Every Man Dies Alone Read Online Free PDF Page B

what meets her eyes, rejection of Quangel’s action, indifference, but then she moves back to her old position. She says, putting the calendar back in her pocket, “Tonight’s not possible, Papa, but I can be at your place tomorrow at eight.”
    “But it has to be tonight, Trudel!” counters Otto Quangel. “There’s some news of Otto.” His look is sharper now, and he sees the smile vanish from her face. “You see, Trudel, Otto’s fallen.”
    It’s strange: the same noise that Otto Quangel made when he heard the news, that deep “Ooh!,” now comes from Trudel’s chest. For an instant she looks at him with swimming eyes and trembling lips, then she turns her face to the wall and props her head against it.She cries, but cries silently. Quangel can see her shoulders shaking, but he can hear no sound.
    Brave girl! he thinks. How devoted she was to Otto! In his way Otto was brave, too, never went along with those bastards, didn’t allow the Hitler Youth to inflame him against his parents, was always opposed to playing soldiers and to the war. The bloody war!
    He stops, struck by what he has just caught himself thinking. Is he changing too? It’s almost like Anna’s “you and your Führer!”
    Then he sees that Trudel has rested her forehead against the very poster from which he just pulled her away. Over her head he can read the jagged type: In the name of the German people; her brow obscures the names of the three hanged men.
    And a vision appears before him of how one day a poster with his own name and Anna’s and Trudel’s might be put up on the wall. He shakes his head unhappily. He’s a simple worker, he just wants peace and quiet, nothing to do with politics, and Anna just attends to the household, and a lovely girl like Trudel will surely have found herself a new boyfriend before long…
    But the vision won’t go away. Our names on the walls, he thinks, completely confused now. And why not? Hanging on the gallows is no worse than being ripped apart by a shell, or dying from a bullet in the guts. All that doesn’t matter. The only thing that matters is this: I must find out what it is with Hitler. Suddenly all I see is oppression and hate and suffering, so much suffering… A few hundred thousand, that’s what that cowardly snitch Borkhausen said. As if the number mattered! If so much as one person is suffering unjustly, and I can put an end to it, and the only reason I don’t is because I’m a coward and prefer peace and quiet, then…
    At this point, he doesn’t dare to think any further. He’s afraid, really afraid, of where a thought like that, taken to its conclusion, might lead. He would have to change his whole life!
    Instead, he stares again at the girl with “In the Name of the German people” over her head. If only she wasn’t crying against this particular poster. He can’t resist the urge to pull her shoulder away from the wall, and says, as softly as he can, “Come away from that poster, Trudel…”
    For an instant she looks uncomprehendingly at the printed words. Her eyes are dry once more, her shoulders no longer heaving. Now there is life in her expression again—not the luster that she had when she first set foot in this corridor, but a darker sort of glow. With herhand she gently and firmly covers the word “hanging.” “Papa,” she says, “I will never forget that when I stood crying over Otto, it was in front of a poster like this. Perhaps—I don’t want it to be—but perhaps it’ll be my name on a poster like that one day.”
    She looks at him hard. He has a feeling she’s not really sure what she’s saying. “Girl!” he cries out. “Stop and think! Why would your name end up on a poster like that? You’re young, you’ve got your whole life ahead of you. You will laugh again, you will have children.”
    She shakes her head stubbornly. “I’m not going to bring children into this world to be cannon fodder. Not while some general can say ‘March till you