Authors: Ernst Haffner
For a long time nothing happens to suggest the train is due for imminent departure. But then a huge express locomotive passes by, and is coupled to the front of the train. Willi feels the jolt run through the line of carriages. Soon after, some people walk by, the train crew. And then, with restrained power, the train moves off. The station is close. From the echoing sound of voices and rapid footfall, Willi Kludas can tell that they’re in the station hall. He can’t see anything, except if he lowers his head to the level of the axle and looks diagonally up. Feet going by, feet and legs about to climb into his carriage.
Willi becomes aware of a series of chimes. He sidles across to the far side of his axle. It’s the guard walking alongside the train, striking the wheels with a hammer, checking for any flaws that might give rise to a disaster at high speed. Suddenly Willi can feel himself praying for something. If they get
you now, you’ll be in a prison cell within an hour. Maybe not that alluring, but if they don’t spot you, you could be a nasty mess on the tracks instead. An icy shudder goes through him. He has to press his trembling hands hard to the cold iron to master his fear. A couple of feet away, there are people in idle conversation, sending regards to Uncle and Auntie. A warm soft woman’s voice implores her “sweetheart” for goodness’ sake not to sit in the draft and catch his death of cold. Willi sees a pair of ladies’ shoes, and shapely calves. Boy oh boy, if she knew someone was looking up her skirts … He has to laugh, and that gets rid of the fear. He feels a little impatient. Come on now, let’s get the show on the road! It’s getting boring here.
“All aboard!… All aboard, ladies and gentlemen!” The train crew rush from carriage to carriage, banging on the doors. The stockinged legs get up on tiptoe for a farewell kiss. Willi adjusts his position. Tomorrow morning you’ll be in Berlin. That’s all there is to it. Gently the train moves off. Slowly it glides out of the station hall. Now there are points, lots of sets of points. Each one is a little jolt. The train is still going slowly, but Willi understands that, as soon as the suburbs are left behind, it will start racing. With considerable difficulty, he has managed to light a cigarette. It took half a box of matches before he could get the cigarette alight in the lee of his open anorak. All right, now. Let’s go! And they’re off. The glittering spokes of the wheels are flying round … then there’s no more spokes, just whirling disks. Ouch! A pebble flew up and struck him. Time for Willi to pull the blanket bag over his head.
The train has a clear track ahead and is flying along. Willi feels mild shocks, more in the nature of a rocking motion.
Hands in the swinging handholds, legs pressed fast to the rods. By and by, Willi starts to feel the penetrating cold, the knife of the whistling wind. Thick dust comes in through his eyeholes. Turn the bag round, so the holes are at the back. Now Willi can’t see a thing. What would be the point? He knows how to cling on. It’s all he can do. Sit there and wait it out, just wait it out. Keep telling himself, tomorrow morning you’ll be in Berlin. Keep telling himself something. Count from one to ten thousand. Or recite a poem, for Chrissakes. Only don’t drop off, otherwise he’ll have had his chips. A slight movement to one side or the other and he’s a goner!
The icy wind drills deeper and deeper into his clothes, bites under the strips of material wound round his trunk. The body hanging there, stock still, loses its flexibility, becomes numb. Willi can no longer feel his hands cramping in their handholds, he can no longer move his fingers. He can’t even feel himself hanging on the axle. All he feels is his body hurtling along at incredible speed, as though shot from a gun. He feels the occasional dull thump of a stone hitting him, but it’s not a pain as such. He is released from his physical self, from time and space. How long has he been hanging like this? Is it one hour, is it four?
From the pitch of the wind he can tell that the train is slowing down. He adjusts his head protection a little: light and shade hurtle past, then the train clatters over points. They are entering a big station. Willi takes advantage of the few minutes they are stopped to move his limbs as much as possible in the constricted space. He alters his position. By leaning against a box under the carriage, he gets into a sort of seated position that allows him to shift his limbs around slightly while they are moving. He peers through the narrow
chink between the carriage and the platform. Nowhere is the name of the place, and he doesn’t hear it called out either. Nowhere in his limited field of vision a clock. Only legs, legs that won’t tell him one thing or the other. “All aboard …!” The train slips out, and quickly and ravenously chews into a racing speed.
