Wolf Among Wolves

Chapter Ten

The Peace of the Fields

I

It was no longer the same office. The bookshelves of ugly yellowish-gray pinewood, the desk with its green ink-stained felt, the over-large safe, were still there—but it was no longer the same office.

The windows sparkled; clean bright curtains had been put up; a dull gleam had been given to the furniture by an application of oil; the worn splintery floor had been planed smooth, waxed and polished; and the wheelwright had painted the safe a silver gray. No, it was no longer the same office.

Rittmeister von Prackwitz had at first worried about putting his friend into such a squalid office to scan wages lists and corn accounts. He need not have worried. Herr von Studmann was not the man to sit in squalor—he drove out slovenliness, gently but inexorably.

On one of those early days Studmann had had to fetch a key from the office—and Frau Hartig was standing on a window seat cleaning the windows. Studmann stopped and watched her. “Do you tidy up here?” he asked.

“I see to that all right!” Hartig said pugnaciously, for firstly she was deceived by this man’s gentleness and secondly she was angry with him because little Meier had gone. Even if she had solemnly renounced all right to the former bailiff, she couldn’t forgive the gentleman there—people said he was a detective—for the fact that Meier was gone.

The supposed detective did not reply, but for no earthly reason smelled the water with which she was cleaning the windows. Then he took the chamois in his hand, which was, of course, no chamois, but a mere rag, for Armgard at the Villa was not parting with good chamois for a bad office. Next he swung the cleaned window to and fro in the sunshine—Hartig’s whole body trembled with fury at a spy who now even sniffed round her work! His inspection finished, he raised his glance to the woman, seeming not to see that she was angry. “Your name is?”

“I am the coachman’s wife,” cried Hartig angrily and polished her window noisily.

“I see, the coachman’s wife,” said Studmann calmly. “And what is the coachman’s name?”

Then Hartig very excitedly and quickly said many things one after another; for example, that she understood her work, that it wasn’t necessary for anyone to come from Berlin to “learn” her how to work, that she had worked for four years in the Manor for the old lady before marrying Hartig, and that the old lady had always been satisfied with her, though she was actually hard to please …

“So your name is Frau Hartig,” said Herr von Studmann, patient because he had worked a long time in the hotel business. “Listen, Frau Hartig, this window cleaning is useless. One doesn’t clean windows in the sunshine—look, they are quite streaky.”

And he swung the window to and fro. But the annoyed Frau Hartig didn’t look. She knew quite well that the windows were streaky, but hitherto her work had been good enough for everyone. She said so, too.

Studmann was unmoved. “And it’s better to put a drop of spirit in the water; that makes the panes bright. But even then all your work will be in vain if you haven’t got a proper chamois. Look, the cloth is fluffy. There’s lots of fluff sticking to the windows!”

At first Frau Hartig was speechless with indignation. Then she asked Herr von Studmann very scornfully where was she to get spirit from, eh? She couldn’t sweat any through her ribs, and Armgard wouldn’t give her a chamois.…

“You shall get spirit and also a chamois,” said Studmann. “And if you haven’t got a chamois, you take an old newspaper—look, like this.” He seized an old newspaper and polished away. “See, like that! Isn’t it clean now?”

“That was the District Gazette!” exclaimed Frau Hartig contemptuously. “They’re collected and bound! No number must be missing.”

“Oh!” said Studmann, embarrassed—in the early days both he and Pagel frequently made such mistakes out of sheer ignorance. He unfolded the damp paper ball. “The date is still readable—I’ll order another.” He made a note of the date.

This little blunder, however, had exhausted his patience. He spoke more curtly. “And now go home. This half-cleaning is useless. Come this evening at six. Then I’ll show you how I want the office and the room cleaned.”

And he went off with his key in his hand. Frau Hartig, though, was quite undisturbed by the talk of this ass from Berlin who would be hopping it in the next few days, anyway. She went on cleaning in her own way, and did not dream of appearing at six, as ordered.

When, however, curiosity impelled her to go to the staff-house towards seven, she saw to her indignation that Black Minna, that sanctimonious bitch, was pottering around, and when she entered quietly, seizing a pail and flannel as if nothing had happened, the detective merely turned round and said in his beastly gentle way: “You are dismissed, Frau Hartig. You don’t clean here anymore.” And before she was able to make any reply, he turned away. The wheelwright and his boy set their planes going with a shrap! shrap! shrip! Frau Hartig had stood there like Hagar driven into the wilderness. Tears had had no effect on the old lady, nor sobs on Frau Eva, nor pleadings on the Rittmeister; all had suddenly become different, a new wind was blowing.… “Yes, if Herr von Studmann doesn’t want to have you, then you can’t have done your work properly, Frieda. So we can’t say anything, and we can’t help you.” Not even the information about the spoiled newspaper, not even the news that Herr von Studmann had had Amanda for over an hour in the office after midnight—nothing which was usually listened to so willingly—had effect. “No, go home now, Frieda! You mustn’t gossip like that—gossiping is a very ugly habit. You must get out of it, Frieda.”

And so she had had to go, to a grumbling husband who was very displeased with her, and she hadn’t even been right in her prophecy that on Saturday evening, after the paying of all the many employees, the office would again look like a pigsty. No, it still looked spotless, for that ass from Berlin had placed a table and two chairs on the grass outside the door, and had paid out the wages there. The men, who were always ready to be impressed by anything new, had thought it wonderful.

“But what will he do when it rains? And in the winter?” Frau Hartig had screamed.

“Be quiet, Frieda,” said the men. “You’re just jealous. He’s ten times cleverer than you. He’s already kicked out Black Meier, and if you scream too much he’ll kick you out as well!”

“He ordered the poultry maid to come to him in the office at midnight!” she cried angrily.

“You’d like to cut her out again, as you did with little Meier, wouldn’t you?” the men had laughed. “Ah, Hartig, you’re silly. He’s really a fine gentleman, like the Rittmeister, and he doesn’t think of you or Amanda. Just be quiet!”

II

And now it was Sunday, a Sunday afternoon after a really busy week, and Herr von Studmann and Pagel were sitting in the spick-and-span office. Studmann was smoking a fine smooth Havana from the Rittmeister’s special box, for they had both been invited “over there” to lunch; young Pagel was smoking one of his own cigarettes.

Yes, both men, to the great awe of the Neulohe employees, had been invited to lunch in the Villa, having already been there twice for supper. This had never yet happened with farm officials, and it added to the rumors about their unusual mission. The elder of the two gentlemen, the one with the somewhat egg-shaped head and brown eyes, had even lived in the Villa until the nocturnal disappearance of little Meier. Then, of course, he had at once moved over to the staff-house—to be sure, against the Rittmeister’s will, who had actually asked him, as was learned from Armgard the cook, to stay. But no, the gentleman had said: “I’m sorry, Prackwitz, but I want to live where my work is. You can see me as often as you like!” And now the younger gentleman, Herr Pagel, lived in the bailiff’s room and the older in the gable room. What work they had in Neulohe would also be discovered in time—for they understood nothing about farming, that much was certain!

Von Studmann, then, was smoking at his desk, going through the lists of specifications. This he did but superficially, for in the first place it was warm, and then the lunch had been excellent. One ate much too much here now that one was so often in the fresh air. Violently Studmann shut his corn account and said to Pagel, who was sitting at the window, blinking with half-closed eyes at the Geheimrat’s sunlit park: “Well, what shall we do? Shall we hit the hay for a bit? God, I’m tired!”

Pagel must have been just as tired, for he did not even open his mouth. But he pointed to the ceiling from which hung a fly-catcher with flies buzzing and humming around it. Studmann looked thoughtfully at the joyful summer dances of these tormenters and then said: “You are right, they wouldn’t let us sleep for a moment. Well, what then?”

“I haven’t seen the forest properly yet,” said Pagel. “Shall we go along and look it over? They say there are ponds there, crayfish ponds, icy cold. We could take our bathing suits with us.”

“Fine!” agreed Studmann, and five minutes later the two left the staff-house.

The first person they met was the old gentleman, Geheimrat Horst-Heinz von Teschow. The cunning old man was plodding along in his shaggy green suit, oak stick in hand; and when the two, who hardly knew him, were passing on with a short greeting, he called to them: “But this is fine, gentlemen, meeting you! I was wondering, thinking, brooding: Have the gentlemen already departed again? Have they had enough of the country and farming?—Why, I haven’t seen you for days!”

As was proper the two smiled at this joke of the Geheimrat’s, Herr von Studmann very coldly, but Pagel with honest pleasure.

“And now the gentlemen want to take a little Sunday afternoon stroll, for recreation, eh? The village beauties walk along over there, young man—I don’t dare bring that to Herr von Tutmann’s notice.”

“Studmann,” corrected the one-time first lieutenant.

“Yes, of course, please excuse me, of course, dear sir. Of course I know. It just slipped out, because people around here call you that. ‘Tut Du Man,’ one of the drivers said yesterday, someone you must have ticked off for his driving. Many around here call you that.”

“Yesterday,” said Studmann.

“Why say yesterday? Or wasn’t it yesterday? Of course it was yesterday. My head’s still screwed on, Herr von Studmann.”

Pagel burst out laughing.

The old man was still for a moment, puzzled. Then he laughed, too. Still laughing, he gave Pagel a very hefty pat on the shoulder. Pagel was tempted to reciprocate, but he didn’t know the jolly old fellow very well yet, so he let it go.

“Magnificent,” cried the Geheimrat. “He got me there. Cunning fellow, Herr von Studmann. No slouch he!” And suddenly the Geheimrat was serious, which convinced Studmann that the whole thing was an act put on for Pagel and himself for some temporarily inexplicable reason. Ready for battle, Studmann thought, “I’ll catch you again.”

“Yes, of course, please excuse me, of course.” Suddenly the old gentleman became serious. “Have you gentlemen a moment to spare?” he asked. “I’ve a letter here for my son-in-law, had it for days; haven’t been able to send it over; had so much to do recently.… If you would deliver it at the Villa when you pass by?”

“I can …” began Pagel, whom Herr von Teschow had chiefly been looking at.

But Studmann interrupted him. “Certainly, Herr Geheimrat. We shall tell the servant at the Villa to fetch it.”

“Excellent! Fine!” cried the master of Neulohe, but his tone was no longer good-natured. “Besides, it occurs to me that my old Elias can stretch his legs for once. I’ll send him.” He nodded to the two men and stamped on through the bushes toward the Manor.

“Lord, Studmann,” said Pagel a little breathlessly, “you’ve got into his bad books, I must say! Why so crusty with the gay old boy?”

“I’ll give you the lease contract to read sometime,” said Studmann, passing his hand over his sweating forehead, “which this gay old boy made his son-in-law sign. Only a child as completely devoid of business instincts as the Rittmeister could have put his name to such a thing. It comes pretty close to the Treaty of Versailles. Bound hand and foot!”

“But the jolly old chap makes such an honest impression.”

“Don’t trust him. Never tell him anything. Don’t do anything he tells you. We are employed by the Rittmeister—the old man has nothing to do with us.”

“Ah, Studmann, you’re a pessimist—I’m convinced that he is a jolly old fellow.”

“And I’m convinced that even the letter he wanted us to deliver has its own peculiarities. Well, we shall see. Let’s get on.”

In the meantime the old gentleman was standing in his study. He was ringing up the forester. At last he heard the quaking voice.

“Are you sitting on your ears, Kniebusch? Is sleeping the only thing you can do? Well, just wait, I’ll soon see that you have a rest—without any money from me! Can you still hear there, Kniebusch?”

“Yes, Herr Geheimrat!”

“Well, praise be to God you can still hear. Then listen to me now! I’ve just seen those two idlers from Berlin, whom my beloved son-in-law has freshly imported, lounging round the farm with bathing suits under their arms. They undoubtedly want to go bathing in our forest, in the crayfish ponds. Stalk them quietly, and when the gentlemen are in the water, but not before, give them to understand that they are my ponds, and that they’ve got no damn business to be bathing there. And you can confiscate their clothes, that’ll raise a laugh. I’ll be responsible, Kniebusch, I’ll protect you.”

“But, Herr Geheimrat, I can’t. One of them is a first lieutenant and a close friend of the Rittmeister’s.”

“Well, what about it, Kniebusch, what about it? What’s that got to do with his bathing in my pond? I tell you to do what I say, and on your own—don’t dare to say I sent you! Otherwise you’ll hear something—no, otherwise you won’t hear anything again.”

“Yes, Herr Geheimrat.”

“And one thing more, Kniebusch. Hi, man, what are you in such a hurry for? When your boss is talking to you wait till you are dismissed. Or perhaps you’re in a hurry for your dismissal? Do you hear what I say, Kniebusch?”

“Yes, Herr Geheimrat.”

“Well, yesterday the examining magistrate phoned me from Frankfurt—Bäumer has a temperature of over 104° and is still unconscious, said to be the result of your rough treatment.”

“But I couldn’t, Herr Geheimrat …”

“Of course you could, man! You should have run, made a bandage, fetched a doctor, nurses, even the mid-wife Müller if you like—poor fellow, he’s just a simple honest poacher! If he shoots at you it’s only because you, wicked man, begrudge him a roast venison—isn’t that so? An examining magistrate can’t blame him for that, can he? He’s only a poor fellow-being, eh?”

“But, Herr Geheimrat, what am I to do?”

“Don’t do anything. I’m looking after you, Kniebusch, I’ve already told Comrade Magistrate what I think! Now go and get this thing done for me! Off with you, Kniebusch, bathing forbidden, distraint of clothes customary.…”

The Geheimrat hung up and grinned, got himself a cigar and poured himself out a brandy. After his day’s work he sat down in an armchair for a snooze.

Why did magistrate Haase write so unfavorably about Kniebusch to the court? he wondered. I don’t like that. I’ll show him where he gets off. He’s got to make reports as I like. But something’s rotten there—and what it is I’ll find out, even if it takes me a whole day!

III

“There they go,” said the people in the village, watching the two “Berlin detectives.” “What fools they must think us to believe they’re farmers!—Did you see the hands of the young one, Dad? He’s never handled a pitchfork in his life!—But yesterday he shoveled away with the rest!—Oh, that’s just eyewash! They’ve already put little Meier away. They say he was taken straight to Meienburg!—Then why are they still here?—Don’t you know who’s the next one?—The next is the Rittmeister.—The Rittmeister! You’re crazy! The next one is Forester Kniebusch.—No, it’s the Rittmeister, I tell you—they’re expecting another Putsch now, and if there are weapons buried anywhere then it’s in our district.—But the man with the egg-shaped head is pals with the Rittmeister.—That’s just their cunning, that’s what the old Geheimrat has schemed out, to hoodwink him.”

“There they go!” said Amanda Backs, and watched the two of them go. But they hadn’t seen her. “What do you think of them, Minna?”

“That I can’t say, Amanda,” said Minna cautiously. “But the big fellow knows everything about tidying-up. When he makes a bed you feel like rolling into it straight away.”

“And the young one?”

“Of course you only see the young one, Amanda,” said Black Minna with a pious roll of her eyes. “Don’t you think of your Meier anymore? After you stood up for him in the evening service, Amanda, and pointed to me with your finger. After all, the detective stole him from you.”

“Yes, thank God he did!” But Amanda sounded very gloomy. “What are you doing this afternoon?”

Minna was suddenly vexed. “What should I be doing? I’ve got to go to my kids. They’re certain to be up to some mischief now that I’m away half the day with the cleaning in the staff-house.”

“You ought to be glad you’ve got your kids. Sometimes I think it would have been better for me if I’d had one from him.”

