Alone in Berlin (Penguin Modern Classics)

49

The Conversation With Otto Quangel

Inspector Escherich had not found it easy to persuade Obergruppenführer Prall to let him conduct the first interview with Otto Quangel alone. But in the end, he had been successful.

When he accompanied the foreman up the steps to his flat, it had already grown dark. There was a light on in the stairwell, and Quangel turned on another light when they entered the flat. He made straight for the bedroom.

‘My wife’s ill,’ he murmured.

‘Your wife isn’t here any more,’ said the inspector. ‘She’s been taken away. Won’t you come and join me here…’

‘My wife has a high temperature – the ’flu…’ Quangel murmured.

It was plain to see that he was shaken by the news that she had been taken away. The stolid indifference he had manifested so far was gone.

‘A doctor’s looking after her,’ the inspector said soothingly. ‘I think she’ll be over the fever in two or three days. I ordered an ambulance.’

For the first time, Quangel took a closer look at the man opposite him. His beady bird’s eye lingered on the inspector a long time. Finally Quangel nodded. ‘An ambulance,’ he said, ‘a doctor – that’s good. Thank you. That’s right. You’re not a bad man.’

The inspector took his opportunity. ‘We’re not so bad, you know, Herr Quangel,’ he said, ‘not as bad as we’re painted. We do all we can to ease the conditions of inmates. All we want is to establish whether a crime has been committed or not. That’s our business, just as your business is manufacturing coffins…’

‘Yes,’ said Quangel, ‘that’s right, the manufacture and supply of coffins.’ There was an edge to his voice.

‘Are you suggesting that I supply the contents for the coffins?’ replied Escherich with faint irony. ‘Is that really the view you take of your case?’

‘There is no case!’

‘Oh, yes, there is, a bit of one. I mean, here, take a look at this pen, Quangel. It’s your pen, that’s right. The ink is still quite fresh. What were you writing with it yesterday or today?’

‘I had to sign something.’

‘And what did you have to sign, Herr Quangel?’

‘I had to sign a medical certificate for my wife. My wife’s ill with the ’flu…’

‘And your wife told me you never wrote anything. Everything that gets written in this household, she told me, is written by her.’

‘That’s quite right. She does all the writing. But yesterday I had to do it, because she has a fever. She doesn’t know anything about that.’

‘And Herr Quangel, did you notice this,’ the inspector continued, ‘the way the pen sticks! It’s quite a new pen, but the nib is already splitting. It must be because you have such a heavy hand, Herr Quangel.’ He laid the two postcards from the factory on the table. ‘You see, the first of these cards is written quite smoothly. But on the second one, you see – here – here – and on the B – the nib stuck! Well, Herr Quangel?’

‘Those are the cards,’ said Quangel apathetically, ‘that were on the floor in the factory. I told the man in the blue jacket to pick them up. He picked them up. I took one look at them and I handed them over to the representative of the Arbeitsfront. He took them away with him. That’s the extent of my knowledge of the cards.’

Quangel spoke in a slow, monotonous drone, sounding like an old, rather dim man.

The inspector said, ‘Now come on, Herr Quangel, can’t you see that the end of the second card is written with a split nib?’

‘I wouldn’t know about that. I’m not a scribe or a learned man, as it says in the Bible.’

For a moment there was silence in the room. Quangel stared vacantly at the table in front of him.

The inspector looked at him. He was firmly convinced that this man wasn’t as slow and lumbering as he pretended to be, but rather as sharp as his profile and as quick as his eye. His first duty was to get the man to betray some of that inner sharpness. He wanted to talk to the clever author of the postcards, not this ancient foreman, grown dull from decades of labour.

After a while Escherich asked, ‘What are those books on the shelf?’

Slowly Quangel raised his head, looked at the inspector for a moment, and then jerked his head round till the shelf was in front of him. ‘Those books? There’s my wife’s hymnal and her Bible. And the others are probably all books belonging to my son, who fell in the war. I don’t read or own any books. I was never much good at reading…’

‘May I see the fourth book from the left, Herr Quangel, the one with the red jacket?’

Slowly and carefully Quangel took the book from the shelf and set it down on the table in front of the inspector.

‘Otto Runge’s Radio Assembly Kit,’ the inspector read out. ‘Well, Quangel, and what does this book signify to you?’

‘It’s a book of my son Otto’s, who fell in the war,’ Quangel replied slowly. ‘He loved radios. He was well known for it; the employers in the engineering companies all wanted him, he knew each and every…’

‘And does nothing else occur to you, Herr Quangel, when you see this book?’

