The Drinker

“So your name’s Sommer?”

“Yes, Sommer’s my name. Erwin Sommer. Like Sommer-time. If you go travelling with me you’ll have Sommer all the time.”

I laughed. But she remained serious. She said, “There you are, pop, somebody’s already stolen your money and things. You can’t manage, in your condition. I’ll look after it for you. It’s quite safe if I keep it for you. Here, I’ll put some money in your pocket. You don’t want to be entirely without money, do you, pop? It’s twenty-three marks. If that gets lost, it doesn’t matter so much.…”

She became more and more insistent. It was ridiculous how seriously she took this silly money.

“And you’ll promise, won’t you, pop, not to tell anybody that I’m keeping your money for you? Nobody? Whatever happens?”

“I’ll never tell anybody, Elinor,” I answered, “I swear. But all this is unnecessary. We’re going away at six o’clock.…”

“Well, you’ve sworn it, pop. You won’t forget. Not a word to anybody, ever. Whatever happens!”

“Not a word, Elinor!”

“My good old pop,” she cried and clasped me in her arms. “And now as a reward you shall be allowed to drink out of my mouth!”

She took a mouthful of kirsch, then she put her lips to mine, I shut my eyes, and from her mouth the kirsch flowed sharp and warm and living into my mouth. It was the sweetest thing I ever experienced. I ceased to exist.

24

I wake up, I look around. No, I am not awake, I am still dreaming. What I just saw was a whitewashed room with an iron grill on one of its sides—that is something out of my dream. I lie there with my eyes shut, I try to remember … something happened in the night. Then my left hand remembers. Quite involuntarily it gropes about the floor and now it encounters the cool smoothness of glass. It raises the bottle to my mouth, and I drink again, with eyes shut I drink Black Forest plum-brandy again. I am with Elinor again! I am with Elinor! Life is beginning again, I swing myself higher … I have only been asleep for a short time and now I’m with Elinor again.

Two, three mouthfuls, and now the bottle is empty. I suck at it, not another drop comes. With a deep sigh I put it down and once again I open my eyes. I see a whitewashed cell, rather dirty, with many inscriptions and obscene drawings scratched on the walls. Very high up on one wall, where it begins to slope, a small barred window. This window is open. Through the opening, I see a pale blue feebly sunlit sky. On its fourth side, this cell has a strong iron-barred grill, exactly like the bars of cages in the Zoo. Outside this grill is a stove, then a door, which is shut. I am imprisoned! I look at my bed. I am lying in my clothes on a miserable iron bedstead, on a straw-bag with a torn blanket. My cell also contains a table, a stool and a terrible stinking bucket. Yes, and the bottle which I have just emptied … I spring up from my bed, I hold the bottle up to the light: there really isn’t a drop in it! Finally I put it away behind the bucket, and while I am doing so, something of the night’s experiences returns …

I see the untidy dimly-lit bar-room, I see myself, Erwin Sommer, proprietor of a market produce business, a respectable citizen of 41 years old, I see myself grappling with the police, resisting arrest tooth and nail—we are rolling on the floor, and the stout landlady with the white hair, who had been so frightened of my gun and who now knows I was only pretending to have a gun, is all the time giving me sly kicks and punches, and suddenly pushing her hand in my face, while I am fighting with the police for my liberty, and at the same time, during the fight, I see Elinor watching us struggling, with an unfathomable smile on her face, but she doesn’t lift a finger to help. Neither does she say a word.

And yet I might perhaps have broken free, for a terror was raging within me that I, a civilised citizen, might be marched off to prison like some nobody, I, a respectable man to whom people raised their hats—in gaol! My desperation gave me such strength, that I might well have wrenched myself free from the sergeant—had it not been for Elinor. At one point of our struggle, perhaps at the very moment when victory was inclining towards me, she was suddenly standing by us with one of my bottles of Black Forest plum-brandy; smiling gently and looking radiantly at me with her pale eyes, she said: “Don’t be upset, pop. The sergeant’ll let you take a bottle of schnaps with you. It’s only for one night, pop, until you’ve got over your jag.”

That dispelled my fighting spirit, and they easily got the mastery of me. Once again, alcohol and Elinor seduced me (they were probably the same poison: alcohol and Elinor); they had deceived me so often, and led me to my most ignominious defeats, and yet I never seemed to learn. I sold my chances of freedom for a bottle of schnaps, and now, there it stands, behind the stinking bucket, empty. And here I stand, between white-washed walls; here is an iron grill, and up there, near the ceiling, a little window. No Freedom, no Elinor. No schnaps. And suddenly I recall the final scene, the very last of the previous night, such a shameful scene that I clench my fists and grind my teeth.… We had come to terms, the policeman and I. He had had a lot to say about the regulations and so on, but I suppose I had given him trouble enough already, and he was probably frightened I might make more difficulties on the way. He had finally agreed that I should take the bottle of schnaps with me; I carried it in my trousers pocket, the cork loose and ready to be pulled out. In return, I had given my word that I wouldn’t resist him any more, and wouldn’t attempt to escape. Despite that, he had put a little steel chain round my right wrist; perhaps he rather mistrusted a drunken man’s word, and now we are standing in the doorway. I turn and say to Elinor: “Good night, Elinor. Thank you for everything, Elinor.”

And she answers in an indifferent voice, “Good night, pop. Sleep well”—just as if I were some regular customer going home to bed after his evening pint. Well, with that we’re ready to go, the sergeant and I, when suddenly the landlady calls in a shrill voice: “What about my wine? And my schnaps? And the broken glasses? The drunken old scoundrel hasn’t paid yet, sergeant! He’s not going to get away with that! Let him pay up first!”

The sergeant looks doubtfully at me, sighs, then asks in a low voice: “Have you got any money?”

I nod.

“Pay up then, so I can get home.”

And aloud: “How much is it?”

The landlady tots it up, and says, “Sixty-seven marks, including service. Oh yes, and there’s the phone call to the police station, sergeant, that makes altogether sixty-seven marks twenty.”

I reach in my pocket, I bring out a little money. I reach into the breast-pocket of my jacket, it is empty. Suddenly I remember … I look at Elinor first with a silent question, then pleading, challenging, insisting … Elinor does not look at me. With a faint unfathomable smile she glances at the little pile of change. I have put down on the table. Then her glance slides away and across to the landlady. Elinor’s lips open a little, the smile broadens on her mouth. The landlady has darted over and counts the money in no time.

“Twenty-three marks!” she shrieks. “You scoundrel! You damned twister, you! First you rob me of my night’s rest and threaten me with a revolver, and then—”

She goes on abusing me. The sergeant listens, bored and yawning. Finally, as the landlady tries to get at my face again with her claws, he wards her off and says: “That’s enough, now, Frau Schulze.” And to me: “Haven’t you really any money?”

“No,” I say, and look firmly at Elinor. This time she looks back at me, just as firmly, without a trace of a smile. And now, quick as lightning, the girl does an astonishing thing: she reaches into the neck of her blouse and momentatily draws out the bundle of notes she has taken from me. I see the blue shimmer of the hundred-mark notes. The tip of her tongue appears in the corner of her mouth. She smiles ironically. The bundle of notes disappears again in her bosom. She puts her hand under her breast, lifts it a little so that I see its beautiful full curve, turns away from me, and goes behind the bar.

Oh, how sly and refined she is: just at the right moment she reminds me of my word, but not quite trusting my word, she reminds me also of the bond of our flesh. Bitter-sweet, with a cold fire, a mistress who has never quite given herself, who would never quite belong to me—the true queen of alcohol!

“No,” I say with a dry voice, “I’ve no more money on me. But send the bill to my office. My wife will pay it.”

The landlady turns on me: “Your wife’ll have something better to do than pay a drunkard’s bills! Turn his pockets out, sergeant. Perhaps he’s still got something on him.…”

“I haven’t,” I say, “but I’ve got a brief-case outside, sergeant. Can I go and fetch it?”

We fetch the brief-case, containing the purchases I had made at the little health resort. I spread out my purchases: my two suits of parrot-coloured pyjamas, the elegant toilet-set, the French perfume … how long ago is it, since I, with my man-of-the-world jokes, had bought them all from those young girls? Now I’ll never use them! How long ago is it since, on that terrace by the lake, I dined off green eels and burgundy and reflected on what a comfortable life I would lead as a retired businessman? How long? Just a bare twelve hours. And now I’ll never lead that comfortable life! Now I have a chain about my wrist and I am being taken into custody by the police as a common criminal. Oh, farewell, good life!

“What am I supposed to do with these fine knick-nacks?” the landlady bellows. “Seven pairs of cuticle and nail scissors alone! I can’t use them! I want my money! And these common-looking pyjamas!”

But one can tell from her voice that this is only a rearguard action; her greed has been awakened.

“I paid about a hundred marks for it,” I say. “And there’s two bottles of plum-brandy and a bottle of schnaps outside. You can have them as well. Now are you satisfied?”

She goes on grumbling for a while, but then she calms down.

“But I’d like to give this bottle of scent to your girl for a tip,” I say, taking it.

“She can have it, for aught I care,” says the landlady. “I don’t want to stink myself up with that whore’s stuff.”

But she holds up the gaudy pyjamas to see if they are long enough for her.

“Elinor!” I call through the bar-room again. I cannot get away from the sergeant because of the chain. “I’ve got a bottle of real French perfume for you here. Come along!”

“Oh, leave me alone,” she calls back sullenly. “I’ve had enough of you. Why don’t you take him away, sergeant? I want to get to bed.”

Her brutal lack of consideration for me, now that she has got what she wants, almost takes my breath away. I call sharply across the bar-room, “Aren’t you relying a bit too much on my decency, Elinor?”

“Take that drunken fool away, sergeant,” she shouts. “I don’t want any more of his gab. He always did make me sick. I hope you keep him in jug for ever!”

I understood, in a moment I understood. Now my money was safe for her. I had denied possession of it myself. And she no doubt did not have it about her any more, she had hidden it somewhere behind the bar. Now she let the mask fall. I was a disgusting idiot. True enough, I really was. A good thing I still had a bottle of schnaps in my pocket, as a consolation! Supposing the schnaps were to desert me now, as well?

“Well, come on,” said the sergeant, and pulled at the little chain.

I followed him without a word. The policeman mounted his bicycle and rode off, slowly for a cyclist, rather quickly for a pedestrian. I trotted beside him. He handed me over at the lock-up in a large village nearby, the same place where I had arrived by train that evening.

25

I have moved my bed under the little window and pulled myself up by the iron bars. I see a peaceful sunny country, with meadows, ploughed fields, grazing cattle, and strips of woodland on the horizon. Directly below me is a vegetable garden with a paling fence. An old man is walking along a path, picking green stuff for goats and rabbits and putting it into a sack. He can go where he likes. And I, I am a prisoner! Yesterday all this belonged to me, I could do as I wished with my life. Today, others hold my life in their hands, and I must wait to see what they decide to do with it.

I let myself fall on the bed. I feel very sick. My head aches. The effect of the few mouthfuls of drink I had just now has gone already. I am thirsty—but whenever shall I be able to quench my thirst again? Today, I tell myself soothingly, today for sure. Today they will let you go again. They only wanted to frighten you. That’s what they do. They put drunkards into a cell for the night, so they can sleep it off and sober up, and then they set them free again. That’s what they’re doing with you too. I don’t bear them any grudge. After all, they’re acting properly enough. I really went too far in that country inn; this warning example, this shot in the air, is quite good for me. Soon the key will turn in the lock and that nice sergeant of last night will come in and say: “Well, Herr Sommer, had a good sleep? Then get out of here—and don’t get into mischief again!”

And I go out into freedom again, into that fresh green sunny morning where an old man with a sack can gather green stuff along the roadside wherever he will. I am free again. If it had been a really serious matter, would the sergeant have put a bottle of schnaps into the cell with me?

So I pacify myself, and when any recollection of that scene in the night with Magda tries to sneak up on me, I firmly ward it off. Magda is my wife. In spite of all our differences lately, we’ve been together for so long, she will forgive me, she has already forgiven me. She understands that I was ill. But this warning example has sobered me. I’ll never drink again. Not a drop.

I jump up and pace about my cell. No, I want to be honest now, I don’t want to lie to myself any more: when I’m released from here, I shan’t be able to give up the drink immediately. I am terribly tortured by thirst already. It is like a voracious longing in my body, a greed that seems to want to kill me if it is not satisfied. My limbs tremble, one fit of sweating follows another, my stomach is in revolt.

Suddenly I remember that before I left the inn, I had paid for a whole bottle of kirsch, which had remained only half-emptied, on the table. I should have asked the sergeant to let me finish it. He would have allowed me, and then I would have had more alcohol in me, and I wouldn’t have had all this terrible trouble now!

Well then, I want to be honest with myself: I cannot entirely give up alcohol at once, but from now on I shall drink only very moderately, perhaps a mere half bottle a day, or only a third, I could even manage with a third already. Just now, one single little schnaps would make me happy, a tiny glass, barely a mouthful of schnaps, in the state I’m in at present.

When I am let out of here shortly, I’ll treat myself to a little glass in the village, just the one, only, and then I’ll go home on foot, and never drink again. I haven’t any more money on me, but I’ve got my blueish spring coat. I’ll leave it with the landlord as security. He’ll give me a bottle of schnaps on it, perhaps two, and then I’ll be provided for, for three or four days. Certainly for three days, anyway! And in three days I’ll have Magda around, I shall be very friendly and loving with her, I’ll get money from her again.… For a moment I shut my eyes: I have just thought of that five thousand marks I drew from the bank about this time yesterday. It must have been a heavy blow for the business. It might not be such a simple matter to pacify Magda … but I quickly assure myself, I can mortgage our house, it’s free of debt so far; I’m sure to raise five thousand marks on the house. Then Magda would be placated. And of course I’m not going to let Lobedanz get away with his robbery unpunished. I’ll go and see him today and he’ll have to give back my things and the silver and jewellery, at least. I’ll let him keep two thousand marks of the money. And if he won’t come to terms, I’ll prosecute him, and then good gentle hypocritical Lobedanz goes to prison instead of me.

So my thoughts run on. Despite occasional uneasy moments, they are on the whole optimistic. I’ll get by, all right. After all, I’m a respected citizen. They’ll take care not to treat me too harshly!

In between times I stare almost unconsciously at the inscriptions on the cell walls. Some are written in pencil, some are scratched in the whitewash with a nail. Mostly, a name is written above, and below are two dates—the date of entry and of release. I find it very reassuring that all these dates are so close together. According to the inscriptions the man who occupied this cell for the longest time was here for ten days. Another proof that they have no bad intentions towards me. Ten days—well, ten days are quite out of the question for me. With my hunger for alcohol, I’d never be able to bear it. But I, of course, I shall be released in a few minutes. And besides, what about breakfast? Prisoners have to have breakfast don’t they? Probably dry bread and water, but still breakfast. It is at least half-past nine now, to go by the sun, and nobody has brought me any breakfast. Of course, that’s another sign they don’t mean badly by me. They intend to let me out so quickly that they don’t want to waste a breakfast on me. The sergeant saves that much. I can buy myself breakfast outside! That’s as clear as day.

Completely reassured for the moment, I throw myself on to my straw mattress again, and try to go to sleep. I think of Elinor. I try to recall the sweetness of the moment when she gave me schnaps to drink out of her mouth, but strangely enough, this doesn’t seem so sweet to me any more. No, I don’t want to think of that country inn again. It was too horrible. And how that little whore fleeced me, like any silly schoolboy. But I’m not going for her like I will for Lobedanz, let her sink or swim with her loot, I’ll never see anything of her again. From now on, I live only for Magda. It’s a good thing I’m absolutely finished with those people at the inn. I’ve paid for everything, they can’t want anything else from me, I shall never see them again. I only wish I was so sure of Magda’s attitude to me.…

So my thoughts run. In between times I sleep a little, half drowsing or else suddenly gone right off as in a deep faint. And then I am awake again, conscious once more of the torment in my body, I groan: “My God, my God, I can’t bear this … am I never to get out of here?”

I run to and fro, shake the iron bars, lean against the door in the mad hope that perhaps it has been left open, and think of Magda.… To tell the truth, I am afraid of Magda … she can be so damned energetic.… But I am her husband, we loved each other, she will forgive me, she must … so turns the mill-wheel of my thoughts.

26

I have been sleeping again. The clatter of keys has awakened me. I spring up from my bed and look expectantly at the four gentlemen who come into my cell. Two of them I accord only a short glance: they wear police uniform. One is the sergeant who brought me here last night; the other is a policeman whom I know from my home town. Many a time I have played cards with him over a glass of beer, a good respectable man, not of my social class of course, but I never was proud. One of the two men in civilian clothes I do not know, a young man with sharp features and rather staring severe eyes. His lower lip protrudes heavily. But I know the other civilian all too well, it is our family doctor, good old Dr Mansfeld. The moment I recognise him, it passes through my mind like a lightning-flash that I’m not going to be released. He will take me to a home for alcoholics. But that is not so bad, on the contrary, perhaps it’s much better. In such a home, my present torments would be eased, they are bound to have some remedy there, and then I shall be spared that impending discussion with Magda. Magda will think much more leniently about a sick man in a home of that kind. All this runs through my mind in a few seconds and I hurry across to the doctor. I shake his hand. I say excitedly: “Thank you for coming, Dr Mansfeld. You see,” I laugh, a little embarrassed, “how they’ve housed me here!”

I glance around the dirty cell. Dr Mansfeld presses my hand firmly. I notice that he is upset too, his face is trembling.

“Yes, my dear Herr Sommer,” he says and there is a tremor in his voice, “I hadn’t intended things to end like this.”

“To end?” I say and try to give an easy tone to my voice. “To end, Dr Mansfeld? I think this is a new beginning. You’ll send me to a nursing-home and make me well again.”

“I wanted to do that a fortnight ago, my dear Herr Sommer,” says Dr Mansfeld, shaking his head, “but unfortunately you’ve made it impossible. Now it’s for the Public Prosecutor to say.”

And with that, he looks across at the younger man with the staring eyes, who pushes out his protruding underlip still further, looks at me severely, and says, at first hesitantly: “Yes, yes, of course.”

Then quickly, “Herr Sommer, I have to arrest you for the attempted murder of your wife. You are under arrest.”

I stand thunderstruck. For a moment I cannot utter a word.

“They can’t be serious,” I think feverishly. “They’re only trying to frighten you. Attempted murder? Of Magda?”

At last I can speak. I say in a trembling voice, “Attempted murder of my wife? That’s ridiculous. I never tried to murder Magda!”

The Public Prosecutor gives me a crushing look, and barks: “We’ll soon show you how ridiculous it is, Sommer!” and, “Come, doctor!”

And again, to the policeman from my own town. “You know what to do, sergeant. Take the man away.”

“Dr Mansfeld!” I call after them in boundless despair, as they leave, “Dr Mansfeld, you know how much I loved Magda.…”

The door slams behind the two civilians. I am alone with the two men in uniform. Distracted, I slump down on my straw bed and hide my face in my hands.

27

After I had sat motionless like that for a while with the words “attempted murder of your wife” running round and round in my head, the sergeant from my own town, Herr Schulze, put his hand on my shoulder and said, as a gentle reminder: “We have to go now, Sommer.”

“Sommer.” How it touched me, this simple “Sommer” without “Herr”! To be spoken to like that by quite a humble man with a yearly income of hardly more than two thousand four hundred marks, brought home to me in the clearest possible way the changed circumstances of my life. Ever since I finished my apprenticeship, no one had addressed me without calling me “Herr”, and now—I took my hands from my face and with tears in my eyes I asked, “Where are you taking me, Herr Schulze?”

