Wolf Among Wolves

Chapter Two

Berlin Slumps

I

Many streets round Schlesische Bahnhof are sinister. In 1923, to the dreariness of the facades, the evil smells, the misery of that barren stone desert, there was added a widespread shamelessness, the child of despair or indifference, lechery born of the itch to heighten a sense of living in a world which, in a mad rush, was carrying everyone toward an obscure fate.

Rittmeister von Prackwitz, in an over-elegant light-gray suit made to measure by a London tailor, looked almost too conspicuous with his lean figure, snow-white hair above a deeply tanned face, dark bushy eyebrows and bright eyes. He walked with fastidiously upright carriage, careful not to come into contact with others, his gaze directed to an imaginary point far down the street, so that he need not see anything or anybody. He would have liked to transport his hearing also, to, say, the rustling harvest-ripe cornfields in Neulohe, where reaping had scarcely started; he had tried not to listen to scorn and envy and greed calling after him.

It was as if he were back in the unhappy days of November 1918, when he and twenty comrades—the remainder of his squadron—went marching down a Berlin street in the neighborhood of the Reichstag and suddenly, from window, roof and dark entry, bullets had pelted down on the small party; an irregular, wild, cowardly sniping. They had marched on then as he now did, chin pushed out, lips compressed, staring at an imaginary point at the end of the street, a point they would possibly never reach.

The Rittmeister had the feeling that, in the five years of lunacy which followed, he had in reality always been marching on like this, eyes fixed on an imaginary point, waking as well as sleeping—because there was no sleeping without dreams during those years. Always a desolate street full of enmity, hatred, baseness, vulgarity; and if against all expectation one came to a turning, there opened up only another similar street, with the same hate and the same vulgarity. But there again was that point which had no real existence and was a mere figment of the imagination. Or was that point something which did not exist outside, but within himself, in his very own chest—let him be frank: in his heart? And perhaps he marched on because a man must, without listening to hate and vulgarity, even though from a thousand windows ten thousand evil eyes are watching him, even though he is quite alone—for where were his comrades? Perhaps he marched on because only thus could a man fulfill himself and become what he had to be in this world—himself.

Here in Langestrasse near Schlesische Bahnhof in Berlin, accursed city, Rittmeister von Prackwitz was haunted by the sensation that, although confronted by ten blatant coffee-house signs advertising nothing but brothels, the goal of his march was at hand. He, who much against his will had come here to hunt up at least sixty laborers for the harvest, could soon lower his eyes, stand at ease and feel with the Lord God: “Behold, it was very good.”

Aye, a good, almost a bumper harvest stood in the fields, a harvest which those famished townspeople could very well do with, and he had had to leave it all in the charge of his bailiff, a somewhat dissipated young fellow, and go up to town to bed laborers. It was strange and utterly incomprehensible that the greater the misery in the city, the scarcer the food, and the more the country offered at least a sufficiency, the more people made for the city like moths attracted by a deadly flame.

The Rittmeister burst into a laugh. Yes, indeed, it really looked as if the heavenly rest after the sixth day of creation was near at hand. Or was it a fata Morgana, a mirage of an oasis, seen when thirst became unbearable?

The female in whose face he had unthinkingly laughed emptied behind him a pailful, a barrelful, nay, a whole vatful of filthy abuse. The Rittmeister, however, turned into a shop over which hung a dilapidated signboard with the words: “Berlin Harvesters’ Agency.”

II

The flame rises up and sinks; it is extinguished; happy the hearth that retains the glow. The glow dies down, but there is still warmth.

Wolfgang Pagel sat at the table in his field-gray tunic, now extremely worn and old. His hands rested on the bare oilcloth covering. “Madam Po has scented it,” he whispered, winking and nodding at the door.

“What?” asked Petra. “You’re not going to call Frau Thumann Madam Po, or she will throw us out,” she added.

“That’s certain,” he said. “There won’t be any breakfast today. She’s scented it.”

“Shall I ask her, Wolf?”

“Don’t bother. He who asks won’t get. Let’s wait.”

Wolgang tilted the chair, rocked back and started to whistle: Arise, ye prisoners of starvation.… He was quite unconcerned, unworried. Through the window—the curtain was now drawn—a gleam of sun entered the dreary gray room, or what is called sun in Berlin; all the light which the smoke-blanket lets through. As he rocked to and fro the sun lit up sometimes his wavy hair, sometimes his face with its sparkling gray-green eyes.

Petra, who had on only his shabby summer overcoat dating from pre-war times, looked at him. She was never tired of looking; she admired him. It was a wonder how he managed to wash in a little hand-basin with less than a pint of water and still look as if he scrubbed himself for an hour in a bath. She felt old and used up compared with him, although she was actually a year younger.

Abruptly he stopped whistling and listened to the door. “The enemy approaches. Will there be any coffee? I’m frightfully hungry.”

Petra would have liked to tell him that she, too, had been hungry a long time, for the scanty breakfast with its two rolls had been her only food for days—but no, she didn’t want to tell him that.

The shuffling footsteps in the corridor died away, the outer door slammed. “You see, Peter, Madam Po has merely taken herself to the toilet again. That’s also a sign of the time; all business is transacting in a circuitous manner. Madam Po runs around with her pot.”

He again tilted back the chair, starting to whistle unconcernedly, gaily.

He did not deceive her. She could not understand by a long way all he said, nor did she listen very attentively, even. She was alive to the sound of his voice, its softest vibration, of which he himself was hardly aware; and she could tell that he was not feeling so gay as he would like to appear, nor so unconcerned. If only he would unburden himself; in whom should he confide if not in her? There was no need to feel embarrassed, he did not need to tell her lies, she understood him—well, perhaps not altogether. But she approved of everything in advance and blindly. Forgave everything. Everything? Nonsense, there was nothing to forgive, and even should he start to race at her or to strike her, well, it would have its reason.

Petra Ledig was an illegitimate child, without a father; a little salesgirl later, just tolerated by her now-married mother as long as she handed over her salary to the last halfpenny. But there came a day when her mother said: “With this rubbish you can buy your own food,” and shouted after her: “And where you sleep, that’s your own affair also.”

Petra Ledig (it may be assumed that the pretentious name of Petra was her unknown father’s sole contribution to her equipment for life) was, at twenty-two, no longer a blank page. She had ripened, not in a peaceful atmosphere, but during the war, postwar and inflation. Only too soon she knew what it meant when a gentleman customer in her boot shop touched her lap significantly with his toe. Sometimes she nodded, met this one or that of an evening, after shop hours, and courageously steered her little ship a whole year without floundering. She even managed to pick and choose to a certain extent, her choice being decided not so much by her taste as by her fear of disease. But when the dollar rose too cruelly and all that she had put by for the rent was devalued to almost nothing, then she would parade the streets, in deadly fear of the vice squad. She had made the acquaintance of Wolfgang Pagel during such a stroll.

Wolfgang had had a good evening. He had a little money, he had been drinking a little. At such times he was always cheerful and ready for anything. “Come along, little dark thing, come along!” he had shouted across the street, and something like a race took place between Petra and a mustachioed policeman. But a taxi, a frightful contraption, had carried her off to an evening quite pleasant but really not very different from any other evening.

The morning had come, the gray, desolate morning in the room of an accommodation hotel, which always had such a depressing effect. The sort of occasion when you ask yourself: “What’s the use of it all? Why do I go on living?” As was proper, she had feigned sleep while the gentleman hurriedly dressed, quietly, so as not to wake her. For conversations on the morning after were unpopular and distressing, because you discovered that you had nothing to say to the other person and, more often than not, loathed him. All she had to do was to look through her eyelashes to see whether he put the money for her on the bedside table. Well, he had put the money down. Everything was going as usual, not a word of another meeting, and he was already at the door.

She did not know how it happened or what had come over her, but she sat up in bed and asked in a low and faltering voice: “Would you—would you, sir—oh, may I come with you?”

At first he had not understood and had turned round quite startled. “Excuse me?”

Then he had thought that she, perhaps new to such a situation, was ashamed to pass the proprietress and the porter. He had declared that he was willing to wait for her if she made haste. But while she hurriedly dressed, it appeared that it was not a question so simple as that of leaving, unmolested, the house for the street. She was used to that. (She had made no pretenses from the first moment.) No, she wanted to stay with him altogether. Wouldn’t it be possible? “Oh, please, please!”

Who knows what he was thinking? He was no longer in a hurry, though. He stood there in the gloomy room—it was just that horrible hour, shortly before five in the morning, which gentlemen always choose for leaving, for then they can catch the first streetcar to their lodgings and freshen themselves up before their work; and many pretend to, or actually do, have a nap, so as to leave the bed disturbed.

