ALONE IN BERLIN — by Hans Fallada

 

Chapter 41

THE OLD PARTY MEMBER PERSICKE

Inspector Zott’s agent, a certain Klebs, was given the task of combing Jablonski Strasse for old men living alone, that category of person the Gestapo was so interested in. He had a list in his pocket with the names of reliable Party comrades living in every house, and if possible in every back house too, and the name Persicke appeared on the list.

Prinz Albrecht Strasse might attach great importance to nabbing their man, but for Klebs it was just a run-of-the-mill job. Small, badly paid and badly nourished, bandy-legged, with bad skin and carious teeth, Klebs had about him something of a rat, and he went about his work much in the way a rat roots around in garbage. He was always ready to snag a slice of bread, to cadge a drink or a smoke, and his plaintive, squeaky voice had something of a whistle about it, as though the unhappy creature was just on the point of expiring.

At the Persickes’ flat, the old man opened the door. He looked dreadful, hair matted, face puffy, eyes red, and the whole man swaying and wallowing like a ship in a strong gale.

“Whaddaya want?”

“I’m just here to collect information, for the Party.”

Zott’s spies had been instructed not to mention the Gestapo when they went about their business. The whole investigation was to have the appearance of a low-level search for some errant Party member.

But to old Persicke, even that harmless tag “information for the Party” had the effect of a punch to the solar plexus. He moaned and leaned against the doorjamb. Some sort of thought process returned to his fogged brain, and with it, so did fear.

He pulled himself together and said, “Come in!”

The rat followed in silence. It watched the old man with alert sliding eyes. Nothing escaped it.

The parlor was ravaged. Upset chairs, bottles of booze spilling their contents on the floor. A rumpled blanket. A tablecloth. Under the mirror, starred like a spider’s web, a little heap of shards. One curtain drawn, the other pulled off. Everywhere cigarette ash, butts, half open packets of smokes.

Klebs felt his fingertips twitch. He would have liked to reach out and help himself: drink, a cigarette, even the watch he could see in the pocket of a waistcoat draped over a chair. But for the time being he was just here on behalf of the Gestapo, or, as he should say, the Party. So he sat down politely on a little chair and squeaked happily: “My, there’s some collection of drinks and smokes you’ve got here! You’re doing all right for yourself, Persicke!”

The old man looked at him with muddy eyes. Then he slid a half bottle of schnapps across the table to the visitor—Klebs grabbed it before it could tip over.

“And you can find yourself a cigarette!” muttered Persicke, looking round the room. “There must be something to smoke somewhere here.” And he added in a thick voice, “But I’ve not got a light.”

“Don’t worry on that score, Persicke!” squeaked Klebs. “I’ll find what I need. You’ll have gas in the kitchen, and a gas lighter.”

He behaved as if he and Persicke had known each other for ages. As though they were best buddies. With an air of entitlement he scuttled into the kitchen on his bandy legs—it looked even worse in there than in the parlor, with smashed plates and overturned furniture—found the gas lighter amid the mess, and lit up.

He had pocketed three opened packs of cigarettes right off. One was drenched in schnapps, but that would dry out. On his way back, Klebs poked his nose into the other two rooms: everything looked wasted and shot to hell. As Klebs had sensed right away, the old man was all alone in the flat. The spy rubbed his hands contentedly and showed his blackish-yellow teeth. There was more to be got here than just some drink and a few ciggies.

Old Persicke was still sitting on the same chair beside the table, just as Klebs had left him. But wily Klebs knew the old man must have been up on his feet in the meantime, because in front of him was a full bottle of schnapps that hadn’t been there before.

So he’s got more stockpiled here. We’ll have to see about that!

Klebs settled into his chair with a contented squeak, blew a cloud of smoke in his host’s face, took a pull from the bottle, and asked innocently, “So, what’s on your conscience, Persicke? Come on, old fellow, make a clean breast of it! And remember, clean underpants for the firing squad!”

The old man trembled at those last words. He had missed the context in which they had appeared—he had only caught a reference to being shot.

“No, no!” he muttered anxiously. “No firing squad, no firing squad. Baldur’s coming, Baldur will fix everything.”

The rat disregarded the question of who this Baldur was who would fix everything. “Well, so long as it’s capable of being fixed, Persicke!”

He glanced at the other’s face, which, he thought, was staring at him darkly and suspiciously. “Mind you, once Baldur shows up…” he offered in a conciliatory tone.

The old man continued to stare at him in silence. Suddenly, in one of those lucid intervals that long-term drunks have from time to time, and no longer stammering, he said, “Who are you, anyway? What do you want with me? I don’t even know you!”

The rat looked cautiously into the face of the suddenly lucid man. In these intervals, drunks can get quarrelsome and aggressive, and there wasn’t much of Klebs (and what there was was cowardly anyway), whereas old Persicke, even in this advanced state of decay, looked like a man who had given his Führer a couple of well-built SS men and a Napola student.

Klebs said mildly, “I told you already, Herr Persicke. Maybe you missed it. My name is Klebs, and the Party sent me to get some information…”

Persicke’s fist smashed down on the table. The two bottles teetered; moving quickly, Klebs managed to rescue them.

“How can a bastard like you say I missed something,” screamed Persicke. “Are you any smarter than me, you skunk? You tell me in my own house, at my own table, that I’m not capable of grasping what you say. You’re a skunk, a lousy skunk!”

“No, no, no, Herr Persicke!” burbled the rat soothingly. “I didn’t mean it that way. A little misunderstanding there. Everything in peace and harmony. Easy, easy—old Party hands like us!”

