Alone in Berlin (Penguin Modern Classics)

46

The Fateful Monday

On the Monday that was to prove so fateful for the Quangels –

on this Monday, eight weeks after Escherich was reinstated in his job;

on this Monday, on which Emil Borkhausen was sentenced to two years in prison, the rat Klebs to one;

on this Monday, when Baldur Persicke – not before time – returned to Berlin from his Napola school and visited his father in the drying-out clinic;

on this Monday, when Trudel Hergesell fell down the steps at Erkner Station and suffered a miscarriage;

on this fateful Monday, then, Anna Quangel was in bed with a bad case of the ’flu. She had a high temperature. Otto sat by her bedside; the doctor had been and gone. They were having an argument as to whether he should drop the postcards today or not.

‘You’re not to go again, Otto, we agreed on that! The cards can wait till tomorrow or the day after. I’ll be up and about by then!’

‘I want the things out of the house, Anna!’

‘Then I’ll take them!’ And Anna pulled herself upright in bed.

‘You stay where you are!’ He pushed her back on to the pillows. ‘Anna, don’t be silly. I’ve dropped a hundred, two hundred cards…’

Just then the doorbell rang.

They both jumped, as though caught red-handed. Quangel hurriedly pocketed the two postcards that had been lying on the bed.

‘Who can it be?’ Anna asked anxiously.

And he, too, ‘Now? At eleven in the morning?’

She guessed, ‘Maybe something’s happened to the Heffkes? Or the doctor’s come back?’

The bell went again.

‘I’ll go see,’ he murmured.

‘No,’ she begged. ‘Stay here. If we’d been off with the cards, they would have rung in vain.’

‘I’ll just have a look, Anna!’

‘No, don’t open the door, Otto! Please! I have a bad feeling that if you do, misfortune will come into the house!’

‘I’ll go very quietly, and ask you first.’

He went.

She lay there, angry and impatient. Why did he never give in, never do anything she asked? There was misfortune lurking outside, but now that it was really here, he couldn’t sense it. And now he won’t even keep his word! She can hear he’s opened the door and is talking to a man. And he promised he would go back and ask her first.

‘Well, what is it? Come on, Otto, talk to me! You can see I’m dying of impatience! Who is it? He’s still in the flat, isn’t he!’

‘It’s nothing to get excited about, Anna. Just a messenger from the factory. The foreman on the morning shift has had an accident – they want me to go and fill in for him.’

She drops her head back on the pillows, a little relieved, ‘And you’re going to go?’

‘Of course!’

‘You haven’t had your lunch!’

‘I’ll get something at the canteen!’

‘At least take a sandwich with you!’

‘It’s all right, Anna, don’t worry. I feel bad about having to leave you alone here for such a long time.’

‘You would have had to go at one o’clock anyway.’

‘I’ll do my own shift right afterwards.’

‘Is the man still waiting?’

‘Yes, I’m going to go in with him.’

‘Well, come back soon, Otto. Take the tram today, why don’t you!’

‘I’ll do that, Anna. Hope you feel better!’

He was on his way out when she called: ‘Oh, Otto, will you come and give me a kiss?’

He came back, a little surprised, a little sheepish about this desire for affection that so rarely arose between them. He pressed his lips to her mouth.

She pulled his head down to her and kissed him hard.

‘I am silly, Otto,’ she said. ‘I still feel frightened. It must be the fever. But now go!’

And they parted, never to see each other again in freedom. In the confusion of parting, neither of them thought of the cards in his pocket.

But the old foreman remembers them again, as he sits with the messenger in the tram. He feels them in his pocket – there they are! He is unhappy with himself; he really should have thought of that! He would rather have left them at home, even have got off the tram now and dropped them in some office building on the way. But he can’t find a plausible pretext for the messenger. It means he’ll have to take the cards into work with him, which is something he’s never done before, never should have done – and now it’s too late not to.

He’s in a stall in the lavatory. He has the cards already in his hands, all set to rip them up and flush them away, when his eye lights on the words it took him so much time and trouble to write: They are powerful, he thinks, effective. It would be a shame to destroy such a weapon. His parsimony, his ‘confounded miserliness’ prevents him from destroying them, but also his respect for work; everything that constitutes work is sacred to him. The destruction of work is a sin.

But he can’t leave the cards in his jacket, which he wears in the shop. So he puts them in his satchel, along with the bread, and the thermos of coffee. Otto Quangel is well aware that there is a split down the side of the satchel – he tried taking it to the saddler weeks ago to have it restitched, but the saddler was drowning in work, and muttered something about not getting to it for at least two weeks. Quangel hadn’t wanted to be without his case for so long, and he’s never lost anything out of it yet. So he drops the cards in there without a second thought.

