Wolf Among Wolves

Chapter Six

It Is Still Sultry after the Storm

I

After the first assault of junior and senior hotel staff, peace reigned round the friends von Prackwitz and Studmann. The reception manager lay sleeping on a rather dilapidated sofa in a basement room of the hotel. His was the leaden and ugly sleep of the drunken, with dropped jaw and wet mouth, a puffy face and a skin which looked suddenly stubby, as if he had not shaved for some time. Across his forehead was a red scratch received while falling down the stairs.

Von Prackwitz looked at his friend, then at the room into which he had been carried. It was not an inviting place. A big electric mangle took up most of the room, empty laundry baskets were piled up in one corner, against the wall leaned two ironing boards.

A waiter peered in—everybody seemed to think that he was entitled to do so without a word of apology, to make frivolous remarks, even to laugh. “Surely Herr von Studmann has a room of his own in the hotel?” Rittmeister von Prackwitz inquired angrily. “Why hasn’t he been taken to it?”

The waiter shrugged his shoulders. “How should I know? I didn’t bring him here,” he said with an inquisitive glance at the sleeper.

Von Prackwitz restrained himself. “Please send me someone from the management.”

The waiter vanished. Prackwitz waited.

And nobody came. The Rittmeister waited a long time. He leaned back in the kitchen chair, crossed his legs and yawned. He was tired out. He felt that he had gone through a good deal since his train, coming from Ostade, had entered Schlesische Bahnhof that morning; too much, in fact, for a simple countryman unfamiliar with cosmopolitan excitements.

In the hope that it would cheer him up he lit a cigarette. No one came. Surely the management must have learned that the reception manager and assistant director, after some incoherent remarks, had fallen downstairs in full view of the crowded entrance hall. Nevertheless none of the gentlemen of the management troubled himself about it. The Rittmeister frowned, wondering what lay behind this matter. Von Studmann had not fallen downstairs through an accident which might happen, by some cruel trick of fate, to the most noble. The intrusion of the junior staff, the absence of the senior, the breath of the sleeper, all gave the game away—Oberleutnant von Studmann was drunk, dead drunk. Was still drunk. Von Prackwitz wondered if Studmann had become a drunkard.

Had Studmann become a drunkard? It was possible. Everything was possible in these accursed times. But the Rittmeister immediately rejected this idea. Firstly, no confirmed drunkard ever fell downstairs—that happened only to the amateur; secondly, no big hotel would employ a drinker.

No—and Rittmeister von Prackwitz paced up and down the ironing room—there was more to it than that. Something unexpected must have happened, which he would hear about in time, and it was quite useless to rack his brains at present. The important question was, how would it affect Studmann? From the behavior of the staff Prackwitz concluded that the results would be unpleasant. Well, he would defend his friend with tooth and nail as long as Studmann was in no fit state to defend himself.

With tooth and nail! The Rittmeister was pleased with this warlike phrase. But should this turn out to be useless (and one knew these unfeeling moneymakers), perhaps it was as well. He might be able to persuade him …

He thought of his lonely walk through Langestrasse to the Harvesters’ Agency. He thought of the many solitary walks he had taken since he had left the army, always toward that imaginary point in his mind’s eye. He remembered how often he had felt the need of a comrade. At the military college, in the army, during the war, there had always been friends with whom he could chat, fellows with similar sentiments, similar interests, the same sense of honor. Since the war all this had vanished, however—everyone was for himself alone; there was no concord, no community of feeling any longer.

He won’t like to come as my guest, reflected the Rittmeister, going on to think of other things. Why should he fool himself. He had made a blunder that morning at the Harvesters’ Agency; and he had made another blunder in giving the dollars to the foreman at Schlesische Bahnhof. And his behavior at police headquarters was possibly not altogether wise; moreover, after endless chasing about and talking, he had allowed an agent, an hour ago, to palm off on him sixty people whom he would not have a chance of inspecting before the following morning—all because he had wanted to bring this nauseating business to a conclusion. That, too, was perhaps not very wise.

Well, he was hot-headed and impulsive, rushing at things tooth and nail, although afterwards he always became bored with them. Besides, some matters he did not entirely grasp; perhaps his father-in-law, old Geheimrat von Teschow, was right—he would never become a real businessman.

The Rittmeister threw the stub of his cigarette into a corner and lit another. Yes, he mortified himself, he smoked this rubbish instead of his favorite brand. If his wife bought herself a couple of pairs of silk stockings he quarreled with her. But when the cattle dealer came and haggled with him over fat oxen, talked for one hour and bargained the next, allowed himself to be sent away and then came back again, wouldn’t go and was humble when he was barked at—yes, then Herr von Prackwitz gave way. He became bored, and sold the fine oxen at a price which made the old Geheimrat, when he heard about it, exult. Who thereupon said, of course: “Excuse me, Joachim, I mustn’t interfere with your business. Only I’ve never had money enough to be able to chuck it out of the window.”

No, he could easily convince Studmann that at Neulohe he would be a very necessary and very useful assistant, who could not be too highly paid, friendship apart. Meier wouldn’t be there much longer. What Violet had said on the telephone a little while ago (when he rang up about the carriages for the following morning) was beyond a joke. Meier, it seemed, hadn’t brought in the crops, but had drunk himself silly during working hours. The Rittmeister’s blood boiled at the thought. He was too easygoing with such fellows. Meier would go out on his ear.

His glance fell on his sleeping friend, and the Rittmeister’s sense of justice forced him to admit that the friend too had got drunk during working hours. But with Studmann it was, of course, quite different. There must be special circumstances, surely.

But in the end nothing stood in the way of assuming that special circumstances obtained in the case of the Bailiff Meier as well—he also was not accustomed to being drunk while on duty.

“Of course, just while I’m away!” said the Rittmeister to himself. But that didn’t sound right either, because he was often away without this kind of thing happening. And so he lost himself again in speculation about Studmann, on the one hand, and Meier on the other.

Thank heavens, there was a knock, and an elderly gentleman in dark clothes entered, who with a bow introduced himself as Dr. Zetsche, hotel physician.

Von Prackwitz in turn introduced himself and explained that he was an old army friend of Herr Studmann. “I happened to be in the hall when the accident occurred.”

“Accident, yes,” said the doctor, rubbing his nose thoughtfully and looking at the Rittmeister. “So you call it an accident?”

“If somebody falls downstairs, isn’t that an accident?”

“Intoxication!” stated the doctor. “Complete inebriation, alcoholism. The scratch on his forehead is not serious.”

“Do you know …” the Rittmeister began.

“Give him some Eumed or Aspirin or Pyramidon—anything which is handy when he wakes up.”

“But there’s nothing handy,” said the Rittmeister, glancing round the ironing room. “Couldn’t you arrange for my friend to be taken to his own room? It was a bad fall.”

“It is a bad case. There are six people upstairs just as drunk, all of them employees of the hotel. An orgy under your friend’s leadership. And the only participant who wasn’t drunk—Herr Reichsfreiherr Baron von Bergen, one of the guests—was knocked down by your friend.”

“I don’t understand it,” said the Rittmeister, dumbfounded by these revelations.

“I don’t understand it either,” said the doctor firmly. “And I don’t wish to understand it.”

“But do explain to me …”

“There’s no explanation,” said the doctor imperturbably. “A guest, a Reichsfreiherr, knocked down by a drunken reception manager!”

“There must have been special circumstances,” insisted the Rittmeister. “I’ve known Herr von Studmann for a long time and he’s always done his duty, even in the most difficult situations.”

“Doubtless,” replied the doctor politely, retreating before the other’s agitation. With his hand on the doorknob he also became agitated. “One of the females was half naked—in the presence of the Reichfreiherr!” he shouted.

“I insist,” cried the Rittmeister in a loud voice, “on Herr von Studmann being taken to a room fit for a human being.”

He hurried after the retreating physician.

“I hold you responsible, doctor!”

“I refuse to take any responsibility,” shouted the doctor over his shoulder, “for this orgy and its participants.” And he dashed down a side corridor, followed by the Rittmeister.

“He’s ill, doctor.”

But the doctor had reached his goal. In a most sprightly manner the old gentleman leaped into an ascending lift. “He’s drunk,” he shouted, his feet already level with the stomach of his pursuer, who would have liked to lead him back by force to his duties. But in vain; the defaulting physician had escaped.

Von Prackwitz, who despite all his energy had been unable to do anything for his friend except the insignificant task of ordering some Pyramidon, uttered a curse and made his way back to the ironing room. However, the confusion of white corridors, all with the same doors, rendered him helpless. Searching for the doctor, he hadn’t noticed into which particular hole he’d bolted. He looked hesitantly here and there, up and down all the corridors at least once. If he persisted he would find the right door. He remembered quite clearly having left it open.

Up and down he went—white doors, white corridors. His sense of direction led him to believe that he was farther and farther from his goal, but in the end even the number of cellars in a grand hotel must be finite. But there were the stairs. Had he passed them before? Should he go up or down? He went up, sure that it was wrong, and met an elderly female, with a rather severe look behind a pince-nez, who was putting clothes in a cupboard in total solitude.

The woman turned round at the sound of his footsteps and inspected the stranger.

Counscious that he was there quite illegitimately, von Prackwitz addressed her very politely. The laundry woman nodded her head gravely without saying a word. Von Prackwitz was decisive: “If you please, how do I get to the ironing room from here?”

His polite smile didn’t in the least soften the woman’s severe look. She seemed to reflect, then made a large gesture with her hands: “There are many ironing rooms here.…”

Von Prackwitz tried to describe this one to her, without having to mention Studmann. “There are wash baskets in the corner,” he said. “Oh, yes, and a chaise-lounge with blue flowers on the covering.” And he added, not without a little bitterness, “It was pretty threadbare.”

She reflected again. Eventually she said coldly, “I don’t think we have a chaise-lounge in disrepair. Everything is immediately repaired here.”

This was not exactly the information von Prackwitz wished to hear upon his inquiry. However, in his present and in his former jobs he’d always had to do with people, and the type who is never able to answer a question precisely was well known to him.

Despite this, he tried again. “So where is the hotel lobby?” he asked.

The answer was prompt: “Hotel guests are completely forbidden to enter the service rooms.”

“Totally,” said the Rittmeister seriously.

“What—?” she almost shouted, and quite lost her control and bearing, becoming a bit flustered, like a chicken.

“Totally or, better still, strictly forbidden,” corrected the Rittmeister. “Not completely. So, good evening and many thanks!”

He addressed her with dignity, as if she was the commander of a regiment and he a young lieutenant. He left. Completely or totally confused, she stayed.

The Rittmeister was now more comfortable being lost. He’d been enlivened by the little incident. It was true that he’d once again not been able to do anything for his friend. This he regretfully admitted. Nevertheless things like that do one good. Besides, he was now walking on carpets, and if he was perhaps farther and farther from Studmann, he seemed to be approaching inhabited regions of the hotel.

The Rittmeister stood before a row of doors in dull polished oak: massive doors, doors inspiring confidence.

“Cashier I,” he read. “Cashier II.” And went on. There came the Service Cashier, Buying Departments A and B, Staff Inquiries, Registrar, Physician. He looked disapprovingly at the physician’s plate, shrugged his shoulders and went on.

“Secretariat.” Still farther, he decided.

“Director Haase.”

The Rittmeister hesitated. No, not there. Farther along.

“Director Kainz.”

“Director Lange.”

“Managing Director Vogel.”

The Rittmeister knocked perfunctorily and entered.

Behind the desk sat a large man dictating to a very good-looking young secretary at the typewriter. He hardly looked up when the Rittmeister introduced himself.

“Pleased-to-meet-you-please-take-a-seat,” he said with the absent-minded unreal politeness of a man whose profession it is to make the acquaintance of a stream of new people. “One moment, please. Where did we get to, Fräulein? Do you smoke? Then please help yourself.”

The telephone rang.

“Vogel speaking—Yes, his doctor? What’s his name? What? Please spell it. What’s his name? Schröck? Medical Superintendent Schröck? When will he be coming? In five minutes? All right, bring him to me at once. Yes, that will be all right, I’ll have time. I’ve only to dictate something and a short interview.” He looked vaguely at the Rittmeister across the telephone. “Say in three minutes. All right. Under no circumstances is he to be taken to No. 37, but brought straight to me. Thanks.” The receiver was replaced. “Where did we get to, Fräulein?”

The young secretary muttered something and the managing director went on with his dictating.

You can only spare me three minutes, thought the Rittmeister angrily. You wait, you’ll be mistaken. I’ll show you.… But he heard a name, started and listened intently.

The director was dictating quickly and mechanically. “We very much regret that Herr von Studmann, whose personal and professional qualities we have learned to appreciate during his eighteen months’ service in our Berlin organization …”

He paused for breath.

“One moment,” cried the Rittmeister and rose.

“One moment,” murmured the director. “I’ll be finished immediately. Where did we get to, Fräulein?”

“No, Fräulein,” protested the Rittmeister. “Excuse me. If I understand you rightly you are dictating a testimonial for Herr von Studmann. Herr von Studmann is a friend of mine.”

“Splendid,” said the director calmly. “Then you’ll take care of him. We were in a fix.”

“Herr von Studmann is lying on a worn-out sofa in an ironing room,” complained the Rittmeister. “There’s not a soul to look after him.”

“Very regrettable,” admitted the director. “A mistake which I must ask you to excuse owing to the momentary confusion created by the occurrence. Fräulein, telephone that Herr von Studmann is to be taken to his room without attracting any attention. Without attracting any attention, Fräulein, please. Without attracting any attention!”

“You want to sack Herr von Studmann,” cried the Rittmeister indignantly, pointing to the notebook. “You can’t condemn a man without hearing his defense.”

The managing director spoke without any show of feeling. “Herr von Studmann will be taken at once to his room.”

“You can’t dismiss him straight away,” cried von Prackwitz.

“We’re not dismissing him,” contradicted the other. Von Prackwitz had the impression that this gray giant could not be touched by any emotion, any entreaty, any human feeling. “We’re granting Herr von Studmann an extended holiday.”

“Herr von Studmann doesn’t need a holiday,” the Rittmeister assured him, intimidated by this unassailable man.

“Herr von Studmann does need a holiday. His nervous system has gone to pieces.”

“You judge without hearing him,” the Rittmeister declared with less conviction.

“In the room occupied by Reichsfreiherr Baron von Bergen,” said the managing director as monotonously as if he were reading from a statement, “we found nineteen champagne bottles, of which fifteen were empty. Four cognac bottles—empty. Two hotel pages—completely intoxicated. Two adult male employees—also completely intoxicated. An insufficiently clad chambermaid—dead drunk. A charwoman in our temporary employ—dead drunk. The guest, Herr Baron von Bergen, quite sober but with a black eye and almost unconscious as the result of several brutal blows on the head. Doubtless you know how we discovered your friend Herr von Studmann.”

Abashed, Rittmeister von Prackwitz bowed his head.

“On the one hand,” said the managing director a little more cordially, “your loyalty to your friend does you honor. On the other hand, I would ask—does a cultured man with a sound nervous system share in such a bacchanalia?”

“But there must have been some reason for it,” von Prackwitz cried despairingly. “Otherwise Herr von Studmann would never …”

“Can you think of any reason which would have made you take part in such an orgy, Herr von …?”

“Prackwitz,” prompted the Rittmeister.

“Herr von Prackwitz. You will understand that we cannot any longer employ in our organization a man so compromised, if for no other reason than the bad example to our staff.”

There was a curt, important knock. The door flew open and in stormed a little bowlegged old man with a tall forehead, shining blue eyes and a faded beard, which no doubt had once been fiery. He was followed slowly by a thickset man whose jacket fitted so tightly across his shoulders that he looked like a prize-fighter.

“Have you still got him?” croaked the fiery old man. “Where is he? For God’s sake don’t let him get away. Türke, see about it! Make haste! Don’t let him escape. Run! I’ve been chasing this boy all over Berlin for the last twenty-four hours. I don’t believe there’s a haunt in this wretched town into which I haven’t stuck my nose, damn it!”

He took hold of the above-mentioned nose and looked breathlessly at the dumbfounded people round him. The thick-set man in the tight jacket, presumably Herr Türke, stood behind.

Probably because his profession had accustomed him to the most extraordinary examples of the human species, the managing director was the first to emerge from stupefaction.

“Vogel,” he introduced himself. “I presume I’m speaking with Dr. Schröck?”

“No, I’m speaking with you,” shouted the old man, letting go his nose. The transition from calmness to rage was so sudden that all—except the imperturbable Herr Türke—were startled. In that bowlegged body a fiery temperament must be concealed. “I’ve been asking you for the last three minutes whether that fellow’s still here.”

