unoccupied.
“Turn out your pockets and put everything on the table.”
I did so. It was little enough: a bunch of keys, a pocket knife, a rather dirty handkerchief.
“That all you’ve got? No money? Well, hold up your arms.”
I did so; and now he felt me up and down, presumably for any hidden belongings.
“All right,” said the blue-uniformed man. “I’ll put you in Eleven for the time being. The governor’s not here just now. It’s the lunch-break.”
I asked politely whether I might have some lunch too. I hadn’t had anything yet.
“Lunch is over,” he answered coolly. “There’s none left.”
“But I haven’t had any breakfast either!” I cried excitedly. Up till the present my appetite had not been very large, but now it seemed ravenous. I felt my rights were being violated; even a prisoner must eat!
“You’ll enjoy your supper all the more,” he answered, unmoved. “Come on now!”
He led me along a corridor, through an iron grill, up a stairway, through an iron door. I saw a long gloomy corridor and many iron-studded doors with locks and bolts, then again up a stairway, up another stairway, again an iron door—the man had to keep unlocking and locking all the time, and he did it all so casually … but my heart sank: all these doors that now lay between me and the outside world made me realise so clearly how trapped I was, how difficult it was going to be to get free again. From the very first moment I felt the truth of that saying which I was to hear often in prison: “Easier to get in than out.”
My guide had stopped before an iron door with a white “11” on it. Behind this, then, I was to live. He unlocked the door, and beyond it appeared another door. This, too, he unlocked.
“Get in,” said my companion impatiently, and I entered. From a narrow bed, a strange figure arose, a tall man of remarkable girth, with a bald head and spectacles.
“A bit of company?” he asked. “Well, that’s nice. Where are you from?”
I was so astonished to find that I had a room-mate in my cell that I only noticed much later that the turnkey had gone and I was finally and irrevocably shut in.
“Sit down on that stool,” said the fat man. “I’m staying in bed for a bit. You’re not supposed to, but Fermi doesn’t say anything. Fermi’s the one who just brought you up.”
I sat on the stool and stared at the man lying on the bed. Like me, he wore civilian clothes, a once-elegant suit from a good tailor, which was now crumpled and stained.
“Are you a prisoner too?” I finally asked.
“I should say so!” laughed the fat man. “Do you think I’d be sitting in this hole for fun?” He stretched, and gave a groan as he did so. “I’ve been stuck in this place eleven weeks already. But d’you think they’ve charged me yet? Not a hope. These fellows take their time, as far as they’re concerned you could rot before they’d stir themselves. What are you up for?”
“The Public Prosecutor had me arrested for the attempted murder of my wife,” I answered with modest pride, and I quickly added, “But it isn’t true. Not a word of it is true.”
The fat man laughed again.
“Of course it’s not true,” he laughed. “There’s only innocent men in here—when you ask them.”
“But in my case it really isn’t true,” I insisted. “I never tried to murder my wife. We just had a bit of a quarrel.”
“Ah well,” said the fat man, “in time you’ll get it all off your chest. Everyone who isn’t used to clink starts to talk after a time. Only you want to be careful who you’re talking to. Most of ’em want to be the governor’s pet and they go crawling to him with everything—and then you’re for it.”
He looked candidly at me with his little eyes through rolls of fat, and said: “You can talk quite openly with me. I’m the soul of honour. I’m ‘stickum’.”
“What are you?”
“Stickum, that’s what we say here for close-mouthed. I don’t squeal, understand?”
“But I’ve really nothing to confess,” I assured him again.
“Well, we’ll see about that,” said the fat man comfortably. “Perhaps you’ll be lucky, and the examining magistrate’ll be of the same opinion as you and won’t commit you for trial.”
“But I was arrested by the Public Prosecutor himself.”
“That doesn’t mean anything,” the fat man informed me. “First of all, tomorrow or the day after, they bring you up before the examining magistrate. He questions you, and if he decides in your favour, you’ll be free again.”