He goes through the shop to the locker room. He walks slowly, already looking this way and that. It’s a different crew; there are hardly any familiar faces. Occasionally he nods to someone, and once he lends a hand. The men look at him curiously: a lot of them know him by reputation. Oh, that’s old Quangel, an odd bird, but his men never complain about him, he’s fair, you have to say that for him. Rubbish, he’s a slave driver, he always manages to get every last ounce of energy out of his men. But none of his men ever gripe. He looks odd all right. Is his head on hinges, because that would explain why he nods so stiffly? Ssh, he’s coming back. He can’t stand chatter – anyone caught chattering gets a stare and then an earful.

Otto Quangel has put his satchel in the locker, and the key is in his pocket. Okay, eleven hours, and then the cards will be out of the factory, and even if it’s midnight then he’ll find somewhere to get rid of them; he won’t take them back to the house. He wouldn’t put it past Anna to get up from her sickbed purely to post them somewhere.

With this different shift, Quangel can’t do what he likes to do, which is take up a position in the middle of the room and keep an eye on things. He has to go from one group to the next, and they don’t even understand what his silent glare signifies; some are even brazen enough to try and draw the foreman into conversation. It takes quite a while before the shop is humming in the way he likes, till they have quieted down and realized there’s nothing to do here but work.

Quangel is just on his way to his usual observation post when his foot draws back. His pupils widen, and a shudder goes through him: on the ground in front of him, on the factory floor littered with sawdust and shavings, is one of his two postcards.

He feels a twitch in his hands, he wants to stoop and pick it up discreetly, when he sees the other one a couple of steps further along. Impossible to pick them both up without attracting notice. The eye of one of the workmen is riveted to him. My God, what women they are, staring at him as if they’d never seen a man in their lives.

Bah, I’ll just pick it up, whether they see me or not. It’s none of their business! No, I can’t, it might have been lying there for fifteen minutes already – it’s a miracle that someone else hasn’t picked it up already! But perhaps someone has seen it, then dropped it when he saw the contents. What if he sees me pick it up and put it in my pocket!

Danger! Danger! screams the voice inside Quangel. Deadly danger! Leave the cards where they are! Pretend you never saw them, let someone else pick them up! Get back to your place!

But suddenly something strange comes over Otto Quangel. He’s been writing and dropping these cards for two years now, and he’s never had a chance to see the effect they have on people. He has gone on living quietly, in his gloomy cave, and the effect of the cards, the commotion they must produce, well, he’s imagined it a hundred times, but he’s never yet seen it.

But now I’d like to see it, just once! What can happen to me? I’m one of eighty men here, they’re all as much under suspicion as I would be – more, because I am known to be an old and reliable worker, with no interest in politics. I’ll risk it, I have to see it once.

And before he’s finished thinking it through, he calls out to one workman, ‘Hey, you! Pick those up! Someone must have dropped them. What are they? What are you staring at?’

He takes a card from the worker’s hand and pretends to read it. But he can’t read just at the moment, he can’t read his own big block capitals. He’s not able to divert his gaze from the face of the worker, who is staring at the card. The man isn’t reading any more either, but his hand is shaking, and there is fear in his eye.

Quangel stares at him. So fear is the answer, nothing but fear. The man didn’t even read to the end of the card; he barely got past the first line before being overwhelmed by fear.

Quangels hears sniggering. He looks up and sees that half the shift is staring at the two men standing around idly in the middle of the shift reading postcards… Or have they got some sense already that something terrible has happened?

Quangel takes the card out of the man’s hand. He has to play this game on his own from now on; the other man is so terrified, he’s no good for anything any more.

‘Where’s the Arbeitsfront representative here? The one in corduroys at the table saw? Okay! Get back to work, and don’t you dare chat, otherwise you’ll be in for a bad time!’

‘Listen!’ says Quangel to the man at the table saw. ‘Can you step outside a minute, I have something to show you.’ And when they are both standing outside: ‘It’s these postcards here! The man at the back picked them up. I saw them. I think you’d better take them to the management? Am I right?’

The other man reads. He, too, doesn’t read more than a couple of sentences. ‘What is this?’ he asks in fear. ‘Were these lying in the shop where we were working? Jesus, they could cost us our lives! Who was it picked them up? Did you notice anything about the way he looked at them?’

‘I told you, it was me that told him to pick them up! I might have seen them before him! Might, mind!’

‘God, what am I going to do with them? I’ll drop them down the bog!’

‘You’re going to have to take them to management, otherwise you’ll be making yourself responsible. The man who picked them up can’t be relied upon to keep his mouth shut for ever. Hurry along, I’ll fill in for you at the saw.’

Reluctantly, the man walks off. He holds the cards with the very tips of his fingers, as though they were terribly hot.

