A Stranger in My Own Country (28 page)

Here is another tale of our mayor's endless, unpredictable flip-flopping, all sunshine one day, thunder and lightning the next – though this is something that happened much later. We live in a heavily wooded area, and we had an abundance of timber almost up until the outbreak of war. Most people heated their homes with wood rather than coal, and we were no different. But as industry geared up for war, the forestry authorities became increasingly reluctant to let us have firewood, as every tree was needed for the production of rayon, which was made into fine silk stockings, soft, durable suiting fabrics, and even, I rather think, gunpowder. Eventually the responsibility for allocating firewood was handed over to the mayors of each locality, who were supposed to allocate supplies to each village resident based on the size of the house and the number of occupants. Our own mayor circulated a list, and from this I could see that he had allocated all of three cubic metres of wood to me. I have a fairly large house with a lot of people living in it, and with this allocation of three cubic metres, plus the coal allowance we also had, I would have been able to keep the kitchen range going all year round, plus just one heating stove for three months. So it really wasn't enough, it seemed to me, and I was enraged by this new dirty trick. But that was just his style, to sneak up and bite you from behind. At the same time I knew that losing my temper with this treacherous man would only make more trouble for me, and so I asked my wife to accompany me: ‘You must come with me and make sure I don't fly off the handle. If it was up to me I'd slaughter the old bastard!'

‘And much good it would do you!' replied my wife, and she was right, of course.

So we went to see mayor Stork together, and he received us in a very friendly manner. My own manner was equally friendly as I pointed out that there must have been some mistake with the three cubic metres of
firewood I had been allocated. And I did the sums for him and showed him how long the briquettes and wood would last me, just enough for the kitchen range and one stove for half the winter. When I had finished, I felt very pleased with myself that I had made such a convincing case, and I looked expectantly at Stork.

He smiled and rubbed his hands together and replied in that smarmy way of his: that was all well and good, and I may well have got my sums right, but unfortunately there was nothing he could do about it – there was just no more wood to be had, and so he couldn't give me any more.

This did make my hackles rise somewhat, and I reminded Stork that I had two small children and a very old woman living in my house, amongst others, and that if I couldn't heat the place properly for them, I would effectively be leaving them to freeze to death. He smiled his smarmy smile again and said that was awful, of course it was; but ‘you know the old saying: you can't get blood out of a stone', and there simply wasn't any more wood to be had.

My temper rising a little more, I pointed out that many people still had wood from the previous year or even further back stored in their yard, yet these people had all been allocated more wood than me, when I didn't have a single log left. Surely there was a double standard being applied here – ? At this point he became angry too, and said it was nothing to do with him how people chose to manage their stock of wood. If one person was sparing in his use while another burned the whole lot away in one year, that was up to them. At all events, I would not be getting any more wood than my allocation, no matter how much of a fuss I kicked up. I was welcome to lodge a complaint against him – we'd soon see who was in the right here!

I knew this already, and so I forced myself to calm down, especially as my wife now placed her hand over mine in a gesture of entreaty, and said that perhaps the mayor would get another allocation of wood later on, and might then allow us to have more. But he was not even prepared to send us away with that crumb of comfort. Instead he shook his head adamantly and repeated: there was nothing else apart from the three cubic metres, and there was an end to the matter. Done and
dusted! But in the meantime I'd come up with a different idea, and I said: ‘Mr Stork, there's a national census taking place soon, on 10 October, and wherever a person is resident on that date, that's where they pay their local taxes. Now, I'll tell you what I am going to do, Mr Stork: at the beginning of October I am going to move to Berlin with my entire family and stay in a hotel, which means I'll also be paying my taxes in Berlin – and the parish of Mahlendorf will have to see how it manages without its only real taxpayer!'

I'd become more and more worked up as I spoke, and the mayor was now equally worked up when he replied: ‘So you think you can threaten me like that? I'll report you! I'm not going to stand here and be threatened by you!'

