Iron Gustav (75 page)

It had diminished since the morning, but hope was still there, and life is a hundred times easier even with only a little hope. This little makes a huge difference. Without it there is nothing but despair; with it life is bearable.

And so he sat and wrote. For every letter he took a fresh nib and blew on the paper, since a speck of dust could disturb the evenness of his penmanship; and he used a ruler. Before starting to write, he mentally set out in paragraphs all he had to say; a job application must not be too detailed, but it mustn't look too thin either. What
creative joy was left him went into these applications for work. His was a mind not devoid of common sense and memory, and common sense could have told him that all these letters were useless. With two million unemployed the odds against him were tremendous. At the unemployment office they said that the single insertion of an advertisement often brought two or three thousand replies, among them offers to work for half, even a quarter of the standard wage, a mere pittance. So that the chances of success were exactly nothing, not worth the postage. Should he write: ‘Dear Sirs, I am the first of May, Summer is on the way,' his letter would have infinitely better prospects of being considered.

As for memory, that could have told him he had already dispatched dozens, even hundreds, of such applications. And what had been the result? Memory replied without hesitation. Some hundreds of letters had remained unanswered; as regards about ten letters he had been notified that his application was being considered and he would receive further particulars later, particulars he never received of course; five or six times he had been invited for an interview. (Sorry, but the vacancy has been filled.)

Yet he still wrote, still hoped. Once upon a time they had gone on at the dole office about the right to work. But that hadn't been mentioned any more for a long time.

Now he had only the hope of work – spurts of hope. So he went on looking, writing and applying.

Until once again hope slowly left him and its place was taken by an endless despair which made him feel that it was almost impossible even to go to the unemployment office.

During this long period of unemployment fortune smiled twice upon Heinz – twice he found work. On the first occasion he was temporarily engaged at a bank, for the yearly balance; glorious to sit again in a real office and do the old familiar work! Not altogether familiar, though. New ideas had been introduced. The cloth-bound ledgers where the first page was traditionally inscribed, in many a
flourish, with the words
Cum Deo
had been abolished. Book entries were made on index cards; the book-keeping machine had been introduced; there was no opportunity to mention God even in print.

All this was new to Hackendahl and it was new to have to ask younger people for advice and information; in the days of steady employment he had been one of the youngest. But even more surprising was to discover that he no longer seemed capable of concentrated labour and that it was difficult to sit for eight hours with work, and nothing but work, in front of him. The jobless days resulted in a painful restlessness in him. He was plagued by a desire to jump up and move about. The fact that one had to do the same thing for eight whole hours was so difficult to take in.

In the recent long months, it had always seemed that he could at any point have been doing something else. He had helped Irma with some work, and had suddenly said, ‘Just a moment! I'm just going to get a few cigarettes!' and gone into the street.

By the time he was back, Irma had generally already finished, and he played for a bit with the little one. Then he got tired of that too, and went down to the street again to look at the newspapers on free display. Then he came back to the flat.

He was not at the time really conscious of how much his joblessness affected him. However, now, with the prospect of work again, he did feel it, and he wanted to jump up and down and run about all the time – and not in a particular place, or to do anything in particular. He just felt like running free.

Although he took care not to give way to this craving, once or twice he had to put up with a reprimand to the effect that he was going far too much to the lavatory and could never be found in his place. It became clear that, in spite of all the efforts he made, he would get no permanent situation at this bank.

The second spell of temporary employment was at a big textile mail order firm. For weeks on end hundreds of thousands of printed items were dispatched in a huge publicity campaign on the American model, to buoy up the ever-flagging sales – the right sort of work for unemployed people, a dozen of whom sat together, men and women. They had to fold printed matter, insert enclosures, add an order card, write the addresses, put the letters in envelopes, and cart
it all off in laundry baskets to the post. This meant one could move about freely and change one's work all the time, now doing a little folding, then unpacking bundles of publicity matter, now typing addresses, and then taking the baskets to the post three streets away; all this amid laughter and talk, for the feeling of having work and earning a few marks cheered up even the grumblers.

There were some petty jealousies, of course, trifling quarrels, discussions about a vanished ball of string; and Fräulein Pendel and Herr Lorenz were surprised kissing behind a door. ‘Hello, hello, you're sly ones! I suppose you call that imprinted matter!' Followed by never-ending laughter …

Heinz, having gained the appreciation of his bosses, was put in some sort of command over his undisciplined fellow workers and told to adjust disagreements, see that there was no idleness, and have the work done to time.

‘The entire northern territory including Hamburg by Saturday? Yes, we'll be able to do that, we'll get that done. Just let us have the directories as soon as possible; it's the addressing which delays things.'

For a while Heinz could allow himself, and was even encouraged, to hope that he would be taken on permanently, being industrious and responsible. But nothing came of it after all. ‘We're sorry, Herr Hackendahl, you know how much we'd have liked to engage you, but our publicity campaign hasn't been as successful as we hoped. No, don't look so down in the month – as soon as we take on anybody we'll think of you. Then you'll definitely hear from us.' (He never did.)

That made two rays of light, but two rays of light don't make a dawn. What money they had the Hackendahls spent on the essentials, rent and food – not on even the smallest purchases. Yet some were necessary. Underwear wore out, and shoes got into such a state that the cobbler said: ‘Well, young woman, what do you want me to do about 'em? The soles are gone and the uppers ruined but the shoelaces are still quite good. In your place I'd buy a pair of new shoes to go with 'em.'

Married couples did their sums, but it's well known that, however many sums you do, ten marks still remain ten marks, and doing sums
doesn't increase them. Undeniably, support for the jobless was increased, but it still wasn't enough. Jobless support became unemployment insurance, dole offices became unemployment offices. ‘And that won't be the end of it,' grumbled the eternally dissatisfied.

