The Drinker

The Drinker

First published as Der Trinker

by Rowohlt Verlag, Hamburg, 1950

Translated by Charlotte and A.L. Lloyd

and first published by Putnam & Co. Ltd, London, 1952

THE DRINKER

1

Of course I have not always been a drunkard. Indeed it is not very long since I first took to drink. Formerly I was repelled by alcohol; I might take a glass of beer, but wine tasted sour to me, and the smell of schnaps made me ill. But then the time came when things began to go wrong with me. My business affairs did not proceed as they should, and in my dealings with people I met with all kinds of setbacks. I always have been a sensitive man, needing the sympathy and encouragement of those around me, though of course I did not show this and liked to appear rather sure and self-possessed. Worst of all, the feeling gradually grew on me that even my wife was turning away from me. At first the signs were almost unnoticeable, little things that anyone else would have overlooked. For instance, at a birthday party in our house, she forgot to offer me cake. I never eat cake, but hitherto, despite that, she had always offered it me. And once, for three days there was a cobweb in my room, above the stove. I went through all the rooms in the house, but there was not a cobweb in any of them, only in mine. I meant to wait and see how long she intended to annoy me with this, but on the fourth day I could hold out no longer, and I was obliged to tell her of it. Then the cobweb was removed. Naturally I spoke to her very firmly. At all costs I wanted to avoid showing how much I suffered through these insults and my growing isolation.

But it did not end there. Soon came the affair of the door-mat. I had had trouble at the bank that day; for the first time they had refused to cash a cheque for me. I suppose word had got round that I had had certain losses. The bank manager, a Herr Alf, pretended to be very amiable, and even offered to ring up the head office about an overdraft. Of course I refused. I had been smiling and self-confident as usual, but I noticed that this time he had not offered me a cigar as he generally did. Doubtless this customer was no longer worth it. I went home very depressed, through a heavy fall of autumn rain. I was not in any real difficulties yet; my affairs were merely going through a period of stagnation which could certainly have been overcome, at this stage, by the exercise of a little initiative. But I just couldn’t summon up that initiative. I was too depressed by all the mute dislike of myself which I encountered at every twist and turn.

When I got home (we live a little way out of town, in our own house, and the road is not properly made up yet) I wanted to clean my muddy shoes outside the door, but today the mat, of course, was missing. Angrily I unlocked the door and called into the house for my wife. It was getting dark, but I could see no light anywhere, and Magda did not come either. I called again and again but nothing happened. I found myself in a most critical situation: I stood in the rain outside the door of my own house, and could not go indoors without making the porch and hall quite unnecessarily muddy, all because my wife had forgotten to put the mat out, and moreover had failed to be present at a time when she knew full well I should be coming home from work. Finally I had to master my feelings: I tiptoed carefully into the house. As I sat on a chair in the hall to take my shoes off, having switched on the light, I found that all my precautions had been in vain: there were most ugly marks on the pale green hall-carpet. I had always told Magda that such a delicate green was not suitable for the hall, but she was of the opinion that both of us were old enough to be a bit careful, and in any case, our maid Else used the back-door and generally went about the house in slippers. Angrily I took off my shoes, and just as I was pulling the second one off, I saw Magda, coming through the door at the head of the cellar steps. The shoe slipped from me and fell noisily on to the carpet, making a disgusting mark.

“Do be more careful, Erwin,” cried Magda angrily. “What a sight this carpet is again! Can’t you get used to wiping your feet properly?”

The obvious injustice of this reproach took my breath away, but I restrained myself.

“Where in the world have you been?” I asked, glaring at her. “I called you at least ten times!”

“I was seeing to the central heating in the cellar,” said Magda coolly, “but what’s that got to do with my carpet?”

“It’s just as much my carpet as yours,” I answered heatedly. “I didn’t dirty it for fun. But when there’s no mat outside the door …”

“No mat outside the door? Of course there’s a mat outside the door!”

“There isn’t,” I shouted. “Kindly go and see for yourself!”

But of course she would not dream of looking outside the door.

“Even if Else has forgotten to put it out, you could very well have taken off your shoes in the porch. In any case, there was no need to throw that shoe down on the carpet with such a thump.”

I looked at her, speechless with rage.

“Yes,” she said, “you’ve nothing to say. When you’re told off, you’ve nothing to say. But you’re always telling me off …”

I did not see any proper sense in her words, but I said: “When have I told you off?”

“Just now,” she answered quickly, “first because I didn’t come when you called, and I had to see to the heating because this is Else’s afternoon off. And then because the mat wasn’t outside the door. With all the work I have to do, I can’t possibly look after every little detail of Else’s work as well!”

I controlled myself. In my heart I found Magda wrong on every point. But aloud I said: “Don’t let’s quarrel, Magda. Please believe me, I didn’t make the marks on purpose.”

“And you believe me,” she said, still rather sharply, “I didn’t intend that you should have to shout all over the house after me.”

I kept silent. By dinner-time, we both had ourselves quite well in hand again, and even managed a fairly sensible conversation, and suddenly I had the idea of fetching a bottle of red wine which someone had given me, and which had been in the cellar for years. I really do not know why this idea occurred to me. Perhaps the sense of our reconciliation had put me in mind of something festive, of a wedding or a baptism. Magda was quite surprised, too, but she smiled approvingly. I drank only a glass and a half, though this evening the wine did not taste sour to me. I got into quite a cheerful mood and managed to tell Magda a few things about those business affairs of mine, which were causing me so much trouble. Naturally I did not refer to them as troubles, on the contrary I presented my misfortunes as successes. Magda listened to me with more interest than she had shown for a long time past. I had the feeling that the estrangement between us had completely disappeared, and in my joy I gave Magda a hundred marks to buy herself something nice; a dress or a ring or whatever she had set her heart on.

2

Since then, I have often wondered whether I wasn’t completely drunk that evening. Of course, I wasn’t; Magda as well as I would have noticed it. And yet, that evening I must have been intoxicated for the first time in my life. I didn’t sway, my speech wasn’t thick. That glass-and-a-half of musty red wine could not have had such an effect on a sober man like me; and yet, the alcohol transformed the whole world for me. It made me believe there had been no estrangement, no quarrel between Magda and myself; it changed my business troubles into successes, into such successes that I even had a hundred marks to give away, not a considerable sum of course, but in my position, no sum was quite inconsiderable. Only when I awoke next morning and all these events, from the forgotten door-mat to the present of the hundred-mark note, passed before my mind’s eye—only then was it clear to me how disgracefully I had treated Magda. Not only had I deceived her about the state of my business affairs, but I had fortified this deceit by a gift of money, so as to make it more credible, with something that would legally be called “intent to defraud”. But the legal side was quite unimportant. Only the human aspect was important, and in this case the human aspect was simply horrible. For the first time in our married life I had deliberately deceived Magda—and why? In Heaven’s name, why? I could very well have continued to keep quiet about the whole thing, just as I had kept quiet up till then. Nobody forced me to speak. Nobody? Ah yes, alcohol had made me do it. When once I had understood, when once I had realised to the full, what a liar alcohol is, and what liars it makes of honest men, I swore never to touch another drop and even to give up my occasional glass of beer.

But what are resolutions, what are plans? On this sober morning I promised myself at least to take advantage of the warmer mood which had arisen between Magda and me last night, and not to let things drift again into friction and estrangement. And yet before many days had passed, we were quarrelling again. It really was absolutely incomprehensible—fourteen years of our married life had gone by almost without a quarrel, and now, in the fifteenth, it appeared that we simply couldn’t live without bickering. Often it seemed positively ridiculous to me, the kind of things we found to quarrel about. It was as if we had to quarrel at certain times, no matter why. Quarrelling seemed like a poison, which quickly became a habit and without which we could scarcely go on living. At first, of course, we scrupulously kept up appearances, we tried as far as possible to keep to the point of the quarrel, and to avoid personal insults. Also the presence of our little maid Else restrained us. We knew that she was inquisitive, and that she passed on everything she heard. At that time it would have been unspeakably horrible to me if anyone in town had got to hear of my troubles and our quarrelling: but not much later it was to become completely immaterial what people said or thought of me; and what was worse, I was to lose all sense of self-respect.

I have said that Magda and I had become accustomed to quarrelling almost daily. In point of fact we were really only bickering about nothing at all, just for something to relieve the ever-growing tension between us. That we did so was really a miracle, though not a pleasant one: for many years Magda and I had led a remarkably happy life together. We had married for love, while we were both very minor employees, and with an attaché case each we had started our career together. Oh, those wonderful penniless years of our early married life—when I look back on them now! Magda was a real artist in housekeeping. Some weeks we managed on ten marks and it seemed to us we were living like lords. Then came that brave time, a time of ceaseless struggle, when I made myself independent, and when with Magda’s help I built up my own business. It succeeded—good God, how lucky we were with everything in those days! We had only to touch something, to turn our hand and mind to it, and it succeeded, it blossomed like a well-tended flower, it bore fruit for us. We were denied children, however much we longed for them. Magda had a miscarriage once; from then on all hope of children was gone. But we loved each other nonetheless. For many years of our married life we fell newly in love with each other, over and again. I never desired any other woman but Magda. She made me completely happy, and I presumed she felt the same about me.

When the business was running smoothly, when it had grown as much as the size of our town and our district allowed, our interest began to flag somewhat. Then, in compensation, came the purchase of our own plot of land just out of town, the building of our house, the laying-out of our garden, the furniture which was to be with us for the rest of our life—all things which bound us closely together again and prevented us from noticing that our relationship was beginning to cool off. If we no longer loved each other as much as before, if we no longer desired each other so often and so warmly, we did not regard this as a loss, but took it as a matter of course. We had simply become a long-married couple: what had happened to us, happened to everyone; it was a natural thing. And as I have said, the comradeship of planning, building, choosing furniture, completely made up for it. From being lovers we had become comrades, and we felt no sense of loss.

At that time Magda had already ceased to be an active partner in my business, a step which we both regarded as inevitable. She had a larger household of her own; the garden and our few fowls also demanded some care; and the extent of the business easily allowed the employment of new staff. Later, it was to become apparent how fatal was Magda’s withdrawal from my business. Not only because we thereby lost a great part of our mutual interests, but also it became obvious that her help was irreplaceable. She was far more active than I, more enterprising, also much cleverer than I in dealing with people, and in an easy jocular way she managed to get them where she wanted them. I was the cautious element in our partnership, the brake, as it were, that checked any too-rash move and made the going safe. In actual business dealings, I was inclined to hold back as much as possible, not to force myself on anybody, and never to ask for anything. So it was inevitable, after Magda’s withdrawal, that our business went on in the old way at first, nothing new came in, and then gradually, slowly, year by year, it fell away. Of course, all this only became clear to me much later, too late, when there was nothing left to salvage. At the time of Magda’s withdrawal I felt rather relieved, even: a man who runs his own firm demands more respect from people than one whose wife is able to have a say in everything.

3

Only when we started quarrelling did I notice how estranged Magda and I had become during those years when she had been looking after her household and I had been managing the business. The first few times I still felt quite ashamed of our lack of restraint, and when I noticed that I had grieved Magda, that she was even going about with tear-stained eyes, it hurt me almost as much as it hurt her, and I swore that I would be better. But man gets used to anything, and I am afraid that perhaps he gets used quickest of all to living in a state of degradation. The day came when, at the sight of Magda’s red-rimmed eyes, I no longer swore to behave better. Instead with mingled satisfaction and surprise, I said to myself: “I gave it to you properly that time! You’re not going to get the upper hand of me always with that sharp tongue of yours!” It seemed horrible to feel that way, and yet it seemed right, it satisfied me to feel so, however paradoxical that may seem. From there, it was only a short step to the point where I consciously sought to hurt her.

At that most critical moment in our relationship, the grocery contract for the prison came up for tender, as happened every three years. In our town (not exactly to the delight of its inhabitants) we have the central prison of the province, which always has some fifteen hundred prisoners within its walls. We had had the contract for nine years. Magda had worked very hard to get it originally. On the two previous occasions when it had come up for tender, Magda had only to pay the prison governor a brief courtesy visit and the contract was ours without further ado. I had always taken this contract so much for granted as a part of my business, that this time I hardly bothered about it, I had the previous tender—whose price-list had been satisfactory for nine years—copied out and sent in. I also contemplated a visit to the official concerned; but everything would go its usual way, I didn’t want to seem importunate, I knew the man was overburdened with work—in short I had at least ten good reasons for abandoning the visit.

Consequently, it came as a thunderbolt out of a clear sky, when a letter from the prison administration informed me in a few bare words that my tender was refused, that the contract had been given to another firm. My first thought was: above all, Magda mustn’t hear of this! Then I took my hat and hurried off to the governor, to pay the visit now, that would have had some point three weeks ago. I was received politely but coolly. The governor regretted that our long-standing business connection was now severed. However he had not been able to act otherwise, since part of the price-list I quoted had long ago been superseded, in some cases by higher prices, in other cases by lower. On the whole, it would probably just about balance out, but my tender had—if I would pardon his frankness—merely made a bad impression on the responsible officials, as if it was all the same to my firm whether we got the contract or not. I learned moreover that a quite new firm, eager to get on at any price, and one which had already given me trouble several times before, had once again come out on top. Finally, in all politeness the governor expressed the hope in three years’ time, they might again be able to resume their previous business connection with my firm, and I was dismissed.

I knew that in the prison governor’s office I had not shown any of the consternation, the desperation even, that I felt at this stroke of bad luck; I had disguised my inquiry under the cloak of politeness and of curiosity about the name of the lucky winner. When I stood outside the heavy iron gates of the prison again, when the last bolt had clashed to behind me, I looked into the bright sunshine of that lovely spring day like someone who has just awakened from a heavy dream, and doesn’t yet know whether he is really awake or is still sighing under the weight of the nightmare. I was still sighing under it. In vain the iron gate had dismissed me to freedom; I remained the prisoner of my own troubles and failures.

Now it was impossible for me to go back into town to my office, above all I had to pull myself together before I saw Magda—I went away from the town and from people, I walked over the fields and meadows, further and further, as if I could run away from my troubles. That day I saw nothing of the fresh emerald green of the young crops, I did not hear the gurgling of the brooks, nor the drum-roll of the larks in the blue-golden air: I was utterly alone with myself and my misfortune.

It was quite clear to me that this was no small mishap for my business, to be taken with a shrug of regret; the delivery of groceries for fifteen hundred people, even at a modest profit, was such an important item of my turnover, that it could not be given up without drastically altering my whole prospects. Compensation for this loss was not to be thought of, other such possibilities did not exist in our modest town. By a supreme effort, it might have been possible to increase the number of retail firms by a few dozen, but apart from the fact that this would by no means be any substitute for my loss, I felt incapable of making any such effort at the moment. For some reason I had been feeling rather low for nearly a year now. I was more and more inclined to let things go their own way and not excite myself too much. I was in need of rest—why, I do not know. Perhaps I was getting prematurely old. It was clear to me that I would have to dismiss at least two of my staff, but even that did not disturb me unduly, though I knew how it would be talked about. It wasn’t the business that worried me at the moment, but Magda. Again and again my main thought, my main worry was: it’s got to be kept from Magda! I told myself that in the long run I wouldn’t be able to conceal from her the dismissal of two of my staff and the loss of the contract. But I pretended that everything depended on her not finding out just yet, that perhaps in a few weeks I would get some substitute or other. Then I had a bright moment again. I stopped, kicked hard against a stone in the dusty road, and said to myself: “Since Magda is bound to find out, it’s better she should hear about it from me than from other people, and moreover it’s better she should hear about it today than some other time. Every day it’s postponed will make confession more difficult. After all, I’m not guilty of a crime, only of neglect.” I kicked the stone again. “I’ll simply ask Magda to help me with the business again. That will reconcile her to my failure, and I and my business can only gain by it. I really am rather under the weather and could well do with some help.…”

But that bright moment quickly passed. The respect of other people, and particularly of Magda, had always been so important to me. I had always carefully seen to it that I was looked up to as the head of the firm. Now, especially now, I couldn’t bring myself to forego a single iota of my dignity, or to humiliate myself before Magda. No, I resolved, come what may, to master the affair myself. Also I didn’t want the help of a woman with whom I quarrelled almost daily. It was easy to foresee that the bickering would go on in the very office—she would insist on having her way, I would oppose her, she would throw my failures in my face—oh no, impossible!

I stamped my foot in the dust of the road. I had no idea where my feet had been taking me, I had been so absorbed in my troubles. I was standing in a village not far from my home town, a favourite spot for springtime excursions on account of its charming birch woods and its lake. But on this week-day morning there were no trippers. People were too busy at home. I was standing just outside the inn, and I was conscious of feeling thirsty. I went into the low, wide, rather dark barroom. Previously, I had always seen it full of townsfolk, the bright spring frocks of the women making the room brighter and giving it, despite its low ceiling, an airy appearance. For when the townspeople were here, the windows had been open, coloured cloths lay on the tables, and everywhere bright sprays of birch stood in tall vases. Now the room was dark, brownish-yellow American cloth covered the tables, it smelt stuffy, the windows were shut tight. Behind the bar stood a young girl with unkempt hair and a dirty apron, whispering busily to a young fellow who seemed to be a bricklayer, by his lime-spattered clothes. My first impulse was to turn back. But my thirst, and particularly the fear of being left at the mercy of my troubles again, made me approach the bar instead.

“Give me something to drink, anything to quench a thirst,” I said.

Without looking up, the girl ran some beer into a glass, and I watched the froth drip over the edge. The girl turned off the tap, waited a moment till the froth had settled, and then let another spurt of beer run in, then, still without a word, she pushed the glass towards me across the tarnished zinc. She resumed her whispering with the young bricklayer. So far she had not given me a glance.

I lifted the glass to my mouth and emptied it thoughtfully, gulp by gulp, without once setting it down. It tasted fresh, fizzy, slightly bitter, and it seemed to leave in my mouth a feeling of airy brightness that had not been there before.

“Give me another of the same,” I was about to say, but I changed my mind. I had seen a short squat bright glass before the young man, the kind called a noggin, in which schnaps is usually served.

“I’ll have a noggin of that,” I suddenly said. Why I did so, who had never drunk schnaps in my life, who had a deep aversion to the very smell of it, I really don’t know. At that very moment all my lifelong habits were changing, I was at the mercy of mysterious influences, and the strength to resist them had been taken from me.

Now for the first time the girl looked at me. Slowly she lifted her rather coarse-grained eyelids and turned her bright knowing eyes on me.

“Schnaps?” she asked.

“Schnaps,” I said, the girl took down a bottle, and I wondered if a female had ever looked at me before in such a shamelessly knowing way. Her glance seemed to penetrate right to the root of my manhood, as if seeking to find out how much of a man I was; it seemed positively physical, something painfully, sweetly insolent, as if I were stripped naked before her eyes.

The glass was filled, it was pushed towards me across the zinc, the eyelids lowered again, the girl turned to the young man: the verdict had been reached. I raised the glass, hesitated—and with a sudden resolve I tipped its contents into my mouth. It burned, it took my breath away, I choked, but managed to force the liquor down my throat, I felt it going down, burning and acrid—and suddenly a feeling of warmth spread in my stomach, an agreeable and genial warmth. Then I shuddered all over. Half aloud, the bricklayer said, “The ones that shake like that are the worst,” and the girl gave a short laugh. I put a one-mark note down on the bar and left the inn without another word.

