Alone in Berlin (Penguin Modern Classics)

34

Karl Hergesell and Grigoleit

Karl Hergesell hadn’t done the swap for the baby carriage after all, no, in fact he had got rather angry about it. The pram was twenty or twenty-five years old, a real antediluvian model; presumably Noah had used it to push his youngest on board the Ark. And the old woman had wanted a pound of butter and a pound of bacon in exchange for it. With baffling stubbornness she had insisted that ‘you people out there, you’ve got the best of everything. You’re all living off the fat of the land!’

People’s notions were absurd. In vain, Hergesell assured her that Erkner was anything but the countryside and that they didn’t get one gram of fat more in their rations than people did in Berlin. Plus he was a simple worker and not in any position to pay extortionate prices to black marketeers.

‘Well,’ the woman had said, ‘do you imagine I’d part with the piece I carried both my babies in, if I didn’t get something decent back for it? Offering to pay me a lousy couple of marks is an insult! No, sir, you’d better find yourself someone stupider than me!’

Hergesell, who wouldn’t have paid fifty marks for this high-wheeled, wobbly-suspensioned monster of a baby carriage, was adamant that her price was an outrage. Moreover she was committing an offence – it was illegal to demand fat in exchange for goods.

‘Offence!’ The old woman snorted contemptuously. ‘Offence! Why don’t you try placing a small ad in the press, young man! My husband’s a sergeant with the police, there’s nothing that’s an offence for us. And now I suggest you get out of my flat. I won’t be yelled at within my own four walls! I’m going to count up to three, and if you’re not gone by then, it’s a breach of the peace, and I’ll charge you!’

Well, Karl Hergesell had told her what he thought of her, in great detail, before he left. He told her just exactly what his views were of exploiters like her, who were trying to grow fat on the neediness of many Germans. And then he had walked out, but he was still angry.

It was in this state of undiminshed anger that he had walked into Grigoleit, that man from the time when he and Trudel were still fighting side by side for a better future.

‘Well, Grigoleit,’ Hergesell said as he crossed paths with the lanky man with the lofty, balding brow, who was laden down with two cases and a briefcase, ‘are you back in Berlin now?’ He picked up one of the cases. ‘Wow, what have you got in there! Are you going to Alexanderplatz as well? I’ll carry this for you, then.’

Grigoleit smiled thinly. ‘Very good, Hergesell, that’s nice of you. I can see you’re still the same old, helpful comrade you always were. What are you up to these days? And that pretty little girl back then – what was she called?’

‘Trudel – Trudel Baumann. Since you ask, I married that pretty little girl, and we’re expecting our first child.’

‘That was probably always on the cards. Congratulations.’ The changed circumstances of the Hergesells appeared not to interest Grigoleit overly – and yet for Karl they were a continually bubbling source of fresh happiness.

‘And what about yourself, Hergesell?’ Grigoleit went on to ask.

‘You mean work? I’m an electrical engineer in a chemical plant in Erkner.’

‘No, I mean what are you really doing, Hergesell – toward our future?’

‘Nothing, Grigoleit,’ replied Hergesell, and suddenly felt a pang of something akin to guilt. He said by way of justification, ‘Look, Grigoleit, we’re a couple of young newlyweds and we live for ourselves. What is the world out there to do with us, them and their shitty war? We’re happy we’re having a child. You see, that’s something too, isn’t it, Grigoleit? If we try to remain decent, and try to make a decent human being out of our kid…’

‘You’ve set yourself a hell of a task in this Nazi-ruled world! Well, never mind, Hergesell, we never thought anything more of you anyway. You were always more concerned with your balls than your brains!’

Hergesell went red with fury. Grigoleit’s contempt was scathing. He didn’t even seem to be going out of his way to give offence, because he continued perfectly calmly, oblivious to the reaction of the other, ‘I’m carrying on, and Babyface is, too. No, not here in Berlin. We’ve relocated west of here, although located is the wrong word really, because I’m always on the go; I’m working as a kind of courier…’

‘And you really think it’ll bring results? Your little bunch and this bloody great machine…’

‘First of all, we’re not a little bunch, as you put it. Every decent German, and there are still two or three million of them, will make common cause with us. They just need to overcome their fear. At the moment, their fear of the future the Nazis are creating is still less than their fear of the present. But that will change before too long. Hitler may continue to triumph a little longer, but then the reversals will come, and the triumphs will stop, and the bombing raids will get heavier…’

‘And second?’ asked Hergesell, who was mightily bored by Grigoleit’s predictions regarding the war. ‘Second…’

‘Second, my dear chap, you ought to know that it doesn’t matter if there’s a handful of you against many of them. Once you’ve seen that a cause is right, you’re obliged to fight for it. Whether you ever live to see success, or the person who steps into your shoes does, it doesn’t matter. I can’t very well sit on my hands and say, Well, they may be a bad lot, but what business is it of mine?’

‘Yes,’ said Hergesell. ‘But you’re not married; you don’t have to look after your wife and child…’

‘Oh, you go to hell!’ shouted Grigoleit, manifestly disgusted. ‘Enough of that sentimental twaddle of yours! You don’t believe a word of it anyway! Wife and child! You idiot, it doesn’t seem to have occurred to you that I could have got married twenty times over, if starting a family had been my intention in life! But it’s not, see! I say what right do I have to any personal happiness while there’s room for such unhappiness on this earth!’