“If you mean Reichsfreiherr Baron von Bergen,” began the managing director, “I know he’s in Room 37.”

“Türke,” screamed Dr. Schröck, “did you hear that? Room 37! Go and fetch the young rotter, alive or dead! Look out—you know how tricky he is. Don’t forget he locked your colleague in his room!”

The thick-set one nodded. “He won’t get away with it this time. He couldn’t have done such a thing to me, sir.” Leisurely he departed.

“An excellent male nurse,” muttered Dr. Schröck. “A man without a trace of sentimentality.” Suddenly his anxiety returned. “He can’t have got away by any chance?”

“No, no,” the managing director reassured him. “He can’t get away. Things have happened, unfortunately.” He gave a glance at the Rittmeister. “I’ll report to you as soon as I’ve dealt with this gentleman.”

With a sigh of relief Dr. Schröck sank into a chair, and mopped his forehead. “He can’t get away then, thank God. Something’s happened. Wherever that fellow goes something happens.” He gave a sigh of resignation. “Police? Public prosecutor?”

“No, no,” the managing director assured him. “The gentleman is sure to apologize.” He glanced with annoyance at the Rittmeister. “We’ll make good any damage. One of our employees unfortunately so far forgot himself as to strike the Baron.”

The old man leaped out of his chair. “Where is he? Who is it?” He pointed to the Rittmeister. “Did you?”

“He apparently threw a champagne bottle at his head,” wailed the managing director.

“Splendid,” cried the old man. “A champagne bottle! Magnificent! Not you? Your friend? Let me meet him. I must thank him. It isn’t possible? Why isn’t it possible?”

“Your charge seems to have made my friend—and half a dozen other people—mysteriously drunk.”

“There you are,” said Dr. Schröck. “The usual dirty business.” He sat down resigned. “I’ll arrange everything, nobody shall suffer. You, my dear managing director, seem to have been dazzled by the title of Reichsfreiherr and so on. Let me tell you this Reichsfreiherr is the most irresponsible, pampered, vulgar, sadistic little beast in the world. And a coward at that.”

“Dr. Schröck!” implored the managing director.

“That’s the truth! He imagines that because he’s been put under restraint as a result of his extravagance, and was acquitted in some scandal because of paragraph fifty-one, he can do what he likes. He’s lazy and without respect, without a trace of human feeling.” Dr. Schröck flared up. “The fellow ought to be whipped morning and evening; he ought to be put in prison or at least in a State asylum. There they’d cure him of his nasty tricks!”

“But he’s in your sanatorium—this poor fellow.”

“Unfortunately,” grumbled Dr. Schröck. “Unfortunately. I offer him to my colleagues as if he were sour beer, but they won’t take him, although he pays more than any other patient. Patient! My goodness, he’s just a vicious monkey. When I take him back to my institution, behind bars and locked doors in the ward for troublesome cases, of course, he’ll be tolerable for a month or two—especially if your friend has given him a good hiding.”

“A quarter of an hour ago he was nearly unconscious,” interposed the managing director.

“Excellent! But he’ll soon be overbearing again. He teases harmless patients into a frenzy, annoys the attendants, steals cigarettes, drives me and my assistants mad.… And he’s by no means stupid, he’s devilishly cunning. He’s always escaping. Watch him as much as we like, he always finds some fool. Borrows money or steals it.… And I can do nothing,” said the old man gnashing his teeth. “I can’t get rid of him. As he’s not in full possession of his mental faculties, the law’s on his side.” He sat there, grown suddenly older and exhausted. “For twenty-four hours I’ve been chasing him in my car.” He looked round. “If only I could get rid of him,” he groaned despairingly. “But then, as likely as not, he’d regain his freedom—no, I couldn’t take the responsibility. However, let’s at least try the ultimate remedy—expense. Perhaps his mother—he has only one mother, unfortunately—will get tired of paying for him. Herr Director, may I ask you for a bill, a detailed account?”

“Yes,” said the managing director, hesitating. “There’s been a lot of alcohol consumed, champagne, cognac …”

“Nonsense.” Dr. Schröck grew angry. “Those are trifles. Champagne, cognac! No, every person the fellow’s harmed is entitled to damages. I hear of half a dozen persons whom he’s made drunk.… Your friend, for instance, I think?”

“I don’t know whether my friend …” began von Prackwitz awkwardly.

“For Heaven’s sake,” cried the incensed Schröck, “don’t be a fool! Excuse me, I shouldn’t say that, of course, but really don’t be a fool! The greater the expense the sooner there’s a chance of his mother locking him up one of these fine days in a well-guarded lunatic asylum. You’re doing a service to mankind.”

The Rittmeister looked at the managing director, then at the typewriter in which the testimonial was still inserted. “My friend, who is assistant director and chief receptionist here, is to be discharged by the hotel management because he was intoxicated while on duty,” he said.

“Excellent,” cried Dr. Schröck, but this time the managing director interrupted him.

“I must contradict Herr von Prackwitz,” he said hastily. “We’re granting Herr von Studmann a long holiday, say three months, even six months. During that time Herr von Studmann, in view of his efficiency, will easily find another position. We do not dismiss him for drunkenness on duty,” he explained firmly, but without emotion. “We simply ask him to look round for another field of activity because in no circumstances must a hotel employee make himself conspicuous. Unfortunately, Herr von Studmann, when he fell down the hall stairs insufficiently clad and completely intoxicated, made himself very conspicuous in front of many employees and still more guests.”

Dr. Schröck was satisfied. “Together with an indemnity for a lost position we must consider the question of damages. That pleases me immensely; I see light. I shouldn’t be surprised if that didn’t put paid to young Bergen. How do I find your friend? At your place? Many thanks. I’ll make a note of your address. You’ll be hearing from me in two or three days’ time. Splendid. By the way, we pay, of course, in stable currency. I assure you that you can’t put in for too much in the way of expenses. Oh, don’t worry. Do you think I mind? Not a bit. It hurts nobody, I only wish it did.”

The Rittmeister rose. Life was a strange thing. Somebody had actually fallen downstairs for once and got rid of his troubles. Herr von Studmann could come to Neulohe as a man free from worry, as a paying guest if he liked. He, Prackwitz, would be no longer alone.

He took his leave, Dr. Schröck once again regretting that he was not allowed to shake Studmann’s hand for knocking the Baron down.

As von Prackwitz approached the door it opened and there stumbled in, guided and supported by the attendant Türke, a creature bedizened in red and yellow, exceedingly wretched to look at, with his black eye and swollen face, contemptible with his hang-dog glance.

“Bergen!” said Dr. Schröck in a voice like a crow’s. “Bergen, come here!”

The coward broke down, fell on his knees. His gorgeous pajamas were in strange contrast with his miserable appearance. “Dr. Schröck,” he begged, “don’t punish me, don’t send me to a lunatic asylum. I’ve done nothing. They drank the champagne quite willingly.”

“Bergen, to begin with, you are deprived of your cigarettes.”

“Please don’t do that, Dr. Schröck! You know I can’t bear it. I can’t live without smoking. And I only shot into the ceiling when the gentleman didn’t want to drink.”

Von Prackwitz closed the door softly, and the miserable creature’s wails, a child without a child’s purity and innocence, died away. If only I were back in Neulohe, he thought. Berlin makes me vomit. No, it’s not only the printing of money which has gone mad. He looked down the clean corridor with its dark polished oak doors. It all had the appearance of soundness, but inside it was rotten. Was the war still in everybody’s bones? I don’t know, and anyway don’t understand.

Walking slowly along the corridor he came into the hall and inquired for his friend’s room. A lift took him up to just beneath the roof. There von Studmann sat on the edge of his bed, his head in his hands.

“I’ve a rotten hangover, Prackwitz,” he said, looking up. “Have you time to come with me into the open air for half an hour?”

“I’ve all the time in the world,” said the Rittmeister, suddenly cheerful. “Both for you and the open air. But first let me put on your collar.…”

II

The little bailiff, his head thick and muddled with drink, had thrown himself on his bed just as he was, with mud-stained boots and clothes soaking wet with the rain. Through the open window he could see that it was still pouring down, and he could hear someone scolding from the direction of the cowhouse and the pigsty. What are they doing? he thought. What’s the matter with them? My God, I want to sleep. I must sleep and forget; when I wake up I shall find out it’s not true!

He put his hand over his eyes and it was dark. Ah, this darkness was good! Darkness was the void; where the void is, nothing is; nothing has happened, nothing has been messed up.

But the darkness lightened into gray and the gray became brighter. Out of the brightness appeared the table, the bottle, the glasses … the letter!

Oh, God, what was he to do? Little Meier pressed his hand more firmly against his eyes. It grew dark again. But flaming wheels of many colors were circling in that darkness, faster and faster, till he felt giddy and sick.

He sat up and stared about the room, which was still light. He loathed it. How familiar it all was! The stinking slop-pail beside the washstand! The photos of nude girls around the mirror! He had cut them out of magazines and pinned them on the wallpaper, and he was sick of the sight of them. How he loathed his present life and what had happened! He would like to get out of this situation; to be something quite different. But what could he do? He sat there with protruding eyes and a swollen face. There was nothing that he could do. Everything was going to collapse about him. He must just stay still and wait—and he hadn’t wanted to do anything bad! If only he could sleep …

Thank God, there was a knock at the door of the adjoining office, to break the monotony. “Come in,” he growled, and when the person outside hesitated, he growled still louder: “Come in, you fool!” And was immediately frightened. Suppose it was somebody he oughtn’t to call a fool—the Geheimrat, or Frau von Prackwitz—then he’d be in the soup again. What a life!

But it was only old Kowalewski, the overseer.

“What’s the matter?” Meier shouted, delighted to have someone on whom he could vent his fury.

“I just wanted to ask a question, bailiff,” said the old man humbly, cap in hand. “We had a telegram from our daughter in Berlin; she’s coming tomorrow morning by the ten-o’clock train—”

“So that’s what you wanted to ask, Kowalewski?” sneered Meier. “Well, now you’ve asked it, you can go.”

“It’s only about her luggage,” said the overseer. “Is a carriage going tomorrow to the station?”

“Of course,” said Meier. “Tomorrow quite a lot of carriages are going to the station. To Ostade and Meienburg and Frankfurt, too.”

“I just thought whether one of our carriages could also fetch her luggage,” explained Kowalewski.

“Ah, that’s what you thought! You’re a mighty fine cock, overseer, talking about ‘our’ carriages.”

The overseer was not discouraged. He had experienced generations of bailiffs, and this one was perhaps the worst of the lot. But a poor man had to beg a hundred times before one of the powerful said “Yes” for a change; and sometimes little Meier was quite different. He was like that; he liked to have his little joke; one ought not to blame him for it.

“It’s only because of her box, bailiff,” he begged. “Sophie doesn’t mind walking at all; she likes walking.”

“But she likes to lie down on her back still better, eh, Kowalewski?” grinned Meier.

Not a muscle of the old man’s face twitched. “Perhaps a farmer will be going to the station,” he meditated, half-aloud.

Meier, however, was satisfied. He had vented a bit of his rage, he had felt not altogether without power. “Well, clear out, Kowalewski,” he said graciously. “The harvesters and the Rittmeister are arriving by the ten-o’clock train. There’ll be room for your little Sophie. Hop it, you stinking old crow,” he shouted, and with a muttered “Very many thanks” and “Good evening,” the overseer retreated.

Black Meier was alone again with his thoughts. “If only I could at least sleep …” he growled to himself, his ill-temper returning. “Any damned fool can sleep when he’s drunk as much as I have, but not me; I never have any luck, of course.”

But perhaps he had not drunk enough. In the inn he had been quite tight; the trouble was, it had blown off by now. He could go back again, but he was too lazy for that. Besides, he would have to pay for all he had had there, and he shuddered at the thought of the reckoning. Well, Amanda was sure to put in an appearance this evening, and she could go and fetch him a bottle of schnapps. It would give her something to do; he couldn’t bear the thought of women today. If Vi hadn’t made such an exhibition of herself, he wouldn’t have behaved so stupidly. But that sort of thing was enough to drive a man mad.

Meier lurched from his soiled, damp bed and stumbled round the room. He had remembered that the forester had told him to pack and get away as soon as possible.

His boxes lay on top of the wardrobe. He had two small suitcases, a cheap dilapidated one of fabric-covered cardboard and a smart leather case which he had taken away with him on leaving his last job—it had only been standing about doing nothing in a loft. Meier squinted up at this suitcase; the cheapness of its acquisition always pleased him.

When you look at a suitcase you think of traveling. And when you think of traveling the money for the fare occurs to you. Thus it was that, without having looked through the half-open office door, Meier had a vision of the safe, bulky and painted green, the gilded decorations of which had become a dirty yellow with the years.

Usually the Rittmeister kept the key and only on pay days or for some special expenditure would fetch from it the necessary money. Meier was, of course, utterly reliable in money matters, but the Rittmeister was a great man and mistrustful! It would serve him right if he came a real cropper through his suspicions.

The bailiff pushed the office door open with his shoulder and planted himself thoughtfully in front of the safe. Yesterday evening the Rittmeister had checked the amount in hand twice over—the safe held quite a handsome packet of money, more than Bailiff Meier could earn in three years. Lost in thought, he fingered the key in his pocket. But he didn’t take it out. He didn’t unlock the safe. No, I’m not such a fool as all that, he thought.

Whatever he did was always on the safe side; he might possibly be sacked, but he couldn’t be jailed for it. To get the sack didn’t matter. One always got a new job after a while; an employer never stated in his testimonial the real reason for dismissal. But Meier had a lively aversion to jail.

I’d only squander the money in a week or two, he told himself. Then I’d be broke and couldn’t get another job, because they were looking for me. No, certainly not.

Nevertheless he stayed before the safe for a long time; it fascinated him. A way out of the dirt, he thought. They don’t catch everybody, by a long way. They say you can get false papers quite cheaply in Berlin. I would only like to know where. How long will it take before the Lieutenant learns that I haven’t delivered the letter? Well, tonight those two are going to miss each other. You’ll have to go to bed hungry, dear Vi. Meier grinned with malice.

There was another knock, and he jumped away from the safe and leaned negligently against the wall before calling out: “Come in,” this time politely. But all his trouble was unnecessary; once again it was no one of any consequence—only the charwoman, the coachman’s wife with the seven urchins, Frau Hartig.

“Your supper, Herr Meier.”

Meier did not want her to see the soiled bed in the next room (Amanda could tidy it up a bit later); he was in no mood for a dust-up now. “Put it on the desk,” he said. “What is it?”

“I don’t know why the women think so much of you,” said Frau Hartig, taking the lid off the dish. “Now Armgard is starting, too.… A roast and red cabbage in the evening for a bailiff.…”

“Rot,” said Meier. “I’d have preferred a herring. Whoa! Look at the fat! To tell the truth, I’ve had a drop too much.”

“I can see that,” confirmed Frau Hartig. “Why can’t you men lay off the booze? Supposing women did the same! Was Amanda with you?”

“What next! I don’t need her for boozing.” He laughed, suddenly quite lively and in high spirits. “What about it, Hartig? Would you like the grub? I can’t eat tonight.”

Frau Hartig beamed. “My old man’ll be pleased. If I quickly cook a few potatoes to go with it, it’ll be sufficient for us both.”

“No,” drawled Meier by the wall. “That’s for you, Hartig, not for your old man. Do you think I want him to get strong on it? You’re crazy. No, if you want the food you must eat it here. On the spot!” He looked hard at her.

“Here?” she asked, returning his stare.

Their voices had changed, become almost soft.

“Here!” answered Black Meier.

“Then,” said Frau Hartig in even lower tones, “I’ll close the windows and draw the curtains. If somebody saw me eating here …”

Meier didn’t answer, but he followed her with his eyes as she closed the two windows and carefully drew the curtains. “Lock the door as well,” he added softly.

She looked at him, then she did so. She sat down in front of the tray on the desk. “Well, it’ll taste good to me,” she said with simulated vivacity.

Again he did not reply. He watched her as she put the meat on the plate, then the potatoes, then the red cabbage. Now she ladled gravy over it all.…

“Hartig, listen,” he said quietly.

“What is it?” she asked without looking up, apparently only concerned with her food.

“Yes, what was I going to say?” he drawled. “Yes, where do you button up your blouse—in front or at the back?”

“In front,” she whispered, starting to cut the meat. “Do you want to have a look?”

