Food and Grub

(1945)

There was once a young man – not to put too fine a point on it, it was I, the author of these lines – who in his youth was condemned by doctors and his parents to go into agriculture because city life was deemed to be ‘unsuitable’ for his high-strung nerves. So it came about that for a dozen or so years, I parked my feet under the tables of various landowners; I’m afraid I can’t say that they were always the most generous of hosts.

Good God, though, they were years of plenty, especially those before 1914, and a bit of food here or there couldn’t really have mattered. But many of these people, most of them, in fact, were just mean, and to their wives it seemed to be a matter of honour not to let us have food that was grown on the farm, so that instead of good butter, they would smear our bread with the cheapest margarine, and they fed us on gruel that was sweetened not with sugar but with saccharin.

I remember a Christmas in the Neumark, on Christmas Eve we farm officials were invited to ‘partake’ at the boss’s table. It was all very festive and cordial, peace on earth and goodwill to all men, as the celebrations would have it. But when I helped myself to a piece of breast when the platter went around, I caught the harsh words of the lady of the house, softened by no spirit of celebration: ‘You might have taken the brown meat, you know! I put it on top specially for you, Herr Fallada!’

Another time I was a field inspector on Count Bibber’s estates in Pomerania. It was a wonderful estate, seven manors and three small farms, the owner drove for over ten miles on his own land, a little despot. I lived in the stewards’ housing on the main manor, and was fed along with the other officials by Fräulein Kannebier. One morning I came in from the fields chilled to the bone – it was late autumn, and I was overseeing the plough teams. My breakfast is on the table, the usual two pieces of bread and sausage and a bottle of beer.

Before I could take a bite, my nose is warning me: this liver sausage reeks! Sadly, I push my plate away – I was very young at the time, and was constantly hungry – and I think: oh well, accidents happen. I drink my bottle of beer, and go back out on the fields.

The next morning it’s the same deal: I’d got over the first time, but today’s bread reminds me, the smell is the same.

In a rage, I pick up my plate and run into the kitchen. You wretch! I think. This is no accident, I think. I’m not going to let you walk all over me, I think. I can look after myself.

And: ‘Fräulein Kannebier!’ I say threateningly. ‘This is the second day you’ve given me off sausage for my breakfast. I do proper work here, and I want proper food!’

‘There’s nothing wrong with that sausage!’ she says, and looks at me insolently with her dark eyes. She has a fat, pale face, I can’t stand the sight of her. I bet she eats everything she doesn’t let me have, and she keeps everything from me she can!

‘Smell this!’ I shout, and I hold the plate under her nose. ‘There, did you smell it!’

She takes a step back. ‘There’s nothing the matter with it!’ she says. ‘It’s not even the least bit high!’ she says. ‘It’s made right here on the estate,’ she even says.

It doesn’t seem like we can come to an agreement, neither of us will give an inch. I suggest that she give the delicious, home-slaughtered liver sausage to one of the others, and I’ll make do with margarine, but she’s not having that. After a while she starts getting heated, and she wants me out of her kitchen, but I refuse to give in. I’m on sixty marks per month, gross, and I can’t afford to take myself out to breakfast on that. I want my regulation breakfast.

Finally, in the heat of the argument she lets slip the sentence: ‘The countess personally instructed me to serve that liver sausage for the farm officials’ breakfast!’

‘Fräulein Kannebier!’ I exclaim. ‘I refuse to believe that. That’s out of the question. The countess in person! No, it’s all your doing, Fräulein Kannebier!’

‘She did so order me to do that!’ repeats Fräulein Kannebier, and turns her back on me. She evidently regrets having said it.

‘I’ll go and ask her then, shall I, the countess!’ I say threateningly.

‘Oh, suit yourself!’ she says crossly. ‘Just get out of my kitchen.’

A minute later, behold little Field Inspector Fallada trotting across the manor yard in the direction of the main house. He looks neither left nor right, and in front of him he is carrying the plate with the stinking liver sausage sandwiches. I’ll show her! he thinks to himself.

I walk down the line of lindens across the park, up the drive and reach the entrance hall. The old major-domo Elias, whom I sometimes play skat with on Sunday afternoons, stares at me in wonder. ‘What are you doing here?’ he asks me.

‘Elias!’ I whisper like a conspirator. ‘Do you know where the countess is?’

His look wanders between the plate in my hand and my face. ‘Why do you want to know?’ he asks me suspiciously.

‘Never you mind!’ I reply. ‘Just tell me where to find her, everything else is none of your business.’

Elias has made his mind up. ‘She’s in the breakfast room that opens onto the terrace,’ he whispers back. ‘Straight on, then down the corridor till you get to the blue door. Mind, I never said a thing!’

‘Not a thing!’ I confirm. ‘We haven’t even seen each other. Bye!’