‘Nope!’ Quangel shook his head. ‘Nothing. Like I say, I don’t read books.’

‘But perhaps you use it to keep things in? Why don’t you open the book, Herr Quangel!’

The book fell open at the place where the card lay.

Quangel stared at the words: ‘FÜHRER, LEAD – WE FOLLOW! YES, WE FOLLOW…’

When had he written that? It must have been long, long ago. Right at the beginning. But why hadn’t he finished it? And what was the card doing in Ottochen’s book?

Slowly it came back to him: the first visit of his brother-in-law, Ulrich Heffke. He had had to put the card away in a hurry, and had taken up the carving of the bust of Ottochen instead. He’d put the card away and forgotten all about it – he had, and Anna had, too!

This was the danger he had always sensed! This was the unseen enemy whose presence had haunted him. This was the mistake he had made, the one he hadn’t been able to remember…

They’ve caught you! said a voice within him. You’ve had it – and it’s all your own fault. Your goose is cooked.

And – did Anna confess to anything? They must have shown her the card too. But Anna will have denied it, I know her, and that’s what I’ll do, too. Of course, she was feverish, so…

The inspector asked, ‘Well, Quangel, cat got your tongue? When did you write the card?’

‘I don’t know anything about the card,’ he replied. ‘I wouldn’t know how to write something like that, I’m too stupid!’

‘Then what’s the card doing in your son’s book? Who put it there?’

‘How would I know?’ Quangel replied almost rudely. ‘Maybe you put it in there yourself, or one of your men did! You hear about it being done, evidence being supplied where there is none!’

‘The card was found in the presence of several excellent witnesses. Your wife was present, too.’

‘Well, and what did she say?’

‘When the card was found, she immediately confessed that she dictated the card and you wrote it. Come on, Quangel, don’t be so obstinate. Just admit it. If you admit it now, you’re not telling me anything I don’t know. But you will make it easier for yourself and your wife. If you don’t admit it, I will have to take you back to Gestapo headquarters, and the basement there is a pretty rough sort of place…’

The memory of what he himself had experienced there caused Escherich’s voice to tremble slightly.

He got a grip on himself and went on, ‘Whereas if you confess, I can hand you over to the examining magistrate. And then you’ll end up in Moabit, and you’ll be well treated, like any other detainee.’

But try as Escherich might, Quangel stuck to his guns. Escherich had made a mistake after all, which the sharp-witted Quangel had spotted right away. Quangel’s lumbering manner and the statements of his superiors had sufficiently impressed Escherich that he didn’t think Quangel was the author of the cards, but merely the writer of what his wife dictated…

And the fact that he had now said it a second time proved to Quangel that Anna had not confessed. That was just a line the inspector was spinning.

He continued his denials.

Finally, Escherich broke off the unsuccessful interview in the apartment and took Quangel back to Prinz Albrecht Strasse. He hoped the change of ambience, the swarm of SS men, and the whole menacing apparatus would intimidate the man, and make him more amenable to persuasion.

They were in the inspector’s office, and Escherich showed him the map of Berlin with the many red flags.

‘Take a look at this, Herr Quangel,’ he said. ‘Each flag indicates where a postcard was handed in. The exact place. If you look closely,’ he tapped with his finger, ‘you’ll see that there are flags all over this whole area, except in this spot. Because that’s Jablonski Strasse, where you live. Of course you didn’t drop any cards there, because you’re too familiar a figure…’

But Escherich saw that Quangel wasn’t even listening. At the sight of the map, a strange, inexplicable excitement had come over the man. His eyes were rolling, his hands shaking. Almost shyly, he said, ‘That’s a lot of flags you’ve got there – do you know how many there are?’

‘I can tell you the exact number,’ replied the inspector, now understanding why his man was so shaken. ‘There are 267 flags, indicating 259 cards and eight letters. How many did you write, Quangel?’

The man said nothing, but this time it was not out of defiance, but from disappointment.

‘And consider this as well, Herr Quangel,’ the inspector continued, taking full advantage of the other’s shock, ‘all these letters and cards were freely handed in to us. We didn’t find a single one of them. People came running to us as though they were on fire. They couldn’t hand them in quickly enough, and most of them hadn’t even read them all the way through…’

Quangel still did not speak, but his face was working. The man was in turmoil; his sharp, beady glance wavered: the eyelids flickered, the eyes wandered off, looked at the ground, then were drawn back to the little flags.