I stressed the “Herr” but he took no notice. Such a simple man probably has no feeling for these fine shades of intonation.

“Only to the police-court, Sommer,” he said. “Only to the police-court.” And he continued, “Look, Sommer, you’re an educated man. You won’t cause any trouble, will you? I ought to put you in handcuffs, but if you promise not to cause trouble.…”

“I promise you, Herr Schulze”, I said eagerly, and almost cheerfully now, “I promise on my honour.”

“Fine,” he replied, “I’ll trust you. Put your coat on. There’s your hat. Have you got anything else? Then come along!”

He went with me out of the cell, we descended a stairway and stood in the village street. I had only been in the semi-darkness of the lock-up for a few hours, but the spacious brightness of the countryside overwhelmed me. My heart beat faster at this greeting from the outside world. “Supposing,” I quickly thought, “supposing I were to jump over the fence and run through that bushy garden, across the meadows and into the forest, would Schulze trouble to catch me again? Would he even shoot after me as if I were a real criminal? Oh no,” I thought, with a weak smile, “he’d never do that. We’ve often played cards together, and he knows who I am and what I represent. But I don’t want to run away from him at all,” I quickly thought, “I promised I wouldn’t cause any trouble, and I’m a man of my word. But there’s something else I want from him.…”

When Schulze had mentioned that he had to take me to the police-court, a hopeful possibility had occurred to me.

“Herr Schulze,” I said very politely, “I would like you to do me a favour.…”

“Well, what is it, Sommer?” he asked. “Am I walking too fast? We can easily go slower. The train doesn’t leave for another twenty minutes.”

“Look, Herr Schulze,” I began, “I’ve got a frightful toothache. And I see there’s an inn just over the road. Couldn’t I quickly nip in and have a rum or a brandy? That always relieves my toothache immediately. You can stand at the bar with me,” I quickly continued, “if you’re afraid I’ll run away from you. Of course, I won’t run away. It’s just on account of this terrible toothache.”

“You put that right out of your head,” said the sergeant firmly. “I’d lose my uniform if it got around that I’d been drinking schnaps with a prisoner in some pub. Nothing doing, Sommer.”

“But nobody knows me here, Herr Schulze,” I cried pleadingly. “It’ll never come out.”

“There!” cried the sergeant, and he raised his hand to his helmet in salute. The doctor’s car, with the Public Prosecutor sitting next to Dr Mansfeld, had passed us.

“If those two had seen us going into a pub, I’d have been for it! So let’s get on. Sommer!”

“Herr Schulze,” I pleaded, and I did not stir a step from the square in front of the inn, my last chance. “There’s really not a soul here who knows me. Please do me this one favour! Just one single schnaps! I’ll tell my wife to let you have a hundred marks …”

“That’s going too far!” shouted the sergeant, red with rage. “Have you gone raving mad, Sommer? That’s bribery, what you’re trying to do. I ought to charge you on the spot. Come on immediately, or I’ll put you in handcuffs.”

Utterly crushed and intimidated, robbed of my last hope, I followed Herr Schulze. For a while we walked silently side by side, he muttering angrily to himself, I with bowed head and dragging feet.

Then the sergeant said more calmly, “I can’t understand you, Sommer. You used to be a solid and respectable man, and now you get up to tricks like this. Haven’t you had enough of that old drink? Hasn’t it got you into enough trouble? Anyway, I don’t want to put you into a worse plight than you are already. I didn’t hear a thing. But be a good fellow now, Sommer, and pull yourself together. In a few days that boozing fit will be over and you’ll have a clear head again. And you’re going to need a mighty clear head, as you ought to know by what the Public Prosecutor said.”

I heard all this in silence, without answering. I found it most humiliating and offensive that such a simple fellow as Sergeant Schulze should dare to presume to speak to me in such a way. Of course I did not know then that I stood at the beginning of a long road of suffering, and that quite other people, of much lower standing, were to be far more outspoken with me.

We had arrived at the station, and Sergeant Schulze bought two third-class tickets for us.

“Well,” he said, and marched me on to the platform among the waiting people. “Keep your head up, Sommer, and go on talking to me, then nobody will notice anything. They’ll all think we’re old acquaintances who’ve just met by chance. At home, after a game of cards, we used to walk along the Breitestrasse together for a bit, and it never occurred to you or anyone else that we were anything other than acquaintances.…”

He was right there. And since by now I had somewhat recovered from my shock over the schnaps, we really managed to hold quite a sensible conversation, first about the hay harvest which was just starting, then about the harvest prospects in general. Schulze and I were both of the opinion that on the whole the outlook was not bad, but it ought to rain now, the spring had been too dry, and the forage especially, but the mangolds as well could do with a bit of moisture.

The short train journey passed quite quickly, and probably none of the passengers had an inkling that here was a man under arrest for attempted murder. (Sometimes I liked to imagine myself as some real and gloriously villainous criminal.) But when we reached our own station and forced our way through the waiting crowds, into the booking-hall then out into the square in front of the station, I felt quite apprehensive again. For at any moment I might meet a close acquaintance, or one of my own employees even, yes, even my own wife. I tugged at the sergeant’s sleeve, and begged, “Herr Schulze, couldn’t we go round by the back streets a bit, and through the park? I know so many people here, and it would really be most embarrassing.…”

Herr Schulze nodded his head.

“That’s all right as far as I’m concerned. It doesn’t matter whether you get to the police-court a quarter of an hour earlier or later. But I’d like to relieve myself.…” And with that, Herr Schulze accompanied me diagonally across the square to that very edifice I had visited with Lobedanz, coming from another direction some twenty-four hours before. It was a strange feeling, to be standing again in this room with its six basins, to hear the water rushing and to look at the dirty wet asphalt floor. This was where I had wrestled with Lobedanz—it was such a short time ago and yet already it seemed quite incredible. Like a wild dream that is completely convincing while one dreams it, and yet seems absurdly grotesque as soon as one awakes. But I had fought Lobedanz here, it hadn’t been a dream, and no word of honour nor feeling of consideration bound me to that arch-rogue. So when we came out of the public convenience again and were making our way along the edge of town, avoiding all the busier streets, I took heart and told Sergeant Schulze one after the other, all my experiences with Lobedanz, from the time I first appeared in his steam-filled kitchen after my flight from the doctor’s car, to my fight for my suitcase and money in the toilet. In the course of his duty, Sergeant Schulze must have experienced too much of human passions and weaknesses to be very surprised about an affair like this, but during my story he stopped several times, quite moved, and exclaimed, “Good heavens, it’s unbelievable!” “You don’t say! Is that really true, Sommer?” He whistled through his teeth as well. Finally, when I had finished and was waiting for an outburst of indignation against that scoundrel Lobedanz, Sergeant Schulze remained silent for a while and then, looking me full in the face, he said deliberately: “I only know you from playing cards with you. That’s to say, I don’t really know you at all, but I always took you for a sensible clear-headed businessman. That you’re such a—excuse the expression but it’s the truth—such a stupid ox, is something I would never have dreamed of. You can twist and turn it about as you please, but it wasn’t just the booze. You can’t blame such thick-headedness as that on the booze. You must have seen what a scoundrel the fellow was, the very first day. Well, you did see it, and yet you didn’t get out, though you would have been able to soak as you wanted in any little pub around the corner. No, it absolutely served you right that that fellow took you down. It served you right, and I only wish he’d taken that last thousand marks from you as well, then you wouldn’t have been able to get up to mischief in that inn.…”

The sergeant drew breath and looked at me severely. I was most indignant at this quite unexpected effect of my account, and I said crossly, “I didn’t tell you this story so that you could give me a moral lecture, Schulze.…”

“Sergeant Schulze, if you don’t mind, Sommer!” Schulze corrected me severely.

“But I thought,” I continued furiously, “that you might take the trouble to set about catching this scoundrel immediately.”

“That’s good,” laughed the sergeant ironically. “First of all, in your drunken stupor you have to hand over all your goods and chattels to some criminal, and then you yell for the police and expect us to say, ‘Dear, oh dear!’ and break our necks running after a handful of spoons for you. I tell you again, you don’t deserve anything better, and if it wasn’t that your poor wife has to bear all the burden of your stupidity, I wouldn’t lift a finger over this affair. But for your wife’s sake, Sommer—mark that, for your wife’s sake—I will, as soon as I’ve seen you safe in clink and made my report to the inspector. It’s still possible this bird hasn’t flown yet—perhaps he doesn’t expect us so soon. But now get on a bit faster, I’d like to hand you over before you get into any more mischief. One never knows what to expect from you. My God! I’m never going to be taken in again by such a fellow as you, in all my life. I used to marvel at what a clever man you were, but probably your wife did it all. How’s she ever going to forgive you for all the muck-up you’ve made of things?”

With that, we went on, and did not exchange another word until we got to the police-court. Probably Schulze was inwardly busy with his report for the inspector, but I was truly deeply offended at all the unjust things which this low-grade policeman had said so rudely to my face. If the fellow couldn’t see that I had merely been ill, a helpless invalid at the mercy of a rogue, there was no help for him, he was a stupid fool. Anyhow, I certainly wasn’t. I had simply been ill, and still was.…

28

In the course of my business career, I had several times had dealings with the police-court, and I knew the lay-out of the place fairly well. But I had never before been in the part to which Sergeant Schulze was taking me now. We went through the whole building (it adjoins the district court) to a rather narrow inner yard which was shut off on one side by a high wall, and on the other three by tall buildings pitted from top to bottom with small, almost square windows, all protected with strong bars.

“I’m going to live up there for weeks and weeks, perhaps,” I thought, and I was overcome by fear. I would have liked to ask my companion a number of things about the customs and regulations of such a prison, but it was too late for that now. Schulze pressed a bell-push, a huge iron door opened, and a blue-uniformed man greeted Schulze with a handshake and me with a cool searching look.

“A new arrival, Karl,” said Schulze. “The papers will be coming this afternoon from the Public Prosecutor’s office.”

“Stand over there!” said the man in uniform, and I obediently placed myself where he ordered me.

The two policemen whispered, and looked across at me several times. Once I heard the words “attempted murder”—it did not seem to make any special impression.

Then Schulze called to me from some distance, “Well, keep your chin up, Sommer,” and the door closed behind him; he had gone back into freedom, and I felt as if I had lost a friend.

“Come with me,” said the man in uniform carelessly, and led me into an office which was quite unoccupied.

“Turn out your pockets and put everything on the table.”

I did so. It was little enough: a bunch of keys, a pocket knife, a rather dirty handkerchief.

“That all you’ve got? No money? Well, hold up your arms.”

I did so; and now he felt me up and down, presumably for any hidden belongings.

“All right,” said the blue-uniformed man. “I’ll put you in Eleven for the time being. The governor’s not here just now. It’s the lunch-break.”

I asked politely whether I might have some lunch too. I hadn’t had anything yet.

“Lunch is over,” he answered coolly. “There’s none left.”

“But I haven’t had any breakfast either!” I cried excitedly. Up till the present my appetite had not been very large, but now it seemed ravenous. I felt my rights were being violated; even a prisoner must eat!

“You’ll enjoy your supper all the more,” he answered, unmoved. “Come on now!”

He led me along a corridor, through an iron grill, up a stairway, through an iron door. I saw a long gloomy corridor and many iron-studded doors with locks and bolts, then again up a stairway, up another stairway, again an iron door—the man had to keep unlocking and locking all the time, and he did it all so casually … but my heart sank: all these doors that now lay between me and the outside world made me realise so clearly how trapped I was, how difficult it was going to be to get free again. From the very first moment I felt the truth of that saying which I was to hear often in prison: “Easier to get in than out.”

My guide had stopped before an iron door with a white “11” on it. Behind this, then, I was to live. He unlocked the door, and beyond it appeared another door. This, too, he unlocked.

“Get in,” said my companion impatiently, and I entered. From a narrow bed, a strange figure arose, a tall man of remarkable girth, with a bald head and spectacles.

“A bit of company?” he asked. “Well, that’s nice. Where are you from?”

I was so astonished to find that I had a room-mate in my cell that I only noticed much later that the turnkey had gone and I was finally and irrevocably shut in.

“Sit down on that stool,” said the fat man. “I’m staying in bed for a bit. You’re not supposed to, but Fermi doesn’t say anything. Fermi’s the one who just brought you up.”

I sat on the stool and stared at the man lying on the bed. Like me, he wore civilian clothes, a once-elegant suit from a good tailor, which was now crumpled and stained.

“Are you a prisoner too?” I finally asked.

“I should say so!” laughed the fat man. “Do you think I’d be sitting in this hole for fun?” He stretched, and gave a groan as he did so. “I’ve been stuck in this place eleven weeks already. But d’you think they’ve charged me yet? Not a hope. These fellows take their time, as far as they’re concerned you could rot before they’d stir themselves. What are you up for?”

“The Public Prosecutor had me arrested for the attempted murder of my wife,” I answered with modest pride, and I quickly added, “But it isn’t true. Not a word of it is true.”

The fat man laughed again.

“Of course it’s not true,” he laughed. “There’s only innocent men in here—when you ask them.”

“But in my case it really isn’t true,” I insisted. “I never tried to murder my wife. We just had a bit of a quarrel.”

“Ah well,” said the fat man, “in time you’ll get it all off your chest. Everyone who isn’t used to clink starts to talk after a time. Only you want to be careful who you’re talking to. Most of ’em want to be the governor’s pet and they go crawling to him with everything—and then you’re for it.”

He looked candidly at me with his little eyes through rolls of fat, and said: “You can talk quite openly with me. I’m the soul of honour. I’m ‘stickum’.”

“What are you?”

“Stickum, that’s what we say here for close-mouthed. I don’t squeal, understand?”

“But I’ve really nothing to confess,” I assured him again.

“Well, we’ll see about that,” said the fat man comfortably. “Perhaps you’ll be lucky, and the examining magistrate’ll be of the same opinion as you and won’t commit you for trial.”

“But I was arrested by the Public Prosecutor himself.”

“That doesn’t mean anything,” the fat man informed me. “First of all, tomorrow or the day after, they bring you up before the examining magistrate. He questions you, and if he decides in your favour, you’ll be free again.”

“Is that really true?” I ask excitedly. “I can still get free?”

“Of course you can. But it doesn’t often happen that way. Still, we’ll see.”

And again he stretched comfortably.

I was intoxicated by the prospect of possible freedom so near at hand. I stood up and thoughtfully paced to and fro in the cell. If Magda gave favourable evidence on my behalf I would get free. And she had to give favourable evidence on my behalf, I felt. And even if she was still furious with me, she could never say I had tried to murder her. That was something I had never wanted to do. Dimly I remembered having said something like “Tomorrow night I’ll come and kill you,” but that was only drunken babble. It didn’t mean anything.

“Listen,” said the fat man. “Don’t run up and down the cell like that. You give me the fidgets. Sit down quietly on that stool, but take the cushion off first, it’s my private cushion. You can’t lie down on your kip yet. The old man won’t bring you your straw-bag till tonight. God, how this stable gets on my nerves!” Then the fat man yawned heartily, let a terrible one go—I started with fright—groaned, “Ah, that’s better!” and fell asleep at once.

I do not want to go on recounting in such detail the first days of my remand period. They were so agonising that one night I got up softly, went over to the fat man’s locker and took the blade out of his safety razor. I wanted to cut my throat. But I could not pluck up the courage. I tentatively made a small cut in my wrist, which only bled a little, but it calmed me. The will to live conquered, and that same night I put the blade back in the razor.

On the whole, it was easier for me to get over my craving for alcohol than I had expected. I had not become a proper drunkard yet, I had given myself up to schnaps for a short time only, and had never seen white mice. I was greatly helped, during this weaning period, by the fact that on the third or fourth day I volunteered for work. I could not bear to sit brooding and inactive in my cell, nor could I stand the fat man’s company—his name, by the way, was Duftermann. I think I would have murdered him if I had been forced to spend twenty-four hours of every day in his company. He was nothing but an animal; a more flagrantly egotistic man I have never met. He had obtained for himself every privilege the law allows for prisoners awaiting trial—he had blankets and cushions on his hard straw-bag, a regular supply of tobacco, and food parcels, but he never gave a crumb away. In the first few days, when I did not have my own washing things in the cell, he forbade me even to use his comb. I was not once allowed to touch his mirror, and it was only unwillingly that he permitted me to use a sheet of his newspaper as toilet paper.

“No, no, Sommer,” he would say. “Here it’s ‘God helps those who help themselves.’ Why should I start looking after you? What do you do for me? You only give me the fidgets.”

That was another point on which I was driven nearly frantic. Everything I did upset Duftermann. I was not allowed to walk up and down in the cell: if, in the night, I turned on my straw mattress, he complained about his sleep being disturbed: if I wanted to open the little window for a moment, he shouted that it was cold on his bald head, and so we had to go on squatting there in the heat and the stink. But he allowed himself everything. He greedily wolfed the food parcels which his wife brought for him twice a week, sat on the bucket six times a day, behaved like a pig, and snored so loudly at night that it kept me awake for hours on end, at the mercy of my gloomy thoughts. If ever I hated a man from the bottom of my heart it was Duftermann. In the long time of trouble ahead of me, I was to lie down with much rougher folk, with labourers, with tramps even—but none of them ever let themselves go, so flagrantly gave rein to all their instincts, as this Duftermann did. By profession he was merely a property-owner, the son of a rich long-dead father who had left him several large houses and other real estate. Up till now, Duftermann had spent his life administering this property, and in the course of administering it, he had met with the misfortune that brought him to prison and caused him to become my cell-mate. As he denied nothing to himself and everything to others, and as he claimed the right to do whatever he pleased, he had set fire to one of his houses, whose dilapidated condition had nettled him for some time past, so as to cover the cost of rebuilding by the insurance money. In this fire, a woman and her child had lost their lives.

Duftermann merely complained: “The damed fool! Couldn’t she run out in time like all the rest? No, the stupid idiot has to stuff some rubbish or other into a trunk first, and then the smoke makes it impossible for her to escape. How can I help it, if some old girl’s so stupid? The Public Prosecutor would like to make a rope out of it for me. But he doesn’t know Duftermann. I’ve engaged the best lawyers, and if everything goes wrong, I’ll have them give me Paragraph 51, be certified and live off my means in some nice little loony-bin.”

Duftermann quite openly admitted his guilt.

“Why should I tell lies? They caught me with the petrol can in my hand. There’s no point in denying it. Yes, if I were in your shoes I’d deny everything to my dying day. But like this—why I’m just certifiable!”

He roared with laughter.

“After all,” he continued in a tone of self-pity, “it was only my good nature made me do it. I’m just a good-natured fool. I couldn’t bear to see people going on living in such a tumbledown bug-ridden barrack of a place. I wanted to provide them with decent housing—and this is what my good nature gets me.”

In this way, Duftermann drove me to volunteer for work; and I could be sure of his biting scorn, when of an evening I returned to the cell from work, with weary bones but quite peaceful at heart. He would greet me something like this: “Ah, here comes the model boy. Well, did you work hard? Did you suck up to that swine of a governor? The Public Prosecutor will give you just as long in clink as if you’d stayed here quietly in your cell. It’s creepers like you who spoil the whole prison. Your sort make it bad for the rest of us, they’ll make all work compulsory. But you wait, I’ll get you yet.”

I hardly listened to his talk, and never addressed a word to the common fellow. Of course, this did not upset him in the least. He had the hide of a rhinoceros, and calmly went on talking whether I answered or not.

