A Stranger in My Own Country (6 page)

I was waiting two or three hours like this. I had no idea what was going on. Later I learned that the SA had problems finding a suitable car to take me away. It eventually arrived, though – the oldest vehicle I have ever set foot in, a decrepit, rattling conveyance from the year dot, which didn't even have a starter motor, but had to be hand-cranked from the front. I was squeezed in between two SA men in the back of this ancient vehicle, whose upholstery was all torn and ripped, while the group leader sat up front and drove, with another SA man beside him. We set off in the direction of Berlin. I looked back at the house. It was a lovely spring day. The sun was reflected off the window panes, and if there was a face at the window looking out at me, I didn't see it. I didn't dare wave. But I noticed that the sentry on the garden gate had not been stood down after my departure, but continued to wander up and down the street. So were they now keeping my wife under guard too? My heart sank.

We rattled through the village, across open country between fields, and entered the forest, a monotonous expanse of scrawny young pines: a characteristic feature of this sandy region, amounting to nothing more than a bunch of thin poles topped with a bit of greenery.

The leader was now oddly courteous to me, constantly turning around (the car had a top speed of twenty kilometres an hour, no more) and inviting me to smoke if I wanted to, and even asking if we were not too cramped back there. The change in his manner made me uneasy. His friendliness seemed so forced, there was something about it that felt like fear; whatever it was, the man was very agitated. I was very much on my guard, and had the feeling: he's up to something. Perhaps the moment of truth is at hand.

Suddenly the car stopped in the middle of the barren forest, the road was completely empty. The two SA men got out, as did the two men in the front. I stayed in my seat. I watched the four of them step to the edge of the road and relieve themselves. And then they stood there, while they lit up cigarettes and talked quietly among themselves. One of them tugged at his belt and pushed his holster more towards the front. I was getting more uneasy by the second . . . The leader crossed the road towards me. His voice sounded strangely low and agitated as he spoke: ‘Perhaps you'd like to get out? Please.' His face was very pale. He went on: ‘We'll be on the road for quite some time yet, and this old jalopy isn't up to much!' He tried to laugh.

I replied coolly: ‘Many thanks, but I don't need to get out. But thanks all the same.'

He was insistent: ‘No, no, it really would be better if you did it now. Otherwise I'll have to stop later when it just isn't convenient. And this old jalopy is hard to get going again. So please!' Now it sounded more like an order.

But as he was speaking, I kept seeing a headline that I'd recently read in a newspaper:
‘Shot while trying to escape.' It all fitted: the quiet, empty road, the secluded forest setting – they would carry me into the house and tell my wife ‘Shot while trying to escape. We're sorry that he was so foolish . . .' No, they would just send her my things, with a note: ‘Shot while trying to escape.' No apology necessary.

I said coolly: ‘Thank you, but I'm fine. I don't need to get out. I'll be all right for hours yet.' His face flushed red with anger. He looked across at his men, who had stopped talking and were looking at us, still smoking their cigarettes. ‘Look, don't make a fuss!' he said brusquely. ‘You will get out now, I am ordering you. I don't want any trouble from you!'

I looked straight at him. ‘And I am not getting out of this car!' I cried, and dug my hands into the seat cushion. I shouted in his face: ‘You'll not shoot me “while trying to escape”! If you want to shoot me, you'll have to do it in the car! And even if the seats
are
all torn and ripped, people will see it!'

For a moment we gazed at each other in silence. His face was white as a sheet, and I dare say mine was too. Suddenly he spun round and shouted across to his men. ‘You lot, come over here!' I gripped the seat cushion even more tightly, and my whole body was shaking. ‘I'm not letting them drag me out of here', I thought to myself. ‘They'll have to shoot me in the car.' All I could think about now was making sure they shot me
in the car
. The fact that I would end up getting shot hardly interested me at all in that moment.