The spring day greeted me with its sunny warmth and its gentle breeze as fine as silk, but I came back into it a changed man. A lightness had mounted to my head from the warmth in my stomach and my heart beat free and strong. Now I could see the emerald green of the young shoots, now I could hear the trilling of the larks in the blue sky. My cares had fallen away from me. “Everything will come right in the end,” I cheerfully assured myself, and started for home. “Why worry about it now?” Before I reached town, I had turned into two other inns, and in each of them I drank another noggin to repeat and strengthen the quickly-fading effect of the schnaps. With a slight but not unpleasant sensation of numbness, I reached home just in time for lunch.

4

It was clear to me that now I had to conceal from my wife not only the loss of the grocery contract, but also my drinking. But I felt so much on top of the world at the moment, that I was sure this would present no difficulty at all. I stayed longer in the bathroom than usual, and not only washed with particular care, but also thoroughly brushed my teeth in order to get rid of any smell of alcohol. I did not know yet what attitude I was going to adopt with Magda, but a slight feeling of unease warned me not to be too talkative—to which I felt a strong inclination. Perhaps a serious, calm and collected pose would be best. The soup was on the table already when I came in, and Magda was waiting for me. I lightly gave her my hand and made a few remarks about the lovely spring weather. She agreed, and told me of a number of things that needed doing in the garden, and asked me to bring her from town that evening certain vegetable seeds which she had just noticed were missing. I promised to do so immediately, and so we got through the soup without a hitch. I was well aware that, every now and then, Magda surreptitiously eyed me up and down, with an unspoken question, but confident that nothing about me was noticeable, and that all was going well, I paid no attention to her glances. I recall that I ate that soup with particular relish.

Else cleared the table, and as she did so she whispered some domestic question to my wife, which caused Magda to get up and follow Else into the kitchen, probably to cut up or taste something. I was left alone in the dining-room, waiting for the meat course. I was thinking of nothing in particular; I was filled with a pleasant contentment; I was enjoying life. I had no warning of what I was about to do next. Suddenly, to my own surprise, I got up, tiptoed over to the sideboard, opened the lower door, and there, sure enough, was the bottle of red wine which we had started on that fateful November evening when our quarrels had begun. I held it up to the light. As I expected, it was still half-full. There was no time to lose, Magda might return at any moment. The cork was driven rather deep into the neck of the bottle, but I pulled it out with my nails, put the bottle to my mouth, and drank and drank like an old toper. (But what else could I do? There was no time to get a glass, quite apart from the fact that a used glass would have given me away.) I took three or four long pulls, held the bottle up to the light again, and saw that only a miserable drop was left. I finished that off as well, replaced the cork in the bottle, shut the sideboard door, and tiptoed back to my place. My stomach heaved, upset by the sudden flood of alcohol; it was convulsed as if by cramp, a fiery mist rose before my eyes, and my forehead and hands were damp with sweat. I had a hard job to pull myself together before Magda returned. Then I sat down at table again, feeling pleasantly abandoned to my drunkenness, and only the necessity of at least going through the form of eating, presented any difficulty. My stomach seemed a very delicate thing, ready to revolt at any moment. Each single bite had to be fed to it with the greatest care, and I regretted that the food which I had to swallow for appearances’ sake was going to disturb the drunkenness which was quietly making itself felt.

It never occurred to me that it might be a good thing to exchange a few words with Magda. Instead, my mind was busy with another problem, which presented grave difficulties. The wine-bottle was in the sideboard all right, but with the scrupulous way in which Magda ran her household, she was bound to notice within a short time that it was empty. I couldn’t possibly allow that to happen. I must take precautions in time. But how incredibly difficult it was! The best solution would be to buy another bottle of red wine this very afternoon, pour about half of it away, and put it in place of the empty one. But when was I to do it, how could I get to the sideboard when I had to be at the office all the afternoon, and Magda and I always spent the evening together, she with some needlework and I with my newspaper? When? and what was I to do with the empty bottle? Would I be able to buy some wine of the same brand? Did Magda remember what sort it was, what kind of label it had? Best would be to get up secretly at midnight, carefully take the label off the old bottle and stick it on the new one. But supposing Magda were to surprise me at it! And moreover, had we any glue in the house? I would have to smuggle some from the office in my brief-case. The more I thought about it, the more complicated the whole affair became. Already it was absolutely insoluble. It had been easy enough to empty the bottle, but I should have thought before, how difficult it was going to be to restore it to its former condition. Supposing I just broke the bottle, and pretended that I had knocked it over while looking for something? But there was no wine left to spill. Or dare I simply half-fill it with water, and put off filling it with wine until some later time?

My head was more and more muddled. While I cast around in my mind, I had quite forgotten not only the meal but Magda as well. So I started, when she asked me with genuine apprehension in her voice: “What’s the matter, Erwin? Are you ill? Have you got a temperature? You look so red.”

I eagerly seized on this pretext, and said calmly: “Yes, I really don’t feel quite well. I think I’d better lie down for a moment. My … my head’s throbbing.”

“Yes, do, Erwin. Go to bed immediately. Shall I ring Dr Mansfeld?”

“Oh, nonsense,” I cried angrily, “I’ll just lie down on the sofa for a quarter of an hour, and I’ll be all right. Then I must get back to the office.”

She led me to the sofa like an invalid, helped me to lie down and spread a rug over me. “Have you had trouble at the office?” she asked anxiously. “Tell me what’s worrying you, Erwin. You’re quite changed.”

“Nothing, nothing,” I said, suddenly angry. “I don’t know what’s the matter with you. A little attack of giddiness or blood pressure and immediately there’s something wrong at the office. Business is fine, just fine!”

She sighed softly. “All right, then, sleep well, Erwin,” she said. “Shall I wake you?”

“No, no, not necessary. I’ll wake up of my own accord—in a quarter of an hour or so.…”

Then I was alone at last: I let my head fall back, and now the alcohol flooded right through me in an unrestrained free-running wave. With a velvet wing it covered all my sorrows and afflictions, it washed away even the little new worry over my unnecessary lie about business being fine. I slept.… Slept? No, I was extinguished, I no longer existed.

5

It is already beginning to get dark when I wake up. I throw a startled glance at the clock: it is between seven and eight in the evening. I listen for any noises in the house. Nothing stirs. I call, softly at first, then louder: “Magda!” But she doesn’t come. I get up stiffly. My whole body feels battered, my head is hollow, my mouth dry and thick. I glance into the dining-room next door: no supper table is laid, though this is our usual supper-time. What is the matter? What has happened while I slept? Where is Magda?

After some reflection, I grope my way to the kitchen. Walking is not easy, it is as if all my limbs are stiff and bent, they move with difficulty in their joints.

I half expected to find the kitchen empty too, and almost dark, but the light is on, and Else is standing by the table, busy with some ironing. As I come in she looks up with a start, and the expression on her face is no more reassured when she sees who it is. I can well imagine that I look a bit wild. Suddenly I feel as if I am dirty all over. I should have gone into the bathroom first.

“Where is my wife, Else?” I ask.

“Madam has gone to town,” replies Else, with a quick, almost fearful glance at me.

“But it’s supper-time, Else!” I say reproachfully, though I have not the slightest inclination to eat any supper.

Else shrugs her shoulders, and then says, with another quick glance, “There was a telephone call from your office. I think your wife has gone to the office.”

I swallow with difficulty; I am conscious how dry my mouth has become.

“To the office?” I murmur. “Good God! What’s my wife doing at the office, Else?”

She shrugs her shoulders again. “How should I know, Herr Sommer,” she says. “Madam didn’t tell me anything.” She reflects for a moment, then goes on. “They rang up shortly after three, and your wife has been gone ever since.” So for more than four hours already Magda has been at the office. I am lost. Why I am lost I cannot say, but I know that I am. My knees grow weak, I stumble forward a few steps and slump heavily into a chair. I let my head fall on the kitchen table.

“It’s all up, Else,” I groan. “I’m lost. Oh, Else.…” I hear her set down the iron with a startled crash, then she comes over to me and puts her hand on my shoulder. “What is it, Herr Sommer? Don’t you feel well?” I don’t see her. I don’t lift my face from the shelter of my arms. In the presence of this young girl I am ashamed of my gushing tears. It’s all over, all lost, my firm, my marriage, Magda—oh, if only I hadn’t drunk that wine this lunch-time, that’s what made everything go wrong; without that, Magda would never have gone to the office (a fleeting thought: I’ve still got to settle that affair of the empty wine bottle, too!). Else gently shakes my shoulder. “Herr Sommer,” she says “don’t give way like that. Lie down again for a bit, and I’ll quickly make you some supper in the meantime.” I shake my head. “I don’t want any supper, Else. My wife ought to be here by now, it’s high time …”

“Or,” says Else persuasively, “would you like to eat a little something here in the kitchen with me, Herr Sommer?” Adding rather doubtfully. “As your wife is out.…” By its very novelty, there is something seductive about this quite unheard-of proposal. To eat in the kitchen with Else? Whatever would Magda say? I raise my head and look at Else properly for the first time. I have never looked at her like that before: for me, she was always merely a dark shadow of my wife in the remoter regions of the house. Now I see that Else is quite a pleasant dark-haired girl of about seventeen, of a somewhat robust beauty. Under a light blouse she has full breasts, and at the thought of how young those breasts are I feel a hot wave run over me.

But then I come to my senses. It’s all so impossible. Already this business of letting myself go before Else just now is utterly impossible.

“No, Else,” I say, and get up. “It is very nice of you to try to cheer me up a bit, but I had better get over to the office as well. If I should miss my wife, please tell her that I have gone to the office.” I turn to go. Suddenly it is hard for me to leave the kitchen and this friendly girl. I notice how pale her face is, and how well her high-arching eyebrows suit it.

“I have many worries, Else,” I say abruptly, “and I have nobody to stand by me.” Emphatically, I repeat, “Nobody, Else. Do you understand?”

“Yes, Herr Sommer,” she answers softly.

“Thank you, Else, for being so nice to me,” I add. And I go. Only as I am getting ready in the bathroom does it occur to me that I have just betrayed Magda. Betrayed and deceived. Deceived and defrauded. But at once I shrug my shoulders: that’s right! Lower and lower. Deeper and deeper into it. Now there’s no holding back!

6

I made my way cautiously to the office, cautiously, because at all costs I wanted to avoid meeting Magda in the street. I stood on the other side of the street in the shadow of a doorway, and looked across at my firm’s five ground-floor windows. Two of them belonging to my main office, were lit up, and occasionally through the ground glass I saw the silhouettes of two figures: that of Magda and of my book-keeper, Hinzpeter. “They’re going through the books!” I said to myself with a deep sense of shock, and yet this shock was mingled with a feeling of relief, for now I knew that the conduct of the business was in Magda’s capable hands. That was just like her, immediately on hearing the bad news, to give herself a clear picture of the situation by going through the books. With a deep sigh I turned away and walked right through the town and out of it, but not towards my home. What should I do in the office, what should I do at home? Invite the reproaches that were bound to be made? Try to justify what was utterly unjustifiable? Not at all. And while I walked out again into the countryside, which was slowly growing darker and darker, it became painfully clear to me that I was played out. I had nothing left to live for, I had lost my footing in society, and I felt I had not the strength to look for a new one, nor to fight to regain the old. What was I to do now? I went on, I walked away from office, wife, home town, I left everything behind—but I would have to go home again eventually, wouldn’t I? I would have to face Magda, listen to her reproaches, hear myself rightly called a liar and a cheat, have to admit that I was a failure, a failure of the most disgraceful and cowardly kind. The thought was unbearable, and I began to play with the idea of not returning home at all, but of going out into the world, of submerging myself in the darkness somewhere, in some darkness where a man might disappear without trace, without a final cry. And while I was outlining this to myself, with some feeling of self-pity, I knew that I was deceiving myself, that I would never have the courage to live without the security of hearth and home. I would never be able to give up the soft bed I was used to, the tidiness of home, the punctual, nourishing meals. I would go home to Magda, in spite of all my fears, I would go back to my own bed this very night—never mind about living in the darkness, never mind about a life and death in the gutter.

“But,” I asked myself again, and I quickened my hasty steps, “but what’s the matter with me? I used to be a fairly energetic and enterprising man. I always was a little weak but I knew so well how to conceal that, that up to now even Magda probably hadn’t noticed it. Where does all this weariness come from that has been growing on me for the last year, paralysing my limbs and brain, and making me, till now a fairly honest man, into a deceiver of my wife, and the kind of character who looks lustingly at a servant-girl’s breasts? It can’t be the alcohol. I never drank schnaps before today, and this lassitude has been hanging over me for such a long time now. Whatever can it be?” I tried this theory and that. I reflected that I was just over forty. I had heard talk of the change of life in men, but I knew no man of my acquaintance who, on passing forty, had changed as much as I. Then I recalled my loveless existence. I had always longed for love and appreciation, secretly of course, and I had had it in full measure, from Magda as well as from my fellow-citizens. Then gradually I had lost it. I didn’t know how it had all happened. Had I lost love and appreciation because I had grown so bad, or had I grown so bad because I had lost its encouragement? I found no answer to these questions: I was not accustomed to thinking about myself. I walked faster still. I wanted to get to the place where I would find rest from all these torturing problems. At last I stood before my goal, before that same country inn I had visited this fatal morning. I looked through the bar-room window for the girl with the pale eyes, who had passed such a contemptuous judgment on my manhood after one insolent glance. I saw her sitting under the dim light of a single little bulb, busy with some needlework. I looked at her for a long time, I hesitated, and with a painful and voluptuous sense of self-abasement, I asked myself just why I had come to her. And I found no answer to this question, either.

But I was tired of all these problems. I almost ran up the paved path to the inn, groped in the dark passage for the door-handle, entered quickly, and with a pretence of cheerfulness I cried: “Here I am, my pretty one!” and sat down in a wicker chair beside her.

All that I had just done resembled so little my usual behaviour, was so different from my former sedateness, that I watched myself with unconcealed astonishment, almost with anxious embarrassment as if watching an actor who has taken on too daring a rôle, and who is unsure whether he will be able to play it convincingly to the end.

The girl looked up from her sewing, for a moment the pale eyes were turned on me, the tip of her tongue appeared briefly at the corner of her mouth. “Oh, it’s you,” was all she said, and these three words conveyed once more her judgment of myself.

“Yes, it’s me, my beauty,” I said quickly, with the glibness and arrogance that came so strangely to me, “and I would like one or two or maybe half a dozen glasses of that excellent schnaps of yours, and if you like, you can drink with me.”

“I never drink schnaps,” countered the girl coolly, but she got up, went to the bar, got a little glass and a bottle, and poured out a drink by the table. She sat down and put the bottle on the floor beside her.

“Anyway,” she added, taking up her sewing again, “we’re closing in a quarter of an hour.”

“Then I’ll have to drink all the quicker,” I said, put the glass to my lips and emptied it. “But if you won’t drink schnaps,” I continued, “I’d gladly buy you a bottle of wine or champagne even, if there is such a thing here. Regardless of cost.”

In the meantime she had re-filled my glass, and I emptied it again in one go. I had already forgotten all that had happened and all that lay ahead, I lived only for the moment, for this reserved yet knowing girl who treated me with such obvious contempt.

“We’ve got champagne all right,” she said, “and I like to drink it, too. But I’ll have you know that I don’t intend to get drunk, nor go to bed with you just for a bottle of champagne.”

Now she looked at me again, accompanying her immodest words with a bold insolent look. I had to go on playing my part. “Whoever would think of such a thing, my sweet,” I said lightly. “Go and get your champagne. You’ll be allowed to drink it quite unmolested. To me,” I added, more firmly after I had had another drink, “you’re like an angel from another planet, a bad angel whom fate has set in my path. It’s enough for me just to look at you.”

“It costs nothing to look,” she said with a short evil-sounding laugh. “You’re a pretty queer saint, but before the night’s out I think I’m going to find out what you’re so excited about.”

With that, she poured me another drink, and got up to fetch the champagne. This time she was away longer. She drew the curtains, then went outside, and I heard her close the shutters, and lock the door. As she went through the barroom again, she said “I’ve locked up, nobody else will be coming. The landlady’s in bed already.” She said this in passing, then stopped, and added in an ironic tone, “But don’t build your hopes on that.” Before I could answer, she had gone again. I used her absence to pour myself out two or three drinks straight off. Then she came back with a gold-topped bottle in her hand.

She put a champagne glass on the table before her, skilfully unbent the wire and twisted the cork out of the bottle without letting it pop. The white foam rushed up. She poured, waited a moment, poured again, and lifted the glass to her mouth.

“I’m not going to drink your health,” she said, “because you would want to drink with me, and for the time being, you’ve had enough.”

I didn’t contradict her. My whole body was so full of drunkenness, it seemed to hum like a swarm of bees. She put down her glass, looked at me with narrowed eyes and asked mockingly, “Now then, how many schnapses did you have while I was away? Five? Six?”

“Only three,” I answered, laughing. It never occurred to me to feel ashamed. With this girl, all such feelings disappeared completely.

“Incidentally, what’s your name?”

“Do you intend to come here often?” she countered.

“Perhaps,” I answered, rather confused. “Why?”

“Why do you want to know my name? For the half hour we sit here, ‘my sweet’ or whatever else you like to call me, will do.”

“All right, don’t tell me your name,” I said, suddenly irritable. “I don’t care.”

I took the bottle and poured another drink. Already it was quite clear to me that I was completely drunk and that I should not take any more. Even so, the urge to go on drinking was stronger. The coloured web in my brain enticed me, the dark untrodden jungles of my inner self tempted me; from afar, a soft seductive voice was calling.

“I don’t know whether I shall often come here,” I said rapidly. “I can’t stand you, I hate you, and yet I’ve come back to you this evening. This morning I drank the first schnaps in my life. You poured it out for me, you stole into my blood with it, you’ve poisoned me. You’re like the spirit of schnaps: hovering, intoxicating, cheap and.…”

I looked at her, breathless, myself the more astonished at these words which hurtled out of me, goodness knows where from. She sat opposite me. She had not taken up her sewing again. She had crossed her stockingless legs and had pushed her skirt back a little from her knees. Her legs were rather sturdy, but long, and fine-ankled. On her right calf I saw a birthmark nearly the size of a farthing—it seemed beautiful to me. She held a cigarette in her hand; she blew the smoke in a broad stream through her nearly closed lips; she stared at me without blinking.

“Go on, pop,” she said, “you’re getting on fine, go on.…”

I tried to think. What had I been talking about just now? The impulse to touch her, to take her in my arms, became almost overwhelming. But I leaned back firmly in my wicker chair, I clung to its arms. Suddenly I heard myself speak again. I spoke quite slowly and very distinctly, and yet I was breathless with excitement. “I’m a wholesale merchant,” I said, “I had quite a good business, but now I’m faced with bankruptcy. They’ll all laugh at me, all of them, especially my wife.… I’ve made a lot of mistakes, and Magda will throw them all in my face. Magda’s my wife, you know.…”

She looked at me steadily, with that very white face of hers, that had about it something almost bloated. Above her nearly colourless eyes, stood her dark high-arching brows.

“But I can still draw money out of the business, a few thousand marks. I’d do it anyway, just to annoy Magda. Magda wants to save the business. Does she think she’s better than I am? I could sell the business. I know already to whom, it’s quite a new firm. He would give me ten, perhaps twelve thousand marks for it, we could go travelling.… Have you ever been to Paris?”