“Yes,” said he, adding impatiently, “well, get on.”

“You must do it yourself,” she replied. “Or else my food will get cold. Ah you … ah.… Yes, darling … such good food … yes … yes.…”

III

Violet von Prackwitz was having supper with her mother. The manservant stood stiffly by the sideboard. Räder, although not much over twenty, was of the “serious servant” type. He was obsessed by the notion that his employers would one day move out of their jerry-built place into the old people’s mansion, where he would no longer be the manservant but the butler. Therefore, in spite of his faultless demeanor, he regarded the old Geheimrat and his wife as people who withheld from his master and mistress something which by right belonged to them. Most of all, however, he hated old Elias, who lorded it over the silver at the Manor. How could anyone bear to have a name like Elias, anyway! His own Christian name was Hubert, and his employers called him by it.

Hubert had one eye on the table, in case they needed anything, and both ears on the conversation. Although he did not move one muscle of his somewhat lined face he was filled with glee at the way in which the young Fräulein was duping her mother. For, as Hubert had little to do, what with Armgard the cook and Lotte the servant, he made it his business to be acquainted with all that went on, to see everything, to know everything. Hubert knew a great deal—he knew, for instance, exactly how the young Fräulein had spent her afternoon. Which madam didn’t know.

“Have you seen to Grandpapa’s geese this afternoon?” Hubert heard Frau von Prackwitz ask.

Frau Eva von Prackwitz was a very good-looking woman, perhaps a trifle plump, though one noticed it only when she stood beside the tall, lean Rittmeister. She had all the sensual charm of a woman who was glad to be a woman and who, in addition, loved country life, and whom the country seemed to reward for this with an inexhaustible freshness and cheerfulness.

Vi pulled a reproachful face. “But, Mamma, there was a storm this afternoon.”

Hubert understood. This evening Fräulein Violet was playing the role of a small girl, which she particularly liked to do whenever she had been up to some very grown-up mischief. This would stop her parents from thinking any wrong of her—that is, from thinking of her aright.

“You would really do me a favor, Violet, if you kept an eye on Grandpapa’s geese. You know Papa gets so annoyed when the geese get into his vetch. And the storm only started at six o’clock.”

“If I were a goose I wouldn’t like to be in Grandpapa’s old damp park with its sour grass,” declared Vi with a childish pout. “I believe the park stinks.”

Hubert, who well knew how often and how gladly the young Fräulein stayed secretly in the Geheimrat’s park, was enchanted by the naïveté of this precautionary reply.

“But, Vi, the word ‘stink’—and at table!” Frau Eva’s calm and smiling glance passed over Räder’s wooden yet far from youthful face.

“All right, Mamma. I won’t go there, I think it st—smells of corpses.”

“Stop it, Vi!” Frau Eva knocked on the table very energetically with the handle of her fork. “That’s enough. Sometimes I think you might be a little more grown-up.”

“Yes, Mamma? Were you more grown-up when you were my age?” The girl’s expression was completely innocent—nevertheless the servant wondered if the artless young person had possibly heard a rumor of her mother’s youthful pranks. There was a story about the old Geheimrat thrashing a farmer’s boy out of his daughter’s bedroom window; and perhaps it was true. At all events, Hubert found that Frau Eva’s next question fitted in very well with the rumor. “What had you to say to Meier that took such a long time this afternoon?” she asked.

“Pooh!” said Vi disparagingly and pouted again. “Old Black Meier.” She laughed. “Imagine, Mamma, all the girls and women in the village are said to run after him, and yet he’s as ugly as—I don’t know, as old Abraham.” (Abraham was the he-goat they kept in the stable, in accordance with the old cavalry idea that he banished disease.)

“The dessert, Hubert!” admonished madam still calmly, but with rather dangerously flashing eyes.

Räder marched out of the room, not without regret. Fräulein Vi had made a slip. And now she would certainly get a good talking-to. She had been piling it on a little too much in her exuberance; madam was not a fool by any means. Hubert would have liked to hear what the mother said, and above all what the daughter answered. But Hubert was not one to eavesdrop; he marched straight away to the kitchen. Granted common sense, there were many ways of learning what one wanted to know. One needn’t shake, by eavesdropping, an employer’s confidence in an exemplary servant.

Old Forester Kniebusch sat at the kitchen table, waiting.

“Good evening, Herr Räder,” he said very politely, for the detached and taciturn manservant was regarded as a power in the land. “Is supper finished yet?”

“The dessert, Armgard,” said Räder, and started to arrange the plates on the tray. “Good evening, Herr Kniebusch. Whom do you want to speak to? The Rittmeister doesn’t come back till tomorrow.”

“I only wanted to see madam,” said Kniebusch cautiously. After long deliberation he had come to the conclusion that he had better lay his knowledge before the older generation. Fräulein was too young to be of any real use to an old man.

“I’ll announce you, Herr Kniebusch,” said Räder.

“Herr Räder,” asked Kniebusch, “could it be arranged that Fräulein Vi is not present?”

Räder’s face showed even more furrows. To gain time he snapped at the cook: “Get on, Armgard. I’ve told you a hundred times that you’re to arrange the cheese dish before I come.”

“In this heat!” sneered the cook, who hated him. “The butter balls would stick to each other.”

“You need not take the butter out of the refrigerator until the last moment. But if you’re still only cutting up the cheese!” And in low tones to the forester: “Why shouldn’t the young Fräulein be present?”

Kniebusch became visibly embarrassed. “Well, you know … I only thought … not everything is fit for a young girl’s ears.”

Räder regarded the embarrassed man with the inscrutability of an idol. “What’s not for young girls, Herr Kniebusch?” he asked, but without any noticeable inquisitiveness.

Kniebusch turned red with the sheer labor of inventing a lie. “Well, Herr Räder, you understand, when one is so young and the rutting season on …”

Räder gloated over his confusion. “There’s no rutting now,” he said contemptuously. “All the same, I understand. Thanks. Uniform—u-ni-form is the password.”

With expressionless fishy eyes he looked at the intimidated, confused forester. Then he turned to the cook. “Well, ready at last, Armgard! But if madam scolds, then I shall tell her whose fault it is. Don’t speak to me, I’ve nothing to say to you.” And he went away with the tray in his hand, grave, far from youthful, rather mysterious. “We’ll have a word later, Herr Kniebusch,” he said and vanished, leaving the forester in the dark as to whether he was to be announced or not.

“What a swelled head that donkey has!” grumbled the cook. “Don’t have anything to do with him, Herr Kniebusch. He pumps you—and afterwards tells everything to the Rittmeister.”

“Does he always behave to you like that?” inquired the forester.

“Always,” she exclaimed. “Never a good word to Lotte or me. The Rittmeister’s not nearly so grand as that ass. He won’t even eat at the same table with us.” She stared at the forester, who muttered something unintelligible. “No, he carries his plate to his room. I believe, Herr Kniebusch,” she whispered mysteriously, “he’s peculiar. He has no interest in women. He’s …”

“Yes?” The forester was curious.

“I don’t want anything to do with such a creature,” asserted Armgard. “Do you think he would as much as touch the Rittmeister’s cigarettes!”

“Yes, doesn’t he?” asked the forester hopefully. “All servants do. Elias always smokes the old gentleman’s cigars. I know the smell because the Geheimrat sometimes gives me one.”

“What? Is that true about Elias? I’ll rub it in to the old rascal. Fancy pinching cigars from the master and then storming at me because I haven’t wiped my boots properly at the Manor entrance!”

“For God’s sake, Armgard, please don’t say a word to him. I might have made a mistake.” The old man fell over himself with anxiety. “It’s probably quite a different cigar, and you’ve just said that Hubert smokes the Rittmeister’s cigarettes.…”

“I haven’t said anything of the kind. I said quite the opposite. He doesn’t smoke, he doesn’t drink, and he doesn’t listen at doors; he thinks himself much too grand for all that, the silly fool.”

“I’m much obliged to you,” a voice rasped, and the two looked intensely startled at Räder’s face. (Old Frog Face, thought Armgard furiously.) “So I’m a silly fool! It’s good to know what people think of you. Go to madam, Armgard; she wants to talk to you. Not that I should have told tales about the cheese, anyway; you’re too stupid for me to bother about. You can tell her, however, that in your eyes I’m a silly fool.… Come, Herr Kniebusch.”

And, obedient but very depressed by all the complications of domestic life, the forester followed with an embarrassed squint at the cook, who, crimson with rage, fought back her tears.

Räder’s room was only a narrow strip of floor in the basement, between the coal cellar and washhouse. It was another reason for his grudge against Elias, who had a proper large two-windowed room in the upper story of the Manor, very cozily furnished with antique furniture. Räder’s room contained only an iron camp bed, an iron washstand, an old iron folding chair from the garden and an old wobbly deal wardrobe. One couldn’t tell that a human being lived in the room. No article of dress was visible, nor the smallest utensil of the occupant’s, not even soap or towel in the washstand, for Hubert Räder washed himself in the bathroom.

“There,” he said. “There, you can sit down on the chair till she comes. Then you can get up and give her your seat.”

“Who’s coming?” asked Kniebusch, confused.

“You’re not to be such a chatterer, Herr Kniebusch,” declared the servant with serious disapproval. “A man doesn’t chatter—above all, with women.”

“I haven’t said anything at all,” the forester maintained.

“Naturally she has to wash her face first, because she’s been crying, but when she’s finished with madam she’ll come.”

“Who’s coming, who’s with madam?” asked the forester, completely confused.

“A uniform is a uniform,” the servant informed him. “My livery, of course, doesn’t count, nor your green one, because you’re only in private service. If you were a Government forester, that would be different.”

Kniebusch, completely lost, agreed. “Yes, yes.” He was still hoping, of course, that he would in the end understand something of Räder’s enigmatic remarks.

“A civilian shouldn’t get mixed up with uniforms,” announced the servant earnestly. After pondering a long time, his brow puckered, he opened the door a little and listened. Then he nodded, went across the room to the forester and said in a low voice reproachfully: “You’re a civilian, Herr Kniebusch, and you want to get mixed up with uniforms.”

“Certainly not,” cried the forester, aghast.

“Have you ever considered, Herr Kniebusch, what the Geheimrat loves most?” went on the servant, returning to his post by the door.

“No.… Why? I don’t understand what you’re getting at, Herr Räder.”

“Don’t you really?”

“No. But I believe he loves his forest most.”

The servant nodded. “Yes, he won’t want to give it away before he dies. And to whom will he leave it?” He looked expectantly at the forester.

“There’s the old lady,” pondered the forester, “and there’s his son at Birnbaum. And here is the Rittmeister.” He considered the case.

“Well, whom will he give the forest to?” questioned the servant condescendingly, as one who puts a very easy question to a backward schoolchild. “Or will he split it up in two or three portions?”

“Split up—his forest?” Kniebusch was full of contempt. “No, don’t imagine such a thing, Herr Räder. If they split the forest after his death I believe he’d come out of his grave and pull up the boundary stones. But he’ll have written down somewhere what he wants done with it.”

“And who will he have set down, Herr Kniebusch?” the servant persisted. “Perhaps the old lady?”

“Certainly not. She’s always saying that she won’t go into the wood because of the snakes. No, Herr Räder, she won’t come into it at all.”

“Or the son in Birnbaum?”

“I don’t think so, either,” said the forester. “He hasn’t a good word for him, because he’s much too grand for his liking and is always asking for money. And now he’s gone and bought a racing car … so that he can run away from his debts, as the old man grumbled.”

“So the old man knows about the racing car,” meditated the servant. “You told him that for certain, Herr Kniebusch.”

Red in the face, the old man wanted to protest, but Hubert paid no attention. “Then madam upstairs will inherit the forest,” he said conclusively, pointing with his thumb to the ceiling.

“Even when he can’t stand the Rittmeister?” queried the forester anxiously. “And this business with the geese will also turn out badly.”

“Who, then, will inherit the forest?” persisted the servant.

“I don’t know,” said the forester, perplexed. “There are his sister’s children in Pomerania, but—”

“What about his grandchild?”

“Who?” The forester’s jaw dropped. “What do you mean? Fräulein Violet is only fifteen.” But Räder continued to stare at him. “Of course,” went on Kniebusch thoughtfully, “she’s the only one whom he takes with him when he goes shooting, that’s true.… And when he measures the timber, she’s got to go with him with the yardstick and tape-measure. Oh, God, Herr Räder, nobody knows yet, and the young Fräulein herself may not know either.”

“And you’ve wanted to get mixed up with uniforms,” said Räder contemptuously.

Before the forester was able to protest, however, there were hasty steps in the corridor and Vi walked in. “Thank God I managed it, after all. I couldn’t get away before. Armgard has been sobbing out to Mamma that you’re always so unkind to her, Hubert. Are you really so unkind?”

“No,” replied Hubert seriously. “I’m only strict with her and I don’t lower myself with females at all.”

“Good God, Hubert, how serious you’re looking, like a carp in the pond. I’m sure you live on vinegar. I’m merely a female myself.”

“No,” declared Hubert. “First of all, you’re a lady and then you’re my superior, so I can’t lower myself with you, Fräulein.”

“Thank you very much, Hubert. You’re really magnificent. I believe you’ll burst with vanity and pride one of these days.”

She looked at him, very pleased, with her slightly protruding bright eyes. Suddenly she became graver and whispered mysteriously: “Is it true, Hubert, what Armgard told Mamma—that you’re a fiend?”

Unmoved, Räder’s fishy eyes looked at the inquisitive girl. Not a trace of color rose in his wrinkled gray cheeks. “But Armgard didn’t say that in front of you, Fräulein,” he maintained. “You’ve been listening at the door again.”

Violet also was not in the least embarrassed. With surprise the forester saw how familiar this odd pair were. Räder was much cleverer than he had thought. He must be on his guard with him.

Vi laughed. “Don’t be silly, Hubert. If I didn’t do a bit of listening I wouldn’t hear anything. Mamma tells me nothing, and recently when we saw the stork in the meadow and I asked Papa if it were really true, he went quite red. Lord, poor Papa, how embarrassed he was! And so you’re a demon?”

“Here is Forester Kniebusch,” interposed Räder, unshaken.

“Yes, of course. Good evening, Kniebusch. What’s the matter? Hubert behaves mysteriously, but, as a matter of fact, he always behaves like that. What’s the matter with you?”

“Lord, Fräulein,” said the forester miserably, for he saw to his horror the moment coming when he had to tell his tale. Already everything was confused and he no longer knew what he had really seen and what he had only surmised. And neither had he the courage to tell everything to her face; maybe Black Meier had not been bragging and she really loved him. Then he would be nicely in the soup.

“I really don’t know.… I only wanted to ask … I’ve caught a glimpse of the stag which the Rittmeister wants to get so much, and if the Rittmeister is coming home this evening … He was standing in the clover, but now he has gone into Haase’s field …”

Vi looked at him attentively. Räder, however, eyed him coldly and contemptuously, waiting quietly till the forester had got himself completely bogged. Then he was unmerciful. “It’s about the un-i-form, Fräulein. If I hadn’t been here he would have told madam and not you.”

“Kniebusch,” said Violet, “you ought to be ashamed of yourself. Always sneaking and telling tales behind one’s back.…”

And now the forester had to reveal everything, if for no other reason than to exonerate himself; starting with the errand round the village, down to the summons into the inn. His account of Meier’s drunken twaddle was faltering and exceedingly embarrassed. He would have liked to beat about the bush, but could not succeed. Vi and Räder were unrelenting investigators.

“No, you’re leaving something out, Kniebusch. Tell me everything. I promise you I won’t blush.”

Nevertheless she did blush. She leaned against the wall, she half closed her eyes, her lips trembled, and she breathed quickly. But she did not falter. “Go on, Kniebusch—what did he say next?”

And now came the affair of the letter.

“Did he read it all out? What did he read to you? Tell me every word he did read.… Oh, and you were idiot enough to believe that I’d written that to him? Him!—That cad!”

Now came the part about the encounter at Haase’s.

“What? You saw the—gentleman and you told him nothing? Didn’t even give him a hint? Of all the fools, Kniebusch, you’re the biggest!”

The forester stood confounded and guilty. He, too, realized that he had done everything wrong.

“Haase was present,” Räder interposed.

“True, but he could have passed him the letter.”

“The forester didn’t have the letter.” (Räder again.)

“Oh, yes, I’m quite muddled. But Meier still has it—is still sitting in the inn, perhaps, and showing it to others.… You must set off at once, Hubert.”

