But on that day I gave no thought to such things. Politics seemed a long way off, and money matters were uppermost in my mind; but I would learn my lesson soon enough!)

I found our quiet house at the end of the village in a state of uproar. The place was crawling with SA stormtroopers, at least twenty or twenty-five of these gentlemen had graced me with their presence, including a big man wearing some sort of gold insignia. Was he a ‘Standartenführer’? A ‘Rottenführer’? A ‘Scharführer’? I’ve no idea, and to this day I have not wasted mental energy on learning to tell the difference between all these silly uniforms that the new Germany has gone to town on since 1933. I’d like to die without insignia or decorations of any kind; if I reach a ripe old age, they can put me on display by the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin with a sign saying: ‘This is the only German who never received a medal or decoration, never earned a rank or title, never won a prize and never belonged to a club.’ In this regard I’m doubtless very un-German.

So anyway, some kind of senior SA officer was involved, but what cheered me was the presence of a good old country policeman, wearing the familiar green uniform complete with shako-style helmet. An edict had only recently been issued by Mr Göring to the effect that house searches and arrests were no longer to be carried out by Party echelons acting alone, but that a regular police officer must always be present. The abuses and brutalities that Party members had permitted themselves in their dealings with opponents had caused quite a stink, and in those early days there were even a few Party noses that were still sensitive to excessively rank odours. But that sensitivity was short-lived. The powers that be soon saw that they could take all the liberties they wanted with the German people, who were too acquiescent by half.

So the sight of a policeman, putting me in mind of that edict, gave me a certain feeling of security: at least things would be conducted with a semblance of ‘legality’. (In the next two hours I would find out just how much this ‘legality’ was worth.) The policeman was very polite and proper: ‘We have to conduct a search of your house, Mr Fallada, a complaint has been lodged against you. Give me your keys!’

‘Be my guest!’ I replied, and handed them over. I was reassured by the courteous tone, but knew better than to inquire as to the nature of the complaint. ‘Ask too many questions and you’ll get too many answers’ – or none at all, and that’s certainly true when dealing with court officials and anything to do with them.

We processed solemnly into the house, my little boy, who had been following everything that happened with big blue eyes and without a sound, and Teddy still holding on to my hand.

For a moment Mrs Sponar peeped round an open door in the hall. There was a burning look in this evil woman’s eyes, and the way she looked at me made me feel distinctly ill at ease. Although I didn’t know it at the time, I was right to feel that way: she thought she was seeing me for the last time in her life. We climbed the stairs, and in the kitchen I saw my wife busying herself with the dishes. She was a little pale, but there was no clattering of plates as she worked. I sent the boy in to her, and the policeman said: ‘For the moment you are not allowed to have any contact with your wife or anyone else.’ I nodded. ‘And now you can start by showing us where you keep your correspondence!’ Which I did.

I have always been proud of the good order in which I keep my private affairs, and my double-entry bookkeeping would not put a professional accountant to shame. My correspondence is clearly filed in alphabetical order by addressee. I unlocked the cupboard where it was kept. The first folder they took out was not the letter A, but the letter S. ‘Aha!’ I thought to myself. ‘This early-morning visit is all about Mr von Saloman! Who knows what that adventurer with his hard-line Communist brother has been up to this time – and now I’m in trouble too because of it!’

But they didn’t find a single letter to or from Mr von Saloman, who was someone I’d only ever spoken to.

But that didn’t discourage them, even if it was initially a disappointment. They went through the correspondence folder by folder, and when they had finished that they started on my books. They took every book and shook it out vigorously, which didn’t do the bindings much good. I didn’t have very many books at the time, but there were still a good few – so it took them quite a time. Every now and then they would trot across to their gold-braided leader and show him a book that had caught their attention, such as the book of memoirs by Max Hölz35 – Vom weissen Kreuz zur roten Fahne [From White Cross to Red Flag] – or Marx’s Das Kapital or an issue of the journal Radikaler Geist.36 But the leader shook his head. He was not interested in such trifles: he was after bigger game. I rightly took that to be a bad sign.