I stand in front of the blue door. By now, my heart has started to pound a little bit. But never mind, there’s no going back on this. I knock and enter, but stay in the doorway.

This is no cosy little breakfast room, this is a vast hall where they are eating. One entire wall is lined with mirror-glass doors, the flower beds on the terrace provide little sprinkles of colour, the bright and dark clumps of ancient park trees – and in the distance the lake is sparkling away.

There they are sitting at breakfast, twenty, maybe thirty of them – the manor is always stuffed full of visitors. The gaudy peacetime uniforms of the officers, the dazzling dresses of the ladies. I see a sparkle of silver and crystal, there’s a fabulous smell of freshly ground coffee, and a hundred other good things – and I’m standing in the doorway with my ponging liver sausage sandwiches. Another world, not for little field inspectors on sixty a month!

But it’s too late to go back. The countess, young as she is, has straight away seen that something’s amiss, and here she is standing in front of me. ‘What brings you here, Herr Fallada?’ she asks. ‘Do you want to speak to the count? I’m afraid he’s not here right now.’

I never supposed the countess knew of my existence, and by golly here she is even using my name! I am almost overcome. In spite of that, I say my piece as well as I can. ‘Countess, this is the second time I’ve been given spoiled liver sausage for my breakfast.’ I raise the plate ever so slightly in her direction. The countess glances at the sausage, and takes a step back. Oddly, I get the sense that countess and sausage have met before. ‘The cook says you ordered the sausage expressly for us officials.’

‘Oh, that wretched Kannebier woman!’ cries the countess, and raises her eyes to the beautiful painted stucco ceiling. ‘She really is too stupid! I told her to use the spoiled sausage for the farm workers, and here she is giving it to the officials!’

For a moment I stand there stunned. Then I say: ‘Thank you very much, Countess!’ Defeated, I slink back across the court. There really are two different worlds!

That evening, the count looks me up in my room and fires me on the spot. He’s even prepared to pay something for the pleasure of ridding himself of this Red troublemaker, who importuned the countess over the matter of his breakfast: he pays me an entire quarter’s salary!

I held many posts during my agricultural period, and none of them for very long. But my shortest spell was on a big estate in Silesia: I worked there for just seven hours, and there too the issue was food.

This was in 1917. I was in Berlin working for a potato wholesaler and starving and freezing through the wretched turnip winter. In those circumstances, it was easy for Economic Councillor Reinlich to talk me into monitoring the progress of a strain of potato he had bred himself on his estate. I was deeply regretting having gone into the city from the country, where at least there was still bread and fruit and milk and potatoes – and not just turnips!

One evening, I clambered down from a hunting wagon that had picked me up from the station, I had reached my new sphere of operations. My boss, old Reinlich, was a good old fellow, a bachelor, by the way, corpulent, a bit deaf and a bit untidy – his standards of personal hygiene had little to do with his name.^* He showed me to my ground-level room, it was all perfectly all right. ‘Maybe you’d like to get moved in a bit. Supper’s in half an hour.’

I had hardly washed when I heard the gong. Everything was very patriarchal here: at one end of the table sat the economic councillor, at the other his little wizened sister who ran the household. In between were the various officials: the field inspector, the farm administrator, the milk controller, the book-keeper, the cook. And in established patriarchal country fashion supper began with a flour soup which was spiced by some brownish-blackish clumps. Then there was bread and butter with cheese and sausage – yes, it was a good thing that I had come here, and I would stay a long time. No more turnips …

Supper was over, and the economic councillor said to his sister: ‘I’m going to sit with Herr Fallada in the office for a while, and talk him through the record-keeping. Would you bring us a bottle of the second-best Mosel.’

Second-best Mosel and the prospect of something to smoke, it all sounded good, very good. Hang onto your hat, Fallada!

In comes the sister with the Mosel. The boss glowers up at her from under his spectacles. ‘If I told you once,’ he growls, ‘I must have told you a hundred times to keep the lid of the flour bin shut! But no! The soup was full of mouse droppings again!’

Then I knew what the strangely spicy little brownish-blackish dumplings I had eaten were. And I thought: something that begins this shittily is only going to go on in the same vein. Knock the dust off your feet, Fallada, and hit the highway!

I listened with interest to everything the economic councillor told me about his remarkable potatoes, and smoked his cigars and drank his Mosel – all those, after all, were safe from contamination. Then, when I was back in my room, I waited quietly till everyone in the building was asleep. I lifted my two suitcases onto the window seat, clambered out and quietly went back the way I had come seven hours before in the hunting carriage. And as they were sitting down to breakfast on the estate – presumably with flour soup, with the same garnish – the train was already carrying me back to freezing, turnip-eating Berlin.

The economic councillor never got in touch. Perhaps he understood that there were people who drew the line at a bit of mouse dirt – I hope he did anyway.