalt, had he woken at five in the morning, would have rejected the charms of a naked girl’s body, remains doubtful. He did not wake up until a quarter to six, when two sharp strokes of the bell indicated that it was time to get up and wash.

  He leapt off his bed and made it with special care, for that day the final cell inspection would take place. Then, a wash in the enamel food bowl instead of in the gleaming nickel basin, which there would be no more time to polish.

  When the orderlies came past for the buckets and the water at about six o’clock, when bolts rattled and keys clashed, Kufalt had long since started polishing the cement floor. The pattern had to be pick
ed out again, it had got smudged during the night. Then he drew up the inventory, as laid down by age-long prescription, so that the chief warder could see at a glance that all was there.

  And all this time he kept thinking of his dream of the night before. The dream of the first few weeks of his imprisonment had returned once more.

  He was running towards a dark wood deep in snow. He had to run very fast, the police were on his track. It was night, and bitter winter weather, the forest was vast, he had seen on a map that the road through it was eighteen kilometres long. But he must get to the further side of it, where there was another railway line, where they would not look for him, and he might escape.

  Before he plunged into that vast forest that was to envelop him for four dark hours, he had to pass through a village; and in the inn the windows were still lit. He went in and asked for a schnapps. And another. And another. He felt as though he would never be warm again. He bought a bottle of brandy, stowed it away in his briefcase and paid.

  Then he noticed that two men were watching him, one of them young and pale and foxy-faced; the other old and bloated, with only a few remaining hairs on his bald, scabby scalp. Two tramps.

  ‘Much snow on the roads?’ croaked the older man.

  ‘Yes,’ replied Kufalt, waiting for the change from his hundred-mark note. He had the wallet in his hand, and the young fox’s eyes were fixed on it with a look of insatiable greed.

  ‘There’s more snow to come, mate,’ growled the older man. ‘It’s no night for walking.’

  ‘No,’ he said shortly, and put the wallet back in his pocket. He said ‘Good evening’ to the landlord and went towards the door. As he passed the table where the two men were sitting, the young one got up and said in an imploring tone: ‘Buy us a schnapps—we’re frozen. We are on the way to Quanz too.’

  But he walked quickly past, as though he had not heard.

  Outside, the wind flung a whirl of snow into his face. He had to fight against it step by step; beyond the fields stood the dark mass of the forest, a few hundred metres away.

  ‘I ought to have bought them a grog,’ he said reproachfully to himself. ‘Then they’d have stayed where they were for a quarter of an hour, and I’d have got a start. They’re after my money. Why did he say they were going to Quanz too? How does he know where I’m going?’