Free Every Man Dies Alone by Hans Fallada Page B

chops!” he announces, just like he did in the morning to Baldur Persicke. But she didn’t scream. So they took a relaxed gander round the small corridor first, which was fairly stuffed with furniture and boxes and cases. Well, the Rosenthals used to own a large apartment near their shop, and if you have to leave in a hurry and move into two rooms with bed and kitchen, then that’s bound to create a bit of clutter, isn’t it? Stands to reason.
    Their fingers were itching to begin prying and poking and packing the loot away, but Borkhausen thought it would be sensible to find Rosenthal first and tie a hanky over her face so she wouldn’t make any trouble. The bedroom was so piled high they could hardly move, and they understood that there was so much plunder here that they wouldn’t be able to move it in ten nights—they could only try and pick the best stuff. In the other room, same story, and in the cloakroom aswell. Only there’s no Rosenthal anywhere. The bed hasn’t been slept in. Borkhausen checks the kitchen and the toilet, but there’s no sign of the woman, and that’s a huge stroke of luck, because it saves them trouble and makes their work considerably easier.
    Borkhausen goes back into the first room and starts digging around. He doesn’t even notice that his partner, Enno, has gone missing. Enno is standing in the larder, bitterly disappointed at not finding any stuffed neck of goose, just a half a loaf of bread and a couple of onions. But he starts eating anyway, slices up the onions and lays them flat on the bread, and he’s so hungry, it tastes pretty good to him.
    While Enno Kluge’s standing there chewing away, his eye falls on a lower shelf and he suddenly sees that while the Rosenthals may not have much in the way of food in the house, they do keep a cellar. Because down on the lower shelf are rows and rows of bottles—wine, but also schnapps. Enno, a moderate man in all things except horses, picks up a bottle of dessert wine, and starts off by drizzling his onion sandwiches with it from time to time. But God knows why, suddenly the sweet stuff is sickening to him. (Ordinarily, he is perfectly capable of nursing a glass of beer for three hours.) He opens a bottle of cognac and takes a couple of slugs from it, and within five minutes the bottle is half empty. Perhaps it’s the hunger, or the excitement, that makes him act so out of character. For the moment he’s stopped eating.
    After a while the schnapps no longer interests him, and he trots off to find Borkhausen, who is still rummaging around in the big room, opening wardrobes and cases and chucking everything on the floor in his quest for something better.
    “Wow, they must have moved their whole haberdashery here!” Enno says, awestruck.
    “Stop talking and get cracking!” is Borkhausen’s reply. “There’s bound to be some jewelry hidden here, and cash—the Rosenthals used to be well-off people, millionaires—and you, you prize fool, go talking about cowboy stunts!”
    For a time the two of them work together silently, which means they chuck more and more stuff on the floor, now so covered with clothes and linens and stuff that they’re trampling it underfoot. Then Enno, feeling the worse for wear, says: “I can’t see anything anymore. I need a drink to clear my head. Get some cognac out of the larder, will you, Emil!”
    Borkhausen doesn’t fuss but does as he’s asked, and comes back with two bottles of schnapps, and then they sit down together companionably on the piles of linen, drink slug after slug, and talk through the situation earnestly and thoroughly.
    “You know, Borkhausen, we’re not going to clean this stuff out very quickly, and we don’t want to sit over it too long, either. I vote we each take a couple of suitcases and clear off. Tomorrow, we can think about a return visit.”
    “You’re right, Enno, I don’t want to sit here too long, either, on account of the Persickes.”
    “Who’re