Alone in Berlin (Penguin Modern Classics)

48

The Arrest of Anna Quangel

After Otto Quangel was gone, Anna Quangel lapsed into a state of dull stupor, from which she woke suddenly. She felt all over the cover for the two postcards and couldn’t find them. She tried to think, but she couldn’t remember that Otto had taken them with him. No, quite the opposite, now it was coming back to her, it was she who was going to drop them the next day or the day after – that was how they had left it.

So the cards had to be in the apartment still. And, alternately freezing and burning with fever, she starts looking for them. She turns the apartment upside down, she looks through the laundry, she crawls under the bed. She has trouble breathing, and sometimes she has to stop and sit on the side of the bed because she simply can’t go on. She pulls the covers round her and stares into space, having forgotten the postcards again. Then she suddenly jumps up once more and starts looking.

She’s been doing this for hours when the bell goes off. She stops. Was that the doorbell? Who can it be? Who wants something from her?

And she lapses into a further round of feverish thinking, which is interrupted by a second ring. This time it keeps going for a long time, insistently. And then there is the sound of fists banging on the door. She hears the cry: ‘Open the door! Police! Open up immediately!’

Anna Quangel smiles, and smiling she goes back to bed, pulling the covers over her head. Let them shout and ring all they like! She’s sick, she doesn’t have to open. Let them come back another time, when Otto’s home. She’s not going to let them in.

More ringing, shouting, banging…

Idiots! As if I would pay any attention to their noise! They can all go to hell!

In her present feverish condition, she doesn’t think of the missing postcards, or of the danger of this police visit. She is just pleased to be ill and not to have to answer the door.

Then they’re inside the flat, five or six of them – they’d got hold of a locksmith, or used a skeleton key. She hadn’t had the chain on; because she was sick she hadn’t chained the door after Otto left. Today of all days – otherwise, she always puts the chain on.

‘Are you Anna Quangel? Married to Foreman Otto Quangel?’

‘Yes, that’s right, sir. Have been for twenty-eight years now.’

‘Why didn’t you open the door when we rang and shouted?’

‘Because I’m sick, sir. I’ve got ’flu!’

‘Don’t give us that!’ yells a fat man in a black uniform. ‘You’re just pretending!’

Inspector Escherich makes a calming gesture in the direction of his superior. Any child could see the woman really is sick. And perhaps it’s a good thing for them: after all, people sometimes blab when they have a temperature. While his men start searching the flat, the inspector turns to the woman again. He takes her hot hand and says sympathetically, ‘Frau Quangel, I’m afraid I have some bad news for you…’

He pauses.

‘Well?’ asks the woman, but she seems quite relaxed.

‘I’ve had to arrest your husband.’

The woman smiles. Anna Quangel smiles. Smiling, she shakes her head and says, ‘No, my dear man, I don’t believe you! No one would arrest Otto, he’s a law-abiding citizen.’ She bends over to the inspector and whispers, ‘Do you want to know what I think? I think this is all a dream. I’ve got a temperature, you know. The doctor said it was ’flu, and if you have a temperature, you can dream all sorts of things. And you’re all part of my dream: you and the fat man in the black uniform, and the man over by the chest of drawers, going through my clothes. No, my dear man, you haven’t arrested Otto, I’m just dreaming.’

Inspector Escherich replies, also in a whisper, ‘Frau Quangel, now you’re dreaming about the postcards. You know, the postcards your husband always wrote?’

But Anna Quangel’s senses are not so befuddled that the word postcards doesn’t ring a bell. She gives a start. For an instant, the eyes with which she fixes the inspector are clear and alert. But then, smiling again and shaking her head, she says, ‘What postcards? My husband doesn’t write postcards! If there’s any writing to be done, I’m the one to do it. But we haven’t written to anyone for a long time. We haven’t written to anyone since my son fell. You’re just dreaming that, my dear man, that my Otto writes postcards!’

The inspector detected her start, but that’s no proof as yet. So he says, ‘Actually, it’s like this: the moment your son fell is when you both began writing postcards. Both of you. Don’t you remember your very first one?’

And with a certain ceremony, he recites, ‘Mother! The Führer has murdered my son! Mother! The Führer will murder your sons too, he will not stop till he has brought sorrow to every home…’

She listens. She smiles. ‘It took a mother to write that! My Otto could never have written it, you’re just dreaming!’

And the inspector: ‘You dictated it, and Otto wrote it! Admit it!’

