A Small Circus

  Henning looks at him. His eyes burn. ‘The flag is ours,’ he says. And yanks it back.

  Holding the pole with his left hand, Geier hits at Henning’s hands with his rubber truncheon.

  Henning doesn’t let go.

  Geier is about to hit him a second time, when a hand reaches from behind and holds his. A brief tussle, a piercing pain, and his half-dislocated wrist drops the truncheon.

  In a dense knot of people, they are fighting for the flag. Henning and Geier, in a continual moving whirl of bodies, wrestling, falling, on the ground.

  ‘Give them a taste of your sabre, Oskar!’ Geier hears a shout above him. ‘It’s what the bastards deserve.’

  There is the giant Soldin, and with him ratty little Meierfeld. With the flats of their swords they dole out thwacking blows on the backs, faces and hands of anyone within reach. The crowd recedes, a small ring is formed, and reeling Geier gets to his feet, giving a mighty jerk on the flag.

  But on the other end of the pole hangs Henning, lying on the cobbles, but his white face and clenched jaws indicate: he’s not about to let go.

  ‘Let go, you!’ yells Meierfeld, and hits the recumbent man with the flat of his sword.

  At the other end Soldin and Geier have joined forces. Another great jerk pulls the flag fully six feet, and Henning, on the floor, with it. The sabre swipes his arm. His dark suit gapes open like a mouth, the white of the shirt—and now, slowly spreading, red, bright, flowing red.

  With his hands clenched round the pole, Henning kicks out furiously against the swordsman.

  Meierfeld raises his sabre again. ‘Will you let go, bitch!’ And he brings it down, on the hand of Henning, which is straight away just a purple stain.

  And now Soldin and Geier let go of the flag, raise their swords, and bring them down. Henning has rolled over on to his side, covering with his body the hand that is still capable of holding, while blows rain down on the other.

  The police rain down blows, breathless, pale with fury, and round this little arena spins the stream of farmers, pressing, marching on, more new witnesses all the time.

  VIII

  A man is running the long way from the Central Prison into the town. He was standing in front of the dead grey wall when it suddenly acquired a voice, a white face appeared, and cries for help rang out: they were killing Reimers, the henchmen of this government, the beadles of the Republic, God damn the lot of them!

  Banz is running as if his life depended on it. In fact, it is someone else’s life. He has long since shaken off his farming friends. Where are they now?

  It’s not two or ten or even a hundred farmers he needs. As he runs along, he has a vision of thousands of farmers standing in front of the dead grey cement wall with its barred holes. And when these thousands open their mouths in a great cry, then it won’t be a cry for help, a cry from weakness, but the gates will fall open, the walls will come crashing to the ground, and out will come the condemned of the Republic.

  He runs—and there flits through his brain the recollection of the three margarine drums with dynamite in the locked barn at home. These drums have the force of ten thousand farmers, they open gates, change things in people’s minds, turn functionaries into timid, parasitical cringers, truly prepare the way.

  But now he is bringing the farmers. He will shout and tell them how they are being cheated and swindled, how Reimers is still doing his time here.

  The market square is empty when he reaches it, panting. Banz sees right away: they’re already on the march, the pavements are deserted, the chairs empty behind the windows of the beer joints.

  He runs on, turns the bend on the Burstah, and sees the street filled with an endless, swarming crowd of people.

  ‘What’s going on?’ he asks, breathlessly. ‘Why have you stopped marching?’

  ‘There’s some hitch at the front.’

  ‘There’s supposed to be a shindig with the Communists.’

  ‘Where’s Rohwer? Where’s Padberg? Where’s Henning?’

  ‘No idea, I expect somewhere near the front, though.’

  Banz must find them. He thinks for a moment. The narrows of the Burstah are impassable. It’s all choked with traffic and pedestrians. But there is a parallel street, which he reached through a gate, a garden, a courtyard and a further gate.

  Now it is plain sailing. He grips his stick harder in his hand and runs: he’ll settle the hash of that Communist rabble!

  He turns into Grünhofer Strasse, reaches the Stolper Torplatz, and now sees the narrows of the Burstah from the opposite perspective, and looks at the head of the march.