“Meier has been back in his room for a long time,” said Hubert imperturbably. “I myself told you that he came back quite drunk from the inn some time after six o’clock. But I suggest the un-i-form.…”

“True. Go off, Hubert, and tell him. You’re bound to find him; he’s sure to be still at Haase’s. No, tell him nothing at all; merely tell him that I must speak to him at once. But where? Tell him at the old place.… How can I get away, though? Mamma won’t let me go out so late.”

“Hush! Madam is coming,” the imperturbable Hubert warned her.

“Well, what kind of a plot is going on here?” asked Frau von Prackwitz, standing very surprised on the threshold. “I’ve been looking for you everywhere, Violet, and I find you here!” She glanced from one face to the other. “Why do you all look so embarrassed? I want to know what’s going on. Will you tell me, Vi?” she added in a sharper tone.

“Excuse me, madam, if I speak.” It was Räder. “There’s no longer any purpose in not telling madam.”

Breathless silence. Despairing hearts.

“To tell the truth, madam, it’s about the buck.”

“About what buck? What’s this nonsense? Vi, I ask you—”

“Yes, the buck in the clover, which the Rittmeister was talking about,” said Räder. “Forgive me, madam, for having heard about it. It was the day before yesterday, at supper, when I was serving the tench.” His persuasive, slightly pedantic voice shrouded everything in a mist. “And the buck suddenly disappeared just when the Rittmeister was stalking it; and you’ve heard about it yourself, madam, the Rittmeister set great store on it.”

“I still haven’t heard what this assembly is about.”

“Well, today the forester’s seen the buck, madam, in Haase’s field, and it will have to be shot this evening, because it never stays anywhere. And so we thought, as the Rittmeister is away, that Fräulein should surprise him. It was not right of us, madam, to want to do it secretly … but it was my suggestion that we should wait till madam had gone to sleep, because there’s the full moon, which would be sufficient light for a rifle, Herr Kniebusch says.…”

“Stop that droning of yours, Hubert!” said Frau Eva, visibly relieved. “You’re a terrible man. For days on end one wishes that you would open your mouth, but when you do, one only wishes that you’d close it again as quickly as possible. And you might be a little nicer to the maids, Hubert; no gem would fall from your crown if you were.”

“Certainly,” said Räder calmly.

“And you, Vi,” she continued severely, “you’re a proper goose. Had you told me, the surprise for Papa wouldn’t have been any the less. Really, as a punishment I ought not to let you go; but if the buck is in Haase’s field only for this evening … You’re not to leave her for a moment, Kniebusch.… God, what’s the matter with you, Kniebusch—why are you weeping?”

“Ah, it’s really only the shock, madam, the shock of seeing you in the doorway,” wailed the old man. “And then I’ve no self-control. But it was a joyful shock, they’re tears of joy.…”

“I think, Hubert,” said madam dryly, “you’d better get ready to go with them, or else, if they meet a wood thief in the forest, our good Kniebusch will burst into tears of joy again and Vi will have to look after herself.”

“Oh, Mamma. I’m not afraid of wood thieves and poachers.”

“You’d better be more afraid of some other things, my dear Violet,” said Frau von Prackwitz energetically. “Above all, you ought to be afraid of secrecy. Then it’s arranged that Hubert’s to go with you.”

“Certainly, Mamma,” said Vi obediently. “Just a second. I’ll change my dress.”

With that she ran upstairs, leaving her mother with the two men, giving them a good talking-to for having “secrets with a mere child.” Frau Eva did this very thoroughly, but she was not quite satisfied with the result, having a womanly intuition that there was something wrong. However, since Vi was still only a child, it couldn’t be really bad, and she made herself easy with the thought that Vi’s misdeeds had so far turned out to be all rather harmless. Her worst wickedness to date had been cutting her beautiful long hair into an Eton crop. But such a crime, thank God, could be committed only once.

IV

The women’s section in Alexanderplatz prison was shamelessly overcrowded. When the prison had been built they had painted the air capacity of each cell on its green iron-plated door: so-and-so many cubic meters inscribed there as adequate for one occupant. Then they had put in a second bed; but that had happened so very long ago that two beds in the one cell were regarded as normal by even the oldest officials. Then came the inflation, and more and more women prisoners. Two further beds were placed in the cell, so that with one stroke the capacity of the prison was doubled. But now, for a long time, that, too, had been insufficient. As the endless procession of women came day after day in the green police van, they were pushed higgledy-piggledy into the cells. In the evening a couple of mattresses and a couple of woolen blankets were thrown after them—let them manage with that.

Seldom had Petra Ledig felt lonelier and more abandoned than in that overcrowded prison. It seemed as if it would never get dark.

True, she did not belong to the class of girl for whom prison means shame and the end of all things. She lived a commonplace existence; she knew that life was a difficult matter for those who were poor and friendless, who never knew what was coming to them, or from which point of the compass the winds of misfortune would blow.

She knew quite well, after the second very superficial examination at headquarters, what she was accused of, and she knew that these accusations were partly out of date, partly untrue. But she did not know what the consequences might be. It might mean the workhouse, or the surveillance card, or weeks or months in prison. Her future lay in the hands of men who were as strange to her as if they had been beings from another world.

She was led at once to the medical officer. The women stood in an endless line outside his door, and in the end it was announced: “No more examinations. The medical officer has gone home.”

So Petra was led back to her cell and she discovered that, meanwhile, supper had been issued and her share eaten up by the others. It didn’t matter very much; she had eaten enough for the time being at the police station. She listened with only half an ear to her fellow prisoners accusing one another—it might well be that the Hawk had stolen her portion, as the fat woman in the lower bed said (already the senior inmate, of two days’ standing).

But never mind. It would be better if they didn’t talk about it, for the Hawk became wild again and attacked Petra with noisy abuse. To have been put in the same cell with her was unpleasant, but that, too, must be endured. The girl couldn’t go on forever with her shouting and raving. When she had first come in she had still been as limp as a wet rag, but now she was restless once more. Again and again she attacked Petra and wanted to beat her. But she no longer had as much strength as formerly; alcohol and cocaine having done their work, Petra could ward her off with one hand. Although she made no reply, nevertheless the Hawk stormed more and more furiously.

That was tiresome. Under these continual attacks and this shouting Petra could not think as she would have liked to. There was the matter of Wolfgang—would he return that night? Would he ever return? She knew what the authorities thought of her and what they would tell him at the police station. What would he then think of her? In his place she would have come all the quicker, but with him you never could tell.

She looked around the cell. She would have liked to ask the gray-haired woman on the bed about the visiting hours, but the Hawk was shouting louder than ever. It seemed, as a matter of fact, not to disturb the others at all, not even to interest them. Two nut-brown gypsies with impudent, restless, birdlike eyes were squatting side by side on one corner of a mattress, whispering loudly, with many gesticulations; they looked at nobody else in the cell. The tall pale girl in the other lower bed had already crept under her blanket: one saw only her shoulders convulsively shaking. No doubt she was weeping. On the stool perched a little fat woman who, scowling, picked her nose.

The gray-haired woman sitting on the edge of her bed looked up and said angrily: “Shut up, you silly bitch. Sock her a couple, jail-birdie, so that she spits teeth.”

The title “jail-birdie” was meant for Petra, probably because she was the only person there who wore the blue prison dress. She had been given it immediately on her arrival.

But Petra didn’t want to hit the Hawk. It was useless; the girl was beside herself with the craving for cocaine or alcohol. Already the warders had knocked on the cell door twice and demanded silence, and each time the Hawk had leaped forward and begged: “Oh, please, do give me a drink. Only one, just a very small one. You can do it, boys. You yourselves like a drink now and then. Oh, please do give me one, boys.”

But their footsteps had died away; she got no response—at most, one of the warders laughed. Then the Hawk was seized with a fit of rage, battering the iron door with her fists and shouting abuse after the men.

Slowly, however, she changed. Gradually the sky outside the cell window grew dark and the electric light over the door brighter; it became increasingly apparent that the girl no longer knew where she was. Probably she believed herself in hell. Like a caged animal she rushed from wall to wall, blind to her companions. Incessantly she muttered to herself. Suddenly she stopped and shrieked in a high-pitched tone, as if in terrible pain.

Again the warders knocked; again their reprimand gave new impetus to the tormented creature’s heart-breaking appeals and furious abuse. This time she collapsed before the door; her head resting against its iron panels, the miserably ruffled Hawk crouched there as if she were intently listening. She started to mutter to herself: “Something’s running, something’s scuttering in my belly. Oh, so many legs! They want to get out—my whole body is full of them, and now they want to get out.”

With trembling fingers she tore her clothes, trying to free her body. “Ants,” she moaned, “transparent red ants. They’re running about inside me. Oh, leave me in peace. I haven’t got anything. I can’t give you any snow.”

She leaped up. “Give me snow,” she shouted. “You’re to give me snow, do you hear? You’ve got snow.”

With a faint cry the gray-haired woman fell down backwards; without any attempt at resistance she lay whimpering beneath the raving girl.

The gypsies interrupted their unintelligible whispering and looked on with a grin. The tall girl’s shoulders stopped shaking. Slowly she turned her head and looked with frightened eyes at the other bed, prepared at any moment to crawl completely beneath her blanket. The fat, gloomy woman on the stool grumbled. “Do stop that row! How can one think when you make such a noise?”

Petra jumped up. It was easy to pull the emaciated creature off the woman lying beneath; it was impossible, however, to disengage the clinging hands from the victim’s hair.

“Will you be quiet, you women!” yelled the warders outside. “Now they’ve got each other by the hair, the miserable creatures. You wait, you’ll get such a thrashing.”

Petra turned and called angrily: “Come in. The girl is in a fit. Do help us!”

For a moment there was silence. Then a polite voice spoke up. “We’re not allowed to, Fräulein. After locking up we’re not allowed to enter the women’s cell. Otherwise it would be said at once that we were carrying on with you.” And another voice added: “It might be a trick on your part. We’re not taken in by that.”

“But this can’t go on,” protested Petra. “She’s half mad. There must be a wardress in the place. Or a doctor. Do send for a doctor, please.”

“They’ve gone by now,” said the polite voice. “She ought to have complained when she was admitted, then she would have been taken to the sick ward. You five will be able to manage her.”

It did not look so. The gypsies sat mute, the fat woman squatted sulkily on her stool, the tall girl had crawled beneath her blanket, and the old woman was groaning beneath the Hawk’s claws.

For a short time the assailant had been lying, quietly sobbing, beside the old woman; now she started to scream again, tugging mechanically but fiercely at the other’s wisps of hair. The old woman also screamed.

“You must help!” cried Petra indignantly, kicking the iron door till it clanged. “Or I’ll make such a noise that the whole prison will start shouting.”

It had almost come to that already. Many cells were resounding with angry cries for silence. A woman started to sing the Internationale in a high-pitched voice.

The door flew open; two armed warders wearing felt shoes so as not to disturb sleeping prisoners stood in the doorway.

“We won’t come in,” said one, a tall, blue-eyed man with a ginger mustache. “We’ll tell you what to do. You look quite sensible, Fräulein. Quick, take a pinch of salt out of the cupboard.”

Petra hurried. “You old scarecrow on the mattress,” ordered the warder, “take the woolen blanket and help a bit. You, too!”

The gypsies jumped up, grinning, and did what they were told.

“You there, the little beauty on the bed,” called the warder in the doorway, “up with you now. You’ll get some snow.”

With a shout of joy the Hawk leaped up and staggered toward the warders. “You’re splendid fellows!”

The old woman sat up groaning, feeling her scalp cautiously.

“Keep off,” cried the ginger mustache to the Hawk. “Keep your distance!” He gave her a scrutiny. “Yes, she’s not acting. She’s a dope-fiend right enough.”

Scared by his command, encouraged and made obedient by his promise, the Hawk waited. Her arms hanging limply, she looked at the men with a cringing hopeful expression. Petra and the gypsies also waited. But the tall pale girl crawled beneath her blanket to get away from the warders’ glances, and the fat woman grumbled. “Oh, hop it with your rubbish. Let me think in peace.”

“Lie down flat on the floor, you!” ordered the ginger warder. “Yes, go on. Or else you won’t get any snow.”

The girl hesitated; then with a moan she lay down.

“Keep your arms close to your body,” ordered the warder. “Do as you’re told. Now roll her in a blanket. Tighter! Tighter! Very tight, as tight as you can. Rubbish, it won’t hurt her. Show her the snow, so that she doesn’t resist! The salt, I mean, you fool. Show it to her, she believes it all right. Yes, my lamb. You’ll get it presently, only be good for a moment.”

The girl moaned. “Oh, please, please! Don’t torture me so. Give me the snow,” she implored.

“Just a moment. Now the other blanket—no, roll it round her the other way. Turn her over like a parcel. It won’t kill her by any means. You there, the fat one on the stool, take your finger out of your nose and help. Fetch two sheets from the upper beds—yes, my dear; in a moment. Don’t you see what a lot of snow there is? You’ll get your shot presently.”

In accordance with the warder’s instructions, they knotted the sheets like ropes around the parcel. The girl submitted willingly. She didn’t lose sight of the hand which held her salvation, the cocaine, the salt. “Please give it to me,” she murmured. “How can you be so cruel? It’s so beautiful.… I can’t stand it anymore.”

“There,” said the warder after a moment’s scrutiny. “That’ll do. Well, it’s really unnecessary because she’ll find out at once, but never mind, give her the salt.”

“Yes, the snow. Please, please, the snow!”

Hesitatingly, reluctantly, Petra held her palm with the salt on it under the Hawk’s nose. And witnessed, oddly moved, the change in that tormented face.

“Nearer,” the girl whispered with a compelling glance. “Hold it right under my nose.” She sniffed it in. “Oh, how good it is.” Her sharp contorted features smoothed themselves out, her eyelids sank. Where there had been dark hollows, soft flesh filled out the cheekbones. The deep furrows round her mouth vanished; the cracked lips became fuller; she breathed rhythmically. What bliss!

But it’s only salt, Petra thought, disturbed. Common cooking salt. But she believes in it and so it makes her young again. And a sudden thought-association made her think of Wolfgang, of Wolfgang Pagel, whom, as she now realized quite well, she had been expecting, minute by minute, the whole evening, in spite of everything. How did others see him?

“There, she’s starting again!” said the warder in an undertone.

The girl’s face, close to that of the kneeling Petra, changed frightfully. The mouth was a dark deep cavern; the eyes stared with rage and anger.

“You beasts, you swine!” she shrieked. “That’s not snow. You’ve cheated me. Oh—oh—oh!”

Her whole body struggled, her head reared up. The face became crimson, then blue, with her efforts to get free. “Let me go!” she screamed. “I’ll show you!”

Petra had recoiled—such hatred, such despair showed on the face which had been so contented only a moment ago.

“No fear, my girl,” said the warder. “That’ll hold you. Take care, you in blue, you’re the most sensible of the lot. Let her lie on the ground; don’t set her free whatever she says. And see that she doesn’t bash her head in on the stone floor, she’s quite capable of it. If she screams too loudly put a wet towel over her mouth, but don’t let her choke.”

“Take her out of this,” said Petra angrily. “I don’t want to do that. I’m no wardress. I don’t want to torture people.”

“Don’t be silly, you in blue,” said the warder imperturbably. “Are we torturing her? It’s the snow which does that. Did we make her an addict?”

“She ought to be in hospital,” said Petra indignantly.

“Do you think they’d give her snow there?” rejoined the warder. “She’s got to get rid of the craving in here or somewhere else. Is she still a human being? Have a look at her.”

And indeed the Hawk hardly looked human, a trembling, raging thing, sometimes full of fury and hate, sometimes weeping and despairing; at other moments beseeching as a child beseeches who believes that the person pleaded with can do everything.

“I’ll see if I can get her a sleeping draught from the sick ward,” said the ginger one reflectively. “But I don’t know whether there’s anybody there who has the key to the medicine chest. These are times, I can tell you.… So don’t depend on it!”

“You can always give her salt occasionally,” interposed the other. “She’ll be taken in by it at least a dozen times. People are like that. Well, good night.”

The door was pushed to, the lock groaned under the keys, the bolt grated. Petra sat down beside the patient, who with shut eyes was flinging her head from side to side, ceaselessly, quicker and quicker.… “Snow,” she whispered. “Snow, snow, good snow.…”

Again and again she’ll be taken in by salt, thought Petra gloomily. “People are like that!” He’s right, people are like that. But I don’t want to be like that anymore. No!

She looked at the door. The peep-hole blinked like an evil eye. Wolf won’t come, she thought resolutely. He has believed what they told him. I’ll not expect him any longer.

