Authors: Ernst Haffner
Ten minutes later, the door is open. A soft meow is the signal to Ulli and Fred, who’ve been standing guard on the corner. Ulli minds the door, the other three go to work inside. Everything happens quietly enough. Felix hops onto the counter, a little table supplies the extra height he needs to reach the ceiling. Fred and Jonny spread a blanket out. Felix’s fretsaw attacks the ceiling. He’s to saw out a square big enough for a person to pass through it. A tough job, even for the powerful Felix. At the end of half an hour, a plaster-of-Paris square falls noiselessly into the blanket the other two are holding ready. With a supple pull-up, Felix gets into the apartment. Jonny and Fred follow. Now everything’s rosy, and time’s not a problem. First get our bearings. Aha, the dining room. Cue: silver.
But everything’s not as it should be. The fact that the butcher happened to have a little reunion tonight in Wilhelmstadt wasn’t anything the band could have been expected to guess. He’s just turning the corner into his street, when he sees a man posted in front of his shop. And the door — he has sharp eyes, even when he’s coming home from a reunion — the door is ajar. A break-in at his shop! Police! Where to go? The
bar on the corner of Rollenhagenstrasse still has its lights on. He rings up. “Burglary!” The police pick up. “… but no sirens mind, officer, otherwise the villains will get away!”
But then the squad car does sound its siren! At some distance yet, but it’s audible a long way off. Ulli hears it too, he yells into the shop: “Out … out!” And now he needs to run. The butcher, in the shade of the opposite side of the street, is livid when he sees Ulli making a break for it. The police car screeches round the corner. Six officers, revolvers in hand, storm the shop, with the butcher lending moral support. Shining their powerful torches around, they quickly see the hole in the ceiling. Upstairs in the apartment, something tinkles to the floor. The leader of the police calls up: “This is the police! Come down, or else we’ll shoot!” Nothing moves. He calls up again. Then the officers hear the sound of a window being opened upstairs. The driver has switched on his mobile beam, and is now bathing the façade in harsh illumination. For a brief instant, a male figure can be made out by the window. The commander calls up again. From above comes an echoing reply: “All right, we’re coming down. Don’t shoot.” One after the other, they clamber down into the shop through the hole. Shortly after, Jonny, Fred and Felix are sitting in handcuffs in the car. The apartment is searched, in case of any more villains lurking about. Since the door to the butcher’s shop can no longer be secured, a constable is left on watch.
At last, the butcher can go to bed. His priceless sausages are safe, and the building’s owner will pay for the hole in the ceiling. Not a bad advertisement for him, a break-in like that. On Monday, they’ll come along in their swarms to stare at the hole in the ceiling. He could take advantage of that to put up a few prices here and there. Maybe his imperial
huntsman’s sausage could go up five pfennigs a quarter-pound. His account of the night’s happenings is surely worth that much. He can imagine himself launching into it in front of his hushed clientele: “… so I see this fellow, a giant, a ruddy colossus, standing in front of my shop. Of course I go right up to him. The fellow sees me coming, and draws a revolver. What choice do I have? I have to knock him over before he gets a shot off at me …”
Ulli wanders around the unfamiliar city. His three mates have been nabbed, that’s for sure. As he ran off, he could already see the flashing lights of the squad car. Luckily, Ulli had accepted an advance on the job from Jonny, otherwise he wouldn’t even be able to make it back to Berlin. At five in the morning, he heads for the station, and takes a seat on the train to Berlin. By ten he’s back in Koloniestrasse, and gives the signal outside his summer house. He knocks for a long time, finally they admit him. “Hey Ulli! Where are the others? Jonny and Fred?” “Where do you think they are? In police cells in Magdeburg …”
17
THE LEADING LIGHTS OF THE GANG,
Jonny and Fred, have been arrested. The rest of the boys, Konrad, Erwin, Heinz, Walter, Hans and Georg, are adrift, left to their own devices. Konrad, Jonny’s stand-in, has nothing like the energy, the cold calculation, the intellect and the absolute ruthlessness of Fred or Jonny. And Ulli, head of the Seven of Spades, is a leader without a troop. His six pals have, by and by, drifted off to other gangs, or disappeared in the endless city. Anyway, Ulli isn’t a leader of the type the gang members need. Like Konrad, he’s impulsive, a born scrapper who loves a fight. But he doesn’t have the intellect that is Jonny’s most striking quality. Each boy can sense it, however crudely, and shies away from such leadership.