The men slowly crossed the road towards the car, cigarettes dangling from their mouths, their eyes fixed on me. The moment of decision had come. But the decision turned out differently from what we had all been expecting. While we were engrossed in our altercation, a big car had arrived on the scene from Berlin. Now it came to a stop, and our own good doctor called out to me from the window: ‘Mr Fallada, what are you doing out here in the middle of nowhere?'

‘Oh', I said, ‘I'm just going to the courthouse in Fürstenwalde with these gentlemen. Please say hello to my wife, and tell her that I am well.'

‘I'm glad to hear it', said the doctor. ‘I'll pass that on. I'll wish you bon voyage, then!' But he did not tell his chauffeur to drive on. The car remained stationary. My escorting party exchanged glances with each other. Now they came to a decision and got back in the car. The
last man turned the hand crank and started the car. We set off, leaving behind the barren spot where I was supposed to die. I had a definite feeling that I was safe for the moment – if the sour and morose look on my companions' faces was anything to go by. And then, when I cautiously turned my head to look back, I saw the doctor's big car still there, as he watched us crawl away at a snail's pace. The dear man had not driven on: back then, in Germany, people knew well enough what it meant when they saw a car with SA men inside and a civilian sitting between them!

We drove into the little town of Fürstenwalde. It's only a one-horse town, a miserable, provincial little place with wretched cobbled streets, but I greeted it like the City of Zion on high, the City of the Redeemer: the humblest citizen, the children playing in the street, everything increased my confidence that now I was safe. The worst of the danger was past; back then even the Nazis were not quite ready to kill their opponents out on the street in broad daylight.

We stopped in front of the police station, and my leader disappeared inside with a couple of his minions. We had a long wait, and once again it seemed that not everything was going to plan with me. And it really wasn't going to plan: even if Göring's own stormtroopers were not following his edicts, other people were. After a while my leader reappeared with a blue-uniformed police officer, pointed at me and said: ‘That's him. Take him into protective custody!'
³⁹

‘No, I'm not doing that', said the policeman obstinately. ‘Without papers I'm not doing it.'

‘But I've told you already, I'll get you the papers! I can't leave the man running around on the loose in the meantime! He's not going to wait for me! So just do it!'

‘Papers first!' came the reply. ‘Without papers we can't take in anyone here.' The man was adamant. ‘Bloody hell!' swore the leader angrily. Then he had a thought – he'd found a way round it. ‘Well, come back inside, then. I'll make out the papers myself.'

They disappeared inside, and this time the negotiations were successful. When they reappeared, the blue-uniformed officer muttered: ‘All
right, come with me.' Before I followed him inside, I cast a last glance at the brownshirts. The several hours I had spent in their company had not deepened my fondness for them. I felt a pressing desire not to have anything to do with them or their like anytime soon – and preferably never again.

The cell they took me to was the scurviest and most disgusting hole I had ever been in in my entire life. I'm not even talking about the obscenities that covered the once-whitewashed cell walls from floor to ceiling, either scribbled in pencil or scratched into the chalky surface with a nail. I'm talking about the appalling standards of hygiene. The straw mattress, which was falling apart, the mouldy, flattened straw spilling out of it, the filthy floor covered with bits of dirt – it all pointed clearly to the fact that all was not well with the administration of the good town of Fürstenwalde – even under the Third Reich. When I gingerly lifted the straw mattress between two fingers, I uncovered swarms of bedbugs; alerted to their presence, I now saw their trails everywhere, on the walls, around the bed – wide, reddish-brown splats of blood or squashed bedbug corpses with their trails of blood tapering to a point behind them. But the worst thing about this disgusting place was the bucket in the corner. It was badly battered and hadn't been emptied for a long time, so that a big puddle of faeces and stale urine had formed all around it. Although most of the window panes in the high-level window of the cell were broken, the air in the cell was thick with this hellish stench, which made it a torment just to draw breath. The act of breathing made you want to throw up at the thought of letting this filthy stench into your body even for a single breath. You couldn't sit and you couldn't lie down, and you couldn't really pace up and down; there was just one small spot that was clean enough to stand on at least.