V

At the Manor in Neulohe the old people, the von Teschows, had supper every day punctually at seven o’clock. At half-past seven they finished, and the maids had only to wash up and tidy the kitchen, which, at the latest, would be finished by eight. As the old lady would remark: “Even a servant must have her free time in the evening.”

True, at eight-fifteen came evening prayers, which everybody in the Manor had to attend after a wash—except old Herr von Teschow who, of course, to his wife’s perpetual annoyance, had always, just at this very hour, an urgent, absolutely essential letter to write.

“No, this evening it’s really impossible, Belinde! And besides—for your sake I listen every blessed Sunday to what old Lehnich tells us from the pulpit. I must say it sounds quite nice, but it doesn’t give me any clear ideas, Belinde. And I don’t believe you get any, either. The only notion I get is that we shall one day be angels flying about in heaven, you and I, Belinde, in white shirts like the pictures in the big illustrated Bible …”

“You’re mocking again, Horst-Heinz.”

“God forgive me, not in the least. And I’ll meet my old Elias there, and he too will be flapping around and singing eternally, and then he’ll whisper to me: ‘Well, Geheimrat, you’re lucky. Had I told the Lord about your red wine and the wicked language you’ve used at times …’ ”

“True, Horst-Heinz, very true!”

“And all without any class distinction and on the most familiar footing, in a kind of nightshirt and with goose wings. Excuse me, Belinde, they really are goose wings. It ought to be swan’s wings, but swans and geese are very much the same.”

“Yes, go upstairs by all means, Horst-Heinz, and write your important business letters. I know you’ll only sneer—not at religion, but at me. Well, I don’t mind that; I can stand it. Perhaps it’s better so. Because if you really mocked at religion you would be an outcast forever and ever—but if you sneer at me you’re only being discourteous. And you can do that, for we’ve been married forty-two years and I’m thus quite used to a discourteous husband!”

With that the old lady bustled off to the chapel, leaving the old gentleman laughing on the landing. The deuce, I’ve got it again hot and strong, he thought. But she’s right—and I’ll go to one of her meetings tomorrow or the day after. It livens her up a bit, and once in a while one ought to do something for a wife, even though one’s been married for forty-two years. If only she wouldn’t get the hiccups as soon as she’s upset. It’s exactly like somebody getting a cannon at billiards—I can’t stand that clicking sound, and I can’t bear her hiccups—I keep on waiting for them. Well, I’ll do some of my accounts. I fancy my son-in-law pays much too little for the electric current …

With that the Geheimrat went upstairs to his study and three minutes later was wrapped in the smoke of a Brazilian cigar, immersed in his belligerent accounts, an old but incurable fighter. The accounts, however, were belligerent because he wanted them to assault his son-in-law with. Who, according to his father-in-law, paid much too little for everything; and according to himself, much too much. Electricity included.

Neulohe was not connected up with any area system, but generated its own current. The generating machine, an up-to-date crude-oil Diesel motor, with its batteries, stood in the Manor cellar, and because of this was not leased to the son-in-law, who was the chief user, but retained by the old gentleman for himself, although he burned only “three miserable lamps in his old hut.” The arrangement about the price of the current was also quite simple: each party had to pay his share of the cost according to the amount consumed.

But even the simplest, clearest arrangement fails when two parties cannot stand one another. Old Herr von Teschow considered that his son-in-law was no farmer, but a grand Herr von Have-Not, who wanted to live comfortably on his father-in-law’s pocketbook. Rittmeister von Prackwitz regarded his father-in-law as a grasping skinflint, and a good deal more “plebeian” than he could bear, at that. The old gentleman saw his ready money dwindle in the inflation and, as the savings of years became worthless, all the more desperately did he chase after fresh sources of revenue. The Rittmeister noticed how, month by month, it became more difficult to carry on, saw the money which came from the harvest vanishing in his hand, was worried, and found the old gentleman miserly in that he was forever coming along with new claims, objections and reproaches.

On the whole, Geheimrat von Teschow found that his son-in-law lived much too well. “Why doesn’t he smoke, as I do, cigars which one can draw at for an hour? No, he must have cigarettes, those coffin-nails which stain your fingers and are puffed away in three minutes. After the war he came here with only an officer’s trunk, and no more in it than his soiled linen. No, Belinde, if anyone pays for his cigarettes it’s us—but of course, he doesn’t pay for them at all, he buys them on credit.”

“All young people smoke cigarettes nowadays,” Belinde remarked, thereby rousing her husband properly. Wives—in fact married people generally—have a special knack of making irritating remarks.

“I’ll teach him! He’s not as young as all that any longer,” cried the Geheimrat finally, nearly blue in the face. “My dear son-in-law shall learn how difficult it is to earn money.”

And so the old gentleman was sitting at his desk and calculating with the idea of earning more money himself. He reckoned what his electric-light plant would cost if he purchased it today at a dollar rate of 414,000 marks, and this purchase price he distributed over ten years. For the plant would certainly not last any longer, and even if it should, he wanted to write it off within that period.

Quite a pretty little sum stood on paper; even charged at the rate of only a twelfth part every month, it still showed a huge figure with very many noughts.

My son-in-law will stare tomorrow morning, said the Geheimrat to himself, on reading these glad tidings. He won’t have any money, of course; the little he still had will have been left behind in Berlin. But I’ll press him so that he starts threshing soon; then I’ll get the threshing money out of him, and he can wait and see how he’ll get through the winter.

The hatred the old man felt toward his son-in-law was incomprehensible. Formerly the two had got on quite well, when the Rittmeister was still an officer living in some remote garrison, or later, during the war, when they had met once in a while. Hatred had only arisen since the son-in-law had lived in Neulohe as its tenant. Since the Prackwitz’s family life had played itself out under the eyes of the old gentleman.

The old gentleman was not entirely foolish and obstinate, for he realized how much the Rittmeister toiled and worried. But his son-in-law was a retired cavalry officer and not a farmer, for which reason he often got hold of the wrong end of the stick, and clumsily at that. Moreover, he was often too easy-going and sometimes impulsive. Besides which, he wore suits made to his measurements by a very expensive London tailor, and shirts which were buttoned from top to bottom (“Revoltingly effeminate”—although no woman ever had such a garment), while the old Geheimrat wore only coarse homespuns and Jaeger shirts. Yes, there were ten or twenty objections to the Rittmeister. But each by itself, or the sum of them, was insufficient reason for such a hatred.

Geheimrat von Teschow had finished his calculations; he would write the letter to his son-in-law after having a look at the Oder-Zeitung. But he did not get as far as reading, for the first glance showed that the dollar no longer stood at 414,000, but at 760,000 marks. That really ought to have annoyed him—he should have looked at the newspaper before starting his calculations—because now he would have to do them all over again. Yet he was not annoyed. With a sense of enjoyment he set about the new reckoning—it meant that his son-in-law would only have to pay more.

I’ll finish him off yet, he thought for a fleeting moment, and the hand which held the pen stopped short, as if it had been frightened. Then it went on with its writing, and the Geheimrat shrugged his shoulders. What a foolish idea! Of course he was not out to ruin Herr von Prackwitz. Prackwitz had only to pay what was right; more was not demanded. For all the Geheimrat cared he could live in the place as he liked, in his silk shirts and breeches!

Through the old Manor sounded the melancholy, yet sometimes almost frivolous, tones of the organ. Geheimrat von Teschow nodded, keeping time with his feet, hurrying up the music. Faster, Belinde, faster! People would fall asleep if she didn’t go faster.

“For he’s not only the Rittmeister von Prackwitz—he’s also our only daughter’s husband,” Belinde had said recently. That was just it! That was the very reason! How like a woman to speak about it as if it were the most natural thing in the world! Our only daughter’s husband!

Now when the old Geheimrat goes through the village and sees a girl, he crows aloud the length of the village street: “Oh, what a charming child! Come over here, my little sweet. Let’s have a look at you. You really are a charmer, my little one. Goodness me, what eyes you’ve got!”

And he strokes her cheeks and chucks her under the chin, all in front of the whole village. And in front of the whole village he goes with her to the shop and buys her a bar of chocolate, or he takes her to the Inn and treats her to a sweet drink. Then he puts his arm around her waist, right in front of everybody. Then he lets her go and goes into the forest smiling with satisfaction.

But he wasn’t smiling because of the girl who, embarrassed yet flattered, had really been delightful. No girl exists anymore on earth who could warm up his old blood. He was smiling because he had once again thrown dust in people’s eyes. Pastor Lehnich will hear about it, and he’ll whisper it to Belinde—and Belinde, poor old hen, will run around as if she’s swallowed a ruler. And no one, but no one, will have any idea.

Except one—the old man himself knows very well. She also feels it; even more, she knows it. He hardly ever sees her anymore, and never by herself. And after the beginning of the bad times, as this problem quite unexpectantly began, he naturally didn’t bother to meet her anymore. No, the Geheimrat knew alright: Hot fires don’t burn in old men anymore. He was nothing but a spark time smothered by ashes.

When a Rittmeister von Have-Not and Cannot but Wants-a-Lot comes along, it must be made clear to him—we haven’t brought up our daughter for your benefit. That’s amazing conceit, thinking we have brought up a daughter, a girl second to none, just for your pleasure. And not only that—one hardly passes the Villa without hearing you shout at Eva. No, my dear son-in-law, we’ll show you; and it doesn’t matter to us that the price of our current is exactly eleven times as high as that of Frankfurt power station; you’ll have to pay up, although—no, because—you are our daughter’s husband.

With angry determination the old man set down his figures. What did he care whether there would be a quarrel? The more quarreling the better. And he would also make another hole in the park fence, so that Belinde’s geese could get into his son-in-law’s vetch. Belinde, up till now, had poured oil on the troubled waters, but if her son-in-law harmed her geese, as he had threatened to do, then she would no longer act as peacemaker.

Yes, Herr Geheimrat Horst-Heinz von Teschow was just in the right mood to write this letter to his son-in-law. It must, of course, be restrained, concise and businesslike, as suited the matter, for one ought not to mix family feeling with financial arrangements.

“Extremely sorry, but the increasingly more difficult conditions on the money market force me, etc. etc. Enclosed statement. With best regards, Yours, H. H. von Teschow.” There! That would do it! Finished! Elias could take the letter across first thing tomorrow morning. Then the gentleman would find it on his return from Berlin. The hangover which he was sure to have brought with him from that place would help in rubbing him up the wrong way.

Herr von Teschow was about to ring for Elias when the organ pealing from below reminded him that devotions were still under way; Belinde was going it tonight very thoroughly. Undoubtedly she had a black sheep in her flock, one who must be guided to penitence before bedtime. He could not call Elias, then. And yet he would very much have liked to see the letter on its way.

As a matter of fact, he knew, of course, who the black sheep was—the little poultry witch, Amanda, with the shining red cheeks. She and Meier with the blubber lips. Recommended as an engaged couple. Well, they’re long past the engagement stage, and well into the marriage bargain. Well, what did it matter?

The Geheimrat grinned a little, and it occured to him that it would be much better to hand the letter to Meier for delivery. That would annoy his son-in-law acutely, for he knew quite well that the old gentleman was fond of an occasional chat with the bailiff. And when he got such a letter through such a go-between he would think, of course, that his father-in-law had already discussed its contents with him. But he would be much too grand to ask his employee right out, naturally, and that again would add to his annoyance.

The old gentleman put the letter in his shooting jacket, took his stick and shaggy hat and went slowly downstairs. The evening devotions seemed to be over; two of the maids passed him on their way upstairs, looking very amused—not at all in a pious mood—rather as if some comic incident had occurred. Von Teschow was about to inquire but changed his mind. If Belinde heard him talking on the stairs she would possibly come out and ask him where he was going, and offer to accompany him. No, better not.

He stepped out into the park, now fairly dark, just made for his purpose. He knew, of course, exactly where his wife’s geese always discovered a hole in the fence, since only the day before yesterday he had stopped it up at her request. But what is shut can be opened, he told himself, and cautiously rattled at the fence. He must find a loose stake which could be broken away.

Suddenly, while he was so employed, he had the feeling that somebody was watching him. Quickly he turned round, and something like a human form did indeed stand near the shrubs. The old gentlemen’s big bulging eyes still saw quite well, even in the dusk. “Amanda!” he called.

But nobody answered, and when he looked more closely there was no human form at all, only the rhododendron and jasmine in the background. Well, never mind. If she had been there it need not and it must not matter to her; he had only been looking to see whether the stakes were firm. But for that evening he refrained from loosening them, and went instead to the staff-house and Meier.

But he preferred not to enter the place; unlike his wife, the old Geheimrat had not the slightest inclination to see things which violated a sense of decorum. With his stick he knocked at the open window. “Hi, Herr Meier! Kindly stick your esteemed nut out of the curtains,” he shouted.

VI

Amanda Backs, the poultry maid, would have preferred to cut evening prayers as she had often enough done before, usually for the more general reason of boredom and of previous engagements, but this time because she could guess at whom madam would be praying and preaching. The fat cook and Black Minna, however, did not allow her out of their sight.

“Come, Amanda, we’ll help you count the hens, and then you can help us with the washing up.”

“I seem to hear the word scram,” said Amanda, meaning by that just what her mother had meant with her “Make yourself scarce.”

But the pair never left her a minute—it was obvious that they were dancing to madam’s tune.

“Always the same,” said Amanda Backs, scolding the few belated hens who, with agitated cacklings, hurried from the meadow to the coop. “You wait, I’ll close the shutter before your very beaks and then you’ll find out how the fox says ‘Good Night.’ You oughtn’t to behave so foolishly, Minna. The cook weighs at least two hundredweights, and so it’s difficult enough for her to get a man—you can’t blame her for standing about like an angel made of soft soap. But you with your six ragamuffins with at least ten different fathers!”

“Indeed, Amanda! Don’t be so low,” protested Black Minna. “Madam means well.”

“I seem to hear the word scram,” said Amanda Backs again, breaking off the discussion. That the old lady should have appointed Black Minna as spy was really too ridiculous. But everyone knew how childishly she fussed over that aged slatternly female. Whenever Minna got into trouble again—and the old lady noticed it only when the midwife arrived, although with such a scraggy, bony woman it had long been apparent to everyone else—then the mistress flew into a passion, abused the woman and once again cast her off forever and ever, telling her to remove from the almshouse where she lived, as utterly incorrigible.

Then Minna would shriek and carry on terribly. Sobbing, she would load her possessions on a little handcart—not everything, however, only enough to impress madam, but not forgetting a single one of her many children—and march through the village howling, and singing hymns. For the last time she would call at the Manor, push the brass bell-knob and ask Elias with many tears to give the dear good lady her blessings and gratitude. And could she be allowed to kiss her hands in farewell?

Thereupon Elias, who knew this play by heart, would say “No.” Whereupon Black Minna wept even more bitterly and departed with her fatherless children into the cold wide world, as far away as the curbstone at the Manor gateway. There she sat and wept and waited and, according to the extent of her mistress’s anger, had to sit one, two, or even five hours, and sometimes as long as half a day.

But she knew she would not wait forever, and if she had not known by experience, she could always tell by the curtains in the house. For the old lady opened and closed them with her trembling hands and could not refrain from gazing on her erring sheep.

But if the scandal happened to be a bad one, and Frau von Teschow had learned from the village magistrate via her husband that this time three men were definitely involved and perhaps even five—not to mention those who were shielded out of “sympathy,” for in her relationships Minna distinguished between “sympathetic” men and casuals—then madam hardened her soft, worldly-unwise heart, thought over all this Sodom and Gomorrah business and remembered how often Black Minna had promised to mend her ways.

Then she would let fall the curtain and say to her friend, old Fräulein von Kuckhoff, who lived with her: “No, Jutta, this time I won’t relent. And I won’t look at her out of the window.” And old Fräulein von Kuckhoff, with the black velvet ribbon round her neck, would energetically nod her little vulture-like head and remark in her flowery but precise manner: “Certainly, Belinde—constant dropping wears away even a stone.”

Yes, and half an hour had barely elapsed when there would be a gentle knock at the door. “Pardon me, madam, but I have to report that she’s exposing herself,” old Elias announced.

And indeed, when the two ladies rushed each to her window, there sat the poor homeless creature on the curbstone, her blouse unbuttoned, feeding the youngest fruit of her sins.

“Jutta, we cannot take the responsibility of this new scandal,” her mistress would sigh. And Jutta would remark obscurely: “Wasps do not attack bad fruit,” which Frau von Teschow then regarded as approval of her intentions.