29

Well, I had volunteered for work. Splittstösser, the headwarder, issued me with a new blue jacket as my prison uniform, and with ten or twelve others I was taken into a yard, surrounded by high walls, where great piles of wood lay. Formerly we, too, had taken the firewood for our central heating—bought by the cord from the forestry people—to the prison, to have it chopped up. I had never given it a thought, who sawed and chopped my wood there. Now I myself stood for eight hours a day at the saw-bench, and opposite me stood an habitual burglar named Mordhorst, a man with many previous convictions. Together, for eight hours at a time, we pulled the two-handled saw through pinewood, beechwood and oak. A guard paced to and fro in the yard, watching to see that we did not do too much talking and too little work. Now I was sawing wood for the citizens of my native town, and this time it was Hölscher—the general merchant for whom we were working at the moment—who gave no thought to the fact that his old client Sommer was cutting his firewood for him. At first it disturbed me greatly that the fourth side of the yard was bounded by the district court building, and many windows looked down on me and my sawing arms in the blue prison clothes; but within a few days I had become accustomed to it and hardly turned my head when Mordhorst whispered: “The Public Prosecutor’s up at the window again, looking to see if we’re earning our keep. Saw slower, mate. When he’s looking, I’m not working.”

Mordhorst was a small wiry man with a wrinkled embittered face and pepper-green hair. He had spent considerably more than half his life in prison. He took it so much as a matter of course, that he never mentioned it. He regretted nothing, he had no desire for a different life. He never spoke of his crimes, as a craftsman never speaks of his craft. Burglary was to him like sewing trousers to a tailor. I only found out from other prisoners that in the criminal world, Mordhorst was a man of high standing, who could crack the most modern safes, and who was well known for working without a mate, a lone wolf, a typical enemy of society. It only irked him that he had got stuck in such a mudhole, as he called my home-town, more or less by chance. He was on his way to Hamburg, where he had a big job to do, and had got stranded here for a few hours, and in the night, being a little drunk and having nothing to smoke, he had broken into the tobacco kiosk in our market place, and they had caught him at it.

“Just think of it, man,” Mordhorst would rage. “I’d got plenty of cash on me, I could have bought what smokes I wanted where I was staying. Just because I was tight! And for a little thing like that they’ll put me away for a five year stretch. It sends me up in the air, just to think of it!”

To me it seemed all the same whether Mordhorst got five years’ penal servitude for a big safe robbery or a bit of tobacco pilfering, it was five years in any case. But I took good care not to say so aloud, for Mordhorst was a quick-tempered man, and he had startled me early on with his fits of rage when I, an inexperienced newcomer, had pulled the saw so clumsily that it jammed. Once, in a burst of temper, he had tried to hit me on the head with a piece of wood, and only the warder’s intervention had saved me.

Then five minutes later Mordhorst had become normal and sensible again. I suppose it was the long years of imprisonment that had made him so wild and unrestrained. I am sure he had a worm gnawing in his brain, anyone who paces a cell year after year, just waiting for the day of release, of freedom, and knowing all the while in his innermost self that the longest stay in freedom is only a flying visit of a few months at most, to be followed again by years and years of bitter waiting—such a man cannot remain normal.

I learned a great deal from Mordhorst. He knew everything about police-courts, reformatories and prisons. It was quite astonishing how well this silent little man, who seemed to have dealings with nobody, was informed about everything. He knew what kind of meat we were going to get on Sunday, and what the new occupant of cell 21 was supposed to have done. He knew the family circumstances, the salary, and the troubles of each prison officer. He could make a light for a cigarette with a trouser button, a piece of thread and a stone. He always had something to smoke, and something extra to eat, though nobody left any food parcels for him. He always had money in his pocket, which was strictly forbidden, he possessed a knife (also forbidden), and had some means of smuggling letters out of prison without being censored by the governor. He knew all the underground ways which open up in time in any human community, however strictly supervised it may be. I was always a novice to him, a mere babe. He passed on some of his life’s experiences, but never let himself be carried away into confessing anything to me. I was well aware that he treated the other prisoners differently.

Old gaol-birds understand each other by a glance and a wink. They walk behind each other, they hardly move their lips, and something has already been slipped from one hand to the other. The prison officers gave Mordhorst far more freedom than me, for example. They shut one eye to him, he could do almost anything. Perhaps they were afraid of him because he knew so much, but I rather think they shied away from a clash with such a dangerous man. When he had been standing idle at the saw-bench for five minutes on end, and I had whispered: “Hey, get on with the sawing. The warder keeps looking over here,” Mordhorst did nothing of the kind. And when the prison officer finally came over to us and said: “Well, Mordhorst, that’s enough loafing, get on with it!”, he said heatedly: “Don’t I do enough for my thirty pfennigs a day?” (We got thirty pfennigs ‘wages’ a day, which was entered to our credit for the day of our release.) “Am I to work my fingers to the bone for that fat swine?” And he looked wickedly at the windows of the district court. The warder merely laughed and said: “You’ve got your rag out again, have you, Mordhorst? The Prosecutor won’t get any fatter or thinner from your saw.…”

But Mordhorst muttered: “I know what I know,” seized the saw-handle which I held out to him and we went on sawing, thrust after thrust, log after log, hour after hour.

They were good times, really, that we spent in the wood-yard. Today I think back on them quite gladly, however endless and heavy they appeared to me then. After the inevitable aches and pains which my unwonted labours caused me at first, my body soon became used to sawing, and the work helped me to bear much easier the symptoms of my dealcoholisation.

Spring was slowly changing to summer now, in the yard stood high fruit trees, apples and pears, into whose shadow we moved the saw-bench when the sun poured down too hot upon us; the saws groaned and shrieked occasionally when a chip resisted the blade, the clop-clop of the wood-cutter’s axes came to us monotonously; on the other side of the wall, unseen, children shouted at their games in the street. We took off first our jackets, then our waistcoats. Some worked quite naked to the waist, but I could never decide to do so. The hours flowed by, life glided along, I was imbued with a—deceptive—feeling of security and regularity. The time of dangers and disorders seemed over, and it appeared so easy to me to continue this life outside, a quiet peaceful life almost without future. Mordhorst and I softly talked of what we were going to get to eat this evening, and what the food had been like at lunch-time today—food played a most important part in our conversation, since like Mordhorst I got no food parcels, and had to rely on the prison diet even more than he. Moreover he was a better comrade than the pampered Duftermann. Every day he brought me something, some trifle that, outside, would have been of no value, an onion perhaps, which I cut up with a spoon and put on bread, or a cigarette and a match; then at evening, after lock-up time, when the building had fallen quiet, I would smoke my fag in comfort. Yes, I learned to smoke in prison, very much to the fury of Duftermann, who always filled the air with his cigar-fumes, and despised the smoking of cigarettes as womanly. But I let him go on talking, by that time I was completely indifferent to him.

Yes, Mordhorst, misanthrope as he was, helped me a great deal; he was an excellent adviser in my ‘case’ too, a better one than the lawyer who came to see me. Unfortunately, at the first hearing, I appeared before the examining magistrate without Mordhorst’s advice, and thus I made a serious mistake which I only realised later.

30

I had been in custody for three days, and I was not yet working in the wood-yard, when the head-warder Spittstösser appeared at my cell at four in the afternoon and said: “Come with me, Sommer. Put your jacket on and come with me.”

I walked behind the “chief”, and was at that time so inexperienced in prison matters that I politely asked: “Where are you taking me, officer?” I did not know then that a prisoner should never ask questions, that he never gets an answer, that he can only wait and see what fate—which may be a warder, or may be the Public Prosecutor—has in store for him. So I got the rather rude answer: “What’s it to do with you? You’ll find out.”

Over in the district court, the atmosphere of a real summer afternoon reigned; many of the room-doors were open and I caught a glimpse of tidied and deserted desks. It turned out that the sergeant of the court had gone to the post office, and so was not able to take me over from the charge of the prison officer. My custodian was in a hurry to return to his own building, and a slight argument ensued between a fat elderly woman clerk and my warder.

“I’m not here to look after your prisoners,” said the clerk angrily. “You always try that sort of thing. If one of them gets away, I’d be blamed for it.”

“Yes, but your sergeant doesn’t have to run off all the time, he knows full well the prisoner’s only been called over for interrogation.”

So the argument went back and forth for a while, neither of them would have me, till suddenly the elderly woman said, quite surprisingly: “All right, just for once I’ll do it. Herr Sommer won’t run away from me.”

With that, she looked at me with a friendly smile. So she knew me. I was set on a chair, and for the first time for days I looked again through an unbarred window, out on to one of my home town streets, and saw the children playing. One of the drays of the Trappe Beer Company rolled by. Trappe himself, who was well known to me and almost a friend, sat on the driver’s seat. Now a young girl, also a clerk probably, went through the room in which I had been put, saw me, gave me a friendly smile and said: “Good afternoon, Herr Sommer.”

So she knew me too, she was kind to me, although I was in custody on a charge of attempting to murder my wife. That elderly clerk had been kind also, she had said: “Herr Sommer won’t run away,”—they were all kind to me, the best proof that my prospects were good. Probably the examining magistrate would not commit me for trial, perhaps I would be free in half an hour. My heart beat strongly, joyfully.

Now an elderly man came into the room, a long, thin, grey-haired gentleman, who looked somewhat uneasy and distraught.

“This is Herr Sommer, Herr Direktor,” said the elderly clerk, and she nodded her head towards me.

“Is it?” said the elderly gentleman, with a slight cough (he was the head of the district court, I later found out). He looked at me for a moment with his tired, rather troubled eyes, and then gave me his hand.

“Come with me, then, Herr Sommer.”

Again nothing but friendliness, handshakes, being addressed as “Herr”; all this to-do utterly deceived me inexperienced as I was, I completely forgot that these were all my enemies only out to trick me, to sentence me, to keep me in prison.

I forgot the saying I had only just learned: “Easier to get in than out.” I thought that getting out was being made easier for me than getting in. I opened my whole heart to the magistrate, told him everything as it really happened, and later I was to find out what consequences my trustfulness had.

The head of the district court went before me into a comfortably-furnished office with many many books along the walls. I was placed on a chair in front of the desk, the magistrate sat behind it, a middle-aged lady appeared and put a large sheet of paper in the typewriter, the magistrate ran his hand through his hair, adjusted his spectacles, and said: “We’re very worried about you, Herr Sommer.” He coughed and said to the woman: “Take down Herr Sommer’s personal details.”

The questionnaire was easily enough answered; perhaps I gave Magda’s birth-date incorrectly (I was ashamed to admit that I didn’t know it for sure), and when I was asked whether my financial affairs were in order, I straightway said “Yes,” though I subsequently had serious doubts about this, because it seemed questionable whether Magda would be able to manage the business after my withdrawal of that five thousand marks. But I did not have the chance to rectify matters, for now the magistrate began to question me, or rather he took up a large closely-typed sheet, ran his hand through his hair again, adjusted his spectacles, coughed, and said: “So you are held on suspicion of the attempted murder of your wife, Herr Sommer. What have you to say to that?”

At this stage, I had such trust in all the people around me that I quite naively cried: “For God’s sake, do they still maintain that I tried to murder my wife? I’ve never thought of such a thing in my life! I love my wife, and if I …”

“No, no, Herr Sommer,” said the head of the district court soothingly. “Of course, attempted murder is out of the question. It was attempted homicide, wasn’t it? You acted under stress, you were drunk, weren’t you?”

“But, Herr Direktor, I didn’t attempt to kill my wife at all. That was just drunken talk because I so much wanted the suitcase, because my wife is stronger than I am.”

“Well, well,” said the magistrate, and smiled thinly. “It probably was something more than a harmless scuffle. You’ve been drinking rather a lot recently, haven’t you, Herr Sommer? Tell me all you had to drink before you paid this nocturnal visit to your wife.”

So the interrogation slowly unfolded. I told everything just as it happened, I racked my brains in order not to forget a single bottle of brandy, I told the barest truth, and like a fool I thought I would manage affairs by truthfulness. But I insisted that I never had the intention of doing my wife any harm, I only wanted the things, I said. The magistrate coughed louder, he referred to the typewritten sheet, and said “I want to put your wife’s statement to you: Here: ‘He seized me by the throat, and tried to kick me in the abdomen,’ and here: ‘He whispered in my ear: I’m coming back tomorrow night to do you in!’ All this sounds like a great deal more than mere threats, doesn’t it, Herr Sommer?”

I was dumbfounded at Magda’s baseness, in putting things in this way. She might at least have added that she only took it for drunken talk: I tried to explain this to the magistrate, I pointed out to him that Magda had been very upset too, and in her excitement she had perhaps taken things far more seriously than they were meant. The magistrate nodded and sighed, he wiped his glasses, whether I convinced him I do not know.

Eventually he said, “Very well then, I won’t question you any further today, that will be enough for the first time.”

“So you won’t commit me for trial?” I asked with boundless joy. The magistrate coughed again.

“No, not exactly commit you for trial, as it were. Not exactly. You see, Herr Sommer, by your own evidence you were excessively drunk.”

“Not excessively drunk, Herr Direktor. I can stand a great deal.”

“You had,” continued the magistrate, correcting himself, “you had an excessive amount to drink, and there is a suspicion that at the time of committing the deed you were not in full possession of your mental faculties. What would you do if you were at home now? You would only start quarrelling with your wife again, you would only start drinking again. No, Herr Sommer, first you must get quite well again. First of all, I’ll send you to an institution where you’ll be under medical supervision and can get really well.…”

“Thank you, thank you, Herr Direktor,” I could have fallen on the old gentleman’s neck for his great kindness. Yes, for his great kindness.

31

Then I heard from Mordhorst two or three days later (they took their time over my transfer to the institution; in the court they all have plenty of time, except the prisoners for whom time passes so slowly)—well, I heard from Mordhorst that I had behaved like a complete idiot.

“Look,” he said, “how could you act so barmy? The old buzzard was laughing up his sleeve at you when you unpacked one bottle of brandy after another. He was just having you on, kidding to be so friendly. You should have said, you should have sworn blind: I wasn’t drunk, I wasn’t drunk at all! I did what I did deliberately, I worked it all out! And why ought you to have said so? Because you run the least risk that way. Look, for homicidal intent you get six months, a year at most. You can do that on your head, and then you’re out, a free man again, and nobody can lay a finger on you. And what’ll happen to you now? First you go for six weeks’ observation in the asylum, to find out the state of your mind. Do you think the asylum is better than gaol? It’s much worse! All the trimmings are the same as here—grub, work, warders. But you’re not with people in their senses, you’re with a pack of loonies! And then the doctor makes his report and you get Paragraph 51 and proceedings against you are stopped. But they’ll declare you insane and dangerous and they’ll order you to be detained in the asylum, and there you’ll stay five years, ten years, twenty years, not a soul will give a damn, and among all those loonies you’ll slowly turn into a loony yourself. That’s probably what they want. From what you tell me, your old woman’s pretty keen on the business; that way she gets the business and everything else belonging to you. And there you are, shut away, just a poor loony, and if they give you a bit of cake and a plug of tobacco at Christmas you can consider yourself lucky.…”

So said Mordhorst, the man of experience, and at his every word a voice within me answered: “yes.” I had acted like an idiot, I had let them entice me on to thin ice and now I was in it up to the neck. From the very first I had guessed what Magda was planning, but I had forgotten it; I had not wanted to think about it any more. I had to some extent deceived myself that she was my wife, she used to love me, she would not betray me.… But she had betrayed me! She had been working to this end for a long time. First she had set the doctors on to me, then she had given this devastating evidence against me, in which she had treated all my drunken talk as something said in dead earnest.

And how had she behaved since I was put in gaol? Had she acted as a real wife should when her husband has met with misfortune? Had she made a single effort to get permission to speak to me, to visit me and so provide an opportunity for discussion and reconciliation? Not at all. I had written to Magda. I had written her a serious friendly letter; I was obliged to write to her, I needed a blanket for my straw mattress, a sheet and a pillow. I also needed a newspaper and something to eat. Oh yes, she sent the things I needed, but there was no food or newspaper in the suitcase. And she did not write a single line!

Now I was in gaol, now she let the mask fall, now she felt herself already the owner of my property, now she thought she’d have me put away for ever in a lunatic asylum!

But she was mistaken about me, I wasn’t giving up the fight yet! No, I was only just starting! I knew what I was doing, I wasn’t a child to be led up the garden by Magda’s “efficiency”, I had Mordhorst to advise me now, and I had the best lawyer in town, Herr Doktor Husten!

32

Herr Doktor Husten, whom I had previously known only by sight, was a man in his late thirties, an already stoutish figure, with the livid wrinkled face of a successful actor. He had not long been in practice in my native town, and had the reputation of being cunning, somewhat rash, and very expensive. In my business dealings, of course, I would never have engaged a lawyer of his kind, but for a criminal case like this he seemed the right man. I was called in from my wood-cutting to find Dr Husten waiting for me in the governor’s office. He had answered the summons of my letter almost at once. Dr Husten shook my hand somewhat emphatically, assured me in a deep voice, with much rolling of the R’s, that he was particularly delighted to make my acquaintance, and then turned to the governor with the playfully-phrased request that we might be shown to some comfortable place where we could have a confidential chat. The governor grinned, and ordered the warder to take us to my cell. The indignant Duftermann was chased out into the yard for a while to take a walk.

“Don’t you dare touch any of my things!” With these words, he went out.

Instead of concerning himself with my case, Dr Husten asked in a whisper who that rude, impressive gentleman was, and he nodded as I briefly informed him. “Ah, that’s who it is! I’ve heard of him. Who’s defending him?—the fellow’s rolling in money. One could make something out of his case.”

I was more interested to know what could be made out of my case, and rather irritated, I reminded Dr Husten of this.

“Ah, your case!” He cried sonorously and in some surprise. “Your case is in splendid shape. I have already examined the documents. You’ll get Paragraph 51 and get off scot-free, just leave that to me, my dear Herr Sommer.”

I asked still more irritably: “And what happens after I get Paragraph 51?”

Surprised again, the lawyer cried: “What happens to you? As far as the criminal court is concerned, your case is absolutely closed. And personally? I suppose you will go to an institution for a little while, but that’s quite desirable for reasons of your health!”

“And how long will that little while in the institution be, Herr Dokter Husten?” I asked maliciously. “Five years? Ten years? For life?”

The lawyer laughed.

“Ah, some fellow-prisoner has been putting ideas into your head! For life! I never heard such nonsense! In your case there’s no question of that. You are a sane man in full possession of your mental faculties …”

“That’s exactly my opinion,” I answered, “and that’s why Paragraph 51 is out of the question for me. No, Herr Doktor Husten, I take full responsibility for everything I have done, and I am ready to bear the consequences.”

“But my dear Herr Sommer,” he cried pleadingly. “You would have to go to prison for twelve months, for at least twelve months. You would come out a dishonoured man. Everybody would point you out!”

“Even so,” I insisted as Mordhorst’s faithful disciple. “Even so, I would far sooner have one year in prison than an unlimited number in an asylum …”

“Unlimited! You’ll have to stay half a year, perhaps a year there, Herr Sommer …”

“Would you give me that in writing, Herr Doktor Husten? Backed by your word as a lawyer … ?”

“Of course I can’t do that, my dear friend,” said the lawyer.

He also seemed rather cross now, and his fingers drummed nervously on the table.

