Free After Midnight by Irmgard Keun Page A

Adelheid’s eyes, and Fraulein Fricke’s breath was coming all thin and whistling. I switched the radio on in the next room. There was a concert on gramophone records. Then they said Göring would be talking on the radio that evening. All the ladies were going to stay at Aunt Adelheid’s to hear him. Thinking nothing of it, I said I’d rather not hear him, because I always got the feeling he was telling me off.And that was absolutely all I said on the subject, but even so it was far too much. It’s true, though: one of those speeches begins harmlessly enough, going on about the magnificent German nation which will overcome everything, and you feel you’re being praised and flattered for listening to it. Then the radio lets out a sudden flood of abuse, saying everyone who offends against the nation’s will for reconstruction will be smashed, and those who go in for harmful, carping criticism will be destroyed.
    My heart always stands still when I hear those speeches, because how do I know I’m not one of the sort who are going to be smashed? And the worst of it is that I just don’t understand what’s really going on. I’m only gradually getting the hang of the things you must be careful not to do.
    And back at Aunt Adelheid’s at that time, I was a good deal dimmer than I am today. But even then I was scared stiff someone might notice I didn’t understand a word of it. Göring and the other ministers often shout over the radio, very loud and clear and angry. “There are still some who have not understood what it is all about, but we shall know how to deal with them.” I hate hearing that kind of thing, it’s creepy, because I still don’t know what it is all about, or what they mean. And it’s far too dangerous to ask anyone. Judging by things I’ve picked up from what I’ve heard and read, I could be either criminal or of chronically unsound mind. Neither of which must come out or I’ll be done for. If I’m criminal I’ll go to prison, and if I’m of chronically unsound mind they’ll operate on me so that I can’t get married and have children.
    The long and the short of it is that I still don’t know any more today, but I’m cleverer than I was then, when I toldAunt Adelheid and Fraulein Fricke I didn’t want to listen to speeches on the radio.
    We went on to talk about all our speechifying Party men, in a perfectly harmless way, and Fraulein Fricke and Aunt Adelheid started going on about the Führer again. They thought he was absolutely marvelous. Aunt Adelheid told us about the wild enthusiasm that filled her when she heard the Führer speak in the Exhibition Hall in Cologne. Paul asked her what she had particularly liked about it, and I said, “She liked the way he was sweating.” Fraulein Fricke immediately clasped her hands in horror above her head, as if I’d said the most dreadful thing in the world. And I couldn’t explain, because a woman came into the shop just then to buy postcards with pictures of dogs on them. Aunt Adelheid disappeared into the room behind the shop with Fraulein Fricke, and I felt perfectly happy again, idiot that I was, and hadn’t the faintest notion that the two ladies were planning to twist my words into a rope to hang me with.
    It’s a fact that the way the Führer was sweating did make a bigger impression on Aunt Adelheid than anything else. She said so herself, too. I was in the hall with her while the Führer was speaking. He shouted like mad and was in a state of tremendous excitement. I couldn’t make out a word of it. So I asked Aunt Adelheid what he had been saying afterwards, and asked her to explain the speech to me. It turned out that Aunt Adelheid couldn’t tell me a single thing the Führer had said, but she did say, quivering with enthusiasm, “Wasn’t it wonderful? Have you ever known anything like it? Did you notice how he could hardly speak at all, and went white as a sheet and nearly collapsed? That man spares himself nothing. Did you