didnât dare cut up rough, but their faces wore an expression of righteous indignation at the injustice visited upon them.
Dollâs own expression when carrying out these confiscations was invariably one of anger and contempt, but inside all he felt was disgust and weariness. As someone who had always preferred to live quietly on his own, and who even within his marriage had defended his right to solitude as something sacrosanct, he now had to spend nearly the whole day with other people, talking to them, trying to wring something out of them, seeing tears, listening to sobs, protests, objections, pleas; his head often felt like an echoing abyss filled with noise.
Sometimes he thought fleetingly: What happened to my hatred? These are the Nazis I swore to be revenged on, after all, whose vile deeds I said I would never forget and never forgive. And now Iâm standing here, and the only thing I feel is disgust, and all I want is my bed, and the chance just to sleep and sleep and forget about all this â just so that I donât have to look at all this filth any more!
But in these days and weeks when he was constantly overworked, he never had time for himself. He could never think his own thoughts through to the end, because his mind was constantly taken up with other things. Sometimes he had the unsettling feeling that his insides were leaking away, and that one day he would just be a hollow skeleton with a covering of skin and nothing else. But he had no time to dwell on this thought, and he couldnât decide whether he really had stopped hating the Nazis, or whether he was just too tired to feel any kind of strong emotion. He wasnât a human being any more; he was just a mayor, a machine for doing work.
There was only one case where the feelings of hatred seemed to come alive again in Doll. A certain Mr. Zaches had lived in the little town for as long as anyone could remember, like his parents and grandparents before him â a genuine local, therefore, and the only kind recognised as such by the natives. Now up until the time when the Nazis seized power, this Mr. Zaches had run a small, struggling beer wholesaling business, and also used to make fizzy drinks for children from spring water, carbon dioxide, and coloured flavourings; latterly he had also supplied wholesale tobacco goods to the hospitality trade. But all of this combined had not been enough to support Zaches and his family. So the two nags he kept to transport beer were also pressed into service for all kinds of other haulage jobs â fetching suitcases and crates from the station, hauling timber out of the forests, ploughing and working the fields of local smallholders. Yet even with all this, the family could barely make ends meet; Zaches was constantly on the brink of ruin, the loss of a customer was enough to put the whole business at risk, and the days when payments to the brewery became due were days of fear and trepidation for the Zaches household.
But when the Nazis came to power, all that changed completely. Like many businessmen threatened with ruin prior to 1933, Zaches had joined the Party, bedazzled by all the talk of âsmashing the tyranny of usuryâ and of the universal prosperity that would surely follow. He wasnât a bit interested in politics, of course, but only in doing well for himself â and in that he succeeded after 1933. Quietly at first, but then more and more brazenly, he set about stealing business from his competitors, who had not been smart enough to join the Party in good time. He put pressure on landlords to order goods only from him, and those who complied were rewarded with little favours. He made minor political difficulties disappear, secured advantages for them by having a word with the local mayor, and generally used his position on all manner of committees, boards, and councils to ruthlessly advance his own interests. If anyone opposed him, he secretly gathered evidence
Dollâs own expression when carrying out these confiscations was invariably one of anger and contempt, but inside all he felt was disgust and weariness. As someone who had always preferred to live quietly on his own, and who even within his marriage had defended his right to solitude as something sacrosanct, he now had to spend nearly the whole day with other people, talking to them, trying to wring something out of them, seeing tears, listening to sobs, protests, objections, pleas; his head often felt like an echoing abyss filled with noise.
Sometimes he thought fleetingly: What happened to my hatred? These are the Nazis I swore to be revenged on, after all, whose vile deeds I said I would never forget and never forgive. And now Iâm standing here, and the only thing I feel is disgust, and all I want is my bed, and the chance just to sleep and sleep and forget about all this â just so that I donât have to look at all this filth any more!
But in these days and weeks when he was constantly overworked, he never had time for himself. He could never think his own thoughts through to the end, because his mind was constantly taken up with other things. Sometimes he had the unsettling feeling that his insides were leaking away, and that one day he would just be a hollow skeleton with a covering of skin and nothing else. But he had no time to dwell on this thought, and he couldnât decide whether he really had stopped hating the Nazis, or whether he was just too tired to feel any kind of strong emotion. He wasnât a human being any more; he was just a mayor, a machine for doing work.
There was only one case where the feelings of hatred seemed to come alive again in Doll. A certain Mr. Zaches had lived in the little town for as long as anyone could remember, like his parents and grandparents before him â a genuine local, therefore, and the only kind recognised as such by the natives. Now up until the time when the Nazis seized power, this Mr. Zaches had run a small, struggling beer wholesaling business, and also used to make fizzy drinks for children from spring water, carbon dioxide, and coloured flavourings; latterly he had also supplied wholesale tobacco goods to the hospitality trade. But all of this combined had not been enough to support Zaches and his family. So the two nags he kept to transport beer were also pressed into service for all kinds of other haulage jobs â fetching suitcases and crates from the station, hauling timber out of the forests, ploughing and working the fields of local smallholders. Yet even with all this, the family could barely make ends meet; Zaches was constantly on the brink of ruin, the loss of a customer was enough to put the whole business at risk, and the days when payments to the brewery became due were days of fear and trepidation for the Zaches household.
But when the Nazis came to power, all that changed completely. Like many businessmen threatened with ruin prior to 1933, Zaches had joined the Party, bedazzled by all the talk of âsmashing the tyranny of usuryâ and of the universal prosperity that would surely follow. He wasnât a bit interested in politics, of course, but only in doing well for himself â and in that he succeeded after 1933. Quietly at first, but then more and more brazenly, he set about stealing business from his competitors, who had not been smart enough to join the Party in good time. He put pressure on landlords to order goods only from him, and those who complied were rewarded with little favours. He made minor political difficulties disappear, secured advantages for them by having a word with the local mayor, and generally used his position on all manner of committees, boards, and councils to ruthlessly advance his own interests. If anyone opposed him, he secretly gathered evidence
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