A Small Circus

  And however inclined Stuff might be to hold Henning in high regard ever since he lay on the cobbles bleeding from two dozen wounds, this seems to him to be overdoing it. Jerk, he thinks, as he goes on his way.

  He had thought it would be difficult to get through to the remand prisoner. But this is the hour when supper is served at the hospital, the sisters are all far too busy to notice him, and he doesn’t see a sentry.

  Fine state of affairs, thinks Stuff. Bit of a miracle Henning is still around.

  He knocks, waits for a moment, and goes in.

  Henning is still parked by the window, waving to his admirers. On the table are the thick end of a dozen bouquets, white parcels of chocolate, packets of cigarettes galore, and, here and there, half unpacked and indifferently left lying around, samples of handiwork.

  ‘Forget that nonsense, Henning,’ says Stuff impatiently. ‘I’ve got something important to talk to you about.’

  ‘Nonsense? That’s what you think. This is laying the groundwork for my forthcoming court appearance.’

  And he continues to wave and smile out the window.

  ‘Rubbish! Those deluded teenagers won’t save you.’

  ‘Maybe not, but they’ll tell their fathers and brothers and uncles what a sweet, kind, natural boy I am. And those fathers and uncles and brothers will be witnesses at my trial, or even on the jury, or at least friends of others that are.’

  ‘They’ll send you down, you know that.’

  ‘Not at all. With an atmosphere in the town like this. And half crippled as I am—that always plays well.’

  ‘Can you really not move the arm in your sling?’

  ‘Absolutely not. That arm is going to cost Altholm a packet in the months ahead.’

  ‘Jerk,’ and Stuff at last has managed to hit the correct tone. ‘You’re mad. You’ll be lucky if you get off with one or two years behind bars. Getting off free and being paid damages—dream on.’

  ‘We’re not there yet.’

  ‘No, thank God. Because before we are I need to know something, which is: What did you do with Gruen?’

  ‘With Gruen? With that maniac Gruen? What good is he to anyone? He’s the original overwound spring.’

  ‘Get to the point, Henning. You’ve planted some idea or other in his head. The man’s barking, you don’t use him! He’s got half a dozen kids or more, starved herring that he is. You don’t get someone like that to do your work for you.’

  Henning abruptly turns round, and slams the window shut. ‘Who do I get to do my work for me? Who am I meant to be using? Stuff, what’s got into you? If that idiot Gruen said something . . . then it was his own innate madness. If you know anything about me, Stuff, it’s that I don’t mind putting my foot in the dog shit.—But we can see right now.’ Henning pulls the door open. ‘Gruen, come here a minute, will you?’

  ‘There was no sentry outside when I came by.’

  ‘Liberal conditions, eh? But honestly, I haven’t seen the guy for five or six hours. And he is meant to be on duty till eight p.m.’

  ‘No, because he was visiting me. Gave me lots of stupid talk, accused me of not writing enough about the farmers—’

  ‘He’s got a point there.’

  ‘Fat lot you know about it.—But he was threatening, saying we were all involved in some conspiracy to betray the cause. “The lightning is in the cloud, and at the right moment—”’

  ‘Blathering imbecile.’

  ‘It got me thinking. There are infectious jokes. Did he ever ask you—this is an idea of mine—how you connect an alarm clock to an electrical timed fuse? Or how much dynamite you need for a proper bomb?’

  Henning stares.

  Suddenly his face turns pinched, the nose yellow and pointy. He slams his hand down on the table.

  ‘Oh, how can I be so stupid! Bloody idiot! Wretch! Those town troops should have beaten me to death, dammit!’

  ‘Stop swearing. Tell me.’

  ‘I can’t remember now how we got on to it, but somehow he managed to get the address where the dynamite is stored out of me. Yes, that was it, he offered to help, and said there was no safer storage for it than prison. So we argued back and forth, and finally I ended up boasting how secure our hiding place was.’

  Stuff groans and stares in disbelief. ‘Henning! Henning! You’re like an infant crapping its nappies! Can’t be expected to keep anything back! Everything’s got to come out!’

  ‘Stuff, we’ve got to find him! It’s all I need, with me about to be released, shenanigans like this.’

