Alone in Berlin (Penguin Modern Classics)

15

Enno Kluge Goes back to Work

When Otto Quangel turned up for work in the carpentry factory, Enno Kluge had already been standing at his lathe for six hours. Yes, the little man couldn’t stay in bed any longer, and in spite of his pain and his weakness he travelled to work. His welcome there was admittedly not that friendly, but what else could he expect?

‘Ah, this is a rare pleasure, Enno!’ his supervisor exclaimed. ‘How long are you planning on staying this time, one week or two?’

‘I’m completely fit and healthy again, boss,’ Enno Kluge eagerly assured him. ‘I’m able to work, and I will work, as you’ll see!’

‘Well,’ said his boss, unconvinced, and made as if to go. But he stopped a moment longer, looked Enno in the face appraisingly, and asked, ‘What’ve you done to your face? You look like you’ve been put through a mangle…’

Enno keeps his face down over the piece he’s working on and doesn’t look up as he finally replies, ‘Yes, that’s right, boss, a mangle…’

The boss stands there thoughtfully and goes on studying him. Finally, he thinks he can make sense of the whole thing, and he says, ‘Well, maybe it’s done the trick, and helped you recover some enthusiasm for work!’

With that, the supervisor moved off, and Enno Kluge was happy that his beating had been taken in that way. Let him think he had been roughed up for shirking, so much the better! He didn’t want to discuss it with anyone anyway. And if they all thought that, they wouldn’t bother him too much with their questions. At the most, they would laugh about him behind his back, and he thought: Let them, I don’t care. He wanted to work, and he wanted to astonish them!

With a modest smile, and yet not without pride, Enno Kluge put himself down for the voluntary extra shift on Sunday. A couple of older colleagues, who remembered him from before, made cynical remarks. He just laughed along, and was glad to see the boss grinning too.

The boss’s erroneous assumption that he had been beaten up for shirking had certainly helped with the management as well. He was summoned up there straight after the lunch break. He stood as though in the dock, and the fact that one of his judges was in a Wehrmacht uniform, one in an SA uniform, and only one in a suit, admittedly also decorated with army insignia, only served to heighten his fear.

The Wehrmacht officer browsed in a file, and in a voice equally bored and disgusted proceeded to throw the book at him. On such and such a day released from the Wehrmacht to the armaments industry, first reported in the appropriate works on such and such, worked for eleven days, reported sick with stomach bleeding, used the services of three doctors and two hospitals. Such and such reported fit for work, worked for five days, took three days off, worked for one day, reported recurrence of stomach bleeding, etc., etc.

The Wehrmacht officer put away the file. He looked with disgust at Kluge, or rather he fixed his eyes on the top button of his jacket and said with raised voice, ‘What do you think you’re playing at, you rat?’ Suddenly he was screaming, but you could tell he was a habitual screamer, without any inner excitement. ‘Do you think you can fool a single one of us with your stomach bleeding? I’ll send you off to a punishment company, and they’ll pull your stinking guts out of your body, and then you’ll learn what stomach bleeding is!’

The officer went on shouting in a similar vein for quite some time. Enno was used to that from the military; it didn’t especially impress him. He listened to the lecture, hands correctly at his trouser seams, eye attentively on his scolder. When the officer stopped to draw breath, Enno said in the prescribed tone, clear and distinct, neither humble nor too cheeky, ‘Yes, First Lieutenant! whatever you say, First Lieutenant!’ At one point he was even able to push in the sentence – admittedly without any visible effect – ‘Beg permission to report, sir, volunteering for work. Ready and willing to work, sir!’

The officer stopped just as suddenly as he had begun. He shut his mouth, took his gaze off Kluge’s top button and redirected it to his neighbour in brown. ‘Anything else?’ he asked, with disgust.

Yes, it seemed this gentleman also had something to say, or rather to scream – because all these commanding officers seemed only able to scream at their men. This one screamed about betrayal of the people and sabotage, of the Führer who wouldn’t tolerate any traitors in the ranks, and concentration camps where he would get his comeuppance.

‘And how have you come to us?’ screamed the brownshirt suddenly. ‘Look at the state of you, pig! Is this how you show up for work? Whoring around with girls! Come here sapped and drained, and we have the privilege of paying you! Where’ve you been, where did you get yourself those bruises, you miserable pimp!’

‘They worked me over,’ said Enno, shy under the other’s gaze.