‘You're threatening me with a lot worse!' I shouted. ‘You're threatening me and my wife with illness and freezing to death!' ‘That's enough now', said my wife. ‘I think it would be better if neither of you said anything more! It's not going to do anybody any good!' And with that she hustled me quickly out of the room, because she could see that I was about to explode and say things that would have landed me in deep trouble.

But I wasn't ready to calm down yet, and I spent the whole night doing and redoing the sums to work out how much coal and wood we would need, and every time the numbers showed that we simply couldn't manage with that amount. Surely the mayor must see that for himself! I just couldn't get my head round the idea that the mayor simply didn't want to see it, that the whole point for him was to torment and harass me until I lost my temper and said things I would regret. I still thought that such cold, calculating villains only existed in the pages of books. And the mayor wasn't even that calculating. He was like his name, not ‘
stark
' – strong – but only ‘Stork', only ever doing things by halves. And so it turned out again on this occasion: he phoned me two or three days later and asked me to drop by to discuss ‘the wood business'. I did so, and he greeted me in the most genial manner and inquired with a smile: ‘How much wood do you want, Mr Fallada?' I was caught off guard: was he just winding me up again? But
I stayed calm and said that I needed at least twenty-five to thirty cubic metres of wood for the winter. He beamed: ‘You can have more if you want it! How much would you like?'

‘Well, I wouldn't mind having fifty cubic metres.'

‘You shall have them!' he said. ‘I'll make sure they are allocated to you right away!'

I couldn't help asking the question: ‘But how is it possible, Mr Stork? Three days ago there was not a single cubic metre to be had, and here you are today, knee-deep in wood!'

‘That's my little secret', he said, and that's how we left it. I never did find out what his little secret was, of course. To this day I don't know if he really did have more wood all along, or if he managed to secure a fresh supply, or if my threat to withhold my taxes had any effect. All I know is that I was given more wood that winter than I'd ever had before, namely fifty cubic metres. But that was him all over, he never changed. He was always a bad lot, even if he did help me out once in a while. He never behaved well because it was the decent thing to do. In most cases I think it was fear that made him change his tune – fear of the consequences of his actions.

(5.X.44.)
He had been living in our village for so many years now, and even a dimwit like him must have noticed that his situation was worse than when he arrived. He had had friends, was invited to people's houses, and now the friends had backed off and the invitations had ceased. In many cases relations had broken down as the result of a quarrel, but more often than not it was because of the very obvious way the Storks cultivated friends only so long as they could be useful to them. This was another delightful characteristic of our mayor that I have not mentioned before: he had perfected the art of getting people to do him favours, favours that were actually not favours at all but proper jobs of work, such as hauling firewood, ploughing fields and suchlike. He just took it for granted that all these things should be done for him free of charge. If someone asked for payment, that was
the end of good relations. The man would get his money eventually, if he was sufficiently persistent, but then the mayor was no longer his friend. So he actually lived a very isolated life in the village; he wielded absolute power, dispensed his favours or disfavours as he saw fit, but he had hardly any friends. And even tyrants have their hours of weakness, when they are in need of friends.

Another separate entry. I'm feeling fairly agitated; there is a possibility that I might be allowed to go home for a couple of hours to fetch some papers, escorted by a police officer, of course. But that would hardly stop me smuggling this MS out of this house of the dead, and hiding it at home. They may tell me their decision this evening. I can hardly believe they'll give me permission, but it would be such a relief! I'm living in a constant state of fear as I push ahead with my writing day after day, watched by so many prying eyes, and it is preventing me from enjoying my work – and disturbing my already fitful sleep. I'm not so much afraid for myself, I'm already living the life of a prisoner behind bars, so outwardly my life would not be very different up until the final hour, when I hope to acquit myself well. But all the others who would be caught up in this business – it's them I fear for! It was incredibly reckless of me to start writing this account here. And yet I could not do otherwise. And yet I carry on writing!

