Wolf Among Wolves

Chapter Four

An Oppressive Afternoon in Town and Country

I

“Listen,” said the Governor, Dr. Klotzsche, to the journalist Kastner, who had chosen that day of all days to visit Meienburg Penitentiary during his tour through Prussia’s strongholds. “Listen. You need attach no importance to the gossip you hear from the townsfolk. If ten prisoners make a noise, in this reinforced concrete building it sounds as if it were a thousand.”

“But you telephoned for the Reichswehr,” the journalist pointed out. “It’s unbelievable!” Governor Klotzsche was about to fly into a rage over Press spying, which went as far as listening-in to trunk calls, when he remembered that this Herr Kastner carried a letter of introduction from the Minister of Justice. Besides, although Cuno was Reich Chancellor, his position according to rumor was shaky, and it was therefore wiser not to be on bad terms with the Social Democratic Party whose Press Herr Kastner represented. “It is unbelievable,” he continued, but in noticeably more moderate tones, “how gossip in this town exaggerates the putting into force of a regulation. If there is unrest in the penitentiary, I have as a precautionary measure to inform the police and Reichswehr. Within a very short time I was able to cancel the warning. You see, Herr Doctor—”

But even that title did not soften this man. “Still, in your opinion there was a possibility of serious unrest. Why?”

The Governor was extremely annoyed, but it didn’t help. “It was on account of the bread,” he said slowly. “It wasn’t good enough for one of the convicts, and he shouted. And when they heard him, twenty others joined in.”

“Twenty, not ten then,” corrected the journalist.

“A hundred for all I care,” cried the Governor, whose gall was overflowing. “For all I care, sir, a thousand, all of them! I can’t alter it; the bread’s not good, but what am I to do? Our food appropriations are four weeks behind the mark devaluation. I can’t buy the best flour—what am I to do?”

“Deliver decent bread. Make a row with the Ministry. Incur debts on behalf of the administration and don’t worry. The men are to be fed according to the regulations.”

“Certainly,” said the Governor. “I’m to risk my neck so that my gentlemen get the best of food. And the unpunished population starves outside, what?”

But Herr Kastner was not accessible to irony and bitterness. Seeing a man in convict garb polishing the corridor floor, he called to him, suddenly very amiable. “You there. Your name, please?”

“Liebschner.”

“Herr Liebschner, tell me quite honestly—how do you find the food, in particular the bread?”

The prisoner glanced swiftly from the Governor to the gentleman in mufti, uncertain of what they wanted to hear. You couldn’t tell; the stranger might be from the Public Prosecutor, and if you opened your mouth too wide you fell in the soup. He plumped for caution. “The food? I like it.”

“Ah, Herr Liebschner,” said the journalist, who was not speaking with a prisoner for the first time, “I’m from the Press. You needn’t be afraid of me. You will come to no harm if you speak frankly. We shall keep an eye on you. What was wrong with the bread early this morning?”

“I beg your pardon,” cried the Governor, pale with fury. “This borders on instigation …”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Herr Kastner barked. “If I’m asking this man to speak the truth, is that instigation? Speak freely—I am Kastner from the Social Democratic Press Combine. You can always write to me.”

But the prisoner had made his decision. “Some will always grumble,” said he and looked frankly at the journalist. “The bread is the same as it ever was and I like it. Those here who complain the loudest go shortest when they’re outside and haven’t a whole pair of trousers to their behinds.”

“So,” frowned the journalist, visibly dissatisfied, while the Governor breathed more easily. “So! What have you been sentenced for?”

“Fraud,” replied Herr Liebschner. “And then they say harvest crews are to go out; tobacco and meat as much as you like.”

“Thanks,” said the journalist curtly, and turned to the Governor. “Shall we continue? I should like to see a cell. Besides, I don’t set much store by an orderly’s gossip; they’re all afraid of losing their jobs. And fraud! Frauds and bullies are the most untrustworthy people in the world.”

“But at first you seemed to attach importance to this swindler’s evidence.” Behind his fair beard the Governor smiled.

The journalist paid no attention. “And then harvest crews. To do work for the big agrarians which even the Poles consider themselves a cut above. And for wretched wages. Is that an arrangement of your own?”

“No, not at all,” said the Governor pleasantly. “It’s a decree of your Party comrade in the Prussian Ministry of Justice, Herr Kastner.”

II

“Frau Thumann,” said Petra, firmly buttoned up from top to toe in the shabby summer overcoat, and without taking any notice of the lodger from the room opposite, the jaunty but debauched Ida of Alexanderplatz, who sat at the landlady’s kitchen table soaking delicious glazed brioche in her milky coffee, “Frau Thumann, haven’t you anything for me to do?”

“Lor’, girl,” groaned Madam Po at the sink. “What do you mean by something to do? D’you want to watch the clock to see if he’s coming, or do you want some grub?”

“Both,” said Ida in a voice hoarse with drink, and sucked her coffee audibly through a lump of sugar in her mouth.

“I’ve already cleaned the fresh ‘errings and you don’t do the potato salad as Willem likes it—and what’s left?”

Madam Po glanced round, but nothing occurred to her.

“I’ve been working my guts out so I’d be at the church door in time for the grand wedding, and now it’s twenty to two and the bride’s still hopping round in a man’s overcoat and bare legs. I’m always being cheated of something.”

Petra sat down. She felt queer in the stomach, a tugging sensation with a hint of pain to come, a weakness in the knees and now and again a flush of perspiration which couldn’t be altogether caused by the sultry air. Nevertheless she felt quite contented. An enormous and happy certainty was within her. She could let them talk as they liked; her previous pride and shame were gone, she knew whither she was going. What mattered was not that the path was difficult, but that it led to a goal.

“Sit down gently on the chair, my lady,” jeered the dashing Ida. “Or else it won’t bear you till the bridegroom comes to take you to the wedding.”

“Don’t be too hard on her in my kitchen, Ida,” cautioned Madam Po at the sink. “Up till now he’s always paid his way, and you have to be kind to paying guests.”

“But there’s an end to everything, Thumann,” said Ida sagely. “I understand men. I know when the dough gets short and he wants to hop it—hers has hopped it today.”

