Alone in Berlin (Penguin Modern Classics)

3

A Man Called Borkhausen

Foreman Quangel has emerged on to Jablonski Strasse, and run into Emil Borkhausen on the doorstep. That seems to be Emil Borkhausen’s one and only calling in life, to be always standing around where there’s something to gawp at or overhear. The war hasn’t done anything to change that, for all its call on patriots to do their duty on the home front: Emil Borkhausen has just continued to stand around.

He was standing there now, a tall lanky figure in a worn suit, his colourless face looking glumly down the almost deserted Jablonski Strasse. Catching sight of Quangel, he snapped into movement, going up to him to shake hands. ‘Where are you off to then, Quangel?’ he asked. ‘Your shift doesn’t begin yet, does it?’

Quangel ignored the extended hand and merely mumbled: ‘’m in a hurry.’

And he was off at once, in the direction of Prenzlauer Allee. That bothersome chatterbox was really all he needed!

But Borkhausen wasn’t so easily shaken off. He laughed his whinnying laugh and said: ‘You know what, Quangel, I’m heading the same way!’ And as the other strode on, not looking aside, he added, ‘The doctor’s prescribed plenty of exercise for my constipation, and I get a bit bored walking around all the time without any company!’

He then embarked on a detailed account of everything he had done to combat his constipation. Quangel didn’t listen. He was preoccupied by two thoughts, each in turn shoving the other aside: that he no longer had a son, and that Anna had said ‘You and your Führer.’ Quangel admitted to himself that he never loved the boy the way a father is supposed to love his son. From the time Ottochen was born, he had never seen anything in him but a nuisance and a distraction in his relationship with Anna. If he felt grief now, it was because he was thinking worriedly about Anna, how she would take the loss, what would now change between them. He had the first instance of that already: ‘You and your Führer.’

It wasn’t true. Hitler was not his Führer, or no more his Führer than Anna’s. They had always agreed that after his little carpentry business folded, Hitler was the one who had pulled their chestnuts out of the fire. After being out of work for four years, in 1934 Quangel had become foreman in the big furniture factory, taking home forty marks a week. And they had done pretty well on that.

Even so, they hadn’t joined the Party. For one thing, they resented the dues; they felt they were contributing quite enough as it was, what with obligatory donations to the Winter Relief Fund and various appeals and the Arbeitsfront.^∗ Yes, they had dragged him into the Arbeitsfront at the factory, and that was the other reason they both had decided against joining the Party. Because you could see it with your eyes closed, the way they were making separations between ordinary citizens and Party members. Even the worst Party member was worth more to them than the best ordinary citizen. Once in the Party, it appeared you could do what you liked, and never be called for it. They termed that rewarding loyalty with loyalty.

But foreman Quangel liked equality and fair-dealing. To him a human being was a human being, whether he was in the Party or not. Quangel was forever coming up against things at work, like a man being punished severely for a small mistake whereas someone else was allowed to deliver botched job after botched job, and it upset him. He bit his lower lip and gnawed furiously away at it – if he had been brave enough, he would have told them where they could stick their membership in the Arbeitsfront!

Anna knew that perfectly well, which is why she should never have said that thing: ‘You and your Führer!’ They couldn’t coerce Anna the way they could him. Oh, he could understand her simplicity, her humility, and how she had suddenly changed. All her life she had been in service, first in the country, then here in Berlin; all her life it had been Do this, do that. She didn’t have much of the say in their marriage either, not because he always ordered her about, but because as the principal breadwinner, things were run around him.

But now Ottochen is dead, and Otto Quangel can feel how hard it has hit her. He can see her jaundiced-looking face in front of him, he can hear her accusation, and here he is off on an errand at a quite unusual time for him, with this Borkhausen fellow trotting along at his side, and tonight Trudel will come over and there will be tears and no end of talk – and Otto Quangel likes order in his life and routine at work; the more uneventful a day is, the better he likes it. Even a Sunday off is a kind of interruption. And now it looks as if everything will be topsy-turvy for a while to come, and maybe Anna won’t ever get back to being her old self again.