  ‘But you can’t get out of here!’

  ‘What do you mean, “can’t”? Don’t you know some way I can get past those hysterical bitches on the street?’

  ‘Yes, there is a way. We go through the boiler room and out the coal cellar. Leave a piece of paper saying you’ve gone out for a walk and are coming back later. They won’t do anything then. They’ll keep mum, seeing as it’s their own sentry who’s gone missing.’

  An hour later, Stuff is ringing the bell at the prison gate. Henning is standing in the background—it’s almost dark.

  They’ve been all over town, talked to the wife, quizzed the kids, no one knew where Gruen was.

  It turns out he is actually here.

  ‘Doing a turn on the late shift. Standing in for a sick colleague. Happy to take over, can use a little extra cash.’

  ‘Could we talk to him? Only for a moment.’

  ‘Completely out of the question, Herr Stuff. Conversation in prison at nine at night! The director would be on the case first thing tomorrow. But why don’t you wait for him to come off? He’ll be out in a couple of hours.’

  ‘Through this gate?’

  ‘Yes. It’s the only one! You ought to know that, Herr Stuff!’

  ‘Would you happen to have noticed if he had a little case with him? Or a cardboard box?’

  ‘Nope. Can’t remember. Don’t think so.’

  ‘Well, goodnight to you, and thanks. Here, take another cigar.’

  ‘Thanks. Do you want me to give him a message, Herr Stuff?’

  ‘No. Nothing. Evening.’

  ‘It all sounds perfectly OK, doesn’t it? Why would he take on someone else’s night shift to earn a little extra money if what he really wants to do is throw a bomb?’

  ‘Everything’s possible with Gruen. He walked off the job with you and took on another one here.’

  ‘Anyway, I’ll tell you this much, Stuff. We’ve got two hours—’

  ‘One hour and fifty.’

  ‘It’s enough. In that time I have to get hold of a woman.’

  ‘Aren’t there enough nurses?’

  ‘If you knew. The minute you want something, the sentry turns out to be a proper sentry. I could have made bombs to my heart’s content, but a girl in my room, absolutely not. Pure jealousy.’

  ‘All right then. How do you want her? Fat? Thin? Blonde? Brunette?’

  ‘I don’t care, Stuff. Just so long as it’s a woman.’

  IX

  At nine o’clock there’s a ring at Mayor Gareis’s door. It’s Political Adviser Stein, come to fetch his friend and master for a walk. They always go for walks together when it’s dark, and almost always along a little-used path that meanders along between fields and meadows.

  ‘You know, Adviser,’ says Gareis. ‘It’s important not to show too much of oneself to people. The less they see of you, the greater your mystique. Take me: if they saw me walking, they would say: Christ, here’s Fatty Gareis trying to lose a couple of pounds.’

  They walk slowly up the suburban street, at the end of which the mayor lives. They turn up the path. The odd summerhouse and allotment, and then the advance guard sent out by agriculture against industry: potato fields.

  ‘Potatoes,’ muses the mayor. ‘I prefer them to roses. Same family—did you know that?—potatoes. At home, whenever there wasn’t anything proper to eat, we always had potatoes. We all filled up on potatoes.’

  ‘A bit dull, do
n’t you find, fields?’

  ‘Do you? Not me.’

  ‘Yes,’ says the political adviser absent-mindedly. ‘You know, the farmers have stopped supplying the town now. They only take their pigs and their potatoes as far as the town limits.—There, you bloody Altholmers, if you want it, come and get it. The boycott is getting more and more rough.’

  ‘Adviser, would you mind not talking about the boycott, just for an hour. As if there was nothing else to do in the world. Unemployment’s getting worse. Our town has the highest unemployment in the entire province. And my welfare budget has been exhausted for the past two months.’

  ‘So what do you do?’

  ‘I carry on spending. I’d like to see the accountant who would refuse me the money. And at least on that point, I’ve got the whole Party behind me.’

  ‘Only on that point?’

  ‘They don’t consider me a proper Red any more. I’m too farmer-friendly for their liking. I think I’m meant to destroy them with fire and sword.’

