Alone in Berlin (Penguin Modern Classics)

56

Otto Quangel’s Second Cellmate

When Otto Quangel was brought by a warder to his new cell in the remand prison, a tall man got up from the table where he had been reading and stood under the cell window in the prescribed position, with his hands pressed against the seams of his trousers. Something about the way he executed this show of respect suggested he didn’t think it very necessary.

The warder motioned to him to relax. ‘It’s all right, Doctor,’ he said. ‘I’m bringing you your new cellmate!’

‘Good!’ said the man, though in his dark suit, shirt and tie, he looked to Otto Quangel more like a gentleman than a cellmate. ‘Good! Reichhardt’s the name, musician. Accused of Communist activities. And you?’

Quangel felt a cool, firm hand in his own. ‘Quangel,’ he said hesitantly. ‘I’m a carpenter. They’re accusing me of high treason.’

‘Oh, it’s you!’ exclaimed the musician Dr Reichhardt. And to the warder who was just about to shut the door, ‘Two portions again from today, okay?’

‘All right, Doctor!’ said the warder, ‘I won’t forget!’

And the door closed behind him.

The two men looked at one another curiously. Quangel was doubtful; he almost wished he was back in the Gestapo basement with Karlchen the human dog. To be put with this fine gentleman, a doctor – it made him uneasy.

The ‘gentleman’ smiled. Then he said, ‘Just behave as if you were on your own, if that’s easier for you. I won’t bother you. I read a lot, I play chess with myself. I do exercises to keep in shape. Sometimes I sing a little to myself, but only very quietly; it’s forbidden, of course. Does any of that bother you?’

‘No, it doesn’t bother me,’ replied Quangel. And almost in spite of himself, he added, ‘I’ve just come from the Gestapo cells, where I spent three weeks locked up with a madman who didn’t wear clothes and thought he was a dog. I don’t think there’s much that would bother me any more.’

‘Good!’ said Dr Reichhardt. ‘Of course I would have preferred it if music had been something you liked. The only way of finding a little harmony within these walls is to make your own.’

‘I wouldn’t know about that,’ replied Otto Quangel. And he added, ‘This is a pretty plush establishment compared to where I’ve just been.’

The gentleman had sat down at his table again and picked up his book. He answered amiably, ‘I spent some time where you’ve just been. Yes, it’s true, things are better here. At least they don’t knock you about. The warders are usually dull, but not completely barbarous. But prison is prison, you know: that doesn’t change. I have a couple of privileges. I’m allowed to read, smoke, get my own meals delivered from outside, use my own clothes and bed linen. But I’m a special case, and even with privileges, prison remains prison. You need to get to a point where you no longer feel the walls.’

‘And have you?’

‘Maybe. Most of the time. Not always. No, not always. When I think of my family, not then.’

‘I just have a wife,’ said Quangel. ‘Is there a women’s wing in this prison?’

‘Yes, but we never see any of them.’

‘I suppose not.’ Otto Quangel sighed. ‘They arrested my wife as well. I hope they brought her here today too.’ And he added, ‘She’s too weak to last long in the cells.’

‘Well, I hope she’s here, too, then,’ said the man kindly. ‘We’ll find out through the chaplain. Maybe he’ll come this afternoon. By the way, now that you’re here, you’re allowed access to a lawyer.’

He nodded amiably to Quangel and added, ‘There’s lunch in an hour.’ Then he put on his reading glasses and again began to read.

Quangel looked at him for a moment, but the gentleman was engrossed in his book and clearly did not want further conversation.

Queer, these fine gentlemen! he thought. I had a lot of questions for him still. But if he doesn’t want to speak, that’s okay as well. I don’t want to be his dog and not leave him a moment’s peace.

And, ever so slightly offended, he set about making up his bed.

The cell was clean and light. Nor was it all that small either: three and a half paces each way. The window was half open, and the air was fresh. It even smelled good, too; as Quangel was later to establish, the cause for this was Dr Reichhardt, with his soap and clean clothes. After the suffocating stink in the Gestapo basement, Quangel felt he had been transported to somewhere bright and cheerful.