But if they would let me go to Mahlendorf for a few hours I would take this MS with me, and I would stop writing at the point I had got to by then, even though I have not yet written what may be the most important chapter, about the war. I wouldn't even be sorry to end it this way. I embarked on this project with great expectations, but now I'm rather disappointed. All the things I've been through come across as just a bunch of petty squabbles, it seems to me, which everyone else must find boring. At the time I felt anger, bitterness, and sometimes fear. But now, writing about these things much later, I haven't even felt that any more. So how am I to communicate anger, bitterness and fear to the reader? He'll be bored stiff reading it! And yet I say to
myself: what else could I have written? I wasn't living at the heart of events, I wasn't the friend and confidant of ministers and generals, I have no great revelations to make. I lived the same life as everyone else, the life of ordinary people, the masses. And for those of us who were not Party members, life in the Third Reich really was just one long series of wrangles, small battles that we had to fight in order to make a living and survive. Nothing big happened. Just as a publisher couldn't publish books any more, but had to spend his time conducting a pointless correspondence with the authorities about every damn thing, so the writer of books could not just get on with his work in peace; there was constant friction, agitation and interference. When I think how much I myself had to change in writing my books! I had to abandon all thoughts of writing the books I really cared about. Any portrayal of darker characters was strictly forbidden. I had to be optimistic and life-affirming, in an era that was negating the very meaning of life through persecution, torture and executions. Since
Wolf
I've not actually written anything that I really cared about. I've fallen back on ‘light fiction'. I've written books of memoirs, yes, and they've given people a lot of pleasure; but they were just evasions too. I really don't feel so old yet that I want to live off my memories – or my memoirs. It would have been much nicer if I'd been able to write them ten or twenty years later. But that's just it: they systematically took us away from our real work, they wouldn't allow us to follow the call of our own heart. For them there was only one call, and that was the sound of them calling the shots. They are frightened of the individual and individuality, they want the shapeless masses into which they can drum their slogans. And they've done very well with that, especially now during the war. They have introduced forced labour, they prohibit everyone from doing the work they want to, the work they were born to, under threat of dire punishment. They are destroying every human being – and the puppets that are left give them no trouble at all.

What will Germany be like after this war? What kind of Germans will one have to live with? A terrible thought! How few of them will have retained vestiges of their true selves! And they won't even feel the
change that has happened to them! They'll just say: ‘We were always like this!'

So I am not satisfied with what I have written. Although I don't know how I could have written it any differently. I'll just carry on, more doggedly than a mule. But if they do let me go back to Mahlendorf for a few hours, then I'll break off without any regrets or remorse. Perhaps my heart has been embittered by what I have written so far? I don't know. But I would be happy to hear a ‘yes' this evening. I'd manage it somehow, smuggling the thing out – under the watchful eyes of the policeman! And then what a relief to think to myself: most of what you planned to write is safely tucked away in Mahlendorf! Then I could sleep more soundly again. Another task accomplished.

When the war came, mayor Stork told everyone who cared to listen that he had immediately volunteered for front-line service. Schoolmaster Stork promptly related this to his pupils, telling them how happy he would be if he could take up arms and show the Führer that he was one of his loyal warriors. Stork was in his early thirties at the time, robust and without visible ailments (except when his feelings of envy sometimes became too much and adversely affected his gall). But the months went by without Mr Stork marching off to war. Every now and then mention was made of the fact that he was indispensable as mayor, and that his local authority superiors would not release him for military service: but his own burning desire was still to be posted to the front. He often belittled the work he was doing here on the home front: ‘But of course we must faithfully do our duty wherever the Führer has thought fit to place us!' The months turned into years, four years of the war had passed, and our mayor was still with us. (During these war years he was more insufferable than ever, but I will come to that later.) Then the news finally came through that our mayor was leaving us: he really was going to join the army as the war entered its fifth year. But again he was out of luck: denied the opportunity to take up arms and fight for his Führer, he was posted to the medical corps. He bore the
disappointment heroically, but never failed to point out what a disappointment it was. Doubtless his wife did much to help him bear his fate with fortitude, going to visit him in the barracks nearly every week with suitcases filled to bursting. It was actually inconceivable that a man could eat so much in addition to the robust army fare. But doubtless Mr Stork put the principles of National Socialism into practice by giving much of it away. Though not so much to his comrades, so we heard, as to his superiors, in particular the all-powerful orderly room sergeant, who could make or break a man.