She looked at me. Neither affirmation nor dissent were to be read in her face. I went on talking, quicker, more breathlessly. “I’ve not been there either,” I continued, “but I’ve read about it. It’s a town of tree-lined boulevards, wide squares, leafy parks.… When I was a boy I learned a bit of French, but I left school too soon, my parents hadn’t enough money. Do you know what this means: Donnez-moi un baiser, mademoiselle?”

Not a sign from her, neither yes or no.

“It means, ‘give me a kiss, mademoiselle.’ But one would have to say to you, Donnez-moi un baiser, ma reine! Reine means queen. You’re the queen of my heart. You’re the queen of the poison they cork up in bottles. Give me your hand, Elsabe—I’m going to call you Elsabe, my queen—I mean to kiss your hand.…”

She filled my glass.

“There, drink this up, then you’re going home. It’s enough—you’ve had enough to drink, and I’ve had enough of you. You can take that bottle of brandy with you. You’ll have to pay for the whole bottle, saloon price. It’s no swindle. Don’t you come in here tomorrow saying I swindled you. You poured I don’t know how many out for yourself.”

“Don’t say that, Elsabe,” I said, half-blustering, half-whining. “I’d never do such a thing! What do I care about money—!”

“Don’t teach me about men! When they’re drunk and randy it’s all ‘What do I care about money!’ and next morning they turn up with the police, shouting about being swindled. The brandy, and the champagne, and my cigarettes … that comes to.…”

She named a sum.

“Is that all?” I said boastfully and pulled out my wallet. “Here you are!”

I put down the money.

“And here …,” I took out a hundred-mark note and laid it beside the other. “This is for you because I hate you and because you’re ruining me. Take it, take it. I don’t want anything from you, anything at all! Go away! I’ve got you in my blood already, I couldn’t possess you more than I do. You’re very likely dull and boring. You’re not from hereabouts, you’re from some city, of course, where you left everything behind—this is just the remains!”

We stood facing each other, the money lay on the table, the light was gloomy. I swayed gently on my feet. I was holding the half-empty brandy bottle by the neck. She looked at me.

“Put your money away,” she whispered. “Take your money off the table. I don’t want your money … you’d better go!”

“You can’t force me to take the money back. I’m leaving it here … I present you with it, my queen of bright brandy called Elsabe. I’m going.…”

Laboriously I made my way to the door. The key was on the inside and I struggled to turn it in the lock.

“Hey, you,” she said behind me. “You.…”

I turned round. Her voice had become low but full and soft. All the impudence had gone out of it.

“You …” she repeated, and now in her eyes there was colour and light. “You—do you want to?”

Now it was I who looked at her silently.

“Take your shoes off, be quiet on the stairs, the landlady mustn’t hear you. Come on, be quick.…”

Silently, I did as she told me. I don’t know why I did. I didn’t desire her now. I didn’t desire her in that way, at all.

“Give me your hand.”

She switched off the light and led me by the hand. In the other hand I still held the brandy bottle. It was completely dark in the bar-room. I crept after her. Moonlight through a little dusty window fell on the narrow angular staircase. I swayed, I was very tired. I thought of my own bed, of Magda, of my long way home.

It was all too much for me. The only consolation was the bottle of brandy in my hand, that would give me strength. I would have preferred to stop already and take a pull out of the bottle, I was so tired. The stairs creaked, the bedroom door groaned softly as it was opened. There was moonlight in the room, too. A rumpled bed, an iron wash-stand, a chair, a row of hangers on the wall.…

“Get undressed,” I said softly, “I’ll be with you in a moment.” And more to myself, “Are there any stars here?”

I went to the window, which looked out over an orchard. I opened it a little; the spring air with its soft breeze and its perfumes entered, mild as a tender caress. Under the window lay the sloping tar-papered roof of a shed.

“That’s good,” I said, softly again. “That sloping roof is very good.”

I couldn’t see the moon, it was behind the house-roof above my head. But its glow filled the sky with a whitish light; only the brightest stars were to be seen, and even they looked dim. I was uneasy and irritable.

“Come on,” she cried angrily from the bed. “Hurry up! Do you think I don’t need any sleep?”

I turned, and bent over the bed. She lay on her back, covered to the chin. I stripped the cover back and laid my face for a moment against her naked breast. Cool and firm. Breathing gently. It smelt good—of hair and flesh.

“Hurry up!” she whispered impatiently. “Get undressed—stop that nonsense. You’re not a schoolboy any more!”

I straightened up with a deep sigh. I went to the window, took the bottle and swung myself out on to the shed roof. I heard a furious cry behind me, but I was already letting myself drop into the garden.

“Drunken old fool!” she called from above, and then the window banged.

I stood among bushes. I smelt the scent of lilac. The spring night was perfect in its purity. I put the bottle to my mouth and drank deeply.

7

I walk and walk. I walk along, singing to myself one of those Wanderlieder that I used to sing when hiking with Magda. Then for long stretches I limp on aching feet. I have stubbed my toe against a stone, it is bad going for my shoeless feet. My socks have long since been torn to ribbons. I come to a stream, clamber down the bank, sit on a stone and put my feet in the water, which shocks me for a moment with its icy coldness. Then it feels good, and sitting on the stone I fall asleep. I wake up shivering, icy. I have fallen from my seat, I walk on. The faster I walk, the longer the road seems to become. The fruit trees along the roadside positively fly past me, yet I seem to be no further on. I don’t know where I am, only that I’m a long way from home. I don’t know what time it is, only that it’s still night. The moon is some two handsbreadths above the horizon. And I walk on. I walk through a sleeping village. Not a light anywhere, everyone asleep, I am the only one abroad. Erwin Sommer, proprietor of a wholesale market produce business. Not now, not now, that was before. The one who is walking through this moonlit night, who is he? Once he was someone—long ago he was. Down and out now, finished, almost forgotten.… At my shuffling step, a dog wakes up in his kennel and starts to bark. Other dogs awaken and now the whole village is barking and I shuffle through it on sore feet, a tramp, and yesterday I was still … oh, shut up! And I stop in the shadow of the wooden church spire and raise the bottle to my mouth again and drink. That stills the questions, soothes the pain, that is a whip for the next half hour on the road. But there is not much left in the bottle. I’ll have to go easy with the precious stuff. I’ll swallow the last mouthful—and it must be a big one—on my own doorstep, before I face Magda. But Magda is asleep. I shall lie down very quietly on the sofa, there won’t be any argument tonight. And tomorrow? Tomorrow is a long way off. By tomorrow I shall have had a deep, deep sleep, I shall have forgotten everything that happened today, I shall be the head of the firm again, who had committed a small blunder, it’s true, but who is perfectly capable of making amends.…

I have hidden the empty bottle in the garden bushes, and now, very quietly, on my bare feet, I mount the steps to the front door. I manage to unlock the door without a sound. I am not a bit drunk now, though I have only just taken one or two long swigs of brandy—there was more left in the bottle than I had thought. So much the better. I am all the more clear-headed and certain. I shan’t make any mistake, I shan’t wake anyone up. How cunning I am. I am tempted to go into the bathroom to bathe my sore feet, but my clear head reminds me that the noise of the taps would awaken Magda, so I sneak into the kitchen. I can wash in the kitchen. Only little Else sleeps next to the kitchen. She’s good to me, she comforted me, she’s not hard and efficient like Magda. I switch on the light, I look round the kitchen. I choose a large enamel basin, and I think to look into the boiler by the stove, to see if there is any warm water. The water is actually luke-warm still. I am proud of my cleverness. I get the washing soap, the hand-towel, kitchen cloths, a brush. I sit on a chair and put my feet into the water. Oh, how good it feels, how soothing that gentle caress is! I lean back, I close my eyes—if only I had something to drink now, I would be absolutely happy.

There’s always something lacking for human happiness, we can never be perfectly content. I’ve drunk all the red wine, and there’s nothing else to drink in the house. Tomorrow I must start a wine-cellar, and there must be a few bottles of schnaps in it, too. Schnaps is a very good thing—a pity I’ve wasted so many years of my life when I might have been drinking schnaps—in all moderation of course. I lean back still further, enjoying the bath, feeling the burning pain recede … and suddenly I jump up! The water slops out of the basin and floods over the tiled floor. But I take no notice of that. I have had a revelation. Of course we have something to drink in the house! Didn’t Magda get some Madeira for certain kinds of soup, ox-tail for instance? And doesn’t she use rum for her preserves? I know that from her housekeeping accounts. And I run on my bare feet into the larder, I search, I sniff at bottles, I smell vinegar and oil—and here, here it is: “Fine old Sherry,” and here’s port wine, no less, the bottle three-parts-full, and rum, half-full—oh, how beautiful life is! Intoxication, forget-fulness, to float along on the stream of forgetfulness, into the twilight, deep into the darkness where there is neither failure nor regret … good alcohol, I salute you. La reine Elsabe, I have rested on your naked breast, I have breathed the scent of your hair and your flesh!

I have filled the basin again, I have set the three uncorked bottles before me, I have taken a long pull from the rum bottle. At first it repels me after the gentler, purer taste of the brandy. The rum tastes sharper, more burning, it is adulterated and all the more fiery on that account. I feel it spreading in my blood like dark-red clouds, it stimulates my imagination, it makes me more wide-awake, more watchful, more cunning.… I know I must tidy up the kitchen properly, wipe the flood off the floor, carefully cork the bottles and put them away again. Nobody must notice anything, not even Else. Good little Else, she’s fast asleep, she’s young still, she sleeps the sleep of youth, but I, her master, I sit here in the kitchen and watch over her sleep. If a burglar were to come now … but where did I leave the corks? I don’t see them anywhere, I haven’t got them in my pockets either—perhaps they’re still in the larder? I must go and look, I must put the bottles away properly corked. But the water is so gentle to my feet, and I am getting so tired, I would like to sleep, just for a brief moment, then I’ll tidy up, I’ll put everything in perfect order, and I’ll find the corks too.…

Who’s coming? Who is disturbing me again? Oh, it’s only Magda, efficient Magda. In the middle of the night, no, rather towards morning, there she stands in the kitchen door-way looking spick-and-span, fully dressed anyway, and stares silently at me with a pale startled face. I half straighten up, make a gesture of greeting, nod to her and say cheerfully: “Here I am again, Magda! I just made a little trip, a little excursion into the springtime. Have you heard the larks sing yet this year? Tomorrow we’ll go together. You’ll see how lovely and green the birches are, and you can make the acquaintance of the Queen of Schnaps, la reine d’alcool, I’ve christened her Elsabe.… You’re so clever, Magda, I saw you at the books with Hinzpeter, in the office. You’ve been through the books, you’ve a clear view of things now. I’ve always been afraid of that clear view! I drink to you, Magda, and again and again! I know it’s your rum, but I’ll replace it, I’ll replace everything. We’ve still got money. I can sell the business. It belongs to me, I’m the boss, I can do what I like! Or have you got something to say against it?”

She said nothing. She looked silently at me, then at my bleeding feet. She was very pale. Two tears welled up in her eyes and ran slowly down her pale cheeks. She didn’t wipe them away. Intently I followed their course with my eyes, until they fell on her dress. Those tears didn’t upset me; on the contrary it pleased me that she wept, it was a sweet feeling to me, that she could still suffer on my account.

I drank again.

“You’re so mercilessly efficient. Yes, I didn’t get the prison contract, but you’ll put that right somehow. I’ve always lived in your shadow; you never let me feel your superiority, but I could never reach as high as you, and now I’m right down. But one can live below the surface as well. I met a curious girl who is right down, too, but she can feel pain and happiness. One can feel joy and sorrow down below, Magda, it’s just like being up above, it’s all the same whether you live up or down. Perhaps the most beautiful thing is to let yourself fall, to shut your eyes and plunge into nothingness, deeper and deeper into nothingness. One can go on falling endlessly Magda. I haven’t reached the end, I haven’t touched bottom yet. All my limbs are still intact.”

“Erwin,” she pleaded, “Erwin, don’t say any more. Stop drinking now. You’re ill, Erwin. Come, go to bed. I’ll bandage your feet. They look terrible. I’ll bandage your feet.”

“You see,” I cried, and drank again, “you begrudge me even these few mouthfuls. They’re your bottles, of course, but I’ll pay for them. I’ll pay you in cash or kind. That’s fair dealing, you can’t say anything against that. You ask about my feet. I’ve been on a trip in the country, while the efficient mistress is at work, surely the master can have some relaxation, once in a while. I walked barefoot, walking barefoot is supposed to be healthy.…”

She let me go on talking. She had quickly left the kitchen and returned with a large sponge, a jar of ointment, and some bandages. She knelt beside me, and while I went on talking over her head, more and more thickly and incoherently, she washed my feet, washed the dirt of the road out of my wounds, wiped them gently, applied the ointment, and bandaged them up.

“Good, good,” I said, “you’re really good to me, Magda. If only you weren’t so damned efficient!”

8

I wake up, I am lying in bed, the windows are open, the curtains move gently in the breeze. Outside, the sun is shining. It must be rather late, the bed beside me is made already. There is no one in the bedroom but myself. I feel very sick. There is a burning dryness in my stomach. Only slowly can I bring myself to think. I become aware of pain in my feet. I turn back the covers and see the bandages. And like a thunderclap everything comes to me again: the way I watched the shadows on the glass from outside my office, all that vulgar boozing in the bar-room, the shameful scene in that common barmaid’s room, my drunken shoeless walk home, and worst of all, the scene in the kitchen with Magda! How I degraded myself, oh, how I degraded myself! A burning wave of remorse sweeps over me. The shame of it, the torturing shame of it! I hide my face in my hands, I shut my eyes tight.… I don’t want to see, I don’t want to hear, I don’t want to think any more. I set my jaw, I grind my teeth. I groan: “It can’t be true! It isn’t true! It can’t have been me! I’ve dreamed it all! I must forget all about it. Straight away, I must forget all about it. None of it must be true!”

I tremble as if with a cramp, and then come the tears, tears for all that I have so wantonly thrown away. Endless, bitter, and eventually comforting tears.

And when I have finished crying, the sun is still outside my window, the cool fragrant curtains sway in the gentle breeze. Life is still here, young and smiling. You can begin again at any time, it only depends on you. A little table is standing by my bed, with a breakfast tray upon it. The coffee is keeping warm under a cosy, and now I begin to have breakfast. I bite into a roll. Ineffectively I chew over and over on the first tough mouthful; but the coffee has been made extra strong, gradually my appetite returns, and I enjoy all the little delicacies which Magda has considerately laid out on the tray: sharp anchovies, lovely fat liver sausage, and wonderful Cheshire cheese. Rarely have I eaten with such relish. I feel like a convalescent. Thankfully I greet the neat familiar objects which surround me, greet them like faithful old friends whom I have missed for a long time. Now I find a note from Magda on the bedside table. She tells me that she has just gone to the office for a few hours, she asks me to stay in bed, or at least in the house, till her return; the bath-water has been heated for me.

Half an hour later I left the house. Although walking was very painful on account of my sore feet, I did not intend to remain inactive any longer. I had cleaned myself up from top to toe, put on fresh linen, my best suit—and now I was going to take my old place in the world again.

No hesitation this time; no peering out of door-ways after shadows; I went straight in. I gave a friendly greeting to my staff in the two outer offices, and entered my private office. Magda jumped up from my desk-chair. Formerly she had never sat at it; she had a place at a side table. It hurt me rather that she had already struck me off the list of active partners; she blushed deeply.

“Erwin!” she cried. “I thought.…” And she looked first at me, then at Herr Hinzpeter.

“Good morning, good morning, Herr Hinzpeter,” I said amiably, “Yes, you thought … but I found I felt much better this morning, except for my feet … of course, my feet … but never mind that. Now tell me what you’ve found out, and what you’ve already decided on. Can we make up for the loss of that prison contract?” I sat down in my desk-chair. I looked at them amiably, quite the boss, ready to listen to the suggestions of his staff before making his decision. Barely an hour ago I had been crying out that I wanted to forget, that I must forget.… And now here I sat. I couldn’t forget, for Magda’s pallor and my aching feet in their tight shoes reminded me: but I wanted them to forget. Another five minutes and it would seem like a bad dream to Magda, that not twelve hours before, she had seen me sitting at the kitchen table, three bottles in front of me, my dirty feet in a bowl, the tiled floor swimming with water—just a bad dream! She must forget! She must forget! (I quite realised that it was absolutely disgraceful of me, just to pass events over without a word, to wipe them off the slate, to allow no allusion to them: it was utterly and absolutely disgraceful!) Anyhow, it transpired that not for nothing had I counted on Magda’s energy.

Early in the morning she had already paid a visit to our friend the prison governor, to find out whether there wasn’t perhaps something to be salvaged. And lo and behold, the good fellow had in fact given her a tip, a very valuable tip.… One section of the prisoners, at the beginning of their sentence, were put on to picking oakum—old used or frayed rope was pulled to pieces, reduced to strands, and then, with the tow so gained, new rope was made. There was always a large demand for this old rope, and at the moment the prison administration’s supplies were almost at an end. The governor had suggested to Magda that she might go to Hamburg and buy up old cordage, two or maybe three truckloads. He said there was quite good business to be done in this way, provided one knew the right places to go to, and furthermore, he dropped a hint or two as to where those places were.

As I have said, I listened benevolently to all this. Of course it was only a small casual undertaking that, even with the most advantageous buying, could not nearly replace a three years’ grocery contract for almost fifteen hundred men, but it was something we could take in our stride, even if it didn’t really fit into the framework of my business.

“And who do you think should go, Magda?” I asked. “Perhaps you yourself …?”

“No, much as I’d like to,” she replied hesitatingly. “I don’t think I can go just now. Particularly now …” she broke off and looked at me rather helplessly, yet with meaning. This was one of those looks that I was not going to put up with in any circumstances. So I said, “You’re quite right, Magda. You can hardly be spared at the moment. And besides, there’s the household. Else is still rather young (dear comforting Else!) I think it’s best if I go. I feel quite well again, and as for my feet, well, I can arrange something about that … I can always take taxis …”

Magda hastily interrupted me. “You can’t go, in any case, Erwin. You know you’re not well.” She looked firmly at me, not maliciously, rather sadly and affectionately, but firmly. This time I lowered my glance.

“No,” she continued, “the best thing would be to send Herr Hinzpeter. He could leave this evening, already, and perhaps be back the morning after tomorrow …”

I interrupted her. “One moment, Magda, please. Thank you, Herr Hinzpeter, I’ll call you in again a little later.…”

I waited until the door had closed behind the book-keeper. Then I looked seriously at Magda.

“Magda,” I said, “we’ll let bygones be bygones. We won’t talk about this thing any more. We’ll forget it for good.”

She made a gesture as if she wanted to speak, to contradict this possibly all too-simple solution.

“No, no, Magda,” I said hastily, “let me finish—I beg you to let me go to Hamburg. It is most important to me, and as for my feet, well, I can manage.…”

She made an impatient gesture, as if my feet were entirely unimportant at the moment. This lack of interest in my well-being offended me very deeply, but without showing my feelings, I continued: “It will be very good for my state of mind if I got away for a day or two.” In a lower voice, I added: “Losing that prison contract has greatly upset me, I feel I’ve disgraced myself over it.”

She looked fixedly at me.

“Erwin,” she said, “you said yourself we should let bygones be bygones, and I’ll agree to that, although …” she broke off. “So don’t you start about it yourself. As far as that trip to Hamburg is concerned, I’m firmly convinced that it would not be good for you just now. It’s not distraction you need, but rest and concentration. Apart from that, I’ve made an appointment with Dr Mansfeld for both of us this afternoon.”