‘And one other thing, Quangel. Did you ever stop to think how much misery and fear you brought upon people with those cards of yours? People were in terror, some were arrested, and I know of someone killing himself over one…’

‘No! No!’ Quangel cried out. ‘I never wanted that! I never thought that would happen! I wanted things to get better, I wanted people to learn the truth, so that the war would end sooner and the killing stop – that’s what I wanted! I didn’t mean to sow terror and dread, I didn’t want to make things worse than they were already! Those wretched people – and I made them even more wretched! Who was it who killed themselves?’

‘Oh, a hustler and gambler, no great loss, don’t worry yourself about him!’

‘But everyone matters! I have his blood on my hands.’

‘You see, Herr Quangel,’ said the inspector to the man standing grim-faced beside him. ‘You’ve confessed your crime, and you didn’t even notice!’

‘My crime? I never committed any crime, at least not in the way you mean. My crime was thinking myself too clever, wanting to do everything by myself, even though I know really that one man is nothing. No, I didn’t do anything that I should be ashamed of, but the way I went about it was mistaken. That’s why I deserve my punishment, and that’s why I’ll go gladly to my death…’

‘Oh, it won’t be as bad as that,’ the inspector said consolingly.

Quangel ignored him. As if to himself, he said, ‘I never had that high an opinion of people, otherwise I should have known what would happen.’

Escherich asked, ‘Do you know how many letters and postcards you wrote, Quangel?’

‘Two hundred and seventy-six postcards, nine letters.’

‘Which means that all of eighteen items were not handed in.’

‘Eighteen items: that’s the sum total of my work of two years, my hope. My life for those eighteen pieces of paper. Well, at least they were as many as that!’

‘Don’t flatter yourself, Quangel,’ said the inspector, ‘that those eighteen circulated from hand to hand. No, it’s just that they were found by individuals so deeply compromised already that they didn’t dare hand them in. Those eighteen cards were just as ineffectual as all the others. We’ve never heard anything from the public at large that leads us to think they had the least effect…’

‘So I’ve accomplished nothing?’

‘So you’ve accomplished nothing – certainly nothing that you would have wanted to accomplish! But you should be glad of that, Quangel, because it will certainly help to bring about a reduction in your punishment! Maybe you’ll get off with fifteen or twenty years!’

Quangel shuddered. ‘No,’ he said. ‘No!’

‘What did you expect anyway, Quangel? You, an ordinary worker, taking on the Führer, who is backed by the Party, the Wehrmacht, the SS, the SA? The Führer, who has already conquered half the world and will overcome the last of our enemies in another year or two? It’s ludicrous! You must have known you had no chance! It’s a gnat against an elephant. I don’t understand it, a sensible man like you!’

‘No, and you will never understand it, either. You see, it doesn’t matter if one man fights or ten thousand; if the one man sees he has no option but to fight, then he will fight, whether he has others on his side or not. I had to fight, and given the chance I would do it again. Only I would do it very differently.’

He turned his now steady gaze upon the inspector: ‘By the way, my wife had nothing to do with all this. You must let her go!’

‘Now you’re lying, Quangel! Your wife dictated the postcards – you said so yourself!’

‘Now you are lying! Do I seem like a man who would take dictation from his wife? Perhaps you’ll go on to say she was the mastermind behind it all. But it was me, it was all my doing. I had the idea, I wrote the cards, I dropped them, I want my punishment! Not her, not my wife!’

‘She confessed…’

‘She confessed nothing! I don’t want to hear any more lies about her! You shouldn’t try to tell a husband lies about his wife!’

For a moment they confronted one another, the man with the sharp bird’s head and the grey colourless inspector with his pale eyes and fair moustache.

Then Escherich lowered his gaze, and said, ‘I’m going to send for someone to take down your statement. I hope you’ll stand by it?’

‘I stand by it.’

‘And you fully understand what lies in store for you? A long jail sentence, or possibly death?’

‘I know what I’ve done. And I hope you know what you’re doing, too, Inspector!’

‘Oh, and what’s that, then?’

‘You’re working in the employ of a murderer, delivering ever new victims to him. You do it for money; perhaps you don’t even believe in the man. No, I’m certain you don’t believe in him. Just for money, then…’

Once again they confronted one another, and once again the inspector finally lowered his gaze, vanquished.

‘Well, I’m going, then,’ he said almost sheepishly. ‘To get a stenographer.’

And he went.