He drummed with his fingers thoughtfully on the table. With greenish eyes shining out from beneath his lowered brow, he looked contemplatively at her. Did she think he had any money?

No. She hadn’t thought of that. It would be all the same to her.

He was a second lieutenant in the war, and without a pension. Without a job. Without a fixed income. In fact, without any income.

It was all right. That wasn’t her reason for asking.

He did not inquire why she had asked. Indeed, he did not ask any more questions, anything at all. Only later did it strike her that he might have asked a lot of questions, very disagreeable questions. For instance, whether she made a habit of begging men to let her go with them; whether she was expecting a baby; thousands of disgusting things. But he stood there and looked at her. Already she was convinced that he would say “yes.” Ought to. Something very mysterious had urged her to ask him. She had never thought of such a thing before, nor was she at that time the least in love with him. It had been quite an ordinary night.

“ ‘Oh, Constance, is it done?’ ” said he, quoting the title of a popular comedy hit. For the first time she noticed the humorous wrinkles round his eyes, and that he winked when he joked.

“Oh, certainly,” she rejoined.

“All right,” he said, drawling the words. “What is hardly enough for one is barely sufficient for two. Come along. Are you ready?”

It was a strange sensation, descending the stairs of a repulsive bed-and-breakfast house by the side of a man to whom one now belonged. When she stumbled over a badly laid stair carpet, he had said “Upsey” quite absent-mindedly. Probably he did not realize she was with him.

Suddenly he had stopped. She remembered it vividly. They were downstairs in the false marble splendor and stucco of the entrance. “By the way, my name is Wolfgang Pagel,” he said with a slight bow.

“Pleased to meet you,” she replied in the correct manner. “Mine is Petra Ledig.”

“Whether you’ll be pleased I don’t know,” he had laughed. “Come on, little one. I shall call you Peter. Petra is too Biblical and too stony. But your surname’s good enough for me and can stay as it is.”

III

Petra was still too much taken up with what was happening to pay much attention to the sense of Wolfgang’s words. Later she learned from him that Petra meant “rock,” and that it had first been borne by the disciple Peter, on whom Christ had founded his church.

Altogether she learned a good deal during the year she lived with him. Not that he behaved like a teacher. But it was inevitable that, during the long hours of their being together—for he was without a genuine occupation—he should talk a good deal with her, if only because they could not always sit in silence side by side in their dreary room. And when Petra gained confidence, she often asked a question, either to stop him brooding or because it gave her pleasure to hear him talk. For instance: “Wolf, how do they make cheese?” or: “Wolf, is it true that there is a man in the moon?”

He never laughed at her, nor did he ever refuse to answer her questions. He replied slowly and carefully, for the knowledge he had gained at the military college was of no great consequence. And where he was not informed, he took her with him and they went into one of the big libraries and he consulted their volumes. She would sit quietly, some little book in front of her, which, however, she did not read, and look about her awestruck at the big room in which people were sitting so still, so gently turning the pages, as quietly as if they were moving in their sleep. It always seemed like a fairy tale that she, a little shopgirl, an illegitimate child, who had just been on the point of going under, was now able to enter buildings where educated people, who had surely never heard of the rottenness with which she had been forced to make such an intimate acquaintance, were sitting. By herself she would never have dared to come, although certain poor creatures allowed to sit along the walls showed that not only wisdom was being sought here, but also warmth, light, and just that which she, too, sensed in these books—a profound peace.

When Wolfgang had learned enough, they went out and he told her what he had gleaned. She listened and forgot it, or remembered it but not accurately—that, however, was of no importance. What mattered was that he took her seriously, that she was something other than a creature whom he liked and who was good for him.

Sometimes, when she had spoken without thinking, she would exclaim, overwhelmed by her ignorance: “Oh, Wolf, I’m so terribly stupid. I’ll never learn anything. I shall remain stupid forever.”

Even then he did not laugh at the outburst, but entered into her feelings in a friendly and serious spirit, declaring that fundamentally it was unimportant whether one knew how cheese was made or not. For one would never know how to make it as well as the cheesemaker did. Stupidity, he believed, was something quite different. If one didn’t know how to arrange one’s life, how to learn from one’s mistakes, but got annoyed, repeatedly and unnecessarily, about little things, knowing that they would be forgotten in a fortnight; if one could not get on with one’s fellowmen—that was stupidity, real stupidity. His mother was a striking example. In spite of all her reading and her experience and intelligence, she had succeeded, out of sheer love, through knowing what was best for him and tying him to her apron string, in driving her son out of the house, he who was really patient and easy to get on with. (So he said.) She, Petra, stupid? Well, they hadn’t quarreled yet, and even if they had no money, they hadn’t spoiled their lives on that account, nor sulked. Stupid? What did she mean?

What Wolf meant, of course. Spoiled their lives? Sulked? They had had the most glorious time, the most beautiful time of her whole life. Nothing could be more beautiful. As a matter of fact, she did not mind whether she was stupid or not—despite what he said, clever was out of the question—as long as he liked her and took her seriously.

A rough passage? Nonsense! She had learned often enough in her life, and especially during the last year, that to be without money need not spoil one’s existence. At this very time when everybody’s thoughts turned on money, money, money, figures stamped on paper, paper with more and more noughts printed on it—at this very time the little foolish girl had made the discovery that money was of no value. That it was absurd to bother one’s head about it for a moment; that is, about the money which one hadn’t got.

(Perhaps she was not quite so indifferent this morning, for she was hungry enough to be nearly sick, and at half-past one the rent had to be paid.)

If she had taken thought for the morrow, she could never have had a peaceful moment by the side of Wolfgang Pagel, former second lieutenant, who had managed for more than a year to provide a livelihood for both, with practically no working capital, from the gaming tables. Every evening at about eleven o’clock he gave her a kiss and said: “So long, little girl,” and went, she only smiling at him. For she mustn’t say a word, in case it brought him bad luck. At first, when she realized that this eternal nightly absence did not mean “going out on the loose,” but was “work” for both their livelihoods, she had sat up till three or four … to wait for him; and he would return pale, with nervous movements and hollow temples, his glance unsteady, his hair wet with perspiration. She had listened to his feverish descriptions, his triumphs when he won, his despair when he lost. Silently she had listened to his complaints about this or that woman who had purloined his stake money, or his brooding astonishment as to why, on that particular evening, black should have turned up seventeen times in succession, and have hurled him and Petra, almost on the threshold of wealth, back into poverty.

She did not understand anything of the game, his game of roulette, however much he told her about it (he had refused point-blank to take her with him). But she understood quite well that it was a kind of tax which he paid to life for having her, that he was so kind, so imperturbable, because in the hours at the gaming table he could spend his energy, all his despair over his spoiled and aimless life, the only life he knew.

Oh, she understood far more; she understood that he deceived himself, at least when he assured her passionately again and again that he was not a gambler.…

“Tell me, what could I do instead? If I were an accountant scribbling figures into a book I’d only get a salary on which we should starve. Shall I sell boots, write articles, become a chauffeur? Peter, the secret is to have but few needs and thus time to live your own life. Three or four hours, often only half an hour at the roulette table, and we can live for a week, a month. I a gambler? It’s a dog’s life! I would rather carry bricks, instead of standing there, holding myself from being swept off my feet by a run of luck. I am as cool as a cucumber and calculating; you know they call me the Pari Panther. They hate me, they scowl when they see me because there’s no change to be got out of me, because I take away my small gains every day, and once I have them, finish! No more play!”

And, with a marvelous inconsequence, having quite forgotten what he had just said: “Only wait! Let me pull off something really big! An amount which is worthwhile! Then you’ll see what we’ll do. Then you’ll see I’m no gambler. I shall never be caught that way again. Why should I? It’s the lowest kind of drudgery; no one would voluntarily take it on—if he’s not a gambler.”

Meanwhile she saw him coming home, night in, night out, with hollow temples, damp hair, gleaming eyes.

“I nearly brought it off, Peter,” he cried.

But his pockets were empty. Then he would pawn everything they had, keeping only what he stood up in (during such times she had to stay in bed), and go off with just enough money in his pocket to buy the minimum of counters—to return with some small winnings, or occasionally, very rarely, with his pockets stuffed with money. When it looked like the end of everything, he always brought in some money, she had to admit; much or little, he brought some.

He had some “system” or other connected with the rolling of the roulette ball, a system of chance, a system which was based on the fact that the ball often did not do what, according to the probabilities, it ought to do. This system he had explained to her a hundred times, but as she had never seen a roulette table she could not properly understand what he told her. She also doubted whether he always kept to his own system.

