Every Man Dies Alone (50 page)

And then he had slapped him on the back, and the inspector detested any form of physical contact. No, that man—well, he could only wait and hope. Those fellows weren’t as secure as they liked to make out; their yelling only masked their insecurity, the fear that they would one day be toppled. However confident and soldierly their bearing, they knew perfectly well that they knew nothing and were nothing. To have to explain to such a dunderhead his great discovery with the streetcar stations—a man who couldn’t even follow such reasoning when it was demonstrated to him! Well, it was pearls before swine, the old story!

The inspector returns to his files, his charts, his plans. He has a tidy mind; he shuts a desk drawer and instantly forgets its contents. He opens the drawer marked
STREETCAR STATIONS
, and starts thinking about what sort of work the author of the postcards might do. He calls the personnel department of the public transport service and asks for a list of all the types of jobs there. He takes notes.

He is obsessed with the idea that the wanted man has something to do with streetcars. He is so proud of his discovery. He would be immeasurably disappointed if they brought him Quangel as the guilty man—a foreman in a furniture works. It would mean nothing to him that the culprit had been arrested—it would only pain him that his beautiful theory was wrong.

And for this reason, when a day or two later inquiries are in full swing both in the streetcar stations and the houses, and the supervisor tells him they might have caught the man, he merely asks what the man’s job is. Carpenter, he is told, and the man has no more interest for him. He is looking for a streetcar employee!

He hangs up, end of story. So much so that the inspector doesn’t even notice that the station is on Nollendorfplatz, that it’s late afternoon on a Sunday, and that a card is due near Nollendorfplatz round about now. The inspector doesn’t even make a note of the station number. Those fools, they do nothing but blunder around—end of story!

My people will inform me tomorrow, the day after at the latest. The uniformed police are all blunderers—after all, they aren’t detectives.

And so it comes about that the Quangels are released…

Chapter 40

OTTO QUANGEL GROWS UNCERTAIN

That Sunday evening, both Quangels rode home without a word, and without a word they ate their supper. Anna, who at the critical moment was so brave and resolute, shed a few tears quietly in the kitchen, unbeknownst to Otto. After the event, when everything has passed off safely, she is in the grip of fear and alarm. It could so easily have gone wrong, and it would have been the end for both of them. If Millek hadn’t been such a notorious querulant. If she hadn’t been able to get rid of the postcard in time. If the station supervisor had been someone else—just from looking at him, you could tell that he couldn’t bear that Millek! Well, it might have passed off safely this once, but never again must Otto put himself in such danger.

She walks into the parlor, where her husband is pacing back and forth. They don’t have a light on, but the blackout screen is up, and it’s a moonlit night.

Otto continues to pace back and forth, still without a word.

“Otto!”

“Yes?”

He comes to a sudden stop and looks across at his wife, who is sitting on the sofa, barely visible in the pallid wash of moonlight.

“Otto, I think we’d better have a break. I think our luck’s changing.”

“Can’t do that,” he replies. “Can’t do that, Anna. They would notice if the cards suddenly stopped. Now, after they almost caught us, they would notice all the more. They’re not stupid—they would know there was a connection between us and the fact that the cards suddenly stopped. We’ve got to go on, whether we want to or not.”

And he added uncompromisingly, “And I want to go on too!”

She sighed. She didn’t have the courage to agree with him aloud, even though she could see he was right. This wasn’t a path on which you could stop when you wanted to. There was no going back, and they weren’t going to be left in peace. They had to go on…and on.

After thinking for a while, she said, “Then let me take the cards from now on, Otto. I think your luck’s out.”

Grumpily he said, “I can’t help it if some eager beaver spends three hours sitting at his peephole. I looked around everywhere, I was careful!”

“I didn’t say you weren’t, Otto. I said you were out of luck. It’s not your fault.”

He changes the subject. “What did you do with the second card? Did you slip it under your clothes?”

“I couldn’t do that, because there were people all round. No, Otto, I dropped it in a mailbox on Nollendorfplatz, during the first commotion.”