“I’m not a doctor, only a doctor can judge how far your alcoholism has gone, and how much time is necessary for a complete cure without fear of relapse—But my dear Herr Sommer,” he cried, pulling himself together and letting his studied triumphant optimism gain the upper hand once more, “give up this dark mistrust of yours. Put yourself utterly into the doctor’s healing hands. Remember too, that psychologically as well as physically, you are scarcely equipped to meet the demands of a long imprisonment. And I hardly think, moreover, that this solution would be according to the wishes of your dear wife …”

This was the wrong word at the wrong moment!

“Herr Doktor Husten,” I cried, jumping up indignantly. “Whose interests do you represent: mine or my wife’s? How do you know what my wife’s wishes are? Have you been to see her before consulting me?”

I was trembling all over with excitement.

“But my dear Herr Sommer,” he said soothingly, and put his hand on my shoulder, “what are you getting so excited about? Naturally, I’ve been to see your wife. As your lawyer, that was a matter of course. And I can tell you that your wife bears you no grudge, although she is upset. I am convinced that she very much regrets what has happened to you …”

“Yes, she shows her regret very clearly in that statement of hers which is among the papers,” I cried, more and more indignantly. “Haven’t you read her statement, Herr Doktor Husten?—No, I find it simply unforgiveable that you, as my lawyer, should have been talking to the chief witness for the prosecution, without consulting me.”

“But I had to do so, my dear friend,” replied the lawyer, smiling gently at my lack of worldly knowledge, “I had to inform myself about who was to pay my fees. At the moment you are, so to say, without means …”

“You are mistaken, Herr Doktor Husten,” I said quite coldly. “Everything there, the business, the bank account, the outstanding bills, the house, all belong to me, and to me alone. Not to my wife. I’m not in any asylum yet, I’m not put away yet …”

“Of course, of course,” said the lawyer soothingly, “that is absolutely correct. Unfortunately I expressed myself wrongly. I shouldn’t have said ‘without means’. Let us put it this way: that you are at present somewhat impeded in the disposal of your assets, while your wife, as your faithful trustee …”

“I’m going to see to it, Herr Doktor Husten,” I said finally, “that my wife does not continue for much longer in the position of trustee. Then perhaps her interest in getting me shut up for life in a lunatic asylum may diminish a little more rapidly. I shall tell my wife that your visit has absolutely convinced me of the necessity for an immediate divorce.”

“My dear friend,” said the lawyer sonorously, shaking his great actor’s head. “How young you are for your forty years! (You are forty, aren’t you?) Always beating your head against the wall! Always throwing out the baby with the bath-water! Well, well, you’ll be calmer once you come under the appropriate medical care!”

Now there was something unspeakably sarcastic about his sickening friendly grin.

“Apart from all that, I am probably not incorrect in assuming that I am not to regard myself as your confidential lawyer?”

“Quite right, Herr Doktor Husten.”

“I am truly sorry. I am not sorry for my sake (yours is only a small case for me, Herr Sommer, a very small case), I am sorry for you and your wife. You are running blindly into trouble, Herr Sommer, and by the time your eyes are opened, it will be too late. A pity.”

He quickly took my hand and shook it.

“But let us not part as enemies, Herr Sommer. We have met, we have talked, now we part. ‘Ships that pass in the night.’ You know that excellent book of the Baroness? I wish you all good luck, Herr Sommer!”

With that, Herr Doktor Husten left my cell with his head in the air; I only followed some distance behind, and returned to my sawing in the wood-yard. There I reported our discussion to Mordhorst down to the smallest detail, was praised by him for the first time, and was strengthened in my determination to hurry on my divorce from Magda as much as possible, and to deprive her of the management of my property.

33

But I was unable to get on with any of this for the time being. Other things intervened, which seemed to me more important. On the morning after Dr Husten’s visit, when the warder unlocked our cell and I hurried towards the latrine with my full bucket, I suddenly stopped short in amazement. I could not trust my own ears, and yet there was no deception: from a cell which had just been opened, came a soft, insinuating, whispering voice, a voice that was inextricably bound up with my drunkenness, a voice that I destested from the bottom of my heart—Lobedanz’s voice!

I hazarded a quick glance. Yes, there he stood with his gentle, sallow face, with the dark beard and dark slashed-back hair with its red-gold sheen, there he stood, talking softly to his cell-mate, and pulling at his fingers till they cracked. He was trying to get something out of the other fellow, for sure, the poor honest working-man!

I hurried past the cell as quickly as I could, emptied and cleaned out my bucket, and crept back into my own cell, taking care not to be seen. That morning Duftermann had to do the “outside work” of cell-cleaning; however much he grumbled, he had to fetch the broom and cloth and the clean water; I had no desire to be seen by Lobedanz.

But inwardly I was filled with triumph and malicious joy. They had caught the sly hypocritical Lobedanz, they had put him in gaol, and only one thought still bothered me; whether they had managed to recover the loot, or a substantial part of it, from Lobedanz. But I was not to remain long in uncertainty about that. As usual we went out into the wood-yard, but without Lobedanz, either because he had not volunteered for work, or because the governor knew that we were mixed up in the same affair. In such cases, care is taken not to allow the accomplices to come into contact with each other.

Mordhorst and I placed ourselves at our saw-bench and began our day’s work, this time of a most agreeable kind—soft smooth pine-logs, child’s play for such practised men as we were. The first log was sawn up, and while I was putting the second one into position on one bench, I asked my workmate the question that was repeated every morning: “What’s new about the place?”

“Mhm!” murmured Mordhorst, and set the saw on. Then: “A new arrival. A con man, it seems.”

We began to saw. Then I stopped again. “What has he done?”

“Who? Done what?” asked Mordhorst, whose thoughts were miles away, probably still revolving around that bitter fate by which he had been caught in such a mud-hole, and over such an undignified little job.

“Who? Done what?”

“The new man!” I reminded him.

“Oh, him. What do those fellows have the nerve to do?”

And he tried to start sawing again, but I held tight to the saw-handle. “No, tell me, Mordhorst, it really interests me. I think I saw the fellow this morning.”

“That may be. He’s in your block. What has he done? Robbed a stiff of course, what else would a geezer like that have the pluck for? Just lifted some stuff from some drunken old soak, you know.”

“I know,” answered the drunken old soak, “and had he managed to put his loot away safely?”

“No idea. I suppose so—even he is not so daft!”

“Find out, Mordhorst. I’m very interested to know.”

“Why are you so interested? It seems funny.”

“Not to me. Because I was the drunken old soak the fellow robbed. You remember, Mordhorst, he’s that landlord who did me down when I was drunk. I told you about him.”

“Ah, that’s him,” said Mordhorst, grinning with delight. “There’ll be a fine old rumpus when he finds you’re here, seeing it’s you who got him in chokey.”

“Well, find out, Mordhorst, whether he managed to put the stuff away. He’s got two gold rings and a gold watch of mine, table-silver for twelve people, a cowhide suitcase with some things in it, a leather brief-case, and four thousand marks.”

“Not bad,” grinned Mordhorst. “Far too much for such a lousy rogue. Well, I’ll let you know.” And we went on sawing, silently now—the warder was looking at us.

It was some days before I got to see Lobedanz or heard his voice again. In the mornings, when I went bucketing, his cell-door was always shut, and was only opened after we had finished, a sign that they knew we were concerned with the same case. I heard nothing more from Mordhorst either. Whenever I insisted, he only answered, “Wait a bit, mate, I’ve got to spy around a bit first. Mordhorst never cracks a safe until he has spied around a bit.”

However, at last he was ready.

“He had over six thousand marks on him when the coppers nabbed him,” said Mordhorst. “And that’s straight up. Not only because he says so himself, but I got it from the orderly who cleans the office. They’ve got the money in there.”

“Then he must have sold all my things and I’ll never see them again,” I said, and suddenly I was very sad about the loss of all my gold and silver things. “He only took four thousand in cash from me, no more.”

“He might have had some money of his own,” replied Mordhorst. “It’s not sure that he flogged your stuff. He may have parked it somewhere.”

“That’s possible,” I admitted, “but I can’t quite believe it.”

For a long time we sawed in silence, one beech log after another.

Then Mordhorst suddenly said: “What would you give, mate, if I found out where that fellow has hidden the boodle?”

“Boodle—what’s that?”

“Your stuff, of course. What would you give?”

“What can I give, in clink? I haven’t got anything myself.”

“You have outside.”

“But I can’t touch that, my wife won’t let me near it.”

And we went on sawing. Next day, Mordhorst said to me. “You’ll be coming up before the beak soon, and you’ll be questioned about this fellow. You’ll have to say that you claim the stolen money that’s here, as your own.”

“You can rely on me saying that, Mordhorst,” I said grimly.

“And the Public Prosecutor will have to release the money to you, that’s certain,” said Mordhorst.

For a while he was silent again. Then he said: “Would you make out a draft, for five hundred marks payable to bearer, if I find out where he has hidden your stuff?”

I thought it over.

“The whole affair is worth five hundred to me,” I said at last. “But I should have to get everything back, the gold things as well, and I can’t believe that.”

“If you get back less, you’ll only have to pay less. I’m a squaredealer,” replied the incorrigible safebreaker.

“But Mordhorst,” I said, and I pitied his ignorance. “Do you really think they’ll pay out money to you or anyone from the gaol, just because I write out a draft?”

“Let me worry about that,” he replied, quite unmoved. “You’ve got a corn-chandler’s business haven’t you?”

“Yes, I have,” I replied. “How did you come to know that, Mordhorst?”

“I know everything,” he answered, with all the bumptiousness of the little man. “And if someone comes from outside with a bill for grain that he delivered to you three months ago, and asks for his money, and you acknowledge the bill, I’ll bet the fellows in the bank will pay up.”

“Possibly,” I replied. “But who’s going to come from outside with such a bill?”

“Let me take care of that,” answered Mordhorst with equanimity. “The main thing is, I’ve got your word, you’ll acknowledge the bill.”

“That you have,” I said, “and I keep my word.”

“You’d better,” replied Mordhorst, and he began sawing again. “You can be sure I’ll get you if you do the dirty on me, I’ll get you tomorrow or in five years’ time, inside or out, myself or someone I tip off for it.”

That is how the game began, a game such as is only played in prison, underground, with many intermediaries, with the whispering of orderlies at locked doors, with infinite subtlety exercised by many brains during many hours: and the cunning hypocritical Lobedanz was the target.

I was never quite able to see how it was done, I have never understood how Mordhorst, who was particularly closely guarded, was able to maintain constant contact with all the prisoners, even with the outside world. But he could. Sometimes half a word would be dropped, out of which I could construct a whole paragraph. For example, there were four carefully selected prisoners who dragged the wood we cut. through the town and round to the houses, in an outsized handcart, under the supervision of a warder of course. And there was the trusty prison-cook, an old prisoner who was sometimes taken by the governor to dig and hoe and water his garden on the outskirts of town. Perhaps these prisoners were not quite so trustworthy as the prison administration allowed themselves to imagine. And then there were the hatches, the openings in our cell-doors through which our food-bowls were handed in to us. When meals were being taken round there was always a lot of secret whispering and furtive passing of things to and fro at these hatches. As I have said, I know next to nothing about the game they were playing, otherwise I would have more to say about it here. I was a novice, and in particular, in the eyes of the others, I was not a “real criminal” because I had committed no offence against other people’s property.

Mordhorst was careful not to tell me too much about it. I only got to know that pressure was being put on Lobedanz. They managed to cut down his food under the eyes of the warder. They let him starve a bit. And his cell-mate had as much as he could eat and never gave away a mouthful. That was one thing. And the other thing was that Lobedanz really had a wife and children at home, and he had been arrested so unexpectedly that they were left without food or money. It was put to him that a prisoner was going to be released in a few days’ time, who could take the hidden things and dispose of them and give the proceeds to his wife—after the deduction of an appropriate commission, of course. I can well imagine that the cunning and suspicious Lobedanz had a hard struggle with himself, but they softened him up. They put the screws on him, they would slip him alarming messages, and then leave him entirely without any news, and when he asked them, they would say “It’s all off. You wouldn’t do it.” And probably even Lobedanz loved his wife and children and did not want to see them starve and beg. The day came when Mordhorst said to me: “So I’ve got your word?”

“You have. Do you know anything yet?”

“I know everything. Your stuff …” Mordhorst looked at me sharply, “… is in the barn in the first field on the road to Kehne. There’s a few planks broken at the back, and it’s there in the straw. So now you know. Your gold wedding ring is missing, he’s got rid of it, but otherwise everything’s there, just as you said. That’s worth five hundred marks, mate?”

“That’s worth five hundred marks,” I answered. Curious, how illogical the heart is. I was almost delighted that Magda would get her silver back, and yet I hated her with all my heart.

“Yes,” I said, “but what can I do with my knowledge? I can’t very well tell anybody I got it from you.”

“When you get your bread today,” said Mordhorst, “you’ll find a slip of paper inside with what I’ve told you written on it. You show that to the warder and let things take their own course.”

“And who’s suppose to have written this note?”

“You don’t know that. Just somebody you don’t know, who hates Lobedanz and wants to do the dirty on him. Don’t worry your head about that.”

34

It was all thought out with real ingenuity and carried through with endless patience. The only pity was that this affair, like the majority of such affairs conceived in prison—great robberies and hold-ups, blackmail and swindles—turned out otherwise than we had expected, and Magda never got her silver back again.

Everything happened just as Mordhorst had foretold. I found the slip, gave it to the warder when he unlocked the cell, I was taken down to the prison governor and questioned. Then they took me back to my cell and I heard them unlocking another cell-door further up the corridor: they were fetching Lobedanz. I heard no more about the affair that night, nor during the next two days, and this time Mordhorst heard nothing either. Then I was summoned by the governor and informed that the police had searched the barn; the planks at the back were loose but there was nothing under the straw, and in fact nothing was hidden in the barn at all. I went back to my cell deeply disappointed. So Lobedanz had been cleverer than the lot of them, and either he no longer had the things or else he had hidden them in some quite different place. But Mordhorst shook his head at this.

“Just wait,” he said, “there’s more in this than meets the eye, and I’ve already got an idea what it is. Just wait, I’ll get to the bottom of it, and if it’s as I think it is, somebody’s going to have nothing to laugh about.”

He really did find out, at least I believe that what he told me was the truth.

“The fellow who was released had picked it up and sold it. He took it just before the coppers got there—the fools, why couldn’t they move a bit faster! But I tell you, I’ll get the rotten dog, he’ll turn up in clink again, and then he’ll have something to holler about!”

And a name was spread throughout the whole prison, sixty prisoners took note of the name of the man who had turned traitor, and these prisoners would take care that in the course of time the traitor’s name was spread through many other prisons. Everywhere he would be looked on as a common traitor, for even among criminals there is a code of honour of sorts, and he had offended against this code.

But for me, who had played the least part of this game, the immediate consequences were most serious. For one morning when a warder had perhaps been a little sleepy and had not been paying proper attention to his task, I was unsuspectingly taking my bucket along the corridor, and did not notice that, contrary to custom, the door of Lobedanz’s cell was already open, and the gentle fellow leaped out at me like a tiger, knocked me and my bucket to the ground and struck me in the face with both fists so that I lost consciousness almost at once. By now they had told Lobedanz that I was in gaol too, and, prisoner-fashion, had teased and tormented him mercilessly over the loss of his loot. They had probably told him also, that the money that had been taken from him was being kept here at my disposal, and perhaps they had pretended that my stuff had come back into my possession again. Anyhow, Lobedanz was wild with rage, and all these days he had been brooding in his cell, thinking how utterly fruitlessly he had worked on me for weeks, how I had got everything back, and how he was faced with a long prison sentence on my account—and all for nothing! He had seen red, he had been brooding all the time on how he could mark me for life, and his rage and hatred had swept away all his native cowardice and caution. When he saw the cell-door open, he had lain in wait for me, he had got me down, and struck me in the face so that the blood immediately gushed from my nose and mouth. As usual the prisoners watched, unmoved and unconcerned, perhaps a little maliciously; it is not the custom, in prison, to interfere in any scuffle between two inmates. I am convinced that Mordhorst would have stood by me, but Mordhorst was not at hand, he was on the corridor below. And before the warder was able to rush up and pull Lobedanz off, Lobedanz had bent over my face and bitten my nose, so as to mark me for life—oh, he nearly bit half my nose off!

Terrible things happen in gaol, and frequently, and nobody makes any fuss about it. Lobedanz was put in a punishment cell, and later a charge of grievous bodily harm was added to all the rest. They laid me down on the straw-bag in my cell, washed off some of the blood, and waited till the prison doctor, summoned by telephone, arrived. The first thing I heard on regaining consciousness, was Duftermann’s nagging voice, complaining about all this “filth in his cell”, and demanding that I should be put somewhere else; and his voice did not cease to complain about me, as long as he was not asleep, every day that I had to share the cell with him.

In the doctor’s opinion, it was not serious enough for me to be transferred to hospital. He sewed up my nose after a fashion, and declared that everything would be all right in three or four days’ time. But it never did get quite right again; apart from the fact that to this day I cannot bear to look at myself in the mirror, because I am so disfigured and disgusting. No, I cannot smell any more, and I cannot breathe properly through my nose, either. I breathe with my mouth half-open like an idiot, and my sleeping-companions abuse me and jostle me of a night-time because I disturb their sleep with my snoring and groaning. That dog Lobedanz really has marked me for life, and I can never forget him. In fact, Lobedanz made a deeper impression on me than any other human being, even than Magda. Sometimes as I sit here, suddenly the image rises before me of how I stood at the attic-window and saw the town with its red-brown roofs spread at my feet in the evening light, saw the river shining among the green, and beyond, half-hidden in a blueish haze, the roof of my own house, while at my back, Lobedanz was assuring me in a soft whisper that he was a very poor but honest man, and making his joints crack. From the very first moment, I had realised that he was a rogue and a liar, and if I had had a little commonsense and decency I would have left that room there and then, and gone back home to the house in the blue haze. But in my frailty I stayed there and I have paid for it since a thousand times over.

35

I lay for three or four days, amid Duftermann’s abuse; I was in bad pain and I cursed my unhappy lot. All thought of revenging myself on Magda or of instituting divorce proceedings had quite faded away; I would have been glad if they had let me go home to her. I would have fallen on my knees and begged her forgiveness. But this was only a passing mood, it did not last. My feelings towards Magda were to change very often. I never saw the wood-yard again, nor my mate Mordhorst. Strangely enough, in my memory today they seem beautiful peaceful hours that I spent at the saw-bench, in my blue prison jacket, with the tops of the apple and pear trees above me, and the sunny sky.

Then late one afternoon, when I was absolutely in despair at the interminable nagging of that murderous incendiary Duftermann, the lock of the cell-door rattled at a quite unusual time, and the warder came in and cried: “Sommer, get up at once and pack your things! You’re released!”

I started up from my bed and stared at the warder.

“Released,” I whispered, and my heart beat furiously. At last! At last!

“Yes, released,” he said maliciously. “You’re going to the institution. Come on, come on, man, pack your things up! D’you think we’ve got all day?”

“Ah,” I said slowly, and started to pack. “Ah—to the institution!”

Duftermann watched me closely to see that I did not pack any of his precious belongings, and all the time he was telling the warder how glad he was that I was leaving, I was the worst cell-mate in the world, I never spoke a sensible word, and the row I kicked up of a night-time was unbearable. I left without a word to him, I did not even look round.

Below, in the governor’s office, stood a strange warder, who scrutinised me carefully, and I notice that he pulled a face at the sight of me. I was still wearing the bandage on my nose.

“Yes,” said the governor, “this is the man another prisoner tried to bite the nose off. I suppose you heard about it officer?”