He wants to get it all clear in his head, and Borkhausen is bothering him. He can’t believe it, here’s the man saying, ‘And is it true you got a letter from the field today, not written by your Otto?’

Quangel throws a sharp, dark glance at the fellow and mutters, ‘Chatterbox!’ But because he doesn’t want to quarrel with anyone, not even such a waste of space as that idler Borkhausen, he adds, rather in spite of himself, ‘People all talk too much nowadays!’

Borkhausen isn’t offended because Emil Borkhausen is not an easy man to offend; instead, he concurs enthusiastically: ‘You know, Quangel, you’re right! Why can’t the postwoman Kluge keep her lip buttoned? But no, she has to blab it out to everyone: There’s a letter for the Quangels from the field, and it’s a typed one!’ He stops for a moment, then, in a strange, wheedling, sympathetic voice, he inquires, ‘Is he wounded, or missing, or…?’

Silence. Quangel – after a longish pause – answers indirectly. ‘The French have capitulated, eh? Well, it’s a shame they didn’t do it a day earlier, because then my Otto would still be alive…’

Borkhausen pulls out all the stops: ‘But it’s because so many thousands have died heroic deaths that the French have surrendered so quickly. That’s why so many millions of us are still alive. As a father, you should be proud of such a sacrifice!’

Quangel asks, ‘Are yours not of an age to go and fight, neighbour?’

Almost offended, Borkhausen says: ‘You know perfectly well, Quangel! But if they all died at once in a bomb blast or whatever, I’d be proud of them. Don’t you believe me, Quangel?’

The foreman doesn’t give him an immediate answer, but he thinks, Well, I might not have been a proper father and never loved Otto as I ought to have done – but to you, your kids are just a millstone round your neck. I think you’d be glad if a bomb came along and took care of them for you!

Still, he doesn’t say anything to that effect, and Borkhausen, already tired of waiting for an answer, says, ‘Just think, Quangel, first Sudetenland and Czechoslovakia and Austria, and now Poland and France – we’re going to be the richest country on earth! What do a couple of hundred thousand dead matter! We’re rich!’

Unusually rapidly, Quangel replies, ‘And what will we do with our wealth? Eat it? Do I sleep better if I’m rich? If I stop going to the factory because of being such a rich man, what will I do all day? No, Borkhausen, I don’t want to be rich, and much less in such a way. Riches like that aren’t worth a single dead body!’

Borkhausen seizes him by the arm; his eyes are flickering, he shakes Quangel while whispering fervently into his ear, ‘Say, Quangel, how can you talk like that? You know I can get you put in a concentration camp for defeatist muttering like that? What you said is a direct contradiction of what the Führer says himself! What if I was someone like that, and went and denounced you…?’

Quangel is alarmed by what he has said. The thing with Otto and Anna must have thrown him much more than he thought, otherwise he would certainly not have dropped his innate caution like that. But he makes sure that Borkhausen gets no sense of his alarm. With his strong workingman’s hands Quangel frees his arm from the lax grip of the other, and slowly and coolly says, ‘What are you getting so excited about, Borkhausen? What did I say that you can denounce me for? My son has died, and my wife is upset. That makes me sad. You can denounce me for that, if you want. Why don’t you, go ahead! I’ll come with you and sign the statement!’

While Quangel is speaking with such unusual volubility, he is thinking to himself, I’ll eat my hat if Borkhausen isn’t a snoop! Someone else to be wary of. Who is there anywhere you can trust? I have to worry what Anna might say, too…

By now they have reached the factory gates. Once again, Quangel doesn’t offer Borkhausen his hand. He says, ‘All right, then!’ and makes to go inside.