No, it wouldn't be enough, no matter how many sums were done. Slowly at first, then with increasing momentum, the home deteriorated. Shirts became frayed and overcoats thin; broken crockery was no longer replaced, the gasman was an anxiety, the inspector who read the electric meter a terror. They got behind with the rent. It started with a small balance left over, which was settled the next time. Then one day this balance was left unsettled and soon they were a whole month in arrears.

The landlord's agent barely acknowledged them now and letters began to arrive from his office, polite at first and then sterner ones sent by registered post.

‘There's nothing for it – we can't afford to live like this,' said Irma over and over again, putting out feelers. ‘It's the rent that gets us down.'

‘Well,' he said, ‘we don't want to be hasty. Perhaps I'll find something soon.'

Four weeks later Irma repeated her remarks on the subject of the rent.

‘Let the agent write if he wants to,' said Heinz, annoyed. ‘He can go to hell. I don't care what he writes!'

But he did care. He suffered at not being able to fulfil his obligations, as the phrase so nicely goes, and took little consolation in the thought that others were not carrying out their obligations to him, by providing a chance to work.

He made one last effort and became a travelling salesman. Like many of his fellow sufferers, he ran around with a little suitcase. In it were an air pump and a tub of liquid floor wax, as well as a few brushes. And he proceeded to spray wax on the floor of every housewife who allowed him to, and made it beautifully smooth.

Oh, but only a few put up with it! And few of them wanted to go so far as to buy an apparatus. And of the few who did want to, even fewer had the money to pay for the thing. No, all this running about wasn't worth it.

‘For goodness sake, leave it!' said Irma. ‘You're wearing your shoes out quicker than you can possibly earn with the stuff.'

And he did leave it – with pleasure. He wasn't cut out to be a salesman. It went against his grain to try to sell something to a woman who didn't need it – who was certainly just as short of money as Irma. He often had a guilty conscience when he sold an apparatus.

‘What do you think? Should we give up the flat?'

‘I don't mind – if you think we ought to.'

‘You know that the rent …'

‘All right! I said yes!'

‘It can't be helped, Heinz. It's also a sacrifice for Mother.'

Naturally it was a sacrifice for her. Frau Quaas, that small, fragile, anxious woman, received the family and its furniture, which took up a lot of space in her not very large sitting room, although most of it went into the garret.

‘Now we'll be able to manage. We shall save the rent and it'll be much simpler when I'm cooking for Mother as well. She'll let us have something over for it and we can buy a few things at last.'

‘First of all we must pay off the rent – I don't want any debts. Certainly not with people who behave as if you were a scoundrel because you can't get work.'

Yes, things became a trifle easier for the Hackendahls. Irma served in the shop and Frau Quaas helped with the housework, turn and turn about. They were rather on top of one another; mother and daughter and child sleeping in one room, Heinz banished to the kitchen … A topsy-turvy existence, of course – a marriage without wedlock, the simplest kiss embarrassed by the mother's presence; the women at work, the man sentenced to inactivity … a world upside down – but hardly more upside down than the world outside, the big world, the political world where – with much hue and cry – they were just initiating the Dawes Plan, whereby the debtor is lent money by the creditor, so that the former, without means, can better pay the latter.

Naturally there were some bright spots at times. Old Hackendahl would stop his carriage outside the shop, Otto would be placed in it and his father beside him, and then Blücher would trot off, with old Hackendahl cracking his whip for no other reason than that it
amused the boy. They would drive three or four streets away, to keep Grandfather company to the nursing home.

Then father and son would alight and slowly walk back, stopping in front of every shop – they had plenty of time – Otto prattling, with his small hand trustfully in the large one. A nice sight and a harmless deception! The child was still ignorant that his father did not rank just below the Lord, but was unemployed, an outlaw, a pariah.

How much a pariah that same father was yet to learn when he next handed in his card to be stamped. The clerk scrutinized a piece of paper, and then Hackendahl's face.

‘Herr Hackendahl? Will you please go to Room 357.'

Heinz Hackendahl went to Room 357. When he was told to do a thing in this place he did it. He was only one of thousands without a destiny of their own or an individuality; he had long ago given up taking matters here personally. But on this occasion he was being considered as a person, for once.

At the desk sat a scraggy, sallow man. What a funny head, thought Heinz. That really is what they call pear-shaped …

‘You are Heinz Hackendahl, your particulars are this and that, you have been unemployed for so long, living at such-and-such address. Is that so?'

‘Yes, that's correct.' But what was not quite so correct was that, though a chair stood available, no chair was offered him. But it wasn't worthwhile getting upset about a trifle like that. Here one mustn't get upset by anything.

‘What kind of a flat have you got?' asked Pear-head (naturally you take against such a head, when it asks in such a stupid way. Otherwise, you would just think it a joke).

Heinz thought he was being asked about his old one. No doubt the agent had complained about the arrears of rent. But those had been paid now and this he explained.

‘So you were in debt for rent and now you've paid up. Where did you get the money from?'

That was the sort of questioning which made a man slowly angry. Heinz said that unfortunately he had no other income than his unemployment benefit and he had paid his rent with that.

‘Fine. So previously the benefit wasn't sufficient for the rent and now it is. How's that?'

‘Because we don't pay rent now. We're living at my mother-in-law's.'

‘All right then. You're living at your mother-in-law's. Costs nothing. What do you do there?'

‘Nothing.' (That, unfortunately, was the trouble.)

‘Nothing at all?'

‘No – what else am I supposed to do?'

‘And suddenly you get so much money that you can pay your arrears? Did your mother-in-law give you the money?'

‘No, she can barely make ends meet. It's only a small stationery shop.'