“No, Elias, I’ll go myself,” she would say hurriedly, for although Elias was now well in his sixties it was uncertain whether he was a match for such a temptation. So old Frau von Teschow personally went down to the sinner who, when she saw madam step out, quickly did up her blouse. For her mistress might perhaps notice that it was only stageplay; Black Minna couldn’t feed any of her children, and had brought them all up on the bottle. That, however, was something madam did not need to know.

Then Minna and her mistress would go to the almshouse, the old woman walking beside the ridiculous barrow-load of furniture, the idea never entering her head that people would sneer or laugh. She had softened and humbled her heart, reminding herself how even she had almost yielded to temptation forty years ago when smart Lieutenant von Pritzwitz had wanted to kiss her behind the door—at a time when she was as good as engaged to Horst-Heinz.

And when she had accompanied Black Minna across the threshold of the almshouse, she was at the stage of understanding and forgiving all. Even if she were not quite so silly as to take the sinner’s tears at their face value, she nevertheless thought in her heart: She does mean it a little, after all, and she’s a tiny bit sorry—how do I know how much repentance God demands of us?

That, then, was how old Frau von Teschow thought and acted—and even Amanda Backs would have regarded it as nice and kind, if only madam’s good heart had been inclined as lovingly and forgivingly to all sinners. But man’s heart is strange—and why should an old woman’s heart be any different? What she forgave an artful female like Minna ten times, she would not once overlook in a young girl.

And in Amanda Backs least of all. For Amanda was brazen and shameless in her speech; she smiled joyously at all men; wore skirts so short that they were hardly skirts at all; never wept over a mistake; never repented, and never sang a hymn, only popular songs such as “What are you doing with your knee, dear Hans?” and “What a woman dreams in spring” …

No, Amanda knew quite well what was in store for her at the prayer meeting. But that Black Minna should have been assigned as her supervisor roused her to especial anger, and for a moment she seriously considered whether she should lock the two women up in the coop and slip off to her little Hans—it would be a glorious joke.

But however forward and impudent Amanda was with her tongue, she was prudent and circumspect in deed—which a poultry maid, of course, has to be above all things. For poultry are the most difficult creatures in the world, ten times more temperamental than a circus full of wild beasts, and obey only levelheaded persons. Yes, out of Meier’s window yesterday evening Amanda in her rage had talked big and threatened to leave madam—but all the same (the human heart is indeed strange) she was fond of her little blubber-lipped Hans Meier, and even the Garden of Eden itself would have appeared desolate without him.

So she didn’t slam the door of the hen house but contented herself with chasing out the two wingless hens, and brought her subjects to roost with a click and a cluck, counted their heads and found that none was missing. “There, you old hens,” she said emphatically, “since you have helped me so wonderfully I’ll scrub your pots for you in return.”

“Lor’, Amanda,” groaned the fat cook, her whalebone corset creaking, “if one didn’t know you were only joking …”

“And how do you know that?” asked Amanda Backs very aggressively. Aggressively she walked between the two women, who had now fallen silent, aggressively she bounced along in her short skirt. For she was very young, and the bitter experiences of her childhood had not been able to rob her of an appetite for life or of the freshness of youth; to be young was good fun and rows were fun and love amused her—if her mistress imagined she could rob her of this fun by hymns and prayers, then she was very much mistaken.

Such thoughts as Amanda’s might well carry one over the scrubbing of the sootiest pot, but they were not quite suitable for evening prayers in the Manor. By this time people had been sitting there quite a while—the usual crowd, a rather imposing assembly. For madam saw to it that not only those who were in her service came to these meetings, complete with chick and child, but that any villager who wanted a little firewood from the forest in the winter, or to gather berries and mushrooms there in summer, obtained permission for this only by sitting through many a service. Pastor Lehnich often did not have so many parishioners in the church of a Sunday as the old lady did evening after evening in her chapel.

“And you, Amanda?” she had asked. Amanda, starting out of her sinful thoughts, had stared around, and knew nothing of what was happening. The little geese on the back benches, the ones in their early ‘teens who laughed at everything, had of course begun to snigger. Madam, however, spoke quite mildly. “And your verse, Amanda?”

Oh, yes, they were having “singing in turns.” That meant that everybody had to name from the hymn book a verse which was then sung by all; which often led to a medley of vesper songs, dirges, hymns, penitential chants, hymns of the Passion, hymns of Jesus, and christening hymns. But it entertained them and livened up the wearisome evening. Even the old lady at her organ got red in the face, so quickly did she have to turn over the pages of her music book and leap from one melody to another.

“ ‘Commit thy ways unto the Lord,’ ” Amanda called out hurriedly before the sniggering could turn into laughter.

Madam nodded. “Yes, you should do that, Amanda.”

Amanda bit her lips for mentioning a first line that had given her mistress such an opening. She was rather flushed as she sat down.

But at least there was no pause, for Frau von Teschow knew this hymn by heart. The organ struck up at once and all joined in immediately. And then it was the turn of Black Minna, who was sitting next to Amanda—that hypocrite chose, of course, “Out of my deep anguish I cry to Thee.”

And they were singing again.

Amanda Backs, however, allowed herself no more day-dreams, but sat there erect and watchful; she did not want to be laughed at again. For quite a while nothing happened. All went on with their singing—in the end without any enthusiasm, because they grew bored and the old lady had become tired and more and more frequently struck a wrong note or didn’t keep time. Then the organ started to whistle strangely and groan; the little geese on the back benches sniggered again, and Frau von Teschow turned crimson.

She’s getting tired, thought Amanda. There’s not much left of her, actually. Perhaps she doesn’t feel disposed to make a long story about me, and I can quickly get to my Hans!

Amanda Backs had no idea how the sins of others can warm up an old woman, how the errors of her sisters can revive her. For one moment it looked as if the mistress wanted to make an end of the meeting. But she changed her mind. Stepping before her little flock, she cleared her throat and said, rather hurriedly and somewhat embarrassed: “Yes, dear children, now we can say the Benediction and go quietly home, every one of us, and sleep with a good conscience in that we have ended our day well. But is that true of us all?”

The old woman, no longer embarrassed, looked from one face to the other. She had stilled the motions of that conscience which warned her that she was about to do something strictly prohibited.

“Yes, is this true of all of us? Looking at Neulohe and even more at Altlohe, where they are most likely still sitting in the pothouse, then we can well be satisfied with ourselves. But, if we look more closely within, what do we see? We are weak human beings, and every one of us errs every day. It is a good thing then if we confess our sins in public and tell our assembled fellow Christians in what way we have transgressed. Only our sins for one day! I myself will make the start.”

With that old Frau von Teschow quickly knelt down and at once prepared herself in silent prayer for an open confession. Through her flock there rippled a barely concealed agitation, however, for not one among them was ignorant that Pastor Lehnich, and even the superintendent at Frankfurt, had strictly forbidden madam to confess her sins in public. It was quite against the spirit of Christ and Luther, and smelled of the Salvation Army, the Baptists, and above all, of the objectionable auricular confession of the Roman Catholic Church!

But if none of those present got up and marched out as a protest—and old Fräulein von Kuckhoff or Elias were the ones to do it boldly—it was because they were all of them on tenterhooks to hear the old woman. Hardly one of us can listen to the sins of others without a thrill. Each person there hoped that it would not fall to his lot to have to confess after madam, and everyone quickly rehearsed his recent sins, both secret and revealed, and thought that he would not come off too badly.

The one person, however, who knew definitely that she would be among the two or three whom Frau von Teschow would subsequently call upon, and who knew that the pastor’s and superintendent’s prohibitions had been disregarded on her account only—that particular individual sat very tensely, though without showing it. In a bad temper she listened to the old woman stammering; she must be very agitated, she was mixing her words up and constantly hiccuping. People would have laughed had it not been for the excitement. Frau von Teschow counted it as sinful that she had read another installment of the wicked serial in the newspaper—hiccup—that she had been impatient with her dear husband—hiccup—and that she had again kneaded margarine into the butter intended for the servants—hiccup!

Amanda Backs listened to all this with an impatient, scornful face. People listened to this silly stuttering, ten times more thrilled than if they were hearing God’s word, and yet the whole confession was only a sham. In spite of her show of piety, madam didn’t mention the things that really mattered. As for the margarine, they had all tasted it for themselves—there was no need to tell them about that. The bit about the serial was rubbish, and everybody in the house knew how often she quarreled with her “dear husband.” It was all eyewash. Madam ought rather to confess that she had staged this performance solely for the purpose of dealing a blow at her, Amanda Backs. That would, indeed, have been a confession! But madam didn’t see it like that at all.

In her excitement the cook was panting like a boiler; her cheeks were flushed crimson, and her whalebone casing creaked. Minna looked stupid and dull, her mouth gaping as if she expected it to be filled with roast chicken.

Amanda Backs’s cheeks also reddened, not with excitement and shame, but with defiance and anger. Madam was now brazenly talking about yesterday evening, when she had surprised a girl (alas, a girl of her own household) as she was climbing into a man’s room in the darkness (hiccup).

A downright start went through the whole assembly, and Amanda saw the faces rigid with sheer astonishment and anticipation. Now it was coming!

But no, not yet. Madam, interrupted by many hiccups, accused herself of letting anger get the better of her, so that she had warmly rebuked the girl and threatened her with dismissal, instead of considering that we were all sinners, and that this erring lamb should be guided patiently to the fold. Ruefully she confessed that she had neglected her duty, since this young girl had been entrusted to her care, and she begged that He might strengthen her with forbearance and long-suffering in her struggle against evil.…

Amanda, utterly contemptuous and very angry, listened to this twaddle. Hardly had Frau von Teschow said the last “Amen” and risen from her knees (certainly she had not had time to indicate by word of mouth or movement of finger the next who was to kneel down on the little stool of repentance and prayer), when Amanda rose with bright red cheeks and eyes dark with anger, and said that madam need not trouble herself, she (Amanda) knew very well who was referred to in all this talk, and there she stood, and perhaps madam was satisfied.

On top of these words, however, Amanda Backs, in a perfect fury, turned on Black Minna, who was pushing her forward so that she should be clearly seen by the whole assembly. “Will you take your muddy paws off my clean dress? I won’t be pushed forward—and least of all by you! The confession and penitence in this show have nothing at all to do with God!”

Having, with this angry hiss, crushed Minna, her enemy, Amanda turned again to the assembly and said (for she was now well wound up) that she had climbed through a window last night and, so that they should know everything down to the smallest detail, it had been the staff-house window, Bailiff Meier’s window. And she was not ashamed of it, and she could point to at least ten women present at the meeting who had climbed through other windows to other fellows! And with that she lifted her finger and pointed at Black Minna, who thereupon cowered down with a screech on her bench. And Amanda lifted her finger again, but before she could point it the bench where the younger girls sat in the dark corner at the back fell over with a crash, so exceedingly occupied had they all been in making themselves inconspicuous.

Then Amanda Backs laughed (and, alas and alack, a good many people joined in), but unexpectedly her laughing turned to weeping. Furiously she cried out: “It would be better if you paid us a decent wage.” And, sobbing unrestrainedly, she rushed out of the chapel into the dark park.

In the meeting place many other things besides the bench had crashed down, the old lady’s views and beliefs among them. Trembling she sat in her chair, gulping wretchedly; and this time even her old friend Jutta von Kuckhoff stood before her and said mercilessly: “You see, Belinde, you can’t touch pitch and remain undefiled.”

People, however, were making their way as fast as possible out of the chapel. They were looking very quiet and almost dumbfounded, but, alas, there was no doubt that before they reached home they would have recovered their powers of speech. And there could be no doubt about who was destined to be the subject of their gossip—it would not be Amanda Backs, the victress in the combat.

She, tear-stained and still very agitated, was running about the park, not feeling at all victorious, but calling herself donkey and goose for having mismanaged her own and Hans’s case. Once she stopped, because she saw someone who turned out to be the old Geheimrat fumbling with the fence. She had wanted to take her courage in both hands and ask him for mercy, but her experience—young though she was—warned her not to ask anybody for anything.

However, roaming in the park, she became calmer, washed her face in the cool pond water and went to her Hans; and arrived just as the Geheimrat was knocking at the window and calling for Bailiff Meier. And heard, in Hans’s room, a frightened woman scream out.

VII

The dusk was thickening into darkness. It was after nine o’clock and the street lamps were already lit. From the window of Wolfgang’s room Frau Pagel looked out into the gardens now almost shrouded by night. In the background, however, there were twinkling lights and a reddish glow over the town—perhaps the mother was reflecting under which of the distant lights her son now sat squandering the filched money.

Impatiently she turned round to Minna, who was packing a trunk. “Hurry up, Minna,” she said. “He may come any moment for his things.”

But Minna did not look up from the shoes with their carefully inserted trees. “He won’t come, madam,” said she, placing the shoes in their small linen bags.

Frau Pagel grew angry. Minna’s answer sounded almost as if she were being talked out of expecting her longed-for visitor. “You know quite well what I mean,” she replied curtly. “Then he’ll send somebody for his things.”

Minna, unruffled, unflurried, went on with her packing. “There was no need to give him your best cabin trunk, madam. You won’t have a decent one to go away with next spring to Ems.”

“Silly creature!” said Frau Pagel, looking out of the window. She couldn’t see the street for the treetops, but in the deep silence she heard every footstep, every approaching car.

“Shall I put the bathing wrap in, too, madam?” asked Minna.

“What? Oh, the bathing wrap! Of course. Everything which belongs to him is to be packed.”

Minna made a sour face. “Then I must go up into the loft and fetch his books. I don’t know whether the porter is still up. I couldn’t manage the heavy cases by myself.”

“There’s time for the books,” said the old woman, annoyed by these continual difficulties. “You can ask him whether he wants them, when he comes.”

“He won’t come, madam,” said the old servant, monotonously dogmatic.

This time Frau Pagel had not been listening; this time she had no need to get angry at her maid’s obstinacy. Leaning out of the window, she strained her ears, listening for one footstep.…

The maid, although she had her back to her mistress, felt that something was happening. She stopped her packing, turned round, a bathing suit in her hand, and saw the listening figure. “Madam!” she said pleadingly.

“Wolfgang!” Frau Pagel called out of the window, doubtingly at first, then with certainty. “Wolfgang! Yes, wait, my boy, I’m coming. I’ll let you in immediately, I’ll open the front door for you at once.”

She wheeled round, her face flushed, the eyes under the white hair shining as of old.

“Hurry, Minna, the key! The young master’s waiting. Run!” And without heeding Minna’s imploring words, she ran into the dark corridor, switched on the light, seized some keys at random from the shelf beside the console table and, followed by Minna, ran downstairs.

She tried the house door, but the keys did not fit. “Quick, Minna, quick!” she called feverishly. “In case he changes his mind—he was always changeable.”

Minna, who had fallen silent, pressed the handle, and the house door, which had not been locked, opened. Frau Pagel ran through the small front garden and pushed open the little iron gate which led to the street. “Wolfgang, my boy! Where are you?”

A solitary wanderer, some crank who longed for fresh air and the smell of growing things rather than for bars and noise, started with surprise. In the glow of the solitary gas lamp he saw before him a white-haired, very agitated old lady; behind her an elderly maid with a bathing suit in her hand. “Yes?” he inquired stupidly.

The old lady stopped short and turned away so suddenly that she almost fell. Throwing him an angry glance, the elderly maid with the bathing suit followed her, took the old lady by the arm, and the two vanished into the house.

They don’t lock up, observed the wanderer to himself. Queer old hens, to scare a chap so! And he went his way, looking for an even quieter street.

The two old women went slowly upstairs without exchanging a word. Minna felt madam’s hand on her arm tremble violently, and she noticed how difficult her mistress found the stairs. The flat door stood open, the landing was brightly lit. Minna closed the door. She was not sure whether her mistress preferred to go into the young master’s room or to her own; it would certainly be better if she had a rest after all this excitement. But Minna, stubborn, obstinate Minna, had learned in her life one lesson which most women never learn—the lesson that there is a time for speaking and a time for silence. This was a time for silence.

Gently she led her mistress across the corridor until a gentle pull at her arm revealed that she wanted to go into the young master’s room again. The trunk stood open before them. A drawer had been pulled out; on top was the young master’s blue-and-white striped bathing wrap.

Frau Pagel stopped on seeing this. She cleared her throat. “Take out the bathing wrap, Minna!” she said coldly.

Minna did so and put the garment on the sofa.

“Take out everything,” said Frau Pagel more angrily. “You must start packing all over again, Minna. I find I can’t spare my trunk.”