“Is that really true?” I ask excitedly. “I can still get free?”
“Of course you can. But it doesn’t often happen that way. Still, we’ll see.”
And again he stretched comfortably.
I was intoxicated by the prospect of possible freedom so near at hand. I stood up and thoughtfully paced to and fro in the cell. If Magda gave favourable evidence on my behalf I would get free. And she had to give favourable evidence on my behalf, I felt. And even if she was still furious with me, she could never say I had tried to murder her. That was something I had never wanted to do. Dimly I remembered having said something like “Tomorrow night I’ll come and kill you,” but that was only drunken babble. It didn’t mean anything.
“Listen,” said the fat man. “Don’t run up and down the cell like that. You give me the fidgets. Sit down quietly on that stool, but take the cushion off first, it’s my private cushion. You can’t lie down on your kip yet. The old man won’t bring you your straw-bag till tonight. God, how this stable gets on my nerves!” Then the fat man yawned heartily, let a terrible one go—I started with fright—groaned, “Ah, that’s better!” and fell asleep at once.
I do not want to go on recounting in such detail the first days of my remand period. They were so agonising that one night I got up softly, went over to the fat man’s locker and took the blade out of his safety razor. I wanted to cut my throat. But I could not pluck up the courage. I tentatively made a small cut in my wrist, which only bled a little, but it calmed me. The will to live conquered, and that same night I put the blade back in the razor.
On the whole, it was easier for me to get over my craving for alcohol than I had expected. I had not become a proper drunkard yet, I had given myself up to schnaps for a short time only, and had never seen white mice. I was greatly helped, during this weaning period, by the fact that on the third or fourth day I volunteered for work. I could not bear to sit brooding and inactive in my cell, nor could I stand the fat man’s company—his name, by the way, was Duftermann. I think I would have murdered him if I had been forced to spend twenty-four hours of every day in his company. He was nothing but an animal; a more flagrantly egotistic man I have never met. He had obtained for himself every privilege the law allows for prisoners awaiting trial—he had blankets and cushions on his hard straw- bag, a regular supply of tobacco, and food parcels, but he never gave a crumb away. In the first few days, when I did not have my own washing things in the cell, he forbade me even to use his comb. I was not once allowed to touch his mirror, and it was only unwillingly that he permitted me to use a sheet of his newspaper as toilet paper.
“No, no, Sommer,” he would say. “Here it’s ‘God helps those who help themselves.’ Why should I start looking after you? What do you do for me? You only give me the fidgets.”
That was another point on which I was driven nearly frantic. Everything I did upset Duftermann. I was not allowed to walk up and down in the cell: if, in the night, I turned on my straw mattress, he complained about his sleep being disturbed: if I wanted to open the little window for a moment, he shouted that it was cold on his bald head, and so we had to go on squatting there in the heat and the stink. But he allowed himself everything. He greedily wolfed the food parcels which his wife brought for him twice a week, sat on the bucket six times a day, behaved like a pig, and snored so loudly at night that it kept me awake for hours on end, at the mercy of my gloomy thoughts. If ever I hated a man from the bottom of my heart it was Duftermann. In the long time of trouble ahead of me, I was to lie down with much rougher folk, with labourers, with tramps even—but none of them ever let themselves go, so flagrantly gave rein to all their instincts, as this Duftermann did. By profession he was merely a property-owner, the son of a rich long-dead father who had left him several large houses and other real estate. Up till now, Duftermann had spent his life administering this property, and in the course of administering it, he had met with the misfortune that brought him to prison and caused him to become my cell-mate. As he denied nothing to himself and everything to others, and as he claimed the right to do whatever he pleased, he had set fire to one of his houses, whose dilapidated condition had nettled him for some time past, so as to cover the cost of rebuilding by the insurance money. In this fire, a woman and her child had lost their lives.
Duftermann merely complained: “The damed fool! Couldn’t she run out in time like all the rest? No, the stupid
