Every Man Dies Alone (78 page)

For an instant he lay there perfectly still, as though the headless trunk were puzzled about the trick that had been played on it. Then the trunk arced up, it pushed against straps and steel stirrups, and the executioner’s assistants hurled themselves on it to hold it down.

The veins in the dead man’s hands grew thicker and thicker, and then everything collapsed in on itself. All that could be heard was blood—hissing, rushing, falling blood.

Three minutes after the ax had fallen, the pallid doctor with trembling voice pronounced the prisoner dead.

They cleared the body away.

Otto Quangel no longer existed.

Chapter 71

ANNA QUANGEL’S REUNION

The months came and went, the seasons changed, and still Anna Quangel sat in her cell, waiting to be reunited with her Otto.

Sometimes the warder, whose favorite Anna Quangel had become, said to her, “I think they must have forgotten about you, Frau Quangel.”

“Yes,” replied #76 mildly. “It would appear so. Me and my husband. How is Otto?”

“Fine!” the warder replied quickly. “He sends his love.”

They had all agreed not to tell the kind, hardworking woman about the death of her husband. They always sent regards from him.

Yes, this time fortune really was smiling on Frau Anna: no needless chitchat, no conscientious chaplain destroyed her belief that Otto Quangel lived.

Almost all day she sat at her little knitting machine and knitted socks—socks for soldiers; she knitted them day in, day out.

Sometimes she sang softly to herself. She was firmly convinced that not only would she and Otto see each other again but that they would go on living together for a long time. Either they really had been forgotten, or else they had secretly been amnestied. Not much longer, and they would be free.

Because however little the warders talked about it, Anna Quangel had picked up on it: the war was going badly, and the news was getting worse from week to week. She noticed it from the rapid deterioration in the food, the regular shortages of material to work with, the broken part in her knitting machine, which took many weeks to replace—everything seemed to be in short supply. But if the war was going badly, then things must be going well for the Quangels. Soon they would be free.

So she sits and knits. She knits dreams into the socks, wishes doomed never to come true, hopes she had never previously entertained. She composes an Otto quite unlike the real one, a serene, contented, tender Otto. She has become a young woman again, seeing the whole of life beckoning to her. Doesn’t she even dream sometimes of having more children? Oh, children… !

Ever since Anna Quangel destroyed the cyanide, when she decided after a dreadful struggle to hold on till she saw Otto again, come what may—ever since that time she has been free and youthful and joyful. She has conquered herself.

Yes, now she is free. Fearless and free.

She is fearless, too, during the ever more terrible nights that the war has brought upon the city of Berlin, when the sirens wail, the planes move over the city in ever denser swarms, the bombs fall, the high explosives howl as they detonate, and fires burst out all over.

Even on such nights, the prisoners must stay in their cells. The authorities don’t dare move them to bomb shelters in case they stage an uprising. They scream in their cells, they rage, they beg and plead, they go mad with fear, but the corridors are empty, no sentry stands there, no merciful hand unlocks the cell doors, the guards are all hunkered down in the air-raid shelters.

But Anna Quangel has no fear. Her little machine clatters and rattles, adding row after row of loops. She makes use of these hours when she can’t sleep anyway to knit. And as she knits, she dreams. She dreams of her reunion with Otto, and it is during one such dream that a bomb comes down and turns that part of the prison into ash and rubble.

Anna Quangel had no time to awaken from the dream of her reunion with Otto. She is already reunited with him. She is where he is. Wherever that may be.

Chapter 72

THE BOY

But we don’t want to end this book with death, dedicated as it is to life, invincible life, life always triumphing over humiliation and tears, over misery and death.

It is summer, early summer in 1946.

A boy, almost a young man, crosses an old farmyard in Brandenburg.

He runs into an elderly woman. “Well, Kuno,” she asks. “What are you doing today?”

“I’m going into town,” the boy replies. “I’m to collect the new plow.”

“Well,” she says, “I’ll write down some things you can pick up for me—if you find any of them!”

“If they’re there, I’ll find them, Mother!” he calls, laughing. “You know that!”

They look at each other, smiling. Then she goes inside to her husband, the old schoolmaster who has long since reached pensionable age but who—as much as the youngest—is still teaching.

The lad takes Toni the horse, their pride and joy, out of his stable.

Half an hour later, Kuno-Dieter Borkhausen is on his way to town. But he is no longer called Borkhausen; he has been adopted, with all the legal formalities by the Kienschapers, back when it became clear that neither Karl nor Max Kluge would return alive from
the war. Incidentally, the Dieter also fell casualty in this renaming: Kuno Kienschaper has a ring to it, and it’s quite enough of a name.

Kuno whistles cheerfully to himself while the chestnut Toni ambles along the well-marked path. Let Toni take his time, they’ll be back by lunch anyway.

Kuno eyes the fields on either side, assessing them, professionally gauging the state of the crop. He has learned a lot here in the country, and—thank God—he’s forgotten just as much. The back-tenement with Otti he hardly ever thinks of anymore, nor of the thirteen-year-old Kuno-Dieter who used to be a kind of hoodlum, no, none of that exists anymore. But the dreams of engineering have been postponed, and for the time being it’s enough for the boy to drive the tractor for the plowing, in spite of his youth.

Yes, they’ve made progress together, Father, Mother, and himself. They are no longer dependent on relatives, because the previous year they were given some land. They are independent people, with Toni, a cow, a pig, a couple of sheep, and seven hens. Kuno can mow and plow; his father taught him how to sow, and his mother how to hoe. He likes the life, and he’ll certainly help to build up the farm, oh yes!