‘We have drifted apart!’ murmured Karl Hergesell, half sadly. ‘My happiness doesn’t cost anyone else a thing.’

‘But it does! You’re stealing it! You’re robbing mothers of their sons, wives of their husbands, girlfriends of their boyfriends, as long as you tolerate thousands being shot every day and don’t lift a finger to stop the killing. You know all that perfectly well, and it strikes me that you’re almost worse than real dyed-in-the-wool Nazis. They’re too stupid to know what crimes they’re committing. But you do, and you don’t do anything against it! Aren’t you worse than the Nazis? Of course you are!’

‘Here’s the station, not a minute too soon,’ said Hergesell as he set down the heavy case. ‘I don’t have to listen to your abuse any more. If we’d spent any more time together, you would have told me it wasn’t Hitler but Hergesell who was responsible for the war!’

‘And so you are! In an extended sense, of course. In a broader sense, your apathy made it possible…’

Now Hergesell could contain himself no longer: he started to laugh, and even the grim Grigoleit broke into a grin when he looked into that laughing face.

‘Well, enough, anyway!’ said Grigoleit. ‘We’ll never understand one another.’ He passed his hand over his high brow. ‘But tell you what, there’s a little favour you could do me, Hergesell.’

‘Happy to, Grigoleit.’

‘I’ve got this heavy old case, which you’ve just been lugging. In an hour I’m travelling to Königsberg, and I don’t need it there. Couldn’t you keep it in your house while I’m away?’

‘Ha, Grigoleit,’ Hergesell said, and looked disapprovingly at the suitcase. ‘I already told you I’m living out in Erkner. That’d mean I’ll have a fair bit more lugging to do myself. Why don’t you just put it in left luggage here?’

‘Why not? Why is a banana crooked? Because I don’t trust the people here. I’ve got all my linen and shoes and my best suits in it. I don’t think they’re honest. Plus given the bombs that the Tommies are dropping these days – and stations are some of their preferred targets – I could lose all I have in the world.’

He pressed: ‘Go on, Hergesell, say yes.’

‘Well, if you insist. My wife won’t be at all happy. But because it’s you. Although you know, Grigoleit, it’s probably better that I not tell my wife I ran into you. She’ll get excited, and in her condition that won’t be good for her or the baby, you know?’

‘All right, all right. Whatever you like. Main thing is you keep the damn thing safe for me. In a week I’ll be back and will pick it up. What’s your address? Okay! Well, see you, Hergesell!’

‘So long, Grigoleit!’

Karl Hergesell went to the waiting room to look for Trudel. He found her pressed into a dark corner, head thrown back, fast asleep. For a moment he stopped to look at her. She was breathing gently. Her bosom rose and fell. Her mouth was slightly agape, but her face was very pale. She looked worried, and there were little beads of sweat on her brow, as though she had been through something strenuous.

He gazed down at his beloved. Then, on a sudden impulse, he picked up Grigoleit’s suitcase and took it to the left luggage office. The most important thing in the world for Karl Hergesell now was that Trudel didn’t think upsetting thoughts and get excited. If he took the suitcase with him to Erkner, then he would have to tell her about Grigoleit, and he knew that everything that reminded her of her ‘death sentence’ upset her terribly.

When Hergesell returns from the left luggage office with the ticket in his wallet, Trudel has woken up and is just putting on her lipstick. She smiles at him, still a little peaky, and asks, ‘What were you just doing with that huge suitcase? Was there a baby carriage in there, Karli?’

‘Huge suitcase!’ he acts surprised. ‘I haven’t got any huge suitcase! I’ve just this moment arrived, and I’m afraid the carriage was no good, Trudel.’

She looks at him in astonishment. Is her husband lying to her? But why? What secrets is he keeping from her? She saw him very clearly just a moment ago, standing by the table with the suitcase and then turning and lugging it out of the waiting room.

‘But Karli!’ she says, a little offended. ‘I just saw you standing there with it a moment ago!’

‘How would I come by a suitcase?’ he asks, a little irritably. ‘You were dreaming, Trudel!’

‘I don’t understand why you would lie to me about that. We never lie to each other!’

‘I’m not lying to you; please don’t accuse me of such a thing!’ He is rather agitated by now, because of his guilty conscience. He stops for a moment, then goes on in a calmer tone of voice, ‘I told you, I just got here. There’s no suitcase, Trudel, you must have been dreaming.’

‘All right,’ she says, and looks at him blankly. ‘All right. Then I was dreaming, Karli. Let’s change the subject.’

She lowers her gaze. She is deeply hurt that he is keeping secrets from her, and what makes it worse is that she is keeping secrets from him, too. She promised Otto Quangel not to tell her husband anything about their meeting, much less about the postcard. But it still doesn’t feel right. Married people shouldn’t keep secrets from each other. And now he’s keeping something from her as well.

Karl Hergesell feels ashamed, too. It’s awful how brazenly he lied to her, even shouted at her when she was telling the truth. He wrestles with himself about whether it wouldn’t be better to tell her about the meeting with Grigoleit. But he decides no, it would only upset her more.

‘I’m sorry, Trudel,’ he says, and squeezes her hand. ‘Sorry I yelled at you. But the woman with the baby carriage made me so angry. Here’s what happened…’