Alone in Berlin (Penguin Modern Classics)

67

The Pleas For Clemency

Otto Quangel had spent only a few days – in accordance with the order of the People’s Court – lying in the dark cell in solitary, freezing miserably in the little iron cage that most resembled a scaled-down version of the monkey house at the zoo, when the door opened, a light came on, and there in the doorway stood his lawyer, Dr Stark, looking at him.

Quangel slowly stood up and looked back.

So that suited and booted gent with his rosy fingernails and his casual drawl had taken it upon himself to pay him a call. Probably to see him suffer.

But even then Quangel had lodged in his cheek the vial of cyanide, his talisman that allowed him to endure cold and hunger. And so, despite being in rags and shaking with cold and with hunger burning his stomach, he stared back calmly, even with a mocking cheerfulness, at the ‘distinguished-looking gentleman’.

‘Well?’ Quangel finally asked.

‘I’m bringing you the verdict,’ said the lawyer, drawing a piece of paper out of his briefcase.

Quangel didn’t take it. ‘I’m not interested,’ he said. ‘I know it’s death. And my wife?’

‘Your wife as well. And there’s no appeal.’

‘Good,’ he replied.

‘But you can petition for clemency,’ said the lawyer.

‘To the Führer?’

‘Yes, to the Führer.’

‘No, thanks.’

‘So you want to die?’

Quangel smiled.

‘Are you not afraid?’

Quangel smiled.

For the first time, the lawyer studied his client’s face with a trace of interest. He said, ‘In that case, I’ll submit the petition myself.’

‘After first calling for me to be sentenced!’

‘It’s the way things happen. Following the death sentence, there’s the petition for clemency. It’s among my duties.’

‘Your duties. I understand. Like defending me. Well, I expect your petition won’t have much effect, so why don’t you just forget it.’

‘I’ll submit it anyway, regardless of what you say.’

‘I can’t stop you, I suppose.’

Quangel sat down on his cot again. He was waiting for the other man to stop his stupid chatter and leave.

But the lawyer didn’t leave, and after a long pause he said, ‘Can I ask you what made you do it?’

‘Do what?’ asked Quangel coolly, without looking at the elegant lawyer.

‘Write those postcards. They didn’t accomplish anything, and now they’ll cost you your life.’

‘Because I’m stupid. Because I didn’t have any better ideas. Because I thought they would accomplish something, as you put it. That’s why!’

‘And don’t you regret it? Aren’t you sorry to lose your life over a stupid stunt like that?’

Quangel cast a sharp glare at the lawyer, his proud, old, tough bird-glare. ‘At least I stayed decent,’ he said. ‘I didn’t participate.’

The lawyer took a long look at the man sitting there in silence. Then he said, ‘I have to say, I think my colleague who defended your wife was right: you are both mad.’

‘Do you think it’s mad to be willing to pay any price for remaining decent?’

‘You didn’t need the postcards for that.’

‘That would have been a kind of tacit agreement. What was your price for turning into such a fine gentleman, with creased trousers and polished fingernails and deceitful concluding speeches? What did you have to pay?’

The lawyer said nothing.

‘You see!’ said Quangel. ‘And you will continue to pay more and more, and maybe one day, like me, you will pay with your life, but you will have done it for your indecency!’

Still the lawyer said nothing.

Quangel stood up. ‘There,’ he laughed. ‘You know perfectly well that the man behind bars is the decent one, and you on the outside are a scoundrel, that the criminal is free, and the decent man is sentenced to death. You’re no lawyer. And now you want to ask for clemency for me – why don’t you just get out of here?’

‘I will appeal for clemency for you,’ said the lawyer.

Quangel remained silent.

‘Well, I’ll be seeing you!’ said the lawyer.

‘Hardly – that is, unless you want to come to my execution. You’re cordially invited!’

The lawyer left.

He was coarse and insensitive, and a bad man. But even so he was able to admit to himself that Quangel was the better man.

The clemency plea was drawn up, and insanity was suggested as grounds on which the Führer might be merciful, but the lawyer knew full well that his client was not mad.

A petition for clemency was sent to the Führer on Anna Quangel’s behalf as well, but it didn’t come from Berlin; it came from a small poor village in Brandenburg, and the name of the sender on the envelope was Heffke.

Anna Quangel’s parents had received a letter from their daughter-in-law, that is, from the wife of their son, Ulrich. The letter contained only bad news, and it was couched in short, harsh, unsparing sentences. Ulrich was in an asylum in Wittenau, and it was Otto and Anna Quangel who were to blame. They had been sentenced to death for betraying their Führer and Fatherland. So much for your children! The name of Heffke brings disgrace to all who wear it!

Speechless, afraid even to look at one another, the two old people sat in their wretched little parlour. The letter, the terrible news, lay on the table between them. They didn’t dare look at it again.