Without a word Minna began the unpacking, her mistress, with a severe, hard face, watching her. Perhaps she hoped for some slackening, some slightest indication of the servant’s taking up an attitude about the matter; but Minna’s face remained expressionless, her movements were neither particularly quick nor particularly slow.

Suddenly Frau Pagel turned away. She wanted to escape to her own dark room. But she could not get as far as that. The tears burst forth, blinding her, and she leaned against the lintel weeping unrestrainedly.

“Ah, Minna, Minna,” she whispered. “Am I to lose him, too, the one person I love?”

But the old servant who during a lifetime had thought and worked only for her mistress’s benefit, who had fetched and carried according to her mistress’s whims, and who was at the moment again forgotten—the old servant seized her mistress’s hand almost imploringly: “He’ll come again, madam,” she whispered consolingly. “Our Wolf will certainly return.”

VIII

Sophie Kowalewski, Countess Mutzbauer’s former chambermaid, had spent a very pleasant evening at the Christian Hostel. Up to supper time she had rummaged among her things, triumphantly examining as final proprietor all that she had carried off from her former mistress, by no means a little. Sophie could feel that she was expensively turned out. Neulohe, when it saw all this finery, would burst with envy.

Having examined her possessions, she now dressed up in them, for she had to wear something suitable for the evening meal in a hostel. With the instinctive adaptation to environment which was Sophie’s strong point, she chose a blue dress and a shantung silk blouse. For truly religious people the skirt was possibly a little too short, but nothing could be done about that now. She possessed no skirt which was longer; however, she made up her mind not to cross her legs. The low front of the blouse she corrected with a light-colored silk modesty vest.

Only a very little lipstick, only a hint of red on her cheeks, and Sophie was ready. She went downstairs to the dining hall. The texts on the wall, some in poker-work, some in colored cardboard, delighted her. The tables had ugly but elaborately carved legs, and the tablecloths were of gray crêpe paper. Where the crêpe had been stained it was covered by a paper serviette. This was economical, practical, and exceedingly ugly—in Sophie’s opinion.

The soup was thin and originated from a soup cube, and to make up for this the green peas were thickened with too much flour; the pork chop was far from large and the fat had a smell. This execrable food Sophie, the spoiled Sophie, ate with the greatest pleasure. It was fun for her to be living with the pious. So this was how they lived, inflicting privations on one another solely for the purpose of mortifying the flesh and standing well with the Lord, Who, after all, did not exist.

With particular interest Sophie looked at the waitresses, trying to make out whether they were fallen women who had been rescued or whether they really liked their present occupation. If they had ever fallen, she decided, it must have been very long ago—they were all so elderly. And they all looked discontented. This place couldn’t be—as advertised in the text above the sideboard—a fat green pasture.

When the meal was over, it was half-past eight—one couldn’t go to bed so early. For a while Sophie stood irresolutely at the dining-hall window, looking at the rain-soaked Wilhelmstrasse. She had been out only in the West End; perhaps for a change she might have a look at the places of amusement in the Center. But no—she decided to go to bed early that night and generally to be perfectly steady throughout her entire holiday. Going out that evening was out of the question. Thank heavens, she had discovered a door marked “Writing Room,” and thus knew how to pass her evening. She would inform her friend Hans that his sister would soon be visiting him.

In the very bare, poorly-lit writing room only one person was sitting—a white-haired gentleman in a long black frock coat—a pastor, surely. As she entered he started up in confusion from his newspaper, or from his nap over the newspaper, and stammered something. Decidedly he was embarrassed; possibly he was in doubt as to whether he should stay in the room alone with such a nicely dressed girl.

Gliding past him with a daughterly smile—at least Sophie considered it as such—she lifted herself into the revolving chair at the desk, thinking that this old sermon-spouter looked one of the soft sort. Pastor Lehnich in Neulohe was of a different breed. She had a distinct remembrance of his heavy hand when she had not learned the hymn verse or, worse still, when she had been caught with the boys.

But neither softness nor age nor religion seemed to prevent the white-haired gentleman from looking up from his paper every so often and peering at her legs. Angrily she pulled down her skirt as far as it would go—that is, as far as the knee. She considered that, for a pastor, his behavior was incorrect. Otherwise it amused her to watch men stealing glances at her legs, but it was not fitting for a pastor; he had something else to do than to find her legs attractive—he didn’t draw his salary for that.

Catching the old gentleman out for the third time, she looked at him severely. At once he turned red, muttered something, and rushed headlong from the room.

Sophie sighed. She hadn’t quite meant that. Occupying the writing room in solitary state was rather dismal.

However, the writing paper bore the heading “Christian Hostel,” which was pleasing. She supposed that such a letter would be handled at the penitentiary with respect, that it would, without fail, get her the longed-for visitor’s permit. As a precaution she slipped at least a dozen of the sheets and envelopes into her handbag; they would certainly come in useful one of these days.

However, not even the most pious superscription could free her from the labor of writing; as in the morning, so in the evening—it was a hard task and a long one.

But at last she finished. She hadn’t written much, only four or five sentences, but they were sufficient to prepare Hans Liebschner (and the penitentiary officials) for his “sister’s” visit. How Hans would grin over this letter! How amusing the visit would be if—and he could do it marvelously—he treated her as a sister. She already felt his mocking brotherly kiss, under the policeman’s very eyes, or whoever looked after a penitentiary.

It was half-past nine and there was nothing more to be done but go to bed. Slowly she undressed. Although she had been tired all day long, she was now wide awake. Not a trace of the desire to sleep was left. Outside, cars glided beneath her window. She could almost see, while she peevishly undressed, men entering bars, pompously or with an affectation of nonchalance, nodding to the girls and climbing on to their high stools, ordering their first cocktail or whisky.

But under no circumstances would she go out tonight. She was resolved on that. And was therefore glad to find a little black book with red ends on the bedside table. It bore in gold letters the title The Holy Scriptures.

Since her confirmation Sophie had never had a Bible in her hand, and then her preoccupation with this book had been limited to learning verses and—more often—to looking for seductive passages. But this evening she had leisure for once; so she took up the Bible and, in order to deal with it properly, started to read from the beginning. (If it turned out to her liking, she would pack this excellent free holiday reading in her trunk.) It would be interesting to find out what there really was to this famous book. The narrative of the Creation awoke only a moderate interest—for aught she cared it might have happened like that or it mightn’t—it was unimportant, anyhow. The important thing was to be here oneself—thanks to the creation of Adam and Eve in the second chapter, and the fall from grace in the third.

So this was the famous Fall of Man with which a girl was so often bored in bars by educated men (as long as they were on their best behavior). Sophie rediscovered everything—the Tree of Knowledge, the apple and the snake. But she didn’t at all agree with the Bible version of what had taken place. If you carefully read what was written you would realize at once that God had never forbidden woman to eat of the Tree of Knowledge. Certainly, He had forbidden man to eat of it, but that was before woman had been created. To punish woman for something which had not been forbidden to her at all was a fine thing! That was exactly what men would do!

If it starts like that, she thought, what can you expect? It’s a put-up job—only a fool would be taken in by such rubbish. And those chaps still go on preaching to you nowadays. Well, let them come to me about it! … She shut the book angrily.… What! Take it with me on my holidays? I shouldn’t think of it for a moment. I should only get annoyed. That’s why they leave the book about so freely—there’s no demand for it!

She switched off the light.

It was very warm; the air in the room was oppressive. She rose and opened the windows. She could hear the streetcar bells clanging; when the streetcars turned into Krausenstrasse they always rang the bell. She heard footsteps, sometimes those of a solitary pedestrian, very distinct; at other times a noisy confusion. Cars came with a roar and a hoot, to scurry on …

Her body started to itch; she scratched herself here, she scratched herself there; she turned over on this side, turned over on that. Then she forced herself to lie still. She assumed a sleeping position—on her right side, both hands under her right cheek. She closed her eyes. Sleep was nearly there. But she was thirsty, and had to rise and drink a glass of water which tasted stale. Again she lay down and waited for sleep, in vain recalling how tired she had been that morning, her mouth foul with liquors, her feet aching. Then she had had to struggle against sleep as she forced herself to write a few lines to Hans, while behind her the cook, that clumsy creature, snored loudly. She began to count up to a hundred.

Similarly thousands of others lay in their beds, harassed and restless. Those who had spent their last penny. Those who had sworn by their morning hangover that they would never again go out at night, but would sleep soundly instead. They were those who’d grown tired of eternal youth and had given up looking for something night after night whose name they didn’t even know. Like Sophie, they tossed restlessly from side to side. It was not the craving for alcohol nor the longing for embraces which kept them awake and finally urged them to get up; no, they could not remain alone and find peace. The darkness of their rooms reminded them of Death. They had heard and seen enough of Death; for four years, at home and abroad, people had been dying. And they themselves would die soon enough—would die much too soon. At present they were alive and wanted to feel so.

As did the others, Sophie Kowalewski got up, dressed hastily as if she had to keep a most urgent appointment—some important matter which she must not miss at any price—went quickly downstairs and out into the street.

Where should she go? She looked up and down the street. It doesn’t actually matter where she goes. She knows inside her: It’s always the same. But she remembered that she once wanted to see the drinking places in the town center. So she goes slowly (as she is among people, she suddenly feels she’s got plenty of time) towards the center of town.

IX

A long quiet stroll through the Tiergarten had cleared the head of von Studmann, the former reception manager. It had also given Rittmeister von Prackwitz the opportunity of painting to his friend a picture of Neulohe, surrounded by woods and remote, almost on the Polish frontier in fact. He had not intended to paint the place rosier than it was or to deceive his friend. But somehow, compared with this riotous and perverse city of Berlin, the Manor of Neulohe now appeared quieter and purer than in reality—every face there known to him, every character in the last resort clear-cut, and in nothing contaminated by the madness of the times.

In the midst of the ostentatious shops with their marble fronts, illuminated signboards and advertisements, although the façades above were crumbling and decaying, Prackwitz found it easy to say: “My buildings, thank heavens, look quite different. Not handsome, but solid honest-to-God red brick.” And looking at the scorched lawns, the weed-ridden flower beds of the Tiergarten, for which no money was available in spite of the flood of money everywhere, he was able to say: “We, too, have had a drought. But we’re having quite a good harvest in spite of it.”

The rose gardens in the Tiergarten were stripped of their roses and badly damaged. There seemed to be florists who supplied themselves, not from the markets, but from the parks. “There’s a bit of pilfering at our place, but, thank heavens, not this devastation!”

They sat on a bench. The dry air had already sucked out the moisture from the soil. Before them stretched the New Lake, dotted with bush-clad islets, and above them the treetops were motionless. From the Zoological Gardens they heard the roar of wild beasts.

“My father-in-law,” said Herr von Prackwitz dreamily, “still retains eight thousand acres of woodland. Although the old man is so stingy in many ways, he’s generous over the shooting—you could kill many a handsome buck.”

Yes, in the increasing dusk Neulohe changed to a quite very remote island, and Herr von Studmann was not unreceptive to such a delineation. That morning he had rejected the idea of a flight into the country. But the afternoon, with its varied experiences, had proved that life today could break the nerve of a soldier who had been four years at the Front. It was not so much the grotesque painful incident with Reichsfreiherr Baron von Bergen—thank God, utter madmen were not as yet so common in contemporary life that one was forced to reckon with them daily—but the incident had laid bare in a frightful manner the inhuman nature of that hotel industry to which von Studmann had devoted his energies and zeal. It had been his belief that, in carrying out his duties conscientiously, he had earned, if not affection, at least respect. He had, however, seen himself the object of shameless, insolent curiosity, from the most recently engaged elevator boy to the managing director. If the temperamental Dr. Schröck had not intervened with his somewhat unusual views on lunatics, he (von Studmann) would have been discharged without any consideration whatever and at a moment’s notice, as if he were some sort of criminal.

As it was, he had, on his way out, been intercepted by the managing director who, in spite of his monumental appearance, had taken a very serpentine course between on-the-one-hand and on-the-other; a gratuity—in good foreign currency, of course—was now pressed on him, and the warmest recommendations assured him later. “Yes, my dear colleague, I believe this rather trifling though exceedingly disagreeable incident will turn out to your advantage. If I have understood Dr. Schröck rightly, he expects you to put in a very heavy claim for damages—a very heavy claim.”

“No,” said Herr von Studmann, emerging from a reverie on his bench in the Tiergarten, “I shouldn’t like to take advantage of that young scamp’s moral weakness.”

“What?” asked von Prackwitz, starting. He had just been talking of wild-boar hunting in Neulohe. “No, of course not. I understand that quite well. It’s not necessary either.”

“Forgive me,” said von Studmann, “I was still here in my thoughts. In Berlin. I’ve been doing very stupid work. Rather like charring—one gets tired out and next morning everything is dirty again.”

“Of course. Female work. At my place …”

“Excuse me, I couldn’t live with you either and do nothing. A real job of work …”

“You’d be a great help,” said von Prackwitz pensively. “I told you this morning about the various political and military complications. At times I’m rather isolated—rather perplexed.”

“So many people are running away from their jobs,” went on Studmann. “To work, to do anything at all, has suddenly become idiotic. As long as people received a fixed tangible value at the end of the week or the month, even the most boring office job had some reason. But the fall of the mark has opened their eyes. Why do we live? they suddenly ask. Why are we doing anything? Anything at all? They don’t see why they should work merely to be paid in a few worthless scraps of paper.”

“This devaluation is the most infamous cheating of the nation ever known,” said von Prackwitz.

“This afternoon opened my eyes. If I really came to live with you, Prackwitz, I’d have to have a real job. Hard work, you understand!”

Von Prackwitz racked his brain. Horse-breaking, he thought. But my nags already have more exercise than is good for them. Scribbling in the office? But I can’t ask Studmann to make out the pay sheets. In his mind’s eye he saw the Manor office with its old-fashioned green safe and ugly deal shelves full of out-of-date law books. A hideously dusty and neglected hole!

Von Studmann was more practical than his friend. “To my knowledge,” he prompted, “they have agricultural students on many estates.”

“They do exist,” confirmed Prackwitz. “A terrible crowd. They pay a premium—otherwise nobody would take them on—keep their own horse, stick their nose into everything, understand nothing, don’t lend a hand anywhere, but hold forth very grandly about agriculture.”

“Well, then, not that,” decided von Studmann. “What other openings are there?”

“All sorts of things. For instance, bailiffs who hand out the fodder, supervise the feeding, milking and grooming of the animals, keep stock books, work with the threshing machine. Then there are outdoor bailiffs who arrange about the plowing, manuring and harvesting, all the fieldwork, and have to be present …”

“On a horse?”

“Bicycle,” replied von Prackwitz. “At least at my place.”

“So you have a bailiff?”

“I’ll sack him tomorrow, he’s a lazy drunken fellow.”

“But not because of me, Prackwitz. I couldn’t become your bailiff straight away. You’d say, ‘Studmann, manure that rye,’ and upon my soul it’d be a difficult job for me. I haven’t the slightest idea about it—except for natural manuring, which would be insufficient, I fear.”

The two men laughed heartily, and stood up. Von Studmann’s brainstorm was over. Prackwitz was sure his friend would join him. Walking along, it was agreed that von Studmann should come to Neulohe as something in between a student, a confidential clerk and a supervisor.

“You’ll travel with me tomorrow morning, Studmann. You’ll have your things packed in half an hour, if I know anything of you. If only I could get hold of another sensible fellow now, to take charge of the people I’ve engaged today, the harvest would do very well. Oh, God, Studmann, I’m so glad! My first happy hour for I don’t know how long. Listen, let’s go to some decent place and have something to eat; it’ll do you good after the wretched drink. What do you say to Lutter and Wegner’s? Fine! Now, if I could get another man, also from the army if possible, an ex-sergeant major or someone like that, who knows how to handle people …”

At Lutter and Wegner’s they went into the cellar restaurant. The army man whom the Rittmeister needed was sitting at a small corner table. He had not been a sergeant major but a second lieutenant and at present was rather drunk.

X

“There’s Second Lieutenant Pagel!” said von Studmann.

“There’s Bombshell Pagel!” said Prackwitz.

And both saw vividly again that scene which had made this same Pagel unforgettable among their many comrades of the World War, or rather, for that war was over, of the last desperate attempt by German troops to hold the Baltic Provinces against the Red onslaught. It had been in the spring of 1919, during that wild attack of the Germans and Letts which finally liberated Riga.

