“Hey!” I called. “There was a rotten potato among that lot!”
“Don’t matter, mate,” he said, chewing eagerly. “I’ve got to mow all day, I never get enough. Perhaps I can pinch some pig-spuds tonight. Hope so!”
He was not the only glutton, they were all hungry, always, even directly after a meal. I saw sick men going round, stealing tiny crumbs of potato off the table, while others scraped out their already spotless bowls. I saw one in the corridor polishing the inside of the gravy cauldron with his finger which he licked again and again. All this was happening under the eyes of the keeper, who regarded it as a commonplace affair.
Here I am anticipating somewhat, but in this chapter I want to have done with my description of asylum meals, though it is not yet a closed chapter for me even today. We never got fresh meat to eat, just occasionally shreds—never lumps—of some old red salt meat floating in the gravy, and very rare shreds, at that! There was never butter, sausage or cheese, never an apple. And everything we had was quite inadequate, always watered- down, and badly prepared. Why it was so, I cannot imagine, even today. The prisoners maintained that the head- nurse was eating everything himself. But even the greediest head-nurse can’t put away the food of a few hundred men. Perhaps the authorities wanted to take away our nature a bit, but I must confess that even on this starvation diet, the passions remained lively enough. However there were always folk among us who suffered no such hunger, who even lived fatly, within certain limits. First there were the orderlies, who had to cut, weigh and spread our bread for us. Officially a keeper stood by and watched, but let the telephone ring and the keeper would have to leave the kitchen and go into the glass box, and immediately a few slices would be thickly spread and disappear. Prisoners have sharp eyes, and hunger makes them sharper; it was inevitable that they should get to know that they were being robbed. One might see an orderly chewing a piece of bread in the lavatory, another might surprise him giving it to a “friend” or trading it for tobacco. But there was no point in informing on them. It was difficult to prove anything, almost impossible, for even if the bread was found (which hardly ever happened because no keeper could be bothered to look for it) the orderly could say “I saved it up from breakfast”; and then the orderlies were the keepers’ blue-eyed boys, their tale-bearers; they would not hear a word against them. So practically nothing ever happened about it, but the envy and the hatred was kept awake all the time.
Even worse than this furtive way of procuring food was a quite legal way, condoned and even encouraged by the authorities. Such of the inmates as still had obliging relatives outside, were allowed to receive food parcels as often as they wished. One might expect that almost every one of the patients would have such relatives outside, who might at least send him a loaf now and then—even dry bread was a longed-for commodity there. But such was not the case. Apart from the fact that many of the inmates could neither read nor write (this dreadful place housed only the last dregs of humanity) or else were too insane or dull-witted to do so, the relatives of the majority did not wish to acknowledge them any more. They had caused grief and shame enough when they were outside, and now that they had been in this place for five, ten, even twenty years, they were done with and forgotten by those outside, to them they were dead and buried.
No, there were very few who got parcels; out of the fifty-six men in my block, perhaps only five or six. But these sat plump and well-fed at our common meal-table and lay beside the bowls full of watery soup, their thickly- spread bread, with sausage and cheese we never got a taste of; yes I even lived to see a fat peasant who had been put away on account of his ungovernable temper, devouring a roast duck at his ease in front of us, gnawing it bone by bone. He dripped with fat, and we sat by with our eyes growing bigger and bigger, our slavering mouths filling with water, our hands trembling, and our hearts full of envy and greed.
From all this, from our constant hunger, and our hatred of the thieving orderlies and our envy of the gluttons, arose an endless round of acrimony, quarrels, fights, punishments. There was not a day’s peace in the place, always something going on. One no longer even listened when two men insulted each other in the most obscene manner. One merely walked away when they blacked each other’s eyes and bloodied each other’s noses. One was thankful not to be involved oneself. One had to watch every word that was said, it would be immediately passed on, immediately turned against the speaker.
For my own part, I must confess that at first it was not only with envy that I regarded these parcel-hogs. It was so simple for me, I had only to write a letter to Magda and I could belong to this privileged class. Magda wouldn’t be one to let her own husband starve! For a week I struggled with myself, and then hunger won, I decided to write. I had neither writing paper nor envelope, and nothing of the sort was provided by the institution; but I saved a slice of bread and got what I wanted. I wrote the letter, and then I waited. In bed of an evening I pictured to myself what would be in the parcel; when I thought of a slice of bread thickly spread with fat liver-sausage, I was nearly sick with hunger and craving. I had calculated the earliest day on which the parcel could arrive, but that day passed, and many days after it, and the parcel did not come. Then I heard that all communications had first to go through the censorship of the medical officer and then be passed over to the administrative offices for franking, and that letters were not sent off immediately, but only after a while, when a number had accumulated.
“They take their time,” said the prisoners. “Do you think they’ll start running just because you want ’em to? They sit all the firmer on their arses.”
So I went on waiting and hoping.
Then one day the head-nurse casually said, “There’s a letter of yours in the office, Sommer. They say it can’t go, you’ve got no money for the postage.”
“What,” I cried. “Because of twelve pfennigs postage I can’t send a letter! I sent my wife four thousand marks from the remand prison!”
“You should have kept a few marks back,” said the head-nurse, and tried to pass on.
“But sir,” I cried, “It’s not possible! Just for twelve pfennigs! They can ring up my wife, and she’ll confirm …”
“A phone call costs ten pfennigs, and you haven’t got it, Sommer,” said the head-nurse coolly. “Keep calm, your letter will go off all right, next month when your first wages are credited to you.”
I have no idea whether my letter to Magda was eventually sent off or whether it got lost in the meantime. Anyhow, I never got a food parcel, I always remained among the hungry ones, the greedy envious ones. For by the time I finally had some wages to my credit, I had long become too dispirited to write to Magda.
40
I have hurried on far in advance of events. I am still on my first day in the asylum. I have eaten my potatoes very properly with no peel on them, and I am dog-tired after my sleepless night. I turn to the head-nurse and beg him to allow me to lie down on my bed for an hour, since I have not been able to sleep all night.
“That is forbidden,” says the head-nurse sternly, but then in a milder tone: “All right, lie down. But get undressed and into bed properly.”
I do so, and I have hardly lain down and shut my eyes before that hated yelling voice rises.
“Get out of bed this instant, you swine! You’d like that, wouldn’t you, to loaf around while we do your work for you? Get up, get out of that bed!”
The ever-watchful bloodhound has tracked me down. But now I am in a fury, my hatred gives me strength to protest.
“Shut your mouth!” I shout furiously. “Do you think you’re better than the head-nurse? He’s given me permission and you, you swine …”
“He’s given you permission, has he really?” he grinned and slobbered and showed his discoloured fangs. “Well, you must be pretty posh if the head-nurse makes an exception like that for you. Don’t be angry, mate. I’m just here to keep order in the block, otherwise I get sat on by the head-nurse.” Whereupon he disappears, and I lie back, quite content to think that I have got the better of him at last.
I have really fallen asleep but only for a few minutes, then something causes me to wake up. It is probably not a noise that awakens me, but an instinct by which I scent danger: in this place one develops the instincts of a hunted beast. I am lying on my side looking straight at the stool by my bed, where I put my clothes. I blink, and see something white, busying itself with my things. It is that Lexer again. Very carefully, infinitely quietly he takes up one article of clothing after another, searches the pockets and feels along the seams … my first impulse is to spring up and rush at this devil, this indefatigable tormentor. But I hold myself back, I remain lying quietly, I watch what he does. Let him search. I grin. I have not the slightest thing in my pockets that he could conceivably want. Not the slightest thing?