“That’s your wilfulness again, Magda,” I cried angrily. “What do I want with Dr Mansfeld? I’m perfectly healthy, apart from my feet, I …” “Oh, your feet!” she cried, now angry too, “that bit of sore skin will soon heal. No, you are really ill, Erwin, I’ve noticed for months past how you’ve changed. The doctor will have to examine you thoroughly.”

“Under your supervision,” I said ironically. “Thank you very much indeed.”

“Erwin,” she said pleadingly. “Just for this once, don’t let’s quarrel. Do come and see the doctor with me, just as a favour. Then he can decide whether it would be good for you to go to Hamburg.”

“Oh,” I said bitterly, “if he’s going to make decisions on your advice, we needn’t go at all. You can tell Hinzpeter straightaway that he’s got to go to Hamburg.”

We each stood at a window of the office, and stared into the street. For my part, I was not only staring, but drumming on the window-pane as well. Outside the spring sun was shining, and many women were passing by, dressed in flowered frocks. Only a short time before I had felt like a convalescent, and had greeted the familiar things around me with fresh interest, convinced that today a new life was beginning … and now the old creaking mill of our dissension was starting up again, grinding all my good resolutions to dust. And why? Because Magda was obstinate and wanted to decide everything on her own. No, this time I didn’t intend to give in. We had agreed that what was past was past, and I didn’t have to be submissive just on account of the events of last night.

Magda turned abruptly from the window towards me.

“Erwin,” she said softly.

“Yes?” I said sullenly, and went on drumming without looking at her.

“Erwin,” she repeated, “I don’t want to quarrel with you today. I feel as if we were in some terrible danger and had to keep together at all costs. So I will do as you wish; you go to Hamburg, but when you come back, do me the favour of coming with me to Dr Mansfeld.”

I turned to her and laughed happily.

“When I come back you’ll see for yourself how well I am, and you’ll give up this visit to the doctor on your own accord. All the same, I promise. Anyway, thank you very much Magda. I’ll bring you home something nice.…” and I laughed again. I was so happy at the prospect of the journey.

“I haven’t done this to get your thanks,” said Magda rather stiffly. “I’ve done it quite against my own better judgment. I’m convinced that this journey will do you no good.”

“But I’ll be going with your consent,” I interrupted again, “and afterwards we’ll see which of us was right. Now tell me, which firms were mentioned in connection with this business? Of course, I’ll look around on my own account as well.…”

9

From the point of view of business, my trip to Hamburg was a great success: I was able to buy three truckloads of cordage at an incredibly low price, and we made quite a tidy sum out of this casual deal. Afterwards, I told Magda a lot of tales about how I had had to hunt for the old rope, but actually it had come my way quite by chance, as sometimes happens; I did not have to work for it at all. Still, I had to say something to justify being away for nearly five days. I did not once get drunk in Hamburg, I want to make that perfectly clear. But I got into the habit there of taking a little drink at any hour of the day, even early in the morning, a habit which is perhaps more fatal than an occasional heavy bout of drunkenness. I went about the beautiful city a great deal—the whole business was settled within half an hour on the second day—I went down to the River Alster and the harbour and among the wharves, tramped through the endless halls of the Altona fish market, attended an auction there, travelled out to Ohlsdorf and wandered through the famous cemetery for hours on end, and in between all this I would scuttle in and out of saloons to drink a glass or two of some clear or brown burning liquid. It put me in a good mood, did my stomach good, cheered my heart, allowed me to see the colourful teeming city through happy eyes, in short, it took me out of myself. I went through the days, not quite drunk, indeed very far from any real drunkenness, and yet never really sober; and whereas at the outset I had waited until ten or even eleven for my first tot of schnaps, by the last two days I was quite cheerfully ringing for the chambermaid and ordering her to bring me my first double brandy in bed by eight o’clock already. Breakfast tasted all the better for it.

During the return journey, for which I had provided myself with a good pocket flask, the best of resolutions matured in me. It was clear that I wouldn’t be able to keep on with this habit under Magda’s sharp eye, and after I had just taken a good swig in the toilet on the train, I felt it would be quite easy to give it up. After all it was only one or two little glasses every one or two hours, it ought to be easy enough to wean myself of that. Contrary to my expectation, the journey lasted longer than the contents of my flask, though I thought I had provided amply for it. In our station buffet (where I am not known) I had another couple of drinks and then set off home. I did not forget to buy a box of cachous at the chemists, to cover up the smell of alcohol. For I anticipated that, after such a long absence, a welcoming kiss from Magda would be inevitable. She received me amicably but coolly, she looked quizzically at me and found I had grown stouter, or a little puffy about the face, as she put it. This made me furious, but I didn’t show it. Instead I talked enthusiastically about how I had bought the cordage, about the beautiful city of Hamburg, the cemetery at Ohlsdorf, and also about an organ concert which I had heard (quite by accident) in St. Nicholas’ church. I proved thereby that I hadn’t only been sitting around in bars, but had led an interesting and lively existence and I actually succeeded, to some extent, in cheering up my all-too-serious Magda. She in her turn reported on the way business was going; she had started something new. She had been going out into the country nearly every day in our little car, and had bought up honey from all the bee-keepers, not only the honey they had on hand, but also the yield of the coming rape- and lime-blossom season. She had bought jars and wanted to add to our firm a department for the distribution of honey direct to the consumer. She started to talk to me about the wording of the advertisements and the newspapers in which our honey department was to be advertised.

I could hardly listen. I wasn’t actually tired, but I was so weary of all these things, of this unflagging busy-ness—all for nothing. Because what was the point of selling honey? None. People ate it, and then it was gone. It was like soap bubbles, a shimmering nothing enclosing a little air in a great deal of light. It burst, nothing remained, all was delusion and black magic! Ah, get away with you! Don’t talk so much, don’t natter all the time! Leave me in peace! What are you wearing yourself out for? There are hundreds of thousands and millions of firms in the world; do you think yours is important? It’s absolutely insignificant, even a fly wouldn’t take any notice of it! Yes, if I had some schnaps now, I might be able to listen to you with some attention. I could get some, too. I could get Else to fetch me a whole bottle from the nearest saloon, but it’s not possible because you’re sitting here nattering all the time. Because you’re sitting here in my life and so I can’t do what my life demands. No, no, of course I don’t mean it’s as bad as all that, I quite like her, Magda, but it would be awfully nice if she would just vanish into thin air for a while—the boring, eternally nattering cow!

In the course of this monologue I had talked myself into a towering rage. Now I suddenly stood up and to Magda’s astonishment brusquely remarked that I had a bad headache and wanted to take a walk for a quarter of an hour—no thank you, no company. And with that I was outside already, and it was really all the same to me what she thought or whether I had hurt her feelings again. I turned six or seven corners till I came to a district where I thought I was not known, and went into a little saloon and asked the fat bearded landlord for a double cognac. As I was knocking back the third one, for I wanted to make proper provision for the night, the landlord said slowly, “This is a bit unusual for you, Herr Sommer, I suppose you’ve got a cold, have you?” Angry to find myself so well known, I gave up the idea of a fourth drink and started for home. I sucked my sweet breath cachous and of course I was furious with Magda because she obliged me to drive away the delicious taste of the cognac with such sickly scented sweets.

She was still waiting for me, probably she wanted to inveigle me into further discussion about her boring honey, but I went straight to the bedroom, and only muttered a few sullen words, pretending that I still had a bad headache. Then I quickly fell asleep.

But in the middle of the night, shortly after one o’clock, I stood barefoot in the larder again, in my pyjamas, and emptied in quick succession what was left in the three bottles, and while I had the last bottle at my lips, I realised with a terrible certainty that I was lost, that there was no salvation for me, that I belonged to alcohol, body and soul. Now it was quite immaterial whether I kept up some appearance of seemliness and moral responsibility for a few days or weeks—it was all over, in any case. Let Magda come and catch me drinking. I’d tell her to her face that I’d become a drunkard, and that she had driven me to it, she and her infernal efficiency!

But she didn’t come. So I left the three bottles standing there empty, and put the corks beside them. Let them all know, Magda, Else, everybody, it was all the same to me!

But then, towards morning, I felt so heavy-hearted that I got up again, virtually licked the last few drops out of the necks of the bottles, filled them with water, half- or three-quarters full as the case might be, corked them and put them back in their old place. And so I gained two or three days’ grace.…

10

Following this, I went to the office fairly regularly and did a certain amount of work, not for the pleasure of it, but because it was an old habit not easily broken, and because I felt ashamed of myself in front of Magda. Magda had grown very quiet; we only discussed the most essential things now. The only time we showed any animation was when some third person was present—Hinzpeter or Else or a client. Then we could even joke together, and the good-humoured tone of our early married life seemed to have returned, but hardly had the door shut behind this third person, than we fell silent immediately, my face froze and Magda began to rummage among some papers. During this time she constantly kept near me. Not that she would walk with me to the office, but five or ten minutes later she would appear without fail. The running of the house was left entirely in Else’s hands. Naturally this supervision had not the slightest effect on me, I did as I liked, that is to say, I drank when I wanted to. From my customary small nips I had passed on to taking long pulls out of the bottle. I always kept a bottle in my desk at the office and another in the corner of the bathroom cupboard at home. I enjoyed smuggling these bottles in under Magda’s eyes, as it were, in my brief-case or even in my trousers pocket covered by my jacket. Whenever I replenished my store, I experienced a real feeling of happiness, as if I had grown richer. At the very slightest sign of thirst I could take a drink. At home in the bathroom it was simple enough, but in the office, which Magda shared with me, there were difficulties sometimes. I would sit for several minutes, turning over in my mind some pretext to send her outside. Once, when I couldn’t think of anything, right in her presence I went as far as to set the uncorked bottle on the floor—the desk hid me from sight—and then I dropped my india-rubber and started fussily to look for it, ending up on all fours under the arch of my desk, where, delighted at my own cleverness, I sent a considerable amount of cognac gurgling down my throat.

I changed my mind almost hourly about the extent to which Magda could see through me. As a rule, I was firmly convinced that she guessed nothing, but at other times, when I was bad-tempered and irritable, I was almost certain that she was completely aware of what I was up to. Sometimes I would moodily pace up and down the office, constantly passing Magda’s place; then I was evil, as I called it, not for any special reason, not even on account of Magda, but I was just evil, as downright bad and wicked as a man can be, that’s how evil I was, and I was looking for a pretext to start quarrelling with her. In this quarrel I wanted to find out for certain whether she knew all or nothing, and if she knew all, then I wanted to drop the last pretence of decorum. Right in the presence of my neat, sober, efficient wife, I wanted to get blind raving drunk, to put my feet up on the desk, to sing coarse and dirty songs and use obscene expressions. What utter satisfaction to drag her down into the filth with me, to make her see: this is the one you used to love, and this is what your love has made of him.…

I paced up and down even more rapidly, I no longer felt ashamed, I threw her fierce challenging glances, and then, just before I broke out, she always got up and left the office. But I stared after her, I stared furiously at the brown grained door, I clenched my fists, I ground my teeth. “Run away again, you coward. But that’s what you’ve made of me, you and your efficiency!” Finally I sat down at my desk again, had a good drink, and grew tired and gentle.

If I said that I only went on working from force of habit, that is not quite correct—one should not hide one’s light under a bushel. Through the alcohol, I lost much of my dignified reserve, I could gossip far more freely with my country clients, we slapped each other on the back, told jokes—always looking round to make sure Magda was nowhere about—and thus I managed to bring off a number of unusually advantageous deals. I now liked to do something that I had never done before, something for which I had considered myself too dignified and my firm too respectable; I would go with my country customers into some little saloon, and there, over a scarred lime-wood table on which our glasses left wet rings, we talked a great deal, drank still more, and often I managed to buy at most advantageous prices from my half-drunken clients. When I got back to the office again and notified Hinzpeter of these transactions so that he could enter them into the books, I noticed the looks which this dry little adding-machine exchanged with my wife, but I only laughed.

However, one morning, after a deal in which I had properly soaked the bailiff of a large farm and had talked him into selling me a whole truckload of peas at half the regular market price, well, that morning I heard the sound of excited conversation in the yard, and when I went to the window I saw the bailiff, sober now, talking wildly to my wife and Hinzpeter. I stared through the glass for quite a while, and thought to myself: “Yes, go on talking, be as sober as you like, but you can’t talk away that signature you put on the deal last night!”

Now Magda spoke and he nodded and shook his head and stamped his foot and suddenly he looked across to me and must have seen me behind the glass and, would you believe it, the fellow raised his arm and shook his fist at me, in front of my wife and Hinzpeter, and shouted a term of abuse, that sounded something like “Old swindler!” I waited and waited for Magda to turn the insolent fellow out of the yard, but she only spoke quietly to him and after a while the bailiff let his fist drop and they resumed their discussion. I was disgusted at my wife’s spinelessness, and after a while, as they still went on talking, I sat down at my desk, opened a certain compartment and fortified myself. After a further lapse of time, during which I had sat thinking of nothing, the door opened and Magda came in, looking very pale, a brief-case in her hand. She put the brief-case on the desk, and started to rummage about among the papers, otherwise it was perfectly quiet in our office, and the alcohol went gently around inside me and made me feel peaceful and contented. But suddenly Magda dropped the papers, let her head fall on to the desk and burst wildly into tears. I was perfectly helpless, had no idea what to do, and anyway in my present agreeable condition I was much too lethargic to do anything. I just said rather feebly: “What’s the matter? Do calm yourself, Magda. I’m sure it’s not as bad as all that!”

But she raised her head and started at me with streaming eyes and cried: “It’s too bad! It’s not enough that you’re blind drunk every day, you have to bring the firm into disrepute! Everybody’s saying that we’re not to be trusted any more, and that we’re out to cheat people …”

“Halt, stop, Magda,” I said slowly, and suddenly I was pleased that things had come to a head at last, and I was determined to spare her nothing.

“Halt, stop, Magda,” I said. “Not too much at a time! As far as being blind drunk every day is concerned, I’d like to ask you whether you’ve ever seen me stagger about or heard me stammer? I quite admit I take a little drink now and then, but I can stand it. It helps me to think clearer. People who can’t stand alcohol should avoid it. But that’s not me. Look,” I said slowly, and opened that certain compartment in my desk, “here we have a bottle of brandy that was still full at nine o’clock this morning, and now about a third is gone, a good third, let’s say. But am I staggering about? Can’t I manage my limbs? Am I muddled in the head? I’m ten times clearer than you! I wouldn’t allow any jumped-up muck-ox to call my wife a swindler. I’d knock his teeth in!” I shouted suddenly, and then continued more calmly. “But you went on talking to him, and calmed him down, and if I know you and that frightened old hen Hinzpeter, you either washed out that deal with the peas or else raised the price.”

I looked at her ironically.

“Of course we did,” she cried, and now she dried her tears, and looked at me without love or affection. “Of course we did. We’ve cancelled the deal, but we’ve lost a good client for ever.”

“Is that so?” I answered, still more ironically. “You’ve cancelled the deal. Of course, I’m just the lowest office boy here, and what I put my name to is just a scrap of paper! I’ll tell you one thing, Magda. If Mr Bailiff Schmidt of the Fliederhof doesn’t fulfil his agreement to the last hundredweight, I’ll summons him, and I’ll win my case. Because an agreement’s an agreement, any lawyer will tell you that. And if he has accepted my low offer, that’s his fault, not mine. I didn’t make him drunk, but he tried to make me drunk, and if he fell into his own trap, it’s not my fault. And, Magda,” I said, and now I got up from my chair, “I’d have you know that I’m the boss here, and if agreements are going to be cancelled, I’m to be asked, and no one else. It doesn’t suit me that you play yourself up here, and try to ride roughshod over me, with all this talk about being blind drunk when I’m as sober as an eel in the water and ten times more clever and more efficient than you are. I’m the boss here, and you’re not going to push me around. Get back to your pots and pans, I won’t interfere with you there. I didn’t ask you to come here, but now I’m asking you to go.”

I had been speaking very seriously and deliberately, and while I was speaking it had become clearer and clearer to me that I was right in every respect, and she was wrong. Now I sat down again.

Magda had been looking at me very attentively while I was speaking, as if she wanted to lip-read every word I said. Now that I had finished, she said: “I can see it’s no use talking to you any more, Erwin. You have lost all sense of right and wrong. The Count had told the bailiff that he would lose his job if this drunken agreement wasn’t cancelled at once, and you would be summoned for fraud.…”

“Let him try!” I cried ironically. “Of course, you’re impressed by a Count, just because he calls himself blue-blooded. But I don’t care that much!”

I snapped my fingers.

“Let him summon me! He’ll soon find out his mistake!”

“Yes,” cried Magda again, “it’s all the same to you whether your good name gets dragged through the mud in court. Unfortunately I’m forced to realise that now. But I give up talking to you about it. Schnaps has destroyed all sense of justice in you. But I would like to ask you something else, Erwin.”

“Go on, then,” I answered sullenly, but I was very much on the alert, for I anticipated that nothing good was coming. She took a deep breath and looked fixedly at me, then she said.

“Are you still a man of your word, Erwin? I mean, will you still stand by what you once promised me?”

“Of course I will,” I answered sullenly, “for instance I would keep to an agreement, whether I was drunk or sober at the time it was settled.”

She took no notice of my irony.

“When you were going to Hamburg,” she said, “you promised me faithfully you would come to the doctor’s with me. Will you keep your word, will you come with me to see Dr Mansfeld this afternoon?”

“Stop,” I said excitedly, “you’ve got things mixed up again, Magda! I never promised you to go to the doctor’s in any event, I only promised to do so if I came back ill. But I have come back perfectly healthy.”

“Yes, so healthy,” said Magda bitterly, “that the night you came back you emptied every bottle in my larder. And since then you haven’t been sober for a minute. But I see you don’t want to keep your word.”

“I would keep my word, but in this case I haven’t given any word, not like that.”

“But Erwin,” Magda began again, but quietly now, “why do you struggle so against having yourself examined for once by the doctor. If it’s as you say and the doctor confirms it, then everything’s all right … but if not …”

“Well, what then?” I asked ironically.

“… then something will have to be done about your health. Because you’re ill, Erwin, you’re so ill, you have absolutely no idea …”

“Oh, stop it,” I said, rather bored. “You won’t get round me that way. You talk soft to me, but I can see by your eyes that you don’t mean well. I’m not going to allow my wife to order me about, however efficient she may be.”

“I don’t want to order you about at all …”

“Oh, please: first you cancel my contracts, then I’m supposed to go to the doctor’s because you imagine some nonsense, finally you’d like to take my place as boss here, eh? During my absence you’ve been making yourself quite comfortable in my chair, haven’t you?”

“All right then,” she said, and now her eyes had a really wicked gleam, and no trace of mildness was left in her voice, “you don’t want to, you don’t want to do anything but drink and cause trouble. But I’m not going to allow you to ruin me and the firm. Ruin yourself as much as you like. But then I’ll have to take other steps …”

“Take them, take them,” I said sarcastically, “and see how you get on.… By the way, would you be good enough to tell me what steps you happen to be thinking of?”

My irony made her beside herself with rage.

“Certainly I’ll tell you,” she cried furiously. “First of all I’ll get a divorce …”

“Well, well,” I laughed. “So you’re going to get a divorce. I didn’t know I’d given you grounds for divorce yet. But that can probably be rectified—and what else have you in mind?”

But she had had enough.

“You’ll see,” she said, and sat down again at her desk and her papers.

“I can wait,” I answered.

I took the brandy bottle and laid it with my uneaten sandwiches in the brief-case.