“Don’t say that, Ida, for God’s sake,” wailed Frau Thumann. “What am I going to do with a girl with bare legs, with nothing on but an overcoat? Oh, God,” she screamed, and flung a pan down with a clatter. “I’ve no bloody luck. P’raps I’ll have to buy her a dress to get rid of her.”

“Buy a dress?” said Ida contemptuously. “Don’t be a mug, Thumann. You only need tell a policeman certain things—by the way, there’s one living in the front part of the house—tell him, for instance, she’s swindling—and off she goes to the police station and Alexanderplatz. They’ll give you a dress there, Fräulein—you know, a dark blue uniform and cap.”

“Why try to worry me?” said Petra peaceably. “No doubt you’ve been thrown over once too.” She had not intended to say it, but out of the fullness of the heart the mouth speaketh—and she had spoken.

Ida gasped as if someone had struck her in the breast.

“She got you there!” giggled the Thumann woman.

“Once, Fräulein?” said Ida loudly. “You say once? You mean a hundred times. No, a hundred’s not enough. The times I’ve stood with icy feet while the hand of the big clock moves on and on until it dawns on me, silly fool, that someone has done the dirty on me once more. But,” and she changed over to truculence, “for all that, a girl who even on her wedding day hasn’t a rag to put on needn’t rub it into me. A girl who can’t keep her greedy eyes off the brioche in my mouth and counts every gulp of coffee I take! A girl like that …”

“Go on, go on!” rejoiced the Thumann woman.

“And besides, is it right that a girl like that should come in such a miserable state, into a strange kitchen and ask, as if she were Lady Mud herself, ‘Can I help?’ Those with nothing must beg. My father used a stick to impress that on my back; and if you’d said: ‘Ida, I’m starving, give me a roll,’ you’d have had one. And another thing, Frau Thumann. I pay you a dollar daily for your bug walk, and there’s not even a night light on the stairs, and what with the gentlemen always complaining about it—it isn’t for you to laugh and shout: ‘She’s got you there, my girl.’ You ought to protect me, and when someone like that gets fresh, a woman who sleeps with her bully buckshee, just for fun, and you, Thumann, have to see where you can get the dough—she’s too good to work, she won’t walk the streets and get cash, she’s too good for that—no, Thumann, I’m surprised at you; and if you don’t chuck out that impertinent hussy on the spot, laughing at me for not always having been lucky with the gentlemen, then I’ll clear out.”

The dashing Ida stood there flushed with anger, a brioche in her hand, getting redder and redder the more it dawned on her how greatly insulted she was. Frau Thumann and Petra looked quite disconcerted at this storm, arisen none knew why or how. (And the dashing Ida, if only she had thought it over, would have been just as surprised at the way her speech had ended.)

Petra would have preferred to get up and go back to her room, lock the door, and throw herself on the bed. But she felt fainter and fainter, there was a ringing in her ears and everything swam before her eyes. The angry voice was speaking from a distance, but then again it came close, shouting into her very ears. Everything swam again. Then fire ran down her nape and back; the sweat of weakness broke out. Now she reckoned it up, she had for some days eaten practically nothing, except when Wolf had had some money; a sausage with salad, or rolls and liver sausage, on the edge of the bed. And, since yesterday morning, nothing at all, though it was important now that she should have plenty to eat. She must try to get to her room as quickly as possible, lock the door, lock it firmly, not open it even if the police knocked; open it only when Wolfgang returned.…

In the distance she heard Frau Thumann wailing: “See what you’ve done, my girl. People like you who’ve nothing mustn’t talk away other people’s livings, and Ida’s a first-class lady who brings me her dollar every day—you mustn’t throw mud at a girl like that, understand? And now get out of my kitchen quickly, or you’ll get more than you bargained for.”

“No,” shrieked Ida. “That’s no good, Thumann. Either she goes or I go. I won’t be insulted by the likes of that—out of the flat with her, or I move this minute.”

“But, Ida, my child,” wailed Frau Thumann. “You see what she’s like; so much spit on whitewash, not a stitch on and nothing in her belly—I can’t turn her out like that.”

“Can’t you, Thumann? Can’t you? All right, we’ll see about that—you can watch me go out of your front door, Frau Thumann.”

“Ida,” begged Madam Po, “do me a favor. Just wait till her chap comes back. Then I’ll get rid of them both. Get out of her sight, you fool, you,” she whispered agitatedly to Petra. “If she don’t see you, she’ll cool down.

“I’m going,” whispered Petra. All of a sudden she could stand and could see the open kitchen door as a black oblong against the passage. But she could not distinguish the faces of the women. She went ‘slowly. They were saying something, ever quicker and louder, but she didn’t hear it clearly, did not grasp it.…

But she could walk, however—from the bright stuffy heat slowly toward the blackness which led to the gloomy corridor with “her” door; she only needed to enter, lock it, and then to bed.…

She passed it as if in a dream, however, her feet disobeying her. I ought to have made the bed, she thought, casting a glance at the room, and passed. Close by was the front door. She opened it, stepped over the threshold, and closed the door behind her.

The blurs right and left were the faces of women neighbors. “What’s the row at your place?” asked one.

“Have they chucked you out, Fräulein?”

“Lord, she looks like a warmed-up corpse.”

But Petra only shook her head—if she spoke she would wake up and find herself again in the quarrelsome kitchen.… Softly and gently, or the dream would vanish! … She held the railing cautiously, and descended a step. It was a real dream stair; one went down and down.

She had to hurry. Upstairs a door opened; they were calling to her. “Wench, don’t be so silly. Where are you going with nothing on? Come upstairs. Ida forgives you, too.”

Petra made a gesture of dissent and went still lower, lower—to the bottom of a well. But down below was a shining gate—as in a fairy tale Wolfgang had told her. And now she passed through the bright gate, out into the sun, across sunny courtyards … and now she was in the street, an almost empty sunny street.

Petra looked up and down it. Where was Wolf?

III

At one o’clock, immediately on starting work, the bailiff Meier went to the sugar-beet field. It was as he had feared. Kowalewski, the overseer, had been slack and let the women merely scratch the soil, leaving half the weeds behind.

