Iron Gustav (40 page)

So she went back into the house.

By now the man in the hall was asleep. Treading softly, she went into room after room, observing the havoc that had been wrought, the curtains torn down, the drunken men who, after befouling everything, were now snoring like beasts. Yes, men were beasts, all of them – beasts.

She went up to the first floor – in vain. She climbed into the attic – no one there.

Descending again, she walked quicker, with beating heart. She must find him. Arriving at the cellars, she could hear the cries of the women, and she stopped. She now heard a voice, an evil mocking voice, his voice.

She trembled. She had known quite well, known for a certainty, that he would be the only one of them not to get drunk. No, he would remain sober – he never drank. He was so wicked that he did not even need to forget himself and his sins for a while.

Slowly, cautiously, silently, she crept towards the half-open door and peeped into the room, a laundry room or some such place …

Oh, she knew her Eugen! He didn't drink, but he had taken one of the women from the coal cellar, a girl, almost a child … She lay as if lifeless in his arms, white and with her eyes shut, while his evilly false voice never ceased. ‘See, my sweet, I'm not doing you any harm – I'm your Eugen, your darling Eugen … say “Eugen” … jus' say “Eugen” once an' I swear I'll let you go. Come on, say it!'

‘Eugen.'

‘There, see how well you learned that. An' you'll say it a hundred times yet. Now tell me something more, my sweet, tell your Eugen, whisper it – have you already … come on, tell me.' And with his sudden transition into rage: ‘But don't lie! Don't dare lie to me – I'd know at once.'

To the girl at the door, Eva Hackendahl, it was as if she herself lay in those arms hearing again for the first time that evil and so persuasive voice, the voice at the beginning of her dark road … And a nameless fear gripped her – for herself, for the other girl, for life, for
her own life, the meaning of all life, she knew not what. ‘Eugen!' she screamed.

The man started and jumped to his feet at once, letting the girl fall. He sprang at Eva – and she fired. Fired straight into the dark and sinister face looming before her. A stream of fire, a deafening crash …

She had dropped the revolver, she was running away – no glance back – running upstairs, through the hall, out of the house – stumbling against the lorry, falling over. But she got up at once and ran, ran farther and farther into the night.

And now she knew what she had done and that she would never again hear that false voice or look into those bright, evil eyes. All was over.

‘I'm clearing! You tagging on or not, Heinz?' asked Irma. She spoke slangily on purpose. She was angry and irritable and in no mood to play the fine lady like the pink doll opposite.

But no one took any notice. Heinz had suddenly turned quarrelsome, perhaps a result of the drinks. ‘And you call yourself a Socialist!' he said to his brother mockingly. ‘Surrounded by soft armchairs and fat cigars.'

‘And fat women,' murmured Irma, but no one took any notice.

‘But if I ask you what you actually want to do for the workers, you've got no answer.'

‘My dear young thing,' drawled Erich in an infinitely superior voice, ‘I might inform you that my personal relations concern you not one whit. But even the brain of a schoolboy has enough logic to understand that I can do something for the workers, even if I'm not starving to death myself. Yes,' he said, enthused by his own words, because he had also drunk heavily.

‘Bubi, come along!' implored Irma. ‘We have to go home.'

‘Yes, I can do something for the others much better if I first do something for myself. I must first create an effective home for myself, and such surroundings as these' – and he looked pleasantly about him – ‘are exactly what I need.'

‘According to your theory, then, millionaires make the best Socialists.'

‘Oh,
Henri, Henri, you're heavenly,' laughed Tinette, flinging herself on the sofa. ‘Pure Parsifal – from the fairy tale.'

‘There's something in what you say,' admitted Erich with a grin. ‘Maybe a certain freedom from care is needed to act in a really social manner. If you've got to keep on thinking how to fill your own belly you can't think about others, that's as clear as soup.'

‘Allow me …'

‘Heinz, I'm going now.'

‘No, you allow me,' broke in Erich. ‘Naturally I presuppose that the prosperous man really does know how the poor feel, that he himself has been poor, that is.'

‘And you think you know that?'