Minna became indignant. “Lord, how can you say that, Amanda, you an unmarried girl! And you’ve already got your eye on another fellow, too. I can understand people sinning, but one’s got to repent of sins, Amanda.”

“Oh, stop your drivel,” said Amanda, angrily going off to the forest, as Minna observed with profound satisfaction.

“There they go,” said Jutta von Kuckhoff to her friend Belinde von Teschow. “Herr von Teschow speaks badly of them—but I do think the older one looks really distinguished. What sort of nobility are the Studmanns—old or new? Do you know, Belinde?”

Frau von Teschow peered eagerly out of the window after the disappearing figures. “They’re carrying bundles under their arms—yes, bathing suits. They had no time for divine service this morning, but for bathing they have time. And you say he’s distinguished, Jutta!”

“You are right, Belinde. It must be very new nobility; our ancestors certainly never bathed. I once saw an old wash-basin at the Quitzows’ in Castle Friesack—the sort of thing you nowadays put in the cage for your canary.”

“Horst-Heinz says he can revoke the lease at once; there isn’t a single farmer on the farm now!”

“I suppose he wants to have little Meier back, does he? The rings round Amanda’s eyes are getting darker and darker.”

“There she goes—the same way!”

“Who?”

“Amanda! But if anything starts again now—efficient or not—she’ll have to go.”

“And what’s this about Fräulein Kowalewski?” asked Fräulein von Kuckhoff dreamily. “Wherever there’s a carcass, the flies gather!”

“They’re said to have traveled in the same compartment,” replied Frau Belinde eagerly. “And even if she did sit on the box with the coachman afterwards, they’re said to have spoken to each other quite intimately. And, up until the day before, the Kowalewski parents didn’t know of her visit. Suddenly a telegram arrived, and—Jutta—my son-in-law was already in town when it was sent off.”

“They say she’s dressed like a cocotte. Her brassière is all lace.…”

“Brassière! Please don’t say that indecent word, Jutta. When I was young, girls like that wore drill corsets with alternate stays of whalebone and steel—that was like armor, Jutta. Armor is moral, but lace is immoral.”

“There they go,” said the Rittmeister, having coffee on the veranda with his wife and daughter. “They look good. Quite different from that monster Meier.”

“They’re going bathing,” said Frau von Prackwitz.

“They’ll be back in time for the foddering,” said the Rittmeister. “Studmann is punctuality and reliability itself.”

“Oh, Mamma!” cried Vi.

“Well,” asked Frau von Prackwitz very coldly, “do you want anything, Violet?”

“I was just thinking.… I’d also have liked to go bathing.”

“You know, Violet, I have forbidden you to go out until you tell Papa and myself who the strange man was with whom you crossed the yard at night.”

“But, Mamma,” cried Vi, almost weeping. “I’ve already told you a hundred times that it wasn’t a strange man. It was Kniebusch! Räder also told you that!”

“You are lying, and Räder is lying, too. You are not going out of the house until you’ve told me the truth, and the good Hubert can expect sudden dismissal if he goes on telling lies. It’s shameful of you both to lie to me in this way.” Frau von Prackwitz looked very angry. Her ample bosom heaved hastily. Sharp, angry looks shot from her eyes.

“But if it really was the forester, Mamma—really and truly!—I can’t lie to you that it was someone else. Who else could it have been?”

“This is impudence!” cried Frau von Prackwitz breathlessly, trembling with rage. She controlled herself, however. “You are to go up to your room, Violet, and write out yesterday’s French lesson ten times, and without a mistake.”

“Even if I write it out a hundred times, Mamma,” said Vi, white with rage, “it was the forester!”

The door slammed: she was gone.

The Rittmeister had listened to this dispute in silence. Only by the twitching of his face had he indicated how painful it was to him. A quarrel between others he always found distressing. But he knew from experience that his wife, on the rare occasions when she was angry, had to be handled with extreme care. “Aren’t you being a little hard on Vi?” he therefore asked cautiously. “It might really have been the forester. Hartig is just a gossip.…”

“It wasn’t the forester. He says so now, but he can’t tell me why they went into the staff-house instead of the forest.”

“Hubert says they went to see whether there were any more cartridges for Vi.”

“Nonsense! You must excuse me, Achim, but don’t let those two make a fool of you. Räder knows as well as Vi that the cartridges are in your rifle cupboard.”

“They say they didn’t want to disturb you.”

“Disturb me! My light was on till after twelve—and Vi’s never yet been considerate. If she’s got a pimple on her neck she wakes me up at two in the night to have it rubbed with ointment.… All stupid lies!”

“But really, Eva, who could it have been, then? A stranger whom Hartig doesn’t know? And going with Vi at night to the staff-house?”

“That’s the worst of it, Achim: that’s why I can’t sleep. If it had been some young fellow from the district, someone we know, a farmer’s son or something like that—he would never be dangerous for her. A harmless flirtation which we could put an end to at once.… But it’s a stranger, a man of whom we haven’t the faintest inkling. She went with him to the staff-house; she was alone with him during the night. For Räder was in bed. That’s not a lie. Armgard confirms it, and she’d never lie for Hubert.”

“You really think, then, that something could have happened? I’d kill the fellow.”

“Yes, but you don’t know who it is. Who can it be, for all of them to be afraid to speak about him—to lie so desperately? The forester, Amanda Backs, Räder—and Vi! I can’t imagine.”

“But, Eva, I’m convinced you are worrying yourself like this for nothing. Vi’s still a mere child.”

“That’s what I also thought, Achim—but my eyes have been opened. She’s no longer a child, but she pretends to be one, very impudently, and a child who knows all about things.”

“Eva, you are exaggerating.”

“No, unfortunately not. She isn’t as clever as all that; sometimes she gives herself away. It’s sickening, Achim, to have to spy on one’s own daughter.… But I’m horribly afraid something may have happened to her. I searched her room to see whether a letter was lying around somewhere, some note, a picture of him—Vi’s so untidy, you know.”

She broke off and looked in front of her with dry, burning eyes. The Rittmeister stood at the window with his white hair and brown face. He did what all husbands do when embarrassed by their wives’ emotional outbursts. He drummed with his fingers lightly against the window pane.

“I thought she hadn’t noticed anything. I was ashamed and took care to leave everything lying as it was.… But yesterday she came into her room very quietly just when I had her album in my hand. I was very embarrassed.”

“And?” The Rittmeister was now very intent.

“And she said to me maliciously: ‘No, Mamma, I don’t keep a diary, either.’ ”

“But I don’t understand.”

“Oh, Achim, that showed me she understood quite well what I was looking for, that she was making fun of me. She was really proud of her cunning! … And that’s the same girl, Achim, who asked you only three weeks ago about the stork. You told me so yourself. Inexperienced? She’s crafty. She’s been corrupted by these cursed times!”

The Rittmeister now stood there in a different way, expectant. His brown face looked gray—all his blood flowed to his heart. He made an angry step toward the bell. “Räder shall come here,” he murmured. “I’ll break every bone in the fellow’s body if he doesn’t confess.”

She stepped in his way. “Achim! You’ll spoil everything by that. I’ll find it out, you’ll see! I tell you they are all mortally afraid of him; there’s some secret. But I’ll find it out and then you can take action.”

She forced him against a chair and he sat down. “And I thought she was still a child!”

“It’s all bound up with little Meier somehow,” she said broodingly. “He must know something. It was certainly very clever of Herr Studmann to get rid of him so quietly, but it would be better now if we knew where he was. Don’t you know what he had in mind?”

“No—he wanted to get away, he was suddenly afraid.” The Rittmeister became animated. “But that’s just what you were saying! Meier, too, was mortally afraid.… Sacked by Studmann? No! He didn’t want to stay! He pleaded with Studmann to let him go, to give him a little money for his fare. Studmann gave it to him.”

“But why was Meier afraid so suddenly? He went off in the middle of the night, didn’t he?”

“With Amanda Backs. Amanda went with him to the station. The thing was like this—wait, Studmann told me about it—everything was so topsy-turvy in the first few days, I hardly paid any attention, and I must confess I was glad that Meier had gone; I never could stand him.…”

“In the night, you were saying,” prompted Frau Eva.

“Yes. In the night Pagel and Studmann were still in the office, looking at the books—Studmann’s thoroughness itself. Meier was sleeping in the next room. He’d handed over the money in the safe to me and Studmann in the evening, not a penny missing.… Suddenly they heard him scream, frightfully, in mortal fear; ‘Help! help! He’ll kill me! …’ They jumped up, dashed into Meier’s room—he was sitting up in bed, as white as a sheet, stammering: ‘Please help me! He wants to shoot me again!’ ‘Who?’ asked Studmann.… ‘There, at the window—I distinctly heard him. He knocked. If I go, he’ll shoot! …’ Studmann opened the window, looked out—nothing.… But Meier insisted he was there, that he wanted to kill him.”

“But who?” asked Frau von Prackwitz, very excited.

The Rittmeister rubbed his nose thoughtfully. “Who? … Well, listen. Meier insisted so firmly that someone had been at the window to shoot him that at last Studmann sent Pagel outside to have a look. In the meantime he calmed Meier down a bit. The chap began to dress himself, and Pagel came back with a girl he had found in the bushes—Amanda Backs.”

“I see,” said Frau von Prackwitz, disappointed.

“Amanda Backs admitted straight away that she had knocked at the window. She said she had to speak to her friend. When Studmann saw it was only a love affair he left the two alone and went back to the office, with Pagel.”

“If he had questioned them properly, he might have found out everything.”

“Perhaps. After a while Meier came to the office with Amanda and said he must go away, at once. Studmann didn’t want to let him. Studmann is exactitude itself. He said it was impossible without notice; he must first ask me. Meier was very quiet and diffident, which is usually not like him; he said he had to go away now, but he would like to have the wages due to him, as fare money.… Finally Amanda Backs pleaded that Meier must get away, otherwise a calamity would happen.… And Studmann didn’t like to ask any more questions. He thought it was a case of love and jealousy. In the end he agreed because he knew I’d be glad to get rid of Meier, and the two went off.”

“Studmann didn’t behave very shrewdly there. Jealousy that shoots through the window doesn’t exist with us. And if I understood you rightly, Meier called out: ‘He wants to shoot me again.’ ”

“Yes, that’s what Studmann told me.”

“ ‘Shoot me again’—so the stranger had already tried it once. And this happened after the night on which Vi went into the staff-house with a strange man.”

There was silence. Neither of the married couple dared say a word of what they feared. The Rittmeister raised his head slowly and looked into the tearful eyes of his wife. “We always have misfortune, Eva. Nothing turns out well for us.”

“Don’t lose courage, Achim. For the moment these are all mere apprehensions. Let me handle the matter. Don’t worry about anything. I promise you I’ll tell you everything, even if it’s the worst. I shan’t lie to you.”

“Good,” he said. “I can easily wait.” And after short consideration, “Are you going to let Studmann into this? Studmann is discretion itself.”

“Perhaps. I must see first. The fewer who know the better. But perhaps I shall need him.’”

“Ah, Eva,” he said, much relieved (it already seemed to him as if he had merely been having a bad dream), “you don’t know how happy I am to have a real friend here.”

“I do, I do,” she said earnestly. “I know. I also thought …” But she broke off. She had been about to say that she also had believed she had a friend in her daughter who was now lost to her.… But she didn’t say it. Instead she said, “Excuse me a moment. I’ll just go and see Violet.”

“Don’t be hard on her,” he said. “The poor child’s already quite pale.”

IV

So there they went, the two of them, along the path to the forest. It was a real country path, which knew nothing of townsmen (and there is nothing townsmen like more than something which wants to know nothing of them). It led to the forest, and far inside the forest lay the crayfish ponds, deep, cool, clear—wonderful!

“Did you see the Rittmeister and family on the veranda just now?” asked Pagel. “What do you think of the young Fräulein?”

“And you?” countered Studmann, smiling.

“Very young,” declared Pagel. “I don’t know, Studmann, but I must have changed tremendously. Fräulein von Prackwitz here, and Sophie who traveled with us, and Amanda Backs—how they would have delighted me a year ago! I think I’m getting old.”

“You’ve forgotten to mention Black Minna who cleans up the office,” said Studmann gravely.

“No, seriously,” replied Pagel half crossly, half laughing. “I’ve got a sort of yardstick in me, and when I apply it, all girls seem to me too young, too stupid, too common.”

“Pagel!” Studmann raised his arm and extended it ceremoniously over the farms of Neulohe. “Pagel! Over there is the west. Berlin! And there it can stay. I declare to you solemnly, I don’t want to see or hear anything of the place. I live in Neulohe! No Berlin memories, no stories of Berlin, nothing of the merits of Berlin girls!” More seriously: “Of course you have a yardstick, you should be glad you have, you even wanted to marry it; but don’t think of it anymore now! Try to forget Berlin and everything in it. Enter into the spirit of Neulohe! Be a farmer only. When you’ve succeeded in that, and if your yardstick still means something, then we can talk about it. Till then it’s only sentimental moonshine.”

Pagel’s face looked sullen and obstinate. He knew quite well what Studmann meant, yet he found it disagreeable. From his mother’s protective care he had passed to that of his sweetheart; every trifling worry had been listened to with sympathy. Suddenly all this was to end.

“All right, Studmann,” he said at last. “As you like.”

“Excellent,” said Studmann. He considered it advisable to discontinue the subject; he had read sufficient in the young man’s face. Raising his voice, he said: “And now, my worthy fellow farmer, tell me what sort of grain this is!”

“That’s rye,” said Pagel, letting an ear glide expertly through his fingers. “I know that stuff. I helped pile it in stacks yesterday.” And he cast a stealthy glance at his blistered hands.

“That’s my opinion too,” said Studmann. “But if it’s rye, we have to ask ourselves, is it our rye, that is to say, does the rye belong to the estate?”

“According to the plan of the holdings, no peasant has a field out here,” said Pagel hesitantly. “It should be ours.”

“Again my opinion. But if it’s ours, why hasn’t it been reaped yet? Seeing that we are already reaping oats? Has it been forgotten, perhaps?”

“Impossible. So near to the farm! We pass here every day with the teams. In that case I should have heard at least something about it from the men.”

“Don’t tell me anything about the men. In the country they’ll be no different from those in the hotel. They grin up their sleeves whenever the boss forgets anything. The experiences I had in the hotel!”

“Herr Studmann! Over there in the west, there lies Berlin—let it stay there, let’s not bring it up! We’re living in Neulohe—I don’t want to hear any tales about Berlin!”

“Excellent. So you accept my suggestion? Agreed! No more about Berlin!” … And with new eagerness: “Perhaps it isn’t ripe yet?”

“It is ripe,” cried Pagel, proud of his newly acquired knowledge. “Look, the grain should break clean over the nail—and this is already dry and as hard as a bone.”

“Queer. We must ask the Rittmeister—remind me. Just watch how I’ll impress him this evening with our vigilance! He shall learn that he now has employees with eyes in their heads and brains in their skulls, the beau ideal of all employees, employees of the first class. He shall weep with joy over us.”

“You’re right off your rocker, Studmann,” said Pagel. “I’ve never known you like this.”

“Pagel, don’t you know what it is? The peace of the fields, the breath of nature, grassy soil under one’s feet—you don’t know what it means, doing eighteen miles a day up and down the stupid corridors of a hotel, with the soles of your feet burning.”

“Berlin! Wicked, forgotten Berlin!”