He had heard about it.

The governor added: “But up to now he’s been quite a quiet orderly man. I don’t think you’ll need to handcuff him.”

“No, no!” said the warder sharply. “I’m responsible for him. If he runs away.…”

“Do as you think fit, officer,” said the governor, “I was merely giving my opinion. Listen, Sommer,” he now turned to me, “sign this receipt, that you’ve had all your things back from us. We’ll send your money on to you by post …”

“Please send it to my wife,” I said, on a sudden impulse. “I shan’t need money any more.”

“Very well,” said the governor impassively, and with that, I was released.

The warder put the handcuffs on my wrist and so I was led through my home town to the station, but that did not worry me. I still had the bandage on my nose; even Magda would not have recognised me.

Like my own ghost I walked through the town in which I was born, along the streets I had played in as a child; on that bench over there I once sat with Magda, she had plaits then, and we both carried school satchels under our arms.… Now we passed my own business, “Erwin Sommer, Market Produce, Wholesale and Retail” it still said on the ground-glass panes—for how much longer? And led along by a little chain, a suitcase in his free hand, this same Erwin Sommer went by, living yet dead for all that; traces of his life still remained—for how much longer?

“I’m only forty-one,” I said to the officer.

“What do you mean by that?” asked the young man. “What are you getting at?”

“Oh, nothing, officer,” I answered. “But when a man’s already dead to the outside world at forty-one.…”

“Ah, come on, don’t fret so,” said the warder placidly, “you’ll be much better off in the place I’m taking you to than you would be in clink, and if you make a sensible impression, maybe you’ll get out again some time. D’you know what?” he continued, more and more humanly, “later on, when we get on the train, I’ll take the handcuffs off, and I won’t put ’em on again outside either. It’s just here in town, one never knows what you fellows suddenly get into your heads.”

I was silent. He meant well, but he did not know how unimportant the little handcuffs were to me. But with his clumsy efforts to console me, he had uttered a phrase that struck me like a thunderbolt, in my depressed mood. “Maybe you’ll get out again some time,” he had said! Maybe … some time.… And I had been counting on a six weeks’ observation period, that’s what Mordhorst had told me.

Maybe … some time.…

Was it just a random remark of the sergeant’s, or did he really know something? He had my papers! Of course, he knew something: I was going to be locked up for life! Really dead to the outside world, as I had imagined just now. A mist rose before my eyes, and the sun that shone for everybody, shone no more for me. Never again would it shine for me.

36

We are walking together along a beautiful country road, the warder and I. I am free of the handcuffs, which has the advantage that I can carry the suitcase, which is none too light, now in my right hand, now in my left. The warder has lit a short pipe, and has graciously given me permission to smoke. This permission does not help me in the least. In any case it would probably go ill with my bitten nose.

Along the road stand tall old chestnut trees, which have finished blossoming. The sun is sinking. Now and then, a belated cartload of hay creaks passed us. The people hardly turn their heads after us, they are long accustomed to such a sight around here, in the near vicinity of the asylum. The most that happened was that once a woman threw an inquisitive look at my bandaged face. The warder had tried to question me about my “crime” and my former life, but I had only answered him in monosyllables. But since he has decided to shorten the journey with a little conversation, he now tells me about himself, or rather about a garden which he works with his young wife. He would so much like to rent the neighbouring plot of land, and, weighing the matter up at his ease, he sets out before me all the reasons for and against it—his low salary and the high rent, the soil full of weeds, the doubtful yield—oh, there were only reasons against. The warder breathes out a cloud of blueish-white smoke and says finally: “Well, I’ll rent that plot at all costs. A plot of land—that’s better than a thousand marks in the savings bank!”

I only half-listen to his chatter, and now when he comes to his surprising conclusion I smile bitterly. “It’s with such empty-heads as this that I’m to keep company from now on, and they simply call me ‘Sommer’ without ‘Herr’ and graciously admit that ‘so far I make quite a sensible impression’!”

But aloud I ask: “Is that the institution?”

“That’s it,” replied the warder. “And now we’d better put a bit of a spurt on; it’s nearly office closing-time, and the governor will complain if I bring you in late.”

Seen from the road, the asylum does not make a bad impression. My heart starts to beat easier. Situated on a slight rise, surrounded by tall thick-leaved old trees, it lies as stately as a great manor-house or some old castle. Great windows blink in the light of the evening sun. But as we come nearer, I see the high red walls all round, with iron spikes and barbed-wire along the top, I see the bars in front of the flashing windows, and my companion has no need whatever to explain: “This used to be a convict prison.”

No, I can see for myself this does not look like a hospital but a convict prison. A real moat, quite wide, encircles the whole group of buildings, ducks and geese swim peacefully on it, but on the bridge we are crossing stands an armed guard in a green uniform, and the office to which I am taken is no whit different from the prison office I left an hour and a half ago. Even the officials in it seem to be of the same kind, the same bored, uninterested yet searching glance is thrown at the new inmate, the same slow formality is gone through by which my escort is relieved of me and my personal details are entered.

This evening affords me only one ray of light; I was arrested on a charge of attempted murder, the magistrate had ordered my transfer to an institution on the grounds of homicidal intent, now I am being handed over here with the entry “uttering menaces”. Without my doing anything about it, the seriousness of the charge against me has been considerably reduced; for a moment I tell myself that it is impossible for them to keep me here for any length of time, and to destroy my whole life for such a slight offence.

But then, as I followed my green-uniformed guide with his fattish melancholy face, through all the wretched stone courtyards on which only barred windows looked down, as I was admitted into a gigantic stone building through double iron doors, and mounted the gloomy staircase, as I realised that the so-called hospital differed in no respect from a prison, that here, too, were bars and warders and iron discipline and blind obedience, I thought no more about the great step I had taken from attempted murder to uttering menaces, I believed no more in the slightness of my offence—I felt that anything was possible, I realised how helplessly I stood at the mercy of gigantic and pitiless powers, powers without heart, without compassion, without human qualities. I was caught in a great machine and nothing that I did or felt was of any more consequence, the machine would run its unalterable course, I might laugh or cry, the machine would take no notice.

37

One iron grill and then another iron grill, and now we enter a long gloomy corridor full of pale figures. It stinks here, it stinks piercingly of latrines, cabbage and bad tobacco. Outside the corridor window is the last glow of sunset, above the high iron-spiked wall I see the peaceful evening countryside with its meadows and slowly-ripening cornfields, right across to the low strips of woodland on the horizon. Around me, pale figures are standing, leaning against the walls. Sometimes I see something of their faces, when the glow of their pipes momentarily becomes brighter. A man, a short sturdy man in a white jacket, takes me behind a partition at the end of the corridor. It is his sanctum, the “glass box” as it is called. From this “glass box” the stocky man, who turns out to be the head-nurse, watches everything that happens along the corridor, and he watches very keenly, as I was to discover. He even sees things that he cannot see at all, he knows what happens in the cells, he knows everything that happens at work—he is the stern conscience of Block 3, and the doctor’s information service.

“Leave your suitcase down here, Sommer,” says the head-nurse. “I’ll give you your institution clothes tomorrow, civilian clothes are forbidden here. And now I’ll show you your bed, it’s bed-time already. We go to bed at half-past seven here, and get up at a quarter to six in the morning …”

“Might I perhaps have some supper?” I ask. “I didn’t have any there.…”

I expect to get a “No” as I did on my first arrival in prison. I did not really intend to ask, having already learned that a prisoner should say nothing, ask nothing, question nothing. But—wonder of wonders—the head-nurse nods his head and says: “All right, Sommer, go and sit in the day-room for a while.”

I am put into the day-room. It is a long, three-windowed room, containing nothing but scrubbed-down wooden tables once painted white, primitive wooden benches without backs, and a sort of kitchen clock on the wall. I sit down on a bench. By the clock it is shortly after half-past seven.

Outside, the cry echoes: “Bed-time! Clothes out!” A violent shuffling begins (what an incredible number of people there must be in this block). Doors slam; in a neighbouring room, which is probably the lavatory, an uninterrupted rush of water begins. In bed at half-past seven, like children! How am I to get through the night? And the thirty-six nights of the observation period? And perhaps many many more nights to come? The weight of an infinite length of time in which nothing happens, descends on me like lead. This bare room, containing only the essentials, seems an image of my future life. Nothing to look forward to, nothing to wish for, nothing to hope for … a life in which every minute is empty and the future will be empty, too …

An aluminium bowl is set before me, a spoon is put by it … This is done by a little man in a dirty linen jacket. His face is ugly, and is made even uglier by the fact that all his upper teeth are missing, except two fang-like yellowish-black eye-teeth.

The man looks like some malevolent animal.

“Who are you?” he asks in a high-pitched insolent voice. “Where are you from? What have you done? What’s up with your nose?”

I do not answer him at all, silently I begin to dip into my aluminium bowl. It is nothing but cabbage and water. Warm salt water with very little cabbage.

“Is this your supper?” I ask. “No bread at all?”

Around me, though it is bed-time already, several figures are creeping, in worn-out brownish clothes which in many cases are in rags.… The little man with the fangs laughs shrilly.

“Is that our supper, he wants to know! He thinks it ought to be cooked specially for him. He thinks he’s in a restaurant. He’s so posh, he won’t talk to the likes of us. No bread, he says!”

He laughs again, and suddenly all is quiet. There are six or seven figures slinking around me or leaning silently against the walls. I put my spoon down in the bowl—what is the good of filling ones belly with warm water? I stand up, take a step toward the door. At the same instant uproar breaks out behind my back. They have thrown themselves on my barely half-emptied bowl, they struggle together like animals. Suppressed cries are heard … the clapping sound of blows … Oh God, they fight like beasts over a pint of hot cabbage-water! A high yelling neigh of triumph rings out—it is the little man with the fangs, he is the victor! “Will you get out and let me through! I’ll report you to the head-nurse! I brought the new fellow the bowl, it belongs to me! You give me the grub, didn’t you, new fellow?”

I hurry to get out of the door. I stand again in the corridor, by the glass box. The head-nurse comes out.

“Well, come along, Sommer. Is your bandage still all right? I’ll have a look at it tomorrow morning.”

In the long corridor, before each cell door, lies a bundle of clothes.

“You put your clothes outside the door too. You’re only allowed to keep your shirt on inside.”

“Mayn’t I fetch some pyjamas out of my suitcase?”

“Pyjamas, nightshirts—things like that don’t exist here. You’ll get a decent institution shirt that’ll last you a week.”

We enter a long narrow cell, the air is fetid, stifling already. Eight beds stand in the narrow room, four below, four above.

“Yours is the lower bunk on the right by the window. Make it up quickly and put your things outside the door. It’s lock-up time immediately.”

The door slams behind me, I go over to my bed. I feel many searching eyes turned towards me, but nobody says a word. The bed is better than in prison. There are no straw-bags here but proper mattresses, hard as stone; one can lie on them better. There is a sheet too, and a fine white blanket which, rather clumsily, I button into a cover. There is also a bolster. The bed-linen is blue-chequered. All the time I feel the searching eyes on me, but not a word is said. Hurriedly I slip off my clothes, bundle them clumsily together, and run back to bed in my shirt. I creep into it. The plank bottom of the upper bunk is close above me, I cannot sit upright. The bed above seems empty. I wrap myself tight in my blankets and stretch out full-length. The warm cabbage-water rumbles disagreeably in my stomach.

A voice says loudly: “Don’t even say good evening or introduce himself, the miserable bastard!”

Murmurs of approval can be heard. I start up in my bed—I must not fall out with these people on the very first evening. I have had enough with my strained relations with Duftermann. I knock my head badly on the planks of the upper bed. Seeing this, the two men in the beds opposite laugh.

One cries: “He’s bumped his nut!”

And the other: “He crumpled his fine cloth pants up in his jacket, he’s got plenty to learn, the fat swine.”

Murmurs of approval again. I creep out of my bed.

“Gentlemen,” I say, “excuse me if I have not behaved properly. I didn’t wish to offend you. If I said nothing, it was because I thought some of you were asleep already.”

A voice from an upper bunk calls out: “That’s Zeese, he’s deaf and dumb, he can’t hear anything!”

I eagerly continue, “I’m not used to all this yet. I’ve only been a fortnight or so in remand prison. For the attempted murder of my wife …”

Murmurs of hearty approval. I have guessed rightly: “attempted murder” makes a much better impression here than “uttering menaces”.

“My name is Erwin Sommer, I have a market-produce business, and I’m here for six weeks’ observation …”

“You watch out it doesn’t turn into six years,” calls a laughing voice. “The medical officer loves us all so much, he doesn’t like to lose any of us.”

Laughter again, but the ice is broken, the bad impression is made good again. I go from bed to bed and hear the names: Bull, Meierhold, Brachowiak, Marquardt, Heine and Dräger. I shall not remember them, especially as it has become almost dark by now and I cannot recognise the individual faces in their box-beds. Then I creep back to my own bed.

A voice calls: “Hey, new fellow, tell us how it happened, that business with your wife.”

Another calls heatedly: “Shut your trap, Dräger! What do you always want to be so nosey for? Leave it to the fellow to tell what he wants. You just want to go crawling to the chief in the glass box tomorrow.”

A heated quarrel begins, about who is the head-nurse’s “earwig”. The occupants of other beds join in. Wild abuse is hurled to and fro. I am glad that, at least, they leave me in peace. I am tired, my nose hurts badly. The quarrel is just beginning to die down for lack of material when angry shouting is heard in the corridor, the sound of blows and howls. Our cell door flies open and a figure hurtles in.

A loud voice calls: “Will you get into your own bed instead of hanging round other people’s cells, you damned queen, you!”

And a shrill complaining voice—I recognise it immediately, it is the fang-toothed man: “You’ve hurt me bad, keeper. Keeper, I shan’t be able to work tomorrow!”

“You damned queen, you!” rumbles the voice outside once more. “Hurry up and roll into kip, or else you’re for it!”

The fang-toothed one thrusts his face into my bed.

“Well, new fellow, so you’re under me? I tell you straight, if you don’t lie still in the night, if you wobble about, I’ll come down and wobble you.”

“I’ll lie still all right,” I tell him, and I think anxiously of my rattling and snoring.

The little man undresses with incredible speed and shoots his rags outside the door. Then with a disgusting lack of ceremony he uses the bucket.

“You could have done that outside, Lexer,” calls an indignant voice.

“Are you too posh to breathe my stink?” cries the shrill insolent voice. “We’re real posh in here now the new fellow’s come! O.K. Now I’ll shit more than ever!”

And he lets a thunderous one.

“In hell,” I think. “I have landed in hell. However shall I be able to live here? And sleep? These are not human beings, these are animals. And am I supposed to live here for six weeks, perhaps longer? Perhaps very long? In this hell? This Lexer, or whatever he is called, is a devil!”

They try to question me further. But I do not want to hear or see anything more of them. I pretend to be asleep. And slowly they too become quieter, the shrill hateful voice falls silent. It becomes darker and darker, most of them are probably asleep already. I hear a clock strike three times. What would it be? A quarter to nine? A quarter to ten? I hope the clock strikes the hours as well. That would shorten the night. Above me Lexer tosses restlessly to and fro. My bed sways each time. And I am not supposed to move! I lie quite still, my face hidden in my arm. I am utterly alone with myself, I see clearly that from now on I shall always be utterly alone with myself. I am somewhere where neither love nor friendship can reach, I am in hell … I have sinned for a brief while and I am being punished for it, incredibly severely, for a long time! But one should have known, before one sinned, how severe the punishment would be. One should have been warned beforehand, then one would not have sinned … God, that bit of brandy-drinking, is it really so terrible? That squabble with Magda—well, all right, legally they could make out a case of uttering menaces, but do I have to spend a living death in hell on that account? If Magda knew how I am suffering—she would at least take pity on me, she would help me out of pity, even if she doesn’t love me any more. There is just one hope, and that is the doctor. Dr Stiebing, the medical officer, had not made a bad impression on me during that car journey. He had joked and laughed with Dr Mansfeld like a real human being. Perhaps he is a real human being, not just part of a machine. I will speak to him as to a human being, I will fight for my soul with him, I will save my soul from this hell.

“Sir,” I will say to him, “I take full responsibility for all I have done. I have never been so intoxicated that I did not know what I was doing. I want to be punished severely. I would gladly go to prison for a year, two years. I would do that gladly. But don’t leave me in this place, in this hell, where a man doesn’t know how he will come out again, and perhaps he will only come out feet first. Sir,” I will continue, “you know our family doctor, Dr Mansfeld. You joked and chatted with him in the car. Ask Dr Mansfeld, he has known me for many years. He will confirm that I am a decent, respectable, sober man. That affair was just a sudden attack, I don’t know how it happened myself”—No, I interrupted myself, I mustn’t tell the medical officer that, or he’ll certify me insane. “But Dr Mansfeld will confirm that I have always been decent. I put Magda into a private ward in hospital and paid the high cost of the operation without a murmur, and spared nothing for her comfort. I always was a decent man, sir, let me go back to live among decent men. Give me a chance.…”

The clock strikes, it strikes the hour, a quarter of the long night is past, it is now ten o’clock. And so I spend the first night in the asylum counting quarter-hour after quarter-hour, making speeches and writing letters, between sleeping and waking. Sometimes, exhausted, I have nearly fallen asleep, but then I start up again: Lexer above me has thrown himself about in his bed, or someone has gone over to the bucket. For a ‘joke’ I kept count this first night: from ten o’clock at night till a quarter to six in the morning seven men went to the bucket thirty-eight times. When I wanted to use it in the morning it was full to overflowing. And not a single man used paper—they were past that. Oh, I got to know a fine corner of hell that night.

38

I was clothed by the head-nurse. I got a brown jacket, striped cloth trousers, leather slippers, all new. The head-nurse treated me with discrimination. But perhaps it would have been better if he had given me old rags like the others. They could see I was wearing new things, and it strengthened their dislike of me.

“He wants to be something better than us, the fat swine,” they said, throwing malicious glances at me.

Incidentally, I did something strange while the clothing was being issued. I was allowed to take soap and a toothbrush out of my case, and I was able, in an unwatched moment, to steal a razor-blade. I had done this once before, but then I had been weak and cowardly, I had no idea what was in store for me. Now I would behave differently, I would slash myself without fear of the pain. No, not just yet; what I had done, this secret taking of the razor-blade, was quite a surprise to myself. Not just yet—first I would fight with myself. But should the fight be unavailing … well, all right, when I had had my hearing and my permanent transfer to this institution was confirmed, then, yes, then.… I was not going to spend my life in this hell, that much was certain.

I have taken my first breakfast with my fellow-sufferers. At half past six in the morning, in the rays of the early sun their faces look absolutely disconsolate. Raw faces, animal faces, blunt faces. Over-developed chins or chins completely missing. Cross-eyed men, hunchbacked men, stunted men. As pale and sad as their worn-out clothes. The head-nurse has assigned to me a place at the last table, right back against the wall. That is good. I can see and observe everything and sit quite undisturbed. From the orderly I have got a mug of some hot chicory brew, and the head-nurse has given me three thick slices of bread. Two I spread with margarine and one with jam. I eat them slowly and with great appetite. I chew thoroughly. Who knows what there will be for lunch today? The cabbage-water has frightened me a great deal. Some get more bread, they also get something extra to put on it. The extras may be chives or onion or skim-milk cheese. These, I learn, are the outside workers. They are engaged on heavy work all day, which is why they get such precious titbits.

