Wolf Among Wolves

Wolf Among Wolves
First published as
Wolf Unter Wölfen
by Rowohlt, Berlin, 1937M
© Aufbau-Verlagsgruppe GmbH, Berlin 1994 (Published with Aufbau;
“Aufbau” is a trademark of Aufbau Verlagsgruppe GmbH)
First translated into English by Phillip Owens and published by G. P. Putnam’s Sons, New York, 1938

This restored, unabridged edition © 2010 Melville House Publishing Additional translations by Thorsten Carstensen and Nicholas Jacobs.
Afterword © Thorsten Carstensen

Melville House Publishing
145 Plymouth Street
Brooklyn, NY 11201
www.mhpbooks.com

First Melville House Printing: April 2010

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Fallada, Hans, 1893-1947.
  [Wolf unter Wölfen. English]
  Wolf among wolves / Hans Fallada ; translated by Philip Owens ; this unabridged edition restored with additional translations by Thorsten Carstensen and Nicholas Jacobs ; afterword by Thorsten Carstensen.
      p. cm.
  eISBN: 978-1-935554-89-9
  1. Germany—History—1918-1933—Fiction. 2. World War, 1914-1918—Social aspects—Germany—Fiction. 3. Germany—Social conditions—1918-1933—Fiction. 4. Germany—Economic conditions—1918-1945—Fiction. I. Owens,
Philip. II. Title.

PT2607.I6W613 2010
833′.912—dc                                                                             2010001949

v3.1

A Word to the Reader

The author has been reproached by some readers of his novel
Once We Had a Child
for making his hero, Johannes Gäntschow, such a brute. He has read this complaint with some astonishment, for as he wanted to portray a brutal man he could not depict a kind one. To avoid similar complaints the author warns in this preface (which can be glanced through in a moment at any bookstore) that
Wolf Among Wolves
deals with sinful, weak, sensual, erring, unstable men, the children of an age disjointed, mad and sick. All in all, it is a book for those who are, in every sense, adult.

Another not superfluous observation is that this is a novel, and therefore a product of the imagination. Everything in it—characters, events, places, names—is invented, and even if time or place should seem to point to a definite person, the novel is nevertheless only invention, fancy, fiction, story.

While not aiming at a photographic likeness, the author wished to picture a time that is both recent and yet entirely eclipsed. It behooves the rescued not altogether to forget past danger, but, remembering it, to appreciate doubly the happy issue.

                    H. F.

A Note on the Text

Philip Owens’ translation of
Wolf Among Wolves
was published by Putnam’s in New York and London in 1938. For reasons that are not entirely clear, the book was heavily edited in translation: hundreds of passages, including entire paragraphs, were edited out the first English edition. This new edition restores the novel by comparing the abbreviated English edition with the original German text published by Rowohlt Verlag in September 1937. New passages have been translated by Nicholas Jacobs and myself and added to Owens’ impressive original.

THORSTEN CARSTENSEN,
New York University

CONTENTS

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

A Word to the Reader

A Note on the Text

                         
Part One—The Unquiet City

             
One
    Awake in Berlin—and Elsewhere

             
Two
    Berlin Slumps

           
Three
    Hunters and Hunted

            
Four
    An Oppressive Afternoon in
                       Town and Country

             
Five
    The Storm Breaks

               
Six
    It Is Still Sultry after the Storm

           
Seven
    Full Moon on an Oppressive Night

           
Eight
    He Goes Astray in the Night

            
Nine
    A New Start to a New Day

                         
Part Two—The Land Afire

             
Ten
    The Peace of the Fields

         
Eleven
    The Devil’s Hussars Come

        
Twelve
    The Quest Fails

      
Thirteen
    Lost and Forsaken

      
Fourteen
    Life Goes On

        
Fifteen
    The Last Does Not Bemain Alone

        
Sixteen
    The Miracle of the Bentenmark

                          
Afterword

Part One
The Unquiet City

Chapter One
Awake in Berlin—and Elsewhere

I

A girl and a man were sleeping on a narrow iron bed. The girl’s head rested in the crook of her right arm; her mouth, softly breathing, was half open; her face bore a pouting and anxious expression—that of a child who cannot understand why it is sad.

She lay turned away from the man, who slept on his back in a state of utter exhaustion, his arms loose. Tiny beads of sweat stood out on his forehead and in the roots of his curly fair hair; the handsome defiant face looked somewhat vacant. In spite of the open window the room was very hot, and the pair slept without blanket or covering. This is Berlin, Georgenkirchstrasse, third courtyard, fourth floor, July 1923, at six o’clock in the morning. The dollar stands for the moment at 414,000 marks.

II

Out of the dark well of the courtyard the smells from a hundred lodgings drifted into their sleep. A hundred noises, faint as yet, entered the open window where a dingy curtain hung motionless. On the other side of the courtyard barely twenty-five feet away, a refugee child from the Ruhr suddenly screamed.

The girl’s eyelids quivered. She raised her head; her body grew rigid. The child wept quietly, a woman’s voice scolded, a man grumbled—and the girl’s head sank back, her limbs relaxed, and she slept.