“I already have an idea that even this peace is a fraud. In the houses of that charming little village which crouches so picturesquely in the forest, scandal, jealousy, and tale-telling are just as much at home as in any city tenement. Instead of the clanging streetcars there’s a pump handle eternally squeaking; instead of the scolding old woman on the floor above, here a farm dog howls day in and day out. The kite over there means the death of a mouse. But, Pagel, leave me my happiness, don’t pluck the young blossom of my faith! The peace of the fields, the harmony of the cottages, the quiet of nature …”

“Come and bathe, Studmann, a bathe will cool you down—the crayfish ponds are said to be very cold.”

“Yet, let’s go and bathe,” agreed Studmann enthusiastically. “Let’s plunge this hot body into the cool waters—let us wash from our worried brow the corroding sweat of doubt—Pagel, I must confess to you, I feel marvelous!”

V

Geheimrat Horst-Heinz von Teschow had once presented his old servant Elias with a stick, a yellowish brown malacca cane with a cylindrical golden knob. As a rule the old gentleman was not the one for giving presents, a problem he generally settled by asking: “Who gives me anything?” Sometimes, however, he was quite the opposite and presented someone with something (and then reminded him of it for the rest of his life).

The malacca cane had passed into the possession of Elias only when the gray lead filling was beginning to show through the knob’s glittering gold. This did not prevent the old gentleman from often reminding Elias of the “real gold stick.” “Do you polish it properly, Elias? You must grease the cane every four weeks. It’s an heirloom, a gold stick like that, you can bequeath it to your children. Of course you haven’t any (at least as far as I know), but I’m convinced that even my granddaughter Violet would be delighted with it if you left it to her in your will.”

What Elias thought of the gold content of the knob remained unknown; he was too dignified to speak of such things. But he made much of the cane, and always carried it on his Sunday walks. Thus he had it today also. Cane in one hand and panama hat in the other, he bore his large yellowish skull in the afternoon sun through Neulohe village, on his way to the Villa. In the breast pockets of his ceremonial brown frock coat he carried in the left the wallet with the 1,000-mark notes, and in the right the Geheimrat’s letter to his son-in-law.

Whenever he saw a face old Elias stopped and addressed it. If it was a child he asked for the first or fifth commandment; if it was a woman he inquired about her gout or whether there was enough milk to feed the baby. With the men, he asked about the progress of the harvest, said “Ah” or “Oh!” or “You don’t say!” and always broke off the conversation after three or four sentences, swung his panama gently, jabbed his stick against the ground and passed on. No ruling prince could have wandered among his subjects more affably or with more dignity than did old Elias among the villagers, who yet mattered nothing to him and to whom he mattered nothing. All, however, readily accepted him as he was; if ever a newcomer felt aggrieved after the first interview—what the devil did the old donkey want of him, what in all the world did he think he was?—at the second or third time, at the latest, he had succumbed to the spell of philosophic detachment and answered as readily as the old guard.

Although he was no younger than Forester Kniebusch, Elias was quite different; whereas the former was ever trying to take color from others, echoing their sentiments, always worrying about his old age and his livelihood, old Elias wandered about with unruffled serenity, the things of this world meaning nothing to him, and managing his crafty master just as naturally as a child does a doll. That’s how things are arranged in this strange world. The cares that press on the hearts of some are not even felt by others.

Having arrived at the Villa, Elias did not take his letter up the front stairs to the brass bell—which on Saturday had been given its Sunday polish by Räder—but went round the Villa and down into the basement, where he knocked at the door, not too loudly and not too softly, just as was proper. No one called, “Come in!” so Elias opened the door and found himself in the kitchen, where a complete Sunday silence and cleanliness prevailed. Only the kettle hummed softly over the dying flames. There was no one in the kitchen. Old Elias emptied the kettle in the sink and put it aside; he knew that Frau Eva liked to have her tea brewed only from freshly boiled water.

Then he went through a door at the back of the kitchen into the dark passage dividing the basement into two parts. His stick was clearly to be heard; he coughed, he also knocked on the door. But perhaps all these announcements of his presence were unnecessary, for Räder was sitting quite still and rigid in his bare room, his hands in his lap, staring with fishy eyes at the door, as if he had been sitting like that for hours.

When the servant Elias entered, however, the servant Räder got up, not too slowly and not too quickly, just as was proper, and said: “Good day, Herr Elias. Will you please take a seat?”

“Good day, Herr Räder,” answered old Elias. “But I shall be depriving you …”

“I like standing,” declared Räder. “Old age must be respected.” And he took the other’s hat and stick. Then he placed himself with his back against the door, facing Elias, but separated from him by the whole length of the room.

The old man mopped his forehead and said pleasantly, “Yes, yes—it’s hot today. Marvelous weather for the harvest.”

“I know nothing about that,” said Räder coldly. “I sit here in my cellar. I’ve nothing to do with the harvest.”

Elias folded his handkerchief carefully, put it into his coat pocket and brought out the letter. “I have a letter here for the Rittmeister.”

“From our father-in-law?” asked Räder. “The Rittmeister is upstairs. I’ll announce you at once.”

“Ah yes, ah yes!” sighed old Elias, looking at the letter as if he were reading the address. “Here are relatives writing letters to each other now. What one can’t say face to face, Herr Räder, ought not to be written either.” He looked at the address once again with disapproval and laid the letter absent-mindedly on Räder’s bed.

“Herr Elias, please take the letter off my bed,” said Räder sternly.

The old man picked it up with a sigh.

Räder spoke more calmly. “The letters from our father-in-law have never yet brought any good—you can deliver it yourself. I’ll announce you, Herr Elias.”

“Let an old man get his breath back, can’t you?” complained the old man. “There can’t be such a hurry about it, on Sunday afternoon.”

“Of course, so that the Rittmeister goes for a walk in the meantime, and I get the full force of his anger!” grumbled Räder.

“We’re worried over there about our grandchild,” said old Elias. “We haven’t seen Fräulein Violet in the Manor for five days.”

“Manor! It’s a mud hut, Herr Elias!”

“Is our little Vi ill?” asked the old man wheedlingly.

“We haven’t had the doctor here,” said Herr Räder.

“But what can she be doing? A young girl—and sitting in the house in such fine weather!”

“Your Manor is also a house—whether she sits there or here, it’s all the same!”

“So she really doesn’t go out at all—not even in the garden?” The old man got up.

“If you call this a garden, Herr Elias! … Does the letter concern the young Fräulein, then?”

“That I can’t say—but it’s possible.”

“Give it to me, Herr Elias, I’ll see to it.”

“You will give it to the Rittmeister?”

“I’ll see to it all right.… I’ll go upstairs at once.”

“I can tell the Geheimrat, then, that you have delivered it.”

“Yes, Herr Elias.”

Tap, tap, tap went the malacca cane, with old Elias, out into the sun; and tap, tap, tap went the servant Räder up to the first floor. But when he was about to knock at the door he heard steps and, looking up, saw the feet of Frau von Prackwitz coming down the stairs. So he held the letter somewhat behind him. “Madam!”

Frau von Prackwitz had two red patches under the eyes, as if she had just been crying. She spoke quite brightly, however. “Well, Hubert, what is it?”

“A letter has come from over there for the Rittmeister,” replied Räder, showing a corner of the letter.

“Yes? Why don’t you go in and deliver it, Hubert?”

“I’m just about to,” whispered Räder. “I’m braver than Herr Elias, who didn’t have the courage to deliver it. He even came into my room about it, a thing he’s never done before.”

Frau von Prackwitz became so thoughtful that a small wrinkle appeared between her eyebrows. Hubert showed nothing of the letter except a corner. From his room the Rittmeister burst forth. “What’s all this damned whispering and rustling outside my door? You know I can’t stand it! Oh, I’m sorry, Eva!”

“That’s all right, Achim. I have to discuss something with Hubert.”

The Rittmeister withdrew and his wife took Hubert over to one of the windows. “Well, give me the letter, Hubert,” she said.

“They’re very worried in the Manor about Fräulein Violet,” said Hubert bumptiously. “Herr Elias was only too eager to find out why the young Fräulein hasn’t been there for five days.”

“And what did you say, Hubert?”

“I, madam? I didn’t say anything!”

“Yes, you are good at that, Hubert,” affirmed Frau von Prackwitz bitterly. “You see how worried and distracted I am because of Violet. Won’t you really tell me who the unknown gentleman was, Hubert? I appeal to you!”

But one should not appeal to a blockhead for anything. “I don’t know of any unknown gentleman, madam.”

“No, of course not, because to you he is known! Oh, what a cunning fellow you are, Hubert!” Frau von Prackwitz was very angry. “But if you carry on like this, Hubert, with these mysterious doings and untruthfulness—then we’re no longer friends.”

“Ah, madam,” said Hubert sullenly.

“What do you mean by ‘Ah, madam’?”

“Excuse me, here is the letter.”

“No, I want to know what you meant just now, Hubert!”

“It is just a manner of speaking, as it were.…”

“What is a manner of speaking? Hubert, I insist!”

“That we shall no longer be friends, madam,” said Hubert very fishily. “I’m just the servant, and you, madam, are Frau von Prackwitz—so there can’t be any talk of friendship.”

Frau von Prackwitz went crimson at this impertinence. In her confusion she seized the letter which the servant still held out to her, tore it open and read it. In the middle of her reading, however, she raised her head and said sharply: “Herr Räder! Either you are too stupid or too clever for a servant’s position—in either case I fear we shall soon separate.”

“Madam,” said Räder, also a little angry now, “in my references I am recommended by persons of very high rank. And at the training school I received the golden diploma.”

“I know, Hubert, I know. You are a pearl!”

“And if the Rittmeister wants me to leave, then I ask that I be told in time, so that I can give notice. It is always an obstacle in my profession, if I’ve been given notice.”

“All right,” said Frau von Prackwitz, glancing quickly through the short letter and looking at the figures in it without understanding them. “It shall be as you wish, Hubert. This,” she said in explanation, “is just an unimportant business letter, nothing about Fräulein Violet. Elias was probably a bit inquisitive on his own account.”

Hubert saw, however, that Frau von Prackwitz folded the letter several times and pushed it into a little pocket in her dress.

“If you see Herr von Studmann, Hubert, tell him to call in about seven, no, let’s say at a quarter to seven.” And with that she nodded curtly and went into the Rittmeister’s room.

Hubert remained in the passage for a moment longer, until he heard husband and wife talking. Then he crept up the stairs with extreme caution, so that no board should creak. He knocked softly on a door, once only, and entered quickly.

In the room Violet was sitting at a little table; a crumpled damp handkerchief and red patches on her face revealed that she, too, had been crying.

“Well?” she said, curious nevertheless. “Did Mamma put you through it as well, Hubert?”

“The young Fräulein shouldn’t be so careless when she’s eavesdropping,” rebuked Hubert. “I saw your foot the whole time on the top stair. And madam could also have seen it.”

“Ah, Hubert, poor Mamma! She’s just been crying here. Sometimes I’m terribly sorry for her, and I feel that I ought to be ashamed.…”

“There’s no use being ashamed, Fräulein,” said Hubert severely. “Either you live as the old people want you to—then you won’t need to be ashamed—or else you live as we young people think right, and then you really don’t need to be.”

Vi looked at him searchingly. “Sometimes I think, though, you’re a very bad man, Hubert, and that you have very bad plans,” she said, but rather cautiously, almost anxiously.

“What I am must be no concern of yours, Fräulein,” he said at once, as if he had thought it all out long ago. “And my plans are mine, after all. What you want, that’s your concern.”

“And what did Mamma want?”

“Just the usual questions about the unknown man. Your grandparents are also worried about you, Fräulein.”

“Oh, God, if they could only get me out of here! I can’t stand it any longer indoors. I shall weep myself to death! Was there really nothing in the tree again, Hubert?”

“No letter, no note!”

“When did you look, Hubert?”

“Just before serving coffee.”

“Take another look now, Hubert. Go there immediately and let me know at once.”

“But it’s useless, Fräulein. He doesn’t come into the village in the daytime.”

“Do you keep a good look-out at night, Hubert? It’s impossible that he hasn’t come at all! He gave me his solemn promise! He was going to be here on the second night, no, the next night.”

“He has definitely not been here. I would have met him, and I would also have heard about it if he had been here.”

“Hubert, I simply can’t stand it any longer … I see him day and night, as if he were really here, but if I try to touch him, there’s nothing, and I seem to fall down a hundred stairs.… I feel quite different, it’s as if I’ve been poisoned, I can’t sleep any more.… And then I see his hands, Hubert. They hold you so tightly, they send a thrill through you.… Oh, what can be the matter with me?” She stared at servant Hubert Räder with wide-open eyes. But it was not certain that she saw him at all.

Räder stood by the door like a stick. His gray complexion took on no color, his eye remained gray and lusterless even though he did not turn his gaze away from the soft, confiding girl.

“You mustn’t think anything about it,” he said in his usual didactic tone. “It is so!”

Vi looked at her confidant, her only confidant, as if he were a prophet bringing salvation.

Räder nodded significantly. “Those are physical processes,” he explained. “That is physical desire. I can give you a book about it, written by a doctor, a specialist. In it everything is exactly described, how it comes, and where its seat is, and how it is cured. It is called deficiency-phenomena or abstinence-phenomena.”

“Is that really so, Hubert? Is that in the book? You must bring it me, Hubert.”

“That is it. Nothing to do with—the man.” Hubert narrowed his eyes and observed the effect of his words. “It is just the body—the body is hungry, Fräulein!”

Vi, although as foolish and pleasure-seeking as any girl in those days, still had her illusions about love, and not every pleasant fancy was swept away by the tearing of a single veil. Only gradually did she grasp the full significance of Hubert’s revelations; she shrank as if from a sudden pain; she moaned.

But then she drew herself up. “How disgusting!” she cried. “You are a swine, Räder, you dirty everything. Go away—don’t touch me! Out of my room, at once!”

“But please, Fräulein! Please calm yourself—madam’s coming! Tell some lie; if the Rittmeister finds out, the Lieutenant is lost.”

He glided out, vanishing into the adjoining bedroom of Frau von Prackwitz, and stood behind the door. He heard the hurried step; then the door of Violet’s room was shut. He could hear the mother’s voice, and Violet sobbing …

That’s the cleverest thing she can do, he thought with satisfaction. Cry! I was probably a bit too soon and too strong. Well, when she’s been a week without news of the Lieutenant …

He heard the Rittmeister’s footstep on the stairs and cowered well back between Frau von Prackwitz’s bathrobe and dressing gown. However contemptible the Rittmeister was in his stupidity and temper, he remained almost the only person of whom one had to be afraid. He was quite capable of throwing someone out of the window—through the glass.

“I tell you you’re exaggerating,” he heard the Rittmeister say angrily. “The child is simply nervous. She must get into the fresh air. Come, Vi, let’s go for a little walk.”

Räder nodded. He slipped through the bathroom and the Rittmeister’s bedroom to the stairs, down which he vanished into his own bare room. He unlocked the cupboard. With a second key he opened a suitcase from which he took out a well-thumbed book—What a Young Man Must Know Before and About Marriage. This he wrapped in a piece of newspaper. One evening he would place it under Violet’s pillow. Perhaps not today or tomorrow, but the day after. He was convinced Vi would read it, despite her outburst.

VI

Sophie Kowalewski, ex-maid to the Countess Mutzbauer, had said to her parents this Sunday morning: “I’m going over to Birnbaum to see Emmi. Don’t keep dinner waiting for me; perhaps I won’t be back until evening.” Her kind-hearted old father had nodded his head. “Ride along the main road, Sophie, not the forest path. There are such a lot of fellows knocking around the district now.” And her tremendously fat mother, interested only in food and digestion, had said: “Emmi has made a wonderful match. They already have a cow and two goats. They kill three pigs for their own use. They don’t have to go around with hungry bellies; there’s always something to eat. They’ve also got chickens and geese. If you would only have such luck!”