But Borkhausen grabs hold of his shirt and whispers to him, ‘Neighbour, let’s not lose any more words about what’s just happened. I’m not a spy and I don’t want to bring misfortune to anyone. But do me a favour, will you: I need to give my wife a bit of housekeeping money, and I haven’t got a penny. The children have had nothing to eat all day. Will you loan me ten marks – I’ll have them for you next Friday, I swear!’

As he did a moment earlier, Quangel shakes free of the man’s clutches. So that’s the kind of fellow you are, he thinks, that’s how you make your living! And: I won’t give him one mark, or he’ll think I’m afraid of him, and then I’ll never see the last of him. Aloud he says, ‘Listen, mate, I take home thirty marks a week, and we need every penny. I can’t lend you a thing.’

Then, without a further word or glance back, he passes through the factory gates. The security guard knows him and doesn’t stop him.

Borkhausen stands there staring and wondering what to do next. He feels like going to the Gestapo and denouncing Quangel, that would certainly net him a couple of packs of cigarettes at least. But better not. He had got ahead of himself this morning, he should have let Quangel speak; following the death of his son, there was every chance he would have done. But he got Quangel wrong. Quangel won’t allow himself to be played like a fish. Most people today are afraid, basically everyone, because they’re all up to something forbidden, one way or another, and are worried that someone will get wind of it. You just need to catch them at the right moment, and you’ve got them, and they’ll cough up. But Quangel, with his hawk’s profile, he’s different. He’s probably not afraid of anything, and it’s not possible to catch him out. No, Borkhausen will let him go, and perhaps try to get somewhere with the woman; the woman will have been thrown for a loop by the death of her only son! She’ll talk, all right.

So, he’ll keep the woman in reserve for the next few days, but what about now? It’s true that he needs to give Otti some money today, this morning he secretly scoffed the last of the bread in the box. But he has no money, and where is he going to get hold of some in a hurry? His wife is a real nag and can make his life a misery. Time was, she was a streetwalker on Schönhauser Allee, and she could be really sweet. Now she’s the mother of five children – most of them probably nothing to do with him – and she’s got a tongue on her like a fishwife. And she knocks him around too, him and the kids, in which case he hits her back. It’s her fault; she doesn’t have the sense to stop.

No, he can’t go back to Otti without some money. Suddenly he thinks of the old Rosenthal woman, who’s all alone now, without anyone to protect her, on the fourth floor of 55 Jablonski Strasse. He wonders why he didn’t think of her before; there’s a more promising victim than that old buzzard, Quangel! She’s a cheerful woman – he remembers her from before, when she still used to have her haberdashery, and he’ll try the soft approach with her first. If that doesn’t work, he’ll bop her over the head. He’s sure to find something, an ornament or money or something to eat – something that will placate Otti.

While Borkhausen is thinking, envisioning what he might find – because of course the Jews still have all their property, they’re just hiding it from the Germans they stole it from in the first place – while he’s thinking, he nips back to Jablonski Strasse, pronto. In the stairwell, he pricks up his ears. He’s anxious not to be spotted by anyone here in the front building; he himself lives in the back building, in the ‘lower ground floor’ of the ‘garden block’ – the back basement, in other words. It doesn’t bother him, but it’s sometimes embarrassing when people come.

There’s nobody in the stairwell, and Borkhausen takes the stairs quietly and quickly. There’s a wild racket coming from the Persickes’ apartment, laughing and shouting, they must be celebrating again. He really needs to get in touch with people like that – they have proper contacts. If he did, things would start to look up for him. Unfortunately, people like that won’t even look at a part-timer like him, especially not the boys in the SS, and that Baldur is up himself like you wouldn’t believe. The old fellow’s different; when you catch him good and drunk, he’s good for five marks.

In the Quangels’ apartment everything’s quiet, and at Frau Rosenthal’s one floor up, he can’t hear anything either, though he presses his ear to the door for a good long time. So he rings the bell, quick and businesslike, like a postman, say, someone who’s in a hurry to move on.