But however that might be, till now he had always scraped through. Relying on this, she had for a very long time managed to lie down and go quietly to sleep, without waiting up for him. Yes, it was better to feign sleep if by any chance she were still awake when he returned. There was no sleep that night if, straight from the game, he started to talk.

“How can you stand it, my girl?” Frau Thumann would say, shaking her head. “Out every night and with all your dough in his pocket. And they say the place is alive with classy tarts. I wouldn’t let my man go.”

“But you let your husband go up a building, Frau Thumann. A ladder may slip or a plank give way. And tarts are everywhere.”

“Lord, don’t suggest such things with my Willem working on the fifth floor, and me being already so nervous. But there’s a difference, lass. Building’s necessary, but gambling’s not.”

“But suppose he needs it, Frau Thumann.”

“Needs it! Needs it! I’m always having my old man telling me what a lot he needs. Cards and tobacco and floods of beer, and, I dare say, little bits of fluff as well, but he don’t tell me that. I tell him: ‘What you do need is me to take you in hand and the pay envelope from the contractor’s office on Friday nights. That’s what you need!’ You’re too good to him, my girl, you’re too soft. When I look at you of a morning when I bring in the coffee, and see you making eyes at him and he don’t notice you at all, then I know how it’ll end. Gambling as work—I like that! Gambling’s not working and working’s not gambling. If you really mean him well, my girl, you take his money away and let him go building with Willem. He can carry bricks, can’t he?”

“Good God, Frau Thumann, you talk exactly like his mother. She also thought I was too kind to him and encouraging him in his vice, and she even slapped my face once for that very reason.”

“Slapping ain’t the right thing either! Aren’t you her daughter-in-law? No, you do it, see what I mean, for your own pleasure, and if it gets too much for you, then you hop it. No, slapping’s not nice, either; you c’n even go to the law about it.”

“But it didn’t hurt at all. His mother’s got such tiny hands. My mother was quite different. And anyway …”

IV

A wooden barrier divided the room of the Berlin Harvesters’ Agency into two very unequal parts. The front part, in which Rittmeister von Prackwitz stood, was quite small and the entrance door opened into it. Prackwitz had hardly room to move.

The other and larger part was occupied by a small, fat, darkish man. The Rittmeister was not sure whether he looked so dark because of his hair or because he had not washed. Gesticulating, the dark fat man in dark clothes was speaking vehemently with three men in corduroy suits, gray hats, and cigars in the corner of their mouths. The men replied just as vehemently, and although they were not shouting it seemed as if they were.

The Rittmeister did not understand a word; they were speaking Polish, of course. Though the tenant of Neulohe employed every year half a hundred Poles, he had not learned Polish, apart from a few words of command.

“I admit,” he would say to Eva, his wife, who spoke broken Polish, “I admit that I ought really to learn it for practical reasons. Nevertheless I refuse, now and forever, to learn this language. I absolutely refuse. We live too near the borders. Learn Polish—never!”

“But the people make the most insolent remarks to your very face, Achim.”

“Well? Am I to learn Polish so that I can understand their insolence? I haven’t the slightest intention of doing so.”

And thus the Rittmeister did not understand what these four men were negotiating so vehemently in the corner, nor did he care. But he was not a very patient man: what had to be done had to be done quickly—he wanted to go back to Neulohe at noon with fifty or sixty laborers. A bumper harvest stood in the fields, and the sun shone so that he thought he could hear the crackling of the wheat. “Shop! Shop!” he called out.

They talked on. It looked exactly as if they were quarreling for dear life; the next moment they would be flying at each other’s throats.

“Hey, you there!” called the Rittmeister sharply. “I said ‘Good morning.’ ” (He had not said good morning.) What a crowd! Eight years ago, even five, they were whining before him and slavishly trying to kiss his hand. A damnable age, an accursed city! Wait till he got them in the country.

“Listen, you there,” he rapped out in his curtest military voice, banging the counter with his fist.

Yes—and how they listened! They knew that sort of voice. For this generation such a voice still had significance, its sound awakened memories. They stopped talking at once. Inwardly the Rittmeister smiled. Yes, the good old sergeant major’s bark still had its effect—and most of all with such scum. Presumably it penetrated to their miserable bones as if it were the first blast of the last trumpet. Well, they always had a bad conscience.

“I need harvesters,” he said to the fat, swarthy man. “Fifty to sixty. Twenty men, twenty women, the remainder boys and girls.”

“Yes, sir.” The fat man bowed, politely smiling.

“An efficient foreman reaper, must be able to deposit as security the value of twenty hundredweights of rye. His wife, for a women’s wage, to cook for them.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I pay single fare and your commission; if the people stay till after the beet harvest their fares won’t be deducted. Otherwise …”

“Yes, sir. Oh, yes, sir.”

“And now get a move on. The train goes at twelve-thirty. Be quick. Pronto. Understand?” And the Rittmeister, a weight having been taken from his mind, nodded even toward the three figures in the background. “Get the contracts ready. I’ll be back in half an hour. I only want some luncheon.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Then everything’s settled, isn’t it?” he concluded. Something in the attitude of the other puzzled him; the submissive grin did not appear so much submissive as deceitful. “Everything’s in order?”

“Everything’s in order,” agreed the fat man, with a gleam in his eyes. “Everything will be done in accordance with the gentleman’s instructions. Fifty people—good, they’re here. Railway station, twelve-thirty—good, the train leaves. Punctually to your orders—but without the laborers.” He grinned.

“What?” the Rittmeister almost shouted, screwing up his face. “What are you saying? Speak German, man! Why without laborers?”

“Perhaps the gentleman who can give orders so perfectly will also order me where to get the people. Fifty people? Well, find them, make them, quick, pronto, presto, what?”

The Rittmeister looked more closely at his man. His first bewilderment was over, as was also his anger, now that he sensed the other was out to annoy him. He knows German well enough, he thought, as the fat man gabbled on grotesquely, but he doesn’t want to.

“And those in the background?” he asked and pointed at the three men in corduroy from whose lips the cigars were still hanging. “You are surely foremen? You come with me. New quarters, decent beds, no bugs.”

For a moment it seemed to him deplorable that he should have to advertise himself in this manner. But the harvest was at stake, and it might rain any day. Yes, today even, for here in Berlin there was something like thunder in the air. He could no longer rely on the fat, swarthy man; he had alienated him, probably by his commandeering voice. “Well, what about it?” he asked encouragingly.

The three stood there motionless as if they had not heard a word. They were foreman reapers, the Rittmeister was sure of it. He was familiar with these struck-out jaws, the fierce but rather gloomy look of the professional nigger-driver.

The swarthy man was grinning; he did not look at his men, he was so sure of them. (Here is the street, the Rittmeister thought, and the point at which to look. I must march along.) Loudly: “Good work, good pay, piecework, good allowances. What do you say to that?” They were not listening. “And for the foreman thirty, I say thirty, good genuine paper dollars down.”

“I’ll arrange for the men,” cried the dark man.

But he was too late. The foreman reapers had moved over to the barrier.

“Take mine, sir. Men like bulls, strong, pious …”

“No, don’t take Josef’s. They’re all lazy scoundrels, won’t get up in the morning; strong with girls but slackers with work …”

“Sir, why waste time with Jablonski? He’s just out of jail for knifing a steward.”

“You dirty dog!”

A cataract of Polish words fell between them. Were they going to pull out their knives? The fat man was among them, talking, gesticulating, shouting, pushing, glaring at the Rittmeister, toward whom the third man was stealing, unnoticed.

“Good paper dollars, eh? Thirty of them? Handed over on departure? If the gentleman will be at Schlesische Bahnhof at twelve o’clock I’ll be there, too, with the people. Don’t say anything. Get away quickly. Bad people here!”

And he mingled with the others. Voices screamed. Four figures swayed to and fro, tugging at each other.

The Rittmeister was glad to find the door so near and unobstructed. Relieved, he stepped into the street.

V

Wolfgang Pagel was still sitting at the oilcloth table rocking the chair, whistling absent-mindedly his whole repertoire of soldier songs, and waiting for Frau Thumann’s enamel coffeepot.

In the meantime his mother sat at a handsome Renaissance table in a well-furnished flat in Tannenstrasse. On a yellow pillow-lace tablecloth stood a silver coffee service, fresh butter, honey, genuine English jam—everything was there. Only, no one was sitting in front of the second cover. Frau Pagel looked at the empty place, then at the clock. Reaching for her napkin, she drew it out of the silver ring and said: “I will begin, Minna.”