Sophie did not stay to hear it all. She duly let her friend, who was lending her the bicycle, admire her blue costume, swung on to the saddle and pedaled slowly through the village with bell ringing, so that all should see her. She turned into the quiet mossy forest path along which the cycle ran as silently as on velvet, a firm and very narrow path, close to the rutted cart track. Heather and broom kept brushing the pedals, casting drops of morning dew on to the toes of her shoes. The beautiful pillars of old pine trees wandered past her, tinged reddish by the morning sun—and sometimes the path went so narrowly between two trunks that she had to grip the handle bars firmly in order not to knock against them. The bilberries were thick and their berries already turning blue. The forest grass was still green, and the junipers stood dark and silent in the bright undergrowth; there was an incessant fluttering and twittering of little forest birds.

Here Sophie had passed her childhood; every sound was familiar to her. As a child she had heard the distant vague soughing of the forest, which came close, but could never come closer. The sun shone on her hair as it had shone on the child’s. As she glided by, there opened and closed almost immediately glades which seemed to lead into the heart of the forest.

No one is all bad, and Sophie isn’t either. Sophie was filled with a gaiety which had nothing in common with the boisterous merriment of a night spent drinking in a bar. It was as if her body had received new blood; joyful, serene thoughts streamed through her with every fresh breath she took; instead of a dreary dance hit she hummed the song of “May has come.” … The clouds—they wander—in the canopy of heaven.… Oh, wonderful!

Suddenly Sophie laughed. She remembered how her mother once took her to pick berries in the forest. At that time she was eight or nine years old. The laborious picking soon bored her. Playing, humming to herself, she wandered away from her busy mother; ten times she heard herself being called, without paying any heed; the eleventh call no longer reached her. Singing softly, laughing with happiness, she wandered deeper and deeper into the forest, aimlessly on and on, from the sheer joy of movement, into the little valleys where the trees descended from flat hills like silent pilgrims. For a long time she listened to the gurgling of a hurrying brook. For a still longer time she watched a butterfly which flew from blossom to blossom in the heat of a forest clearing—and was not tempted to try and catch it.

At last she reached a beech wood. The trees towered high and silver-gray. The green above was so bright. They stood far from each other; everywhere sunbeams penetrated into the golden warm shadows; her bare feet sank deep into the soft brownish-green moss. Singing softly, almost without knowing what she was doing, Sophie stripped off her clothes. There lay her little dress; over a tree stump the bright patch of her little knickers; now her chemise fell upon the moss—and gaily whooping, the child danced naked through sun and shade, laughing.

It was the joy of living on this earth, of wandering in the light—the joy of life! The little heart in the thin body throbbed. Dancing into ever new greenness, into ever different worlds, into ever deeper mystery. With sounds such as the birds sing, interrupted to watch a beetle lost in a wheel track … and begun again, all without thinking, like breathing.…

It was the joy of life, the happiness of being—that for which grown-up people eternally yearn, whether they know it or not. Happiness—for which they are always seeking, and which they will never find again. Joy which vanishes with childhood—only to be glimpsed afterwards in the weak reflection of a lover’s embrace, in the joy over some work.

The bicycle sang softly along the path, the chain grated. Passing over a root, the rear mudguard clattered and the saddle springs sighed. Sophie, wishing to sing, could not succeed, and remembered only how to the child the sun had suddenly become cold, and the familiar forest strange. She had burst into tears—she was lost. Everything was hostile: prickly brambles, pointed stones on the path, a swarm of horseflies blowing over from a herd of cattle. At last a woodsman, old Hofert, had found her …

“Aren’t you ashamed, Sophie, to run around naked like that?” he had scolded her. “You’re a human being, you know, not a little pig.” And he had taken her back to her mother. Oh, her mother’s anger. The long search for her clothes, which could not be found, the scolding, the blows. The return to the village, with her mother’s kerchief round her hips. The mocking of the other children, the wise observations of the old people: “Look out, Kowalewski. That girl will bring you trouble some day.”

Sophie pedaled faster, ringing the bell loudly in the forest silence. She shook her head, although no swarm of horseflies now buzzed round her—she wanted to shake her thoughts away. No person can say how he has become what he is, but sometimes a piece of the way is revealed to us. Then we become angry with ourselves, find it disagreeable, shake the tormenting thoughts from our head. We’re all right as we are; it’s no fault of ours if we haven’t turned out differently. We needn’t think about that.

Faster and faster sped the bicycle; glade after glade, path after path, glided by. Sophie was not cycling to Birnbaum to see Emmi. She was cycling to the prison to visit Hans Liebschner, a lawfully condemned swindler with previous convictions. Life is no holiday; it’s an extremely deceitful business, and whoever doesn’t cheat others gets cheated himself. Sophie had no time to waste on dreams. She had to work out how she could get a visitor’s permit as Hans’s sister—without identification papers!

Her eyes had a dry, hard gleam. True, she had certified on a sheet of note-paper from the Christian Hostel that she was the cook, Sophie Liebschner, working there. But she was quite aware that this badly written and perhaps not even properly spelled document would be worthless to an official eye. From what her father had told her, Meier, the little bailiff who had run away, would have been just the right man to have given her some sort of certificate with the farm stamp on it. But there again she had been unlucky; she hadn’t been able to get hold of the fellow. And the other two, who had traveled in the train with her, they wouldn’t do a girl a favor like that, as you could see at a glance. They’d been much too polite, just like those gentlemen in a bar who are so politely cold merely to save themselves buying a lady a whisky!

Sophie’s thoughts, however, did not make her despondent. Up till now she had always had luck, and she knew very well what effect a proper glance at the proper time could have. Pretty girls always had luck.

Sophie as well, therefore. It was grand visiting day at the prison; over a hundred relatives were standing outside its iron gate. Forcing herself among them, Sophie was let in with the great rush. Warders ran to and fro, papers were examined, questions asked, and gently, gently, step by step, Sophie edged herself from the group which had not been questioned into that which had.

Then she was in the visitors’ room. On one side of the bars stood the relatives, on the other the prisoners. The talk and chatter were deafening! The two poor warders who had to supervise every word couldn’t but fulfill their duties badly. How wonderfully might Sophie now have chatted with her Hans, have said everything that she had in her heart! But of course there was no Hans Liebschner in the visitors’ room, nor could she insist on seeing him, for he was not in the list of prisoners due for visits, naturally!

But here again it proved to be good that Liebschner was a swindler—that is to say, not a violent or dogmatic person, but a cunning fox, versed in all the crafty arts—that is to say, a submissive, well-behaved prisoner, the pattern of obedience. Which was why he had become an orderly and, as orderly, had work to do in the corridors, and from the corridors could see the visitors coming. A raven’s eye is sharp: Sophie was the same Sophie. Yes, supposing Hans had not been in favor with the warder of his landing? But the steel saw had actually been found, and three bars already sawn through! To discover a thing like that in time is a feather in the cap of any warder. And this one had been commended and was therefore well disposed to his orderly—all the more because he hadn’t been able to fulfill his promise about the outside gang, since none had yet been sent out.

So Sophie was suddenly beckoned onwards by a bearded old warder. “Just come along here, Fräulein.” She was pushed into a narrow cell crammed full of dirty cordage, even bolted in; and just as she was beginning to think all sorts of things, wondering if her unauthorized entry had been discovered and if this was her punishment, the bolt rattled again and in slouched her Hans in a disgusting get-up. There were shadows under his eyes, his nose was thin—but the same mischievous smile, the same old Hans!

The warder raised his finger threateningly. “Don’t get up to any silly tricks now, children!” But he looked at Sophie with a benevolent smirk, as if he wouldn’t mind getting up to silly tricks with her himself.

Then the bolt rattled again, and she was in Hans’s arms. It was like a storm, a hurricane. She lost all sense of sight and sound. Oh, this dear good face, so close! The familiar smell! The taste of his lips! A sigh, a laugh which soon choked, a few words. “Oh, you! You! Oh, darling!” They scarcely found time to speak. “How I’ve been longing for you!”

“I’m coming out, with a harvest crew. Then I’ll make a break for it!”

“Oh—if you would come to us!”

“Where?”

“To Neulohe! I’m with my parents. Father says we need a harvest crew.”

“I’m certain to go with the next one. Can’t you put a little pressure on your people?”

“Perhaps. I’ll see. God, Hans …”

“That did me good! Six months …”

Happy and contented, Sophie walked along the rough pavements of the little town of Meienburg, having first left her cycle in a small pub. She entered the Prince of Prussia, the best hotel in the town, for lunch. There the wealthy farmers ate; as a child she had often stood before it, admiring the sign. Now she walked through the place and sat down on the terrace. The hotel was almost empty. On Sunday the farmers ate at home; there was no farmers’ union, no cattle-dealing to be used as a pretext for escaping from their families.

Sophie ate with relish everything that was brought her, and drank half a bottle of Rhine wine with it. There was some point in feeding well now—perhaps Hans would be coming to Neulohe. He must succeed! With her coffee she ordered a large glass of cognac, and leisurely smoked cigarette after cigarette. From the stream, which flowed below the terrace, came the dry wooden sound of oars in their rowlocks. The rowers could not be seen, but in the midday heat their voices were heard distinctly. “Pull a little quicker, Erna! We want to have a bathe.”

Suddenly Sophie realized that she also wanted to bathe, to bathe and lie in the sun, and roast herself. But not here! Here it was certain to be crowded with fellows. That wasn’t bathing! The ass at the next table had been goggling at her for the last half hour: strange that some men can never understand that one hasn’t been waiting precisely for them.

But she had no bathing suit with her—nor, for that matter, one at home—but a bathing suit was not a problem in Meienburg, even on Sunday. She paid, and as she went out accidentally knocked the goggling gentleman’s straw hat off his head into the cheese dish. “Oh, I’m so sorry!” she said graciously to the blushing man and hurried out.

The little needlework shop, of course, was still where it had been five years ago, ten years ago, where it had probably been ever since Meienburg was built; there where the needlework shop of Fräulein Otti Kujahn would forever be—in little Bergstrasse, directly opposite the Konditorei Köller (the Lover’s Nook). Sophie did not try the shop door. In things like that the little villages are punctilious; on a Sunday afternoon the shop door is locked. But if you go round the back there is not the slightest difficulty. Little humpy Fräulein Kujahn with the same gray hair, the same languishing pigeon-glance of ten years ago, was very pleased. She stocked bathing suits. She was also ready to sell them on a Sunday afternoon.

They were not modern—they were not those aquatic garments which reveal a different part of the anatomy at every movement and seem to consist only of open-work—as Sophie discovered with a certain regret. They were costumes which covered the body, which clothed and did not unclothe. But perhaps it was better so. Sophie had no intention of offering a spectacle to the adolescents of Neulohe. She knew the habit these young gentlemen had of spying on the bathing places on their free afternoons, in order to get a glimpse of the village girls. Sophie selected therefore a completely decent black costume with white embroidery and a minimum of open-work. She also bought a bathing cap.

The price which Otti Kujahn asked for these two things, after long hesitation (“Yes, what shall I take for them? They cost me under three marks”), corresponded perhaps to the postage of a local letter. Sophie was now of the opinion that the Kujahn needlework shop would not exist forever. At these prices Fräulein Kujahn could not survive the inflation, but would soon be sold out and starving.

The bicycle sang gently, the chain grated softly, in the afternoon silence the woods lay as if sleeping; the birds were quiet, the heather brushing the toes of her shoes swept off the dust. Something like happiness filled Sophie, a peacefulness she had not felt for a long time. The sun stood still, the day proceeded no further—her happiness remained.

Deep within the forest lay the crayfish ponds, a chain of little pools, reedy and muddy. Only in the large one was it possible to bathe. For a while Sophie lay in the sun. But she had to go into the water, feel its coolness, experience its freshness.

The fine sandy bottom sloped away gently; cool and fresh, cooler and fresher than anything on this earth, the water rose round her. Once she shivered, when the coolness reached her waist, but even this shiver was pleasant. And it was gone immediately. She went deeper. In a long swimming stroke she glided into the coolness, became one with it, as cool!

Now she strove to maintain her balance lying on her back, gently paddling with her hands. Lying in one element, part of it, her eyes closed, she felt the other element on her face, a heavenly greeting, fire. The warmth of the sun penetrated her, warmth that had nothing withering in it like the artificial flames of mankind. A puff of wind seemed to waft it away, but it was back again, penetrating, something nourishing, a divine nectar. Yes, this gentle warmth had something of life, of eternal life—it dispensed happiness.

But the happiness Sophie Kowalewski now felt had nothing in common with the childish joy remembered that morning. The child had danced through the woods, blissful, unselfconscious, laughing, singing. The rapture of existence had seized her, as it seizes a bird or a calf in the meadow. The happiness Sophie now felt was conditioned by many experiences. After months of tormented longing, her body was again for the first time in harmony with itself; she was no longer aware of it, it made no demands on her, no longer tormented her soul. Resting quietly on the surface of the water, it also rested quietly in the eternal ocean of desire, longing, craving.

The child’s blissful unconscious happiness can never be attained again. The gate had closed, innocence had departed—but life has many possibilities of happiness! She had thought it was in the cell, with him, in his arms.

And now it was here in the water, wave upon wave of warmth, of happiness …

In a dream she came out of the water and lay down on the sand, propped on one arm, her chin in her hand. She looks closely at the confusion of grasses. They fold into each other, creating little hollows. But she sees nothing. Real happiness has no name, no word, no picture. It is a gentle hovering in some indeterminate place; not a tune for the song “I am here!”—but something like a gentle lament to the words “I am I.” For we know that we must grow old and ugly, and have to die.

When she heard steps Sophie scarcely looked up. Lazily she pulled her costume over her naked breasts, murmuring, “Good afternoon.” At another time she would have welcomed the accident which brought her together here with the two new gentlemen from the estate. But now they were of no moment to her. In a few syllables she answered their inquiries: yes, this was the only bathing place, everywhere else was reedy. No, the gentlemen were not disturbing her. No, the water was not dangerous, no water plants.… She relapsed into silence. She hardly knew that the two of them were there. She looked again at the grass hollows, which then immediately vanished as if by magic, so she couldn’t see anything anymore. The sun was wonderfully warm. She pushed her costume down from her breast again, the voices of the two men came distantly from the water—oh, heavenly!

With all the cunning in the world Sophie Kowalewski could not have behaved more shrewdly than she did in ignoring, however thoughtlessly, the two gentlemen. It is undeniable that both Studmann and Pagel had not received a too favorable impression of her in the train, although the easily enthusiastic Rittmeister had praised this jewel of a girl to the skies. Both had recognized only too well that affected manner of speaking put on by little adventuresses wanting to play the great lady. They were both disgusted by her simultaneously dried out and puffy facial skin, which still smelled of powder. They were not leaving Berlin for the peace of the fields in order to burden themselves with such a companion. They had been very reserved. They thought a bit differently from the Rittmeister about the distance you should keep from your employees. When they saw Sophie, the thought didn’t go through their heads: in the end she’s only overseer’s daughter. That’s not how they wanted to see her. They had nothing against the girl, but they had strong objections to transplanting Berlin tart-shops to Neulohe.

When, therefore, Sophie did not exploit the present encounter, that yet offered so much incentive and possibility to an experienced girl; when she did not presume upon an acquaintanceship made in peculiar circumstances and did not seem minded to draw any inferences from it, Studmann said very cheerfully to Pagel as they went into the water: “As a matter of fact, the girl looks quite nice.”

“Yes, queer. She seemed quite different to me last time.”