Having made his bed, he sat down on it and looked across at his cellmate. The gentleman continued to read, turning the pages fairly rapidly. Quangel, who had no recollection of having read any book since his school days, thought to himself, What can he be reading? Why isn’t he fretting? I could never sit and read like that! I keep thinking about Anna, how everything happened, and what will happen next and if I can continue to put a brave face on things. He says I can get a lawyer. But a lawyer costs money, and what good is he going to do me, seeing as I’ll be sentenced to death anyway? I confessed everything! Everything’s different for a gentleman like that. I saw it the moment I walked in, the warder calling him Sir and Doctor, as is only fit. He won’t have a lot on his plate, I reckon – he can read all he likes…

Dr Reichhardt interrupted his pre-lunch reading only twice. The first time was to say, not raising his head, ‘Cigarettes and matches are in the little cupboard – if you want to smoke?’

But when Quangel replied, ‘I don’t smoke. It costs too much money!’ he was deep in his book again.

The second time, Quangel had clambered on to the stool and was trying to look out on the yard, where the regular rhythm of scraping feet could be heard.

‘Best not now, Herr Quangel!’ said Dr Reichhardt. ‘It’s exercise. Some of the warders make a note of the windows where inmates watch. Then it’s solitary confinement with only bread and water. It’s usually safe to look out the window in the evenings.’

Then lunch came. Quangel, who was used to the contemptuously thrown together grub in the Gestapo prison, was astonished to see two big bowls of soup and two plates with meat, potatoes and green beans. But he was even more astonished to see his cellmate pour a little water from the ewer and carefully wash and dry his hands. Then Dr Reichhardt poured fresh water into the basin, stepped aside and politely said, ‘Herr Quangel!’ and Quangel duly washed his hands, even though he hadn’t touched anything dirty.

Then they ate the – for Quangel – unusually good lunch in near silence.

It took three days before the foreman understood that this wasn’t the ordinary diet afforded by the People’s Court to remand prisoners, but Dr Reichhardt’s private food, which he shared without the least fuss with his cellmate. In the same way that he was completely ready to give Quangel whatever he had, whether that was cigarettes, soap, or books; all he had to do was ask.

It took a few more days for Otto Quangel to overcome the sudden surge of suspicion that was his instinctive reaction to all Dr Reichhardt’s kindness. He was convinced that whoever enjoyed such incredible privileges had to be a spy for the People’s Court. Whoever offered another man such favours must want something in return. Watch your step now, Quangel!

But what could the man want from him? Quangel’s was an open-and-shut case, and he had repeated to the examining magistrate, coolly and succinctly, the statements he had previously given to Inspectors Escherich and Laub. He had said everything exactly as it was, and if the files still hadn’t been passed on to the prosecution for the fixing of a date for proceedings, that was purely because of Anna’s peculiar insistence that she had done everything and that her husband had merely been a sort of tool for her. But all that was no reason to shower Quangel with valuable cigarettes and good, clean food. The case was straightforward, there was no reason to spy on him.

Quangel only really got over his suspicion of Dr Reichhardt on the night that his cellmate, this superior, elegant gentleman, confessed to him in whispers that he was horribly afraid of death, whether by rope or axe; often he would think of nothing else for hours on end. Dr Reichhardt also admitted that often he only turned the pages of his books mechanically: before his eyes he saw not printer’s ink but a grey concrete prison yard, a gallows with a noose swinging gently in the breeze that within three to five minutes would convert a strong, healthy man into a repulsive piece of dead meat.

But even more horrifying than the death that Dr Reichhardt foresaw (it was his firm conviction) coming closer with every new day, even more horrifying was his fear on behalf of his family. Quangel learned that Reichhardt and his wife had three children, two boys and a girl, the oldest eleven, the youngest only four. And Reichhardt was often desperately afraid that his persecutors, not content with murdering the father, would extend their vengeance to his innocent wife and children, would drag them into a concentration camp and slowly torture them to death.

Witnessing these agonies, not only did Quangel feel his suspicions swept aside, but he even came to regard himself as a relatively fortunate man. He had only Anna to worry about, and however foolish and contrary her reported statements were, he could see from them that she had fully recovered her courage and strength. One day, they would both have to die, but dying would be made easier for them, because it would take both of them: they weren’t leaving anyone behind whom they would have to worry about in the hour of their death. The torments that Dr Reichhardt had to go through on behalf of his wife and three children were incomparably greater. They would accompany him to the last second of his dying. The old foreman understood that.