But lest you think things can’t get any worse, Willi Kludas … Lest you think it’s a straightforward matter, cheating the railway of the price of a Cologne–Berlin ticket … you’ve got another think coming! What prompted you to lay into your well-intentioned educators, and then duck out of the punishment that was coming to you? Punishment? Hear that? Punishment? Yes, indeed. It’ll catch up with you here, under the chasing express. Here. A rigid lump clinging on for dear life to still-colder iron! At last the resistance of your thick skull is broken. Cry, howl in the din. No one will ever hear you, not even the people sitting a few feet away on upholstered benches. Your desire for freedom, your longing to grope a girl in a passageway, to walk through the lit-up streets at night as a free man, not to be a youth anymore, cuffed with impunity by anyone with half a mind to. All those desires that a careful education tried to repress in you, to make you a person after its own liking, you now must pay for with the price of this night in which death will not shrink from your side, not for a second!
The train rumbles over more points, and stops reluctantly at a signal. A child leans out of a carriage window and a joyful treble calls out into the morning: “Mama … we’re almost in Berlin!” The child’s voice breaking the silence, the word “Berlin” … together they mobilize the last resources in Willi Kludas so that he can crawl away from under the carriage.
He collapses among some piles of wooden sleepers. The train moves off with a jerk and is soon gone. Willi bestirs himself. He can’t stay here. Over there are long lines of empty carriages on dead tracks. That’s where he has to get himself to. He can’t walk upright. Crawling and slithering like a stoned dog, Willi moves in the direction of the carriages. On the way is a barrel of rainwater. Water, water for his parched throat! It takes infinite effort to pull himself up at a carriage, to heave aside the door, to haul himself into the wagon, and finally to slide the door shut. Almost instantly, Willi slumps into wet straw that has been put there for a horse transport.
Late in the afternoon, as floodlights again brighten the sidings, Willi Kludas awakens to the torments of hunger and thirst. The awareness of having got through the ghastly night helps him overcome the pain in his bones. In the darkness of the wagon he gets undressed. He strips off the bandages that have served him well, knocks some of the dirt off his trousers and anorak, and pulls his things on right way round. He wipes his boots with handfuls of straw. Then he cautiously pushes the door open and peers out. No one there. In the dim light of distant lamps he studies his reflection. Good God! In spite of the head protection, his whole face is coated with a thick layer of grime. Carefully Willi crawls up to the water barrel again, and scrubs face and hands with water and grit. Another look in the mirror tells him that he isn’t clean, but at least he’s not so strikingly dirty that he will draw attention to himself when he’s among people again.
Now, the thing is to get off the railway terrain unobserved. Past the signal boxes, the railwaymen’s quarters. Any shadow might harbor a railway official. Slithering and crawling, Willi crosses the rails, then he has to pass a signal
box. He can clearly make out a couple of officials in the room, green and red lights flashing on and off. Past them. Now up a steep embankment, a careful straddle of a barbed wire fence, and he’s all alone on an empty footpath. A passerby tells him where to catch a tram into the city.
Berlin, Berlin … The name sounds like music to his ears. As if Berlin were a laid table and a soft bed waiting for Willi Kludas. He’s got two cigarettes left, and twenty-five pfennigs. The first cigarette is lit. After the first deep puff, he almost moans with delight. Ah, cigarettes are something else. He contemplates jogging to the tram stop. But his aching bones refuse any fresh abuse. So he walks on.
It’s about half past six when Willi gets off the tram in Müllerstrasse. He wants to look up a school chum. Maybe his mum will let Willi spend a night there. It’s three years since Willi was last in Berlin. Pray to God that Otto Pageis is still living in Müllerstrasse. What was the number again? Here, this is the building, surely. And there’s the greengrocer’s cellar where they cadged bruised apples and pears when they were kids. Second yard, fourth floor, middle apartment, that’s Otto’s place, isn’t it? But now he sees the name “Kowalski” on a piece of card. All the same, Willi knocks. A slatternly, highly pregnant woman answers. “Pageis … Pageis, yeah, there were people living here by that name. But they left. Thing is, she kept bringing so many gentlemen home, and the landlord wouldn’t stand for it. And then they took Otto, the boy, and stuck him in welfare … yeah, that’s what happened.” “So, Otto’s in welfare … thanks ever so much, ma’am …” Otto Pageis was the only person in Berlin that Willi knew to look up. And now he’s in some institution himself, dreaming of Berlin …
Downstairs at the baker’s Willi buys rolls with his last twenty pfennigs, and scarfs them down. Where’ll he go for the night? Hard to answer. He can’t run around much more, that’s for certain. He sees nothing of the bustle of Müllerstrasse as he staggers on. He isn’t drawn to the lights at the northern end of Friedrichstrasse either. Willi turns off, and wanders along the River Spree. It’s half past nine already. Should he go to the Tiergarten? He can feel the cold settling in his bones. He can’t go on much longer.