“Did you see, Pagel?” Studmann asked after a while. “A perfectly decent bathing suit.”

“Yes,” agreed Pagel. “And no glad eye. I think I’ll never understand women.” With this light reference to the tragedy he had recently suffered, Pagel plunged into the water. Five or ten minutes, even a quarter of an hour, went by in swimming and diving and floating side by side and talking; minutes in which they both felt stronger, fresher, more conscious than for years. Until a noise from the bank caught their attention—a woman’s shrill voice, a man’s suppressed mumble.

“That’s Sophie,” said Studmann.

“Oh, forget her!” cried Pagel angrily. “It’s so nice here in the water. Probably some quarrel with a country lover. Ain’t love grand!”

“No, no!” said Studmann, the nursemaid who always had to intervene wherever anything threatened to go wrong. “She made a very nice impression on me just now.” And he swam rapidly toward the bank, followed by the reluctant Pagel.

Yes, there was Sophie shouting. “I say, you two! Here—he wants to take away your clothes!”

“Be quiet, Sophie, can’t you?” whispered the forester, trying to make off with his booty. “Nothing will happen to you. I only want the gentlemen’s clothes.”

“Herr von Studmann! Herr Pagel! Hurry up!” called Sophie all the more loudly.

“Now, what’s going on here?” asked von Studmann with extreme astonishment. And Pagel too looked more puzzled than was becoming to an intelligent face.

In the meadow stood the forester, whom they knew slightly, a worthy old dodderer, his gun over his shoulder, and under his arm the two men’s things in a bundle. Facing him Sophie Kowalewski, a charming sight in her rage, an Artemis. With one hand she held her bathing suit over her breast, with the other a trouser leg from the forester’s bundle—and von Studmann recognized that it was his.

“What’s this supposed to be?” he asked, still extremely astonished.

The forester was as red as a tomato, and became redder. Perhaps he wished to speak—all that was heard was a babbling in the depths of his beard. Yet he continued holding on to the clothes, and Sophie Kowalewski continued to tug at the trouser leg.

But she spoke, and what she said had certainly no ladylike affectation about it now.

“I’m lying here and thinking of nothing, and I hear something rustling and I think it’s a hedgehog or a fox and take no notice, and then I look over there and I’m flabbergasted. There’s Kniebusch creeping behind the reeds after the gentleman’s clothes, and sticks them under his arm. So I get up and say: ‘Kniebusch, what are you doing, those are the gentlemen’s clothes!’ But he says nothing, puts his finger on his lips and wants to slink away. So I make a grab and manage to get hold of the trousers. Will you let go of the trousers now! They’re not your trousers!” she screamed angrily at the forester.

“You seem fated to be our rescuer, Fräulein Sophie,” said Studmann, smiling. “Here you are again helping us out of an embarrassing situation. We are very grateful. But I think you can now let go of the trousers. Herr Kniebusch won’t run off with them under our eyes.” Sharply: “May I ask you, Herr Kniebusch, what is the meaning of this? In case you’ve forgotten, my name is Studmann, von Studmann, and this gentleman’s name is Pagel—we are employed by Rittmeister von Prackwitz.”

“That’s got nothing to do with me,” muttered Kniebusch, looking at the clothes which Pagel, without more ado, had pulled from under his arm. “Bathing is prohibited here, and if anyone bathes here his clothes are taken away!”

“Since when?” cried Sophie Kowalewski angrily. “That’s a new one!”

“Shut up, Sophie!” said the forester rudely. “It’s one of the Geheimrat’s orders, it’s been in force a long time.”

“If you tell me to shut up, then I’ll talk!” cried the warlike Sophie. “And anyway you’re lying. You told me specially that nothing would happen to me, you only wanted the gentlemen’s clothes!”

“That’s not true!” contradicted the forester hastily. “I didn’t mean it that way.”

“You did mean it that way! I just want the clothes of the gentlemen, you said!”

“No!”

“Yes!”

“No!”

“Yes!”

“Let’s sit down!” suggested von Studmann. “Yes, you too, please, Herr Kniebusch. Pagel, give me the cigarettes from my jacket. Sit down, Kniebusch! That’s right. Cigarette, Fräulein Sophie? Yes, of course I know you smoke. We’re not as strict as the Rittmeister was in the train; we’re the younger generation. So you were specially ordered to confiscate our things, Herr Kniebusch?”

“I wasn’t! I always confiscate the things of people bathing here!” said the forester obstinately.

“Not those of Fräulein Sophie, for instance. Well, let’s drop that. How often have you confiscated clothes here, then, Forester Kniebusch?”

“I don’t have to tell you that. I’m employed by the Geheimrat, not the Rittmeister,” said the forester defiantly, squinting at the clothes, squinting at the forest, and feeling as if he were slowly roasting in hell—the heat from below supplied by Herr von Studmann, the heat above from the Geheimrat.

“I am only asking,” said Herr von Studmann, “because you must have already had a lot of unpleasantness with this confiscation, haven’t you?”

The forester maintained an obstinate silence.

“Or are you an auxiliary police official?”

Kniebusch remained silent.

“But perhaps you have been previously convicted. Then confiscating clothes without any legal right wouldn’t matter to you so much.”

Sophie burst out laughing, Pagel loudly cleared his throat, and the forester blushed to his eyes, which had become small and gloomy. He kept silent, however.

“You know us by name, you could have reported us for illegal bathing. If we had been convicted, we would, of course, have paid the fine. Why confiscation, then?”

The three of them looked at the forester fidgeting about, wanting to say something. Once more he looked at the forest close by. He half got up, but between him and the salvation of cover was young Pagel’s leg. The forester sat down again.

“Forester Kniebusch,” said Herr von Studmann, in the same pleasant, patient tone, as if he were explaining something to an obstinate child, “won’t you speak openly to us? Look, if you don’t tell us all about it, we shall go to Geheimrat von Teschow. I shall explain to him the situation in which we caught you here, and then we shall hear what this is all about.”

The forester had lowered his head; his face could not be seen.

“But if you tell us the truth, I promise you on my word of honor that we shall keep it to ourselves. I think I can also answer for Fräulein Sophie’s keeping quiet?” Sophie nodded. “Yes, we should like to help you to get out of this situation honorably.”

The forester raised his head. He stood up. In his eyes were tears, and while he spoke these tears broke free and ran down into his beard. Others followed. Tears of old age, a graybeard’s tears, flowing of themselves.

“Yes, gentlemen,” said Forester Kniebusch, “but no one can help me. I understand that you are being very friendly to me, and I accept with gratitude your promise to say nothing. But I am a finished man. I’m too old—and when one is too old, nothing goes right for him any more. Everything that once pleased him is gone.… I recently caught the worst poacher, Bäumer, and I want to tell the truth now. I didn’t do anything; he simply fell from his bicycle onto a stone and was knocked unconscious at once. Everything I said about a struggle was only to praise myself … I wanted to be clever, but an old man shouldn’t try to be clever.”

Sophie and Wolfgang stared in front of them. They were ashamed of the weeping old man who so shamelessly poured out his heart. Herr von Studmann, however, had directed his brown eyes attentively on him, and now and again he nodded.

“Yes, gentlemen,” continued the forester, “and now in the courts they want to twist a rope out of it for me, because Bäumer has a high temperature. And the only one who can defend me is the Geheimrat, and if I don’t do what he wants, he won’t defend me, but will even take away my livelihood. And what will then become of me and my sick wife?”

The forester stood as if he had forgotten what he wished to say, but at Herr von Studmann’s glance he pulled himself together. “Yes, and today after lunch he phoned me up and told me that the gentlemen had gone bathing and that I was to be certain to take their clothes away, otherwise he wouldn’t help me. But Sophie was sitting there and it came to nothing. Why he is so angry with the gentlemen I don’t know; he didn’t say a word about that.” Kniebusch stared disconsolately before him.

“Well, Herr Kniebusch, there are other ponds here, aren’t there? We needn’t have come here,” said Studmann.

The forester reflected, a glimmer of hope in his eyes. “In this direction it’s difficult,” he said. “Here, apart from this, it’s all forest and sand.”

“Birnbaum,” said Sophie.

“Yes, the gentlemen might have gone to the Birnbaum ponds. But then the gentlemen mustn’t be home before seven, because it’s so far. Would they like to sit in the forest as long as that?”

“Oh, of course we’ll do that,” said Studmann pleasantly. “The men can feed the cattle without us for once.”

“Then I thank the gentlemen very much,” said the forester, no longer tearful. “You are being very kind to an old man. But still, it won’t help much. I ought sometime to bring a real success home, but that’s asking too much of an old man. No young person knows what an old man feels like.” He stood a moment longer in thought. “However, through the kindness of the gentlemen, it hasn’t been a failure.”

He raised his hat and went.

Studmann gazed after him. Then he called out: “Wait, Herr Kniebusch, I’ll come along with you for a bit!” And he ran after him, barefooted, in bathing costume, without any regard for his rather tender feet. A true nursemaid, however, doesn’t think of herself when she sees others who need comforting.

Sophie and young Pagel were alone, and very pleasantly they conversed, first about Forester Kniebusch and then about the harvest. And because that afternoon Sophie was rested and happy, it did not occur to her to impress young Pagel with feminine tricks or even to make eyes at him, so that Wolfgang was continually obliged to marvel how wrongly he had judged this nice, intelligent girl in the train. And he was now tempted to blame his Berlin eyes for this false judgment.

As to the harvest, however, her father had said that in Neulohe they were at least three weeks behind, and they would never do it unless a proper reinforcement of strong men came. And no one in the village understood why the Rittmeister did not order a gang from Meienburg. They were the most industrious and most submissive of men, as long as they were given enough to eat and smoke. But the Rittmeister had to remember that all the farms in the neighborhood already had their gangs, and the prison was half empty. That’s what her father said, for of course she knew nothing about it, she had only just come to the district herself. But she was sorry about the harvest.…

Pagel thought this very intelligently spoken and thought it very good of the girl to worry about the Neulohe harvest, which after all did not matter a jot to a Berlin lady’s maid. He resolved to discuss the matter with Studmann that evening. Since, however, Studmann had not yet returned, they decided to go into the water once more.

There he saw that Sophie swam excellently, and that it was an effort for him to keep up with her. But he was able to show her something new, a style of swimming which had just begun to spread in Berlin, and which was called the crawl. It always does a young man good when he can do something a little better than a young girl; and if he can teach this young girl something he finds her extremely likeable.

And Sophie also was very much pleased with her disinterested swimming instructor, whom otherwise she had found altogether ill-mannered; and so the two of them were the best of friends when finally a limping, thoughtful Studmann appeared out of the forest.

“Well,” he said, sitting down on the grass and lighting himself a cigarette, “it’s a strange world, Pagel. The earth sweats fear instead of corn, and its fear infects everything. A generation full of fear, Pagel. As I suspected this afternoon, the peace of the fields is an illusion, and someone is not hesitating to make us understand that as quickly as possible.”

“That old geezer,” said Sophie very contemptuously, “has been chattering and gossiping again, I suppose? Perhaps it still works on you—we no longer pay any attention to his claptrap.”

“No, Fräulein Sophie,” countered Studmann, “the old man didn’t chatter, unfortunately. I wish he had been more talkative, for queer things seem to be happening here. Well, I think I’ll get to know them in time. But, Pagel, I ask you one thing: when you see the old man, be a little friendly. And if you can help him in anything, then do so. After all, he’s only an infirm old bundle of fears—Fräulein Sophie is right about that; but when a ship sends out an S O S, one helps it and doesn’t spend too much time asking about its cargo.”

“Good Lord!” mocked Sophie. “I would never have believed that Forester Kniebusch would ever have got two such helpers.” For Pagel had nodded in complete agreement with Studmann. “He certainly hasn’t deserved it, the sneak and tell-tale that he is.”

“Is there anyone here who deserves anything?” said Studmann. “Certainly not me, and probably not Pagel; and you, Fräulein Sophie, decent and good-hearted girl though you are, no doubt you also have not deserved an extra-special reward.”

Here Sophie turned red and felt that the line had a hook, although there was none.

“Well, let’s drop it. I really wanted to ask you, Fräulein Sophie, whether you wouldn’t like to tell us something about the wood thieves. You see, Kniebusch is so worried about them. He says they go about in gangs, and he as an individual is powerless against them.”

“What have the wood thieves got to do with me?” cried Sophie indignantly. “I’m not a spy!”

“I thought, Fräulein Sophie,” said Studmann, as if he had heard nothing, “that you in the village would notice when a gang like that sets out sooner than we who live on the farm.”

“I am not a spy,” Sophie again cried heatedly. “I don’t go around spying on poor people.”

“Wood-stealing is wood-stealing,” persisted Studmann. “Spy sounds ugly, but whoever reports wood-stealing is no spy. I think,” he continued persuasively, “you are interested in the farm and its welfare. Your father has a position like that among the men; he has to report sometimes who’s been working badly, without being called a sneak for it. And then you sat very comfortably next to the Rittmeister in the train and are sitting quite pleasantly here with us—one must know, after all, to whom one belongs.”

Sophie had propped her head on her hands. She looked thoughtfully, now at Herr von Studmann, now at Herr Pagel. But at the same time it wasn’t certain whether she had listened to Studmann’s cunning words; she seemed to be thinking about something. At last she spoke: “Very well, I’ll see. But it isn’t certain whether I’ll really find out anything. The people don’t count me one of them anymore.”

“Fine!” said Studmann and got up. “If you only think of us, that’s already something. The rest will arrange itself. And now if you’ve no objection, let’s all three go into the water again. My feet are in a bit of a mess; I’d like to cool them a little before going home. Our time ought to be up then, and we can go back without fear of reproach. And you must tell us about the Birnbaum pond, Fräulein Sophie. I believe the old gentleman’s capable of not believing the mere word of his forester, but will try and pump us a bit. If he doesn’t turn up here himself!”

And Studmann cast a suspicious glance at the forest.

VII

Herr von Studmann had no ground for his fear that the old Geheimrat might turn up in person at the crayfish ponds. In fact, he judged Herr von Teschow wrongly. The latter did not mind prying around quietly, but he preferred to leave things to his men when it came to open rows. Ten horses could not have dragged him to the crayfish ponds where, on this afternoon, a row was to be expected. Instead he wandered, serene and affable, through the village of Neulohe, stopped whenever he met someone, exchanged a few words, and was indeed just like a prince mingling with his subjects. Old Elias hadn’t done it better three hours previously.

And while the Geheimrat chattered his way through the village, he was continually thinking what sort of business he could pretend to have at Haase’s, for he didn’t like doing things awkwardly. He had to find out what the magistrate had against Kniebusch; why he had submitted such an unfavorable report on him. If one doesn’t know everything one knows nothing, he had always said, and from Fräulein Kuckhoff he had often heard that no filth is so filthy as to prevent someone coming and growing the finest cucumbers on it.

But he couldn’t think of the slightest excuse and was becoming quite discouraged when, just in front of the village square, where the road descended to the cemetery, he saw old Leege. Old Leege was a very ancient woman; formerly, when she was still able to work, she had been employed on the farm, while her husband, now dead for a long time, had earned his bread partly in the parish as a gravedigger, partly in the forest as a woodman. That was all a long time ago, however, and old Leege had been dwelling for some ten years now, ever since her last grandchild went to America, in an old cottage by the cemetery wall. She was a little odd, and feared by everyone, for she had the reputation of being able to put a spell on cattle. This much was certain—warts and erysipelas disappeared at her incantations.

The old Geheimrat was not very fond of old women, a hunters’ superstition; and so he hurried on his way when he saw old Leege. But she had spied him with her sharp black eyes. She darted across the village square so as to block his path, and began, weeping huskily, to mumble something about her cottage roof, through which the whole of the last rain had come as through a sieve.