“Get this quite clear: by law everything belongs to me. You had nothing when we married. House, furniture, business: all mine!”

I laughed as I saw her furious gesture of protest.

“Yes, you enquire from a lawyer first, then you’ll think again about a divorce, and now,” I said, and took my hat from the hook, “I’ll leave my firm on loan to you. Be very industrious, dear Magda, and cancel plenty of nice contracts, and … why, what’s the matter? Are you trying to give me grounds for divorce?”

My sarcasm had made her frantic with rage. She had snatched up the nearest thing to hand, a blotter, and thrown it at me. I only just managed to dodge it. She looked at me, trembling, white as a sheet. I thought it best not to provoke her any more, I put the blotter back in its place, and left the office.

11

I was firmly decided not to return too soon. Let her play about there for a bit on her own; I couldn’t do a thing right, anyway. The whole business had bored me for some time past: now I had a more interesting task on hand, better suited to my present mood—my fight with Magda! Let her match herself against me, and she would find out how much the cleverer I was, and how much more I knew about the law!

I was on my way again, my brief-case under my arm, through a lovely though rather hot day at the end of spring. The Queen of Alcohol—I had neglected her for far too long—she certainly wasn’t dull. Apart from that, it was time I got my shoes back. Nobody was going to say that in my drunkenness I had scattered my clothes over half Europe. Nobody, not even Magda. It was quite clear what this capable lady intended, to whom I had been married up till now. Divorce, all very well, but divorces aren’t arranged so quickly as that; certain preparations have to be made, e.g., an examination by the doctor. Magda had been on good terms with Dr Mansfeld for years. He had always treated her whenever she was ill. I knew him less, I never had much the matter with me. She would probably talk him over to her way of thinking and then I should probably be put under restraint in a home for inebriates. That’s what my fine Magda would like: her husband shut up in a home, preferably third-class of course, while she gets her hands on his property and runs the firm. But there were other doctors, more clever and capable than good old Dr Mansfeld who was only an ordinary G.P., after all: right away within the next few days I would go to one or more of them and get certificates attesting to my perfect health. With such a target before my eyes it should be easy not to drink for a day or two before my visit to the doctor. She would soon find out whom she had to deal with, would Magda; despite fifteen years of married life, she didn’t know her husband at all! Anyway, before I’d give up my property to her, I’d sooner burn the house down over her head, that was certain.

So my thoughts ran, on my way to the village inn, and the filling-in of all the details shortened the journey for me in the most agreeable fashion. For instance, I could dwell on the idea of being shut up in some institution cell, disciplined with cold water and fed on bad food, while Magda ate veal cutlets and asparagus in our pretty dining-room. Tears of self-pity nearly came into my eyes at the thought of my hard lot and Magda’s injustice. In between times, I fed my sandwiches to the village ducks and geese, for as usual lately, I wasn’t in the least hungry, and every so often I dived behind a hedge and took a drink. I never quite lost the feeling of shame that I, Erwin Sommer, was hiding behind a hedge, pouring schnaps into myself like the lowest tramp. I could never take it for granted, I never became quite so blunted. But it just had to be, it couldn’t be otherwise.

I had finished the bottle shortly before reaching my goal. I threw the bottle into the ditch and began my last five minutes’ walk. It was striking noon from the village steeple; before me, behind me, and all around, the villagers were coming from the fields, with hoes and spades over their shoulders. Some of them greeted me, some gave me keen sidelong looks, and others nudged each other, pulled faces and laughed as they passed me by. It may only have been the usual critical village attitude to townsfolk, but I had the suspicion that it might be noticeable I had been drinking, perhaps, or that something about my clothing was disarranged. I was already acquainted with the fact that the worst thing about alcohol was the feeling of uncertainty it gave, as if something was not quite right. You can look in the mirror as often as you like, look your clothes over, try every button, but when you have had something to drink, you are never sure that you have not overlooked something, something quite obvious that has been neglected despite the closest attention. One has similar experiences in dreams, one moves quite happily in the most exclusive society, and suddenly discovers that one has forgotten to put one’s trousers on. Well then, I found it irksome to be so stared at, and besides, it occurred to me that this busy noonday hour would not be the right time for me to go looking for my pretty one. I turned aside into a field path and threw myself down on the grass under a shady bush. At once I fell asleep, into that pitch-black sleep that alcohol induces, in which one is, so to speak, extinguished, one dies a modified death. There are no more dreams, no notion of light and life—off into nothingness!

When I woke up, the sun was already low. I must have been asleep for four, perhaps five hours. As usual nowadays, my sleep had not refreshed me, I woke up old and tired, a shaky feeling in my limbs. My bones were stiff when I stood up; and I found walking very difficult. But I knew by now that all this would be better as soon as I had had my first few drinks, and I hurried to reach the inn.

I had chosen a good time: the bar-room was empty again, there was nobody behind the bar either. Stiffly, I let myself fall into a wicker chair and called for some service. First a woman’s head appeared in the crack of the door; it wasn’t my pale pretty one however, but an unkempt red-nosed elderly character, and then a fat woman looked in, calling “Coming, coming!” and opened the door by the stairway which I had climbed that night, led blindly by the hand.

“Elinor, Elinor, come down!” cried the landlady. She once again assured me that I would be served, and disappeared into the kitchen. So her name was Elinor. I hadn’t been so far out with Elsabe. But Elinor was very good, rather better really. Elinor suited her, Elinor la reine d’alcool. Very nice too!

And then I heard her coming down the stairs, not at all gazelle-footed by the way; the door banged open, and in she came. She must have been asleep, her hair was not so neat and carefully pinned as usual, and her light dress was rather rumpled and untidy. She stood for a moment and looked across to me. She did not recognise me at once, she was looking into the sun. Then she cried quite cheerfully: “Oh, it’s only old pop who likes schnaps so much!”, and ran upstairs again. I didn’t really mind this novel and rather painful greeting. I was only pleased at such an unaffected reception. I had been a bit doubtful how she would receive me after my departure over the shed roof that night. But now everything was all right, and I waited patiently for five minutes until she appeared again, spick-and-span. She came straight over to my table, gave me her hand like an old friend, and said amiably, “I thought you were never coming back! What have you been doing all this time? Are you bankrupt now?”

“Not yet, ma reine,” I said, smiling too, “but for the time being I’ve handed the business over to my wife, from whom, by the way, I’m getting a divorce. What do you think of that, my pretty one? Perhaps in eight weeks I’ll be on the market. Quite well-preserved, aren’t I?”

She looked at me for a moment, and then the smile vanished from her face, and she said rather coolly and in a businesslike tone, “One schaps, was it? Or a whole bottle again?”

“Quite right, my golden one,” I cried, “a whole bottle again! And another bottle of champagne for yourself!”

“Not in the daytime,” she answered shortly, and went away. A moment later I had plenty to drink, of this coarse watery-coloured stuff that I already liked better than cognac. But except for that, I didn’t get much for my money that afternoon. Elinor was constantly busy, in and out of the barroom, and we could only exchange a few words from time to time.

Upset by this, I drank more than usual, and after about an hour and a half, Elinor had to bring me another bottle, and I realised myself that I was very drunk. Then a few young fellows came in, among them that bricklayer with whom Elinor had been talking so intimately; and just to attract the girl to my table (which only succeeded for a few minutes) I let them all sit with me and ordered for each one whatever he wanted. In a short time my table offered a wild spectacle. Beer and schnaps glasses, wine and champagne bottles stood on it in wild confusion, and around it were grouped a horde of wildly talking, shouting, laughing, gesticulating figures, and I was the wildest and drunkest of the lot. I felt myself absolutely liberated, I really was a stone hurtling into the abyss—I absolutely ceased to think.

In all our uproar we did not hear the car pull up, and when two gentlemen came in we hardly noticed them. I was just shouting some protestation or other to the man opposite me—he wasn’t even listening—when suddenly I stopped as if a hand had been clapped over my mouth, for one of these gentlemen, who had sat down at the next table, greeted me with a friendly “Good evening,” and this gentleman was Dr Mansfeld. I didn’t know the other gentleman. Even my drinking companions fell silent; and though they saw that nothing further was happening, that the gentlemen at the next table were quietly drinking their beer, deep in conversation, even then the old jollity did not return. One after the other, they faded away, and at last I was left alone in this wilderness of glasses and bottles, and I looked in vain for Elinor; she did not come to restore order to the chaos. Probably she was outside the door flirting with the young bricklayer, who was doubtless a lover of hers. After the wild abandon of a few moments ago, a deep depression fell over me, I gnawed my lips and shot suspicious glances at the neighbouring table, where they were taking no notice of me at all. My suspicions were aroused, I wondered whether Dr Mansfeld had turned up here by mere coincidence in the course of going the round of his practice, or whether Magda had asked him to come. I racked my brains to remember whether in my drunkenness I might have given Magda the name of this little resort of mine, or whether I might have let slip some indication so that it was not difficult to trace—but I could not remember. The second gentleman seemed familiar to me but I couldn’t quite place him.…

I could have done with another drink, and the brandy bottle was close enough at hand, but in front of the two guests at the next table I did not dare to fill my glass. I told myself that in view of the state of this table and my wild behaviour of a short time ago, nothing could make matters worse, and yet I still didn’t dare.

At last Elinor came back into the bar-room. I called her to me and quietly asked her for the bill. While she totted up a row of figures on her pad, standing bent over me and hiding me rather from the view of the next table, I swallowed down two or three quick mouthfuls. Then I carefully corked the bottle and thrust it into my brief-case. Elinor gave a sharp glance at what I was doing and, indicating the next table, she whispered with raised eyebrows: “Friends?” I merely shrugged my shoulders. The bill was so steep that it took nearly all my money down to the last mark, and left only a quite inadequate tip for Elinor. She looked at me again with raised eyebrows, and whispered: “Cleaned out?”

I answered just as quietly, “I know where to get more. Till the next time, ma reine.”

She nodded lightly.

Now I had to get up and walk, under the watchful eyes of the gentlemen at the next table. I took my brief-case and made sure in advance on which hook my hat was hanging so that I shouldn’t have to search round for it as I went out. Then I stood up. I felt I could manage. I would have to move slowly and very carefully, and then it would be all right. After all, I only needed to get out of the village to one first sheltering bush, or better still, a happy thought!—I only needed to lock myself up in the toilet here, and I could sleep as long as I wanted to. I had fresh provisions with me.

Already I had politely said “Good evening” to the next table as I got up, and now I was at the door only a step from salvation, when a voice behind me said: “Oh, just a moment, Herr Sommer!”

It gave me such a start, I nearly fell.

“I beg your pardon?” I cried in an unnecessarily loud voice. The doctor had taken hold of my arm and supported me.

“Did I startle you? I didn’t mean to. I’m sorry.”

“Oh, it’s nothing, nothing,” I said, embarrassed. “It must have been this wretched carpet I stumbled over.…” And I looked crossly at the carpet which lay quite smooth.

“I only wanted to ask you, Herr Sommer,” Dr Mansfeld went on, “if I might perhaps offer you a lift home in my car.”

He paused, and then said smilingly, “We’ve been celebrating a bit, haven’t we? Never mind, we all like to do that occasionally. But getting home might be a bit hard going, mightn’t it? So you come with us.”

He took me amiably but firmly under the arm. The other gentleman had paid and now he came over to us. “May I introduce you?” said the doctor, “Herr Sommer—Dr Stiebing, our district medical officer.”

With that he took me out of the inn and over to the car. I followed him like a sheep to the slaughter—the district medical officer!

So it was not chance, after all. It was a cleverly laid trap! That damned Magda! She wanted to get the better of me. She acted fast, I must admit. But I was clever too, I would have to play a part, be cunning, counter guile with guile.

“Well,” I suddenly laughed merrily, “two doctors, they should be able to manage a poor drunkard, eh? Have mercy on me gentlemen!” With that, I sat in the back of the car, while the other two gentlemen, also laughing, took their seats in front. We were just about to start when Elinor came running out of the house. She was carrying an ugly parcel wrapped up in newspaper, and she handed it into the open car. She said in a loud voice: “Here’s your shoes that you forgot the other night!” She gave a sneering laugh as she looked at me with her big white face and colourless eyes. Her mouth was very red.

After an embarrassed silence, the doctor asked, “Shall we go now?”

I answered, “Yes,” and the car moved off.

12

I am quite unable to describe how I felt during that journey. Abysmal desperation alternated with a paralysing apathy which terrified me even in that state of mind. It was as if I lay imprisoned in some heavy nightmare, close to waking all the time and yet unable to waken, and becoming involved in ever deeper and more fearful horrors. On a seat beside me lay the parcel containing my shoes. The newspaper had burst open and I saw them, smeared and dusty. I looked at one of the soles: dreadful, simply dreadful what pretty Elinor had done, worthy of a queen of schnaps.

“Yes,” I thought, “that’s how alcohol tortures and makes fools of its disciples. It’s the only thing capable of such dumb-founding surprises. One thinks one is safe, one has acted the part well, one has overcome the worst, and suddenly it thrusts its devil’s face forward, flays your breast with its claws, leaves you trembling, destroys your dignity.… La reine d’alcool—if I ever see you again, you won’t have a good time with me, Elinor!”

I could stand it no longer. With a glance I made sure that the two gentlemen were deep in conversation. I drew the bottle out of the case, uncorked it, and took a few long pulls. But I had not thought of the driving mirror.

“Not too much now, and not too fast, my dear Herr Sommer,” said Dr Mansfeld, and lifted a warning hand from the steering wheel. “We would like to have a sensible talk with you later.”

The scoundrel, the glib medical scoundrel! Now that he had me in his car, he let the mask drop, I wasn’t being driven to my home, but to some medical discussion at which just by chance the district health officer happened to be present!

From then on I was absolutely calm and collected. The schnaps I had just drunk lent me new strength and concentration. I had a firm aim in view—to get this discussion deferred by hook or by crook; later on, certainly, under circumstances more favourable for me, but today, outwitted like this by order of her ladyship—no thank you, my dear!

The car went on and on. Already we were on the outskirts of town and so far I’d had no opportunity to withdraw my partnership in this journey. But then a big locomotive pulling two trucks came rather suddenly out of the goods-yard. The doctor put his brakes on and pulled over to the left side of the road, and in the meantime I had gently opened the car door; and now that the train had passed and the doctor was accelerating again, I jumped lightly out, staggered for a moment, threatened to fall and then caught myself. I stood, waved my hand after the car to give passers-by the impression that this sudden descent had been with the knowledge of the people in it, and then walked off briskly, taking the right fork in the road, along the goods-yard fence, to a small dilapidated colony which the townsfolk call the “shed district.” I shook with inner laughter to think that the two clever doctors would bring no more back from their expedition than the drunkard’s shoes.

13

The most disagreeable thing about my present predicament was that I was standing in the street practically without a penny. I couldn’t go home, where I had at least some small change in my bureau, because I was obliged to assume that as soon as they noticed my absence the doctors would go looking for me there, and make their report to Madame Magda. It was too late to go to the bank, it shut two hours ago. Just as I was looking at my watch, it occurred to me that I owned not only it, but also a heavy gold signet ring and quite a solid wedding ring, moreover, which, after my scene with Magda this morning, had lost all real significance. So I was not entirely without means, and I boldly directed my steps towards the narrow dirty lane that led through the “shed district.”

This colony had grown around an old army camp in the depression years following the World War. The former army huts had been changed but not beautified by all kinds of ramshackle additions and reconstructions. In between stood little red brick houses which were already collapsing before they had been properly finished. I went hesitantly along this lane, myself unsure what I was doing or looking for here, when, at a window in one of these little brick houses, the familiar red sign caught my eye, advertising accommodation. I stepped closer and read, sure enough, that there was a comfortably furnished room to let to a respectable gentleman. There was no doorbell. I stepped through the open door and immediately found myself in a kitchen filled with steam from boiling washing. I couldn’t see anyone, so I loudly called “Hallo!” and out of the steam appeared a tall, bent, but still quite young man, with a yellow pallor, a soft beard, and lightish brown hair which had a golden sheen above the forehead. This man looked at me with some surprise and in a soft voice, he very politely asked what he could do for me.

“I would like to see the room that’s to let.”

“For yourself?” asked the man, rubbing his hands and coughing slightly. I said, yes.

“It’s no room for a gentleman. It’s not fine enough for a gentleman. It’s a room suitable for a working-man, sir.”

“Show it me, anyway,” I insisted.

He went silently before me, up a stairway, across an unfinished floor, and opened the door of a little one-windowed room with sloping walls—an attic really. Its interior was almost exactly like Elinor’s primitive room, and involuntarily I went across to the window to see whether there was a sloping shed roof here too, to offer the possibility of escape in the event of a surprise visit. No, the shed roof was missing, but instead there was an absolutely astonishing view over my native town. It lay before me, a little below, with its red-brown roofs, its three pointed church spires and the round-headed tower of the Town Hall; the green-bordered river wound through it, disappearing here and shining out again there, and as my eyes followed its course, I saw in the distance, out among the green of the fields and gardens, veiled in a blue mist, a roof, my roof.

“It’s a lovely view,” I said after a while.

The man behind me coughed.

“A working man,” he said, “doesn’t ask about the view. He asks if the bed’s good, and that’s a good bed, sir.”

“What does the room cost?” I asked.

“Seven marks a week,” said the man, “and we change the sheets once a week.”

“I’d like to eat here too,” I said. “I want to live here undisturbed for two or three weeks, in absolute quiet. I have some work to do, some writing. I shall hardly leave the house, can that be arranged? I don’t make many demands.”

“Our food is too simple for you, sir,” said the man. “But I can have meals sent over from the pub, if that’s all right for you.”

“All right,” I said, “I’ll take the room. My trunk is coming tomorrow. Have some supper sent over,” and I sat down at the table.

“I’ll have to ask for a little deposit, sir,” said my landlord, and he pulled his fingers till the joints cracked. “We’re poor people, sir …”

“Sit down,” I said to my landlord. “Ah, I see there’s a glass over there on the wash-stand. I wonder if you’d be good enough to bring it over, please.”

My landlord did so, and at my repeated invitation, he sat down at the table.

“What’s your name?”

“Lobedanz,” he answered, “It’s a rather funny name …”

“I don’t care whether your name is funny or not,” I said patronisingly, “let’s drink your health.”

I poured his glass half full—despite his protests—and kept hold of the bottle.

“I can drink out of the bottle for once,” I said laughingly. “We’ve all done that in our young days.”

He smiled feebly and took a little sip, while I drank deeply.

“I must ask you, Herr Lobedanz,” I said easily, “to have a bottle of brandy sent over with the supper. But no rubbish please. The best they have in stock.”

I saw his lips move and guessed what he was going to say.

“About that deposit—I ought to tell you that I decided on this work quite suddenly.” I caught my landlord’s glance, as he looked thoughtfully at my open brief-case, which was quite empty. I laughed.

“Well, I’ll tell you the truth, Herr Lobedanz. All that stuff about the work I want to do here in absolute peace and quiet is rubbish of course. The fact of the matter is I had a serious row with my wife this afternoon. And in order to scare her a bit I want to disappear for a week or two. You understand, I want to bring her to her senses.”

Herr Lobedanz nodded.

“I want to let her see what it’s like without a husband.”

Herr Lobedanz nodded again.

“She’s got to learn how useful, how indispensable I am!”

Again Herr Lobedanz nodded and then he said in his soft, almost whispering voice: “Even so, sir, I can’t take you without a deposit. We’re very poor people here in the ‘shed district’, sir, and supper from a good pub and a bottle of best brandy costs a lot of money.”