‘Who, who was it who worked you over, that’s what I want to know!’ screamed the brownshirt. And he brandished his fist under Enno’s nose and stamped his feet.

The moment had come when any kind of thought left Enno Kluge’s skull. Threatened with fresh blows, he was deserted by caution and good intentions and whispered, trembling, ‘Beg to report, sir, the SS worked me over.’

There was something so convincing in the man’s fear that the tribunal immediately believed him. A comprehending, approving smile spread over their faces. The brownshirt screamed, ‘You call that worked over? Punishment is the term for that, just punishment. What is it?’

‘Beg to report, sir, just punishment!’

‘Well, bear it in mind. Next time you won’t get off so easily! Dismissed!’

For the next half hour Enno Kluge was shaking so hard that he couldn’t work at his lathe. He hung around the lav, where the boss finally ran him to ground and chased him back to work with a tongue-lashing. He stood next to him, and watched as Enno wrecked one piece after another with his clumsiness. Everything was spinning round in the little fellow’s head: the scolding from the boss, the mockery of his colleagues, the threat of concentration camp and punishment battalion; he could see nothing clearly. His normally deft hands let him down. He couldn’t work, and yet he had to, otherwise he would be completely lost.

Finally the supervisor saw it himself, that this wasn’t ill will and shirking. ‘If you hadn’t just been off sick, I would say go home to bed for a couple of days and get well.’ With those words, the supervisor left him. And he added, ‘Mind you, you know what would happen to you if you did that!’

Yes, he knew. He carried on, tried not to think of his pain, the unbearable pressure in his head. For a while, the shimmering, spinning iron drew him magically into its spell. All he need do was hold his fingers there and he would have peace, get put to bed, could lie there, rest, sleep, forget! But then he remembered that wilful self-mutilation was punishable by death, and his hand recoiled…

That was it: death in the punishment battalion, death in a concentration camp, death in a prison yard, those were the outcomes that daily threatened him, that he had to try and keep at bay. And he had so little strength…

Somehow the afternoon passed, and somehow, a little after five, he found himself in the stream of those going home. He had so longed for quiet and rest, but once he was standing in his cramped little hotel room again, he couldn’t manage to put himself to bed. He trotted off again, and bought himself a few provisions.

And then the room again, the food on the table in front of him, the bed beside him – and it was more than he could do to stay there. He felt cursed, he just couldn’t stand to be in that room. He needed to buy some toilet articles, and try to get hold of a blue work shirt at some second-hand stall.

Off he trotted again, and as he stood in a chemist’s shop, he remembered that he had left a large, heavy suitcase full of things at Lotte’s, when her husband returned on furlough and so roughly threw him out. He ran out of the chemist’s, got on a streetcar, and chanced it: he went straight to Lotte’s place. He couldn’t abandon all his things there! He dreaded getting a beating, but he had to go, he had to go to Lotte’s.

And he was in luck. Lotte was at home and her husband was away. ‘Your stuff, Enno?’ she said. ‘I put it all down in the cellar, so that he wouldn’t see it. Wait, I’ll find the key!’

But he clutched at her, pressed his head against her thick bosom. The strains of the past few weeks had been too much for him, and he started crying.

‘Oh, Lotte, Lotte, I can’t stand it without you! I miss you so much!’

His whole body was convulsed with sobbing. She was taken aback. She was used to men of all shapes and sizes and types, including even a few weepers, but then they were drunk, whereas this one was sober… And all that talk of missing her and not managing without her, it was ages since anyone had said something to her like that! If they ever had!

She calmed him down as well as she could. ‘He’s only here for three weeks on his furlough, and then you can come back to me, Enno! Now pull yourself together, and get your things before he comes back. I don’t need to remind you!’

No, he knew only too well what threatened him!

She took him to the tram, and carried his case.

Enno Kluge rode back to his hotel, feeling a little better. Only three weeks, four days of which were already up. Then the man would be back at the Front, and he would be able to sleep in his bed! Enno had imagined he could get by without women, but he couldn’t, it was beyond him. He would visit Tutti in that time; he saw that if you put on a show and cried, then they weren’t so bad. They even helped you right away! Maybe he could stay the three weeks at Tutti’s. The lonely hotel room was too awful!

But even with the women, he would work, work, work! He wouldn’t pull any stunts any more, not he! He was cured!