  He stands there motionless, forgetting to breathe.

  The collision with the police has stopped the front of the demonstration, but the following ranks have spilled out laterally: the whole breadth of the street is filled with a seething mass of peasantry, as dense as a wall.

  And in front of this wall, at intervals of six or ten feet, is a blue chain of police, beating down on the demonstrators with sticks and swords, trying to drive back the front line, which is itself continually being pressed forward by those following.

  With upraised hands and sticks, the farmers try to shield themselves against the blows, try to sidle down along the walls, looking for passages through to Grünhofer Strasse, only to be repeatedly forced back by fresh blows, to receive yet more blows.

  Banz gives a roar of rage. This is the State! This State as it really is, exactly as one had always imagined it to be.

  Bloodhounds! he thinks. Bloodhounds. Clubbing helpless citizens like seals.

  Banz walks on. On the side of the road, he’s spotted a gigantic policeman, bringing the flat of his sword down on the heads of demonstrators, all the time repeating his pointless mantra: ‘Clear the road!’

  He’s already very close to him, came up to him from behind, with his reversed stick like a cudgel in his fist. Suddenly it seems cowardly to him, to fell the man from behind, so instead he gives him a hard kick in the side of the shin.

  The policeman spins round, looks at him furiously. ‘Clear the road!’ he bleats.

  ‘“Clear the road!”’ Banz mocks him back. ‘You bloodhound! “Clear the road” . . . !’

  And strikes him with the handle of the stick on the temple, causing the man to throw up both his arms, spin wildly round on his own axis, and fall crashing to the ground.

  Oddly sobered, Banz looks down at him. He looks at the faces all round, he seems to see them as though through a veil, looking at him critically, reproachfully.

  ‘Well, you know,’ he mumbles, ‘he shouldn’t have been doing that either, with the sabre.’

  And he creeps off in the direction of Auntie Lieschen’s pub.

  I’ll stay out of things for a while, he thinks ruefully. I’ll drink a glass of beer.

  He lifts his foot to take a step. The noise and the turbulence are behind him.

  Then something strikes him sharply, pierces his brain like a hot iron. Fiery sparks whirl, and he plummets headlong with a shattered skull.

  IX

  The Altholm post office is on the Burstah, hard by the Stolper Torplatz. It has rather a lofty lower-ground floor, and two outer staircases lead up to the counters in the upper-ground floor.

  At the time of the battle, the staircase was packed with curious onlookers, surveying the scene and experiencing history in the making. In the counter room too there are many people crowded together, the windows on to the street have been thrown open, and they are looking out. Debating, excited, everyone is speaking at once, customers and post-office workers.

  One of the members of the public is the rustic gentleman with the chamois-brush hat, which he has, incidentally, now taken off. The secret representative of the regional government in Stolpe has the best seat in the house, and is half leaning out of the window, and is thus able to see, diagonally and from above, something the others can’t, namely the battle for the flag.

  Which is now almost over. Henning, who has still re
fused to relinquish the shaft, has been dragged bodily across the cobbles and against the kerb, has been further beaten, till finally the multiple severed muscles in his hands and arms have given way.

  Then they took the flag off him, and now Superintendent Kallene and a few constables and Inspector Hebel are standing on the pavement with their booty, ringed by the surf of the witless and helpless wash of farmers.

  From the station comes a little bearded man in grey street clothes and a little suitcase in his hand. The man from Stolpe sees him, the little manikin amuses him, because he doesn’t know what to do in the bustle, pushes in here, comes running out there, tries one avenue, and is brought to a stop.

  The manikin keeps running into the jam-packed crowds, like an ant he indefatigably keeps trying to break through, but not succeeding, and now here he is in the proximity of the flag.

  Detective Tunk follows the soft, broad-brimmed grey hat that is now suddenly steering confidently straight for the group. There is an area of clear space around the group, the farmers are standing silently and staring, and are being shoved away.