At Kronprinzen Ufer, he comes upon a sandbox marked “BATG 2.” It’s half full. Willi climbs into it, and shuts the heavy lid over his head. He smokes his last cigarette, then he burrows down into the wet sand. The great and compassionate city of Berlin has afforded a bed for Willi Kludas …
7
ULLI IS THE BOSS
of a gang that’s allied to the Blood Brothers, and it’s his birthday. He’s come of age, twenty-one today. Which means that remand schools and borstals have lost all their terrors so far as he’s concerned. A great and long-awaited experience, worthy of a great celebration. Which is scheduled for tonight. Ulli has extended invitations to all the Blood Brothers. Starting at eleven o’clock, at intervals of fifteen minutes and in groups of three, the Blood Brothers are to wait at the corner of Koloniestrasse and 80th Street, Section 2 (provisional). There they will be picked up by a boy and taken to the festive premises. No more than three at a time, so that the police don’t get interested. The rest of the lads are to bide their time in a doorway on Koloniestrasse till it’s their turn.
Jonny, Konrad and Erwin are the first. On the dot of eleven they’re standing by a lamp post bearing the street sign
80th Street, Section 2 (provisional).
Only thing is, there is no 80th Street. After four paces in the direction indicated, a credulous so-and-so would find himself perched on top of a barbed-wire fence instead of turning down any street. Why, and to what purpose, that sign has been affixed to where it is, that’s the sweet secret of the planning department of the city of Berlin … No one to be seen far and wide. There’s no buildings
yet, in these latitudes. Waste ground, gypsy caravans; summer houses, large and small; rotted planks and fences that decades of practice have kept in position. This is home to Ulli and his boys. A part of the world that might have been invented for discreet and silent disappearances.
Here comes Ulli’s envoy. They’ve seen each other before. Somewhere between the planks and the barbed wire, there’s a little gap. The four boys skip through it, and find themselves in deep mire. In Indian file, each holding on to the coattails of the one before, their guide leading the way, the group feel their way through the dark. Their feet plod through little ponds, get snarled up in discarded mattresses, stumble over pots and pans and other detritus. Something runs across their path that was never a path; it could have been a cat or a rat or a rabbit. At last they get to a dark summer house. Their guide whispers the password through the keyhole: “Hungry bellies, parched throats.” The doors are thrown open to hunger and thirst.
The sudden incursion of fresh air has brought turmoil to a thick fug of tobacco. The atmosphere is as dank as in a laundry. Ulli, the birthday boy, accepts congratulations and small contributions, and calls on them to be seated. Slowly the new arrivals adjust to the smoke. There is no furniture as such. There wouldn’t be any room anyway. A few blankets and potato sacks have been spread over the bare floorboards, and the birthday guests sit and squat and sprawl over them. Against the wall is an upended orange box, with a three-foot altar candle set on it, burning. Next to that a good dozen or so full bottles of schnapps and wine. Against the opposite wall, muffled under a horse blanket, a gramophone. The guide sets off to pick up the next batch of Blood Brothers. In due course,
they and the last pair settle themselves, rather intimately, on a potato sack. “No Ludwig?” asks Ulli. Jonny tells him: “He’s disappeared for a week now. No one has any idea where he can have got to …” The conclusion that Ludwig’s disappearance is involuntary is one they have all come to by now. The police have nabbed him, they think.
Sixteen gang members are assembled in the summer house. Someone puts a record on the gramophone, and covers it over again with the horse blanket. “
Hoch soll er leben!
” it drones out from under. Applause for Ulli. A bottle of cognac does the rounds. The last boy gets the grisly lees. “Parched throats!” Parched throats of lads from fifteen to eighteen. Only a couple are older. Is it showing off, their thirst for alcohol? The cognac is chased with a bottle of plum brandy. It too is drained. Then cigarettes are passed round. From outside the door is unlocked. The sentry is relieved. Each one does half an hour. A dance tune animates them all to quiet whistling and humming along.