“You’ll have all the money you want tomorrow Herr Lobedanz,” I said persuasively. “I’ll go and draw some money from my bank at nine tomorrow morning.”

“No,” said my landlord, “I’m sorry, sir, I’d like to have you as a lodger, an educated man who wants to frighten his wife a bit in a gentlemanly way. We beat our wives, it’s simpler and cheaper.”

“Well, yes, yes,” I laughed, a little embarrassed, “but I don’t know whether I would come off best in a fight with my wife. I’m afraid she’s the stronger.”

I laughed again and drank.

“But since you’re so keen on a deposit, I’ll give you a ring as security.”

I took the signet ring and the wedding ring off the third finger of my right hand. I hesitated for a moment, then handed the wedding ring to Lobedanz.

“I’d like you to keep this as security till tomorrow morning, and not get rid of it.”

Herr Lobedanz took the ring from my hand.

“We’re very poor people, sir,” he said again in his whispering voice. “We’ve hardly got three marks in the house. But I could pawn the ring with a safe man I know, and we could redeem it again tomorrow afternoon.”

“All right, all right,” I said, suddenly bored and irritated by all these formalities. “But see to it that the food and the brandy gets sent over quickly, especially the brandy. You can see the bottle’s nearly empty, and a man needs to drown his sorrows, you know.”

“It will be very quick, sir,” whispered my landlord, and he shut the door. I threw myself on the bed and drank. That is how I made the acquaintance of Lobedanz, the lowest scoundrel and hypocrite I ever met in my life.

14

I had firmly resolved that night to go home, pack a case with clothes, linen, shaving things, and to take what money was in my bureau. For I really intended to live in hiding for a few weeks at Lobedanz’s. I had the idea of curing myself of the drinking habit in peace and quiet; the first day I would drink the usual amount, the following day one-third less, and so on, until in a week or two I could appear before Magda and the doctors and say “What do you want with me?”

I thought it quite possible that Magda would surprise me at my nocturnal packing, but I didn’t shrink from meeting her, no, I even wanted to. In the silence of the night, undisturbed, I would be able to tell her a few home-truths about her despicable behaviour in setting the doctors so slyly on to a man to whom, after all, she has been bound in marriage for fifteen years. She had broken off the comradeship between us, and I became more and more certain that she was only trying to have me put away, so as to get hold of my property. I was going to tell her all this to her face.

Unfortunately nothing came of my fine plan. Again, alcohol played me a dirty trick. Not that it plunged me into a stupefying dreamless sleep, as had occasionally happened before, so that I missed the proper time; no, on this occasion, I had a much worse experience: my body refused to serve me, my stomach went on strike. Though with some aversion, I had dutifully eaten part of the supper which had been brought in—it was quite nice—and afterwards I had drunk heavily. I had lain down on the bed and, in a half-sleep I was awaiting the time for my departure. Then my stomach began to heave. I was obliged to get up and vomit endlessly, in agonising pain. My whole body was covered in sweat, my hands and knees were trembling, my heart beat loudly and uncertainly as if at any moment it would stop. There were tears in my eyes, lights flickered in front of them, veils seem to float through my brain, often I was almost unconscious. At last I lay on my bed again, nearly dead with exhaustion, seized with an insane fear; was the end near? So soon, already? I hadn’t been drinking for very long, and not at all excessively. Did one become a drunkard so quickly? No, I didn’t want to die yet! I had regarded this period of drunkenness merely as a passing phase; I had been convinced that I could give it up at any time without harming myself—and now was everything to come to an end already? No, it was impossible! I would get well again, soon, perhaps by tomorrow; there must have been another reason for that gall-bitter vomiting! Surely it was something I ate for supper!

It is strange that at the worst stage of the poisoning, I had not the slightest notion of giving up alcohol. On the contrary, I anxiously avoided any thought of it. It couldn’t be the cause, I couldn’t give it up! It was my only true friend in all this abandonment and degradation. And hardly had I recovered a little, hardly had my heart and my breathing become calmer, than I reached out for the bottle again, and drank anew, to summon the dreams, to summon forgetfulness, to enter again into that sweet oblivion in which one knows neither sorrow nor joy, in which one has neither past nor future.

For a while the schnaps did its duty: I lay there relaxed and faintly happy. Then the vomiting caught me again, an even more agonising retching sickness, since there was nothing left in my stomach but a few mouthfuls of schnaps.

So I passed the night between drinking and vomiting. In the end I was concentrating all my will and all my strength just on keeping back the vomit for as long as possible, so that the alcohol would have a few minutes to work its way through the mucous membranes of my stomach into my body, before a new bout of retching drove it out. It was such a pity about that lovely schnaps!

At last, towards morning, I fell into a restless exhausted sleep through which flitted the images of wild agonising dreams.

Lobedanz woke me up. He stood in the doorway and remarked with a cough that it was nine o’clock, should he bring the coffee? I told him indignantly that I didn’t want coffee, he was to bring me another bottle at once.

Without taking any notice of my words, he began tidying up the wild disorder of my room. He opened the windows, and the fresh air and sunshine streamed in. Exhausted, weak, defenceless, I blinked into the light.

“Hurry up, Lobedanz,” I angrily implored. “I’ve emptied this bottle. See that I get a new one straight away!”

“You wanted to go to your bank at nine, sir,” Lobedanz reminded me in his soft, whispering way. “It’s nine now.”

“I can’t go now,” I said angrily. “You can see that I’m ill, Lobedanz. I’ll go tomorrow, or this afternoon. Now fetch me some schnaps.”

“Then I’ll have to sell the ring, sir,” said Lobedanz. “The pawnbroker would only lend me fifteen marks on it. If I sell it, I’ll get twenty-five marks.”

“Twenty-five marks!” I cried indignantly. “That ring cost ninety marks new!”

“It’s an old ring now, and the pawnbroker’s got to live, sir,” whispered Lobedanz impassively. “If I can sell the ring for twenty-five marks, the brandy will soon be here.”

“And how can fifteen marks be gone already?” I cried in exasperation. “One supper and a bottle of schnaps, that doesn’t come to fifteen marks!”

“And the room-rent, sir?” asked Lobedanz. “Isn’t a poor man like me to have anything? By the way, I’ll have to charge you twelve marks for the room, sir.… I know, I know,” he said, and again he cracked his joints in a particularly loud and disgusting way, “I said seven marks and I’m a man of my word. But you make a lot of work, sir, and you’re ruining the room, and you go to bed in your clothes and shoes and that spoils the sheets. It all costs money, and we’re very poor people …”

“You’re a lot of thieves!” I shouted furiously. “You can go to the devil! I’m moving!”

“Very good sir,” said Lobedanz, and went away.

But of course he was the winner. After a while I got up, tormented by thirst, and went groaning down the stairs, calling him. (He let me call for a long time). And I cajoled him, and gave him permission to sell my wedding ring for twenty-five marks—and then, at last, after a long, long agonising wait, I got a new bottle of brandy, and again I could drink and vomit, drink and vomit. So out of one day grew a second and a third and a whole row of days and I never once left the room at Lobedanz’s.

15

During this first week which I spent with Lobedanz, both of my rings, my gold watch and my brief-case passed into his possession. I am quite convinced that the pawnbroker was merely an imaginary person, and that the one who actually acquired my valuables was that “very poor man” Lobedanz himself. What I got in return was absurdly little. Perhaps twelve to fourteen bottles of schnaps, at four marks a bottle (incidentally, the quality he brought was always poor), and now and then a little food. For I ate hardly anything. Whenever I happened to glance in the mirror now, I would observe my face with a sort of cruel voluptuousness. Covered with days-old bristles, it looked bloated yet emaciated, positively burnt-out. “That’s the way to destroy oneself,” I said triumphantly. And immediately I thought of Magda again, and how shocked she would be if she could see me in this condition, and how I would fling it in her face that she, and she alone, was the shameful cause of this transformation!

My health changed much during this time. Of course, I did not give another thought to the cure I had planned. I drank as much as I could get into my stomach. Usually, it was on strike, and I had a great deal of trouble to get the required amount down; at other times, for some unknown reason, it was quite willing to swallow and keep down whatever it got. Those were the good times. Then I sat at the window, with the bottle always close by me; I sang old folk-songs and wanderlieder softly to myself, and I looked out over the town below me, over to the house which lay far away in the blueish mist, and which was mine. Then I would wonder what Magda was doing just now; and at these times I was firmly convinced that I loved her as much as ever, and that it was she who had betrayed our love. Then I imagined how, one day, I would return home, healthy and bright; somehow, by some secret but quite lawful means, I had come into possession of a lot of money, and made everybody glad, and everyone admired me, and they all lived happily ever after.

From such childish dreams, Lobedanz would wake me roughly enough. He made it clear that I should get neither drink nor lodging from him unless I produced some more money at once.… We became involved in an endless quarrel, on his side, always polite, quiet, insinuating, on mine, rude, with passionate outbursts that ended almost in floods of tears. But it did not help in the least to keep reproaching him for the usurious prices at which he availed himself of my belongings, giving me little, almost nothing, in return. He sheltered behind the pawnbroker who just would not give more, he swore up hill and down dale that he had not made a penny out of me up to now, and still maintained that I must get money or move out. Yes, and now he even made dark insinuations that the police might be very interested in people of my sort, and that it was not permitted to take up residence without reporting to them, and that this was making it dangerous for him. At that time, I paid no attention to such threatening talk. But I knew that I would have to get some money, for the gentle Lobedanz was as hard as flint.

The only thing I got out of him was another bottle of brandy on tick, to make me fresh for my night expedition. I had just had one of my good days, that is, a day when my body was on good terms with alcohol; that was a bit of luck. On another day, it would have been impossible for me to undertake such a trip. I knew that I could not go to the bank any more: I was sure that they had been notified of my disappearance, and advised that, if I did turn up, no payments were to be made to me without previous consultation. So I would have to break into my own house. The thought of meeting Magda was not so pleasant—now that such a meeting was almost certain—as it had been a week ago, when I had only dreamed of her. But it had to be. I thrust the brandy bottle into my trouser pocket—the gentle Lobedanz had refused me the return of my brief-case—and started on my way. It was shortly after midnight. Lobedanz let me out of the house and whispered that it was very dark. I should be particularly careful when crossing the bridge over the river.

“I’ll wait up for you, sir,” he whispered, “however late it may be. I’ll have a bottle ready for you. And then, sir,” he whispered still softer, “then, sir, if you’ve still got any jewellery or silver—I’ve got a dealer on hand who pays very decent prices, not like that twister—just bring whatever you can and I’ll look after you all right.”

“That’s the way to catch simpletons,” I thought, and was simpleton enough not to withhold my appreciation from Lobedanz for being so clever as to keep a bottle of brandy ready as a reward for my return. Of course, I had quite different plans, of which he had no inkling.

Walking was much easier for me than I had expected. I felt hardly any need for drink. I was rather excited. I well remember how, all the long way, I tried anxiously not to think of what lay ahead of me. I recited to myself, over and over again, all the poems I knew by heart from my schooldays; and in spite of that, I found myself between one verse and the next, talking to Magda or wondering which suitcase would be the best one to take.

At last, after nearly three-quarters of an hour’s walking, I arrived at the garden gate of my villa. Shortly before, one o’clock had struck from the town’s three steeples. I closed the gate softly behind me, and avoiding the gravel-path, made my way across the grass round my house. Everything lay quiet and dark. For a long time, I stood under Magda’s bedroom window, and thought I heard her quiet breathing; but it was only my own heart beating loud and restless within my breast. When I came to think that here I stood by my own house, within five yards of my own wife, like a penniless stranger in the night, unwashed and unshaven for a week, such a wave of self-pity swept over me that I burst into bitter tears. I wept long and painfully. I would have liked to get into Magda’s room and let her console me, but in the end, the schnaps again proved the best comforter. I drank long and deeply. My grief calmed down. I fought back an inclination to sleep for a while, and returned to the front of the house.

16

I am standing in my stockinged feet in the hall of my house. I have left my shoes by the door. It is dark, but now my hand gropes for the switch, a faint click, and it is light. Yes, here I am at home again, I belong here, in all this order and cleanliness! With an almost reverent shyness, I gaze around at this cosy little hall, with its light-green carpet, from which the ugly traces of that dismal night have long since been removed; I look at the hall-stand, on which Magda’s green costume jacket and a blueish summer coat are neatly hanging side by side. And now I tiptoe over to the mirror, in which one can see oneself from head to foot, and I look myself up and down. And I am gripped by a terrible fear when I see myself standing there in my soiled and shapeless clothes, with a greyish-black collar, a pallid bristly face, and red-rimmed eyes.

“So that’s what’s become of me!” cries a voice within me, and my first impulse is to rush in to Magda, to fall on my knees before her, and to implore her: “Save me! Save me from myself! Hold me to your heart!” But this impulse vanishes: I smile craftily at my image in the mirror.

“That’s just what she would like,” I think. “And then—off with the old man into a drunkard’s home, while she gets hold of the business and the money!”

Be cunning. Always be cunning. And I quickly move a chair over to the big cupboard in the hall, I reach up, and take down a suitcase, the best suitcase we possess, a real cowhide one; it belongs to Magda really, I gave it to her once for a birthday present. But that is of no importance now, besides—do not married people own everything in common? In the next quarter of an hour, I become feverishly active, I pack my overcoat, two suits, underwear. I fetch my toilet things from the bathroom. Magda will be surprised in the morning! From the shoe-cupboard I fetch two pairs of shoes—I arrange everything as if for a long journey. And now I really do feel as if I were about to start on a long journey, perhaps, perhaps this time Elinor will be more amenable. Now I have finished with all these things, and before I begin the most difficult part, I sit down for a moment on the hall floor, take a drink, and rest. It is very noticeable how feeble I have become during the last few weeks. This bit of packing has exhausted me out of all proportion, my heart is palpitating, I am covered with sweat.

Then I set to work again. Till now, everything has gone splendidly. I have made no noise that would wake a normal sleeper, nothing has fallen from my hands. But, as I have said, the most difficult part is still ahead of me. I open the drawer under the mirror, and look, the torch is lying there sure enough! I switch on, and look, it really works! There’s nothing like a well-ordered household—hurrah for Magda! I switch off all the lights and steal into our living-room with the torch. It is next to the bedroom, and is separated from it only by a double-door decorated with coloured glass panels, through which every light and every sound penetrates. In the darkness, I grope over to the writing-desk, in whose centre compartment our ready money lies in a small cashbox. Usually, only the money necessary for household expenses is kept in it—very little; but if we had taken some money at the office of an evening, too late to pay it into the bank, we would bring it home with us here. So I was very anxious to see how much I would find. I managed to open the compartment without any noise and to get the cash-box out. In the dark I also came across the chequebook which was lying beside the cash-box. I thrust it into my pocket, and carried the cash-box carefully, step by step, into the hall, put it down first, closed the door, and switched on the light. It may sound odd, but I uttered something like a prayer before unlocking the cash-box. I prayed to God, whom I had so long forgotten, to let there be a lot of money in the box. A lot of money, to continue this life between drunkenness and sickness for a long time yet, still more money to induce Elinor, la reine d’alcool, to go travelling with me. I didn’t give a single thought to the position into which I was putting my own business by taking the money. Indeed, I believe that if I had thought of it, the greater the harm done to my business, the more I would have exulted. So I uttered my prayer, and opened the cash-box. I lifted out the upper compartment, in which there were only coins, and looked eagerly for the paper-money.

My disappointment was boundless. There were only a very few notes there; as I counted them over, they came to not much more than fifty marks. I still see myself standing there, those few notes in my hand, an icy feeling in my heart.

“This is the end,” I thought. “This is neither enough for Elinor nor for Lobedanz. In two or three days, this money will be gone, and then there’s only surrender, sackcloth and ashes, the cold-water asylum, the final abandonment of hope.”

So there I stood, with death in my heart, for a long, long time.…

Then life came back to me again. Again I saw Lobedanz’s yellowish face before me, with its dark beard; I heard his soft voice whispering something about jewellery and silver.… Jewellery was out of the question. The little jewellery that Magda possessed was worth hardly anything; besides, she kept it in the bedroom dressing-table.

But silver—yes, we had silver. Beautiful heavy old table silver, a bargain picked up at an auction. There was still room in the suitcase.… I drank quickly and deep. I emptied the whole bottle at a go. There had been a good third of it left. For a moment, the sudden strong intake of alcohol flooded my body like a red wave. I shut my eyes. I trembled. Would I have to vomit? But the attack passed, I had myself under control again. Quickly I went into the dining-room and switched on the chandelier. Now I did not need the caution that I had so carefully observed hitherto. I unlocked the sideboard and took out the silver, which was wrapped by the dozen in flannel covers (we only use it on festive occasions). First I laid it all in a heap before me, then I packed it away, big spoons, knives and forks, the small set, the fish knives and forks.… I stuffed them all into the suitcase as they came. Now only the silver serving-spoons, the salad- and carving-set were missing, which were lying loose in a separate drawer. I quickly took them out; suddenly something was driving me on, I had to get out of this house. A spoon fell with a clatter to the floor. I swore aloud, made a grab for it, and let a second spoon drop.

Impatiently I tugged at the drawer to pull it right out, and to carry the single silver pieces in it to the suitcase. The drawer gave unexpectedly, and fell with a crash on to the silverware, which rang brightly. I gathered everything together however I could get hold of it, without a care now for the noise I made, and hurried with it to the suitcase. As I went, two or three spoons fell. I threw what I had brought into the suitcase, on top of everything, and ran back to get those I had dropped. Then I stood rooted, staring at Magda, who was there in the middle of the dining-room, in front of her burgled sideboard!

17

She turned her head and looked at me for a long time. I noticed how she started, how rapidly she breathed, how she tried to collect herself.

“Erwin,” she said, in a faltering voice. “Erwin! What a sight you are! Where have you been to get into such a state? Where have you been for so long? Oh Erwin, Erwin, I’ve been so worried about you! And to think that we should meet like this! Think Erwin, we loved each other once. Don’t destroy it all! Come back to me, I’ll help you the best I can. I’ll be so patient with you. I’ll never quarrel with you again.…”

She had been speaking faster and faster. Breathlessly she stopped and looked imploringly at me.

But I was stirred by quite other feelings. I glared with fury and hatred at this well-kept woman, flushed with sleep, in her blue dressing-gown—I who looked as if I’d been rolling in the gutter, I who stank like a polecat. I think it must have been the reference to our former love that put me into such a mad rage. Instead of moving me, her words only reminded me how far off was the submerged past.

Angrily I stumbled towards Magda, nearly fell over a silver-serving spoon, looked furiously at it, took a step back and trampled it underfoot. Magda cried out. I rushed over to her, raised my fist and cried: “Yes, you’d like that, wouldn’t you? I come back to you. And then what happens? Then what happens?”

I shook my fist in her face.

“You put me to bed and make sure I go to sleep and as soon as I’m asleep you fetch the doctors and let them take me off to some drunkards’ home for life, then you laugh up your sleeve and do as you please with my property. Yes, that’s what you’d like!”

I glared at her. Now I was breathless too. And Magda glared back at me. She had turned very pale, but I could clearly see she wasn’t afraid of me, despite my threatening behaviour.

Suddenly my mood changed; my excitement died down, and coolly and calmly I said, “I’ll tell you what you are. You’re just a common vulture. I say it to your face!”

She didn’t flinch. She only looked at me.

“You’re a traitor! You betrayed our whole marriage when you set those doctors on to me. I’d like to spit in your face, you—!”