Minna, the yellowish, faded creature at the door, who had been over twenty years with Frau Pagel, nodded, looked at the clock and said: “Certainly. Those who come late …”

“He knows our breakfast time.”

“The young master couldn’t forget it.”

The old lady with the energetic face and clear blue eye, from whom age had not stolen her upright bearing nor her firm principles, added after a pause: “I really thought I should see him for breakfast this morning.”

Since that quarrel at the end of which Petra, least concerned of any, had had her face slapped, Minna had daily set a place for the only son. Day after day she had had to clear away an untouched plate, and day after day her mistress had voiced the selfsame expectation. But Minna had also noticed that the repeated disappointment had not in the least diminished the old lady’s certainty that her son would appear (without herself making any advances). Minna knew that talking did not help, and so she kept silent.

Frau Pagel tapped her egg. “Well, he may come during the course of the day, Minna. What are we having for lunch?”

Minna informed her and madam approved. They were having the things he liked.

“In any case he must come soon. One day he’s sure to come to grief with that damnable gambling. A complete shipwreck! Well, he shan’t hear a word of reproach from me.”

Minna knew better, but it was no use saying so. Frau Pagel, however, was also not without intelligence nor without intuition. She turned her head sharply toward her faithful old servant and demanded: “You had your afternoon off yesterday. You went—there—again?”

“Where’s an old woman to go?” Minna grumbled. “He is my boy, too.”

Frau Pagel angrily tapped her teacup with her spoon. “He’s a very silly boy, Minna,” she said harshly.

“You can’t put old heads on young shoulders,” answered Minna, quite unmoved. “When I look back, Madam, at the silly things I did in my youth …”

“What silly things?” her mistress called out indignantly. “You didn’t do anything of the kind. No, when you talk like that you mean me, of course—and I won’t stand it, Minna.”

Minna thereupon kept silent. But when one person is dissatisfied with herself, then another person’s silence is like fuel to a fire—silence more than anything.

“Of course, I oughtn’t to have slapped her,” Frau Pagel continued warmly. “She’s only a silly little chit and she loves him—I don’t want to say like a dog its master, although that expresses it exactly. Minna, don’t shake your head. That’s it exactly … (Frau Pagel had not turned round to look, but Minna had really shaken her head.) She loves him as a woman oughtn’t to love a man.”

Frau Pagel stared furiously at her bread, put the spoon in the jam and spread it finger-thick. “To sacrifice oneself!” she said indignantly. “Yes, of course! They all like to do that. Because it’s easy, because there’s no trouble then! But to tell the painful truth, to say: ‘Wolfgang, my son, there must be an end to this gambling or you’ll never get another penny from me’—that would be true love.”

“But, madam,” said Minna with deliberation, “the child has no money she could give him, and he’s not her son, either.…”

“There!” Frau Pagel called out furiously. “There! Get out of the room, you ungrateful creature! You’ve spoiled my breakfast with your everlasting back talk and contradiction. Minna! Where are you going to? Clear away at once. Do you think I can go on eating when you annoy me like that? You know quite well how easily upset I am with my liver. Yes, take away the coffee, too. The idea of coffee! I’m upset enough as it is. The girl can be a daughter to you for all I care, but I’m old-fashioned, I don’t believe that one can be spiritually pure if before marriage …”

“You just said,” replied Minna, quite unmoved by this outburst, for such outbursts were part of the routine and her mistress calmed down as quickly as she flared up, “you just said that if you love someone you sometimes have to tell them disagreeable truths. Then I have to reply that Wolf isn’t Petra’s son.”

Whereupon Minna stalked off, the tray rattling in her hand, while as a sign that she expected to have peace and quietness in “her” kitchen, she slammed the door.

Frau Pagel understood quite well and respected her old servant’s familiar hint. She only shouted after her: “You old donkey. Always feeling insulted. Always losing your temper about nothing at all.” She laughed; her anger had evaporated. “Such an old donkey, imagining that love consists of saying disagreeable things to the other person.” She crossed the room. Her outburst had taken place only after she had finished her breakfast, and she was therefore in the best of spirits. The little quarrel had refreshed her. Stopping before a small cabinet, she selected a long black Brazil cigar, lit it carefully, and went across to her husband’s room.

VI

On the door of the flat, over the brass bell-pull (a lion’s mouth) was a porcelain name plate: “Edmund Pagel—Attaché.” Frau Pagel was getting on for seventy, and it therefore didn’t look as if her husband had made much progress in his career. Attachés advanced in years are unusual.

Edmund Pagel, however, had gone as far as the most efficient councillor or ambassador—that is, as far as the cemetery. When Frau Pagel went into her husband’s room, it was not to visit him but only those reminders of him which were renowned far beyond the walls of the little home.

She flung the windows wide open; light and air flowed in from the gardens. In this small street, so close to the traffic that of an evening one could hear the elevated railway enter Nollendorfplatz station and the buses rumbling day and night, there was a straggle of old gardens with tall trees—long-forgotten gardens which had scarcely changed since the ‘eighties. Here it was good to live—for aging people. The elevated might thunder and the dollar climb—but the widowed Frau Pagel looked tranquilly into the gardens. Creeping vine had ascended to her windows; down below, everything grew, flowered, seeded—but the frenzied, restless people yonder with their turmoil and commerce did not know it. She could look and remember, she need not hurry, the garden would remind her. That she could live on here, that she did not need to hurry, was the doing of the man whose work was in this room.

Five-and-forty years ago they had seen each other for the first time, loved and married. Nothing was as radiant, as happy, as swift as Edmund, when she looked back. It always seemed as if she were running with him in a beautiful breeze down streets full of blossoms. Branches seemed to reach down to them over walls. They ran faster. The sky soared over them from the top of a hill full of houses.…

As long as they kept running, the blue silk curtain in front of them would continue to open.

Yes, what characterized Edmund was his speed, which had nothing hasty about it, but it came from his strength, his sense of perfect well-being. They reached a meadow with crocuses. For a moment they remained motionless on the festive green and purple carpet, and then bent to pick the flowers. But hardly had she had twenty in her hand then he came to her, swiftly, with no rush, light of step, with a whole big bouquet.

“How did you do that?” she asked breathlessly.

“I don’t know,” he said, “I feel so light, like I’m blowing in the wind.”

They had been married for quite a while when in her sleep the young wife heard a cry. She awoke. Her husband was sitting up in bed, looking altogether changed. She hardly recognized him.

“Is that you?” she asked, very softly lest her words turn the dream into reality.

The strange yet familiar man tried to smile, an embarrassed, apologetic smile. “Forgive me if I have disturbed you. I feel so strange. I can’t understand it. I’m really worried.” And after a long pause, while he looked doubtfully at her: “I can’t get up.”

“You can’t get up?” she asked skeptically. It was a joke, some nonsense of his, of course, a poor joke. “It’s impossible that all of a sudden you can’t get up.”

“Yes,” he said slowly and seemed not to believe it himself. “But I feel as if I had no legs. Anyhow, they are numb.”

“Nonsense,” she cried and jumped up. “You have caught a chill, or they’ve gone to sleep. Wait. I’ll help you.”

But even as she spoke, even as she walked round the bed to him, terror pierced her.… It’s true, it’s true, she realized.

Did she realize it? The old woman at the window shrugged her shoulders. How could she realize the impossible? The fleetest, the happiest, the most vivid creature in the world, not to be able to walk, not even to stand. Impossible to realize that!

But the icy sensation had remained; it was as if she were inhaling more and more of coldness with every breath. Her heart tried to resist, but it, too, was getting cold. Round it an armor of ice closed tightly.

“Edmund!” she called imploringly. “Wake up, get up!”

“I can’t,” he murmured.

He really could not. Just as he sat that morning in bed, so he had sat, day in and day out, year after year, in bed, in a wheeled chair, in a deck chair … sat, entirely healthy, without pain—but could not walk. Life which had started so flamboyantly, swift shining life, the smile of good luck, the blue sky and flowers—all was all gone and done with. Why could it not return? No answer. Oh, God, why not? And, if it had to be, why, then, so suddenly? Why without any warning? He had passed happily into sleep and had miserably awakened, to incredible wretchedness.

Oh, she had not lain down under it; no, she hadn’t given in for a moment. All the twenty years this had lasted she hadn’t given in once. When he had long abandoned every hope, she still dragged him from physician to physician. Reports of a miraculous cure or a newspaper notice were enough to rekindle her optimism. In succession she believed in baths, electrical treatment, mud packs, massage, medicine, miracle-working saints. She wanted to believe in them, and she did believe.