At once little Meier went crimson and started to curse him. “You damned swine, standing about flirting with the women instead of keeping your eyes open, you miserable old fool,” and so on, the well-known and frequently repeated formula upon every irregularity.

Without a word of excuse Kowalewski let the torrent pass over his almost white head, and had meanwhile pulled up one or two of the weeds with his own hands.

“You’re not here to cuddle the girls, but to watch them,” Meier shouted. “But naturally you prefer a cuddle.”

An utterly unfounded accusation. But Meier, having scored off the old man amid the laughter of his men, vanished among the firs, where his crimson complexion returned to its usual color—a healthy tan—and he laughed till his belly shook. He had given it hot and strong to the old fool: the telling-off would have its effect for at least three days. You had to learn the trick of shouting furiously without feeling angry, or else the laborers would be the death of you.

The Rittmeister, although an old officer and used to drilling recruits, had not this knack. When angry he turned as white as snow and as red as a lobster, and after every such explosion he was played out for twenty-four hours. Queer old bird—great man, indeed!

It would be interesting to see the workers he turned up with, supposing he brought any at all. If he did, they were bound to be excellent, because the Rittmeister had engaged them—and he, Meier, would have to cope with them. Complaints would be useless.

Well, it would pan out all right. He, little Meier, had always got on with great men. The most important thing was that he should bring a few nice girls along, too. In her way Amanda was quite all right, but Polish girls were still more impulsive and passionate, and, above all, they had no grand ideas. Black Meier sang absent-mindedly: “Both the rose and the girl want to be plucked.”

“Young man, you’re not alone!” At the deep voice of his employer’s father-in-law, Bailiff Meier started with fright. Geheime Ökonomierat von Teschow was standing on the path beneath a fir tree.

Below the waist the old gentleman was sufficiently clad, particularly for such oppressively hot weather; that is to say, in top boots and coarse green trousers. But from the middle upward he wore over his enormous corporation only a Jager shirt with a colored piqué front, which showed his gray, shaggy, sweating chest. Higher up again there was a grizzled reddish beard, a red bulbous nose, two cunning cheerful eyes, and on top a green hat decorated with a goat’s beard. The whole was Geheime Ökonomierat Horst-Heinz von Teschow, owner of two estates and eight thousand acres of forest.

And, of course, the old gent was carrying a couple of sturdy branches—his hunting carriage was probably somewhere round the corner. The bailiff knew that he hated all fawning and false refinement, and was no enemy of his. Therefore he could speak undaunted. “Been looking for a bit of firewood, Herr Geheimrat?”

In his old age Herr von Teschow had leased both his estates, Neulohe to his son-in-law and Birnbaum to his son, keeping for himself only “a few fir trees”—that is how he described his eight thousand acres of woodland. And just as he insisted on the highest possible rent (“donkeys if they let themselves be fleeced”), so he kept his eyes as sharply on his wood as the devil does on a lost soul. Nothing was to be wasted; on every expedition he would, with his own hands, load his hunting carriage full of firewood. “I’m not such a nob as my fine son-in-law. I don’t buy firewood, not even from my own firs—I look for it. A perquisite of the poor, haw, haw, haw!”

This time, however, he was not inclined to air his views on the gathering of firewood. Branches in hand, he contemplated the young man who barely reached his armpits. Almost anxiously he inquired: “Up to your tricks again, eh, my boy? My wife’s on about you. Is the plucked rose the Backs wench?”

As well-behaved and polite as a good son, little Meier replied: “Herr Geheimrat, we’ve only been checking the poultry accounts.”

At once the old gentleman flushed purple. “What have my poultry accounts to do with you, sir? What has my poultry girl to do with you? You’re employed by my son-in-law, not by my maid, understand? Nor employed by me.”

“Certainly, Herr Geheimrat,” said little Meier obediently.

“Why must it be my wife’s maid, Meier, my boy, you Apollo, you?” the old gentleman lamented again. “There are so many girls about. Consider the feelings of an old man. And if it must be, why must you do it so that she sees it? I understand everything; I’ve been young myself once. I, too, didn’t sweat it out; but why must I have all this trouble because you’re such a Casanova? I’m to fire you. It’s impossible, I told her; he’s not my employee. I can’t sack him. Sack your maid. No, it’s impossible, she’s only been seduced, says she; and besides, she’s so efficient. Good poultry maids are hard to find, but bailiffs are as numerous as the sands of the sea. So now she’s sulking, and as soon as my son-in-law comes back she’ll be at him—so there you are.”

“We only went through the poultry accounts,” maintained little Meier, for “Never admit anything” is the slogan of all petty criminals. “Fräulein Backs is no good at adding up—so I helped her.”

“All right,” laughed the old man. “She’ll learn it all right. Totting up, my lad, what?” And he laughed uproariously. “By the way, my son-in-law has phoned to say that he’s got the laborers.”

“Thank God!” said Meier hopefully.

“Only the trouble is, they gave him the slip; probably he’s been ordering them about too much. I neither know nor understand anything about it. My granddaughter, Violet, spoke to him on the phone. He’s held up at Fürsten-walde—does that make sense? Since when was Fürstenwalde part of Berlin?”

“May I ask a question, Herr Geheimrat?” said little Meier with all the politeness he kept in reserve for his superiors. “Am I to send conveyances to the station this evening or not?”

“I’ve no idea,” said the old man. “I’d better not interfere with your affairs, my son; if you make a mistake you’d like to say it was under my orders. No—ask Violet. She knows. Or doesn’t know. One can never tell the way things are run with you.”

“Certainly, Herr Geheimrat,” said the well-behaved Meier. One had to be on good terms with the old man. Who knew how long the Rittmeister would last with the rent he had to pay? And then perhaps the old man would engage him, Meier.

The Geheimrat whistled shrilly on two fingers for his carriage. “You can put the branches on my cart,” he said graciously. “And what about the sugar beet? You’re only hoeing now, aren’t you? Won’t grow, eh? You heroes have probably quite forgotten the sulphate of ammonia, eh, what? I wait and wait, nobody spreads manure. I think—leave them alone; a clever child knows without being told. And have a good laugh at you all. Good morning, sir.”