Moreover, there’s the fact that the rest of the gang feel the hot breath of the police down their necks. There are officers with orders to round up this band of youthful pickpockets and car thieves. The knowledge of being on some wanted list or other was something they’d been familiar with over the years. You were a name among thousands of others. But this, this active pursuit, is intimidating and tends to irritate and cow them. They hardly dare set foot out of the summer house. Only by cover of darkness, on winter afternoons, do
they slink out to buy food. The money they have won’t last for more than another week. Fred was carrying the gang’s fortune, well over five hundred marks, about his person. All of it is now in the hands of the Magdeburg police.
The morning of December 24. They don’t have a penny left. If they’re not to go hungry on Christmas Eve and over the holidays, they have to go out and work. They will try their luck in the market hall on Ackerstrasse. Ulli wants no part of it. “I’m doing enough for your welfare, letting you sleep here,” he says. He knows the Blood Brothers are utterly dependent on him and his summer house. Yesterday things had come to a head between Konrad and Ulli. They move out in two groups of three and head for Ackerstrasse. The rendezvous afterwards is the Rückerklause. Ulli is staying home in the summer house.
The shoppers flocking around the stalls and in the narrow aisles afford plenty of easy pickings for the boys. But, in spite of that, they stand there and dither. They miss the dynamism of Fred and Jonny. Neither group can see the other. Then suddenly, in front of a fruit stand, a piercing cry: “My money! My money!” The hysterical woman goes on and on. The screams provoke indescribable disturbance. Waves of excitement pulse through the space; no one thinks anymore of buying or selling. “Police!… My money … my money!” the bereft lady keeps wailing. Someone has called the police. The flying squad are coming … the flying squad are on their way, is the buzz throughout the crowd. Whoever has reason not to be there when they come makes for the Invalidenstrasse exit.
A minute later, six officers jump out of their vehicle. Two stand guard by the Ackerstrasse exit, two more on Invalidenstrasse.
But what can six officers hope to do? Reinforcements are called. Half a platoon is bused in. They go over the market hall with a fine-toothed comb. The market-sellers are livid, “it’s hurting my business.” Detained individuals swear and shout, a few bystanders with clean consciences find it all quite diverting. A dozen suspicious characters are taken back to the station for questioning. The waves of agitation finally settle, and slowly the business rhythm reasserts itself. People go around warning each other: “Take care … pickpockets! There’s just been a huge police raid.”
Jonny’s first and most essential principle was: as soon as there’s the least excitement, just leave. Leave the department store, leave the market hall, leave the weekly market. One by one, at intervals of several hours, the Brothers congregate in the Rückerklause. It’s already dark by the time all six are there. In the Rückerklause, the home for the homeless, the mood is mawkish and Christmassy. And when the loudspeaker intones: “
O du fröhliche, o du selige
…” the whole bar joins in. Not the sort of drunken growl that might accompany “Liebe der Matrosen,” but in a decent, reverent, disciplined manner, as tuneful as can be managed. Sentiment, at the right moment, is not unwelcome to the hardest-hearted of ruffians. Tears, if shed in circumstances like these, have nothing weak or unmanly about them.
The cause of the kerfuffle in the market was Georg. “Well, was it worth it at least?” Georg pulls out a purse: twenty-two marks. They split up and head back to the summer house on Koloniestrasse. At Gesundbrunnen station they stop off at a restaurant. Walter is told to go get Ulli. They’re still hacked off with him, but if they didn’t have his summer house, they’d be really up against it. They sit over their fifty-pfennig
suppers in silence. The restaurant’s deserted, and there’s not much going on outside, just people hurrying home. Walter returns, alone, out of breath, trembling. “Ulli’s gone … the summer house is locked up … there’s a police seal on the door!” Five forks clank against plates. Police seal? Then they must have come for the gang, and found Ulli. It’s over — over! Out of here. On to the underground and begone. Otherwise they’ll be spending Christmas Eve behind Swedish curtains. The gang is finished. No place, hardly any money, the likelihood of arrest at any minute. They’re sitting in an underground carriage in their ones and twos. They mustn’t be seen to belong together. But they keep glancing up at each other, seeming to say: What do we do now?