She was still staring at me. Then she said swiftly, “Yes, I did send the doctors after you, but not to betray you, only to save you if that’s still possible. If you had a spark of commonsense left, you would realise that, Erwin. You must see that you can’t live another month like this. Perhaps not another week …”

I interrupted her. I gave a sneering laugh.

“Not another week? I can live for years like this, I can stand anything, and I’ll go on living just to spite you, just to spite you.”

I leaned close to her.

“Shall I tell you what I’m going to do next time I get drunk? I’m going to stand outside your window and shout out to everyone that you are a traitor, a greedy vulture, greedy for my money, and greedy for me to die …”

“Yes,” she said spitefully. “I believe you’re capable of that. But if you did, you wouldn’t land up in a home, you’d land in prison instead. And I’m not sure that it wouldn’t do you good.”

“What?” I shouted at her, and now my rage had reached its climax. “Now you want to have me put in prison? Just you wait! You won’t say that again! I’ll show you.…” I reached for her. I saw red. I tried to seize her by the throat, but she fought back. She really was almost as strong as I, indeed in my present condition she was probably much stronger. We wrestled together. It was a sweet sensation, to feel this once loved, now hostile body pressing so close against me, now her breast, now her straining thigh. The thought shot through my head, “Suppose you were to kiss her suddenly, whisper loving words in her ear? Could you get her round?” I whispered in her ear: “Tomorrow night I’ll come and kill you. I’ll come very quickly.…”

Magda called loudly, “No, no, it’s all right, Else! I can manage him alone. Ring Dr Mansfeld and the police. I’ll keep him here!”

I turned in astonishment. Sure enough, there stood Else, pretty as a picture, attracted by the noise of our struggle. And then she disappeared in the hall, towards the telephone. I tore myself free with a jerk.

“You’re not going to get me, Magda!” I gave her a push and she fell back.

As I ran, I snatched up the scattered silverware, including the broken serving-spoon, and rushed into the hall. I threw everything into the suitcase, and tried hard to shut the lid. Magda was there already.

“You’re not taking those things! My silver is staying here! You’re not going to drink that up as well!”

A yard away, Else was busy telephoning. I heard her say: “He wants to kill his wife!”

“My God, what a child you are,” I thought.

We both tugged at the suitcase. Then suddenly I let go and Magda went sprawling on the floor again. I tore the case out of her hand, lashed out at her once or twice, rushed to the porch, snatched up my shoes and ran into the street in my socks. Suddenly I stopped short.

“Give me the suitcase, sir,” said Lobedanz’s soft insinuating voice. “I’ll go on ahead, look out, here come the women!” Quite mechanically, I handed the case to Lobedanz. He made off. I ran after him, off into the night, in my socks.

18

Lobedanz ran with the suitcase. He took the shortest route, plunged into the oldest part of the town, rushed along lanes and alleys, and suddenly turned a corner. I ran after him. It was very dark. It was only because he was wearing shoes and so made a noise as he ran, that I was able to follow him at all. I am quite sure that Lobedanz had intended to disappear completely with the suitcase, and leave me helpless in the street. He really thought he had shaken me off: he hadn’t heard my soft stockinged footsteps. But when he eventually stopped to draw breath, I was beside him, and asked him why he had been running so senselessly. Nobody was after us!

The scoundrel was not put out for a moment. He managed to conceal his disappointment at my appearance, and said: “You had some trouble with the women, didn’t you? The women were shouting, weren’t they? What did you do to them?”

“Nothing you hadn’t advised me to, Lobedanz,” I laughed. “I tried to frighten them by knocking them about but it didn’t come to much. It’s quite understandable that a woman should resist when her silver’s being taken. I’ve got the silver, Lobedanz.”

“Ah, have you?” the scoundrel answered. “Now we have to see if we get anything for it. Most silver is light and hollow, or the shape is unfashionable, silver that’s only good for melting down is hardly worth anything.”

“You needn’t worry about that, Lobedanz,” I said maliciously, “I’ll sell my silver without you—if I sell it at all, which I haven’t decided yet. Now let me carry my suitcase myself.”

During our conversation I had been putting my shoes on, and now I took the suitcase despite Lobedanz’s protestations. At last I had hit on the right tone for dealing with him. Alcohol, which is constantly stirring up new and different moods, had suggested it to me. Now Lobedanz became a worm again, he protested that he was only a poor worker incapable of dealing with an educated man. Of course my silver was bound to be good, bound to be. I must put it down to his stupidity—that he had thought a man like myself might have inferior silver. I pretended to be sunk in gloomy silence, which made him uneasier than ever, but to myself I was shaking with inner laughter. When we got back home, without having to be asked, Lobedanz brought out the bottle of brandy which, sure enough, he had kept ready. I reached in my pocket and asked: “How much?”

“Two marks fifty,” he whispered, very humbly.

“Here’s your money, and don’t you dare to bring me such rotten liquor again. Have I got to pay anything else?”

He assured me that everything was settled.

“Good, then get out. I want to sleep now.” He wriggled out through the door, I had managed to make him embarrassed and humble.

But I neither felt like sleeping nor drinking. My craving for intoxication had slackened for a while, for some unknown reason I was given a short respite, during which something of my former active self came up to the surface. Perhaps this was a result of the scene I had just had with Magda, which had deeply upset me—of course I tried to think of it as little as possible. For a while I sat brooding on the sofa. It was terribly apparent that, after what had happened, I could never return home again. My old plan of weaning myself from alcohol and facing Magda and the doctors as a healthy man, had finally collapsed—in my sober moments I had never quite believed in it myself. It was also impossible to stay any longer here with Lobedanz; the idea filled me with disgust. It could only end in madness. I had to find some other way, and I believed I had a notion of what this way might be. Within the next twenty-four hours I should have to risk a great deal. I couldn’t set about my task as a drunken man.

It must have been between two and three in the morning when I got up from the sofa and began unpacking the suitcase. I washed myself from head to foot, got half-dressed, and shaved with the utmost care. Everything went infinitely slowly. My hand was shaking so much that from time to time I despaired of ever being able to shave, but at last I managed it. From some unknown source within me, new energy arose, that gave me endurance, that allowed me just to take a few little mouthfuls of drink at long intervals.

When at last, washed and tidied, I looked at myself in the mirror, I was astonished how well I still looked. True, my eyes were bloodshot, with pinpoint pupils, and my cheeks were rather flabby, but nobody could take me for a drunkard. I could risk it tomorrow morning, and I would risk it. I didn’t bother to go to bed. I wrapped a blanket round me and sat down on the sofa, to wait for morning. I listened. Everything was quiet in the house, but I was firmly convinced that Lobedanz was on the watch. Well, I would wait, and I trusted myself to outwit him.

I had filled a tumbler with brandy, and put the bottle with the rest of it in the furthest corner of my room. I would have to manage till morning with this tumbler of brandy: I had made up my mind. But I only sipped it. I was dead-tired from the unwonted activity of the night. I leaned back, and was soon asleep.

A slight clatter awoke me. I half-opened my eyes and blinked into the room, in which the morning sun had already got the upper hand of the light from the electric bulb. Lobedanz stood bent over my suitcase. He had taken a table-knife out of its baize, examined it critically and weighed it in his hand. For a while through half-closed eyelids I watched this scoundrel rummaging among the silver; then I stretched and yawned loudly like someone who is just waking, and looked round my room. It was empty. I just caught sight of the door-handle lifting into position. A glance into the suitcase convinced me that Lobedanz had contented himself for the time being with merely examining the silver. The actual pilfering was probably being reserved for my more drunken moments. I opened the window and looked out over the town. The sun had not risen far above the horizon, it must have been between six and seven o’clock. I called through the door for Lobedanz. The artful dog let some time pass before he answered. I called down to him that I would like to have my breakfast. He brought it very quickly: his cringing, almost sheeplike expression betrayed a lively alarm at the change in my bearing. I acted as if I had noticed nothing and for the first time I ate with some relish. The coffee was surprisingly good, the rolls crusty, the butter fresh and cool—that scoundrel Lobedanz certainly knew how to live.

While I was eating, Lobedanz tidied up my bed and the wash-stand, and as he did so, he couldn’t resist throwing furtive side glances at me. His cough seemed to get worse. The brandy-bottle which he found in the corner of the room, gave him at last the excuse he had been seeking to start a conversation:

“You’ve hardly drunk anything, sir,” he said, and held the bottle up to the light.

“No, my dear Herr Lobedanz,” I said ironically but genially, as I spread some butter thickly on a roll. “And if you go on bringing me such hooch, I’ll soon give up drinking altogether.”

“It was a mistake, sir,” he growled. “A mistake on the grocer’s part. As true as I stand here, I paid four marks fifty for this bottle, and the grocer gave me the wrong one. But of course I’ve only charged you the proper price, I paid the two marks myself, though I’m a poor man. I’m honest, sir …”

“Don’t talk rubbish, Lobedanz,” I answered roughly. “You’re no more honest than you are poor. You’re an old swindler, or rather a young one, but sly enough for an old one. Perhaps that’s why I like you. Now you can take that bottle,” I suddenly cried in pretended rage, “and drink it yourself. And see there’s a decent one here in five minutes.”

And I threw a note down on the table. He snatched it.

“As soon as the shops open,” he assured me.

“Not when the shops open!” I shouted still louder. “Now, this very minute! You idiot, do you think I’m going to sit awake all day after a night like this? I want to get to sleep some time.”

With a pretence of excitement, I had jumped up, already taken off my jacket and unbuttoned my waistcoat. I had to convince him now, or the whole thing would go wrong. So I snatched up the tumbler of brandy that stood on the table, gulped it down, and cried, “There, fill it up again with that damned hooch of yours. And see there’s some other drink here in five minutes; the grocer is bound to let you in by the back door, a good customer like you!” I had torn off my waistcoat and was already unbuttoning my braces.

“In five minutes!” Lobedanz assured me, and hurried out of the room. It was easy to detect the relief and satisfaction in his words. He had been afraid of losing his milch cow, but now I was boozing again, hallelujah!

Hardly had I heard the front door shut than I was in my clothes again. I shut the suitcase, took it, and ran downstairs. There might be a Frau Lobedanz, and Lobedanz children, of the same gentle, insinuating, whispering, damned-roguish kind as their father, I’d never set eyes on them, and I didn’t see them this morning either. Unimpeded, I came out into the lane. Here, almost free of my tormentor, the alcohol nearly played a trick on me again. Suddenly I remembered that for the first time for weeks I was out without “provisions”, and on such a dangerous and decisive journey, while up in my room stood a newly-filled tumbler of brandy. I nearly went back, and if I had I would almost certainly have fallen again into the long-fingered blackmailing clutches of Lobedanz. But the energy which had newly awakened in the night was victorious; I shook my head and went on my way.

19

Of course I had no idea in which direction Lobedanz had gone, and at first I looked about me rather anxiously. But once I was out of the “shed quarter” and walking through the clean streets of my home town, I felt safer. Without hesitation, I went straight to the station and sat down in the second-class waiting-room. I knew I was risking a great deal; if anything of my story had leaked out, I was lost. But I would have to run many more risks this morning: this sitting in the waiting-room was only a rehearsal for other important undertakings to come. Of course I could have hidden in the park for a few hours with less risk, but in my changed mood, I liked to defy danger now, though I must also confess that I was to some extent incited to it by alcohol. I did not want to be quite without it, so I ordered from the waiter, besides a big breakfast of fried eggs, sausage and cheese, a carafe of cognac as well, with which to lace my coffee while I breakfasted for the second time, in comfort, and not without appetite. During this long spun-out meal I buried myself in the local newspaper, which I had not seen for a long time. I read all the local news, including the personal columns, and became certain that no hint about me had got into the paper. It was quite feasible that Magda in her ‘concern for my well-being’ would have inserted in the paper an announcement to the effect that: E.S., a wholesale merchant, had been missing for such and such a time and was probably wandering about the neighbourhood in a state of mental confusion. Anyone having news of him etc., etc. But nothing of the kind.

During my breakfast I was interrupted for some ten minutes by Stretz the baker, about whom I had just been reading in the newspaper. It appeared that he had been celebrating the twenty-fifth anniversary of his business. We get our bread from him, and now and then he buys his white flour from me. We have known each other for years. He sat down at my table and expressed surprise that we had not seen each other for so long and that I was here at the station eating his competitor’s rolls, instead of breakfasting peacefully at home off his. But all this was innocent, as I quickly noticed. I explained everything by hinting at a journey. I was sure now that no rumour of my changed way of life had penetrated beyond the very narrow circle of those concerned. Later, some distant acquaintances came into the waiting-room and, feeling quite safe, I greeted them with a friendly nod and wave of the hand.

However, as the hands of the clock got closer to nine, the waiter had to bring me a second, and finally a third carafe of cognac—let him think what he liked about me, I was not likely to be his guest again soon.

By five to nine I had paid. I got up, took my suitcase, and went into the street. I went along the station road, then fearlessly down our main promenade, the Ulmenallee, and so to the market square where the bank is. Here I was well inside enemy territory. Directly opposite the bank is the Town Hall, on the ground floor of which is situated the very police station that was probably called last night on my account. And one minute from the market square is my own business-place to which, perhaps, this farm-cart is rolling with its load of wheat-sacks. I really was rather excited and before I entered the bank I dried my sweating hands with my handkerchief. Then I went in.

In the bank, I saw at a glance that, at this time of day, shortly after opening, there were only a few office-boys and typists fidgeting with papers. I put the suitcase down, hung up my hat, and went over to the counter behind which sat the clerk who looked after my account. Smiling, I bade him “Good morning” and told him that I had just returned from a lengthy journey (I pointed to my suitcase by the door) and that I would like to ascertain the state of my current account. And while I said all this lightly and without hesitation, I examined his face, inwardly trembling, for any sign of mistrust, suspicion, doubt. But nothing of this showed in the young man’s face. He willingly opened the book, totted up some figures with his pencil for a minute, and then said quite indifferently that at the moment my account stood at seven thousand eight hundred odd marks and some pfennigs.

I could hardly conceal a start of joyous surprise, I had never expected so much in my wildest dreams. It was something of a puzzle to me how Magda had managed it. Probably the prison administration had settled up for the delivery of the cordage, but even that could not nearly have accounted for so much. Well anyway, I told myself, suppressing my happy excitement, there was money enough there, enough for the business and above all enough for me and my plans. For the moment I struggled with the temptation to draw out the whole amount, but I conquered myself. I did not want to behave meanly to Magda and the business, however meanly she had behaved to me. Apart from that, such a withdrawal, which would have looked like the closing of my account, would have attracted too much attention.

All this went through my head like lightning, and now I said casually that I had a large payment to make today, and asked for pen and ink. Still standing by the counter, I made out a cheque for five thousand marks, and handed it to the book-keeper. With a last remnant of fear I examined his face again, but without a moment’s hesitation he made the necessary entries, stamped the cheque, and himself took it over to the cashier’s compartment. I went over too. I was animated by a feeling of proud triumph and boundless joy. Now I had done Magda beautifully: that she had been stupid enough not to give the bank the slightest hint, that showed my enormous superiority in its true light. I could have danced and shouted for joy. It was only with an effort that I suppressed a laughing fit that overtook me.

“How would you like the money, Herr Sommer?” asked the cashier.

“In big notes,” I said hastily, “that is, in fifties and hundreds, and about two hundred marks in small change.”

In two minutes I had my money, put it away carefully in my breast pocket, and stepped like a proud conjuror into the market square. Just as I was going through the revolving doors, the idea occurred to me that this triumph ought really to be celebrated. Despite the early hour, I wanted to go to a little wine-bar in the market square and, with a bottle or two of burgundy, to eat a lobster or some oysters, or whatever Rohloff had, according to the season of the year.

I step out of the door, and before me stands the inevitable, the repulsive Lobedanz, looking at me with his slimy smile.

20

If this had not been the open market square I would have strangled the scoundrel! As it was I only looked at him darkly, menacingly for a moment, held on tighter to my case, and without taking further notice of him, made my way toward the station. But I knew full well that he was following on my heels and soon I heard his hateful soft insinuating voice:

“Do let me carry your case, sir! Please let me carry your case, sir!”

I pretended I had not heard, and walked on faster. But suddenly I felt a hand near mine on the handle of the case, and, in broad daylight on the open street, Lobedanz had taken the suitcase out of my hand.

Furiously I turned and shouted: “Give me back that case at once, Lobedanz!”

He smiled humbly.

“Not so loud, sir,” he begged in a whisper. “People are looking. That’s embarrassing for you, sir. Not for a poor working man like me, but for you, sir.…”

“Give me back that case at once, Lobedanz,” I repeated, but quieter, for people really were looking at us.

“Later, later,” he said soothingly. “I like to carry it, sir. To the station, eh?” And without waiting for an answer, he passed by me and went on ahead to the station. I followed him with a helpless feeling of impotence. I looked with hatred at this slightly bowed figure in the dark-blue jacket. Ever since those minutes during which I walked behind Lobedanz to the station, I have known how a murderer feels immediately before his crime. And I could do nothing to him, nothing at all. He was stronger than I, physically as well as morally. He only needed to call the nearest policeman, and I was lost. He knew that perfectly well, the scoundrel. If I had been a bit more calm and collected at that moment, I could have left Lobedanz peacefully in possession of my suitcase, and dodged off quickly into some side street. With such a large sum of money in my pocket, the loss of the suitcase could easily be put up with—just the ransom to buy myself free from the miserable rogue. But these thoughts did not occur to me, my blood was boiling, I could not think.

Having reached the square in front of the station, instead of going in, Lobedanz turned into the public convenience that lay to the left, hidden by bushes. He did not look round at me, being certain that I would follow him like a little dog. Once in there, he put the suitcase down, pulled on his fingers till the joints cracked, and said: “Now, sir, we can talk peacefully here.”

I looked round. The water was rushing in the half-dozen urinal basins, but customers were lacking at this early hour. Lobedanz was right: we could talk in peace here.

“And so we will!” I cried furiously. “What do you think you’re doing, Lobedanz, running after me and spying on me all the time, last night already, and now again …”

“Spying on you?” he echoed, reproachfully. “But sir, I’ve brought you your brandy,” and he actually took it out of his trousers pocket. “You forgot it this morning. But I’m an honest man. I said to my wife: ‘The gentleman paid for the brandy, so he ought to get it.’ So here I am.”

He held the bottle out to me.

“Drink up, sir, I’ve uncorked it already. The cork’s quite loose.”

I made a furious gesture. He wasn’t discouraged. He offered me the bottle again.

“Do drink,” he insisted. “You’re such a nice gentleman when you’ve had a drop to drink. It doesn’t suit you at all when you’re sober. You’re always so irritable then.…”

He took the cork out of the bottle and rubbed its wet butt to and fro on the neck of the bottle.

“Listen, sir,” he said laughing, “the schnaps is calling you.”

And really, to this day I can’t make it out, but by his idiotic behaviour the rogue got me round again. Now laughing myself, I seized the bottle, cried “You miserable scoundrel, you!” and drank and drank. Then I took the bottle away from my mouth, corked it, thrust it into my own trousers pocket, and asked: “But what do you want from me, Lobedanz? Haven’t you had everything you were supposed to get?”

“Don’t let’s talk about that, sir,” said Lobedanz eagerly. “Don’t let’s talk about trifles like that. I know you’re an honourable man, you’re really a fine man. You wouldn’t have the heart to let a poor man die in misery.…”

“What do you mean, Lobedanz?” I asked warily. “I think you’ve already had enough, and more than enough, out of me. When I think of that jewellery of mine.…”

He paid no attention.