IV

The atmosphere of Police Headquarters at Alexanderplatz was stifling. The corridors stank of fermented urine, rotten fruit, unaired clothes; people stood about everywhere, dull figures with wrinkled gray faces, hopeless or madly excited eyes; the tired policemen were apathetic or irritable. Rittmeister von Prackwitz, blazing with fury, had had to approach a score of people, rush, through dozens of corridors, go up and down numberless stairs till he was sitting, half an hour later, in a big untidy, smelly office. Hardly a couple of yards away the metropolitan railway rattled outside the window; one heard it more clearly than one saw it through the grimy panes.

Von Prackwitz was not alone with the official. At a neighboring desk a pale-faced, big-nosed ruffian was being examined by a plain-clothes officer concerning some pocket picking. In the background, at another desk, four men whispered together; one could not tell whether any of them were criminals, for all were in shirt sleeves.

Controlling his fury, the Rittmeister made his report as brief and as exact as possible, very vigorous and almost loud when his fury at having been taken in got the better of him. The official, a pale, worn-out civilian, listened with lowered eyes without interrupting. Or else did not listen. In either case he was very busy all the time trying to stand three matches against each other so that they would not fall down.

When the Rittmeister had finished, the man looked up. Colorless eyes, colorless face, short mustache, everything rather sad and dusty, but not unsympathetic. “And what are we to do about it?” he asked.

The Rittmeister was greatly shocked. “Catch the fellow,” he shouted.

“But why?”

“Because he hasn’t kept his contract.”

“But you didn’t make a contract with him, did you?”

“Yes, I did. By word of mouth.”

“He’ll deny it. Have you got witnesses? The man from the Agency will hardly confirm your statements, will he?”

“No. But the fellow, the foreman, has cheated me out of thirty dollars.”

“I would prefer not to hear that,” said the official in a low voice.

“What?”

“Have you got a bank certificate entitling you to possess foreign currency? Were you allowed to buy it? Are you permitted to dispose of it?”

The Rittmeister sat there rather pale, biting his lips. So this was the assistance the State gave you! He had been cheated—and all he got was threats. Everybody possessed foreign currency instead of rubbishy marks—he would like to bet that the gray man before him had some in his pocket, too.

“Don’t bother about the man anymore, Herr von Prackwitz,” advised the official. “Suppose we did catch and jail him? The money would be gone, and you wouldn’t get the laborers anyway. Day after day, hour after hour, these cases are reported. There’s a daily list of persons wanted—as long as this. It’s useless, believe me.” Suddenly he became quite official. “Of course, if you wish, there’s the matter of the fare money.… You can prosecute for that. I’ll file it.”

Von Prackwitz shrugged his shoulders. “And I’ve got my harvest waiting out there,” he said finally. “You understand, no end of food, sufficient for hundreds of people. I didn’t give him the foreign currency just for fun, but simply because one can’t get workers.”

“Yes, of course,” said the other man. “I understand. So let’s drop the matter. There are plenty of agencies around Schlesische Bahnhof—you’re sure to get laborers, but don’t pay anything in advance, or to the agent either.”

“All right,” said the Rittmeister. “I’ll try again.”

The big-nosed thief at the next desk was weeping. He looked repulsive. Undoubtedly he wept because he could think of no more lies.

“All right and many thanks,” said von Prackwitz, almost against his will. And in a subdued voice, almost sympathetically, as if to a fellow sufferer: “How do you get on with all that?” and he made a vague gesture with his hand.

The other raised his shoulders and then dropped them hopelessly. He made to speak, hesitated, and finally said: “Since midday the dollar’s stood at seven hundred and sixty thousand. What are people to do? Hunger’s painful.”

The Rittmeister likewise shrugged hopelessly, and without another word went to the door.

V

Weaponless, without even thinking of defense, he let himself be pushed and shoved—not even protecting his neck from the blow that threatened. Carry on, man, you leaf on life’s stream. Its swift currents bear him to calmer waters; but a new eddy engulfs him, and nothing remains but to let himself be whirled to destruction or to another respite—who knows?

Petra Ledig, half-naked and cast out, could with a few words have calmed the storm raised by the two women in the back kitchen. The matter was not really so serious. Life could have returned to its past, had it not been for a stubborn silence which hid pride as well as despair, hunger as well as contempt.

Nothing compelled Petra Ledig to pass by the open door of her room. She could have entered and turned the key had she wanted to. But the eddy wafted the leaf onward. For too long it had been lying in a quiet corner by the water’s edge, at the most sometimes agitated by a ripple. Now the wave lifted the acquiescent leaf into the utterly unknown, onto the street itself.

It was the afternoon, perhaps three o’clock, perhaps half-past three; the workers had not yet left their factories, women were not yet shopping. Behind their windows, or in dark, musty back parlors, the—shopkeepers dozed. No customer was in sight. Too hot!

A cat lay blinking on a stone step. Across the street a dog looked at her, but decided that she was not worth troubling about, and yawned, displaying his rose-pink tongue.

The still blinding sun looked, through the haze, like a red-hot sphere boiling over. Whether it was the walls of a house or the bark of a tree, a shopwindow or a pavement, clothes drying on a balcony rail, or a horse’s urine in the roadway—everything seemed to groan, sweat and smell. It was hot. Redhot. The girl, quietly standing there, thought she heard a soft monotonous sound, as if the whole town were simmering.

With her tired eyes blinking in the light, Petra Ledig waited for an impetus which would carry the leaf onward, no matter whither—anywhere. The town hummed in the heat. For a while she stared across at the dog, as if he could supply this; and the dog stared back, then flopped down, extending all four legs, to sigh with the heat and fall. asleep. Petra Ledig stood and waited, making no effort one way or another. Even a blow would have been relief. The town hummed with the heat.

And while she was standing in the unbearable heat of Georgenkirchstrasse waiting for something or other to happen, her lover, Wolfgang Pagel, sat waiting in a strange house, in a strange kitchen—waiting for what? His guide, the spotless Liesbeth, had disappeared somewhere in the interior of the house; and another young girl, to whom she had whispered a sentence or two, stood at the electric cooker with its chromium-plated fittings. A pot was boiling diligently on the hot plate. Wolfgang sat waiting, hardly waiting indeed, his elbow supported on one knee, his chin in his hand.

