Once a Jailbird

ONCE A JAILBIRD

Hans Fallada was born Rudolf Wilhelm Adolf Ditzen in 1893 in Greifswald, north-east Germany, and took his pen-name from a Brothers Grimm fairy tale. He spent much of his life in prison or in psychiatric care, yet produced some of the most significant German novels of the twentieth century, including Little Man, What Now?, Iron Gustav, A Small Circus, The Drinker and Alone in Berlin, the last of which was only published in English for the first time in 2009, to near-universal acclaim. He died in Berlin in 1947.

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Copyright © Aufbau Verlag GmbH & Co. KG, Berlin 2009

First published by Rowohlt, Berlin 1934; first published by Aufbau Verlag, Berlin 1962
in: Hans Fallada. Selected works in single issues. Edited by Günter Caspar. Tome VI.

Revised Translation copyright © Nicholas Jacobs, 2014
Translation copyright © Eric Sutton, 2014
Translation is published and licensed to Skyhorse Publishing courtesy of Penguin Books Ltd., London

First published as Wer Einmal Aus Dem Blechnapf Frißt in Germany by Rowohlt, 1934
First published in English as Who Once Eats Out of the Tin Bowl in Great Britain by Putnam, 1934

First published as Once a Jailbird by Penguin Classic, 2012

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10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

eISBN: 978-1-62872-381-6

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.

ISBN: 978-1-61145-944-9

Printed in the United States of America

Contents

1 Time-expired

2 Release

3 The Home of Peace

4The Road to Freedom

5The Cito-Presto Typing Agency

6 On His Own

7 Collapse

8 A Job

9 Ripe for Arrest

10 North, South, East, West—Home’s Best

1

Time-expired

I

Prisoner Willi Kufalt was pacing up and down his cell. Five paces forward, five paces back. Five paces forward again.

He stopped for a moment under the window. It was opened slantwise, as far as the iron shutters allowed, and through it he could hear the shuffle of many feet and the intermittent shout of a warder: ‘Keep your distance! Five paces apart!’

Section C4 were having their recreation period, walking round and round in a circle for half an hour in the open air.

‘No talking! Get it?’ shouted the warder outside, and the feet shuffled on and on.

The prisoner walked to the door, stood beside it and listened; not a sound in the whole vast building.

‘If Werner doesn’t write today,’ he thought, ‘I must go to the chaplain and beg to be taken into the Home. Where else can I go? My earnings won’t come to more than three hundred marks. And they’ll soon be gone.’

He stood and listened. In twenty minutes recreation would be over. Then his section would go down. He must try to grab a bit of tobacco before that. He couldn’t be without tobacco for his last two days.

He opened his little cupboard and looked inside; of course there was no tobacco there. He must rub up his plate too, or Rusch would be on to him. Polish? Ernst would get some for him.

He put his coat, cap and scarf on the table. Even if it was a warm bright May day outside, scarf and cap were compulsory.

‘Well, only two more days of it. Then I can dress as I please.’

He tried to imagine what his life would then be like, but could not . . . ‘I’ll be walking along the street, and there’ll be a pub, and I’ll open the door and say: Waiter, a glass of beer . . . ’

Outside, in the Central Hall, Rusch, the chief warder, was knocking his keys against the iron grille.