Shortly after breakfast, the order “Fall in!” is heard, and all those who are working, line up, and are let through the iron-barred door by a keeper, and all that remain behind are the orderlies, the sick, and myself. There are many sick.…

I stand at the window and watch how the people from every block line up in the yard. There are many, many people. Over to the left stands a line of women. Then the yard is emptied. A fat man in a white coat, the head-nurse, has detailed them off for work. Some have marched off with scythes, others with hoes, many have gone to the factory. Now I walk along the corridor with Hielscher, up and down, up and down. Hielscher is a little hunchback, who speaks careful German in a soft, very clear voice. Hielscher calls me “Herr Sommer”, and that does me good. In his clear careful speech, he tells me many things about this place and its inmates. He usually peels potatoes. He has been peeling potatoes for six years. Altogether he has been eleven years in the asylum.

“I am a sexual offender,” he says gently, choosing his words with care. “The medical officer has made his report about me. I got congenital mental deficiency coupled with lack of control and a drastically impaired sense of responsibility, and besides I have a hump, that is obvious of course, and also I limp. Is that bad, Herr Sommer?”

I am quite perplexed at this question.

“Bad?” I ask, embarrassed. “How do you mean, bad?”

“Well, is it a bad ailment or only a slight one, Herr Sommer?” And he looks at me with his lively but sad eyes.

“No, it’s probably not too bad.”

“That is what I think,” says Hielscher. “I’m sure they’ll soon release me. Have you by chance a little tobacco for me, Herr Sommer?”

I told Hielscher that I had a longing for tobacco myself, and that unfortunately I had none to give him. Thereupon Hielscher’s interest in me faded rapidly, he left me, and I wandered alone up and down the corridor. That morning was interminable. I walked and walked, but the hands of the clock did not move on. Sometimes I glanced into one of the two day-rooms, but the torpid figures sitting there, the wrecks, repelled me. Only the orderlies were busy with bucket and broom, clean-looking, well set-up men, as in all prisons, skilful and unscrupulous, sucking up to the officials, informing on their fellow-prisoners about every trifle, corrupt, and rude to their comrades. I saw them going from cell to cell, pretending to tidy up, but mainly searching the beds for a hidden slice of bread or a plug of tobacco. It strengthened me in my antipathy when I saw that the hated Lexer was also a kind of orderly, an assistant-orderly, who spent the greater part of the day over in one of the workshops in the annexe, making brushes, but who always contrived also to make a job for himself in the block.

The staircase was being cleaned by a man in his middle years, with a face once clever but now confused and hopelessly sad; from time to time he broke off his cleaning, tore open a window and shouted filthy insults through the bars at some imaginary person outside. I watched Lexer creep up behind the yelling man, spring on him from the back and beat his head again and again against the iron bars.

He cried shrilly: “Will you get on with your work, you swine! What are you shouting about! You want to eat but you don’t want to work for it! Just you wait!”

And he beat his head again. I would have liked to help the poor fellow, but the grill on to the staircase was locked and during the previous night I had firmly resolved not to interfere in any quarrels but to remain completely neutral. The more unobtrusively I lived, the more favourable would be the doctor’s report. Besides, I was afraid of Lexer, and I had every reason to be. I long observed this scoundrel—or lout, rather; he was only in his middle twenties and of extremely backward development—with the watchful eyes of hatred. He was a born bloodhound. He took a delight in torturing his fellow-prisoners, he was always cuffing them here and pinching them there, hitting them, reporting them to the head-nurse. Nothing was too petty for him. If a prisoner brought in an onion he had secretly picked up, Lexer would either take it from him or else denounce him to the head-nurse as a thief. And since the onion really would be stolen, only from the institution garden of course, the thief would be bound to get fourteen days in the lock-up. The weaker ones Lexer would entice into some quiet corner and there he would beat them until they handed over their tobacco or whatever else of their possessions he coveted. The stronger ones he approached with cunning, deceiving them with promises of bread and never keeping his promise. But with the keepers, Lexer was not at all unpopular. He played the part of the court-jester; in his shrill insolent way, he always had some quick-witted joke at hand, usually at the expense of his fellow-prisoners. He would perform any service for the keepers quickly, skilfully, willingly, and if he was caught in any misdemeanour, he would take his thrashing with a comically lachrymose expression.

“You can’t be angry with the swine,” said the keepers and they tolerated him and his tyranny over the other prisoners. He was particularly useful to them; through him they got to know everything that happened in the place.

Lexer had been put into an orphanage at the age of six and from then on he had only spent a few weeks or months at liberty, and had always returned into the safe keeping of the State: in approved schools, reformatories, prisons. Eventually they had put him into this institution as incorrigible, and as he well knew, for life. But that did not upset him in the least. In this place, which seemed a hell to me, he was like a pig in clover. He felt in his element here. Here he could give rein to all his malevolence. He played the assistant-orderly, the assistant-keeper, the head devil. Here he was, beating the head of an imbecile, a schizophrene, against the bars and probably expecting praise for keeping the inmates so strictly to their tasks.

39

Even an interminable morning comes to an end. Lunch-time came, and the prisoners smiled: it was a good day, they got a good meal. Each man received in a string bag a pound and a half of potatoes in their jackets, and with it, in his aluminium bowl, a ladleful of sharply spiced gravy in which floated a few shreds of meat. Laboriously I peeled my potatoes with a spoon; knives and forks were too dangerous in this place of constant fighting. Watching the men as they ate, I noticed some who peeled their potatoes, put them in the gravy and waited until they finished peeling before they began to eat. But these were in the minority: most were so famished that they could not wait. The potatoes disappeared into their mouths just as they were peeled, only a few ever reached the gravy. Near me I saw a fat stocky man with iron-grey hair and the reddish-brown sunburnt face of a land-worker, who ate his peelings as he cut them off. I had hardly finished peeling my potatoes, when he threw a questioning glance at me, reached his calloused hand across the table, scooped up all my leavings and thrust them into his mouth.

“Hey!” I called. “There was a rotten potato among that lot!”

“Don’t matter, mate,” he said, chewing eagerly. “I’ve got to mow all day, I never get enough. Perhaps I can pinch some pig-spuds tonight. Hope so!”

He was not the only glutton, they were all hungry, always, even directly after a meal. I saw sick men going round, stealing tiny crumbs of potato off the table, while others scraped out their already spotless bowls. I saw one in the corridor polishing the inside of the gravy cauldron with his finger which he licked again and again. All this was happening under the eyes of the keeper, who regarded it as a commonplace affair.

Here I am anticipating somewhat, but in this chapter I want to have done with my description of asylum meals, though it is not yet a closed chapter for me even today. We never got fresh meat to eat, just occasionally shreds—never lumps—of some old red salt meat floating in the gravy, and very rare shreds, at that! There was never butter, sausage or cheese, never an apple. And everything we had was quite inadequate, always watered-down, and badly prepared. Why it was so, I cannot imagine, even today. The prisoners maintained that the head-nurse was eating everything himself. But even the greediest head-nurse can’t put away the food of a few hundred men. Perhaps the authorities wanted to take away our nature a bit, but I must confess that even on this starvation diet, the passions remained lively enough. However there were always folk among us who suffered no such hunger, who even lived fatly, within certain limits. First there were the orderlies, who had to cut, weigh and spread our bread for us. Officially a keeper stood by and watched, but let the telephone ring and the keeper would have to leave the kitchen and go into the glass box, and immediately a few slices would be thickly spread and disappear. Prisoners have sharp eyes, and hunger makes them sharper; it was inevitable that they should get to know that they were being robbed. One might see an orderly chewing a piece of bread in the lavatory, another might surprise him giving it to a “friend” or trading it for tobacco. But there was no point in informing on them. It was difficult to prove anything, almost impossible, for even if the bread was found (which hardly ever happened because no keeper could be bothered to look for it) the orderly could say “I saved it up from breakfast”; and then the orderlies were the keepers’ blue-eyed boys, their tale-bearers; they would not hear a word against them. So practically nothing ever happened about it, but the envy and the hatred was kept awake all the time.

Even worse than this furtive way of procuring food was a quite legal way, condoned and even encouraged by the authorities. Such of the inmates as still had obliging relatives outside, were allowed to receive food parcels as often as they wished. One might expect that almost every one of the patients would have such relatives outside, who might at least send him a loaf now and then—even dry bread was a longed-for commodity there. But such was not the case. Apart from the fact that many of the inmates could neither read nor write (this dreadful place housed only the last dregs of humanity) or else were too insane or dull-witted to do so, the relatives of the majority did not wish to acknowledge them any more. They had caused grief and shame enough when they were outside, and now that they had been in this place for five, ten, even twenty years, they were done with and forgotten by those outside, to them they were dead and buried.

No, there were very few who got parcels; out of the fifty-six men in my block, perhaps only five or six. But these sat plump and well-fed at our common meal-table and lay beside the bowls full of watery soup, their thickly-spread bread, with sausage and cheese we never got a taste of; yes I even lived to see a fat peasant who had been put away on account of his ungovernable temper, devouring a roast duck at his ease in front of us, gnawing it bone by bone. He dripped with fat, and we sat by with our eyes growing bigger and bigger, our slavering mouths filling with water, our hands trembling, and our hearts full of envy and greed.

From all this, from our constant hunger, and our hatred of the thieving orderlies and our envy of the gluttons, arose an endless round of acrimony, quarrels, fights, punishments. There was not a day’s peace in the place, always something going on. One no longer even listened when two men insulted each other in the most obscene manner. One merely walked away when they blacked each other’s eyes and bloodied each other’s noses. One was thankful not to be involved oneself. One had to watch every word that was said, it would be immediately passed on, immediately turned against the speaker.

For my own part, I must confess that at first it was not only with envy that I regarded these parcel-hogs. It was so simple for me, I had only to write a letter to Magda and I could belong to this privileged class. Magda wouldn’t be one to let her own husband starve! For a week I struggled with myself, and then hunger won, I decided to write. I had neither writing paper nor envelope, and nothing of the sort was provided by the institution; but I saved a slice of bread and got what I wanted. I wrote the letter, and then I waited. In bed of an evening I pictured to myself what would be in the parcel; when I thought of a slice of bread thickly spread with fat liver-sausage, I was nearly sick with hunger and craving. I had calculated the earliest day on which the parcel could arrive, but that day passed, and many days after it, and the parcel did not come. Then I heard that all communications had first to go through the censorship of the medical officer and then be passed over to the administrative offices for franking, and that letters were not sent off immediately, but only after a while, when a number had accumulated.

“They take their time,” said the prisoners. “Do you think they’ll start running just because you want ’em to? They sit all the firmer on their arses.”

So I went on waiting and hoping.

Then one day the head-nurse casually said, “There’s a letter of yours in the office, Sommer. They say it can’t go, you’ve got no money for the postage.”

“What,” I cried. “Because of twelve pfennigs postage I can’t send a letter! I sent my wife four thousand marks from the remand prison!”

“You should have kept a few marks back,” said the head-nurse, and tried to pass on.

“But sir,” I cried, “It’s not possible! Just for twelve pfennigs! They can ring up my wife, and she’ll confirm …”

“A phone call costs ten pfennigs, and you haven’t got it, Sommer,” said the head-nurse coolly. “Keep calm, your letter will go off all right, next month when your first wages are credited to you.”

I have no idea whether my letter to Magda was eventually sent off or whether it got lost in the meantime. Anyhow, I never got a food parcel, I always remained among the hungry ones, the greedy envious ones. For by the time I finally had some wages to my credit, I had long become too dispirited to write to Magda.

40

I have hurried on far in advance of events. I am still on my first day in the asylum. I have eaten my potatoes very properly with no peel on them, and I am dog-tired after my sleepless night. I turn to the head-nurse and beg him to allow me to lie down on my bed for an hour, since I have not been able to sleep all night.

“That is forbidden,” says the head-nurse sternly, but then in a milder tone: “All right, lie down. But get undressed and into bed properly.”

I do so, and I have hardly lain down and shut my eyes before that hated yelling voice rises.

“Get out of bed this instant, you swine! You’d like that, wouldn’t you, to loaf around while we do your work for you? Get up, get out of that bed!”

The ever-watchful bloodhound has tracked me down. But now I am in a fury, my hatred gives me strength to protest.

“Shut your mouth!” I shout furiously. “Do you think you’re better than the head-nurse? He’s given me permission and you, you swine …”

“He’s given you permission, has he really?” he grinned and slobbered and showed his discoloured fangs. “Well, you must be pretty posh if the head-nurse makes an exception like that for you. Don’t be angry, mate. I’m just here to keep order in the block, otherwise I get sat on by the head-nurse.” Whereupon he disappears, and I lie back, quite content to think that I have got the better of him at last.

I have really fallen asleep but only for a few minutes, then something causes me to wake up. It is probably not a noise that awakens me, but an instinct by which I scent danger: in this place one develops the instincts of a hunted beast. I am lying on my side looking straight at the stool by my bed, where I put my clothes. I blink, and see something white, busying itself with my things. It is that Lexer again. Very carefully, infinitely quietly he takes up one article of clothing after another, searches the pockets and feels along the seams … my first impulse is to spring up and rush at this devil, this indefatigable tormentor. But I hold myself back, I remain lying quietly, I watch what he does. Let him search. I grin. I have not the slightest thing in my pockets that he could conceivably want. Not the slightest thing?

My heart stops and again I would like to jump up, to snatch from him the razor-blade which he has now found, though I had carefully wrapped it in an old newspaper. He throws a glance at me. I shut my eyes, I am asleep. Then, when I peer again, I see that he is wrapping up the blade once more in the newspaper, and he puts it back in my pocket. Then he is gone. But I have realised the danger. With one bound I spring out of bed, take out the blade, and hurry with it to the lavatory. A pull of the plug, and the blade has disappeared, that precious blade that was to have opened the way to freedom for me if all else failed. A minute later I am in bed again. None too soon! For there stands the head-nurse by my bed and he puts his hand on my shoulder. “Wake up, Sommer!”

I wake up, just right I hope, not too easily, not too slowly.

“Get up, Sommer!”

I do so, and stand before him in my shirt.

“Sommer, have you got something forbidden in your pockets?”

“No, sir.”

“You know that anything that cuts is strictly forbidden here, for instance table-knives, razor-blades, nail-files. You know that?”

“Yes, sir, so I’ve been told.”

“And you have nothing in your pockets that’s forbidden?”

“No, sir.”

A short pause.

Then: “Sommer, I’m warning you. Own up, and I’ll shut one eye to it. Otherwise, on your first day I’ll put you under punishment for four weeks.”

“I’ve nothing to own up to, sir.”

“All right, then turn out your pockets.”

I do so, beginning with my jacket. I leave the trousers pocket till last.

“Undo this newspaper, Sommer.”

I do so. Nothing, absolutely nothing. The head-nurse stands thoughtfully for a moment. Then he goes through my clothes himself, garment by garment, but again nothing.

“Get dressed, Sommer.”

I do so.

“All right. Now send Lexer to me. You will stay in the day-room till the leisure-hour.”

“Yes, sir.”

I had set them a lovely task: under the supervision of the head-nurse, all the orderlies searched the whole cell, bit by bit. They found all manner of things, but no razor-blade. In the end, they abused Lexer, they imagined it was some idiotic roguish trick of his. But Lexer at least knew that I had really had a razor-blade. I had got the better of him. And strangely enough, though they all abused him, from the head-nurse down, he bore me no grudge. I had got the better of him, that impressed him. From that time, he never picked on me directly, though he could never quite leave off nagging.

41

The afternoon was endless. The only slight diversion was that, for our “leisure hour” we were taken outside for two hours from two to four. “Outside” was a small garden within the high prison walls, perhaps four hundred square yards in extent, in which a single narrow path, just wide enough for two people, ran round a grass plot. The sun was shining, it was a fine summer day. But what the sun shone upon was not so fine. I am not speaking now of the surroundings, high walls, red and naked or clothed with dead grey cement, decked with barbed-wire, the bars at the windows, the blind window-panes—this alone is enough to rob the most beautiful summer day of its brilliance.

But I do not mean all this. I mean my comrades, my fellow-sufferers, who lean against the wall in their discoloured rags squat on a bench, or scuffle along the sandy path, in wooden shoes or barefoot. How revealing is the pitiless sunlight on these faces, which seem merely like distant lost memories. Grief, sadness, bestiality and mad despair. I shut my eyes and see them standing, squatting, scuffling there, as I have seen them a hundred times, and shall perhaps see them a thousand times more. There is a tall shaky man whose close-cropped iron-grey head is covered with blood-red or festering “pig-boils” as they call furuncles here, his face hard and angular and his dark deep set eyes entirely devoid of brightness. Ceaselessly, this fellow, a Rhinelander who was once probably a street-trader, murmurs: “Two hundredweight Kanalstrasse 20, one hundredweight Meier, Triftstrasse 10, market police, market police.…”

He raises his voice as he looks up to the blind barred windows, waiting for buyers. “Seed potatoes! Seed potatoes! Buy my seed potatoes!”

No buyers come. Despairingly he shakes his hideous head and begins again: “Two hundredweight Kanalstrasse 20, one hundredweight.…”

Yet if you ask him what time it is, he looks up at the sun and gives you quite a sensible and approximately correct answer, but no sooner has he done so than he resumes his eternal litany once more: “Seed potatoes! Seed potatoes! Buy my seed potatoes!”

How it still rings in my ears!

And then there is that other whom I have already mentioned, the schizophrene who hears voices, whose poor sad head Lexer had so mercilessly beaten against the iron bars—he shuffles round and round in slippers whose entire back part is missing. Suddenly he stops, he lifts his arm and makes a threatening gesture towards sky, walls and bars, but he does not see sky, walls and bars, he sees some invisible enemy whom he now threatens in a most obscene way. He is the only Saxon amongst us, and his abuse is uttered in such a pure Saxon dialect that the few among us who have their senses, smile. But it is really nothing to smile at when this lost man, the son of a good family, abuses the unseen enemy who prevents him from explaining everything to his parents. Why does he always thrust himself in the way, what is he after, this eternal trouble-maker? Isn’t the son the one best qualified to explain things to his parents?

Apparently this poor fellow had once committed some offence which had separated him from his parents. Perhaps it was only some indiscretion; in any case he was weak—he had wanted to hurry to his parents to explain everything to them; but he had been arrested straight away. And the years went by, one after another, and the iron bars were still between him and his parents, between his guilt and the family discussion that would have set his heart free. He threw himself against the bars, he cared nothing that some swine beat his face till the blood came, he fought day after day with an enemy invisible to us, and day after day he took up the fight anew. In between times, one could exchange a sensible word with him too, about the primitive things of life, how the soup had tasted and where the handbrush was. He even managed a little work; as I have already said, he swept the staircase. Incidentally this Saxon, Lachs, was the one who got most food parcels from home; but unfortunately he no longer noticed what he ate, it was all the same to him whatever the head-nurse put in his hand.