“Don’t bother,” he smiled. “Perhaps it’s just as well as it is.”

“That’s what you’d like,” she cried angrily. “To give in, to bear it patiently. That’s too easy. Humility may be all right for the proud and fortunate who need checking. I hold with the ancients who fought the gods for their happiness.”

“But I am happy,” he said good-humoredly.

She didn’t want that kind of happiness, however. She despised it, it filled her with anger. She had married an attaché, an active man on good terms with his fellow men, a future ambassador. On the door she had fixed a plate: “Edmund Pagel, Attaché,” and it would stay. She would not have a new one made: “Pagel—Artist.” No, she had not married a color-grinder and a paint-dauber.

He sat and painted. He sat in his wheeled chair and smiled and whistled and painted. Angry impatience filled her. Did he not understand that he was wasting his life on these stupid paintings at which people only smiled?

“Let him alone, Mathilde,” said the relatives. “It’s very good for an invalid. He has occupation and amusement.”

No, she would not let him alone. When she married him there had been no talk of painting; she didn’t know that he had ever held a paintbrush in his hand, even. She hated it all, down to the smell of the oil paints. She was always knocking against the frames, the easel was always in her way; she never resigned herself to it. His pictures she left in boarding houses, at watering-places, in the attics of their flats; his charcoal sketches lay around and were lost.

Occasionally, in the midst of some work or worry, she would glance from the narrow prison of herself at one such picture on the wall as if seeing it for the first time. Then something seemed to want to lightly touch her, as if something asleep were waking.… Stop! Oh please stop! Everything was very bright. A tree, for instance, in the sun, in the air, against a clear summer sky. But the tree seemed to rise up, the wind to blow gently. The tree moved. Was it flying? Yes, the whole earth was flying, the sun, the play of light and air—everything was light, swift, soft. Oh, stop, you relentless, bright world! She came closer to the picture, and the curtain in front of the mysterious stirred. It was linen, smelling of oil paint, earth, firm earth. But the wind was blowing, the tree waved its branches, life was in movement.

Painted by a cripple, created out of nothing by a man who knew and loved movement, it is true, but who was now no more than a cumbersome body that had to be rolled out of bed into a chair. No, do not stop, we’re fleeing, we’re flying.

Yes, something stirred in the dreaming woman about to be illuminated by an intuition that in this picture her husband was living, immortal, brilliant, swifter than ever; but she turned from it. There was nothing left now but canvas and paint, a flat surface colored in accordance with certain rules; nothing of movement, nothing of the man.

More watering-places! Still more physicians! What did the world say? Two or three exhibitions—no one heard anything about them, saw anything of them; and no pictures were ever sold—thank God, there was no need of that. Now and then, on one of their restless journeys through the health resorts of the world, someone would seek them out; some young man, taciturn, awkward, gloomy, or another breaking out into a flood of words, with nervous movements, to announce a new era; such people did not encourage her to regard her husband’s pictures seriously.

“The day is so beautiful; let us go for a drive.”

“The light is good. I should like to paint another hour.”

“I almost forget what it’s like outside. I shall die for lack of air.”

“All right, sit by the window, open it—I’ve been wanting to paint you for a long time.”

That was his way—friendly, serene, never angry, but not to be moved either. She talked, implored, got furious, made it up again, used wiles, asked for forgiveness. He was as a field over which pass wind, storm, sunshine, night frost and rain, accepting everything without seeming to change, yet in the end producing a harvest.

Yes, the harvest came. But before it ripened something else happened, something for which she had fought, scolded, struggled, begged, for twenty years: one day he stood up, made a few steps, faltering at first, and then, with the same somewhat embarrassed, apologetic face of twenty years before, said: “I really think I can.”

The affliction vanished as it had come, just as incomprehensively. All her eagerness, her zeal, had not been able to effect its departure; it had been beyond human influence—it was enough to make one despair.

Meanwhile half a life—the better half—had passed. She was in her early forties, a forty-five-year-old husband at her side. An active life, an eager life without rest, full of plans, full of hopes, had slipped away. Now the hopes were fulfilled and there was nothing more to desire. All her plans, all her cares, had lost their meaning. A whole life had crumbled to dust in the moment Edmund got up and walked.

Incomprehensible heart of woman! “Here is your painting, Edmund. It only wants a few more touches. Won’t you?”

“Painting, yes, painting,” he said absent-mindedly, glanced at it, and went out, where his thoughts had already gone.

No, there was no time now to paint for even half an hour. He had had time, twenty years, to be ill, patiently, without complaint; now he had not a minute to spare. Outside, the whole of life was waiting for him in a whirl of festivities each more splendid than the other, hundreds of people with whom it was glorious to talk, beautiful women, girls who were so bewitchingly young that a thrill went down one’s spine just to look at them …

And wasn’t he himself young, really? He was five-and-twenty; what had happened didn’t count, a mere waiting around. He was young, life was young; pick and taste the fruit. Stop, please stop! Go on.…

Painting? True, it had helped him, it had been an excellent pastime. Now nothing more was needed to pass away the heavy burden of time. Down its torrent raced, sparkling, shining from a thousand eyes, thrilling to a million songs—with him, still with him, forever with him. Sometimes he started up at night, supporting his burning temples in hot hands. He thought he could hear Time rustling by. He ought not to sleep; who dared sleep when Time glides away so quickly? To sleep was time lost. And softly, so as not to wake his wife, he got up, went into the town, went once more into the town where the lights shone. He sat at a table, looked frantically at the faces. That one? Or you—? Oh, don’t rush away—stay for a while!

She let him go. She heard him, but she let him go, in the day as well as the night. At first she had gone with him; she, whose hope was now fulfilled. She saw him at the garden party of a family with whom they were on friendly terms; at a dinner, immaculately dressed, slim, quick, laughing, with gray hair. He danced faultlessly, with assurance. “Forty-five,” something said within her. He chatted and joked always with the youngest, she observed. It was horrifying. Just as if a dead man had come to life, as if a corpse with its mouth full of dust were reaching out for the bread of the living. Stay for a while! That memory which her jealous heart had clung to for twenty years and which had been her happiness and life, that memory of early, splendid days faded now, and she could not recall them.

The night surrounded her like a prison wall without a gate. On the bedside table the clock ticked away a useless time which had to be endured. A trembling hand switched on the light, and his bright sketches greeted her from the walls.

She looked at them as if for the first time. In this she was like the world, which at that time had also begun to look at his pictures. Their day had suddenly come, but for their creator it was already over. Paradox indeed that, when he was creating for twenty long years, he was the only one who saw his work. Now came the world, with letters and reproductions, with art dealers and exhibitions, with money and golden laurels—but the once-flowing spring of his interest was dry.

“Yes, paintings,” he said, and went.

The woman who was expecting his child lay in bed, and now it was she who gazed at the paintings. It was she who now saw his true image in them. His fleetness, his cheerfulness, his interest—all had gone. Gone? No, they were here, enhanced by the glory that eternity gives to life.

There was one painted shortly before his “recovery,” the last to be finished before he put away his brush. He had made her sit at an open window; she sat motionless, as hardly ever in her active life. It was her picture, it was she when she was still with him, painted by him when she still had significance for him. Nothing but a young woman at a window, waiting, while the world rushed by outside. A young woman at a window—his most beautiful picture.

Painted by him when he was still with her. Where was he now? One morning in a vibrant world full of the sun’s splendor (but the sun paled for her), he was carried home, disheveled, dirty, the clever hands contorted, the jaw fallen, dry blood on his temple. Policemen and detectives were very tactful. It had happened in a street, the name of which of course conveyed nothing. A fatal accident—yes, an accident. Say no more.

Time, you must fly. Hurry, hurry. And now the son. The father was a radiant star which shone benignly for a long time and was extinguished suddenly. He was extinguished. Let us await the son. A spark of hope, the promise of a fire. Alone no longer.

The woman at the window, an old woman now, turned around. Certainly there was the picture. Young Woman at a Window, Waiting.

The old woman put the stub of her cigar in the ash tray.

“I have the feeling that the silly boy will really come today. It is time he came.”

VII

Frau Thumann, spouse of the bricklayer, Wilhelm Thumann, bloated and flabby, in loose garments, with a bloated, flabby face which nevertheless wore a soured expression—the Thumann woman shuffled with the inevitable chamber pot across the corridor to the toilet on the half-flight of stairs below; a toilet serving three families. She was entirely without scruples concerning the harboring of girls of the worst reputation and their hangers-on (at present, temperamental Ida from Alexanderplatz was living in the room opposite the Pagels), but she was full of sanitary niceties about the toilet.