And it's a strange thing: I'd just managed to escape almost certain death, and in a manner of speaking I was now safe, yet the outrage I felt about the pigsty they'd put me in outweighed everything else. I had not been anything like so furious with my brown-shirted friends – who did, after all, try to kill me – as I was with the policeman who had put me in this hole. I had only been taken into protective custody, and yet
they had the nerve to put me in this squalid hole, fit only for some verminous lowlife! Had these people forgotten the meaning of the words ‘law' and ‘justice' in Germany, or what? Then it was high time that I reminded them! And I began to hammer on the iron-plated door, alternately using my fists and my heels. I could hear a muffled echo in the corridor, but it had absolutely no other effect. I hammered on the door again from time to time, and in between I shouted, but nobody came. It didn't surprise me: I knew what nerves of steel police officers can have, able to sleep through the night on standby on a hard bed while some drunk who's just been brought in is raving deliriously in the cell next door, or some woman high on alcohol is bawling out obscenities. So I could well imagine that my blue-uniformed friend out there in his front office was taking a quiet afternoon nap while I was making all this racket, especially as this was the first really fine and warm afternoon of the spring. But I carried on hammering and shouting all the same; it was a way of passing the time.

I was right in the middle of one of these hammering and hollering sessions when suddenly the cell door opened without warning, and a man in a blue uniform was standing there in front of me. But it was not the same man I had seen earlier. ‘What's all this noise about, then?' he inquired mildly, and without any real interest. ‘First of all, I demand a decent cell and not a shit-hole like this!' I shouted in fury. ‘And secondly I demand some lunch! I am here in protective custody, and I have a right to insist on that!'

‘Well then, just be happy that you've got such a right!' he replied, slamming the door shut and sliding the bolt home. Through the sound of my renewed angry bellowing I could hear him quietly giggling in the corridor.

The hours crept past, spent partly in studying the pornographic scribblings on the wall, partly in kicking up more din. I had to do something with my time, after all. I'd have liked to take a look out of the window, and get a little fresh air after this noisome stench. But in order to pull myself up to the window I'd have had to come into contact with the wall, and the thought of that was just too revolting.
Then again, I was quite sure that they planned to do something else with me before nightfall, and at the time I just couldn't believe that they would dare to leave me sitting (or rather standing) in this hole for the entire night. After all, we were living in a country under the rule of law, and a dirty trick like that would cost them dear. Child that I was, I still didn't get it: since January 1933 Germany had ceased to be a country under the rule of law, and was now a police state pure and simple, where those in charge decided what was lawful and what was not. But on this occasion my instinct was right, and as it was starting to get dark my cell door opened again. ‘Come with me!' he said, and led me to the front office of the police station, where he handed me over to a man in a grey uniform with the words ‘This is the man.' Then he turned on his heel and promptly dismissed me from his mind for good. ‘Come with me', said the man in the grey uniform, and I thought: ‘I wonder where your fate is taking you now', and followed him. But we didn't go far, just across the street to a red building that bore the legend ‘Courthouse'. ‘Aha!' I thought to myself, ‘the courthouse jail – at least it can't be any worse!' We entered the building and went into an office, where an elderly, decrepit-looking man with moth-eaten hair was sitting chewing on his pen. ‘This is the man', said my escort; the lexicon of social intercourse around here seemed somewhat impoverished. The clerk gave me a sidelong look, searched at length through a great stack of files, but in the end decided to plump for a single sheet of paper lying on the desk in front of him. ‘There!' he said.

I unfolded the letter. It was from the district council leader for the Lebus district, and informed me in a single sentence that he had ordered my arrest on the grounds that I was involved in a ‘conspiracy against the person of the Führer'.

‘I deny the charge!' I protested. ‘That's complete and utter nonsense! I have never been involved in any conspiracy, and certainly not against the person of the Führer. I'm not even interested in politics . . .'

‘That's nothing to do with us', said the clerk evenly, and scratched his ear. ‘We're only here to process the arrest order. Is there anything else?'