Bachelors’ Christmas Party
, it says outside a little bar in a Bülowbogen side street. Half bar, half popular café. There’s a tree with candles on it, and each table is decorated with fir twigs tied with colored ribbons. The piano player keeps launching into “Stille Nacht, heilige Nacht,” as he should. A few street girls and their fancy men are getting drunk on punch and sentiment, and one half-lit individual is told off by the landlady for his tuneless bass. “Sing it properly, you old disgrace …” The six Blood Brothers are seated next to the big Dutch oven, drinking their mulled wine and staring at the tree. Little Walter sheds a few big tears from his bulging eyes. He reaches up with his dirty hand to wipe them away, and now Walter has a properly grimy tear-stained orphan’s face. When the first rush of Christmas feeling is over, the landlady remembers her tax arrears, and sets about bringing in more custom. Those six louts by the stove aren’t eating anything, maybe they think this is a warming hall … “What about some more mulled wine, boys?” “Yes, ma’am.”
“I’ve got a place we can sleep, not much colder than the summer house. And there’s blankets there too …” says Georg into the silence. “Whereabouts?” “Whereabouts?” they all chime in. “Stallschreiberstrasse, doesn’t cost a thing. I spent a whole week there one time …” It’s almost midnight. The six Blood Brothers traipse off to their new billet, Georg’s wheeze.
Stallschreiberstrasse, the stage entrance to the theater on Kommandantenstrasse, closed for years. A low iron barrier separates the yard from the street. They’re over it in a trice. Georg fiddles with a low door next to the stage entrance, and in no time he’s picked the lock. They find themselves in a small theater wardrobe. An open door leads out onto a narrow passage, which winds its way to the stage. Georg lights the way with his torch. A few alarmed mice scuttle out of their path. A flight of stairs leads down to the heating cellar and various subterranean rooms where such things as sets and flats and pieces of furniture and so forth are stored. There’s all kinds of things littered about. Also a few shot rugs, ends of carpet, backcloths and costumes moldering away in various corners. The dream of one day standing up in the lights is one the rascals have long since kissed goodbye to. But as a place to kip, it’s about as good as they can expect. In the everlasting night of this theater basement the boys sleep long into Christmas Day. In uncertainty, in fear of what the future might bring.
They are condemned to spend the entire holiday holed up there. They can’t very well go out into the yard and scramble over the fence in daylight. It’s late in the evening when one of them is despatched to a bar somewhere to get something to eat. It’s the same deal on Boxing Day. Two days and three nights in the dark and cold of the basement. By the time they venture out into the street, early the following day, none of
them has a penny. Hungry, and rigid with cold, they wander into the warming hall on Ackerstrasse. They all have good winter coats — which they will now have to sell. Each of them gets three or four marks. Then back to the Rückerklause. Hot potato pancakes and a cup of broth. After dinner, each of them buys a half-pint. They need to make economies.
Only Heinz, who has barely spoken a word the past few days in the theater, is ordering one schnapps after another. After paying, he’s got thirty pfennigs left. “Here, Erwin, this is for you. I won’t be needing any money. Cos I’m … I’m on my way now … to the Alex … and hand myself in to the police …” Suddenly he starts wailing like a child, and his head drops onto the table. “I’ve had all I can take … of this … this shitty life … I can’t do it anymore …” His friends try and comfort him, but he loses control completely. His body convulses with sobs. The other customers are making fun of him: “Someone change his nappy, poor little baby’s wet himself …” A pimp calls out to his sweetheart: “Lotti, give the little boy your tit to keep him quiet …”
Finally, Heinz calms down. But he’s set on going to the police. He puts on his cap. “All the best, lads. You know I won’t say anything about you …” “Heinz, calm down!” “Heinz, you’re mad!” “Stay, Heinz!” they appeal to him. Try to force him to stay. He breaks free, rushes out into the street. Konrad and Georg go after him. Heinz races to the unemployment office. There’s always a policeman there. And his suspicion is borne out: there are two greens just turning the corner. Konrad and Georg have to stop if they are not to endanger themselves. Heinz is talking to the officers. Their first reaction is not to listen and to send him away, but they end up escorting him to the station.
Always quiet, always dreamy, Heinz had woken up. And his waking up, his insight into the way he and his friends have ended up, left him no option. He will be given the third degree. They will try to find out who he was with, what he’s been doing. And if Heinz softens up, and confesses that he was part of the Blood Brothers, then the hunt will begin in earnest. But if Heinz remains stubborn, admits nothing and keeps the gang out of it, then he will be taken back to a home. The police will hardly be in a position to prove that he was involved in pickpocketing. If Heinz remains stubborn! However, if he allows his head to drop, and is softened up, and starts to sing … then the public prosecutor will be in business. The young offenders’ court will shake their heads, and Heinz will be severely punished.