Officer Factory. Hans Hellmut Kirst

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      The old woman who lives in one of the attics above us passes me on the stairs, goes on down, and then suddenly stops. She stops, and collapses as if her legs had snapped like matchsticks. She lies there without moving, like a bundle of rags. Slowly I go up to her, stand in front of her, bend over her and kneel down and look at her. Her eyes are yellow and staring; her thin mouth, with its dry, cracked lips embedded in a web of wrinkles, is twisted open and a thread of saliva runs down on to the dirty floor. She is no longer breathing. I put my hand over her shriveled breast at the place where the heart should be, but it is no longer beating.

      Giebelmeier, the head of the post office, gives Father a dressing down in front of everyone in the middle of the post office, because of some express letter which hasn't arrived quickly enough. Quite by chance I happen to be standing there behind a pillar. And Giebelmeier roars and gesticulates and goes purple in the face. But Father never says a word; he simply stands there, small, hunched and trembling. Rigidly at attention. He looks up rather shiftily at Giebelmeier, who stands stiffly and proudly in front of him, roaring his head off. Because of some express letter or other. And Father remains silent, abject.

      That evening Father sits there silent as ever, and asks for a beer, which he drinks in silence. He asks for another beer. And then another. “Karl," my father then says to me, “a real man must have pride, a sense of honor. Honor is the all-important thing. One must always defend one's honor." “Oh, yes," I say,” but sometimes one has to remain silent and accept abuse for the sake of a quiet life." “Never," says my father indignantly. “Never, do you hear? Take me, for example, my son. To-day in the post office I had a row with the head, this fellow Giebelmeier. He started shouting at me! But he came out of it badly. I told him off. Gave him a regular trouncing!" “Well done, Father," I say, and leave the room, because I feel ashamed for him.

      I hold my friend Heinz's hand, which is cold as ice. I raise his head and turn it round slightly and see the rent in the skull and the watery blood and brains running out, all yellow and grey. Gently, I lay my friend's head back again and my hands are sticky with blood. And then I look at the weapon on the ground, a .98 rifle, the end of the bullet filed off. He hadn't wanted to live. What has to happen to make a man not want to live like that, I wonder. And I can't get rid of the thought.

      The girl snuggles up to me; I feel her body through the cloth of my suit. All I can see is the gleam in her eyes, but I feel her breath on my face and the moistness of her lips, and my hands slide down her back, brushing the boards of the fence against which I'm pushing her. A wave of passion comes over me, and I no longer know what I am doing. Then I have a great feeling of exhaustion and hear a voice asking me: “What’s your name?"

      “It was two hundred hundredweight of potatoes," I tell the accountant in the estate office. But he doesn't look at me and simply repeats: "It was one hundred hundredweight. Do you follow me?" “No, I don't," I say. “We delivered two hundred hundredweight." “But only a hundred are being entered up," says the accountant. “And we enter up what I say. Is that clear? Perhaps you've heard something about the crisis in agriculture, Krafft? It may have occurred to you to wonder how we keep our heads above water? And here you are wanting to let the State—a State like this, I ask you!—wanting to let the State swallow up all our hard-earned cash! It's suicide. Put it down, then: one hundred hundredweight! Enter that up." “Enter it up yourself," I tell him, pushing the books towards him,” and kindly keep that crisis-in-agriculture stuff to yourself in future!" “Krafft," the accountant then says, “I’m afraid you're not really cut out for this profession. You can't take orders from people. You don't co-operate." “I’m not going to make any false entries," I say. “Look here," says the accountant, “are you trying to accuse me of fraud? Just look here, will you—what's written down here? What have I written? Two hundred! There you are, you see. I only wanted to test you. And of course I'm not going to stand for it if you're going to start suspecting me and accusing me of dishonesty. You're not a person one can work with. I'll have to draw my own conclusions!"

      One evening my uncle says to my father: “Your son Karl doesn't seem to have understood the signs of the times. He goes to church too little and makes no preparations for a family. As a result he's beginning to get ideas into his head. He'd better be sent into the army. They'll soon knock some sense into him there."