They had had to scrape by all their lives, humble farmworkers on a large estate under rough stewards. It had been a tough life for them: hard work and few joys. Their pride had been in the children, and the children had turned out well. They had done better for themselves than the parents, and they hadn’t had to work quite as hard – Ulrich became a technician in an optics factory, and Anna was married to a master carpenter. The fact that they hardly ever wrote and never visited, that barely bothered the old people: that was the way of the world, birds flew the nest. At least the children were doing well for themselves.

And now this pitiless, pitiless blow! After a time, the bony, exhausted hand of the old farmworker reaches across the table: ‘Mother!’

And suddenly tears well up in the old woman’s eyes. ‘Oh, Father! Our Anna! Our Ulrich! And now they’re said to have betrayed our Führer! I can’t believe it, not for the life of me!’

For three days they were too bewildered to do anything. They didn’t set foot outside the house; they didn’t dare look anyone in the eye, for fear that their shame might already have been broadcast everywhere.

Then, on the fourth day, they asked a neighbour to keep an eye on their hens, and they set off for Berlin. As they walked down the windswept avenue, the man ahead, the woman in country fashion a step or two behind, they resembled two children who had wandered out into the big wide world, where everything – a gust of wind, a falling branch, a passing car, a crude word – menaced them. They looked so defenceless.

Two days later, they trekked back down the same windswept avenue, even smaller, more bowed and disconsolate.

They had achieved nothing in Berlin. Their daughter-in-law had called them a load of names. They hadn’t been allowed to see Ulrich because they had come outside ‘visiting hours’. Anna and her husband – no one could even tell them what prison they were in. They hadn’t found their children. And the Führer, to whom they had looked for help and comfort, and whose chancellery they had gone to, the Führer wasn’t in Berlin at the time. He was in his principal HQ – Hitler Quarters – busy killing sons, and he had no time to help parents who were in the process of losing their children.

Why didn’t they file a petition for clemency? someone at HQ had suggested.

But they didn’t dare entrust their case to anyone. They were afraid of humiliation. They had a daughter who had betrayed the Führer. They couldn’t continue to live there, if that got out. And they had to stay alive to save Anna. No, they couldn’t get help from anyone with the petition – not the teacher, not the mayor, not even the minister.

Laboriously, after hours of discussion, agonizing, and writing with trembling hands, they drew up a petition themselves. They copied it out, and then copied it out again. It read:

Hitler apotheosized, Hitler in excelsis, lord of the universe, all-powerful, all-seeing, all-forgiving! Two old people – the war rages on, slaughtering millions, but still they believe in him – even as he delivers their daughter into the hands of the executioner they believe in him, no doubt creeps into their hearts; it is their own daughter who is evil, not their Divine Führer!

They don’t dare deliver the letter in the village, so together they trek to the local town to post it themselves. The envelope is addressed: ‘To our dearly loved Führer – personal…’

Then they return home to their parlour and wait faithfully for their god to grant his forgiveness…

He will be merciful!

The post takes receipt of both petitions, the perfunctory, hypocritical one of the lawyer and the desperate one from the two grieving parents, and conveys them both, but not to the Führer. The Führer doesn’t care to see such petitions; they don’t interest him. What interests him is war, destruction, and killing – not the avoidance of killing. The petitions go to the Führer’s chancellery, where they are numbered, registered and stamped: TO BE FORWARDED TO THE MINISTRY OF JUSTICE. Only to be returned if the condemned is a Party member, which is not stated in the petition…

A double standard. Clemency is for Party members, not for members of the public.

In the Ministry of Justice, the appeals are again registered and numbered, and are given another stamp: TO THE PRISON ADMINISTRATION FOR ASSESSMENT.

The post conveys the appeals a third time, and for the third time they are numbered and logged. A secretary scrawls the same formulaic words on Anna and Otto Quangel’s appeals: ‘Conduct in custody was acceptable. No case for clemency. Return to Reich Ministry of Justice.’

Once again, a double standard: those who transgress against the prison rules, or even merely follow them, do not qualify for mercy; those others who have distinguished themselves by betraying, abusing, or snooping on a fellow prisoner just might.

In the Ministry of Justice, they register the returned appeals and stamped them REJECTED, and a pert young lady types from morning till night, Your appeal was declined… was declined… declined… declined… declined… all day and every day.

Then one day an official tells Otto Quangel, ‘Your appeal was declined.’

Quangel, who never made any appeal, doesn’t say anything. It’s not worth it.

But the post conveys the other rejection to the old people, and the village is abuzz with gossip: ‘The Heffkes got a letter from the Ministry of Justice.’

And even if the old couple keep adamantly, fearfully, shakingly silent, a mayor has ways of finding out the truth, and soon sorrow turns into humiliation for two old people…

The ways of clemency!