  Into that clear space the little fellow now plunges, and is already taking off his hat and moving his lips—Tunk can almost hear him speak, a politely couched question in a squeaky voice. But no one pays him any regard, the officials are standing with their backs to the people, grouped around their booty.

  Then the little bearded fellow takes heart, puts out a hand and tugs at an official’s jacket from behind.

  What happens next is like lightning striking.

  The official, a policeman, whirls round as though stabbed. There is a flash in his hand, white and shining. The sabre slices through the air, straight into the face of the little man.

  For a moment Tunk thinks he can see a deep, gaping slash across the nose and both cheeks. Then the manikin lifts both hands to his face, his deep gurgling ‘Oh’ is louder than everything else, and is clearly audible as far away as the window of the post office. And the man tumbles forward and is lost in the commotion of bodies.

  At the same time the officials and their flag withdraw further to the wall, and in the distance music is heard, a louder buzz goes through the ranks of marchers.

  Tunk with his chamois brush backs into the crowd behind him. ‘Out of my way!’ he shouts, and fights his way through. ‘Is this a post office or a theatre? Clear off. I need to telephone.’

  The further depths of the counter hall are empty, everyone is packed against the windows. The detective hurries up to the nearest phone box. ‘It’s high time,’ he murmurs.

  The door closes behind him, he sets a coin aside and picks up the receiver. An operator comes on the line.

  ‘372. And hurry. It’s urgent.’

  ‘Please pay!’

  There’s a ring, and Gareis’s girl secretary picks up.

  ‘Quick, I want the mayor! It’s a matter of life and death!’

  ‘The mayor is on holiday.’

  ‘You silly goose! Don’t give me that!’ shouts the detective. ‘Haven’t I said it’s a matter of life and death!?! Will you call the mayor, you silly bloody girl!’

  ‘Just one moment, please! I’m calling the mayor right now,’ he hears the voice, a little faintly.

  ‘But get a move on, will you!’

  The detective is grinning like an ape, receiver in hand, he suddenly starts doing knee-bends, madly quickly, up and down, faster and faster, wilder, while his heart is beating more rapidly and his lungs pant desperately for air.

  And so, when the mayor comes on the line, sleek, sleep-drunk (and very annoyed), he is able to sound completely plausible as he gasps: ‘Mayor! Comrade Gareis! The farmers are fighting with the police! The commander has been knocked to the ground, two watchmen are dead. I can see ten or a dozen farmers pulling out revolvers even as I speak. Rescue—’

  His voice is gone. And while Gareis rants and raves on the other end, Tunk quietly lays down the receiver on the shelf, doesn’t hang up, creeps quietly out of the booth, and gently shuts the door.

  And he goes into the phone booth next door, and in his normal voice, asks for number 785.

  Landlord Mendel in Grünhof answers.

  ‘This is the police. I want to speak to Lieutenant Wrede right away. He’s sitting in your lounge.’

  And then: ‘Well, Wrede . . . well, you know . . . best not use any names. Anyway, I’ve done it. Get your men ready. In five minutes Gareis will call you. Of course that’ll be the first you’ve heard of anything.’

  Calmly Detective Inspector Tunk walks out of the call booth. From the booth next door, from where he phoned just three minutes ago, a post official pops out and looks at him doubtfully.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ Tunk asks him encouragingly.

  ‘You wouldn’t by any chance have just called from this box?’ asks the official shyly.

  ‘Me? Didn’t you see which box I just came from?’

  ‘Of course. I do beg your pardon. But did you happen to see someone using this box?’

  ‘See? Yes, wait a minute. It was occupied when I happened along. I thought it might be empty. But there was a worker, yes, a worker in a blue jacket. He seemed terribly wrought up about something.’

  ‘Worker? Blue jacket? Thank you. Thank you very much. I’ll pass it along. Thank you.’

  And with that the postal worker dives back into the box, and the detective disappears into the crowd.

  X

  The Unicorn Pharmacy doesn’t have a very good reputation in Altholm. People would rather go to the Salomon or the Aquarius, even though it might be three times as far to get to.