But she shook her head. ‘No, dear sir! I couldn’t dictate something like that, I don’t have the brains…’

The inspector gets up and leaves the bedroom. In the parlour he joins his men in the search for writing things. He finds a little bottle of ink, a pen and nibs, and a field postcard. Armed with those things, he returns to Anna Quangel.

In the intervening time, she has been questioned – after his fashion – by Obergruppenführer Prall. Prall is firmly convinced that all that stuff about ’flu and temperature is just pretend. Then again, even if he had thought she was really sick, it wouldn’t have made the least difference in his methods. He grabs Anna Quangel by the shoulders, really hurting her, and starts shaking her. Her head slams against the wooden bedstead. He jerks her back and forth twenty or thirty times, and then presses her head down into the pillows, screaming venomously in her face: ‘You’re still lying to me, aren’t you, Communist pig? When – will – you – learn – to – stop – lying! Stop – lying!’

‘No!’ wails the woman. ‘Stop that!’

‘Admit you wrote those postcards! Admit – it – right – now! Or – I’ll – beat – your – brains – out, you Bolshevik pig!’

And with every word, he slams her head against the bedstead.

Inspector Escherich, standing in the doorway with the writing things in his hand, has a smile on his face. So that’s what the Obergruppenführer means by interrogating a suspect! Another five minutes like that, and she’ll be out of commission for the next five days. No amount of cunningly conceived torment will give her back her consciousness then.

But for a little while, it might not be such a bad idea. Let her feel a little fear and pain, and then throw herself all the more at him, the soft cop!

When the Obergruppenführer sees the inspector pop up beside the bed, he stops his maltreatment of the suspect and says, half apologetically, half reproachfully, ‘Your touch is far too soft for women like this, Escherich! You have to squeeze them till the pips squeak!’

Prall turns to the invalid, who is lying in bed with her eyes shut, trying to breathe. ‘Listen to me, Frau Quangel!’

She seems not to hear.

The inspector reaches out and gently pulls her upright. ‘There,’ he says, mildly. ‘Now won’t you open your eyes, please!’

She does so. Escherich was quite right: after the shaking and the threats, his friendly, polite voice is welcome to her.

‘You just told me that no one here has had occasion to write anything for a long time? Well, look at this pen. It’s been used very recently, yesterday or today; the ink on it is very fresh! You see, I can scratch it off with my nail!’

‘I wouldn’t know about that!’ says Frau Quangel. ‘You’d better ask my husband about that – I don’t understand.’

Inspector Escherich looks at her attentively. ‘You understand perfectly well, Frau Quangel!’ he says, a little more harshly. ‘But you don’t want to understand, because you know you’ve already given yourself away!’

‘No one here writes anything!’ Frau Quangel repeats stubbornly.

‘And I don’t need to ask your husband any more,’ the inspector continues, ‘because he’s already confessed. He wrote the cards, and you dictated them…’

‘Well, if Otto’s confessed, what are you worried about?’ says Anna Quangel.

‘Give the bitch a smack in the chops, Escherich!’ the Obergruppenführer suddenly butts in. ‘She’s got a nerve to string us along like this!’

But the inspector doesn’t give the bitch a smack in the chops; instead, he says, ‘We caught your husband with two postcards in his pocket. There was nothing he could say.’

At the mention of the two postcards that she spent so long looking for in her fever, Frau Quangel gets another shock. So he did take them with him, even though they’d agreed that she was to drop them the next day or the day after. That was wrong of Otto.

Something must have happened with the cards, she thinks to herself. But Otto hasn’t confessed anything; otherwise, they wouldn’t be standing around here, questioning me. They would simply…

And out loud she asks, ‘Why don’t you bring Otto here, then? I don’t know what you keep going on about postcards for. Why would he write postcards?’

She lies back in bed, mouth and eyes closed, resolved not to say another word.

For a moment, Inspector Escherich looks thoughtfully down at the woman. She is exhausted, he can see that. For the time being, there’s nothing to be done with her. He spins round, calls a couple of his men, and gives the order: ‘Move the woman to the other bed, and then search this one minutely! Obergruppenführer, if you please!’

He wants to get his superior out of the room, for fear of another Prall-style interrogation. It’s very likely that he will need this woman in the course of the next few days, and he would prefer her to be clear-headed and strong. Besides, she seems to belong to the minority that respond to threats with increased obstinacy. There’s nothing to be gained by knocking her about.