Young Pagel, looking hardly older than a schoolboy, had been one of Rittmeister von Prackwitz’s motley detachment. He may have been seventeen, but more probably was only sixteen. Intended for an officer’s career, he had been thrust from the military college at Gross-Lichterfelde into a delirious world exhausted with fighting and no longer wishing to have anything to do with officers. Uprooted and not knowing what to do, the boy had wandered farther and farther into East Prussia until he fell in with men whom he might call comrades but was not forced to address as “Comrade.”

This beardless youth who had never before smelled gunpowder was both moving and ridiculous in his delight at being among veterans who spoke his language, wore uniforms, gave and accepted orders, and really carried them out, too. Nothing could damp his ardor or his desire to get acquainted with all there was to know in the shortest possible time—machine guns, mine mortars, and the one and only armored train.

Until it came to an attack; until hostile machine guns as well as friendly ones started to rattle and the frist shells whined overhead to burst in the rear; until the enthusiastic schoolboy play turned into reality. Then Prackwitz and Studmann had seen young Pagel turn pale and silent, flinching at every scream of a shell and ducking his head.

With a glance the two officers had understood each other. To the boy they said nothing. Green with terror, with sweating brow and wet hands, he was fighting against his fear; to them he was a bridge between the present and those inconceivably remote days in August 1914, when they themselves had heard this screaming for the first time, and had flinched. All had to go through that experience; everybody, once and for all, had to fight down the terrified cur within. Many lost this secret battle, but the majority were victorious and from that time were masters of themselves.

With young Pagel the result was at first in doubt. One could have spoken to him, shouted at him, and he would have heard nothing. His ears perceived only the wailing overhead; he looked hither, thither, like someone in a nightmare; in the midst of the advance he hesitated. Now he looked back.

“Yes, Pagel, that’s right, the damned Reds are getting the range. They’re landing them nearer. Yes, we’re in for it now, Second Lieutenant!”

And then the first shell was already in their lines—automatically Studmann and Prackwitz flung themselves down. But what was the matter with Pagel? Young Pagel stood looking at the shell hole, his lips moving as if he were mumbling some incantation.

“Lie down, get down, Pagel!” screamed von Prackwitz.

Up went the earth in a welter of dust, fire and smoke—the explosion rent the air.

Fool! thought von Prackwitz.

A pity! thought von Studmann.

But—and one could hardly believe one’s eyes—a shadow, a motionless figure was standing in the fog and smoke. It became clearer, leaped forward, picked something off the ground, shouted furiously “Blast it,” let it drop, took his cap to hold it by, rushed up to Prackwitz, clicked his heels and said: “Beg to report, Herr Rittmeister, a shell splinter!” And in very unmilitary language: “Damned hot!”

He had—forever—vanquished the cur in himself.

Forever?

This scene, this rather ridiculous yet heroic deed of a very young man, was clearly recollected by the two as they saw Pagel sitting, apparently rather the worse for drink, at a corner table in Lutter and Wegner’s. “There’s Bombshell Pagel!” they called out.

Bombshell Pagel looked up. With the hesitating movements of the drunken, he pushed back his glass and bottle before rising to his feet and said without surprise: “The officers!”

“Stand at ease, Pagel,” said the Rittmeister smiling. “We’re no longer officers. And you’re the only one of us who still wears his uniform.”

“Certainly, Herr Rittmeister,” said Pagel stubbornly. “But I’m no longer on duty.”

The two friends exchanged an understanding glance.

“May we sit at your table, Pagel?” asked von Studmann. “It’s rather crowded down here, and we want something to eat.”

“Please do,” said Pagel and sat down quickly as if standing had become very difficult for him. The other two, sitting down, spent some time choosing their food and wine.

Then the Rittmeister raised his glass. “Your health, Pagel! To old times!”

“My respectful thanks, Herr Rittmeister, Herr Oberleutnant. Yes, to old times!”

“And what are you doing now?”

“Now?” Pagel looked slowly from one to the other as if he had to think very carefully about his answer. “I’m not sure.… Something or other.” He made a vague gesture.

“But you must have been doing something during these four years,” said von Studmann. “Perhaps you’ve started something, been employed, achieved something, eh?”

“Certainly, certainly,” assented Pagel politely. And with the malicious insight of drunkenness, he added: “May I be permitted to ask, Herr Oberleutnant, what you have achieved during these four years?”

Von Studmann started, was about to be angry, then laughed. “You’re right, Pagel. I haven’t achieved anything. As you see me here, I have only six hours ago suffered complete shipwreck again. I really shouldn’t know what to do if the Rittmeister wasn’t taking me back to his manor—as a kind of apprentice. Prackwitz has a big estate in Neumark, you know.”

“Shipwrecked six hours ago,” repeated Pagel, not noticing what was said about the estate. “That’s strange.”

“What’s strange, Pagel?”

“I don’t know.… Perhaps because you’re eating duck and barberries, therefore it seems strange.”

“With regard to that,” said von Studmann, in his turn malicious, “you’re sitting here and drinking Steinwein which, by the way, taken in such quantities is far too heavy. Duck would be much better for you.”

“Of course,” Pagel readily agreed. “I did think about it. But eating’s so terribly boring, drinking’s much easier. Besides, I’ve something on hand.”

“Whatever you may have on hand, Pagel,” remarked Studmann casually, “food will serve your purpose better than drink.”

“Hardly, hardly,” replied Pagel. And, as if to prove his point, he emptied his glass. But since this demonstration made no impression on the others, their faces being still skeptical, he added by way of explanation: “I have to spend a lot of money.”

“By drinking you’ll certainly not be able to spend much more, Pagel,” interposed von Prackwitz, more and more annoyed by the casual attitude of Studmann, who was rather encouraging this young puppy. “Don’t you see, man, that you’re full to the brim already?”

Von Studmann winked at his friend as a hint to desist, but Pagel remained surprisingly calm. “Possibly,” he said. “But that doesn’t matter. I’ll get through my money all the easier.”

“So it’s something to do with women,” von Prackwitz cried angrily. “I’m no moralist, Pagel, but to be in such a drunken condition—that’s not good.”

Pagel made no reply except to fill his glass again, empty it and refill it deliberately. Prackwitz made a furious gesture, but von Studmann was not in agreement. His friend was an excellent fellow, but certainly no psychologist; he was not observant, and he always thought that everybody must feel as he did. And when things were not just as he wished them he would flare up at once.

Seeing Pagel refill his glass, Studmann was very painfully, and therefore very vividly, reminded of a certain room—No. 37. There, too, glasses had been filled and emptied in a similar manner, and he also clearly remembered a look of fear and insolence which he had observed then. He was not at all sure that Pagel, in spite of his heavy drinking, was actually drunk. Certainly, however, he didn’t like being questioned and would probably much prefer to be alone. But Studmann had no intention of allowing himself to be influenced by Pagel’s indifferent or even hostile mood. He sensed they had met the former second lieutenant in a critical situation; now, as before, they had to keep an eye on him. And von Studmann, who that afternoon had suffered a defeat, swore to himself not to fall for any tricks that night, but to throw the champagne bottle hand grenade in good time—there were many kinds of precedents for such actions.

Pagel was smoking, apparently lost in thought and not altogether conscious of the others’ presence. In an undertone Studmann informed Prackwitz of his scheme and was answered by an impatient gesture of refusal, but in the end Prackwitz agreed.

Pagel tilted the bottle over his glass, but no wine flowed forth. Avoiding their eyes, he attracted the waiter’s attention and ordered another bottle of Steinwein and a double cherry brandy.

The impatient Prackwitz started to speak, but Studmann placed an imploring hand on his knee, and the other maintained an unwilling silence.

When the waiter brought the wine Pagel asked for the bill. The charge, either because of the guest’s condition or because he had been drinking there for some hours, was heavy, indeed extortionate. Pagel pulled a wad of bank notes out, selected a few, gave them to the waiter and refused the change. The man’s unusually servile thanks gave a hint as to the size of the tip.

Again the two gentlemen exchanged glances, the one angry and the other pleading for patience. They still said nothing, however, but continued to observe Pagel, who now drew from every pocket large and small bundles of notes, piling them on top of each other. Then he took his paper serviette, wrapped it round them, searched his pockets again for a length of string, and tied the parcel up. Pushing it aside, he leaned back as after a task finished, lit a cigarette, swallowed the cherry brandy and poured out a glass of wine.

Then he looked up. His expression was remarkably gloomy and uncompromising, and his glance rested mockingly on the two friends. At once Studmann was aware that Pagel was only showing off. His drinking, his apparent indifference to them, the provocative display and wrapping up of his money—all was histrionics, performed for their benefit.

The lad is utterly wretched, though Studmann, strangely moved. Perhaps he would like to tell us about his trouble or ask our help, but he can’t get himself to do so. If only Prackwitz wouldn’t …

But the white-haired choleric Prackwitz could no longer restrain himself. “It’s rotten, Pagel,” he shouted, “the way you’re behaving with that money. You mustn’t treat money like that.”

Studmann got the impression that Pagel was pleased with this outburst, although he did not show it.

“If I may be permitted to ask a question, Herr Rittmeister,” said the young man, mouthing the words with exaggerated politeness, “how does one treat money?”

“How?” screamed the Rittmeister, the veins in his forehead swelling and his face almost purple with fury. “How does one treat money? In a proper manner, Second Lieutenant Pagel! Properly, conscientiously—as one ought to, you understand? You don’t carry it about loose in your pocket, you put it in a wallet …”

“There’s too much of it, Herr Rittmeister,” said Pagel apologetically. “No wallet would be large enough.”

“One doesn’t carry so much money about with one,” shouted the Rittmeister at white heat. Already people were looking at them from the adjoining table. “It isn’t right. It isn’t done.”

“Why not?” asked Pagel like an obedient inquiring pupil.

Studmann bit his lips so as not to burst out laughing. Von Prackwitz, however, had too little humor to understand that his leg was being pulled.

“As soon as I’ve drunk my wine I’ll try and get rid of the stuff as quickly as possible,” said Pagel apologetically. He drank, an amused boyish smile spreading over his face. He looked very much as he did on his first day in Courland, so Studmann thought—no trace of a resemblance to Reichsfreiherr Baron von Bergen. Taking hold of the packet of money, Pagel hesitated and then impulsively held it out to the Rittmeister. “Or would you like it, sir?”

Rittmeister Joachim von Prackwitz started out of his chair, his face flushing crimson. It was an insult, a deliberate insult, all the more heinous in that it came from a former second lieutenant. An officer, and particularly a Rittmeister von Prackwitz, may leave the Service, but he still retains his old conceptions and views. Studmann and Prackwitz were good friends, but the friendship originated at a time when one was a captain and the other a lieutenant; and it continued on that basis. If the first lieutenant wished to criticize the captain he had to do so while carefully observing the formalities proper between a superior officer and his subordinate. Pagel, however, was not even a friend of von Prackwitz; he had said something very unpleasant, even insulting, to his face, without preparation and without observance of the proper forms. Rittmeister von Prackwitz therefore exploded. Something dreadful might have resulted had not von Studmann laid a firm hand on the Rittmeister’s shoulder and forced him back into his chair. “He’s stupidly drunk,” he said in low tones. And sharply, to Pagel, “Apologize at once!”

The boyish smile faded slowly. Pagel looked thoughtfully at the angry Rittmeister, as if he were not quite clear as to what had happened, then at the parcel of money in his hand. His face darkened. Putting the money back again on the table near him, he reached for his glass and drank hastily.

“Apologize?” he said sullenly. “Who attaches any importance nowadays to such tomfoolery?”

“I do, Herr Pagel,” cried the Rittmeister, still very angry. “I have retained my manners, whether others consider them antiquated and foolish or not. I attach importance to this tomfoolery!”

“Let him alone, Prackwitz,” suggested von Studmann. “He’s overwrought, he’s drunk, and perhaps he intends to do something vicious.”

“I’m not interested,” cried the Rittmeister furiously. “I’ll let him alone with the greatest pleasure.”

Pagel glanced quickly at Studmann but made no reply.

Studmann bent across the table and said in a friendly way: “If you were to offer me the money, Pagel, I’d accept it.”

The Rittmeister made a gesture of extreme astonishment. Pagel, however, hastily reached for the packet of money and drew it nearer.

“I’m not going to take it away from you,” said Studmann, rather mockingly.

Pagel turned red, ashamed of himself. “What would you do with it?” he asked sullenly.

“Keep it for you—till you felt better.”

“That’s not necessary. I don’t need money anymore.”

“Exactly what I supposed,” agreed the Oberleutnant calmly. “How was it that you, too, suffered shipwreck six hours ago, Pagel?” he inquired with an exaggerated indifference.

This time the young man went completely crimson. With an almost painful slowness the flush, starting from his cheeks, spread over his whole face. It crept under the high and creased collar of his tunic, and went up into the roots of his hair. Suddenly one could see how very young he was, how terribly he suffered under his embarrassment. Even the angry Rittmeister looked at him with new eyes. Pagel, however, annoyed at his very obvious confusion, asked defiantly: “Who told you that I had suffered shipwreck, Herr von Studmann?”

“I understood you so, Pagel.”

“Then you’ve misunderstood me. I—” But Pagel broke off, dissatisfied with himself, his blush having betrayed him completely.

“Of course you’re not doing well, Pagel,” said von Studmann mildly. “We can see that, the Rittmeister as well as myself. You’re not an habitual drunkard. You’re drinking for a definite reason, because something’s gone wrong, because—oh, you understand me quite well, Pagel.”

Pagel tilted his wineglass. His bearing was less tense, but he made no reply.

“Why don’t you want us to help you?” Studmann asked. “I let the Rittmeister help me this afternoon without any hesitation. I, too, had a very unpleasant upset.…” He smiled at the remembrance of his fall. He had no actual recollection of it, but Prackwitz had described, very caustically, how he had rolled downstairs in the hotel. Studmann was clear that his case was different from Pagel’s—albeit only physically.

“Perhaps we could advise you,” he continued persuasively. “It would be better still if we could help you in a practical way. When we were advancing on Tetelmünde you fell down with the machine gun and you didn’t hesitate for a moment to accept my help. Why can’t what held good in Courland hold good also in Berlin?”

“Because,” said Pagel morosely, “we were fighting for a cause. Today everybody fights for himself—and against everybody else.”

“Once a comrade always a comrade,” said von Studmann. “You remember, Pagel, don’t you?”

“Yes, of course.” Pagel bent his head as if he were deliberating, watched expectantly by the other two. Then he lifted his head. “I could say a good deal against it,” he said with his clumsy yet distinct articulation. “But I don’t want to. I’m terribly tired. Could I meet you somewhere tomorrow morning?”

In a few words the two friends reached an understanding. “We are leaving Schlesische Bahnhof for Ostade shortly after eight tomorrow morning,” said von Studmann.

“Good,” said Pagel. “I’ll also be at the station, perhaps.”

He stared into space as if everything had been settled. He put no questions: it did not seem to interest him why they were leaving, where they were going, or what was to happen.

The Rittmeister shrugged his shoulders, dissatisfied with this half-promise. But Studmann persisted. “That’s something, Pagel. But not entirely what we would like. You’ve something on your mind; you spoke just now about getting rid of your money.”

“Affairs with women,” muttered the Rittmeister.

“It’ll soon be midnight. Between now and tomorrow morning at eight o’clock you’ve got something on hand, Pagel, the result of which appears so uncertain that you can’t give us a firm promise and also don’t want us with you.”

“Wretched women,” muttered the Rittmeister.

“I differ from Prackwitz,” said Studmann, noticing that Pagel was about to reply. “I don’t believe that some dubious affair with a woman is behind it. You’re not the kind of man for that.” Pagel lowered his head, but the Rittmeister snorted. “I should be grateful, we should be grateful, if you would allow us to spend the next few hours with you.”

“It’s nothing special,” said Pagel, now won over by the other’s tactful insistence. “I only want to make a test.”

The former lieutenant smiled. “A challenge to Fate, Pagel?” he said. “The former Second Lieutenant Pagel submits to God’s judgment! Oh, how enviably young you still are!”

“I don’t consider myself so enviable,” growled Pagel.

“Of course not, and you’re quite right,” agreed Studmann hastily. “So long as one is young one regards Youth as a misfortune. Only later does one discover that Youth is happiness. Well, how about it? Are we coming with you?”

“You won’t prevent me from doing what I want to do?”

“No, of course not. You must behave as if we aren’t present.”

“And the Rittmeister agrees?”

Rittmeister von Prackwitz muttered something, but it was enough for Pagel.

“All right, come with me if you like.” He cheered up a little. “It might perhaps interest you. It’s—well, you’ll see. Let’s go by taxi.”

They set off.