But nothing stirs, and after waiting for a minute or two, Borkhausen decides to try again, and then a third time. In between, he listens, but can’t hear anything, and finally he hisses through the keyhole, ‘Frau Rosenthal, open up! I’ve got news of your husband! Quickly, before someone sees me here. I can hear you, Frau Rosenthal, open the door!’

He keeps ringing, but without results. Finally, he falls into a rage. He can’t go home empty-handed – there’d be an almighty scene with Otti. The old Jewess should just hand back what she stole. He jams his finger into the bell and yells through the keyhole, ‘Open the goddamned door, you Jewish bitch, or I’ll smash your face in so badly you won’t be able to see out. I’ll haul you off to the concentration camp today, if you don’t open the door, you fucking kike!’

If only he had some gasoline, he could torch the bitch’s door.

Suddenly Borkhausen goes all quiet. He’s heard a door open downstairs, and he presses himself against the wall. No one must see him here. They’re bound to be going out, he just needs to keep really quiet.

But the steps are coming closer, ever closer, even if they’re slow and halting. It’s one of the Persickes, and if there’s anything Borkhausen doesn’t need, it’s a drunken Persicke. Whoever it is is making his way toward the attic, but the attic is secured with an iron door, and there’s nowhere to hide. Now he’s only got one hope, which is that whoever it is is so drunk, he’ll walk straight past without seeing him; if it’s old Persicke, it could happen.

But it’s not old Persicke, it’s the loathsome boy, Bruno or Baldur or whatever he calls himself, the worst of the lot. Prances around in his Hitler Youth uniform all day long, looking to you to greet him first, even though he’s a little snot. Slowly Baldur climbs up the last few steps, gripping the banister – that’s how drunk he is. His glassy eyes have spotted Borkhausen against the wall, but he doesn’t address him till he’s standing directly in front of him. ‘What are you doing hanging around in the front building? I’m not having you here, get down to your basement hole with your whore! Get lost!’

And he lifts his hobnailed boot, but quickly puts it down again: he’s too unsteady on his pins to kick anything.

Borkhausen simply can’t cope with a tone like that. If he gets barked at, he curls into a frightened ball. He whispers back, ‘Terribly sorry, Herr Persicke! I was just looking to have a bit of fun with Frau Rosenthal!’

Baldur furrows his brow, thinking. After a while he says, ‘Stealing is what you came to do, you sonofabitch. Well, on your way.’

The words are crude, but the tone has something a little more gracious or encouraging about it. Borkhausen has a sensitive ear. So, with a grin that craves indulgence for the joke, he says, ‘I don’t do theft, Herr Persicke – at the most I might do some spontaneous reorganizing from time to time!’

Baldur Persicke doesn’t smile back. He won’t sink to the level of people like that, even though they have their uses. He cautiously follows Borkhausen downstairs.

Both of them are so preoccupied with their thoughts that they fail to notice that the Quangels’ door is slightly ajar. And that it opens again once the men have passed. Anna Quangel darts over to the balustrade and listens down the stairwell.

Outside the Persickes’ door, Borkhausen extends his arm in the ‘German greeting’: ‘Heil Hitler, Herr Persicke! And thank you very much!’

He’s not sure what he has to be thankful to him for. Maybe for not planting his boot on his backside and kicking him downstairs. He couldn’t have done anything about it, little pipsqueak that he is.

Baldur Persicke doesn’t return the salute. He fixes the other man with his glassy stare, until he starts blinking and lowers his gaze. Baldur says, ‘So you wanted to have a bit of fun with Frau Rosenthal?’

‘Yes,’ answers Borkhausen quietly, not looking at him.

‘What sort of fun did you have in mind?’ comes the question. ‘A bit of smash and grab?’

Borkhausen risks a quick look up into the face of the other. ‘Ach!’ he says, ‘I would have given her a good beating-up!’

‘I see,’ Baldur says. ‘Is that so?’