A third man, who talked a great deal, was a wiry patient with sharp features and a narrow aquiline nose: he looked like a white-skinned Arab. He laboured under the delusion that he was a high-ranking politician of a neighbouring country who had a bad reputation for recklessness, even for murderous tendencies. This patient always walked round in a circle or leaned against the fence which shut off our little grass patch from the main building. When he was thus leaning, he gave the impression that he had been there for ever; his bleached discoloured clothes seemed to melt away in the sunlight, leaving visible only his once-bold Arab face. Most of what he cunningly babbled to himself, with a sardonic giggle, is unrepeatable; he indulged in long fantasies in which he cut off the sex organs of his enemies, male or female, and ate them. Sometimes he indulged in such rigmaroles as this: “It is logical that you should have first to pass the examination at Landsberg, if you want to be a Field-Marshal in England. Otherwise of course it can’t happen. You wear a red-boot on the right foot, a blue one on the left.…”

He turned and sniggered at me, highly amused, and then immediately in full swing, he mowed down the French with a machine gun and in the same breath he remarked on the unbridled lasciviousness of Tungus virgins. His brain was constantly busy associating the most incompatible things, it was as if he were threading necklaces in which an old shoepolish tin dangled next to an ostrich-feather fan. With this man, one could have no sensible conversation; if he was addressed, he never listened, but either calmly went on talking or else fell silent. A fellow-prisoner told me that this “Arab”, Schniemann by name, used formerly to be more sensible, and even capable of proper work. He used to go with an outside working party to a factory in the town. There he had made an attempt to escape, but had been recaptured. As he resisted his new arrest with almost animal desperation, a violent commotion broke out around him; in the course of it, somebody had trodden on his arm, and broken it. When he returned from hospital, he was as insane as he is now; his arm, which had mended badly, was no further use to him, and he always kept his hand in his pocket. This added a characteristic and unforgettable touch to his melancholy figure.

42

Before I finally return to my own experiences, I must mention one man, a scintillating figure who made his appearance among us for a few brief days at the beginning of my stay here, only to disappear for ever, transferred to another asylum. On my very first day I had heard of a prisoner who because of a fight had already been eight weeks in the punishment cells on dry bread and water. If I thought of this man at all—with a shudder at the seemingly unbearable length of his solitary confinement—I pictured to myself a fellow like Liesmann, a fellow about thirty years old, with a brutal angular face, who wore a black patch over one eye, and went about the block mute and sullen. Everyone avoided him, even the most quarrelsome did not dare to start anything with Liesmann, who had a reputation for suddenly lashing out at the merest hint of an insult, and for not giving over until the other man was battered into submission.

And then Hans Hagen made his appearance in our block, a handsome healthy-looking young man of thirty, with the figure of a trained athlete, jet-black slightly wavy hair, and an ivory-coloured face of pure classical line. He had obtained from the head-nurse an entirely new outfit instead of the rags which the others were obliged to wear, and he wore his brown corduroy trousers and rush-coloured jacket as elegantly as if the best tailor had made them to measure. His every movement was swift, purposeful, beautiful. The way he spoke, and his dark eyes lit up as he did so, the manner in which he was able to impart charm and amiability to the most casual utterance was sheer delight in this place of misery.

“How can a young god like this come to be in such a hell?” I asked myself, and aloud, “A newcomer?”

“No,” they answered. “That’s the prisoner who was eight weeks in the punishment-cells for fighting.”

I could hardly believe my ears.

Later I often walked with Hans Hagen for a few minutes along the corridor or out in the yard, and I always listened to his chatter with new delight, whether he was talking of his youthful escapades in Rochester—he had been educated for some years in England—or of his bold sailing voyages to the North Cape. By what he told me, this passion for sailing had been his downfall. He had gone on buying bigger and more beautiful yachts and apparently he had committed some insurance fraud over the last yacht, which brought him into conflict with the law. As I have said, this was the version which he quite lightly and casually told me. As I later found out, he had been rather more frank and honest with other prisoners. He was one of three sons of a merchant in Rostock, who had a very flourishing sports outfitter’s business, a wealthy man who was able to give his sons a good education. But with the youngest, this same Hans, simply nothing would go right. In his schooldays certain things had happened which necessitated his hasty removal from Germany and his trip to England. There, too, he seems not to have led a particularly respectable and industrious life. He told me of his secret nocturnal trips from Rochester to the London suburbs, and when he was in a good mood he would sing me softly in a pleasant tenor voice, little songs he had picked up in bars and dance-halls there. In English of course—but still I found it delightful what pains he took to amuse me and cheer me up. Back home at Rostock, he officially devoted himself to the study of medicine, but in reality he was discovering his passion for the sea and sailing. He bought himself his first yacht, and I doubt if it was his father who financed the purchase. Even a prosperous sports outfitters’ concern cannot afford tens of thousands of marks for one of three sons, particularly as Hans Hagen merely wanted to live well on it, to make long expensive trips with his girl-friends, and never worry about money. At this time he found out how easily a good-looking and well-connected young man can do business even if he hasn’t a pennyworth of working capital. He dealt in houses, sold stocks and bonds, acted as car agent and insurance broker and picked up commissions right and left. His quick, brilliant, resourceful brain enabled him readily to perceive any good business opportunity and to step in quickly. He used his power over women unscrupulously, and there were not many men who could resist his charm either.

But as the money flowed in, so his requirements increased also. They were always a step ahead of his income, and his pocket-book was always empty. But he knew only one thing: at all costs he wanted to keep on with his life of pleasure, the only life that suited him. He became more and more unscrupulous about his choice of the means by which he obtained money: he stole cars off the streets, he even stole the handbags of women as they danced with him—in short, he became a swindler and a thief. That could not go on successfully for long.

His first case was hushed up because he was the son of an influential father; the second landed him in prison, and from prison into this sad place in which he had already been living for six years.

43

Six years—I could hardly believe my ears—this young man had been living for six years in these wretched surroundings, and had retained all the flexibility and charm of youth, he still bore about him the brightness of the outside world! It was a puzzle to me, after being there only a few days I was already worn down and crushed. Since then I have thought a great deal about Hans Hagen and I believe I have discovered how he managed to remain so unalterably strong.

First, nothing penetrated him very deeply. So nothing could deeply hurt him. He lived so much on the surface, his brilliant gifts enticed him here and there, he was always busy yet he never did anything seriously. He could do everything about the place, he cut the keepers’ hair in an unusually bold and elegant style, he laid bricks better than a bricklayer, he gave lessons in shorthand, English, French, Russian, he worked hard in the factory, he did carpentry, he had been looking after the pigs—he could do everything, but he did it in a brilliant offhand way, he was irresponsibility itself, nothing was durable. But the main reason for his immutability, his unconquerable youth, was that here in this death-house he lived hardly differently from outside. True, his surroundings had changed, but not Hans Hagen. If he had charmed women outside, here he charmed sick men. He did not overlook even the dullest one among them, he would not rest till a ray of his charm had touched him. He was the real king of this place, was Hans Hagen, and the authorities knew it too.

And like a king he collected his tribute—exactly as he did outside. I never saw Hans Hagen ask for anything, beg for anything. That was not necessary, to such an extent did his followers look after him. A keeper told me that while Hagen was in the punishment cell, there was a constant coming and going, every unguarded moment was taken advantage of to pass him something on the sly. There was an endless whispering at the spy-hole, whose glass had been broken so that the most precious commodity in the institution, matches, could be handed in to him. If another comrade was in the punishment cells he was forgotten, nobody thought any more about him. His reappearance was received as indifferently as his disappearance. Not so Hans Hagen. I have seen myself, often and often, how they came to him, these poorest of the poor, with hunger gnawing at their bowels. One outside-worker brought him a cucumber, another a pocketful of potatoes, here a piece of bread, there an onion, a few sprigs of parsley, carrots, windfall apples, salt, a handful of picked-up cigarette ends. In this place, these are all most precious valuables, difficult to obtain, there is none who can give out of an over-abundance, all are sacrificing what is most essential. And Hagen took everything, everything. He laughed, he thanked them, he made a joke. He could say “Thank you” so charmingly. And then he would turn his back and the giver was forgotten.

Hans Hagen had sometimes given me some of his surplus, in that swift spontaneous way that was peculiar to him. I was sitting disconsolately over my water soup, and Hagen cried: “Here, Sommer, catch!” and from the next table a piece of bread flew across to me, and he laughed heartily as I clumsily caught it; even as he laughed he had already forgotten that he had given me something precious for which I was obliged to be grateful to him. That is how he was: without memory. That is how he stands before me: without past or future, only living for today, abandoned to the moment. But it worried me that I allowed him to give me presents, that I accepted his company and his amiable chatter, without having anything to offer in exchange. For who was I, after all? A mediocre little businessman gone astray!

44

It was one of the inconceivable things about our administration that among this gang of fifty-six decrepit, bestial and criminal men, they should allow two youngsters to live, one of seventeen, the other eighteen years of age. One would have thought that this place, whose walls were constantly echoing with obscenities, curses and brawls, whose atmosphere was saturated with hatred and baseness, was anything but a suitable place for the education of youngsters, before whom a whole life lay. But they were among us, not transiently, but for good. They shared our dormitory, our table and our work. I do not doubt that they also shared our way of thinking and feeling, and if they differed somewhat from us older ones, it was that their wickedness was perhaps transfigured by the glitter of youth, but was more deliberate and calculating than ours. They were both handsome youths; the one, Kolzer by name, I shall mention later in another connection. The other, the eighteen-year-old Schmeidler, belonged to Hagen’s closest circle. Also belonging to this circle were Liesmann, the gloomy taciturn fighter with the black leather patch over his right eye, and a tall, strange, somewhat Don-Quixoteish figure of twenty-nine years old, Brachowiak by name. In contrast to Hans Hagen, all these three had been in state institutions since their sixth year. They had been in orphanages and reformatories, they had been put in prison and eventually they had landed up in this place. Though they always resisted its discipline and complained about it, they felt at home in such a place, its poisonous atmosphere was their life-breath. All three had been repeatedly released on probation and all three had failed to pass the test: within five or six weeks they were back again in the hands of the law, for they shied away from any form of work and preferred to live only by stealing.

I heard with astonishment and at first disbelief that Liesmann, whom I constantly saw in the company of the scintillating Hagen, who was his most faithful friend with whom everything was shared, that Liesmann was the very one with whom Hagen had fought so savagely that he had been given eight weeks in the punishment cells. But I had to believe it, for I heard from the head-nurse himself that apart from minor brawls, Hagen had successfully fought Liesmann three times: once he had dislocated his jaw, once he had stabbed him through the hand, and this last time he had so damaged his eye that Liesmann had almost entirely lost the sight of it. And Hagen himself once pulled the black patch off Liesmann’s brow, showed me the fixed and sullen-looking eye and said, “That’s where I hit Hein—can you see a bit again, Heini?” with a note of touching solicitude.

“Well, it’s as if I’d been looking too long at the sun,” answered Liesmann placidly.

Yes, they were the best of friends, they looked after each other. Liesmann bled the weaker ones without scruple, manhandling them until they parted with their treasured scraps. They looked after each other and they fought, not just brawling but as if they were fighting to the death, impelled by a blind and furious jealousy. For the handsome little eighteen-year-old Schmeidler, the male whore, was shared by the two of them, quite peacefully as a rule; but if young George—he was nicknamed “Otsche” Schmeidler—happened to favour one of them a bit more than the other, the fighting broke out. It was just like outside, it would not have been Hans Hagen if he hadn’t been able to procure for himself the pleasures of love, even in this house of the dead, a dark corrupt love, but still love, with all its voluptuousness and its dangers.

This youngster with the fair wavy hair, the blue eyes, the almost Grecian profile with its straight nose and round chin, scampered about among these men of a morning in the washroom. He would whisper in his short shirt, his slender white limbs as yet unspotted by any boils, and they turned their heads towards him, a light came into their eyes, their hearts beat faster, and in this comfortless place the day would seem not quite without comfort after all. The place was deranged by love, a flower on a muck-heap; other men moved lasciviously about the fringe of this circle and dare not come nearer for fear of Liesmann’s brutal strength and Hagen’s cunning ju-jitsu holds. But the boy Schmeidler, the whore, did not ignore these distant mute admirers. He “kept them on the boil,” he took their last bit of tobacco, for a smile he got bread, for a swift tender caress he got the best morsel from a newly-arrived food parcel. Oh, he looked after the interests of their common household, did Otsche Schmeidler, he did not allow himself merely to be kept, he contributed also. And his two friends were generous, they were men of the world, they shut one eye; in short, even the charming Hans Hagen was a pimp, nothing more nor less. He let his boy-whore run around provided that it brought something in. Have I not said that we lived in hell? Nothing was lacking in this hell, not even love, but even love was corrupt, it stank to high heaven!

45

I would never have got to know as much about these various entanglements, had I not daily sat at table beside Emil Brachowiak. I have often noticed that people prefer to make quiet silent men their confidants, and during the first week after my arrival in the asylum, I hardly spoke at all. So Brachowiak made me his confidant, he poured all his amorous troubles into my ear, he even tried to make me a sort of cupid’s messenger. Many an hour we walked side by side up and down the long corridor while he talked indefatigably. I have seen him cry and I have seen him laugh with happiness.

Outside it was getting dark already, the patients leaned forlornly against the walls; when they drew on their pipes the glow burned red; in one cell, Hagen, Liesmann and Schmeidler were at their secret business; and the outcast went on talking more and more feverishly to me, whether he should disclose the whole filthy affair to the medical officer, whether he should split on them or better still write a letter to Otsche.

“ ‘Otsche’, I’ll put, ‘I’ve done so much for you. I’ve given you two and a half packets of tobacco and a little gold ring I found in the factory. I know full well you gave the ring straight to Hagen, and he swapped it with one of the orderlies for a pound and a half of bacon stolen from the kitchen. But I won’t complain about that if you’ll be nice to me again. Since yesterday morning you’ve not as much as said “Good day,” you don’t even look at me any more. You’d better be nice to me or I’ll go and split to the doctor. I’ll tell the doctor everything you told me about those filthy tricks Liesmann and Hagen get up to with you.’ That’s what I’ll put.”

“If I were you, I wouldn’t split,” I answered. “You’ll only get the worst of it.”

“All right, then will you take the letter to Otsche this evening?”

But no, I didn’t want to do that. I didn’t want to take any active part in this affair. It didn’t matter at all, for Brachowiak easily found another messenger, and next morning, he reported in a voice trembling with indignation, that Otsche Schmeidler had sent him an answer.…

“What sort of answer?” I asked. “Is he going to be nice again?”

“I can lick his arse,” cried Brachowiak furiously. “That’s the message I get from that snotty-nosed little whore. But you wait, my boy. I’m finished with you now for good and all. You’re not getting anything else out of me, not another pipeful of tobacco!”

Oh, it was all right for Brachowiak to talk, I knew full well he hadn’t a shred of tobacco left, Otsche had cleaned him out, and Otsche knew it too.

But what had Hagen, our king, to say to all this, that charming and amiable young man who always kept up the appearance of cleanliness at least? Emil Brachowiak was utterly without shame in his amorous troubles, he knew Hagen’s relationship to Schmeidler, he constantly saw the youngster in the closest proximity to the king, Otsche himself had told him of the filthy tricks they practised with each other—but despite that Brachowiak went running to Hagen and poured out all his troubles to him, as he had to me. And Hagen listened and was kind and friendly, he spoke comfortingly and promised to act as a mediator with Schmeidler. And behind Brachowiak’s back they laughed at the useless fool—oh, what a truly hellish atmosphere of baseness and deceit!

Brachowiak was a clever and industrious worker, he had to some extent a position of trust in the factory, also he often came in contact with civilian workers and knew how to flatter and to beg, in a short time he once more had tobacco.

“This time I’m not giving in, this time he won’t get anything, not a pipeful!”

And Brachowiak went up and down the corridor with his long-stemmed pipe, and blew smoke into Schmeidler’s face without even looking at him. Brachowiak had reported sick and was not going to work. He spent his leisure-hour with me and, lo and behold, this time Schmeidler appeared in the prison yard, Schmeidler, quite alone, without Hagen and Liesmann. A rare sight.

“I won’t even look at him!” Brachowiak assured me, as we passed Schmeidler, who was sitting on the steps in the sunshine. The light summer wind moved his fair hair, he looked young, he looked fresh, he looked uncorrupted.

As we passed for the second time, Brachowiak said, “Otsche smiled at me just now.”

“Hang on to yourself,” I warned him. “The young lout is only after your tobacco—by the way, can you give me a bit of tobacco for a cigarette?”

“I haven’t got any tobacco down here,” said Brachowiak quickly. “No, he’s not going to get a bit of it. He only wants to clean me out again.”

But at the third time round, Schmeidler said quite amiably to us: “Shall we have a game of cards?”

And he took out of his pocket a filthy pack on which one could hardly distinguish the pips. Brachowiak was willing enough, so I did not say no either, but I nudged him and he nodded reassuringly, as if his mind was firmly made up. So we played our game of cards, Schmeidler with extraordinary luck, Brachowiak with equally remarkable ill-fortune. Schmeidler was the winner, I came second.

The youngster cried: “That’ll cost you a bit of tobacco, Emil,” and laughed at him, and Brachowiak took out his tobacco (which he hadn’t got with him!) and generously filled the youngster’s tin, while I, when I held my hand out, got barely enough for a cigarette. Then the two went round the yard, arm in arm, pressing closely together. I was forgotten. That evening, Emil Brachowiak was in tears again: Schmeidler had cleaned him right out and would have nothing more to do with him. And next day, Brachowiak really split on them, not to the medical officer, but to the head-nurse. But nothing happened, nothing at all. Why not, I do not know. The authorities had everything in their power, they could have punished the offenders, they could have separated them, they could have put the youngsters, that constant source of trouble, into other institutions. They did nothing, just as they did nothing about our hunger. I suppose it was immaterial to them how we lived and in what filth we rotted away. Of fifty-six, there were not six who would ever see freedom again. All, or nearly all, were sentenced to live in this place for ever. It was quite unimportant how they did so, that didn’t matter. They had to work as long as a bit of productivity could be squeezed out of their emaciated bodies. Let them put up with it or perish, life was outside, and this was the house of the dead!

46

I return now to my own experiences. It is still the day of my arrival, the leisure-hour is just over, I have formed my first impressions and made my first acquaintances, and now I stand in the long dim corridor that remains gloomy even on the brightest day. Hour after hour I wander to and fro, idle, tormented and yet dulled. I am glad when the head-nurse or a warder comes by with a patient taking washing to the store or carrying a pile of old documents. At least something is happening! What is happening does not concern me, and really nothing is happening at all, but I am diverted from myself and my uncertain fate; I may not, I cannot bear myself any longer.

Sometimes I stand by the one window that is accessible to me—the other is obstructed by the glass box—and stare out over the barb-wired walls, into freedom, which lies glittering in the sun “outside”. They must be limes; they shade a highway along which cars are speeding by, I see girls in bright dresses riding on their bicycles—but I turn my head away and walk on in the gloomy corridor. Life outside tortures me, it does not belong to me any more, I am severed from it, I want to know no more about it. Drive on, all of you. May the trees wither, the sand blow over meadows and fields, there should be desert about such a death-house as this, dry dead desert.

Sometimes I go into one of the two day-rooms, either the big one or the small one, and sit there for five or ten minutes with my fellow-sufferers. Fellow-sufferers? They cannot suffer as I do, their fate has been decided already, it is the uncertainty that torments me so much.

Some sleep with their head on the table (for it is forbidden to sleep in bed), others stare dully ahead, a small youngish man, completely crooked, with a squint in both eyes (but each in a different way), and a pear-shaped head, has an incredibly dirty pack of cards in front of him, and very slowly he lays one card on the other and grins stupidly at it. One has a newspaper in front of him, but he is staring over the top of it, and one has even taken his trousers off and with a face distorted by pain he examines the suppurating and bleeding furuncles on his leg—at our meal-table!