He’s whistling.

By the side of the road, a tall wasted-looking specter suddenly looms up: ragged clothes, ravaged face. He’s not one of the desperate war refugees; he’s a wastrel, a layabout, a scoundrel. His sodden voice wheezes, “Hey there, boy, will you take me into town with you!”

The sound of the voice makes Kuno Kienschaper jump. He feels like asking the cozy old sofa Toni to break into a gallop, but it’s too late for that, and so, with lowered head, he says, “A ride? Not up front with me! You can sit in the back if you like!”

“Why not with you?” wheezes the man challengingly. “Not good enough for you, huh?”

“Idiot!” shouts Kuno with feigned roughness. “It’s because you’ll sit softer in the straw!”

The man agrees grumblingly, crawls up onto the wagon, and Toni breaks into a canter of his own accord.

Kuno has got over his initial shock at having to help his father Borkhausen out of the gutter into the wagon. But perhaps it was no accident; perhaps Borkhausen has been waiting for him and knows exactly who this is, giving him his ride.

Kuno squints over his shoulder at the man.

He is stretched out in the straw and now says, as though he had seen the boy’s look, “Do you know a boy hereabouts, a Berliner, must be sixteen or so? He must live somewhere here…”

“There’s loads of Berliners live round here!” replies Kuno.

“So I noticed! But the boy I’m referring to, he’s a special case—he wasn’t evacuated in the war, he ran away from his parents! D’you ever hear of a boy like that?”

“Nah!” lies Kuno. And after a pause he asks, “You wouldn’t know a name for him, would you?”

“Yes, he’s called Borkhausen…”

“There’s no Borkhausens anywhere round here, mister; I’d know it if there was.”

“Funny!” says the man, forcing a laugh, and hits the boy hard between the shoulder blades. “I’d have sworn it was a Borkhausen driving this cart!”

“You’d be making a mistake then!” answers Kuno, and now that he’s sure what’s going on, his heart is beating solidly and coolly. “My name’s Kienschaper, Kuno Kienschaper…”

“Well, there’s a coincidence!” says the man in mock astonishment. “The boy I’m looking for’s Kuno, Kuno-Dieter in fact…”

“No, my name’s plain Kuno. No Dieter. Kuno Kienschaper,” says the boy. “Plus if I knew I had any Borkhausen on my cart, I’d turn my whip around and hit him till he got off of my cart!”

“No! No! Surely not!” says the tramp. “A boy who whips his own father off a cart?”

“And once I’d whipped Borkhausen off of my cart,” Kuno Kienschaper continues mercilessly, “then I’d go straight to the police in town and tell them to look out. There’s a man around who’s no good for anything except lazing around and stealing and doing damage; he’s got a jail record, he’s a criminal, you’d better get hold of him!”

“You wouldn’t do that, Kuno-Dieter,” calls Borkhausen in real alarm now. “You won’t sic the police on me! Now that I’ve got out of jail and am on my way to recovery. I’ve got a letter from the padre saying that I’ve bettered myself, and I don’t touch stolen goods any more, I swear! But I was just thinking now that you’ve got a farm and are living off the fat of the land, you wouldn’t mind letting your father rest up a bit with you! I’m not well, Kuno-Dieter, I’ve got something wrong with my chest, I need a break…”

“Now you give me a break!” cries the boy bitterly. “I know if I let you into our house for one day, you’d take root there, and it’d be impossible to get rid of you, and with you we’ll have unhappiness and bad luck in the house. No, you get right off my cart, or I really will give you a taste of the whip!”

The boy had stopped the cart and jumped down. Now he stood there, whip in hand, prepared to do anything to defend the peace of his newly acquired home.

The eternal loser Borkhausen said miserably, “You wouldn’t do that! You wouldn’t hit your own father!”

“You’re not my father! You told me that often enough before!”

“That was meant as a joke, Kuno-Dieter, don’t you understand!”

“I’ve got no father!” shouted the boy, wild with anger. “I’ve got a mother, and I’m starting afresh. And if people come from long ago and say this and that, then I’ll whip them until they leave me alone! I’m not letting you ruin my life!”

He stood there so threateningly with whip upraised that the old man was really frightened. He crept down from the wagon and stood on the road, fear contorting his face.

He came back with the cowardly threat: “I can do you a lot of harm…”

“I was waiting for that!” cried Kuno Kienschaper. “First you beg, then you threaten—that was always your way! But I’m telling you, I swear, I’m going straight to the police, and I’m going to accuse you of threatening to set fire to our home…”

“But I never said that, Kuno-Dieter!”

“Nah, but you thought it, I could see it in your eyes! That’s the way you are! Remember, in an hour the police will be on your tail! So, you get away from here.”

Kuno Kienschaper stood on the road until the ragged shape had disappeared into the cornfields. Then he patted Toni on the neck and said, “Come on, Toni, are we going to let someone like that make a mess of our lives a second time? We started afresh. When Mother put me in the water and washed the dirt off of me with her own hands, that’s when I swore to myself: From now on I’m going to keep clean all by myself! And so I shall!”

Over the next few days, Mother Kienschaper had occasion to wonder several times why she couldn’t get the boy out of the house. Usually he was always the first to volunteer for fieldwork, and now he didn’t even want to play with the cow in the pasture. But she said nothing, and the boy said nothing, and when the days lengthened into summer, and the rye harvest came due, then at last the boy headed out with his scythe…