  ‘But if they’re not going to support you, who are you going to look to in the coming struggle?’

  ‘Myself. I always think in the end they’ll realize they still need me. That I was right all along.’

  ‘Yes, and Temborius’s defeat will strengthen you.’

  The mayor stops. ‘That defeat is the worst thing that could have happened. Since learning about that, I’ve almost given up hope of an accommodation.’

  ‘But why? They’re all running back to you now.’

  ‘Can I do anything final without the help of the government? It’s the way it is, they’re always going to want to put their oar in, otherwise it’s no go. Henceforth, Temborius will chuck a spanner in the works whenever he can.

  ‘He’s such a confounded bureaucrat, his heart bleeds when things don’t run smoothly. It really causes him pain.

  ‘Well, and then he thought: All right, I’ll be a trimmer, I’ll meet you halfway, you’ll see you had the wrong impression of me . . . You don’t like Frerksen and Gareis? Fine, I’ll give you their heads on a plate!

  ‘He does it, and then he sends for them. The speed with which he does it, so soon after the sacrifice, you can tell, he couldn’t wait for things to be smoothed over. Then he can go to Berlin and brag about peace with the farmers. Triumph of my diplomacy.

  ‘And they go and spit in his face, they really hawked up some nasty phlegm. Believe me, the man sits in his office and weeps bloody tears, because for once in his life he acted against his principles and tried the humane route, and offered them his hand in peace. He’s now breeding a real hatred in his bosom, and I promise you there’s nothing worse than a hate-filled bureaucrat. If you can’t count on anything else in the world, there’s something you can build your house on.

  ‘And he will make any future reconciliation impossible. He won’t stop until the last farmer starves. He will happily sacrifice Altholm with its forty thousand inhabitants, he’ll even sacrifice his own career. And he’ll be the one who shatters all my good work.’

  ‘You can build it up again wherever you go, Mayor.’

  ‘But I’m not even entertaining the idea of going elsewhere. Maybe I can still win. I can point to farmer-friendly policies, all the things I’ve done things for them! The exhibition. The auction hall, which I financed. Or scraped together. The horse market at the equestrian show. And the training courses in winter. Well, one day when they’ve quietened down a bit they’ll remember them all. And then there won’t be a big palaver about reconciliation, then we’ll just do something nice, which will help the farmers come into some money—and we’ll all be friends again.’

  ‘May I point out that you’ve been talking about the boycott for the past fifteen minutes?’

  ‘I know. I’m no good at keeping to my own rules. But now we’re going to walk briskly for the next half an hour. And I swear I’ll be thinking of anything but the boycott.’

  Silence follows, not just for the next half-hour but for fully an hour of walking.

  Then the path goes through a small copse. There the mayor sits down and listens to the night wind in the branches.

  ‘Isn’t it good? What a wonderful institution the wind is. One should keep time for something like that. You can spend for ever thinking about stuff. There’s something so . . . Did you ever think about how you recognize the different trees, Stein?’

  ‘The leaves, maybe?’

  ‘But in winter you can still tell which is an apple tree and which is a cherry.’

  ‘I can’t, I have to say. But presumably by the colour of the trunk, and the type of bark, and what have you.’

  ‘And if you’re two hundred yards away, could you tell then? No, it seems to me every type of tree has a particular angle of extension, so many degrees at which it puts out its branches. Or variations of different angles. I’m sure there are people who know such things. But unfortunately we never come across them, you and me.’

  ‘I certainly can’t help you.’

  ‘Are you upset, Adviser? Don’t be.—Shall we turn back?’

  They approach the town once more, when suddenly a man emerges from the darkness. Little more than a shade. He asks politely after the time.

  The luminous dial on the mayor’s watch indicates half past eleven, and just as he says so, the clocks of the town all strike, some tinny, some clangorous, all seven of them.

  The man thanks him and heads on out of town. Then he stops and calls out of the darkness: ‘That was Mayor Gareis, wasn’t it?’

  The man is quite some way off, and Gareis calls back: ‘At half past eleven at night, just plain Gareis will do. Leave the mayor in the town hall.’

  The man seems to be even further away, but seems to have an unquenchable thirst for answers. ‘Are you actually married?’ he asks.

