Alone in Berlin (Penguin Modern Classics)

61

The Trial: Judge Feisler

The president of the People’s Court, the senior judge in Germany at the time, Judge Feisler, looked like a cultured man.^∗ He was, to use the terminology of Foreman Otto Quangel, a distinguished-looking gentleman. He wore his robe with style, and the cap gave his head dignity rather than looking merely stuck on, as it can on some heads. His eyes were clever, but cold. He had a high, smooth forehead and a mean little mouth, and it was the mouth, with its hard, cruel, sensual lips that gave the man away: he was a sybarite who sought all the pleasures of this world and left others to pay the bill.

The hands with the long, knotty fingers were mean, too, like vulture’s claws, and each time he asked an especially hurtful question his fingers curled, as though to dig into the flesh of his victim. And his way of speaking was mean, too: this man was incapable of speaking coolly and dispassionately; he always hacked at his victim, abused him, talked with vicious sarcasm. A mean man, and a bad man.

Since Otto Quangel heard who was going to try his case, he had spoken about it a few times with his friend Dr Reichhardt. Clever Dr Reichhardt had also been of the view that since the outcome was a foregone conclusion, Quangel should admit everything, and not cover anything up or lie. That would take the wind out of their sails, and they wouldn’t be able to go on abusing him for as long as they would have liked to. The trial would be short, and they wouldn’t even have to call witnesses.

It created a minor sensation when the judge asked how they pled, and both accused answered with a simple ‘guilty’. That ‘guilty’ made them subject to the death penalty and rendered any further business superfluous.

Judge Feisler hemmed and hawed for a while, stunned by this almost unprecedented plea.

But then he recovered his grasp of the situation. He wanted his day in court. He wanted to see these two workers grovel, he wanted to see them writhe under his razor-sharp questioning. This ‘guilty’ plea betrayed pride. Judge Feisler could see recognition of it in the faces of the spectators in the courtroom, some of whom were astonished, and others pensive. He wanted to strip the accused of that recognition. He wanted them to leave these proceedings without a shred of dignity.

Feisler asked, ‘Are you clear in your minds that you have just renounced your lives, that you have cut yourselves off from all decent people? That you are now a common criminal deserving to die, carrion that will be hanged by the neck? Are you quite clear about that? Now, are you still guilty?’

Quangel said slowly, ‘I am guilty. I did what it says on the charge sheet.’

The judge leveled his beak at him: ‘I want you to answer yes or no! Are you a common traitor, or not? Yes or no!’

Quangel looked hard at the distinguished-looking gentleman above him. ‘Yes!’ he said.

‘Disgusting!’ yelled the judge, and spat over his shoulder. ‘Disgusting! And that sort of creature calls itself German!’

He looked at Quangel with deep contempt, then turned to Anna Quangel. ‘What about you, woman?’ he asked. ‘Are you as common as your husband or not? Are you another loathsome traitor? Are you set on disgracing the memory of your son who fell on the field of honour? Yes or no?’

The worried-looking, grizzled attorney quickly got to his feet and said, ‘Your Honour, may I have the court’s permission to note…’

The judge struck him down with his beak. ‘I warn you, attorney,’ he said, ‘I warn you not to speak unless I ask you to! Sit down!’

The judge returned to Anna Quangel. ‘Well, what about it? Can you summon up some last shred of decency in your breast, or are you intent on matching your husband, who, as we have heard, is a common traitor? Did you betray your people in their hour of need? Had you the heart to let down your son? Yes or no!’

Anna Quangel looked timidly across at her husband.

‘Look at me! Not that traitor! Now, yes or no?’

Quietly, but distinctly, ‘Yes.’

‘Speak up! We all want to hear it, a German mother who feels no shame in staining the heroic death of her son with filth!’

‘Yes,’ said Anna Quangel loudly.

‘Unbelievable!’ cried Feisler. ‘I have sat through many sad and hideous experiences, but I have never witnessed a disgrace like yours! It seems to me hanging would be too good for you; you should be quartered, like beasts!’

He was addressing the spectators more than the Quangels, as he took over the role of the prosecutor. Then he recovered himself (he wanted his day in court). ‘But my heavy duty as judge obliges me not to be contented with your confessions. However loath I am to undertake it, and however hopeless it might appear to be, my duty obliges me to examine whether there might not be some grounds for clemency in your case.’

So it began, and it went on for seven hours.

Yes, sensible Dr Reichhardt had been mistaken, and Quangel with him. Never had it occurred to them that the highest-ranking judge in Germany would conduct the trial in a spirit of such bottomless, mean-spirited malice. It was as though the Quangels had offended him, Judge Feisler, personally, as though this unforgiving, rancorous little man had had his honour besmirched and had now set himself to wound his enemy to death. It was as though Quangel had seduced the man’s daughter, so personal was it all, so infinitely wide of any impartiality. No, the two of them had made a colossal mistake. This Third Reich kept springing new surprises on its antagonists; it was vile beyond all vileness.

‘Accused, witnesses – your law-abiding co-workers – have stated that you were driven by a positively squalid avarice… For instance, how much did you make in a week?’ the judge asked.