  That’s because Heilborn the pharmacist indulges a sort of perverse opinionatedness next door to barminess. It doesn’t occur to him to give people what they ask for, he sells them only what he thinks is right. If Frau Marbede wants Pyramidon for her head-splitting migraines, then he gives her an enema, ‘so that you finally get the dirt flushed out of your system’. And he has an endearing way of sticking some French letters in with the purchases of young men and women. ‘You can thank me later, when you don’t have to come knocking for Gonosan and clap injections.’

  Of late the Unicorn has been almost entirely deserted. Apothecary Heilborn has extended his mission to the doctors of Altholm: he exercises a right of veto on their prescriptions, strengthens and dilutes as he sees fit, and has even been taken to court.

  He won’t be able to hang on to his knackery, as vengeful Altholmers refer to his practice, for much longer. But until they finally do withdraw the privilege, he continues to walk around his shop, and whiles away the hours administering morphine to himself at ever-more potent concentrations. That keeps him nice and busy, because he insists that the needles for the syringes have to be disinfected, and then the long dreamy states are there . . .

  Sometimes he has company. In the back office Frau Schabbelt sits with him for hours on end. A pairing made in heaven, one might think.

  There they are, old, greasy, dirty, with unkempt hanks of grey hair, dirty fingernails, pale, yellow-grey, with trembling lips. Sometimes Frau Schabbelt lays her head on the table, and sleeps the sleep of the dead, after the heavy intoxicants that Heilborn mixes up for her. Sometimes his head slumps forward on to his chest, strings of drool run down on to his waistcoat and shirt: they both have severed their ties with Altholm; neither has any family, any friends; no familiar, detested bed; no burial plot, purchased prudently in advance and waiting, fenced off, in the graveyard.

  He says to her: ‘No, don’t go just yet. You have some more of your poison, while I treat myself to a lovely four per cent solution.’ He potters off into the pharmacy.

  She stares out at the yard, the grey, rotting, packing straw, the ugly plywood chests, bristling with rusty nails.

  After a while, she realizes that he hasn’t returned and she starts calling for him: ‘Herr Heilborn! Herr Heilborn!’

  But she tires of that, and with what’s left in the glass and the bottle, she tries to get one more taste
in her mouth, and then she gets up, and sets off, lurching and reeling, supporting herself on table, chair, cupboard and wall, in the direction of the shop.

  There she finds Heilborn, backed against the wall, listening out. There is nothing to be seen through the tall windows, but a wild, threatening murmur is audible.

  ‘Ssh!’ whispers Heilborn, and sets his finger on his lips. ‘Ssh! Be very quiet! They want to find me to haul me off to the funny farm, but they won’t find me.’

  The woman listens too. ‘Nonsense,’ she manages to say. ‘There’s lots of people there. Something must have happened.’

  She walks over to the door of the shop and opens it.

  Just in front of the pharmacy windows is the group of officials with their captured flag. The masses are some way off, so Frau Schabbelt can see Henning lying in the gutter, bleeding and pale, with eyes shut.

  Five steps further on is a little manikin sitting on the kerb, with his face in his hands and blood pouring out between his fingers.

  People are milling around at a greater distance, because the police are still patrolling with weapons drawn, and from time to time calling out: ‘Move along now!—Don’t loiter!—Move along!’

  Frau Schabbelt scuttles down the steps to the man lying injured. She bends down over him, she calls to him, in her brain something has gotten confused: she thinks it is her dead son in front of her.

  ‘What happened, Herbert? What are you doing, lying there? You shouldn’t lie there!’

  She looks crossly at the pharmacist, who is trying to pull the little grey manikin upright. ‘Come here, you. He doesn’t matter. This is Herbert. Herbert is injured.’

  Now some of the farmers take up courage, a few of them step forward, help the drunken woman to pick up Henning. She cradles his head.

  ‘There,’ she says eagerly, ‘in there, in the pharmacy!’

  They drag him up the steps. Two others lead the little fellow with the beard, whom the apothecary is propping up from behind.

  The police commander strides through the mob. ‘Stop!’ he calls out. ‘These men are under arrest. No one is permitted to speak to them. Stop, I say!’