‘Please don't forget, Bubi, that my father's a simple cabby.'

‘Oh, you've got wise to that, have you? You see its use now, eh? What a swine you are, Erich! I can see you running around telling the workers your father is a cabman. Hadn't I better give you Father's address so the workers can convince themselves you're not lying? Otherwise you hardly need his address. I now already know that you won't be seeing Father in the next hundred years, unless, that is, you still need his War Loans.'

‘The two angry brothers, Henri and Erich! Now it's your turn, Erich.'

‘Bubi, please! Dear Heinz.'

‘You're showing off a good deal, my boy, but I don't mind. Yes, my son. I admit it – I'm an out-and-out egoist. I learned my lesson in the war, in the trenches.'

‘Three days.'

‘Three weeks. Longer at any rate than you. And I say that a man who doesn't think of himself is a fool, and deserves nothing better than a bullet through his head.'

‘You make me sick.'

‘You'll change in time, my boy, and start thinking of yourself. I was an idealist myself once.'

‘When you took the money from Father's desk, I suppose?'

‘Get out, will you? Get out of my house!'

Crimson with fury, they faced each other.

Irma pulled Bubi's sleeve. ‘Please, Heinz, do come now.'

But Tinette sprang from her couch, ran to the brothers and, standing between them, put an arm round each unwilling neck. Both made some attempt to release themselves, but with no great vigour.

‘You silly boys! You're not out of the Bible – your names aren't Cain and Abel, are they? Make it up on the spot! I never heard such nonsense; no one quarrels about things like that. Men quarrel over a woman, and then they can even kill one another – but Henri doesn't want to take your Tinette from you, Erich. He's got a girlfriend of his own … Where is she, by the way? She's run off at the wrong moment, just when you ought to kiss her, Henri. That's just all ideas, rubbish! Erich, you're nothing but a gigantic egoist, and Henri, you are a sinister idealist. What more is there? Nothing.' And she looked, laughingly, at them both.

I must go, thought Heinz. Irma's sure to be waiting outside. I can't behave like this. But here was Tinette's arm round his neck and even though everything she said was insincere – or could it be genuine? – her arm was round his neck!

‘And now we'll drink a loving cup together and all go to bed. You'll sleep in the spare room, of course, Henri, and tomorrow morning we'll all have breakfast together. I'll get up terribly early because of you, Henri. Your little friend's very silly to have run away, but don't you worry, I'll make a woman out of her yet. Do bring her as often as you like, and you yourself must come even more often. We'll always be pleased, won't we, Erich? And we'll see that he becomes a wonderful idealist and you become the great egoist, Erich.'

‘If you'd only give us our drinks!' growled Erich. ‘I'm already such an egoist that even in your arms I have to think of that.'

The man, the old man, the iron man had woken in the night.

Was it the grey that had woken him?

He sat up in bed, listening to the sounds of the house – the inhabitants of this crowded human hive slept through many different sounds. He didn't want to hear these sounds. He'd just been sleeping
himself. Now he wanted to avoid the sleep of others … Hadn't the grey woken him?

Hadn't it been the halter rattling? Hadn't a hoof been pawing the stable floor, to attract the master's attention? Hackendahl listened. Directly beneath him stood the grey in what had formerly been a joiner's workshop, five stone steps above the small courtyard; the bench was there still, leaning on end against the wall, and whenever the grey flicked away the flies her tail would brush over it. But there were no flies in November, surely.

For a moment, Iron Gustav considered what had been agreed about his taking over the carpentry bench. Did it belong to him now, or the inheritors of Strunk, the dead master cabinetmaker? The courtyard children of this house in Wexstrasse, number so-and-so, these starving, snivelling little children used to sing a rude song about him.

But Hackendahl didn't want to think about cabinetmaker Strunk. He wanted to think about his grey. The one which had woken him up. Already four weeks before they moved in, Strunk had hanged himself in this very flat, using the gas pipe on the little landing. He'd bent it over with a bootjack – you could see it was the same one. The same gas lamp, the same flat, the same workshop, the same tenement block, the same boss, the same going-bust, the same drinking, the same gas pipe …

Yes, I spend too much time on the drink. When I still had money, I didn't go often, but now … !

