Alone in Berlin (Penguin Modern Classics)

8

Small Surprises

While the two drunks were talking together, all the male members of the Persicke family had filed into the room. Nearest to Enno and Emil is the short, wiry Baldur, his eyes glinting behind his highly polished spectacles; just behind him are his two brothers in their black SS uniforms, but without caps; next to the door, as though not quite sure of himself, is the old former publican Persicke. The Persicke family has had a bit to drink as well, but the alcohol has a different effect on them than on the two housebreakers. Far from becoming emotional and dull-witted, the Persickes are even sharper, greedier, and more brutal than in their normal condition.

Baldur Persicke barks, ‘Well, out with it! What are you doing here? Or is this where you live?’

‘But Herr Persicke!’ Borkhausen whines.

Baldur pretends only now to recognize him. ‘Ah, it’s Borkhausen from the basement flat in the back building!’ he exclaims in mock astonishment to his two brothers. ‘Herr Borkhausen, what are you doing here?’ His surprise takes on an edge of sarcasm. ‘Wouldn’t you be better advised to look after your wife, the lovely Otti, a little bit – especially at this time of night? I’ve heard tell of convivial gatherings with well-placed gentlemen, and your children rolling around the courtyard at all hours, drunk. Don’t you think you should put your children to bed, Herr Borkhausen?’

‘Trouble!’ mutters Borkhausen. ‘I knew it the moment I saw the spectacles: trouble.’ He nods sadly at Enno.

Enno Kluge is no help to him at all. He is swaying slightly, his brandy bottle dangling from one hand, and he doesn’t have a clue what’s going on.

Borkhausen turns back to Baldur Persicke. His tone is no longer plaintive so much as accusatory; all at once he is deeply offended. ‘If my wife does behave in a certain way,’ he says, ‘then I’ll take responsibility for it, Herr Persicke. I am a husband and father – by law. And if my children are drunk, well, you’re drunk yourself, and you’re no more than a child yourself, for Christ’s sake!’

He looks angrily at Baldur, and Baldur glints back at him. Then he gives his brothers a discreet signal to get ready.

‘What are you doing in the Rosenthals’ apartment?’ the youngest Persicke barks again.

‘But it’s all according to our arrangement!’ Borkhausen assures him, eagerly now. ‘All agreed. Me and my friend here, we’re just on our way now. We’re running a bit late, in fact. He’s going to the Stettiner, I’m going to the Anhalter. Two suitcases each, plenty left for you.’

He’s practically falling asleep, the last few words are mumbled.

Baldur fixes him with an alert stare. Maybe it’ll pass off without violence – the two men are completely sloshed. But his instinct warns him. He grabs Borkhausen by the shoulder and barks: ‘Who’s that man with you? What’s his name?’

‘Enno!’ Borkhausen barely manages to say. ‘My friend Enno…’

‘And where does your friend Enno live?’

‘Don’t know, Herr Persicke. Met him at the bud… drinking pubbies… at the Also Ran…’

Baldur has made up his mind. Suddenly he swings his fist into Borkhausen’s midriff, causing him to fall into the piles of clothes. ‘Bastard!’ he yells. ‘How dare you refer to my spectacles, and call me a child. I’ll show you!’

But his shouting serves no purpose, for the two men can no longer hear him. His SS brothers have jumped in and knocked their opponents cold with a couple of brutal blows.

‘There!’ says Baldur happily. ‘In an hour or so we can hand the two of them over to the police as burglars caught in the act. In the meantime we can move down whatever things we want for ourselves. But quiet on the stairs! I haven’t heard old Quangel come back from his late shift.’

The two brothers nod. Baldur looks down at the bloodied, unconscious victims, then at all the cases, the clothes, the radiogram. Suddenly he breaks into a smile. He turns to his father. ‘Well, Father, how did I do? You and your anxiety about everything! You see…’

But that’s as far as he gets. His father isn’t standing in the doorway, as expected; his father has suddenly disappeared. In his place is Foreman Quangel, the fellow with the sharp, cold birdlike face, silently staring at him with his dark eyes.

