Borkhausen is Rooked a Third Time

Borkhausen — the 'super' who confronted Klebs — sits in the ravaged Persicke flat and sees through him at once: the suitcases must hold stolen goods. He refuses drink, remembering how Enno Kluge's drinking wrecked the Rosenthal job. His ruinous year is traced: cheated of Frau Haberle's two thousand marks by the Gestapo, abandoned by Escherich, then jailed eleven weeks after Otti accused him of murdering their runaway son Kuno-Dieter, terrified through nightly bombing raids. Released, he beat Otti until she vanished for good, leaving him four children and ten-year-old Paula to run the household. Spotting old Persicke's collapse and the stolen Rosenthal radio, Borkhausen sees his chance, and when Klebs offers a fifty-fifty split, he knocks him out with a chair leg and repacks the suitcases himself. Minutes later, constables seize him at the door, and Judge Fromm promises to hand his children to welfare.

A third scavenger arrives at the same carcass, and Fallada lets the comedy curdle: Borkhausen's backstory of prison, bombing raids, and a wife who finally leaves him earns him no sympathy, only exposes greed as constant. Judge Fromm's dry arrival closes the Persicke-house subplot with tidy, understated authority.