“Where’s your membership card? How can you walk in here and not show me your card? You know the Party doesn’t allow that!”

But on that point, there was nothing to worry Klebs: the Gestapo had furnished its men with excellent, valid, faultless identification.

“There you are, Herr Persicke, look at it, take your time. All correct. I’m entitled to obtain information, and you’re under obligation to help me to the best of your ability!”

The old man stared mistily at the papers brandished in front of him—Klebs was careful not to let them leave his hand. The writing swam in front of his eyes; he jabbed the paper with his finger and asked, “Is that you?”

“Can’t you see that, Herr Persicke? Everyone says it’s an excellent likeness!” And, vainly, “Only I’m supposed to look ten years younger in actual life. I can’t say, I’m not vain. I never look in the mirror!”

“Put that shit away!” growled the ex-publican. “I’m not in the mood to read. Sit down, drink, smoke, but keep quiet. I need to think.”

The rat Klebs did as it was instructed, and kept a watchful eye on the man opposite, who seemed to have disappeared in a cloud of smoke.

Yes, old Persicke, after another long slug from his bottle, seemed abandoned by his clarity once more, drawn irresistibly back into the maelstrom of his inebriation; what he termed “think” was a helpless anguished searching for something that had slipped his mind long ago. He didn’t even know what it was.

He was in a bad way, the old man. First one son had been sent to Holland, then the other to Poland. Baldur had gone on to a Napola school: the ambitious kid had achieved his first aim, and he was now among the best and brightest of the German nation, a special student of the Führer’s! He was studying advanced subjects, such as discipline—not self-discipline, mind you, but the discipline of others, who hadn’t done as well as he had.

The father and his wife and daughter had remained behind. He had always been fond of a drink—old Persicke had been his own best customer in the old days behind the bar. Once the boys were gone, and especially once he was away from Baldur’s supervision, Persicke had begun to tipple, and from there he had progressed to heavy drinking. His wife hadn’t been able to cope; small, timid, and tearful in her male-dominated household, where she had never been more than an unpaid and badly treated skivvy, she hated to think where her husband had got hold of the money to pay for all his drink. On top of that there was her fear of the drunkard’s threats and abuse, and so she had taken refuge with relatives, leaving their daughter with her father.

The daughter, a real battleax, having been through the BDM—even been an official in the BDM—hadn’t had the least inclination to tidy up after the old man and court his ill-treatment for doing so. Through connections, she got a job as a warder in the women’s camp at Ravensbrück, and there, with the help of vicious dogs and a riding whip, began a new career, forcing old women who had never done physical labor in their lives to do more than their bodies could cope with.

Thus left alone, the father had swiftly degenerated. He called in sick at his office, no one brought him any food, he lived almost entirely on alcohol. In the early days he had at least gone out to buy bread with his food stamps, but he had lost the stamps or someone had stolen them, and Persicke hadn’t had anything to eat for days.

The night before, he had been very ill, he could remember that. He no longer remembered rampaging through the flat, smashing dishes, knocking over cupboards, in his paranoia seeing persecutors everywhere. The Quangels and old Judge Fromm had stood at the door and rung and rung the bell. But he hadn’t answered it; he wasn’t about to admit his enemies. The people outside had to have been sent there by the Party, come to get the books from him, and there were more than three thousand marks missing (or it might be six, even in his more lucid moments he was unable to be precise about the sum).

The old judge had observed coolly, “Well, we’ll just let him carry on then. I’ve no interest myself in calling anyone…”

His generally friendly, mildly ironic face had looked very severe as he spoke. Then the old gentleman had gone back downstairs.

And Otto Quangel, with his usual profound aversion to being dragged into anything, had said, “What should we get mixed up in this for? It’ll only cause more trouble! You can tell he’s drunk, Anna. He’ll sober up sometime.”

But Persicke, who had forgotten all about the episode the next day, hadn’t sobered up. In the morning he had felt rotten; he was shaking so hard he could hardly raise the bottle to his lips. But the more he managed to drink, the less he shook and the less often he lapsed into his amorphous dread. Yet the dark sense of having forgotten something vital still tormented him.

And now this rat was sitting opposite him, patient, cunning, greedy. The rat was in no hurry: it had spotted its opportunity and was determined to make the most of it. The rat Klebs was in no rush to write its report to Inspector Zott. You could always think of some reason to explain why progress had been unexpectedly slow. But this here was a splendid opportunity, not something to let slip.

And Klebs didn’t let it slip, either. Old Persicke sank deeper into drunkenness, and if his words were all babble, even a babbled confidence was worth something.

After an hour Klebs knew everything there was to know about the old man’s embezzlement, he knew where the schnapps bottles were, and the cigarettes, and what was left of the money was already in his pocket.

Now the rat has become the old man’s best friend. It puts him to bed, and when Persicke yells, Klebs runs over to him and gives him enough schnapps to stop him yelling. In between times, the rat quickly packs a couple of suitcases with valuables. In this way the fine damask underwear of the late Frau Rosenthal once again changes owners, once again not entirely legally.

Then Klebs gives the old man one more hefty drink, picks up the suitcases, and tiptoes out of the flat.

As he opens the door, a tall, bony man with a grim expression comes up to him and says, “What are you doing in the Persickes’ apartment? What are you lugging away with you? You didn’t have a suitcase when you walked in here! Come on, spit it out, or do you want to accompany me to the police?”

“Please, step closer,” whistles the rat meekly. “I’m an old friend and Party comrade of Herr Persicke’s. He will affirm it to you. You’re the supervisor, aren’t you? Herr Supervisor, you must know my friend Herr Persicke is a very sick man…”