“In a mailbox? Very good. You did well, Anna. I think in the coming weeks we should drop cards in the post wherever we happen to be, so that this one doesn’t stick out so. The post’s not such a bad idea; they won’t be all Nazis there either. And the risk is smaller.”

“Please, Otto, let me take the cards from now on,” she begged him once more.

“You mustn’t think I made a mistake that you wouldn’t have made, Mother. These are the chance things that I’ve always worried about, because you can’t predict them. What can I do about a snoop sitting at his peephole for three hours? You could suddenly fall ill, or you trip over something and break your leg—they’ll go through your pockets and find one of those postcards! No, Anna, there’s no guarding against those flukes!”

“It would take such a load off my mind if you would let me take on the distribution!” she came back.

“Listen, Anna, I’m not saying no. I want to be truthful with you. All of a sudden I do feel unsure. It’s like I can only stare at one point, which doesn’t have any enemies there. But all around me there are enemies, and I can’t see them.”

“You’ve gotten nervous, Otto. It’s been like this for too long. If only we could take a break from it for a couple of weeks! You’re right, though, we can’t. But from now on I’ll take the cards.”

“I’m not saying no. Do it! I’m not afraid, but you’re right, I’m nervous. It’s these unpredictable chances. I thought it would be enough, just going about our job properly. But it’s not: we need to have luck on our side as well, Anna. We did have luck, for a long time, and now things look as though they’re beginning to turn…”

“We got through,” she said calmingly. “Nothing’s happened.”

“But they’ve got our address; they can come back for us anytime! Those bloody relations, I always said they were bad news.”

“You’re being unfair now, Otto. You can’t blame Ulrich for what happened!”

“Of course not! Who said I did? But if it wasn’t for him, we never would have gone to that part of town. It’s no good depending on other people, Anna. It just drags us all down together. Well, now we’re under suspicion.”

“If we really were under suspicion, they wouldn’t have let us go, though, Otto!”

“The ink!” he suddenly exclaimed and stopped. “The ink’s still here. The ink I wrote the card with, the same ink’s here in the bottle!”

He ran over, and poured the ink down the drain. Then he put on his coat to go out.

“Where are you going, Otto?”

“I’ve got to get rid of the bottle! We’ll buy a different sort tomorrow. Burn the pen in the meantime, and above all burn all the old cards and old writing paper we still have. Burn everything! Check in every drawer. None of that stuff can be allowed to remain here!”

“But Otto, we’re not under suspicion! We’ve got plenty of time still!”

“We’ve got no time! Do as I tell you! Check everywhere, and burn the lot!”

He went out.

When he returned, he was calmer. “I threw the bottle in the Friedrichshain park. Did you burn everything?”

“Yes!”

“Are you sure? Did you check through everything and burn it?”

“I just told you I did, Otto!”

“All right, Anna, that’s good. But I still have that funny feeling, as though the one place I can’t see is the one place where the enemy is lurking. As though I’d forgotten something!”

He pressed his hand against his forehead and looked at her thoughtfully.

“Calm yourself, Otto, I’m sure you haven’t forgotten anything. There’s nothing left in the flat.”

“Have I got any ink on my fingers? Do you understand, I can’t have the least ink stain anywhere on me, not now that there’s no ink in the house.”

They looked closely and found a stain on his right forefinger. She rubbed it away with her hand.

“You see, didn’t I tell you, there’s always something! Those are the enemies I can’t see. Well, maybe it was just that ink stain that was still tormenting me!”

“It’s gone now, Otto, there’s nothing left for you to worry about!”

“Thank God! You do know, Anna, that I’m not afraid, but I don’t want us to be discovered before our time. I want to be able to do this work as long as I can. If possible, I’d like to be around to see it all collapse. I would like to experience that. We’ve done our bit to make it happen!”

And this time it’s Anna who consoles him. “Yes, you will be around then, we both will. Think about it—what actually happened? Yes, we were both in great danger, but…you say our luck’s turned? I think our luck stayed true to us; the danger’s past, we’re here.”

“Yes,” said Otto Quangel. “We’re here, we’re at liberty. For the time being. And long may we remain so…”

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.”