When Otto Quangel got home from his shift – even though it had grown very late, because of the meeting, he had refused to take a tram, saving his pennies – he saw that in spite of the blackout there was a light on in Frau Rosenthal’s apartment. On closer inspection he saw that there were lights on at the Persickes’ as well, and downstairs at Judge Fromm’s, shining past the edges of the blinds. In the case of Judge Fromm, of whom it wasn’t certain whether he had gone into retirement in ’33 because of old age or the Nazis, this wasn’t surprising. He always read half the night. And the Persickes were presumably still celebrating their victory over France. But he couldn’t believe that old Frau Rosenthal would have the lights on all over her apartment – there was something amiss there. The old woman was so cowed, she would never light up her flat like that.

There’s something wrong, thought Otto Quangel as he unlocked the front door and slowly went up the stairs. As ever, he had forborne to switch on the lights in the stairwell – he didn’t just economize for himself. He economized for everyone, including the landlord. Something’s up! But what’s it to do with me? I want nothing to do with those people. I live for myself. Me and Anna. The two of us. Anyway, perhaps it’s the Gestapo conducting a search of the place. And I walk in! No, I’ll just go to bed…

But with his scrupulousness, almost his sense of justice, sharpened by the ‘You and your Führer’ gibe, he found this decision rather unsatisfactory. He stood outside the door of his apartment, key in hand, head cocked. The door must be ajar there, there was a little light filtering down, and he could hear a sharp voice giving orders. An old woman, all alone, he thought suddenly, to his own surprise. Without protection. Without mercy…

At that moment, a small but forceful male hand reached out of the darkness and grabbed him by the scruff and faced him toward the stairs. A cultured voice said: ‘Why don’t you go on ahead, Herr Quangel. I will follow and appear at the correct moment.’

Without hesitating now, Quangel went up the stairs, such persuasive force had been vested in that hand and voice. That can only have been old Judge Fromm, he thought. What a secretive so-and-so. I think in all the years I’ve lived here, I’ve seen him maybe a score of times by day, and now here he is creeping around the stairs in the middle of the night!

So thinking, he mounted the stairs unhesitatingly and reached the Rosenthal apartment. He just caught sight of a squat figure – certainly old Persicke – retreating hurriedly into the kitchen, and he caught Baldur’s last words about the thing they had done, and that it was wrong to be afraid all the time… And now the two of them, Baldur Persicke and Otto Quangel, stood silently confronting one another, eye to eye.

For an instant, Baldur Persicke thought the game was up. But then he remembered one of his maxims, Shamelessness wins out, and he said a little provocatively, ‘I can imagine your surprise. But you got here a bit late, Herr Quangel, we’ve caught the burglars.’ He left a pause, but Quangel didn’t say anything. A little less brightly, Baldur added, ‘One of the two villains appears to be Borkhausen, who lives off immoral earnings at the back of the house.’

Quangel’s eyes followed Baldur’s pointing finger. ‘Yes,’ he said curtly, ‘that’s Borkhausen.’

‘As for you,’ broke in Adolf Persicke of the SS, ‘what are you doing, standing there staring? Why don’t you go to the police station and report the crime, so that the police can arrest the culprits? We’ll keep them pinned down in the meantime!’

‘Will you keep out of it, Adolf!’ hissed Baldur. ‘You can’t issue orders to Herr Quangel. Herr Quangel knows what he has to do.’

But that was just what Quangel at that moment did not know. If he had been alone, he would have decided spontaneously. But there was that hand grabbing at his shirt, and that cultured voice, and he had no idea what the old judge had in mind, or what he wanted from him. But whatever it was, he didn’t want to spoil his plan. If only he knew what it was…

And that was when the old gentleman appeared on the scene, though not, as Quangel had expected, at his side, but from the interior of the apartment. Suddenly he stood in their midst, like an apparition, and gave the Persickes a further, deeper shock.

He did look rather singular, the old gentleman. Of frail build and average height or less, he was swathed in a lustrous black silk dressing gown trimmed with red and secured with large red toggles. The old gentleman wore a grey imperial and a white moustache. The very fine, still brown hair on his head was brushed carefully across the pale scalp, but was unable to hide its bareness. Behind the delicate gold-rimmed spectacles lurked two amused, sardonic eyes.