“That’s no business of mine, Leege,” the Geheimrat shouted into her deaf ears. “You must go to the magistrate about it. It’s a parish matter, not a farm matter.”

But old Leege would not be put off so easily, for she was firmly convinced that Herr von Teschow was her master and responsible for her welfare, just as he had been thirty or forty years ago—nor would she let herself be hustled out of the way. She filled the whole square with her husky, wailing cries in such a way that the Geheimrat began to feel truly sorry about the business. And since he reflected that a bad excuse is always better than none at all—and why shouldn’t one, after all, talk to Haase about the leaky roof of a poor superannuated farm worker—he yielded and set off with her to Hangman’s Pines, as Leege’s dwelling place was called.

“Well, don’t any of your grandchildren ever write to you?” he asked in order to escape from the roof topic, about which he already knew everything—front, back and gable. Old Leege moaned happily that her grandsons wrote from time to time and also sent her little pictures.

Well, what did they write, and how were things over there?

Yes, what they wrote she couldn’t say exactly, for her old cat had broken her glasses over a year ago; but if the berry crop was good this year, she might perhaps be able to afford a new pair!

Then why didn’t she get someone to read the letters to her?

No, she wouldn’t do that, for if her grandsons should ever write that they weren’t getting on well, it would immediately be spread through the whole village, and she didn’t want people to talk about her grandsons. She would have plenty of time to read them when she had new glasses.

Did they ever send anything for their old grandmother, a little money or a little packet of something to eat?

Oh, yes, they sent her nice pretty little pictures; but as to food, they probably hadn’t got so much in the Indian country!

In the meantime they had reached the old cottage, which really looked uncannily like a veritable witch’s hovel out of a fairy tale, there among the Hangman’s Pines. The Geheimrat took a look at the ancient mossy thatched roof, from the front, from the back and from the gable side, always accompanied by the wailing complaints of the old woman. He had suddenly become very thorough and was no longer in such a hurry to escape from her. For a true fox will smell out a goose in a cartload of straw. So he pushed open the door and entered the old hovel—he had smelled something. The inside of the house under the Hangman’s Pines looked exactly as one would expect from the outside; that is to say, just as a pigsty ought not to look if the pigs are to thrive.

But neither dirt nor stench could upset the Geheimrat now, nor the rags and rubbish of extreme poverty. With his cunning old eyes he looked around, and there on the wall he spotted what he wanted, namely, an old photograph behind which something had been stuffed.

“Yes, that’s Ernie,” moaned the old woman. “He was the last to go out there, just at the beginning of ‘thirteen, just before the Great War broke out.”

“And that’s one of the little pictures that Ernest sent you, Leege, eh? Have you got any more?”

Yes, she had some more, and there were some still in the letters, and she had also made a border of the little pictures in the kitchen cupboard.

“Listen, Leege,” said the Geheimrat. “You’ll get a new roof, I promise you. And if you want a goat you’ll get one, too. And enough to eat as well. And a pair of glasses also. And firewood.…”

The old woman raised her hands toward him, as if she wanted to push the abundance of all these gifts away from her breast, and she began to praise her good old master.

But the Geheimrat was in a hurry. “You stay here, Leege, and in half an hour at the latest I’ll be here with the magistrate; perhaps I’ll bring the pastor, too. And you are not to go out, nor are you to give any of the little pictures away.”

Old Leege promised this solemnly.

And everything took place in proper and orderly manner. With the Geheimrat came the pastor and the magistrate, and a search was made, and old Leege could not marvel enough at the three gentlemen who wouldn’t stop turning over and shaking out her things. They even messed her pair of winter stockings about; the magistrate pulled the bed straw from its frame—all in the search for these bright-colored little pictures.

As for old Leege, she understood nothing of this business, and although they trumpeted ten times into her ear that this was “proper” money, gold money, foreign currency—while the other was rubbishy money, worthless money, muck—it still seemed to her as if these worthy three—Wealth, Priesthood and Authority—had turned into little children looking for Easter eggs in her cottage.

Geheimrat von Teschow, however, was once more in his element, and now and again he bubbled over, with a remark to the effect that of course an old man like himself had had to come first and look after his old employee, who, legally speaking, was no concern of his, while the magistrate, who ought to look after the local poor in respect of his office, and the pastor, who ought to look after his parishioners as a religious duty, once again didn’t know a thing about anything, and would have let the old woman, with all her wealth, drown from rain and perish from hunger.

Both the magistrate and the parson made the best reply they could to these continual and pointed remarks—namely, none; and scarcely was the old woman’s fortune ascertained to be two hundred and eighty-five dollars and legally recorded, than the parson hastily departed, for the matter was now in the best hands. The magistrate took charge of the bank notes and in return for the little pictures promised the old woman the thatcher for the next day. Also a basket of provisions. “Also a goat, of course, Leege. Also a new pair of glasses. Very good, Leege.”

“What are you going to do with the money, Haase?” asked the Geheimrat, on the way back.

“Yes, Herr Geheimrat, that’s a business,” said the magistrate. “I shall have to think about it first.”

“I believe I’ve read somewhere that foreign currency must be handed over. To the bank. But that need not be true.”

“Yes, Herr Geheimrat, if I take it to the bank I’ll get a worthless bundle of money for it, and if old Leege wants some coffee next week, I shall have to say to her: ‘The money’s all gone, Leege.’ ”

“That’s no good to the old woman, Haase. But I suppose there’s no help for it, if that’s the regulation.”

“Perhaps it isn’t so—the Geheimrat might have read it wrongly.”

“Yes, of course, I might have. There’s so much in the newspapers.”

“That’s true—one gets dizzy merely looking at them.”

The two walked along thoughtfully. The tall, lean Haase with his ravaged, multi-lined face, and the short, fat Geheimrat with his bright red face—which, however, also had its lines.

“The fact is,” began Haase again, “we’re all busy with the harvest; who’s got time to go to the bank in Frankfurt to change the money? And I must give the thatcher something and pay for the straw and the goat—I can’t do that with dollars. In the first place there’d be talk, and anyway I mustn’t do it.”

“Well, in that case someone else must change the money until there is time to hand it in,” said the Geheimrat.

“Yes. That’s what I’ve been thinking all the time. Only, who’s got so much money on hand in harvest time?”

“I think I’ve still got something in my safe. I’ll have a look. I’ll let you know this evening.”

“I’ve been doing my threshing yesterday,” said Haase, “and I think I’ll deliver tomorrow. I’m only doing it, Herr Geheimrat, because I have to pay your forester the day after tomorrow.”

The Geheimrat said not a word.

“I wonder whether the forester would perhaps wait a few days.”

“I don’t understand this. Excuse me, Haase, I’m probably deaf in both ears. I suppose you’re talking about Kniebusch’s mortgage for ten thousand prewar marks?”

The magistrate bit his lip. “I don’t understand it either, Herr Geheimrat,” he said sulkily, “but your Kniebusch is an old hound. He’s swindled me. I can’t cancel the mortgage now, and I have to give him forty hundredweights of rye a year as interest, and that’s why the rye’s going away tomorrow.”

“Well, well!” grinned the old gentleman, extremely pleased that someone had been caught out (for there was nothing in life he esteemed so highly as swindling a person properly). “You do get up to mischief! … Now I understand why the examining judge in Frankfurt speaks so badly about Kniebusch.”

“I only wrote what was right,” cried the magistrate hotly.

“Of course, Haase, what else?” said the old Geheimrat, delighted. “Always in accordance with justice and law and order! But we’ll talk about that this evening. For I’ll bring you the money so that you can change the dollars, since what you get for your rye won’t cover everything. I’m glad to help you, Haase. And if I go to Frankfurt I’ll hand in my dollars, and when you go there you’ll hand in yours—the Government will certainly have learned how to wait. And Kniebusch also. I’ll see to that, you can rely on me. He’s a cunning dog, old Kniebusch; I’d never have thought him capable of taking in a farmer. Well, you’ll tell me all about it this evening, Haase.”

“The dollar is now one million one hundred thousand marks—that’s what we’ll exchange at, I suppose?” asked the magistrate thoughtfully.

“Why, of course,” said the Geheimrat. “What else?”

“And supposing it rises tomorrow? Then I’ll be landed with all those marks and won’t be able to buy her anything.”

“Oh, you’ll be able to buy something for a little while, and lay in a few supplies, anyway. When it’s gone, it’s gone. If someone else had seen the little pictures she would have got nothing. And, anyway, in the letters it says that the grandson sends her ten dollars every month, with twenty dollars extra on her birthday and at Christmas, so there’s always something coming in. Why, old Leege’s got more now than she had in her whole life!”

“We ought to be certain, though, that no one will talk,” said Haase. “Otherwise there’ll be trouble.”

“Who’s to talk, Haase? Pastor Lehnich will keep his trap shut, having made a fool of himself. And we two won’t talk. As for old Leege, she didn’t get wise—she thinks it’s a holiday in heaven. If she does talk no one will understand, and supposing someone does, just let him come and say that Geheimrat Horst-Heinz von Teschow is up to something shady. We’ll hand the dollars in—that’s agreed, eh, Haase?”

“As soon as I go to Frankfurt, without fail, Herr Geheimrat.”

And so the two separated, Haase not quite content, for he would have preferred to manage the business himself; but he knew that the fattest pigs squeal the loudest for food. The Geheimrat, however, was perfectly content; he had not only learned what he wanted to know, he had also done a little business. However rich a man may be, he never feels he is rich enough. Forester Kniebusch, though, was very much astonished at the indifference with which his surly master heard about his unsuccessful search of the crayfish ponds. And still more astonished was he that Herr von Teschow knew all about the readjustment of the mortgage and was even interceding on Haase’s behalf, asking for him to be allowed to pay two weeks later. To this Kniebusch willingly agreed; but all the more obstinate did he prove when the Geheimrat wanted to discover how Haase had been moved to such an unheard-of concession.

The forester swore by all that was holy, his pale blue eyes becoming even bluer and more honest, that Haase was a thoroughly decent man and had done what was right out of sheer decency. “And as a matter of fact it should have been sixty hundredweights of rye, Herr Geheimrat, but I’m not so particular, like Haase.”

“Kniebusch!” cried the old gentleman in a rage, “you can’t pull a hunchback through a lattice fence! Where money begins, decency stops—and now you two old rogues want …”

But no, the forester stuck to it! His forehead was dripping with sweat, and his tone became so sincere and ingenuous that it smelled of lies and deceit for ten miles against the wind. And it must be said that the Kniebusch who had always been subservient to his master had never so impressed Herr von Teschow as did the Kniebusch who was obviously telling him a pack of lies.

“Well, I never!” said the old gentleman when he was alone again. “My Kniebusch is getting on. But just wait! What one won’t tell, the other will babble—and I’ll eat my hat if I don’t worm everything out of Haase this evening.”

But in this he was mistaken: the magistrate kept as mum as the forester, to the old gentleman’s surprise. For such a thing had never happened before.

To be sure, he did not yet eat his hat on that account. The Geheimrat was not one to give up hope so easily.

VIII

Studmann and Pagel had taken leave of their fair companion outside her home, and the villagers had seen with astonishment that these suspicious gentlemen from Berlin had not simply passed on with a nod, as was usually done with a farm girl, but had shaken her hand properly, as if she were a real lady. The older one, with the egg-shaped head, had raised his cap. The younger was not wearing one.

Admiration for Sophie, who seemed to the villagers like a butterfly which has emerged dazzling and gay from its dull chrysalis, had immeasurably risen. What her clothes had begun (and the journey with the Rittmeister) was completed by this formal leave-taking. Mothers no longer found it necessary to admonish their urchins to behave themselves with Sophie—“She’s a real lady now!” Henceforth she was as safe from their mischievous tricks as, say, the young Fräulein in the Villa. None of them wanted to get into trouble with the gentlemen from Berlin, who might be detectives. And the gentlemen had gone on their way without any inkling that they had achieved the isolation in the village of a dangerous enemy.

Räder was waiting for them in the office. Madam would like to speak to Herr von Studmann at a quarter to seven.

Herr von Studmann, glancing at his watch, saw that it was a quarter past seven already. He looked at Räder inquiringly. But the servant did not move a muscle or utter a word.

“Well, I’ll go right away, Pagel,” said Studmann. “Don’t hold up supper because of me; you’d better begin.”

Wolfgang Pagel remained alone in the office. He did not begin his supper, however, but paced up and down, contentedly smoking his cigarette and glancing every now and again through the wide-open windows at the green park loud with the song of birds.

As is the way with all young men, he didn’t think about his situation. He just went to and fro, smoking, moving between light and shadow. Nothing weighed on him, and he desired nothing. If he had thought about his situation and summed it up in the shortest way, he would have said he was—almost—happy.

On closer examination he would perhaps have discovered a slight feeling of emptiness, like the convalescent who has survived a life-threatening illness and hasn’t yet been counted among the living. He’d survived serious danger, but still had no purpose in life; indeed he didn’t fully belong to it. A secret power which wanted him healthy led his actions and, even more, his thoughts. Quite unlike Herr von Studmann, he was not interested in whatever lay behind things; he was only interested in the exterior. He instinctively defended himself against having to worry. He didn’t look at rental contracts and made no painful calculations about rent levels. He considered old Herr von Teschow a good-natured, bushy-bearded old man and didn’t want to know about his cunning and sinister intentions. He was fully satisfied by the simple, tangible life-tasks—going out into the field, the stoking up of the barley, and the deep, dreamless sleep that comes from extreme physical exhaustion. He was carefree like a convalescent, superficial like a convalescent, and still felt, without being clear about it, again like a convalescent, that frightening hint of what he had only barely escaped from.

Tomorrow they would begin gathering in the sheaves again—excellent! They could, of course, have gathered them in today, as all the farms in the neighborhood were doing; but the old lady in the Manor (he had not yet seen her) was supposed to be against working on Sunday. Good. Studmann had planned something for this evening; what it was he didn’t know, but it was bound to be pleasant. Everything was pleasant here. He hoped Studmann would soon return. Wolfgang didn’t like to be alone. He felt best in the midst of people.

Thoughtfully he came to a stop in front of the pinewood bookshelf, where the black annual volumes of laws and decrees stood in long rows. Row upon row, volume upon volume, year upon year they decreed, proclaimed, threatened, regulated and punished from the beginning of time to the end of the world, and yet every individual continually battered his skull against this world of law and order.

Pagel lifted down one of the oldest volumes. From the spotty brown paper a decree spoke to him, forbidding that a servant or inmate be given more than six score crayfish a week to eat. He laughed. Today bathers were chased from the ponds, thus protecting the crayfish from the people; in those days people were protected from the crayfish!

He put the volume back in its place, and just below his eye-level was the top edge of another row of volumes of the official District Gazette. Out of one of them peeped the corner of a sheet of paper. He seized it with two fingers and found he held a piece of typewriting paper only a quarter covered with typing. “Dearest! My dearest darling! My only one!”

He glanced at the volume from which he had taken it. It was the Gazette for the year 1900. Pagel felt reassured and read on with a smile, tasting something of the charm which clings to love letters of a century ago, the letters of lovers whose voices have died away, whose love is extinguished, who lie cold in their graves. He read down to the name “Violet.”

That was no common name in Germany; until recently he had come across it only in books. But he had heard it frequently in the last few days, usually in the form “Vi.” In some families, however, names are handed down.… He rubbed his finger cautiously over the typescript. It was fresh! The fingertip showed a faint smear.