  And the mayor echoes: ‘Christ, man, would I be so fat if I wasn’t?’

  ‘Any kids?’

  ‘No. Not as of now. Anything else?’

  And honestly, the questioner—he’s now at least fifty paces off—calls back: ‘Why did you have the peasants beaten down?’

  ‘They did that themselves,’ comes the sibylline reply, and Gareis hears a cheeky, cackling laugh.

  ‘He was a few sheets to the wind,’ says the adviser reprovingly. ‘I really don’t understand you, Mayor.’

  But the mayor doesn’t reply.

  ‘That was funny,’ he says at last, ‘and a little bit eerie. Well, I think I need a good night’s sleep, nothing less will do me good.’

  ‘Why eerie? It didn’t seem eerie to me. Just aggressive.’

  ‘Aggressive? If you say so. He seemed to me to be someone looking for extenuating circumstances.’

  ‘You’ve lost me there.’

  ‘I think . . . Let’s go on. It doesn’t matter. Anyway—there’s no protection against it.’

  ‘Against what?’

  ‘Against being accosted by a drunk, I suppose.’

  They walk on. They turn into the suburban street and find themselves outside the mayor’s house. There are two men standing there, watching them.

  Gareis recognizes one of them, but doesn’t want to know him. He walks straight up to his front door, but the man addresses him.

  ‘Excuse me, Mayor. Did you happen to run into a man with a little goatee beard? It’s very important.’

  The mayor replies coolly: ‘I would have preferred not to have to talk to you for a while, Herr Stuff. Something about you doesn’t smell right. But since it does seem to matter to you: on the footpath to Lohstedt, about five minutes ago, a man accosted us. It was dark, but from the sound of his voice he might have had a goatee.’

  ‘Might I ask, Mayor, what he was after?’

  ‘No, no more questions, Herr Stuff.’ The mayor turns to Stein. ‘Goodnight, Adviser—’

  But Stuff won’t be shaken off. ‘Don’t be vengeful, Mayor. I swear, tomorrow you can cut me dead as much as you like, but today please answer me: what was the man after?’

&nb
sp; ‘You’re a queer fish, Stuff,’ says the mayor, not without a tinge of admiration. ‘Too bad you’re a newspaper man.—My adviser was of the view that the man was drunk, but that wasn’t my feeling.’

  Stuff presses. ‘What did he ask you?’

  ‘The time. Just as it was striking half past eleven. Whether I was the mayor. Whether I had children. Whether I was married.’

  The adviser completes the list: ‘Why you had the peasants beaten down.’

  ‘Did you give him sensible answers?’

  ‘Except for the final question, yes.’

  ‘That was him, Henning. I tell you—’

  ‘Henning . . . ?’ asks the mayor, acutely.

  ‘Here he comes!’ yells Henning. ‘Run! Run!’

  Out of the dark allotment path a man shoots past like a rocket. Over his head he is ready to hurl something that looks like a parcel.

  Stuff barges the mayor in the back. ‘Run! Run, Mayor! A bomb!’

  And Stuff races off. Stein is already running. Henning has a twenty-yard start on both.

  The four of them run down the barely built-up, deserted suburban street, the mayor bringing up the rear, already panting for breath. Behind him, fleet-footed, races the starved herring, madman Gruen, whirling the bomb over his head. In a shrill voice, he yells: ‘The plot has been discovered! The traitors are assembled. All will be annihilated by the lightning from the cloud!’

  The outcome of the race is hardly in doubt: every second Gruen is closing on the mayor.

  He hears the light and rapid footfall, thinks: done for either way. It all depends on my being able to snatch the bomb away from him with my hands.

  He turns with baffling swiftness, crashes into the arms of his pursuer, knocks him to the ground with the sheer bulk of him, falls down on top of him, feels him holding the case tightly in his hands, feels an absurd bite in his arm, yells: ‘Stuff, come here! Stuff, help!’

  And, quite astonished at himself, he hears himself call: ‘Brave Stuff, help me!’

  He wrestles with the other man for the bomb, which he is trying to smash down on the ground. The other is fighting tooth and nail, the mayor feels any moment . . .