Quangel never learned quite what it was that Dr Reichhardt had done wrong and that made capital punishment seem so certain to him. As far as Quangel knew, his cellmate had not very actively opposed the Hitler regime, nor conspired with others, nor put up posters, nor plotted assassinations, but had simply lived in accordance with his principles. He had refused all the temptations that National Socialism had thrown his way, he had never contributed financially or by word or deed to their rallies, though he had often raised his voice in warning and had clearly stated how disastrous the course was that the German people were taking under their Führer. In a word, all the things that Quangel had laboriously written out on his postcards, Reichhardt had been happy to say to persons at home and abroad. Because even in the latter years of the war, Dr Reichhardt had gone on giving concerts abroad.

It took a very long time for the carpenter Quangel to form a reasonably clear picture of the sort of work that Dr Reichhardt had done in the world – and even then the picture never became completely clear, and in the depths of his soul he never quite saw Reichhardt’s activity as work.

When he first learned, right at the beginning of their acquaintance, that Reichhardt was a musician, he had thought of dance musicians playing in cafés, and he had smiled a little contemptuously about that as not much of a job for a tall man with strong limbs. It was a little like reading: something superfluous that only high-up people went in for, people who did no proper work.

Reichhardt had to explain to the old man at some length and repeatedly what an orchestra was and what a conductor did. Quangel never tired of hearing about it.

‘So you get up in front of your people with your little stick, and you’re not even playing anything yourself…?’

Yes, that was pretty much the way of it.

‘And purely for showing an individual when you want him to start playing, and how loud – purely for that, you get paid a lot of money?’

Yes, Dr Reichhardt was afraid that was all he had done to come into so much money.

‘But you’re able to play music yourself, on a violin or a piano?’

‘Yes, I am. But I don’t do it, at least not in public. You see, Quangel, it’s a bit like you: you can plane and saw and bang in nails. But that wasn’t what you were doing; you were overseeing others doing it.’

‘Sure, to make them work harder. Did your standing there make your people do their work any faster?’

‘No, they didn’t do that.’

Silence.

Then Quangel suddenly said: ‘Anyway, music… You see, in the good years, the things we made weren’t coffins, but furniture – sideboards, bookshelves, tables – and we could take pride in our work! First-class carpentry, pinned and glued, things that will last a hundred years. But music – the minute you stop playing, what have you got left?’

‘There is something, Quangel. The joy in the people who hear good music, that’s something enduring.’

But no, on this point they weren’t able to agree, and Quangel was left with a quiet disdain for the work of the conductor Reichhardt.

But he could at least see that his companion was an upright, sincere man who went on living his life in the same way he had always lived it, despite all the threats and terrors he was confronted with, always friendly and helpful. With astonishment Otto Quangel saw that the kindnesses he received at Reichhardt’s hands were not specifically directed at him, but would have been offered to any other cellmate, even, for instance, to the ‘dog’. For a few days they had a small-time thief in their cell with them, a spoiled and deceitful creature, and this louse exploited the doctor’s kindnesses to the full, smoking all his cigarettes, trading away his soap, stealing his bread. Quangel itched to beat him up – oh yes, the old foreman would have taught the creature a lesson he wouldn’t have forgotten in a hurry. But the doctor wasn’t having that, and he simply took the fellow under his wing – the thief who took his kindness for weakness.

When the man was finally taken away, it transpired that in his unfathomable wickedness he had taken a picture that Dr Reichhardt had, his only picture of his wife and children, and torn it up. As the doctor sat grieving before the scraps of the picture, which he was unable to put together again, Quangel angrily said, ‘You know, Doctor, pardon my saying so, I think you’re just too soft at times. If you had let me, I would have sorted the guy out right away, and something like that would never have happened.’ The conductor replied with a rueful smile, ‘Do you want us to be like the others, Quangel? They think they can convert us to their views by physical punishment! But we don’t believe in force. We believe in goodness, love, and justice.’

‘Goodness and love for a monster like that!’

‘But do you know what turned him into such a monster? Are you sure he’s not just resisting goodness and love because he’s afraid his life would change if he were no longer evil? If we’d had him in our cell for four weeks, I think you would have seen a change in him.’

‘But in life you need to be tough sometimes, Doctor!’

‘No, you don’t. And a saying like that is justification for every form of brutality, Quangel!’

Quangel shook his head, with its sharp, angular bird face, in dissent. But he did not continue the dispute.