‘Latterly, I was taking home forty marks a week,’ Quangel replied.

‘I see, forty marks, and that was net of tax and medical insurance and contributions to the Winter Relief Fund?’

‘Yes, net.’

‘Doesn’t that seem a decent sum for an older couple like yourselves?’

‘We got by on it.’

‘No, you didn’t get by on it! You’re lying again! You managed to save regularly! Is that correct or not?’

‘That’s correct. Most of the time we managed to put something by.’

‘How much would you say you were able to put by in an average week, then?’

‘I couldn’t tell you. It varied.’

The judge lost his temper: ‘I said in an average week! Average! Do you understand the meaning of the word, average? And you call yourself a foreman! Can’t even do basic arithmetic! Wonderful!’

Judge Feisler didn’t seem to think it all wonderful, however, because he looked at the accused indignantly.

‘I’m over fifty years old. I’ve worked for twenty-five years. There were good years and not-so-good years. I was unemployed for a while. My son was ill. I can’t give you an average.’

‘Oh? You can’t, can’t you? I’ll tell you why that is! It’s because you don’t want to! That’s your filthy avarice, from which your decent colleagues recoiled. You’re afraid we might find out how much you managed to scrape together! Well, how much did it come to? Or can’t you tell us that either?’

Quangel struggled with himself. The judge had found his weak spot. Not even Anna knew how much they had saved. But then Quangel mastered himself. He got over it. There was so much he had got over in the course of the past few weeks, why not this too? He broke with the last thing that tied him to his old life, and said, ‘It was 4,763 marks!’

‘Yes,’ drawled the judge, and leaned back in his high-backed judge’s chair. ‘It was 4,763 marks and 67 pfennigs!’ He read the figure from a file. ‘And are you not ashamed to fight a state that allowed you to save such a sum? To oppose the commonweal that cared for you to that degree?’ He raised his voice. ‘You don’t know the meaning of gratitude. You don’t know the meaning of honour. You’re a disgrace, a blot. You need to be blotted out!’

And the vulture’s claws closed, opened, closed again, as though ripping at prey.

‘Almost half the money I saved before the Nazis came to power,’ Quangel said.

There was a laugh in the auditorium, but it froze under a furious glare from the judge. A sheepish cough was all that remained of it.

‘Silence in court! Absolute silence! And you, accused, if you think you can be insolent, you will be punished. Don’t think you’re safe from additional punishment, you’re not! You’ll take whatever I give you!’ He looked piercingly at Quangel, ‘Now, tell me, accused, what were you saving for?’

‘For our old age.’

‘Your old age? You don’t say. How sweet that sounds! But it’s just another lie. From the time you began writing your postcards you must have been damned sure you weren’t going to experience any old age! You confessed yourself that you were always aware of the consequences of what you were doing. But even so, you carried on putting money aside and depositing it in the bank. What for?’

‘I reckoned I would get away with it?’

‘What do you mean, get away with it? Be acquitted?!’

‘No, I never thought that. I thought I wouldn’t be caught.’

‘You see, you were wrong to think that. But I don’t believe that’s what you did think anyway. You’re not so stupid as you like to pretend. You can’t possibly have thought you could go on committing your crimes year after year.’

‘I wasn’t thinking about year after year.’

‘What is that supposed to mean?’

‘I don’t think it’s going to go on much longer, your Thousand-Year Reich,’ said Quangel, inclining his sharp bird’s head toward the judge.

The attorney shuddered.

There was another laugh in the listening gallery, followed by an ominous murmuring.

‘The bastard!’ someone yelled.

The guard behind Quangel adjusted his cap, and with his other hand reached for his holster.

The prosecutor had jumped to his feet, brandishing a piece of paper.

Frau Quangel was smiling at her husband, nodding enthusiastically.

The guard behind her grabbed her shoulder and squeezed it viciously.

She bit back the pain and didn’t cry out.

An assistant judge was staring at Quangel open-mouthed.

The judge jumped up: ‘You, criminal! Idiot! Cretin! How dare you…’

He stopped, mindful of the impression he was creating.

‘Take the accused away, Sergeant! Get him out of here! The court will come up with a suitable punishment…’

A quarter of an hour later, the trial resumed.

It was widely noticed that the accused seemed to have difficulty walking. People thought, They will have given him a good going-over. Fearfully, Anna Quangel thought the same.

Judge Feisler announced: ‘The accused Otto Quangel is sentenced to four weeks in solitary on bread and water, with enforced fasting every third day. In addition,’ Judge Feisler went on, by way of explanation, ‘the defendant has had his braces taken from him, since, during the interval, he was seen behaving suspiciously with them. There is a view that he may have intended to attempt suicide.’

‘I only had to be excused.’

‘Silence, accused! He might have attempted suicide. The accused will have to get along from now on without braces. He has no one to blame but himself.’

There was a further outbreak of laughter in the court, but this time the judge shot an almost grateful look at the gallery, evidently pleased with his own little joke. The accused stood there looking cramped up, having to keep one hand on his trousers to stop them from sliding down.

The judge smiled. ‘Now, let’s get on with the case.’