“And now they’ve discovered them bacticilli, dearie. They could have let ’em alone, but as they’ve gone and done it, and we ain’t got the most wonderful people here either, and sometimes when I go to the toilet I c’n hardly fetch my breath, and who knows what’s flying about! An’ once there was a blackbeetle there which looked at me in such a nasty way.… No, trust me, dearie, I know bugs when I see ’em. You can’t tell me anything about them, dearie—I was born and brought up among bugs. Since they have been discovered, though, I says to my Willem: ‘Pot or no pot, health’s the most important thing in life.’ I says to him: ‘Be careful! The beasts jump at you like tigers and ‘fore you know where you are, you bring in a whole microcosmetic of ’em.’ But I tell you, dearie, we’re made in the rummiest way. Since I’ve kept to the pot I’m running about with it all day. Not that I’m complaining, but it is a bit funny. Our young gentleman who’s got the little pale dark girl—she isn’t his wife, but she imagines she will be one day, and some of them relish their imagination like a cake from Hilbrich’s—he always calls me Madam Po. Only she tells him not to, which I find decent of her. But he can call me what he likes, for all I care. What does he say it for? ’Cause he likes his little joke. And why does he like his little joke? ’Cause he’s young. When you’re young you don’t believe in nothing, neither in parsons, which I don’t either, nor in these bacticilli. And what happens? Just as I rush about with the pot, so they hurry to the Health Committee, but what with, I don’t care to say. We all know what it is, though some of ’em call it only a catarrh. And now, silly as they are, they suddenly become wise to it. And as regards the catarrh, don’t they wish they could sneeze and someone would say to them, ‘God bless you’! But it’s too late then, and that’s why I’d rather trot about with my pot.”

So the Thumann woman, frowsy and voluble, with an acid complexion, was shuffling with her pot along the corridor.

The door of the Pagels’ room opened and revealed young Wolfgang Pagel, tall, with broad shoulders and slim hips, fair and cheerful, in a field-gray tunic with narrow red stripes. It was a material which, even after five years’ wear, still looked good, with a silver gleam like the leaves of the lime tree.

“Good morning, Frau Thumann,” he said quite pleasantly. “How about a little chat about coffee?”

“You! You!” said the Thumann woman indignantly, pushing past with half-averted face. “Don’t you see I’m busy?”

“I beg your pardon. It was an urgent inquiry as the result of hunger. We’ll gladly wait. It’s only about eleven o’clock.”

“Don’t bother to wait till twelve, then,” she replied, and stood in the doorway, waving her pot in a portentous manner. “The new dollar comes out at twelve and, as the man in the greengrocer’s cellar said, it’ll come out strong and Berlin’ll slump again. Then, without batting an eyelid, you can put down another million marks on the table. Coffee without cash—nothing doing!”

Thereupon the door closed; sentence had been pronounced. Wolfgang turned back. “She may be right, Peter!” he said reflectively. “By the time I’d persuaded her about the coffee it would have been twelve o’clock, and if the dollar is really going up—what do you think?”

He did not, however, wait for a reply, but continued, somewhat embarrassed: “Make yourself comfortable in bed, and I’ll carry the things straight to Uncle’s. In twenty minutes—at most half an hour—I’ll be back again and we’ll breakfast comfortably on rolls and liver sausage—you in bed and I on the edge. What do you think, Peter?”

“Oh, Wolf,” she said weakly, and her eyes became very big. “Today!”

Although they had not said a word about it this morning, he did not pretend to misunderstand her. Rather conscience-stricken, he replied: “Yes, I know it’s silly. But it’s really not my fault. Or almost not. Everything went wrong last night. I already had pretty fair winnings when I had the mad idea that zero must win. I don’t understand myself at all.…”

He stopped. He saw the gaming table before him, nothing more than a worn green cloth on the dining table of a good middle-class room; in one corner stood a great hulking buffet with carved pinnacles and knobs, knights and ladies and lions’ mouths. For the gambling hells of those days led a nomadic existence, always in flight from the department of the police which dealt with them. If they thought the police had smelled out the old meeting place, then the very next day they would rent a dining or drawing room from some impoverished clerk. “Only for a few hours tonight when you’re not using the room. And you can lie in bed and sleep; what we are doing is no business of yours.”

So it happened that the prewar room which a head accountant or departmental chief’s mother-in-law had furnished became, after eleven o’clock at night, the meeting place of evening dresses and dinner jackets. In the quiet, decent streets, touts and drummers collected their clientele—provincial uncles, sizzled gentlemen undecided where to go next, stock-exchange jobbers who had not had enough of the daily exchange swindle. The house porter had his palm oiled and slept soundly; the outer door could be opened as often as they liked. In the sober passage with the tarnished brass clothes-hooks, a little table stood with the big box of chips, guarded by a bearded, melancholy giant, looking like a sergeant major. A cardboard notice “HERE” on a door indicated the toilet. They spoke in whispers, everybody realizing that the people in the rest of the house must not notice anything amiss. There were no drinks. They had no use for “drunks” because of the noise they might make. There was only gambling—sufficient intoxication in itself.

It was so quiet that even behind the entrance hall one could hear the humming of the ball. Behind the croupier stood two men in dinner jackets, ready at any moment to step in and settle an argument by the dreaded expulsion into the street, by exclusion from the game. The croupier wore a tail coat. But all three resembled each other, he and the two birds-of-a-feather standing behind, whether lean or fat, dark or fair. All had cold, alert eyes, crooked, beaky noses, and thin lips. They rarely talked with each other; they communicated by glances, at most by a nudge of the shoulder. They were evil, greedy, insensible—adventurers, cut-purses, convicts—God alone knew. It was impossible to visualize them leading a private life with wife and children. One could not imagine how they behaved when alone, getting out of bed, looking at themselves in the mirror while shaving. They seemed born to stand behind gaming tables—evil, greedy, insensible. Three years ago such people had not existed, and in a year’s time none of them would be left. Life had washed them up when they were needed. Life would carry them away, whither no one knew, when the time came. Life contains them, as it contains everything else necessary to it.

Round the table sat a row of gamblers: the rich people with fat pocket-books which were to be gutted, the beginners, the greenhorns. They always found a seat—the three silent, alert birds of prey saw to that. Behind stood the other gamblers in a crowd two or three deep. To place their stakes on the little peep of table which they could command, they reached over the shoulders of those in front, or under their arms. Or, above the heads of the others, they handed their chips to one of the three men, with a whispered instruction.

But, in spite of the poor view and the crowding, there was hardly ever a dispute, for the gamblers were much too immersed in their own game, in the spinning of the ball, to pay much attention to others. And besides, there was such a diversity in the counters with which they played, that even when there was a huge throng only two or three at the most played with the same color. They stood close together, beautiful women and good-looking men among them. They leaned against one another; hand touched bosom, hand brushed silky hips—they felt nothing. Just as a great light kills a lesser, so the crowd heard only the whirring of the ball, the click of the bone chips. The world stood still, lungs could not breathe, time stopped while the ball spun, clattered, ran, turned toward a hole, changed its mind, jumped on, rattled …

There! Red! Odd—twenty-one! And suddenly the breast heaved again, the face softened; yes, she was the beautiful girl. “Your stakes, ladies and gentlemen, your stakes. That is all.” And the ball rolled, clattered … the world stood still.

Wolfgang Pagel had elbowed himself into the second row. He never got any farther forward; the three birds of prey saw to that, exchanging glances of annoyance as soon as he entered. He was the most undesirable type of gambler—playing carefully, never letting himself be carried away, the man with so small a working capital in his pocket that it was hardly worth looking at, far less winning. The man who came evening after evening with the firm determination to take enough from the bank to live on the following day—and who mostly succeeded.

It was useless for Pagel to change his club, although at that time the number of gambling hells was as the sands of the sea, just as everywhere there were heroin and cocaine, “snow,” nude dances, Franch champagne and American cigarettes, influenza, hunger, despair, fornication and crime. No, the vultures at the top of the table recognized him at once. They recognized him by the way he came in, the detached scrutiny which, passing from face to face, rested at last on the table. They recognized him by his exaggerated, his feigned indifference, by the way he played his stakes, by the intervals between them intended to even out the chances and take advantage of a run; they recognized a like bird to themselves, in different plumage.

This evening Wolfgang was nervous. Twice, till he succeeded in squeezing in with a party, the touts had closed the door in his face in the hope of driving away an undesirable gambler. The man with the sad sergeant major’s face pretended not to hear his request for chips, and Wolfgang had to control himself so as not to make a scene. In the end he got the chips.

