I can’t remember what you told me a moment ago.” With grim resolve he gazes at the poster. “I don’t care if the whole Gestapo turns up, I don’t know anything. And,” he adds, “if you want, and if it makes you feel more secure, then from this moment forth, we simply won’t know each other anymore. You don’t need to come tonight to see Anna, I’ll cook up some story for her.”

“No,” she replies, her confidence restored. “No. I’ll go and see Mother tonight. But I’ll have to tell the others that I blabbed, and maybe someone will come and see you, to see if you can be trusted.”

“Let them come,” says Otto Quangel menacingly. “I don’t know anything. Bye, Trudel. I probably won’t see you tonight. You know I’m rarely back before midnight.”

She shakes hands with him and heads off down the passage, back to her work. She is no longer so full of exuberant life, but she still radiates strength. Good girl! thinks Quangel. Brave woman!

Then Quangel is all alone in the corridor lined with posters gently flapping in the draft. He gets ready to go. But first, he does something that surprises himself: he nods meaningly at the poster in front of which Trudel was weeping—with a grim determination.

The next moment, he is ashamed of himself. How theatrical! And now, he has to hurry home. He is so pressed for time, he takes a streetcar, which, given his parsimony that borders sometimes on meanness, is something he hates to do.

Chapter 5



ENNO KLUGE’S HOMECOMING

Eva Kluge finished her delivery round at two o’clock. She then worked till four totting up newspaper rates and surcharges: if she was very tired, she got her numbers muddled up and she would have to start again. Finally, with sore feet and a painful vacancy in her brain, she set off home; she didn’t want to think about everything she had to do before getting to bed. On the way home, she shopped, using her ration cards. There was a long line at the butcher’s, and so it was almost six when she slowly climbed the steps to her apartment on Friedrichshain.

On her doorstep stood a little man in a light-colored raincoat and cap. He had a colorless and expressionless face, slightly inflamed eyelids, pale eyes—the sort of face you immediately forget.

“Is that you, Enno?” she exclaimed, and right away gripped her keys more tightly in her hand. “What are you doing here? I’ve got no money and nothing to eat, and I’m not letting you into the flat either.”

The little man made a dismissive gesture. “Don’t get upset, Eva. Don’t be cross with me. I just wanted to say hello. Hello, Eva. There you are!”

“Hello, Enno,” she said, reluctantly, having known her husband for many years. She waited a while, and then laughed briefly and sardonically.” All right, we’ve said hello as you wanted, so why don’t you go? But it seems you’re not going, so what have you really come for?”

“See here, Evie,” he said.