He had never seen such a kitchen. It was as large as a dance hall, white, silver, copper-red, its saucepans a dull black; and the working part was divided from the sitting-room part by a waist-high railing of white wood along a kind of platform. Two steps down, and you had cooker, kitchen table, pots, cupboards. In the raised part where Pagel sat stood a long snow-white dining table and comfortable white chairs. Yes, there was even a fireplace of beautiful red bricks with fine white joints.

Wolfgang sat above; below, the strange girl was busy with the stove.

Indifferently he looked through the high bright windows, framed by vine leaves, into a sunny garden—to be sure, there were bars to the windows. And, he thought absently, just as crime is shut up behind bars, so wealth also shelters behind them, feels secure only behind the railings of banks, the steel walls of safes, the wrought ironwork -also in its way a barrier—and steel grills and burglar alarms of its villas. Odd resemblance—not so strange actually. But I’m so tired.…

He yawned. The girl at the stove was looking at him. She nodded, smiling but serious. Another girl, also not unsympathetic—plenty of girls about and nods and sympathy: But what on earth was he to do? He couldn’t sit here forever.… What am I really waiting for? he thought. Not for Liesbeth. What can she say to me? Work and pray; the early bird catches the worm; we rise high on work and industry; work is the citizen’s ornament; no sweets without sweat. Or the dignity of labor, and the laborer is worthy of his hire; therefore he ought to be a laborer in the vineyard; work and don’t despair is the best medicine …

Ah, thought Wolfgang, and smiled weakly as if he were nauseated, what a lot of proverbs man has prepared to persuade himself that he must work and that work is good for him, though he would much prefer to sit here with me, doing nothing, waiting for something, I don’t know what. Only in the evening at the gaming table when the ball buzzes and clatters and is about to fall into the hole—only then do I know what I’m waiting for. But when it’s fallen, whether into the hole I want or another, then I no longer know.

He stared into vacancy. He hadn’t a bad brain; he had ideas, but he had gone to seed and was lazy, he didn’t want to pursue a thought to its logical conclusion. Why should he? I’m like that and I’ll stay like it. Wolfgang Pagel forever! Stupidly he had sold their last possessions merely to visit Zecke, to borrow money. But, arrived at Zecke’s, he had just as stupidly, for the sake of a malicious word, destroyed his chances of getting that money. And, again stupidly, he had gone with the first person he happened to run into, and that was why he was now sitting here—in stagnant water, a leaf without a purpose, the image of all leaves without a purpose. He was not without talents, not without good feelings, not unkind, but he was indolent—just as old Minna had expressed it, he wanted a nursemaid to come and take him by the hand and tell him what to do. For the last five years he had been nothing more than an ex-second lieutenant.

His presence had probably been made known by Liesbeth. A stout woman came in—a woman, not a lady—She cast a swift, almost embarrassed glance at Wolf, and announced from the cook stove that the master had just telephoned. They would eat at three-thirty sharp.

“Good,” said the girl at the stove and the woman left, not without casting another glance at Wolfgang. A stupid inspection. He would clear out at once!

The door opened once more and a liveried manservant came in, an important fellow. Unlike the fat woman, he did not need any excuse; but, crossing the kitchen, ascended the two steps and went up to Wolfgang at the table. He was an elderly man with a fresh-complexioned kindly, face.

Without any embarrassment he held out his hand and said: “My name is Hoffmann.”

“Mine is Pagel,” said Wolfgang after a momentary hesitation.

“It’s very close today,” said the servant in a friendly, low, but very clear and trained voice. “May I bring you something to drink—a bottle of beer?”

Wolfgang pondered a moment. “May I have a glass of water?”

“Beer makes one sleepy,” agreed the -other and fetched the water. The tumbler was on a plate and a piece of ice swam in the water; everything was done in style here.

“Yes, that’s good,” said Wolfgang, drinking greedily.

“Take your time,” advised the other, always with the same kind seriousness. “You can’t drink up all our water—nor the ice,” he added after a pause, and the corners of his eyes wrinkled. However, he fetched a second glass.

“Many thanks,” said Wolfgang.

“FräuleinLiesbeth is engaged for the moment. But she will come soon.”

“Yes,” said Wolfgang slowly. And pulling himself together—“I’d rather go now, I’m quite refreshed.”

“Fräulein Liesbeth is a very good girl, very good and very efficient.”

“Yes,” agreed Wolfgang politely. Only the thought of his money in this Fräulein’s pocket still held him there; those few notes so recently despised would take him back to Alexanderplatz. “There are many good girls,” he acquiesced.

“No,” declared the other. “Forgive me for contradicting you: the sort of good girl I mean is rare.”

“Yes?” inquired Wolfgang.

“Yes. For one ought not to do good just for the fun of it but because one loves what is good.” He looked at Wolfgang again, but not quite so kindly. (Queer fish! thought the visitor.)

“Well, it won’t be long now,” the servant concluded, and he left the kitchen just as gently, as deliberately, as he had entered. Wolfgang felt that although he had hardly said anything he had not given the man a good impression.

Now he must move a little; the girl from the stove came with a tablecloth, then a tray, and started to lay the table. “Stay where you are,” she said. “You’re not in my way.”

She too had a pleasant voice. It struck Wolfgang that the people in this house spoke well. They spoke very good German, clearly and distinctly.

“There’s your place,” said the girl as Wolfgang gazed absent-mindedly at the paper napkin in front of him. “You’ll have your lunch here.”

He made a vague but defensive gesture. Something was beginning to disturb him. The house was not far from Zecke’s mansion, yet far removed in other ways. But they ought not to talk to him as if he were a patient, or rather as if he were somebody who had committed a crime in a fit of madness, and must be spoken with cautiously so as not to provoke him again.

“You won’t disappoint Liesbeth, will you?” the girl said. And after a pause: “The mistress is agreeable.”

She laid the table, the silver clinking—not much, though, as she was very neat-handed. Wolfgang did not stir; a kind of paralysis caused by the heat, no doubt. So he was being treated as some sort of beggar from the street, a hungry man who was given a meal with the consent of the lady of the house. In his mother’s case, the beggar was not allowed into the kitchen; Minna would make some sandwiches and at best a plate of soup was handed out through the door, to be eaten on the landing.