He saw at once that a certain lady of the demimonde, called by habitués the Valuta Vamp, was present in the gaming room. There had been encounters in other places with this pushing and impudent girl, because, when she had a run of bad luck and was near the end of her resources, she did not hesitate to use the stakes of her fellow gamblers. He would have liked to go away—he had let a chip fall to the floor, a bad omen, because it meant that the room wanted to keep his money. (There were many omens of this sort—mostly unlucky.)

Nevertheless, since he was already there, he went to the table to play within the limits he had imposed on himself. As with all gamblers, Wolfgang Pagel was firmly convinced that what he was doing was not real gambling and “did not count.” He firmly believed that one day, in a flash, the feeling would possess him: your hour has come. In that moment he would be a real gambler, the pet of Fortune. Whatever he staked, the ball would hum, the money flow to him. He would win everything, everything! Sometimes he thought of this hour, but not very often, just as one doesn’t want to lessen the enjoyment of a big piece of luck by savoring it too often in advance. And when he did think of it, he felt his mouth go dry and the skin over his temples tighten.

He thought he could see himself, leaning forward with shining eyes, the notes collecting between his open palms as if blown there by the wind; all this paper representing huge amounts, noughts upon noughts, an astronomical number of noughts, wealth beyond realization.

Till that hour came he was only an unpaying guest of Fortune, a starveling who had to be content with the lean chances of even odds. This he was more than content to put up with, for the prospect of something big allured him.

On this evening he was, for him, not badly off. If he played cautiously he ought to be able to take home quite a good profit. Wolfgang Pagel had based his system on careful observation. Of the thirty-six numbers of the roulette, eighteen were red, eighteen black. If one didn’t take into consideration the thirty-seventh chance, zero (in which case all the stakes went to the bank), the chances for red and black were equal. According to the theory of probabilities, if roulette were played throughout eternity red must turn up as often as black. It probably would. But the manner in which red and black alternated during the course of one game seemed to be governed by a much more mysterious rule, which might be guessed at partly by observation, partly by intuition.

Wolfgang stood watching the table, as he always did before he staked for the first time. He would see, for instance, that red turned up, then red again, and so on for the fourth, fifth and sixth times; it might continue to turn up ten times running, in very rare instances even longer. Red, always red. It was against all sense and reason, it contradicted every theory of probabilities, it was the despair of all gamblers with a “system.”

Then all at once black turned up; after six or eight turns of red came black. Came twice, thrice, then red again, and next occurred a tiresome, everlasting alternation between red and black, black and red.

But Wolfgang still waited. No stake could be risked until he felt sure there was a chance of success.

Suddenly he felt something within him tighten; he looked at the little space of table within his view. He felt as if he had been so carried away by his thoughts that he had not been following the game. Nevertheless he knew that black would turn up thrice in succession; he knew that he must stake his money now, that a run of black had started. He staked.

He staked three, four times. Further he did not dare go. Red turning up twelve or fifteen times was an exception, but it was that which meant the big winning chances: allowing the stake to stand and so double the winnings. Letting it stand again and double itself … again and again until it had reached a fabulous figure. But his capital was too small, he couldn’t risk a failure, he had to be content with dull safety. The night would certainly come, however, when he would stake on and on and on and on. He would know that red would turn up seventeen times; he would stake seventeen times and no more.

And then never gamble again. With the money they would start something quiet, an antique shop, for instance. He had a flair for such things; he liked to handle them. Life then would flow gently and quietly. There would be no more of this horrible tension, none of this dark despair, no more vulture-like faces scrutinizing him angrily, no more doubtful ladies stealing his stake money …

He had found at the other end of the table a place away from the Valuta Vamp, but it did not help him. Just as he was staking he heard her voice. “Make room. Don’t spread yourself all over the place. Others also want to play!”

Without looking at her he bowed and quit the field, found another place and started again. He was thinking that tonight he must be particularly cautious—he must take home more than usual; tomorrow at half-past twelve they intended to marry.

All right. She was an excellent girl; no one would ever love him so unselfishly, just as he was, and without comparing him with some tiresome ideal. So they would marry tomorrow; though why, he didn’t really know at the moment. It didn’t matter, it would turn out all right. But he wished he could pay more attention to the game. Just now he shouldn’t have staked on black at all. Lost! Lost! Well …

Suddenly he heard the malignant voice again. She was quarreling now with another man, speaking in high-pitched and indignant tones. Yes, of course, her nose was quite white, she sniffed snow, the bitch. No use starting a row with her; even when she was sober she didn’t know what she wanted or was doing. And now she knew less than ever.

He looked for another place.

This time everything went well. Staking cautiously, he made up what he had lost. Indeed, he could now pocket his original capital and operate with the winnings. Beside him stood a young fellow with unsteady eyes and fidgety movements, unmistakably playing his maiden game. Such people brought luck, and he succeeded in passing a hand, his left hand, across the young fellow’s shoulder without his noticing—which increased the chances of winning. In consequence he let the stake stay on one game longer than he would otherwise have dared. Again he won and the vultures cast evil glances on him. Good.

He now had enough for tomorrow, even for a couple of days longer, if the dollar didn’t mount too high—he could go home. But it was still very early. He would only lie awake for hours, analyzing the game, and be filled with remorse at not having exploited this chain of good luck.

He stood quietly there, holding the counters he had won, listening to the ball, the voice of the croupier, the gentle scratching and scraping of the rakes on the green table. He felt as if he were in a dream. The clacking of the ball reminded him of a water wheel. Yes, it made him drowsy. Life, when one felt it, reminded one of water, of flowing water; πávia q∑î, everything flows, as he had learned at grammar school before he went to the military college. Flows past, too.

He felt very tired. Besides, his mouth was as dry as leather. Damned nonsense that there was nothing to drink here; he’d have to go to the water tap in the lavatory. But then he wouldn’t know how the game went. Red—black—black—red—red—red—black … Of course, there was nothing but Red Life and Black Death. Nothing else was being handed out or invented. They might invent as much as they liked—beyond Life and Death there was nought.…

Nought.

Of course! he had forgotten zero; that existed, too. The even-odd gamblers always forgot zero, and their money vanished. But if zero existed, then it was Death—a reasonable assumption. Red then was Love, a somewhat exaggerated emotion. Certainly Petra was a good girl. I’m feverish, he thought. But I suppose I’m feverish every evening. I really ought to drink some water. I’ll go at once.

Instead of that he shook the counters in his hand, hastily added those from his pocket and, just as the croupier called: “That’s all,” put everything on zero. On Nought.

His heart stopped. What am I doing? he asked himself. In his mouth the sensation of dryness increased unbearably. His eyes burned, the skin tightened like parchment over his temples. For an inconceivable time the ball hummed around; he felt as if everybody were looking at him.

They all look at me. I have staked on zero. Everything we possess I have staked on zero—and that means Death. And tomorrow is the marriage.

The ball went on spinning; he could not hold his breath any longer. He breathed deeply—the tension relaxed.

“Twenty-six!” called the croupier. “Black, odd, passe.” Pagel ejected the air through his nose, almost relieved. He had been right—the gaming room had kept his money. The Valuta Vamp had not disturbed him for nothing. She was saying in a loud whisper: “Those poor fish, they want to play but they ought to play with marbles.” The vulture-like croupier shot him a sharp, triumphant glance.

For a moment, Wolfgang stood still, waiting. The feeling of relief from agonizing tension passed. If I had just one more chip, he thought. Well, it’s all the same. The day will come.

The ball whirled round once more. Slowly he went out, past the mournful sergeant major, down the dark stairs. He stood for a long time in the entrance hall until a tout opened the door.

VIII

What could he tell his good little Peter? Almost nothing. It could be compressed into one sentence. At first I won, then I had bad luck. So there was nothing special to report; of late it had been like that frequently. Of course, she could hardly gather anything from that. She thought, perhaps, it was somewhat similar to losing at cards or drawing a blank in a lottery. Nothing of the ups and downs, good fortune and despair, could be made comprehensible to her; she could be informed of the result only—an empty pocket. And that was all. But she understood much more than he thought. Too often she had seen his face when he came home of a night, still heated with excitement. And his exhausted face while he slept. And the evil changes in it when he was dreaming of gambling. (Didn’t he really know that most nights he dreamed of it, he who wanted to persuade both her and himself that he was not a gambler?) And his thin, remote face when he had not listened to her, absent-mindedly asking: “What did you say?” and still not hearing—that face which expressed so clearly what he was thinking that it seemed one could touch it, as if it had become something tangible. And his face when he combed his hair in the mirror and suddenly saw what sort of a face he had.