‘No, no, gentlemen,’ he said smoothly, seeming to continue a conversation begun long ago to the edification of all. ‘No, no, Frau Rosenthal is not at home. But maybe one of the junior Persickes would take the trouble to look in the bathroom. Your father appears to have been taken ill. At any rate, he seems to be trying to hang himself with a towel there. I was unable to persuade him to desist…’

The judge smiles, but the two elder Persicke boys storm out of the room so fast that the effect is rather comical. Young Persicke has turned pale and quite sober. The old gentleman who has just set foot in the room and is speaking with such irony is a man whose superiority Baldur effortlessly senses. It’s not a seeming, jumped-up superiority, it’s the real thing. Baldur Persicke says almost beseechingly, ‘Please understand, your honour, father is, to put it bluntly, very drunk. The capitulation of France…’

‘Oh, I understand, I quite understand,’ says the old judge, and makes a little deprecating gesture. ‘We are all human, only we don’t all try to hang ourselves when we’re in our cups.’ He stops for a moment and smiles. He says, ‘Of course he said all sorts of things, too, but who pays any attention to the babble of a drunkard!’ Again he smiles.

‘Your honour!’ Baldur Persicke says imploringly. ‘I beg you, take this matter in hand! You’ve been a judge, you know what steps to take…’

‘No. No,’ says the judge firmly. ‘I am old and infirm.’ He doesn’t look it. Quite the opposite, he looks in flourishing health. ‘And then I live a very quiet, retired life, I have very little contact with the world outside. But you, Herr Persicke, you and your family, it’s you who took the two burglars by surprise. You must hand them over to the police and secure the property in the apartment. I have taken a cursory look. There are seventeen suitcases and twenty-one boxes here. And more. And more…’

He speaks more and more slowly. Then he says casually, ‘I imagine that the apprehension of the two burglars will bring substantial fame and honour to you and your family.’

The judge stops. Baldur stands there, looking very thoughtful. That’s another way of doing it – what a wily old fox that Fromm is! He must see through everything; certainly his father will have blabbed, but this man’s retired, he wants his peace and quiet, he doesn’t want to get involved in a business like this. There’s no danger from him. What about Quangel, the old foreman? He’s never bothered himself about anyone in the house, never greeted anyone, never chatted to anyone. Quangel is a real old workingman, scrawny, wizened, not a single independent thought in his head. He won’t make any needless trouble. He’s utterly harmless.

The only ones left are the two drunks lying there. Of course you could hand them over to the police, and deny whatever Borkhausen might say about your having tipped them off. They’ll never believe him, if he’s up against members of the Party, the SS, and the Hitler Youth. And then report the case to the Gestapo. That way you might get a piece of the action perfectly legally, and without risk. And you’d get some kudos for it, too.

Tempting. But it might be best to handle everything informally. Patch up Borkhausen and that Enno fellow and send them packing with a few marks. They won’t talk. Lock up the apartment as it is, whether Frau Rosenthal comes back or not. Perhaps there’ll be something to be done later on – he has a pretty certain sense that policy against the Jews is going to get tougher. Sit tight, relax. Things might be possible in six months that aren’t possible today. As things stand, the Persickes are somewhat compromised. They won’t suffer any consequences, but they’ll be the subject of gossip within the Party. They’ll lose a little of their reputation for reliability.

Baldur Persicke says, ‘I’m almost tempted to let the two rascals go. I feel sorry for them, your honour, they’re just small fry.’

He looks round, he’s all alone. Both the judge and the foreman have vanished. As he thought, neither of them wants anything to do with this business. It’s the smartest thing they could do. He, Baldur, will do the same, no matter what his brothers say.

With a deep sigh for all the pretty things he has to say goodbye to, Baldur sets off into the kitchen to restore his father to his senses and to persuade his brothers to put back what they’ve already earmarked for themselves.

On the stairs, meanwhile, the judge says to Foreman Quangel, who has silently followed him out of the room, ‘If you get any trouble on account of Frau Rosenthal, Herr Quangel, just tell me. Goodnight.’

‘What do I care about Frau Rosenthal? I barely know her,’ protests Quangel.

‘Very well, goodnight, Herr Quangel,’ and Judge Fromm heads off down the stairs.

Otto Quangel lets himself into his dark apartment.