In the house there was movement. Doors banged, feet shuffled across the court. There was noise on the stairs; enamel pails knocked against iron banisters; in the kitchen next door the tap was running. On the ground floor a bell rang out in the tin-stamping shed; wheels hummed, machine belts slithered.

The pair slept on …

III

In spite of the early hour and the clear sky, a dull vapor hung over the city. The stench of an impoverished people did not so much rise to the skies, as
cling sluggishly to the houses, creep through every street, and seep through windows into every mouth that breathed.

In the neglected parks the trees let fall faded leaves.

An early main-line train from the east approached Schlesische Bahnhof—the wreck of a train, with rattling windows, broken panes and torn cushions. Its carriages clanked over the points and crossings of Stralau-Rummelsburg.

Rittmeister Joachim von Prackwitz-Neulohe—white-haired and slim, with bright dark eyes, retired cavalry captain and tenant of a manor—leaned out of the window to see where they had come to, and started back: a spark had flown into his eyes. “Miserable dust heap!” he muttered angrily, dabbing with his handkerchief.

IV

Fires had been kindled with limp yellow paper and matches whose heads jumped off or which stank. Bad coal or damp rotten wood smoldered; adulterated gas spluttered, burning without heat; blue watery milk warmed slowly; bread was doughy or too dry; margarine, softened by the heat of the flats, smelled rancid.

The people ate their carelessly cooked food as hastily as they slipped into garments cleaned, shaken and brushed too often. Hastily they skimmed the newspapers; because of the rise in prices there had been riots, disturbances and looting in Gleiwitz and Breslau, in Frankfurt-on-the-Main and Neuruppin, in Eisleben and Dramburg, six killed and a thousand arrested and therefore public meetings had been prohibited by the government. The State Tribunal had sentenced a princess to six months’ imprisonment on the charge of being accessory to high treason and perjury—but the dollar stood at 414,000 as against 350,000 marks on the twenty-third. Salaries would be paid at the end of the month, in a week’s time. What would the dollar be then? Would there be enough to buy food for a fortnight? For ten days? Three days? Would one be able to pay for shoe leather, gas, fares? Quick, wife, here’s another 10,000 marks. Buy something with it—a pound of carrots, some cufflinks, the phonograph record “Yes, we have no bananas,” or a rope to hang ourselves with—it doesn’t matter what. Only be quick, run, don’t lose a second.

V

The early sun was also shining upon the manor of Neulohe. The rye stood in the fields, the wheat was ripe, oats were ready, too. Across the fields a few tractors rattled, lost in the expanse of country. Larks were warbling and trilling overhead.

Forester Kniebusch, bald but with his wrinkled brown face thickly bearded, left the heat of the open field for the wood. Walking slowly, he adjusted the rifle sling on his shoulder with one hand and with the other wiped the sweat from his brow. He walked neither happily, hurriedly, nor powerfully. He walked in his own way, the way he walked in his own forest—light-footed, soft-kneed, cautious, noticing every twig on the path, to avoid stepping on it; he wished to walk quietly.

In spite of all his caution, however, at a turn in the path he met a procession of handbarrows emerging from behind a thicket. Men and women. Their barrows were loaded with freshly cut wood; not branches, only solid trunks were good enough for them. The forester’s cheeks flushed angrily, his lips trembled, and his faded eyes lit up with a gleam of their bygone youth.

The man with the leading barrow—Bäumer, of course—gave a start. Then he went on. The barrows of stolen wood clattered past with hardly a yard to spare, the people looking straight in front or aside as if the forester were not there, motionless, breathing heavily.… Then they disappeared behind the thicket.

“You are getting old, Kniebusch.” The forester could hear the voice of Rittmeister von Prackwitz.

Yes, he thought gloomily, I am so old that I would gladly take to my bed and die. He thought it and walked on.

He was not to die in his bed, however.

VI

Alarm bells were shrilling in Meienburg Penitentiary, the warders ran from cell to cell, the governor was telephoning the Reichswehr for reinforcements, the staff were buckling on their pistol belts and seizing rubber truncheons. Ten minutes ago No. 367 had thrown his bread ration at the warder’s feet, screaming: “I insist on having bread, regulation weight, and not this damned plaster pulp!”

And this had precipitated the uproar, the riot. Yells, shouts, wails, singing and howling came from twelve hundred cells. “Grub! Grub! We’re starving!” The little town of Meienburg crouched beneath the shining white walls of the penitentiary. That uproar penetrated into every house, through every window. And there came a frightful crash. A thousand prisoners had beaten their stools against the iron doors.

Warders and orderlies ran through the corridors, trying to calm the rebels, unlocking the cells of the well-behaved prisoners. “Be reasonable … nobody in Germany gets better food … the dollar … the Ruhr … harvest crew will be
organized at once and sent to the big estates. A packet of tobacco every week, meat every day … for the well-behaved.”

Slowly the noise died down. “Harvest crews … meat … tobacco … good conduct.” The news trickled into every cell and calmed the rumbling stomachs with hopes of repletion. And there was the prospect of the open sky, perhaps of escape. The last of the rioters, those who were still goading themselves into fury, were dragged by warders to the solitary confinement cells. “Well, then, see if you can live without the plaster pulp.”