No, she knew enough. He did not need to say anything, nor to torment himself with explanations and apologies.

“It doesn’t matter, Wolf,” she said quickly. “Money never meant anything to us.”

He looked at her, grateful that she could have spared him this explanation. “Of course,” he said, “I shall make up for it. Perhaps this evening.”

“But,” she replied, for the first time insistent, “we have to go at half-past twelve to the Registry Office.”

“And I,” he said quickly, “have to take your clothes to Uncle. Can’t the registrar marry you as someone seriously ill in bed?”

“You may have to pay for invalids as well,” she laughed. “Surely you know that not even death is free.”

“But perhaps invalids can pay afterward,” he said, half smiling, half reflectively. “And then if he doesn’t get his money, well, a marriage is a marriage.”

For a while both remained silent. The vitiated air in the room, ever hotter with the climbing of the sun, felt unpleasantly dry to the skin. The noise of the tin-stamper seemed louder. They heard the tearful voice of Frau Thumann gossiping with a neighbor in front of their door. The over-crowded human hive of the house buzzed, shouted, sang, chattered, screamed and sobbed with multifarious voices.

“You know, you needn’t marry me,” said the girl with sudden resolution. And after a pause: “No human being has done so much for me as you.”

He looked away, a little embarrassed. The window glistened in the sun. What have I really done for her? he thought, bewildered. Taught her how to handle a knife and fork—and speak correct German.

He looked at her again. She wanted to say something more, but her lips trembled as if she were struggling with tears. Her dark glance was so intense that he would have preferred to look away.

But she had already spoken. “If I thought that you only felt you ought to marry me, I wouldn’t wish it.”

He shook his head slowly.

“Or to spite your mother,” she continued. “Or because you think it would please me.”

He shook his head again. (Does she know, then, why we are marrying? he wondered, amazed and lost.)

“But I always feel that you would like it, too, because you feel we belong to each other,” she said suddenly, forcing the words out with tears in her eyes. Now she spoke more freely, as if the most difficult part had been said. “Oh, Wolf, my dear, if it isn’t so, if you marry me for some other reason, don’t do it—please don’t do it. You won’t hurt me. Not so much,” she corrected hurriedly, “as if you married me and we didn’t belong to each other after all.”

“Oh, Petra, Peter, Peter Ledig!” he cried in his den of selfish solitude, overwhelmed by her humility and her loveliness. “What are you talking about?” He took her, embracing and rocking her like a child, and said laughingly: “We haven’t got the money for registrar’s fees, and you talk about one’s deepest feelings.”

“And am I not to talk about them?” she murmured, lowering her voice, nestling her head on his breast. “Am I not to talk about such things because you don’t talk about them? Always, every moment, every day, I think, even when you hold me in your arms and kiss me, as you are doing now, that you’re very far away from me—from everything.”

“Now you’re talking about gambling,” he said, and his embrace relaxed.

“No, I’m not talking about gambling,” she denied hurriedly, and leaned closer to him. “Or perhaps I am. You must know that I don’t know where you are or what you are thinking about. Gamble as much as you like—but when you don’t, couldn’t you be with me a little? Oh, Wolf,” she cried, and now she had moved away, holding him above the elbows and looking firmly at him, “you always think you ought to apologize about the money or explain something. There’s nothing to explain and there’s nothing to be sorry for. If we belong to each other, everything’s all right; and if we don’t, then everything is wrong—with or without money, marriage or no marriage.”

She looked hopefully toward him, she yearned for a word; if only he had held her in his arms in the right way, she would have understood him.

What does she really want of me? he had been thinking. But he knew. She had given herself to him entirely, right from the start, from that first morning when she had asked whether she could come with him. Now she begged him to open for once his dark, remote heart. But how can I do that? he asked himself. How am I to do it? He felt a sudden relief. That I don’t know how shows she is right: I don’t love her, he thought. I merely want to marry her. If I hadn’t staked on zero there would have been money for the registry office; there wouldn’t have been this discussion. Of course, now I know it, it would be better if we didn’t marry. But how am I to tell her? I can’t retreat. She’s still looking at me. What am I to tell her?

The silence had become heavy and oppressive. She still held his arms, but loosely, as if she had forgotten she was holding them. “Peter!” He cleared his throat.

The outer door creaked, and the shuffling of Frau Thumann was heard.

“Quick, Wolf, shut the door,” said Peter hurriedly. “Frau Thumann’s coming and we don’t want her now.”

She had let go of him. But before he could reach the door of their room the landlady came in sight.

“Are you still waiting?” she asked. “I’ve told you: no money, no coffee.”

“Listen, Frau Thumann,” said Wolfgang hurriedly. “I don’t want any coffee. I’m going immediately with our things to Uncle’s. In the meantime give Petra rolls and coffee. She’s half dead with hunger.” Not a sound from Petra. “And with the money I’ll come at once and pay you everything, keeping only what I need for my fare to Grunewald. I’ve an old army friend there, Zecke is his name, von Zecke, who’ll certainly lend me some money.”

He risked a glance into the room. Petra had sat down quietly on the bed, sat there with bent head; he couldn’t see her face.

“Is that so?” the Thumann woman replied, half a question, half a threat. “The girl shan’t lack for breakfast, not today nor tomorrow—what about the wedding, though?” She stood, an overflowing form in shapeless garments, the chamber pot in her hand—the sight of her was enough to destroy anybody’s desire for weddings and respectability forever.

“Oh,” said Wolfgang lightly, and recovered himself. “If Petra’s breakfast comes along, the wedding will come along as well.” He glanced at the girl, who did not move.

“You’ll have to stand in line at the pawnshop and Grunewald’s a long way,” said the Thumann woman. “I’m always hearing about the wedding, but I’d prefer to see it.”

“It’s all right,” cried Petra and got up. “You can be sure about the money and about the wedding, too. Come, Wolf, I’ll help you pack the things. We’ll take the small suitcase; then the man will only have to glance at it to see everything is there as usual. He ought to know it well by now.” And she smiled at him.

Frau Thumann looked keenly from the one to the other, like a wise old bird. Immensely relieved, Wolfgang cried: “Peter, you’re splendid. Perhaps I can really get it through by half-past twelve. If I find Zecke at home, he’ll certainly lend me enough to take a taxi.…”

“Certainly,” replied the Thumann woman for Petra. “An’ then she gets out of bed and into the registry office with a man’s overcoat on and nothing beneath. We’re very clever, aren’t we?” she flashed out. “I’m tired of hearing about it, and what’s worse, there’s no end to the silly little geese who believe you fellers when you tell such yarns. And I know the girl. She’ll sit about the kitchen pretending to help me, but she won’t want to help me, not a scrap; only wants to keep an eye on the kitchen clock, and when half-past twelve comes she’ll say: ‘I feel he’s coming, Frau Thumann.’ But he won’t turn up; he’ll probably be with his high-born pal, and they’ll be having a quiet drink an’ smoke. If he’s got it in his head at all, it’ll be: ‘They marry people every day, anyhow.’ And what don’t happen today needn’t happen tomorrow by a long chalk!”

And thereupon the Thumann woman shot a devastating look at Wolfgang and a contemptuous, pitying one at Petra, made a flourish with the chamber pot which was period, exclamation and question mark combined, and closed the door. The two stood there, hardly daring to look at each other, for, however one might regard the landlady’s outburst, it was not pleasant.

Finally Petra said: “Never mind, Wolfgang. She and all the others can say what they like; it doesn’t affect the issue. And if I was in a tearful mood a moment ago, forget it. Sometimes one feels quite alone, and then one is afraid and would like to be reassured.”

“And now you don’t feel alone, Peter?” asked Wolfgang, oddly moved. “Now you don’t need reassurance?”

She looked at him, forlorn and confused. “Oh, you are with me.…”

“But,” he urged, “perhaps Madam Po is right. At half-past twelve I’ll be sitting and thinking: ‘One can be married any day.’ What do you think?”

“That I trust you,” she cried and lifted her head and looked at him confidently. “And even if I didn’t, what difference would that make? I can’t tie you down. Marriage or no marriage—if you want me everything is all right, and if you don’t …” She broke off, smiled at him. “Now you’ve got to hurry, Wolf. Uncle closes at twelve for lunch, and perhaps there’s really a line.” She handed him the suitcase, she gave him a kiss. “Good luck, Wolf.”

He would have liked to say something, but could not think what.

So he took the case and went.