The Obergruppenführer is loath to leave her behind. He would only too gladly have shown the old cow what he thought of her. He would have vented his irritation with this whole never-ending Hobgoblin story on her. But with the two detectives in the room… and in any case, by nightfall the bitch would be safely in the Prinz Albrecht Strasse basement, and then he could do whatever he liked with her.

‘You do mean to arrest the baggage, Escherich?’

‘Certainly,’ replied the inspector, as he watched his men meticulously unfold and refold every single piece of bed linen, drill through the sofa cushions with long pins, and feel along the walls. He added, ‘But I need to see that I get her in a fit state to answer questions. In her fever she only half understands things that are put to her. She must be made to understand that her life is in danger. Then she will be frightened, and with fear…’

‘I’ll happily teach her what fear is!’ growled the Obergruppenführer.

‘Not in the way you mean – and anyway, she needs to be over her fever,’ said Escherich, and then he exclaimed, ‘What do we have here?’

One of his men had been working on the little shelf of books. He had shaken one of the books, and something white had fluttered to the ground.

The inspector was first to the spot. He picked up the piece of paper.

‘A card!’ he exclaimed. ‘An unfinished draft of a card!’

And he read it out: ‘FÜHRER, YOU GIVE THE ORDERS, WE OBEY! YES, WE HAVE BECOME A FLOCK OF SHEEP, FOLLOWING OUR FÜHRER TO THE SLAUGHTERHOUSE. WE HAVE GIVEN UP THINKING FOR OURSELVES…’

He lowered the card and looked about him.

All eyes were on him.

‘We have the proof!’ said Inspector Escherich, with a touch of solemnity. ‘We have the culprit. We have clear proof of guilt, no need for a forced confession. This long, long campaign was worth it!’

He looked around, his dim eyes shining. This was his hour, the hour he had been looking forward to for so long. For a moment, he thought about the long, long way he had come to get here. From the first card, which he had taken receipt of with smiling indifference, to this one now in his hand. He thought of the great wash of cards and the red flags proliferating on his map, and he thought of little Enno Kluge.

Once again, he was with him in the police cell, and then above the dark surface of the Schlachtensee. A shot rang out, and he thought he was blind for life. He saw himself: two security men throwing him down the stairs, bleeding, finished, while a little pickpocket slithered about on his knees, appealing to his holy Virgin. Fleetingly, too, his thoughts took in Zott – poor man, his tram theory was dashed.

It was the zenith of Inspector Escherich’s life. It had been worth it, worth the patience and the long-suffering. He had caught him at last, his Hobgoblin, as he had begun calling him in jest, though he had turned into a real one later: he had almost shipwrecked Escherich’s life. But now they had him, and the chase was over, the game at an end.

Inspector Escherich raised his head like one awakening. He gave orders: ‘I want the woman taken away in an ambulance. Two-man escort. You’re in charge, Kemmel. There’s to be no interrogation; in fact, I don’t want anyone to speak to her. A doctor, right away. I want the fever gone in three days, tell him, Kemmel!’

‘At your orders, sir!’

‘The rest of you are to tidy up the flat, I want it impeccable. What book was the card in? Radio kit instructions? Okay! Wrede, put the card back where you found it! In one hour everything has to be shipshape, because that’s when I’ll be returning here with the culprit. I don’t want to find anyone still here. No sentries, no one. Got it?’

‘At your orders, sir!’

‘Well, shall we be going then, Obergruppenführer?’

‘Aren’t you going to confront the woman with the postcard, Escherich?’

‘What would be the point? In her fever we won’t get a proper reaction out of her, and I’m only interested in the husband. Wrede, did you happen to see any spare keys?’

‘In the woman’s handbag.’

‘Let’s have them – thank you. All right then, let’s be off, Obergruppenführer!’

Downstairs at his window, Judge Fromm watched them go. He waggled his head from side to side. Later on, he saw Frau Quangel being lifted on a stretcher into an ambulance, but from the look of the stretcher bearers, he could tell they weren’t taking her to an ordinary hospital.

‘One after the other,’ Judge Fromm said softly. ‘One after the other. The house is emptying. The Rosenthals, the Persickes, Borkhausen, Quangel – I’m almost on my own here. Half the population is set on locking up the other half. Well, it can’t go on like this much longer. At any rate, I will remain here; no one is about to lock me up…’

He smiles and nods.

‘The worse it gets, the better it will be. The sooner it will all be over!’