Oh, it's horrible how thoughts run into each other. The night's there for sleeping, like mother does, not for thinking. If only the wretched grey hadn't woken him. But now: one, two, three – and now you've got me!

The whole disaster began with the grey, with that race. Everything went wrong from that moment. And this wretched animal that lost him his best clients, was still there, rattling its chain, stamping its hoof, as if asking for something – but there was nothing it could ask for!

Who indeed could?

Otto? … Otto was dead. He left a widow with two children. He got his way, despite his father. No demands could come from him – rather the opposite!

Hadn't
the grey always got her feed, more of it and better, too, than she deserved? Then shut up! Give me a bit of peace, you damned brute.

And Eva? She'd been a good girl once, a pretty girl. But she couldn't keep away from the men. Hadn't he warned her? Didn't I sit in her den myself and try and persuade her, without being nasty to the men? Away with you, girl! You can't be any man's daughter if you're every father's favourite. It's not my fault! Off with you!

Erich? Erich was a smart lieutenant in corduroy velvet breeches that cost a hundred and fifty marks, but he hadn't time to write to his parents. Well, nothing to be done there. Full stop.

And Sophie – Staff Sister and very busy. ‘In the field hospital we have a wounded man without parents or relations. You would be doing a real service if you sent this lonely soldier a parcel, together with a few kind words …'

Oh, you cold bitch! It's never dawned on you that there are lonely parents without any kind words from their children. Well, Mother's sure to have sent that parcel and the kind words as well – and that's all you wanted, isn't it? Go in peace! Notice to quit follows.

And Heinz – Bubi? Old Hackendahl had given up pretending that it was the grey that had awakened him. Oh no! The poor beast was only too glad to get some rest. No, he had woken because it was three in the morning and his dear son hadn't yet come home. He had to admit that he'd recently thought more highly of Bubi. Bubi wasn't clever like Erich, but wasn't a failure like Otto. If someone talks about maths in the afternoon and is to be back at six – that is, lies, and lies to his own father – then a son like that isn't a son at all. No, that put a finish to him too. Decency is decency, lies are lies – and iron is iron too.

Old Hackendahl sat for a bit longer in the dark. He thought neither of the grey, nor of Strunk. He made sure that all was right as rain. Yes, it all came out in the wash. They'd all got what they wanted – and this was the end! Today they put rubbish through his letter box – the
Rote Fahne
instead of the
Berlin Lokal-Anzeiger
. If you take the
Lokal-Anzeiger
, you don't want to see the
Rote Fahne
. You don't want chalk instead of cheese. For a while you let yourself be
cheated – not that you didn't know about it – but once you made up your mind it must stop, it stopped. A man was a man – there was no need to be a father as well.

Suddenly he turned on the light and Frau Hackendahl started up. ‘What is it, Father?'

‘I'll tell you, Mother. I was thinkin' about the grey …'

‘Is Heinz home? I didn't hear him come in.'

‘No, he isn't. Tomorrow I'll take the grey to the butcher's. With horse meat the price it is I ought to get something for her, she looks a sight in front of the cab, and I don't want to see any more of her, what with one thing and another.'

‘And when you sell her you can ask them to give you five pounds from the best part of the leg; they can manage that quite easily. A bit of meat for a change would do you and Heinz both good.'

‘You needn't tell me what would do Heinz good. Not that I care much now, anyway. I'll see about buying a bay or a chestnut – no more grey horses – I've been sick of 'em for a long time.'

‘That's a good idea, Father. Driving will be a pleasure again.'

‘A pleasure? Well, p'r'aps. One's not jus' simply a father, one's human also.'

‘What d'you mean by that, Father?'

‘Oh, never mind, we'll talk about it later … And then I've thought of something else, Mother. I'll go to Bayer, you know, the perfume shop chap who took the first mortgage on this house, an' I'll say to him: take the whole blasted lot as it stands. I don't want nothin' and you don't want nothin'. Then that'll be done with.'