Tearing the cover from the typewriter, he typed the words “Dearest! My dearest darling! My only one!”—with repugnance. He, too, had once heard those similar words and did not like being reminded of them. There was no doubt about it. The letter had been typed on this machine, and very recently: the capital E was defective.…

His first impulse was to destroy the letter; his next, to put it back in the Gazette. He didn’t want to know anything of this affair.

But steady, old chap, steady! he thought. This Vi is very young—sixteen, perhaps only fifteen. She won’t like her letters lying about in an office. I ought … Pagel put the letter in his inside pocket. That was no mistrust of Studmann, but Pagel was determined to read this letter only after he had considered everything in detail. Perhaps he wouldn’t even mention it to him. In any case he must be clear about everything first. It was not pleasant; he would have liked to have continued walking up and down in his office without a thought in the world. But that’s life. It doesn’t ask if it suits us. We’re already engaged in it.

So Pagel went thoughtfully up and down his office, smoking. (If only Studmann doesn’t suddenly turn up!)

First question: Was the letter really a letter? No, it was the carbon copy of a letter. Second question: Would the sender have made a copy? Very improbable. Firstly, it wasn’t the sort of letter which is easily written on a typewriter—a thing like that had to be written by hand if it wasn’t to look utterly idiotic. Secondly, it was very improbable that Fräulein Violet would have chosen the office to write her love letters in. Thirdly, she would never keep the carbon copy there. And why make a copy at all? Conclusion: It was therefore, in all probability, the carbon copy of a copy of a letter of Fräulein Vi’s. (One could leave till later the consideration: Where was the copy itself?)

Third question: Could the recipient have made a copy and carbon for himself? There seemed to be no point in his making a copy, though. Because the recipient would have the original! No, it was quite clear—an unauthorized person was responsible. And it ought not to be difficult to find out who. This third party must have had regular access to the office, otherwise he would not have been able to type or keep anything there. No, there could be no doubt about it. It could only have been that ugly little fellow called Black Meier.

And Wolfgang now recalled Meier’s nocturnal departure, his waking up in a fright, his “He wants to shoot me.” They had thought it was a question of jealousy involving that chubby-cheeked poultry maid, and the Rittmeister had accepted this explanation. So he, too, had no inkling of the real truth. Yes, there was something mysterious and dangerous about the whole affair—although Meier, of course, was a coward who had only imagined he was going to be shot. One didn’t murder people so lightly because of an intercepted love letter.

And there still remained the question whether he ought to say nothing and replace this carbon copy—better still, destroy it; or whether he ought to speak about it—with Studmann, perhaps. Or with the passionate little Fräulein Vi. One must not forget, either, that the absconding Herr Meier was carrying another copy around with him. But what, after all, could such a copy prove? Anyone might make up a thing like that on the typewriter. It mentions no name that refers to anybody.

All the same, this business could upset an inexperienced young girl. But perhaps she already knew that this letter had been intercepted and copied. Its intended recipient must have known about it—how else would Meier have been so frightened that night by a rustling at the window? Yes, thought Pagel, if I only knew exactly what Meier cried out then. Was it “He wants to shoot me” or “He wants to shoot me again?” Shooting again would mean that Herr Meier had already attempted something like blackmail—one doesn’t copy a letter of this sort for purely literary reasons—and that he had received a rather violent answer, perhaps with gun in hand.…

Pagel racked his brains, but he could not remember what Meier had actually called out.

Herr von Studmann entered, returning from his meeting with Frau von Prackwitz. Pagel glanced at Studmann’s face. Even Herr von Studmann looked rather lost in thought. Now he could ask him what Meier had shouted back then, but he thought better of it. Such an inquiry would provoke counter-questions. Perhaps he would have to reveal the copy of this letter—and he didn’t want to do that. Its recipient, whoever that might be, had been warned, and Fräulein Vi presumably too. So Pagel decided for the moment to say nothing at all. He had no wish to get into trouble by letting himself be sucked into love intrigues. Nothing would be missed if this letter stayed hidden for the moment, namely, in his pocket.

IX

Studmann was so lost in thought that he did not notice Pagel had not yet eaten, and when the young man poured himself out a cup of tea and took some bread, he looked up. “Eating a second supper, Pagel?”

“I’ve not eaten yet, old man.”

“Oh, so I see. I’m sorry! I was just thinking about something.” Studmann relapsed into thoughtfulness.

After a while Pagel asked cautiously: “What’s on your mind?”

Studmann answered with surprising violence. “The peace of the fields is a bigger fraud than we supposed, Pagel. These people have their troubles. But I expect you’d rather I didn’t bother you with them—” He broke off.

Herr von Studmann also had a letter in his pocket, a letter which Frau von Prackwitz regarded as a rather harmless business communication. To Herr von Studmann, however, it seemed crafty and underhanded—he would rather have been carrying a hand grenade in his pocket. But he was much more preoccupied with something else. Frau von Prackwitz was still a good-looking woman; she had very beautiful eyes, and there had been tears in those eyes, tears which had not made them any the less beautiful. A woman who must always control herself in the presence of a hot-headed husband and a wayward daughter, who must never let her household notice anything, must be able to let herself go before a chosen confidant. This absence of restraint had only made Frau Eva the more charming. A warm sweetness, a helplessness which was all the more seductive in so mature a woman, had captivated von Studmann.

I must help the poor creature! he thought. What does that kid think she’s doing, carrying on in this way! Why, she can’t be more than fifteen!

At this moment Pagel, likewise wrapped in thought, looked up from his cheese. “How old do you reckon Fräulein Violet is?”

“What?” cried Herr von Studmann, dropping his knife and fork with a loud clatter on his plate. “What makes you ask, Pagel? What’s it got to do with you?”

“Good Lord!” said Pagel, taken aback. “I can ask, can’t I? All right, then—not!”

“I was just thinking of something else,” explained Studmann, a little embarrassed.

“It looked damn well as if you had just been thinking of her age, too!” grinned Pagel.

“Not a bit. Little girls like that don’t mean a thing to me—I’m not twenty-two, like you, Pagel.”

“Twenty-three.”

“All right. Well, it’s now just after eight. I think it’ll be a good idea if we toddle along and indulge in a drink at one of the two local inns.”

“Fine. And how old do you think Fräulein Violet is?”

“Sixteen. Seventeen.”

“Much too high! She’s got such soft curves, it’s deceptive. Fifteen at the most.”

“Anyway, keep your hands off her, Herr Pagel!” cried Studmann with a fierce glint in his eyes.

“Why, of course,” said Pagel with astonishment. “Heavens, Studmann, you’re getting like the sphinx itself. Well, about the inns?”

Somewhat more calmly Studmann outlined his plan of getting to know the innkeeper, of becoming regular patrons, and thus trying to discover as much as possible from the village gossip. “Neulohe is much too big. Even if we were to run round night after night looking for field thieves, we might still never find one. And our Rittmeister wants to see results. So a hint from the innkeeper would be worth its weight in gold.”

“True!” agreed Pagel. “Are we taking a gun with us?”

“No use doing that tonight; tonight we just want to get pally. But if you’d like to take one along! You still want to be in full war paint. I dragged one of those things around for over five years.”

It was half-past eight when the two finally set off. The sun had gone down, but it was scarcely dusk even in the shade of the trees. The road to the village was full of people: children ran about, old people sat on little benches outside their doors, the younger folk hung about in groups, a girl dragged a restive goat into its shed. When the two men passed by, the people fell silent, the children stopped running about, everyone stared after them.

“Come along, Studmann,” suggested Pagel, “let’s go on the outside of the village. We’ll find our way somehow. This being stared at gets me down. And anyway they don’t all have to know that the farm officials are going boozing.”

“Very well,” said Studmann, and they turned into a narrow path between the windowless gable walls of two laborers’ houses, and came to a ridge. To the left lay deserted orchards, to the right stretched a flourishing potato field. They came to a churned-up cart track; on the right it led straight into the fields, on the left it approached the last houses in the village. The air was turning gray, one could feel the darkness coming on, the birds had become silent. From the village echoed a laugh which died away.

As Pagel and Studmann strolled along, each in a rut of the track, they encountered a troop of people, some six or seven, men and women, who went by quietly in single file, baskets on their backs, along the grassy strip between the ruts.

“Good evening!” said Pagel loudly.

There was a muffled response, and the ghostly procession was gone.

The two went on a few steps, uncertain, then stopped as if by agreement. They turned round and gazed after the silent wanderers. Yes, it was true, they hadn’t gone to the village, but had turned into the path between the fields.

“Well!” said Pagel.

“That was queer!” replied Studmann.

“Where are they going to at this hour?”

“With baskets?”

“To steal!”

“They might be going over there into the forest to gather wood.”

“Gather wood—at night!”

“Well, let’s give up our drink and errand, and follow them.”

“Yes, but wait a moment. Let them get over the crest first.”

“I didn’t recognize any of them,” said Pagel thoughtfully.

“It’s getting dark; you could hardly distinguish their faces.”

“It would be marvelous if we caught six first go.”

“Seven,” said Studmann. “Three men and four women. Well, let’s go.”

But after the first few steps Studmann stopped again. “We haven’t thought this out, Pagel. Even if we catch the people we won’t know them. How are we to find out their names? They can tell us what they like.”

“While you’re holding a general staff meeting here, Studmann, the people will slip through our fingers,” urged Pagel impatiently.

“To be well informed is half the battle, Pagel.”

“Well?”

“You go to the village and get some old inhabitant who knows everyone.…”

“Kowalewski? The overseer?”

“Yes, that’s right. He’s a bit slack; it’ll be good for him to come more into conflict with his men; it’ll make him sharper. They’ll be in a rage with him if he has to name them.”

But Pagel had long stopped listening to the opinions of a former reception manager of a city hotel in a period of inflation. He was already running at a steady trot toward the village. It did him good to run. It had been an eternity since he had done anything like this. Not since his time in the Baltic. Since then, he’d always moved as slowly as possible. It was a long day, waiting for play to begin. Now he was glad to see how efficiently his body worked. The mild, somewhat cool damp air filled his lungs, and he was glad that he had such a broad chest; despite his running he inhaled deeply and slowly and pleasurably. In Berlin he had sometimes had a stitch in lungs or heart, and as is the way with young people who have never really been ill, he had then imagined some serious malady. Well, thank God, it had been nothing. He ran like Nurmi. I’m in good condition, he thought cheerfully.

In the village he slowed down to a walk, so as not to arouse attention. Nevertheless, his disappearance into Kowalewski’s house attracted a lot of notice. “See that!” they said. “An hour and a half ago he was saying bye-bye to Sophie, and now he’s calling on her again. He’s got rid of that old egg-face he had with him, of course. Well, what do you expect of a Berliner? And he’s a strong fellow, too. Sophie’s also become a bit of a townee—if you’re used to cream, you want cream!”

Unfortunately the young man came out of Kowalewski’s house, accompanied only by the old man, immediately. He probably hadn’t seen Sophie, who went on singing upstairs. Hastily the two left the village, Kowalewski keeping to the young man’s side, half a pace behind, like a well-trained dog. When Pagel had burst into his Sunday quiet, merely saying: “Come along with me, Kowalewski,” the old overseer had followed without a question. A poor man has not to reason why.

Studmann was waiting where the path turned into the fields.

“Good evening, Kowalewski. Glad you’ve come. Has Pagel told you? No? Good. Where does this path lead to?”

“To our outfields, sir, and then into the Geheimrat’s forest.”

“Any peasants’ fields there?”

“No, only our land. Lots five and seven. And on the other side lots four and six.”

“Good. If you had met six or seven people here half an hour ago, silent, with baskets that looked empty on their backs—what would you have thought, Kowalewski?”

Kowalewski pointed. “Going over there?”

“Yes, over there, toward the outfields.”

Kowalewski pointed. “Coming from over there?”

“Yes, Kowalewski, that’s about where they’ll have come from, not from the village.”

“Then they were from Altlohe, sir.”

“And what do Altlohe people want on our field? Now, at nighttime?”

“Well, sir, there’s nothing on the potatoes yet. But there are the beetroots; perhaps they want to pick the leaves. And then further over is the wheat which we cut on Friday and Saturday—perhaps they want a few ears.”

“Stealing, eh, Kowalewski?”

“They need the beetroot leaves for goats’ fodder, nearly all of them have a goat. And if the wheat’s nice and dry, you can grind it in a coffee grinder—they learned that in the war.”

“Very good. Well, let’s follow them. You come with us, Kowalewski. But I suppose you don’t like to?”

“It’s not for me to say, sir.”

“You needn’t have any more to do with it, Kowalewski, than just to give me a dig in the ribs if one of the people tells me a false name.”

“Yes, sir.”

“But I suppose they’ll have it in for you, Kowalewski?”

“Even if they’re Altlohe people, they know I have to do what I’m ordered. They understand that much.”

“But you don’t like admitting that they are stealing, Kowalewski, do you?”

“You see, sir, it’s bad if you’ve got a goat and have no fodder for it. And it’s still worse if you’ve got no flour for the children’s soup.”

“But Kowalewski!” Studmann stopped abruptly, then went on into the growing darkness. “How are you going to preserve order if people simply steal what they need? That would ruin the farm, wouldn’t it?”

Kowalewski kept obstinately silent, but Studmann was unyielding. “Well, Kowalewski?”

“That’s no sort of order, sir, if you’ll excuse me, when people work and yet can’t give their children anything to eat.”

“Why don’t they buy things? If they work, they must have money to spend.”

“They’ve only got paper money, sir. Everybody sticks tight to his goods and won’t take the paper.”

“I see! But still you must agree, Kowalewski, that the farm can’t carry on if everyone takes what he needs. You want your wages when they’re due, but where are they to come from if there are no profits? Take it from me, the Rittmeister doesn’t find it too easy.”

“The old Geheimrat always did well; he made a lot of money.”

“But perhaps the Rittmeister has more difficulties—he has to pay the old man rent.”

“The people from Altlohe don’t take any notice of that.”

“You mean they don’t care?”

“No, they don’t care.”

“And do you think it right for them to steal, Kowalewski?”

“If a man has no fodder for his goat …” began the obstinate old man again.

“Rubbish! Do you think it right, Kowalewski?”

“I wouldn’t do it, sir. But of course I get my corn from the farm and potatoes and free pasture for a cow …”

“Do you think it right, Kowalewski?” Herr von Studmann almost screamed. Pagel began to laugh.

“What are you laughing at, Pagel? Don’t be an idiot! Here’s an old man, who himself has never stolen, advocating the right to steal from his own employer. Have you ever stolen yourself, Kowalewski?”

It was laughable. Herr von Studmann screamed at the old man almost as Bailiff Meier used to. But this did not intimidate Kowalewski.

“Do you mean what you call stealing, sir, or what we call stealing?”

“Is there any difference?” growled Studmann. But he knew there was.

Pagel intervened. “May I put a question, Herr von Studmann?”

“If you like. This warped morality seems to amuse you very much, Herr Pagel!”

“It’s now very dark,” said Pagel cheerfully, “and Herr Kowalewski knows that neither of us is familiar with the fields. Tell me, Kowalewski, where does our beetroot field lie?”

“About five minutes’ walk ahead and then to the right over the rye stubble. You can see it in the starlight.”

“And the wheat field?”

“About three or four minutes’ walk along the path. Then we’ll be right on it.”

“Well, Kowalewski,” said Pagel mischievously, “if you think that these people have a right to take their fodder, why don’t you lead us a bit zigzag in the dark. You know we haven’t the faintest notion where things are!”

“Pagel!” cried Studmann.

“I can’t do that, sir. That wouldn’t be right. If you tell me to do something, I can’t lead you around by the nose.”