I retire in disgust and stand in the corridor again. I read the name-plates on the cells; I read: Gothar, Gramatzki, Deutschmann, Brandt, Westfal, Burmester, Röhrig, Klinger. And as I go on I repeat them to myself, repeat them like the vocabularies I used to learn as a child: Gothar, Gramatzki, Deutschmann, Brandt … I go on repeating the list, till it sticks. Then I pass on to the next name-plate … So I learn, I pass the time, this endless time, two and a half endless hours! What are two and a half hours outside? And what are they here? Then at last the inside working parties march back to their cells, the mat-weavers and brush-makers; doors are slammed, shouts are heard, water runs in the wash-room, pipes are lit. Life, thank God, a bit of life!

And already the cry is heard: “Here comes the factory party!” And immediately after, another cry: “Food servers fall in!”

A little later we are sitting in the day-room which is now fully occupied; those who have been in the factory are asked for news, and they tell how this time they had to carry boxes weighing a hundredweight and a half, whereas yesterday the boxes only weighed one hundredweight twenty pounds. At once a furious quarrel breaks out, concerning how this difference in weight is to be explained. We do not need to worry about our food, it just eats itself, it is water with a few morsels of kohlrabi. I am still so finicky that I put these morsels, which are completely woody, beside my bowl. A great toil-worn hand reaches across the table, takes hold of the morsels and stuffs them into a wide-open mouth. Immediately a furious voice calls to me from the other side of the table.

“Why the hell do you give Jahnke your kohlrabi? The bastard stuffs everything into him that he sets eyes on!”

And Jahnke roars back furiously: “What’s it to do with you what I eat, snotnose? If the new fellow gives me his kohlrabi, that’s his business. Are you his keeper? Every young snotnose round here wants to act the keeper… !”

Fortunately, in this new quarrel in which of course others immediately join (“Shut that row, God damn you! Can’t you keep quiet!”—“What’s up with you?”—“He’s right! We want some peace!”—“I’ll shout as much as I want to!”), fortunately, in all the uproar which now arises, I am completely forgotten. But the keeper in the glass box, which has a window on to our day room, does not even lift his head at the din, he goes on calmly reading his newspaper.

The meal is over, I have managed what yesterday I had thought impossible; I have ladled into myself a whole quart of warm water. At the moment I feel satisfied. But in the night the rumbling of my stomach will teach me that I am utterly and absolutely unsatisfied. From now on, I too am to be among those who constantly visit the bucket. The head-nurse collects together all the men who are supposed to or want to see the doctor, the latter only if he approves of their intentions. From our section alone, about twenty men fall in, I am not among them.

Outside the bars which separate one corridor from the staircase, other sick men from the two buildings opposite have gathered. I count over thirty. And now “the women” march in, mostly girls, led by their wardress. They are put quite close to the wall, and the wardress keeps a sharp look-out so that none of us can exchange a word with them. But that is over seventy patients—and already it is past seven in the evening! Is the doctor going to hold his consultations till well past midnight? The outlook for me is bad. “Are there always so many?” I ask another patient.

“So many?” he answers indignantly. “It’s only a few today. In this cursed place every single one is ill. But I don’t report sick any more, there’s no point in it.”

The doctor came while I was at the other end of the corridor. I did not notice him. But that does not matter, I am not seeing him today, in any case. It is better that way, with more than seventy patients he would not have proper time for me. It is better for me to wait till some other day when things are quieter. I have to tell him my story in full detail.

The head-nurse calls: “Foot-patients first, shoes off!”

And now it starts, at a breath-taking speed. Six men at a time are ushered into the consulting room, and at the latest after one minute the first man is out, doctored and treated!

The head-nurse calls: “Shirts off, you others! Fall in, one behind the other.”

The girls watch how the men slip out of their shirts. This arouses the anger of the wardress, a robust elderly person with a red face. She rushes up to one girl who has a few curls hanging at her temples, under her kerchief.

“What’s this?” she cries angrily. “All you think of is men, eh? Wait, I’ll show you to make yourself pretty here!” and she tears the scarf off the girl’s head.

“What!” she cries indignantly. “You’ve been pinning curls up, have you? Haven’t I told you a thousand times you’ve got to wear just a simple parting? I’ll show you!”

And she tugged at the girl’s hair, she tugged the few poor curls apart. Without a sign of protest or pain the girl patiently moved her head this way and that as her tormentor pulled her hair. But I had no time to follow this shocking incident (which I seemed to be the only one to find shocking) any further.

The head-nurse came towards me. “Quickly, Sommer, pack up your bedding and your things. You’re being transferred!”

My bedding and belongings were packed into a bundle quickly enough, and I followed the keeper, who opened a cell door near the glass box. The cell was smaller than my former one, but there were only four beds in it. Fortunately one did not sleep in two tiers here. The cell was lighter and more airy too, it did not smell bad. I had decidedly bettered myself; I rightly attributed it to the doctor’s influence. “Thank God, he’s favourably inclined towards me,” I thought. “Everything’s all right.” Meanwhile the head-nurse had chased an old man out of bed.

“Come on, come on, out of it, Meier,” he cried. “Be a bit quick about it. You’re going in Wing 2.”

“Oh God!” wailed the old man; “Have I really got to move, sir? I get pushed around all the time! I’ve only had this bed a few weeks! And it was so peaceful in here, and such nice air.…”

But the head-nurse was not inclined to listen to an old man’s jeremiads.

“Out of it, Meier!” he shouted and he gave the old man a violent push. “Stop your nattering!”

With his bundle of bedding, the old man staggered out of his cell on his thin sticks of legs; his short shirt barely covering his behind.

“You can make your bed later!” said the head-nurse. “Now come with me to the doctor. He’s waiting.”

47

The doctor really was waiting for me—hardly an hour had gone by and a good seventy patients had already been treated.

Dr Stiebing, in a white coat, smiled at me amiably, invited me to sit down, and even offered his hand. The head-nurse stood in the background, with watchful eyes, waiting; not a word, not a movement, did he miss. I was pleased that he saw with what discrimination the doctor treated me, this friendly greeting now, beforehand, the transfer to a better cell—he would be careful about dealing too hard with me.

“Well,” said the doctor, smiling, “Now you’ve landed up with me, Herr Sommer. A fortnight ago we could have put you in somewhat more comfortable surroundings, my colleague Mansfeld and I. Well, well, you’ll be able to bear it here. It is a well-disciplined place, you’ll get your rights here. A little discipline is good for everybody, isn’t it?”

He was really amiability itself. Rather touched, I thanked him for the better sleeping quarters allotted to me.

“Oh, that’s all right,” said the doctor. “We’ll do what we can to make your stay here easier. Of course there are certain unchangeable house-rules.…”

He looked at me with a friendly expression of regret.

Then: “And you’ll do everything you can to lighten our task, too, won’t you, Herr Sommer?”

I assured the doctor of this, and asked whether he had to make a report on me.

“No, not yet,” he said quickly. “I suppose they will ask me for one, but for the time being you have just been assigned here for a stay, Herr Sommer.”

“But then everything will take so long!” I wailed. “Why can’t you make out your report immediately? It’s quite a clear affair. It’s only a slight case of uttering threats, and I’m convinced that Magda, that my wife will testify that she had not really felt herself menaced by me at all. For such a small matter as that, they can’t keep me here for weeks!”

I had been speaking more and more seriously and emphatically. I wanted to make it clear right away what an enormous disparity existed between my slip and my stay here.

“But, but,” cried the doctor, and laid a soothing hand on my arm. “Why are you in such a hurry! First you must have a thorough rest and get quite well again …”

“But I am quite well,” I assured him.

“No dizziness?” asked the doctor. “No sweating? No loss of appetite and then sudden hunger? No longing for alcohol?”

“I simply never think of alcohol!” I cried, shocked at such a dangerous suspicion. “I feel absolutely well!”

“Really no symptoms of de-alcoholisation then?” asked the doctor doubtfully. “Well, how is it, head-nurse? Have you noticed anything?”

I looked expectantly into the hard dark face of the head-nurse. He could not have noticed the slightest thing, of that I was sure.

“Yesterday evening,” he reported, “Sommer felt an urgent hunger and demanded supper, but he only ate four or five spoonfuls of it. Lexer swore today that Sommer had a razor-blade in his pocket; we couldn’t find it, but still—as a rule Lexer’s information has been reliable up to now. Then, too, Sommer is very restless, he can’t stay in one place for five minutes, can’t occupy himself with anything, hasn’t touched a newspaper …”

“But,” I cried, indignant and shocked at such misleading information, “there’s quite other reasons for all that. That has nothing to do with alcohol or the symptoms of de-alcoholisation either. Really, doctor, I never think of schnaps …”

The doctor and the head-nurse both smiled thinly.

“But really,” I cried still more emphatically. “I have had such a shock, with my arrest and all its consequences; I’ll never touch another drop of alcohol as long as I live!”

“That sounds better,” said Dr Stiebing amiably, and he nodded.

“And if I only ate a little of my cabbage soup yesterday, it’s merely because I’m not used to this kind of food. Certainly,” I added hastily, “the cabbage soup was very good, but at home I just eat different things …”

They both looked at me watchfully.

“And if I’ve been walking up and down a bit and haven’t been able to rest, it is quite explicable, in my position. Anyone who is uncertain about his whole future is bound to be restless. Anyway, everybody paces about if they have to wait a long time, you can see that in any dentist’s waiting-room or police-court corridor …”

“All right, all right,” the doctor interrupted, but I had the feeling that I had not convinced him, and that he did not find it “all right” in the least.

“And what about the razor-blade? You’ve quite omitted that!”

I tried not to blush—and yet.… No, perhaps I did not blush at all, I only imagined it. In any case I said with great firmness, “I didn’t omit the razor-blade. I just didn’t think any more of it. I’ve never had a razor-blade here. Why should I? I’ve got no razor.…”

Perhaps I pretended to be too simple, perhaps the doctor had it in mind that an accused person always protests most vigorously against a false charge. In any event, I found this preliminary discussion, in which my case was not even mentioned, full of snares and subterfuges.

I could not guess what the doctor thought of my words. Quite kindly, he said:

“In any case, I hear that it’s not long ago since you first started to drink, so the effects of de-alcoholisation shouldn’t be so drastic. You were previously in remand prison too …”

“Yes,” I said, “and I worked every day in the wood-yard there—I volunteered for it—and you can ask any warder whether I didn’t do as much work as anyone else, though I’m not really used to this kind of work.”

“You drank quite heavily then?” asked the doctor, and he seemed disinclined to pursue enquiries about the quality of my wood-cutting. “One might say, very heavily?”

“Never more than I could stand!” I assured him. “I never staggered, sir, and I never fell about.”

For a moment I was obliged to recall that scene when I tried again and again to pull myself up on to the roof-edge below Elinor’s window, and kept falling back into the bushes. And immediately another scene came to mind, a scene which the medical officer himself had witnessed, when more than half-seas over, I had sat at the inn table kicking up a din with a villager just as drunk as myself, and I had nearly fallen over as I went out, and Dr Mansfeld had to help me to the car.…

“I shouldn’t have said that,” I thought desperately. “That was wrong. It detracts from my other absolutely true remarks.”

I wanted to prevent the health officer from turning this over in his mind, so I continued quickly: “In any case, in that scene with my wife which they first put down as attempted murder, I was in full possession of my mental faculties. I knew perfectly well what I was doing, and I did not do a bit more than I intended. And I had had comparatively little to drink before it.”

“Yes, my dear fellow,” said the doctor, suddenly smiling almost sarcastically, “our two views of what constitutes a little to drink seem somewhat far removed from each other. Reckon up for me how much you had to drink every day, on an average, as far as you can remember.”

I thought of Mordhorst and how he had reproved me for my foolish truthfulness in giving the magistrate such a detailed account of my consumption of liquor. I reflected whether the doctor would already have received these documents for perusal and decided that was hardly likely, since he had not yet been asked for a report. Nevertheless I decided to be very careful, not to deceive him too much, and to try to make as good an impression as possible. Till now, I had had little success with my statements, that much was clear. But everything depended on making a good impression on the doctor at the outset; once you’ve won a man over, it is difficult for any subsequent reports, even if quite unfavourable, to shake this good first impression. So I reflected, and arranged my testimony accordingly. I had hardly ever drunk more than a bottle a day, and mostly less.… What I had had to drink in the inn, I really couldn’t say for sure, because I had been drinking out of small glasses, and had mixed my drinks, and also I had paid for other people, I declared. The doctor listened to my rather rambling discourse with his head in his hand, almost in silence, just occasionally throwing in a question. Finally, when I had no more to say, he said: “As I told you, no report about you has been asked for yet. We’ve just had this little preliminary chat, so as to get to know each other. But get the idea out of your head, Sommer (Sommer! no more ‘Herr’ Sommer), that your account of things can decisively influence your stay in this place. The only thing that can influence your future is your will to be strong and to resist the sort of temptations you had before.…”

He looked at me seriously. I am not very quick-witted, indeed I am a rather slow thinker, so I nodded eagerly in token of my will to be better. (Only ten minutes later, when I was in bed, did it become clear to me that with this phrase, the doctor had branded my statements as lies—of course he had already been handed the documents and had seen there how I had accounted for my consumption of alcohol for pretty well every day, and had put the amount much higher than I had tonight. So it was already definitely too late to make that “good first impression”.)

Anyway, the doctor kindly offered me his hand and said: “Well, we’ll have another talk. I’ll send for you. Goodnight, Herr Sommer.”

I was just about to go when the head-nurse asked: “Is Sommer to work, doctor?”

“Of course he’ll work!” cried the medical officer. “Then time won’t pass so slowly for him, and he won’t brood. You want to work, don’t you, you busy wood-cutter?”

I assured him that I had no keener wish. I had seen a lovely big garden outside the wall, perhaps I could be put to work in the nursery? I always liked gardening so much.

The doctor and his right-hand man looked at each other and then at me. They smiled rather thinly.

“No, in this early period we had better not let you work outside,” said the doctor gently. “We’ll have to get a bit better acquainted first …”

“Do you think I’d run away?” I cried indignantly. “But doctor, where could I run to, in these clothes, with no money, I wouldn’t get ten miles …”

“Ten miles would already be too much,” the doctor interrupted. “Well, nurse?”

“I think I’ll put him on to brush-making, we need a man there. Lexer can instruct him.”

“Lexer?” I interrupted the head-nurse, terrified. “I beg you, anyone but Lexer! If ever I hated a man, it is that disgusting yelling little beast! Everything inside me turns over with disgust, just at the sound of his voice.… Anything you like but, please, not Lexer!”

“Did you suffer from such violent antipathies outside, Sommer?” asked the medical officer softly. “You’ve hardly been twenty-four hours in the place and already you’ve conceived such a hatred of this harmless feeble-minded youngster.”

I was embarrassed, nonplussed, I, had made a mistake again.

“There are such sudden antipathies, doctor,” I said. “You see a man, you just hear a voice and …”

“Yes, yes,” he interrupted me, and suddenly he looked tired and sad. “We’ll talk about all that later. Now, goodnight, Sommer!”

48

It was a defeat, an ignominious defeat, and nothing could gloss over the extent of the defeat in my mind. I was unmasked as a liar, I had symptoms of de-alcoholisation and suffered from sudden morbid antipathies. Perhaps I thought of escape. Powerless and despairing, I lay on my bed, I could have wept for shame and regret. So much thought out, so many precautions taken, and I fall into every trap like a stupid brainless youngster! And it’s not at all true, what they think of me, I cry desperately to myself. I really don’t think of escaping, I really have had no symptoms of de-alcoholisation, or only in the very first two or three days, and then only very slightly, and if I had lied a bit about my consumption of alcohol, it was not with the intention of deceiving the doctor. He came here with a preconceived and bad opinion of me, an opinion which did not accord with the facts, and it was a duty, an act of self-defence, for me to destroy this preconceived opinion by any means at my disposal.

But I could tell myself what I liked, the fact remained that I had suffered a heavy defeat, that in the eyes of doctor and head-keeper I was just a flighty little criminal who tried to wriggle out of the consequences of his guilt by hook or by crook.

“Guilt?” I thought. “What is this great guilt of mine? That little threat—Mordhorst told me that for uttering menaces one got three months at most! That’s nothing, one couldn’t count that! But they make a gigantic affair of it, they shove one in prison and in this asylum, they take the ‘Herr’ off my name Sommer, they give me cabbage-water for food, and they third-degree me as if I’d murdered my mother and was the lowest of human beings; I’m sure, if I could only be allowed to talk to Magda for five minutes, I could convince her; together we could confront that ridiculous prosecutor with the jutting underlip and starting eyes, and the fellow would have to stop proceedings against me immediately. But,” I suddenly, painfully thought, “but it’s Magda’s fault as well! If she had had a little love and loyalty, as partners in marriage should for each other, she would have applied for permission to visit me long ago, she would have moved heaven and hell to get me out of this death-house! Nothing of the kind! Not even a letter has she written me. But I know how it is: she’s hand in glove with the doctors. They tell her I’m well looked after here and have nothing hard to put up with, and that is enough for her, she doesn’t give me another thought. She has got what she wanted, she can do what she likes with my property—that’s the most important thing for her! But just wait, one of these days I’ll get out of this place by hook or by crook, and then you’ll see what I’m going to do.…” And in a wild rage I submerged myself in fantasies of revenge. I sold the business behind her back and I gloatingly imagined to myself how one morning she would arrive at the office and in her—in my place at the boss’s desk, the young proprietor of the rival concern is sitting, smiling at her ironically: “Well, Frau Sommer, come to buy a little something from me? Ten kilos of yellow Victoria peas, perhaps? A kilo of blue poppy-seeds for the Sunday cake?”

She would go red with shame and anger and desperation, and I, hidden in the big filing-cabinet, would see it all, with an exultant heart. Or I imagined how, after my release from this death-house, I would wander out into the wide world, how I would roam through foreign countries as a beggar and a tramp, and only eventually, unrecognisable to anyone, I would return to my native town.

There I would beg for a piece of bread at the door of my own house, but she would sternly refuse me. Then in the night I would hang myself from the plum tree in front of her window, with a note in my pocket to say who I was, and that I forgave her all the wrongs she had done me.… Tears of emotion at my unhappy lot came into my eyes, and these fantasies, childish as they were, did something to comfort my heart.

My companions had chatted together until it grew dark, two of them, that is—the third, an elderly man with a handsome sad face and a wonderfully-modelled high forehead, had pulled the blanket over his head immediately. Now they had all long since fallen asleep. I congratulated myself on such quiet, decent sleeping-companions. I observed that night that they had got each other to use the bucket only for the lesser business, they reserved the other function for the daytime. I felt a mild rush of gratitude towards the artful doctor who had transferred me to such improved sleeping-quarters. I was convinced that I had been put in among the most irreproachable and sanest men in the whole place. A few days passed before I found that the elderly man with the beautiful forehead and melancholy face, who bore the unusual name of Qual,* was a killer who had murdered his cousin for money in a most bestial way. Now, through all the torments he had undergone, first during long years in prison and then in this place, his mind was utterly confused. With him, in any case, his name was his fate, you could see that in his face.

For days on end he would remain silent and then from time to time he would talk in a high cheerful voice (yet almost toneless, and quite without resonance) of many things; of the parching Sun-god, of the glass house on Mont Blanc where the next Ice Age would be spent, and of horse-chestnuts and acorns which were becoming edible because of some fancied reversal of sap. By this means, the authorities would be in a position to give better food, at no cost at all (as with all of us, Qual’s thoughts, though confused, circled incessantly round the subject of food). At other times, Qual would fall silent again, irritable and quarrelsome, and then everybody kept out of his way. He had the reputation—probably quite unfounded—of being a cold-blooded murderer who would kill a man for a single word. I think this reputation was entirely unjustified.

*Qual, in German, means Torment.