“Look, sir,” he began in his most insinuating tone, and he made his joints crack sickeningly, “a man like myself is like a brute beast, born in filth and never getting out of the filth. A fine gentleman like yourself can’t imagine it properly …”

“I can imagine a whole lot of things about you, Lobedanz,” I said grimly, “and they certainly have to do with filth.”

Again he took no notice of me. Impressively and with conviction, he said: “And when such a brute beast, sir, sees a bit of business that might lift him out of the filth for his whole life, well, sir, there can’t be any hesitation, the business has to be gone through with, sir!”

He looked at me and repeated, this time with nothing soft and insinuating in his voice: “The business has to be gone through with, sir. It’s a matter of life and death.”

Inwardly, I trembled at the wild threat in his voice, but outwardly I was quite calm as I asked: “And what sort of business are you talking about, Lobedanz?”

He passed his hand over his eyes as if wiping away some evil picture, and began to smile, insinuatingly, softly. He had himself under control again.

“What sort of business, sir?”

He smiled more broadly, his finger joints cracked.

“The gentleman knows best how much money he drew out of the bank, and how much he wants to give me.”

I was dumbfounded by his impudence. I had expected that he would claim the silver, and was already half prepared to let him have it, but that he should ask for a share of my precious money, that was something I hadn’t anticipated.

“You’re a fool, Lobedanz,” I laughed. “Moreover, you didn’t pay proper attention. I didn’t get a pfennig from the bank. My wife had blocked my account. I’m not allowed to draw any more money out, do you understand?”

He listened to me in gloomy silence. I reached into the side-pocket of my jacket and took out what was left of the money I had taken from Magda’s cashbox.

“Here, see for yourself. That’s all the money I possess.”

I held the money out to him. His dark suspicious glance wandered from my face to the money in my hand.

“How much is there?” he asked in a faltering voice. “Show me.”

He stood quite near to me, his eyes close to the money. Then surprising me with a sudden lunge he reached into my breast pocket and tore out the bundles of money. One or two fell on to the dirty wet asphalt floor of the lavatory—we both bent down after them simultaneously. His hands were quicker, but realising the futility of trying to pick up the money. I seized him by the throat, I hung tightly on to him, determined never to let him go until he had given in, until I had my money back.… He tried to defend himself, but his defence was hindered by his greed. With both hands he was holding on to the money that he could not bear to relinquish.

He jerked his knee up against my stomach. A moment later, we were both rolling on the floor, I still hanging on to his throat, his limbs wildly threshing, like a fish the angler pulls in to land … then his limbs went slack, from his throat came a horrible rattle … I let go of him and tried to open his hand … I would like to know what our honest postmaster Winder can have thought when he found two men struggling wildly on the lavatory floor, when all he wanted was to settle peacefully his morning business! “Gentlemen! Please!” he cried in a high startled voice. “Here, in the toilet! Gentlemen!”

Lobedanz, who had got his breath back, saw his chance—with one bound he was up, grabbed the suitcase, pushed the postmaster aside, and was out of the lavatory, before you could count three. I stood giddy and benumbed, unable to make any quick decision. I went towards one of the basins, turning my back on the bewildered and indignant postmaster. He said “Herr Sommer, if I’m not mistaken. I’m surprised, Herr Sommer. I’m really surprised at you!” For a moment I felt his stabbing glance at my back, then a closet-door closed, a lock clicked, clothes rustled—I was alone and able to make my exit. And just at that moment when I was about to leave the convenience, absolutely desperate, without money, my glance fell on a blue package, and, look, there crumpled and soiled, lay a bundle of hundred-mark notes—a round thousand in ten hundred-mark notes!

21

Nobody who has just lost a beautiful cowhide suitcase with his best things and all his silver, nobody who has just lost four out of five thousand marks, can have the slightest idea how happy I was, as I left my native town a quarter of an hour later in a second-class compartment. Heaven knows how it was, but I really felt I had got rid of Lobedanz remarkably cheaply and I thanked God that I had at any rate salvaged a thousand marks from the disaster.

Of course I must confess, this feeling of happiness was considerably helped by the fact that despite the struggle, I had found the brandy-bottle intact and unspilt in my trousers pocket. I had already taken a long drink from it, and this drink no doubt contributed substantially to my optimistic assessment of the situation. Comfortably I gazed at the green fields gliding by, with grazing cows and peaceful woods, and I had not the slightest care for the future. For the time being, I had enough to live on (and to drink), and what came after would somehow settle itself. I would manage somehow; I felt I had emerged from the day’s adventures with complete success, for I marked up the visit to the waiting-room and the bank as victories to my own credit, and I took the defeat at Lobedanz’s hands with a calm shrug of my shoulders, as an inevitable accident of nature.

About midday, I reached my destination (which I had only chosen to mislead anyone who might be following me). It was a small health-resort, little known but well kept. I ate in an hotel by the water (green eels with dill sauce and cucumber salad) and let the sun shine on my head as I drank a fine fully-matured burgundy, and reflected what a comfortable life I could lead now, as a retired businessman and semi-bachelor. After the meal I sauntered through the town, bought a brief-case, two pairs of silk pyjamas (I had never before possessed any so gaudy) some fine toilet things, scented soap, and some rather sharp French perfume with which I had already been sprayed on approval—and I joked in such a superior, charming, mondaine way with the young salesgirls that I, at least, came to have a lively respect for my own hitherto-unused talents as a gallant and a ladykiller.

As a logical consequence I immediately bought some scented cachous at a chemist. Then I went to the best hotel in the square, to which was attached a wine-shop, to buy some schnaps. I had the good fortune to meet the owner himself, a stout white-haired man whose blossoming red face told of many bottles of burgundy emptied in peace and comfort. He smiled a little at my primitive request for corn-liquor, recommended and sold me an amber-yellow Saxon schnaps, and then drew my attention to a highly alcoholic plum-brandy from the Black Forest, a real wood-cutters’ tipple for icy winter days, he called it. He poured me out a little glass to try, and I must confess I was so enthusiastic about it, that I quickly followed the first glass with a whole sequence of others. This was just the thing for me, an exaltation far above my hitherto primitive experience—burning and pungent and retaining in itself something of the sweetness of ripe fruit. I bought five bottles straight away, a handy-sized parcel was made of my purchases; in another shop I obtained a strong corkscrew, and so I wandered back to the station, well-provided and in a most cheerful mood.

Now I was travelling again, and on the same route by which I had come this morning. I was travelling back towards my home town. But one station before it, I got out and walked. Night was falling. I was nearly half an hour from that country inn where Elinor, the queen of alcohol, lived. Forgotten was that abortive night in her room, forgotten that humiliating bout when, under the eyes of the doctors, my boozing companions had all left me, forgotten were the shoes that had been so maliciously handed into the car! Alcohol has no memory. If it makes a man angry, a word or a glass can soon extinguish that anger again. I only knew that after my experiences with Magda and Lobedanz, Elinor was my refuge. With her I would stay or with her I would go—that was the only glimmer of life I had, and it seemed enough.

22

I had come too late. At the inn-windows the shutters were already closed, and no gleam of light came through. I tried the latch but the door was locked. For a moment I stood reflecting. Then I went softly round the house into the orchard and looked up to Elinor’s window. There, too, all was in darkness, but that did not matter. I had all the time in the world, and in any case we would get on quite well in the dark. Better, even, better!

First of all I sat in the grass and started to open my parcel. A cleverly-tied parcel is an excellent thing, but it has the disadvantage that one cannot get at its contents so easily. I had been thirsty for too long, I had accomplished great things, and now for that good old woodcutters’ schnaps! After I had considerably, very considerably, fortified myself, I began to set my belongings up on the shed roof, which I could just reach with my hands. First the brief-case, and then one bottle after the other: one bottle of Saxon schnaps, then four unopened and one opened bottle of Black Forest plum-brandy. All nice and tidy, side by side on the edge of the roof. Now I was ready for the climb. I hung on to the overhanging edge of the roof and tried to pull myself up. But I had overestimated my gymnastic abilities and underestimated the effect of the schnaps. For a while I dangled helplessly in the air, then I lost my hold and fell heavily in the grass. I lay there groaning; the fall had done me no good. But with that obstinacy that drunkards develop towards impossible tasks, I kept renewing my attempt—after I had well and truly fortified myself each time. The remainder of the first bottle went in that way. Each time I fell to the ground. The last time I tried, it was clear to me that I would never achieve my aim like this. Also I realised that I was very drunk. “I’m absolutely tight, I’m completely sozzled,” I kept murmuring stupidly, and I leaned panting against a tree.

Then I dimly recalled that I had seen iron tables and chairs standing outside the inn. Laboriously I dragged one of the chairs over, clambered on to it carefully (by now I was afraid of another fall) and tried to get up on the roof. And again I fell. There was a longer pause, partly because I had bruised myself badly and partly because I had to hunt around for the corkscrew to open a fresh bottle. I was sure I had put it on the edge of the roof, but quite inconceivably it had fallen off. Grumbling to myself I looked for it on all fours in the grass. It was not to be found. Eventually it occurred to me that there was a corkscrew on my pocket knife which had served me quite well up to now. I felt in my pocket for the knife, did not find it, but found instead the corkscrew I had put on the roof. After I had had another drink, the thing became clear to me: I would never reach her bedroom window by way of the roof. So I went round to the front again and once more tried the front-door. It was still locked. I took the bunch of keys out of my pocket and tried my keys one after the other. They were all much too small for this stout country keyhole, but I kept on trying them with stupid obstinacy, in the firm hope that eventually a miracle would happen and the door would open of itself. During all these drunken preparations I had not shown the slightest consideration for the inhabitants’ sleep, so it was no wonder that eventually a window opened above me and an angry woman’s voice asked sharply: “Who’s there?”

I stood quite still, like a trapped thief.

“Will you go away!” cried the furious voice from above. “You won’t get anything here. We’re closed!”

With that, the window slammed to, and I stood alone in the dark, still locked out. For a while I remained without moving, then I tiptoed to the back-garden and began softly to take my belongings off the shed roof and round to the entrance, where I pedantically arranged them on an iron table. (Needless to say I did not forget to drink during this operation.) Hardly had I finished this task, which took a long time on account of my stupor and my uncertain gait, than I began that idiotic game with the bunch of keys and the keyhole again. I had not been at it for long, when the window flew open again with a crash, and the woman’s voice cried out furiously: “This is going too far! Will you get away from here, or do I have to fetch the police!”

The word “police” loosened my heavy tongue. “Oh please, let me in!” I called up in confusion. “I’m the Professor.…”

How I came to give myself the title of “Professor” I have no idea, it was a heaven-sent inspiration.

“The Professor?” said the voice from above in a tone of utter astonishment. “What Professor … ? The one who was painting pictures here last summer?”

“Yes, of course,” I said in the most matter-of-fact tone in the world, as if it were quite normal for a picture-painting professor to try to unlock strange doors with his own keys in the middle of the night.

“Let me in! I’ve been standing here for two hours!”

“If you’d only written a postcard, Herr Professor,” said the voice from above, still not exactly friendly but milder. “Wait a moment. I’ll open up at once.”

Relieved, I sat down on an iron chair, took a quick drink and shut my eyes. I was very tired, almost stunned. I did not realise then that something dangerous lay hidden within my calmness, a wild unbridled rage that might break out at any moment. It only lacked a cause, and anything might start it off This plum-brandy was far more dangerous than the comparatively harmless schnaps. It went deeper into the blood, and led to unexpected abysses.

At last the key turned in the door. A ray of light shone on me.

“Well, come in then,” said the woman’s voice, “but it’s not very nice of you to disturb our night’s rest like this, Herr Professor.”

I got up and followed my guide into the bar-room, which, by the light of a single bulb, looked most inhospitable, with its chairs set up on the tables. My companion now turned to me. It was the white-haired innkeeper of whom I had caught a glimpse once before. She gazed at me in astonishment.

“But you’re not the Professor at all!” she cried angrily. “You’re that gentleman who got drunk here the other day, and the medical officer had to take you away. You’ve got a cheek, coming here with your lies …!”

I silenced her with a threatening glance. I felt an enormous rage rising in me. I knew I would break any resistance that might be opposed to me; I was capable, I knew, of striking this woman, of throwing her to the ground, of killing her even, if the devil so prompted me. I looked at the woman and ordered: “Call Elinor!” And as she gave a sign of dissent: “Call Elinor at once, or” my voice became soft and threatening, “or something will happen!” The woman made a helpless gesture and then said pleadingly:

“Please don’t cause any trouble, sir. It’s night time now, and the girl’s asleep. I’ll gladly make up a bed for you on the sofa. You see, you’re a little bit drunk.”

She tried to smile but there was fear in her smile. I recognised it very well.

“You sleep it off, and tomorrow Elinor’ll be with you as much as you like. After all, you’re an educated man, sir.”

“Call the girl,” I said obstinately, and as she started to protest again: “All right, then I’ll go up to her myself.”

I pushed the landlady aside. “I’ll call Elinor,” she said quickly. “Please sit down on the sofa for a moment. Elinor’ll come immediately.”

“Stop!” I cried as the landlady made to go upstairs. “You call her from down here. You’re not leaving this bar-room. Any one leaving this room will be shot.”

I reached into my pocket as if I had a gun there. The landlady screamed softly.

“Now you know,” I said darkly. “Go on, call her.”

The landlady called. She had to call several times before an answer came from above. Elinor slept heavily.

“You’ve got to come down, Elinor!” called the landlady. “Be quick, will you?”

“That’s better,” I said, with the face of an examining magistrate. “And now, one question: have you any Black Forest plum-brandy?”

“No,” said the landlady, and as she saw my furious expression, she added, “but we’ve got some kirsch, that’s much better.”

“Nothing’s better than plum-brandy, but bring me your kirsch, anyway.”

She brought it, bottle and glass shaking in her hand.

“That’s it,” I said, and drank. My mood brightened; it really was almost better. “And now sit down and tell me who else is in the house besides yourself.”

“Only Elinor, really, besides myself there’s only Elinor.”

“You’re lying!” I cried furiously. “Don’t you try to lie to me again, or something will happen!” And I reached in my pocket again. And again she screamed softly.

I continued inexorably, “I saw a woman the last time I was here, with shaggy hair and a red nose …”

“Oh, you mean Marie,” cried the landlady, relieved, “but sir, what do you want to upset yourself for and frighten me like this. I’m not trying to tell you lies; Marie only helps here. She lives in the village with her parents.”

“Well,” I said, pacified, “if that’s the case, I’ll forgive you this time.”

I drank.

“This kirsch isn’t bad. It’s quite good, even.”

“Isn’t it, isn’t it?” said the landlady eagerly. “I’m doing all I can to satisfy you. I’m getting the girl out of her bed in the middle of the night. But now you’ve got to be nice too, and not threaten me with that gun any more. Best thing would be to put it away. A thing like that goes off easily, and you wouldn’t want that; you’re a good respectable gentleman …”

Before I could protest against this new insult, for I was determined not to be good, but awe-inspiring and wicked, and to show my power over people, before I could get angry again, Elinor’s firm tread was heard on the stairs; and she stepped into the light. She was fully dressed, only her dark hair was not done up but combed to the back. She looked more beautiful than ever.

“Elinor!” I cried, “my queen!”

Just for a moment she started, seeing me there with the landlady in that untidy room; and then this astonishing girl did exactly the right thing, as if she knew everything that had happened: she ran up to me, embraced me, gave me a kiss on the right cheek and a kiss on the left, and cried happily: “Why, it’s pop! Good old boozy pop! Now we can have fun, eh, Mother Schulze? Now we’ll have some champagne!”

“Champagne,” I cried. “Of course we’ll have champagne. As much as you like. I’ve got lots of money. Elinor, you’re my best girl, you know I love you. You’re my queen, and now we’ll go off on our travels. Elinor, give me another kiss, but right in the middle of the mouth!”

She did so. I felt her breast against mine, I was happy. At last alcohol had brought me complete happiness. I saw only Elinor, I felt only Elinor, I thought and spoke only Elinor. I did not notice that, despite my stern threat of death, the landlady had long since left the bar-room.

23

I do not know how long I had been like that in Elinor’s arms. I had her huge white face with its high-arched eyebrows quite close to mine, it leaned over me—and the whole world sank away. Her eyes, no longer colourless but glittering green, looked at me, and I felt a trembling within me, to the innermost part of my bones. My heart fluttered like a poplar-leaf in the breeze.

“Oh Elinor, forgive me! I’ve never loved like this before. I never knew that such a thing existed. You make me weak and strong; when your breath touches me I feel as if a storm was blowing through me, blowing away all the dry old leaves of the past. Through you, I have become new again—come, let’s get away from here, let’s get away from the past! We’ll go to the South, where the sun always shines, and the sky’s always blue. White castles on the vine-slopes! That’s where we’ll go! Come with me! I’ve got a little brief-case outside, but there’s enough in it. Come with me as you are, we’ll get away, this very minute. I’m afraid something dreadful will happen if we stay here any longer. They wouldn’t allow you to be with me. Come, let’s go, my relentless paleface, ma reine d’alcool. To you, and long may you live, from the bottom of my heart, I drink to you.”

I looked at her, beaming. Then, deeply disturbed: “Why don’t we go now?” She passed her hand caressingly, soothingly, through my hair. She was sitting on my lap, she had one arm round my neck, her tenderness hid the world from me.

She said softly: “We’ll go soon, pop, soon. There’s a train goes from the station at six o’clock. Till then, you must be patient, pop. We’re all right sitting here, aren’t we?”

I nestled closer to her. I laid my head against her breast, I felt sheltered there, like a child with its mother.

“Of course we’re all right here. But we’ll go at six o’clock, we’ll travel far, far from here. We’ll never want to see any of this again. In the South, we shall love … we shall always love each other.…”

She looked into my eyes, so near, it seemed to be one single eye, that became blurred as if I had looked into the sun.

She whispered close to my ear: “Yes, I will travel with you, pop. But you won’t drink all the time then, will you? I hate men who are always drunk. They disgust me.”

“I’ll never drink any more, once I’ve got you; not a drop more. You’re better than wine or schnaps. You’re like fire in me. You make the whole world dance. Your health, my queen!”

“Your health, my old pop! We’ll go travelling. But shall we have enough money for such a long journey? We shan’t want to have to work.”

“Money?” I asked contemptuously. “Money? Money enough for both of us. Money for all the journeys and the longest life!”

And I tore the notes out of my pocket. It really was quite a bundle. Elinor took them from my hand, smoothed out the notes and arranged them for counting.

“Eight hundred and sixty-three marks,” she said at last, and looked at me thoughtfully, with knitted brows. “That’s not very much money, pop. Not enough for us to go on a long journey, and live together without working. Is that all the money you’ve got?”

For a moment I was somewhat sobered. I passed my hand over my forehead, and looked with aversion at the bundle of dirty scraps that Elinor held in her hand.

“Somebody’s stolen my money, Elinor,” I said sullenly. “Some scoundrel has stolen from me five times, ten times more money than you’ve got in your hand. And all my things in a cowhide suitcase, and our silver, it’s all gone. Whatever will Magda say?”

Under her gaze I slowly collected my senses.

“But it doesn’t matter, Elinor. Put the money away. I don’t want to see it any more. I can get some more from the bank, I can get as much as you want. Tens of thousands! I come in with a cheque, they say to me: ‘Herr Sommer …’ ”