perhaps, which I cut up with a spoon and put on bread, or a cigarette and a match; then at evening, after lock-up time, when the building had fallen quiet, I would smoke my fag in comfort. Yes, I learned to smoke in prison, very much to the fury of Duftermann, who always filled the air with his cigar-fumes, and despised the smoking of cigarettes as womanly. But I let him go on talking, by that time I was completely indifferent to him.
Yes, Mordhorst, misanthrope as he was, helped me a great deal; he was an excellent adviser in my ‘case’ too, a better one than the lawyer who came to see me. Unfortunately, at the first hearing, I appeared before the examining magistrate without Mordhorst’s advice, and thus I made a serious mistake which I only realised later.
30
I had been in custody for three days, and I was not yet working in the wood-yard, when the head-warder Spittstosser appeared at my cell at four in the afternoon and said: “Come with me, Sommer. Put your jacket on and come with me.”
I walked behind the “chief”, and was at that time so inexperienced in prison matters that I politely asked: “Where are you taking me, officer?” I did not know then that a prisoner should never ask questions, that he never gets an answer, that he can only wait and see what fate—which may be a warder, or may be the Public Prosecutor—has in store for him. So I got the rather rude answer: “What’s it to do with you? You’ll find out.”
Over in the district court, the atmosphere of a real summer afternoon reigned; many of the room-doors were open and I caught a glimpse of tidied and deserted desks. It turned out that the sergeant of the court had gone to the post office, and so was not able to take me over from the charge of the prison officer. My custodian was in a hurry to return to his own building, and a slight argument ensued between a fat elderly woman clerk and my warder.
“I’m not here to look after your prisoners,” said the clerk angrily. “You always try that sort of thing. If one of them gets away, I’d be blamed for it.”
“Yes, but your sergeant doesn’t have to run off all the time, he knows full well the prisoner’s only been called over for interrogation.”
So the argument went back and forth for a while, neither of them would have me, till suddenly the elderly woman said, quite surprisingly: “All right, just for once I’ll do it. Herr Sommer won’t run away from me.”
With that, she looked at me with a friendly smile. So she knew me. I was set on a chair, and for the first time for days I looked again through an unbarred window, out on to one of my home town streets, and saw the children playing. One of the drays of the Trappe Beer Company rolled by. Trappe himself, who was well known to me and almost a friend, sat on the driver’s seat. Now a young girl, also a clerk probably, went through the room in which I had been put, saw me, gave me a friendly smile and said: “Good afternoon, Herr Sommer.”
So she knew me too, she was kind to me, although I was in custody on a charge of attempting to murder my wife. That elderly clerk had been kind also, she had said: “Herr Sommer won’t run away,”—they were all kind to me, the best proof that my prospects were good. Probably the examining magistrate would not commit me for trial, perhaps I would be free in half an hour. My heart beat strongly, joyfully.
Now an elderly man came into the room, a long, thin, grey-haired gentleman, who looked somewhat uneasy and distraught.
“This is Herr Sommer, Herr Direktor,” said the elderly clerk, and she nodded her head towards me.
“Is it?” said the elderly gentleman, with a slight cough (he was the head of the district court, I later found out). He looked at me for a moment with his tired, rather troubled eyes, and then gave me his hand.
“Come with me, then, Herr Sommer.”
Again nothing but friendliness, handshakes, being addressed as “Herr”; all this to-do utterly deceived me inexperienced as I was, I completely forgot that these were all my enemies only out to trick me, to sentence me, to keep me in prison.
I forgot the saying I had only just learned: “Easier to get in than out.” I thought that getting out was being made easier for me than getting in. I opened my whole heart to the magistrate, told him everything as it really happened, and later I was to find out what consequences my trustfulness had.
The head of the district court went before me into a comfortably-furnished office with many many books along the walls. I was placed on a chair in front of the desk, the magistrate sat behind it, a middle-aged lady appeared and put a large sheet of paper in the typewriter, the magistrate ran his hand through his hair, adjusted his spectacles, and said: “We’re very worried about you, Herr Sommer.” He coughed and said to the woman: “Take down Herr Sommer’s personal details.”
The questionnaire was easily enough answered; perhaps I gave Magda’s birth-date incorrectly (I was ashamed to admit that I didn’t know it for sure), and when I was asked whether my financial affairs were in order, I straightway said “Yes,” though I subsequently had serious doubts about this, because it seemed questionable whether Magda would be able to manage the business after my withdrawal of that five thousand marks. But I did not have the chance to rectify matters, for now the magistrate began to question me, or rather he took up a large closely-typed sheet, ran his hand through his hair again, adjusted his spectacles, coughed, and said: “So you are held on suspicion of the attempted murder of your wife, Herr Sommer. What have you to say to that?”
At this stage, I had such trust in all the people around me that I quite naively cried: “For God’s sake, do they still maintain that I tried to murder my wife? I’ve never thought of such a thing in my life! I love my wife, and if I …”
“No, no, Herr Sommer,” said the head of the district court soothingly. “Of course, attempted murder is out of the question. It was attempted homicide, wasn’t it? You acted under stress, you were drunk, weren’t you?”
“But, Herr Direktor, I didn’t attempt to kill my wife at all. That was just drunken talk because I so much wanted the suitcase, because my wife is stronger than I am.”
“Well, well,” said the magistrate, and smiled thinly. “It probably was something more than a harmless scuffle. You’ve been drinking rather a lot recently, haven’t you, Herr Sommer? Tell me all you had to drink before you paid this nocturnal visit to your wife.”
So the interrogation slowly unfolded. I told everything just as it happened, I racked my brains in order not to forget a single bottle of brandy, I told the barest truth, and like a fool I thought I would manage affairs by truthfulness. But I insisted that I never had the intention of doing my wife any harm, I only wanted the things, I said. The magistrate coughed louder, he referred to the typewritten sheet, and said “I want to put your wife’s statement to you: Here: ‘He seized me by the throat, and tried to kick me in the abdomen,’ and here: ‘He whispered in my ear: I’m coming back tomorrow night to do you in!’ All this sounds like a great deal more than mere threats, doesn’t it, Herr Sommer?”
I was dumbfounded at Magda’s baseness, in putting things in this way. She might at least have added that she only took it for drunken talk: I tried to explain this to the magistrate, I pointed out to him that Magda had been very upset too, and in her excitement she had perhaps taken things far more seriously than they were meant. The magistrate nodded and sighed, he wiped his glasses, whether I convinced him I do not know.
Eventually he said, “Very well then, I won’t question you any further today, that will be enough for the first time.”
“So you won’t commit me for trial?” I asked with boundless joy. The magistrate coughed again.
“No, not exactly commit you for trial, as it were. Not exactly. You see, Herr Sommer, by your own evidence you were excessively drunk.”
“Not excessively drunk, Herr Direktor. I can stand a great deal.”
“You had,” continued the magistrate, correcting himself, “you had an excessive amount to drink, and there is a suspicion that at the time of committing the deed you were not in full possession of your mental faculties. What would you do if you were at home now? You would only start quarrelling with your wife again, you would only start drinking again. No, Herr Sommer, first you must get quite well again. First of all, I’ll send you to an institution where you’ll be under medical supervision and can get really well.…”
“Thank you, thank you, Herr Direktor,” I could have fallen on the old gentleman’s neck for his great kindness. Yes, for his great kindness.