Well, here at Dahlem they were more generous, but it didn’t matter much to the beggar. Whether he was outside the door or in the kitchen, a beggar was a beggar, now and forever after. Amen.

He hated himself for not going. He didn’t want food. What did he care about food? He could eat at his mother’s; Minna had told him that a place was always laid for him. It wasn’t that he was ashamed, but they ought not to talk to him as if he were a patient who had to be considerately treated. He wasn’t ill. It was only that damned money. Why hadn’t he taken those miserable scraps of paper out of her hand? He would be sitting in the subway by now …

In his nervousness he had taken out a cigarette and was just about to light it when the girl said: “Please not now, if you can possibly do without it. After I have sent the lunch up to the dining room it will be all right. The master has such a delicate sense of smell.”

The door opened and in came a little girl, the daughter of the house, ten or twelve years old, bright and cheerful. She certainly knew nothing of the evil gray town side. Probably wanted to have a look at the beggar. Beggars seemed to be a rarity in Dahlem.

“Papa is already on the way,” said the child to the girl at the cooker. “In a quarter of an hour we can eat. What have you got, Trudchen?” “Inquisitive!” laughed the girl and raised a lid. The child sniffed eagerly at the steam. “Oh, merely those old green peas again,” she said. “No, tell me honestly, Trudchen.”

“Soup, meat and green peas,” said Trudchen tantalizingly.

“And?” urged the child.

“Curiosity killed the cat,” laughed the girl.

Such a world still exists, thought Wolfgang, half smiling, half desperate. And I had only forgotten it because in Georgenkirchstrasse I lost sight of it. But children innocent and unspoiled, and real innocence, still exist. What the pudding’s going to be is important, even though hundreds of thousands of people have given up asking about their daily bread. Looting at Gleiwitz and Breslau, food riots in Frankfurt-on-the-Main and Neuruppin, Eisleben and Dramburg …

He eyed the child with suspicion. It’s a swindle, he thought, an artificial innocence, a carefully protected innocence—just as they have bars in front of their windows. Life will reach her in spite of all this. What will remain of her innocence in two or three years’ time?

“Good day,” said the child. She had only just noticed him, perhaps because he moved his chair in order to get up and go. He took the hand which she extended. Beneath a frank handsome forehead she had dark eyes. “You’re the gentleman who came in with our Liesbeth?” she asked, looking at him seriously.

“Yes,” said he and tried to smile at so much earnestness. “How old are you?”

“Eleven,” she answered politely. “And your wife has nothing on but your overcoat?”

“That’s so.” He still tried to smile and appear at ease. But it was damnable to hear one’s shortcomings from the mouths of others, especially from a child’s. “And she has nothing to eat—and won’t be able to get anything, not even a pudding with macaroons.”

She remained unaware that he had intended to hurt her. “Mamma has so many clothes,” she said meditatively. “Most of them she doesn’t wear at all.”

“Quite right,” he said, feeling rather shabby with his cheap talk. “Such is life. You haven’t learned that in school yet, eh?”

He felt lower and more miserable than ever before those serious eyes.

“I don’t go to school,” said the child, assuming an air of importance. “I’m blind.” Again that look. “Papa is also blind. But Papa used to be able to see. I have never been able to, at all.”

She stood before him—and he, so quickly punished for his cheap sneering, felt still more strongly that she was looking at him. No, not with her eyes, but perhaps with her candid brow, her pale curved lips; as if this blind child could penetrate further than did Petra with her eyes.

“Mamma can see. But she says she would prefer not to, as she never knows what Papa and I feel like. We wouldn’t let her though.”

“No,” agreed Wolfgang. “You don’t want that.”

“Fräulein and Liesbeth and Trudchen and Herr Hoffmann can tell us what they see. But when Mamma tells us, then it’s quite different.”

“Because it’s your Mamma, isn’t it?” said Wolfgang cautiously.

“Yes. Papa and I are both Mamma’s children. Papa, too.”

He kept silent, but the child expected no reply. The subjects she was speaking about were so self-explanatory that there was nothing for him to say about them.

“Has your wife a Mamma—or has she nobody?”

Wolfgang stood there, a very thin smile round his lips. “Nobody,” he said decidedly. If only he could get away. Knocked out by a child exposing his unkindness, his want of character.

“Papa will certainly give you some money. And this afternoon Mamma will go and see your wife. Where is she?”

“Seventeen Georgenkirchstrasse,” said he. “Fourth floor,” said he. “At Frau Thumann’s,” said he. Something welled up within him. If only she could get some help! She ought to be helped. She was worthy of all help. Evanescent world in which you have your being, poor thing, both entangled and entangling. Just as you suddenly feel she is freeing herself from you, you notice how useful she was to you. Expelled into the dark, with clear light still existing far away. But now it goes out. You’re on your own, and don’t know whether you can and will return or not. Poor Petra … He was indeed a beggar; and now that the chance of help had arrived he felt that it would be of no use to him, because he was hollow, burnt out, empty.

“I must go now,” he said to the kitchen. He shook hands with the child, nodded, said: “You know the address?” and went. Went into the sultry, the confined, tumultuous town, once more to try and hold his own in the struggle for money and bread. For what? For whom? He did not know and was not to know for a long while.

VI

The Manor, as it was called in Neulohe, was the old gentleman’s house. Rittmeister von Prackwitz lived about half a mile farther on near the farmyard and among the fields, in a small villa of six rooms, speculative-builder style; a jerry-built erection of the early inflation period, the plaster already in flakes. The Manor—which the old gentleman wouldn’t leave, if only because he wanted to stay near his beloved firs and incidentally keep an eye on his son-in-law was a ramshackle yellow building also, but with three times as many rooms as the younger people had and at any rate a real terrace and steps, a sun porch with French windows, and a park.