“Well, then,” said Pagel with satisfaction, “now we’ve got the thing clear. You believe in what’s right, Kowalewski. And what Herr von Studmann does is right. But what the people from Altlohe do is not right. You understand what they’re doing, but you don’t find it right, you don’t find it proper …”

“Well, sir, that may be. But when the goat hasn’t any fodder?”

“Stop!” shrieked Studmann. “Your success didn’t last long, Pagel!”

The stars glimmered in the almost black vault of heaven, and they saw round them nothing but gradations of black and gray. After a while, Pagel began to speak again. Something had occurred to him, and that something made sense. Because he sensed that the rather didactic and pedantic Studmann had developed an anger for the soft Kowalewski, who only thought and felt in a vague and confused way. Pagel felt the urge to try to reconcile Herr von Studmann with Sophie’s father.

“You know,” he said, “Herr Kowalewski is rather worried about our harvest, Studmann. He says we’re three weeks behind.”

“That’s so!” said the overseer.

“Sounds bad,” growled Studmann.

“We’ve got to have men as quickly as possible, Kowalewski thinks. And since the Rittmeister couldn’t dig any up in Berlin, Kowalewski thinks we ought to have a prison gang.”

“Me, sir?” asked the old man, still more astonished.

“Yes, your daughter told me today that you thought since the prison’s half empty on account of the number of gangs they’ve already sent out, we’d better get a move on, otherwise we’ll be left empty-handed.”

“Me, sir?” asked the old man still more astonished.

“Well,” said Herr von Studmann, “I’ve already spoken to the Rittmeister about it. But he thinks it involves a lot of expense, especially as the convicts know nothing of farming. So you’re in favor of it, Kowalewski?”

“Me? No, sir. They’re just a lot of criminals.”

“Quite so. Men who have stolen. But Herr Pagel just said that you told him …”

“His daughter Sophie, Studmann.”

“Your daughter, then. Your daughter probably got it from you.”

“From me, sir?”

“Now don’t start acting the fool again. All right, Kowalewski, I shan’t bother you again.” He stopped. “How much farther have we to go?” he asked very crossly.

“Here to the right, sir, is the rye stubble. If we cross that we’ll come to the beetroot field.”

“Do you think the people are really there?” Herr von Studmann suddenly felt qualms.

“Our beetroots aren’t much this year; we transplanted them a bit too late. I think if there are any people they’ll be on the wheat.”

“And the wheat is straight ahead, isn’t it?”

“Another three or four minutes.”

“You know what, Pagel—why should we all three make the detour? You dash across the rye stubble, check up on the beetroots, and then come after us as quickly as you can.”

“Right, Herr von Studmann.”

“And since you probably won’t meet anyone there, let me have the gun. Thanks. Well, good hunting, Pagel!”

“Same to you, Studmann.”

With his hands in his pockets, Pagel sauntered cross the stubble, his glance fixed on the starry sky rather than on the ground. The footsteps of the others had already died away. Through his shoes he felt the cold dew brushed from the stubble. For the first time he was glad he did not have to be with Herr von Studmann. Schoolmaster, nursemaid! But he immediately regretted this thought. Studmann was really a decent fellow, and his pedantry was merely the shadow cast by a perfect reliability, a quality that had almost vanished today. It’ll only make things difficult for him, he thought. Now I’m just the opposite, I’m too lax, I let things slide. This isn’t a hotel business with highly experienced headwaiters and cunning elevator boys—good old Studmann will have to adapt himself. I, on the other hand—well, take this case …

He looked around. The field of rye stubble stretched, gray-white, in front of him. The ground beneath his feet seemed to sink a little. The dark starless patch which he saw over there against the sky was the beetroot field, perhaps.

Take this case, he thought. I ought to get to the bottom of it. Me, sir? No, Kowalewski wasn’t being stupid. He really didn’t know anything about it. But why should Sophie try to fool me? What interest’s she got in a prison gang, to make her tell me that tale? Oh, what nonsense! There’s probably some very simple explanation. I’ve enough with this silly love letter in my pocket. I don’t want any more worries. I’ll do my work and worry about nothing. The beetroots …

He stood still. Only another fifty or sixty paces separated him from the beetroot field, which rose like a hill against the starry sky. But dark though the field was, he could make out darker points moving on it. Sometimes a clear echo resounded when a knife struck a stone. Darker points! Pagel tried to count them. Six or seven? Sixteen? Twenty-six? It could have been over thirty! A swarm of locusts, a flying plague, attacking the fields at night …

“If the goat has no fodder …” But these weren’t hungry goats. This was a robber gang—and must be caught!

Pagel’s hand went to his hip pocket. Then he remembered that he had no weapon. Walking more and more slowly, he wondered if he ought to run back and call the others. But he, who had been able to recognize the thieves against the dark background, must long since have been noticed by them, standing out as he did against the lighter rye stubble. If he went for help, they would be gone! The fact that they so calmly saw him approach proved that they thought he was one of them. Or they thought there was no need to be afraid of one man. That way it’s also probably going to go wrong. But in making all these rash decisions he didn’t even hesitate once.

Step by step he advanced, perhaps a little slowly, but not through fear. Now he was quite close. His feet had left the crackling rye stubble; the beetroot leaves hung over his shoes like wet rags. Soon he would have to call out to them.

If I only catch a few, six or eight … he thought. And an idea came to him. Wrenching his jacket open, he snatched the silver cigarette case from his waistcoat pocket and raised it. “Hands up, or I’ll shoot,” he roared.

The case glittered in the starlight.

If only they see it! he thought. If they only see it straight away! It all depends on the first moment. If those near me put their hands up, the others will do the same.

“Hands up!” he shouted again, as loudly as he could. “I’ll put a bullet into the man who doesn’t put his hands up!”

A woman gave a little scream. A man’s very deep voice said: “Here, what’s all this!” But they raised their hands. Scattered over the dark field, the shadowy horde stood, their hands reaching to the starry sky.

I must shout as loud as possible, he thought with feverish excitement, so that they’ll hear in the wheat field. If only they come quick enough!

And he roared at a non-existent man in the rear that, if he lowered his hands again, he’d have a bullet through him. He was gripping the cigarette case so tightly that its sharp edge cut painfully into his flesh. The people, so many around one man, stood like stiff dolls. This attitude did not necessarily mean surrender to fate. It might also have been a threat, and he was overwhelmed by the helplessness of his position: he was holding up thirty people with a ridiculous cigarette case. Only one of them needed to go for him, and they would all be on him. He was not afraid they would beat him to death—but he would be thrashed, the women would tear his hair out, he would become a figure of ridicule, unable to show himself in the village again …

How much time had passed? Do the seconds pass slowly? The minutes? How long had he been standing here, with pretended power among the powerless, who only need remember their strength to humble him? He didn’t know. Time passed so slowly. He stopped shouting and listened. Weren’t they coming yet?

Someone coughed, someone else moved. The man with the deep voice, quite close to Pagel, spoke: “How much longer are we to stand like this, sir? My arms are beginning to ache. What’s going to happen?”

“Be quiet!” shouted Pagel. “You’re all to be quiet, otherwise you’ll get a bullet!” He had to keep saying that. Since he couldn’t even fire a warning shot he must convince them by words of his dangerousness.

But now rescue came! Across the rye stubble Studmann came running, with Kowalewski following.

Breathless, as if it were he who had been running so quickly, Pagel yelled: “Shoot! For God’s sake shoot, Studmann, shoot into the air and show them that we can! I’ve been standing here for ten minutes with my cigarette case in my hand.”

“Good work, Pagel,” said Studmann—and a shot, strangely small and dry under the expanse of heaven, cracked over the heads of the people.

A few laughed. The deep voice said: “Look out, they’re throwing crackers about!” More laughed.

“Form up in twos!” called Studmann. “Get your baskets on your backs! We’re going to the farm, where we shall take your names. Then everyone can go home. Pagel, you lead the way; I’ll bring up the rear. We’d better leave old Kowalewski out of it; he can shuffle along behind. I hope they obey. We can’t go shooting people on account of a few beetroot leaves.”

“Why not?” asked Pagel.

The roles were changed. Pagel still trembled from the excitement; having felt himself threatened, he regarded his supposed threateners as bad lots, almost criminals. Every measure against them seemed justified to him. Studmann, who had seen how the thirty had let themselves be held up by a cigarette case, inferred therefrom the harmlessness of their activities. It was all a mere trifle.

Neither Studmann nor Pagel was right. The men from Altlohe were certainly no criminals. Yet they were just as certainly determined not to starve, but to get their food where they could find it, since they couldn’t buy anything. They accepted a first surprisal almost good-humoredly. A second might make them vicious. They were hungry—and saw the huge farm where abundance grew. The smallest fraction of the harvest, a little corner of one field, could still their hunger, silence their ever-gnawing worry. The Rittmeister didn’t know how much a goat gobbled up, they said. What difference did a sack of potatoes make to him? This spring he had sent a thousand hundredweights of frozen potatoes to the starch factory. Last year the rye had been so wet when they brought it in that they couldn’t thresh it. It was all rotten—afterwards it had been thrown on the manure heap!

As long as they had been able to purchase their requirements with their wages, they had bought and not stolen. A few lazy rogues had always done a bit of stealing, but they were rogues and regarded as such. But now the people couldn’t buy anything—and there had been the war with its thousands of regulations which no one could ever remember, and its ration cards which only enabled one to go hungry. Many of the men had been at the front, where it had not been a disgrace to “forage” what you needed. The moral standard had gradually grown laxer; it was no longer thought shameful to break the law, unless one were caught doing it. “Don’t let yourself get caught!”—this increasingly popular saying was an indication of the decay in morals. Everything was topsy-turvy. It was still war. Despite the armistice, the Frenchman was still the enemy. Now he had marched into the Ruhr; horrible things were said to be taking place there.

How could these people think otherwise than they did—behave otherwise? When they passed by the Villa and heard the plates rattling they said: “He doesn’t starve! Do we do less work? No, we work more! Then why should we starve and not him?” From this thought sprang hatred. If they had heard the plates rattling like that ten years ago they would have said: “He eats roast lamb, and our salt meat’s like straw.” That was envy. Envy is not a feeling that makes a man pugnacious—but strong haters become strong fighters!

This time they had been caught—caught for the first time; so they went along quietly. After five minutes they were chatting and laughing. It was just a night adventure. What could happen to them? A few beetroot leaves!

They spoke to Wolfgang. “What are you going to do now, sir? A few beetroot leaves! You write our names down and report us to the police for field stealing; that used to cost three marks—today it costs a few million. Well? By the time we pay our fine it’ll be nothing, not a penny—we’ll be able to pay it with the smallest bank note! Is that why you have to go popping off guns?”

“Quiet!” ordered Pagel angrily. “Next time we won’t shoot into the air.”

“You want to do a man in for the sake of a few beetroot leaves, do you? That’s the sort you are! So long as we know! Other people can also shoot.”

“Shut up!” called the others. “There’s no need to say things like that.”

“Quiet!” cried Pagel sharply. He thought he had seen figures on the path. Could it have been the Rittmeister with his wife? Impossible. He would have said something.

In passable order they approached the farm. Now curses were raised when the people had to empty their baskets. They had thought their fine would have enabled them to take the leaves home.

“What shall we give our goats?”

“An animal like that won’t understand. He wants his fodder!”

“We’ll have to go foraging again!”

“Be quiet!”

Their good humor was gone; they said their names crossly, aggressively, snappishly, defiantly. But they said them. Kowalewski had no need to do any rib-digging.

“You won’t get me next time!” declared one.

“Write Georg Schwarz II, bailiff,” said another. “Don’t forget the II. I don’t want my cousin to get mixed up with such a bloody business.”

“Next,” said Studmann. “Pagel, hurry them up a bit, will you? Next!” Till at last he could say: “Good night, Kowalewski. Oh, and thanks very much. I hope this won’t cause you any unpleasantness.”

“No—not me. Good night.”

Studmann and Pagel were left alone. The desk was untidy with papers, the nicely waxed floor was dirty and covered with sand, which grated at every step.

Studmann got up from the desk, glanced curtly at Pagel. “Actually we set forth in good spirits at half-past eight, didn’t we?”

“Yes, it was a nice walk, too, despite your quarrel with the overseer.”

“Oh, you can’t make him understand. Nor these others. It’s just like the hotel in Berlin: they consider everything we do as low-down trickery.”

“You mustn’t ask too much of them, Studmann. After all, they can’t help it.”

“No, these can’t, but …”

“But?”

Studmann did not answer. He was leaning out of the window. After a while, he turned back into the office. “No, he’s not coming,” he said quietly.

“Who’s not coming? Are you waiting for someone?”

Studmann waved the question aside. Then he recollected himself. “You played the chief part in this success, Pagel. I thought the Rittmeister would come to thank us, or rather you.”

“The Rittmeister?”

“Didn’t you see him?”

“I thought … on the path … was it really him?”

“Yes, it was. He tried to avoid us. I spoke to him, but he obviously felt awkward. He didn’t want the people to see him.”

“Why not?” asked Pagel, astonished. “He wants us to put an end to this field stealing, doesn’t he?”

“Of course! But we have to do it. We, Pagel! Not him; he doesn’t want to have anything to do with it.”

Pagel whistled thoughtfully through his teeth.

“I’m afraid Pagel, we’ve got a boss who wants strict officials so that he can appear all the milder. I’m afraid we won’t get much support from Herr von Prackwitz.” Studmann stared once more at the window. “I thought at least he’d come here. But if not, all right! If we have to depend on each other, we can still carry on, eh?”

“Splendidly.”

“No getting annoyed with one another, always say what’s on your mind! No secrets, always tell everything, every trifle. To some extent we’re in a besieged fortress, and I’m afraid it will be difficult to hold Neulohe for the Rittmeister. Anything wrong, Pagel?”

Pagel withdrew his hand from his pocket. It’s not my secret, he thought. I must speak to the young Fräulein first.

“No, nothing,” he said.

Newspapers, newspapers …

People, be it in Neulohe or Altlohe, in Berlin or anywhere else in the country, bought newspapers. They read these newspapers. More people bought newspapers than at any previous time, to find out the dollar rate—as yet there was no broadcasting. And as they turned the pages in their search for these figures running into millions, the events of the day, whether they liked it or not, leaped up at them in huge headlines. Many did not want to read them. For seven years they had been fed with ever-larger headlines, they wanted to hear no more of the world. The world brought nothing good. They wanted as much as possible to live alone. Alone. But there was no help for it; they could not free themselves from their time.

Much happened in these hot harvest days. People read that Cuno’s Government was tottering; it was said to have abetted usurers, to have been responsible for the food shortage. The French still occupied the Ruhr with their black troops, not a man was working there, not a single factory stack was smoking. This was called passive resistance, and people thought they could finance this by new taxes, new duties, to be paid by property through devaluation. In the period between July 26th and August 8th the dollar rose from 760,000 to 4,860,000 marks! The bank rate had been raised from eighteen to thirty per cent.

Despite resistance, however, despite the protests of England and Italy that French action was unjust, France continued its war in peace time. Difficulties must be created for Germany, it declared; otherwise she would not pay. Up to date these difficulties included: over a hundred killed, ten death sentences, half a dozen sentences of life imprisonment, the taking of hostages, bank robbery, the expulsion of 110,000 people from house and home. Germany might break down, but pay she must!

People read of these things in the papers. They did not see, but they felt them. These things entered into men, became part of them, affected their sleeping and waking, their dreaming and drinking, their eating and living.

A desperate people in a desperate position; every despairing individual behaving desperately.…

Confused, chaotic times.