For a moment they stand there in silence. Borkhausen wonders if it’s okay for him to go, but he hasn’t yet been told he can. He continues to wait in silence with his eyes averted.

‘Get in there!’ says Baldur Persicke, suddenly, in a thick voice. He points through the open door of the Persicke apartment. ‘Maybe we’re not finished yet! We’ll see.’

Borkhausen follows the pointed index finger and marches into the Persicke apartment. Baldur Persicke follows, a little unsteadily, but still upright. The door slams behind them.

Upstairs, Frau Quangel lets go of the banister and sneaks back inside her flat, softly letting the lock click shut. She’s not sure what prompted her to listen to the conversation between the two men, first upstairs outside Frau Rosenthal’s, then downstairs outside the Persickes’. Usually she does exactly what her husband says, and doesn’t meddle with the other tenants. Anna’s face is still a sickly white, and there’s a twitch in her eyelid. Once or twice she has felt like sitting down and crying, but it’s more than she can do. Phrases go through her head: ‘I thought my heart would burst,’ and ‘It came as such a shock,’ and ‘I felt as though I was going to be sick.’ All of them had some truth about them, but also there was this: ‘The people who are responsible for my son’s death aren’t going to get away with it. I’m not going to let them…’

She’s not sure how she’s going to go about it, but her listening on the stairs might be a beginning. Otto’s not going to decide everything by himself, she thinks. I want to do what I want some of the time, even if it doesn’t suit him.

She quickly prepares dinner for him. He eats the lion’s share of the food they buy with their ration cards. He’s getting on a bit, and they always make him work past his strength, while she sits at home with her sewing, so an unequal distribution is perfectly fair.

She’s still wielding pots and pans when Borkhausen leaves the Persickes’ place. As soon as he’s on the steps, he drops the cringing posture he adopted in front of them. He walks upright across the yard, his stomach has been pleasantly warmed by a couple of glasses of schnapps, and in his pocket are two tenners, one of which should be enough to sweeten Otti’s temper.

As he enters the parlour of the so-called lower ground floor apartment, Otti isn’t in a foul temper at all. There’s a white cloth on the table, and Otti is on the sofa with a gentleman unknown to Borkhausen. The stranger, who is by no means badly dressed, hurriedly pulls away his arm, which had been thrown round Otti’s shoulder, but there’s really no need for that. Borkhausen’s not particular in that regard.

He thinks to himself, Well, will you look at that! So the old bird can still pull in a john like that! He’s bound to be a bank employee at least, or a teacher, from the look of him…

In the kitchen, the children are yelling and crying. Borkhausen cuts them each a slice from the loaf that’s on the table. Then he has himself a little breakfast – there’s sausage and schnapps as well as bread. He throws the man on the sofa an appreciative look. The man doesn’t seem to feel as much at home as Borkhausen, which is a pity.

And so Borkhausen decides to go out again, once he’s had a bit of something to eat. He doesn’t want to chase the john away, heaven forfend. The good thing is that he can keep his twenty marks all to himself now. Borkhausen directs his strides toward Roller Strasse; he’s heard there’s a bar there where people speak in a particularly unguarded way. Perhaps he’ll hear something. There’s always fish to be caught in Berlin. And if not by day, then at night.

When Borkhausen thinks of the night, there seems to be a silent laugh playing around his drooping moustache. That Baldur, those Persickes, what a bunch! But they’re not going to make a mug of him, no sir! Let them think they’ve bought him off with twenty marks and two glasses of schnapps. He can see a time coming when he’ll be on top of all those Persickes. He just has to be clever now.

That reminds Borkhausen that he needs to find someone called Enno before nightfall – Enno might be just the man for the situation. But no worries, he’ll find Enno all right. Enno makes his daily rounds of the three or four pubs where the little punters go. Borkhausen doesn’t know Enno’s full name. He only knows him by sight, from a couple of pubs where everyone calls him Enno. But he’ll find him all right, and it could be he’s exactly the man Borkhausen is looking for.