Black Meier passed the Manor. He had no business there and was not looking for any, wishing to avoid the angry old lady. He was bound for the staff-house (situated uncomfortably close to the Manor) where he had an office and a bedroom—the other rooms stood empty because of the Rittmeister’s economy campaign. (Yet the Rittmeister was a great man!) Since he wanted to question the young Fräulein about her telephone conversation with her father, he went first to his room to wash his hands and face, and sprinkled his chest profusely with a scent called Russian Leather, which was obviously the right thing for the country, since it was advertised as “Pungent, Manly, Dashing.”

He looked at himself in the mirror. That time was, of course, long past when he had felt ashamed of his small stature, blubber lips, flat nose and bulging eyes. Successes with women had taught him that to be handsome was not essential; on the contrary a somewhat odd appearance attracted the girls as surely as a salt-lick attracted the deer.

Naturally Violet would not be so easy to deal with as, for example, Amanda Backs or Sophie Kowalewski. But little Meier believed—again not in agreement with his employer’s view—that little Vi, although only fifteen years old, was a bitch. Certain glances, a young bosom consciously displayed, certain expressions—sometimes bold, sometimes of the deepest innocence—these could not be misunderstood by such an experienced wencher. It was natural, when you came to think of it. Old Herr von Teschow was said to have thrashed a lover out of the bedroom of her mother, then unmarried, a discipline which the mother subsequently tasted herself. So people said. Well, the world was large and everything possible. Like mother, like daughter. To call the little bailiff, because of his thoughts in front of the mirror, an intriguer and a rascally seducer would be an exaggeration. His thoughts were not plans; only day-dreams full of youthful vanity. He had a young puppy’s ravenous appetite; he would have liked to bite at everything—and Violet was very handsome indeed.

But, as with a puppy, his fears were as big as his appetite, and he was afraid of a thrashing. He was bold enough with Amanda Backs, who had no relatives; but he would never be able to behave like that with Vi, who had the support of a quick-tempered father. Although in his dreams he had arranged everything, including an elopement and a secret marriage, he still funked the return to his father-in-law’s, for he could conceive of no homecoming which would be at all satisfactory; the young wife would best manage that interview. He need have no fear of Vi, nor respect for her; once she had slept with him she would be no better than he was. Aristocratic origin peeled off as varnish did from mass-production furniture, revealing the common pine beneath.

Black Meier grinned at himself in the mirror. “You’re a gay dog” may have been the meaning of it, and, as confirming his valuation of himself, he remembered that the Lieutenant had spoken to him this morning in a more comradely tone than to the sneaking Kniebusch.

Meier greeted himself in the mirror, waved a friendly hand at his reflection—“Good luck go with you, child of Fortune”—and marched off to Violet von Prackwitz.

Frau Hartig was tidying up in the office. The coachman’s wife, still comely, would probably also like to have her fling; but women over twenty-five were as old as the hills, and Hartig was about twenty-seven, the mother of no less than eight children. Today her lips were compressed, her eyes sparkled, and she frowned. That didn’t bother Meier; but, just as he was about to pass by, the iron reading lamp fell from the desk with a thundering crash and the green shade broke into a thousand fragments.

So Meier had to stop and say his piece.

“Well,” he grinned, “broken glass brings us good luck-does this apply to you or to me?” She gave him an angry glance. “What’s the matter with you? Is it the weather? It’s close enough for a storm.” And he looked mechanically at the barometer, which had been dropping slowly but steadily since midday.

“I don’t want any of your dirtiness,” cried the woman shrilly. “Do you think I’m going to tidy up any longer after you two?” And she slipped her hand into the pocket of her apron and showed him three hairpins. (In 1923 bobbed hair had not yet conquered the great plains.) In your bed they were,” she almost shrieked. “You filthy beast! But I won’t tidy up that, I’ll show it to the mistress.”

“Which one, Frau Hartig?” laughed Meier. “The old one knows about it already—and she’s praying for me at this moment; the young one has guessed and’ll laugh all the more.” He looked at her with a superior and mocking air.

“Such a common bitch, too,” shrieked Frau Hartig. “Can’t she have a look in the bed before she clears out? But no, I’m to tidy up after a poultry maid! Creatures like that have no shame.”

“Oh, yes, they have, Frau Hartig,” said Black Meier seriously. Then he grinned again. “What handsome red hair your youngest son has, exactly like the head stableman’s. Is he to become a coachman like his father, or stableman like his stepfather?” And with that Meier marched off, giggling to himself, pleased as Punch, while Frau Hartig, still angry but already partly mollified, stared at the three hairpins in her hand. He was a rotter, but he knew his way about, small as he was.

She looked at the hairpins once more, then stuck them resolutely in her own hair. I’ll get hold of you yet, she thought. Amanda won’t rule forever.

Cheerfully she cleared away the fragments of the lamp shade, of a sudden firmly convinced that they would bring her the good luck.

Meier, too, was thinking of the broken glass and the good luck it would almost immediately bring him. In the best of moods he arrived at the Rittmeister’s villa. First he peeped into the garden, for he would much prefer to meet Vi out of earshot of her mother; she was not there, however. This was not difficult to establish since, although the garden was not small, one could see all over it at a glance. Already partly dried up, it had been recently created by Frau von Prackwitz and conjured up at a moment’s notice from a bare field.

Nothing, by the way, could better symbolize the position in Neulohe or the gulf between owner and tenant than a comparison of Teschow’s park with Prackwitz’s garden: in the former were sumptuous trees a hundred years old, abounding with foliage and sap; in the latter a few bare sticks with scanty and fading leaves. In the one were wide green lawns; in the other a thin dry grass struggling hopelessly against advancing mare’s-tail, couch-grass, and meadow heartsease. There a fair-sized lake with rowboat and swan; here an artificial stone basin filled with green ditchwater. In one place a growth inherited and full of promise for the future; in the other, growth hardly born, yet already withering. (Still, the Rittmeister’s a great man!)

Bailiff Meier was just about to ring the bell when he heard a call from the side. A ladder led up to the flat roof of the kitchen annex where stood a deck chair and a big garden sunshade. It was from there that the voice had called, “Herr Meier!”

Meier stood to attention. “At your service.”

An ungracious voice from above: “What’s the matter? Mamma is quite done up by the heat and wants to sleep. Don’t you dare disturb her.”