Quangel returns to the shop. But he can’t go to the table saw right away: the whole shop is in uproar. No one knows anything for certain, but they all have a sense that something has happened. They put their heads together, they whisper and tsk, tsk, and this time the silent birdlike stare of the foreman is no use. He is forced to do what he hasn’t done for years, curse them out loud, threaten punishment, play the wild man.

When quiet returns to one corner of the shop, the opposite corner grows all the noisier, and once things are running reasonably well, he notices that two or three of the machines are unmanned: the bunch have decamped to the lavatory! He chases them down there, and one of them has the nerve to ask, ‘What was that you were reading a moment ago, boss? Was it really a British propaganda leaflet?’

‘Just get back to your work!’ growls Quangel, and drives them ahead of him back to the shop. Where everyone is once again chattering. They’ve formed up into little clusters and there is an unprecedented level of disorder. Quangel has to run back and forth, he has to yell, threaten, swear – the sweat is beading on his brow…

And all the while he continues to think, So that’s the effect. Just fear. So much fear they that don’t even read on! But maybe that doesn’t mean anything. In here, they feel they’re under observation. Most of my cards were found by individuals on their own. They could read them in peace, think about them – they would have a completely different effect under those conditions. This is a stupid experiment I’m conducting. Let’s see how it goes. It’s probably just as well that I, as foreman, found the cards and reported them – that will get me off the hook. No, I’ve not risked anything. Even if they search the flat, they won’t find anything. Admittedly, Anna will get a shock – but no, before they do the search I’ll be back and prepare Anna… Two minutes past two, the afternoon shift ought to be coming on, it’s time for my regular shift to begin.

But there is no change of shift. No bell goes off in the shop, no relieving shift (which would have been Quangel’s own) appears, and the machines continue to run noisily. Now the men are getting really restive; they put their heads together more and more frequently, and look at their watches.

Quangel is forced to give up his effort to stop their chatter: there is only one of him and eighty of them; he has no chance.

Then suddenly a gentleman comes down from the office, a smart-looking gentleman with sharp creases and a Party badge. He stands next to Quangel and shouts into the noise, ‘Shift! Your attention, please!’

All faces turn in his direction – curious, expectant, gloomy, apathetic, hostile faces.

‘Circumstances require the shift to continue working for the time being. Overtime will be paid!’

He stops, they all stare. Is that it? Circumstances require? They want a bit more than that!

But he merely yells, ‘All right, back to work!’

And, turning to Quangel, ‘I want you to keep them calm and focused! Who is the fellow who picked up the cards?’

‘I think it was me that saw them first.’

‘I know. That one? Okay, you know his name?’

‘No, this isn’t my shift.’

‘Of course. Oh, and will you tell the shift that they’re not able to use the lavatories for the time being, and no one is allowed to leave the workshop. There are two sentries posted outside every door!’

And the man with the sharp creases nods brusquely at Quangel and walks off.

Quangel walks down the assembly line. For a moment he studies the work, the hands of the men. Then he says, ‘For the time being, no one is allowed to leave the workshop or go to the toilet. There are two sentries posted outside every door!’

And before they can ask him any questions, he’s gone on to the next place on the line and repeats his message.

Now he doesn’t need to drive them on or tell them to stop chatting. They are all working silently and doggedly. They all sense the threat hanging over each one of them. Because there is not one among the eighty men there who has not in some way opposed the present government, at least by a word or two! Each one is threatened. Each life is at risk. They are all terrified…

And they continue to turn out coffins. They pile up the coffins, which cannot leave the premises, in a corner of the workshop. To begin with there are only a few, but as the hours go by, there are more and more of them, piled up as high as the ceiling, and new piles have started up alongside them. Coffins and coffins, enough for everyone on the shift, enough for everyone in Germany! The men are still alive, but they are already making their own coffins.

In the midst of them stands Quangel. His head jerks this way and that. He can feel the danger, but it makes him laugh. He has taken a chance, he has thrown the whole machine into disarray, but still he’s just silly old Quangel, the old miser. They’ll never suspect him. He will fight on and on.

Then the door opens, and the man with the sharp creases walks in again. He is followed by a second man, a tall, gangling fellow with a sandy moustache that he keeps stroking.

Immediately all work stops.

And while the manager calls out, ‘All right, everyone, knock off!’

while they put down their tools with a mixture of relief and disbelief;

while light returns to their dulled eyes;

while all this is happening, the tall man with the pale moustache says, ‘Foreman Quangel, I’m arresting you on urgent suspicion of treason. I want you to leave the room quietly, I’ll follow!’

Poor Anna, thought Quangel, and with his head and bird profile upraised, he slowly preceded Inspector Escherich out of the shop.