“I only wanted to ask, Fräulein … Herr von Teschow told me that the Rittmeister had telephoned.” Rather angrily: “It is about the conveyances … Am I to send them to the station or not?”

“Don’t shout like that,” shouted the voice from above. “I’m not one of your farm girls. Mamma wants to rest, I tell you.”

Meier looked despairingly at the flat roof. But it was too high to see anything of the girl he had eloped with in his dreams and married; only a corner of the deck chair and part of the sunshade. He decided to whisper as loudly as he could. “Am I to send conveyances—this evening—to the railway?”

Silence. Meier waited.

Then from above: “Did you say anything? I could only hear “Run away.”

“Haw-haw-haw.” Meier guffawed dutifully before repeating his inquiry somewhat louder.

“You’re not to shout,” came her command.

He knew quite well that she only wanted to torment him. He was merely Papa’s bailiff. Had to do what he was told. Had to stand and wait till it graciously pleased Fräulein. You wait, my dear, one day you’ll have to stand and wait—for me.

However, he now seemed to have been kept waiting long enough, for she called to him (surprisingly loud, too, for such a considerate daughter): “Herr Meier, aren’t you going to speak? Are you still there?”

“Certainly, Fräulein.”

“I thought you’d melted in the sun. You’re hot enough for that.”

There, she knew all about it, of course. But no harm done, it only whetted the appetite.

“Herr Meier!”

“Yes, Fräulein?”

“If you’ve stood there long enough perhaps you will notice a stepladder, and come up here and tell me what you really want.”

“Yes, Fräulein.” And up the ladder. “Yes, Fräulein” was always good, flattered her and cost nothing, stressed the social gulf between them and permitted everything. One could peep into her low-necked dress while saying, very humbly: “Yes, Fräulein.” One could even say it and kiss her. “Yes, Fräulein” was smart and gallant, like the officers at Ostade.

He was now standing at the foot of her deck chair, blinking obediently, yet with insolence, at the young mistress who reclined before him clad in nothing but a very short bathing suit. At fifteen, Violet von Prackwitz was already fully developed—over-developed if one considered her age, her heavy bosom, fleshy hips and vigorous bottom. She had the soft flesh, the too-white skin of the lymphatic, and, in addition, somewhat protruding eyes like her mother’s, of a pale blue, a sleepy blue. The dear innocent child had raised her naked arms, stretched herself; it didn’t look at all bad, the bitch was handsome and, hang it all, what a body to cuddle.

Sleepily, sensually, through half-closed eyes, she searched the bailiff’s face. “Well, why are you looking like that?” she demanded. “At mixed bathing I wear nothing else. Don’t be stupid.” She studied his face.

“Mamma ought to see us both here.…”

He struggled with himself. The sun burned madly, vibrated, dazzled. Now she stretched herself again and he made a step toward her. “Vi, oh, Vi.”

“Why, oh why?” she laughed. “No, no, Herr Meier, you’d better stand nearer the ladder.” And now she was the daughter of the house again. “You’re funny. You seem to imagine things. I have only to call out and Mamma’s at her window.” Then, when she saw that he obeyed her: “You needn’t send carriages to the station today. Probably tomorrow morning to meet the first train. But Papa will telephone again.”

A moment ago she had understood quite well, the cheeky bitch. Had only wanted to exhibit herself and torment him. But wait, I’ll get you yet.

“Why don’t you gather in the harvest?” asked the young girl who was to be eloped with and secretly married.

“Because the laborers have to sheave it first.” Rather surly.

“And if there’s a storm and it all gets wet, Papa will be in a terrible temper.”

“And if I bring in the crop and there’s no storm, he’ll also be in a temper.”

“But there will be a storm.”

“One can’t be certain.”

“But I know.”

“So Fräulein wishes me to get the crop in?”

“Not at all.” She laughed boisterously, her full bosom positively jumping in her bathing dress. “So that you could blame me afterward if it doesn’t suit Papa! No, blunder as much as you like, but don’t put the blame on others.”

She looked at him with an air of benevolent superiority. This flapper of fifteen years was amazingly impudent. Why? Because she happened to be born a von Prackwitz, heiress of Neulohe—for no other reason.

“Then I can go, Fräulein?” asked Black Meier.

“Yes, be sure and don’t neglect your work.” She had rolled on one side and looked at him mockingly.

He moved off.

“Hi, Herr Meier,” she called.

“Yes, Fräulein?” There was nothing he could do about it.

“Are you carting manure?”

“No, Fräulein.”

“Then why do you smell so queer?”

It took him quite a while to grasp that she meant his perfume. Then, without a word, but red with fury, he turned round and descended the ladder as quickly as he could.

What a bitch! One oughtn’t to have anything to do with such a bitch. The Reds were quite right—against the wall with the whole insolent rag, tag, and bobtail! Aristocracy be damned! Insolence, impudence, nothing but arrogance.…

He was down the ladder, walking away with short, furious legs. Then a voice sounded again, a voice from heaven, the voice of the young lady: “Herr Meier!”

He started, full of fury—and again he couldn’t do anything about it. “Yes, Fräulein?”

Her voice was very ungracious. “I’ve told you three times you’re not to shout like that. You’ll wake Mamma.” Then, impatient: “Come up again.”

Meier climbed the ladder once more, full of bile. Yes, hopping up and down like a tree frog, with you calling the weather. But wait till I get you. I’ll jilt you and leave you with a baby, without a penny. Nevertheless he stood smartly upright. “Please, Fräulein?”

She was no longer thinking of showing her body off, but was reflecting, although she had practically decided. Only she was uncertain how to tell him. In the end she said as innocently as possible, “You’re to deliver a letter for me, Herr Meier:”

“Yes, Fräulein.”

Suddenly it was in her hand. Whence she had taken this longish envelope of blue paper was a mystery; as far as one could judge at Meier’s distance it was unaddressed.

“You’re going this evening to the village?”

He was utterly taken by surprise and quite uncertain of himself. Was this merely conversational, or did she know something? That, however, was impossible.

“I don’t know. Perhaps I will. If you wish it, Fräulein, certainly.”

“A gentleman will ask you for a letter. Hand it over.”

“What gentleman? I don’t understand.”

Suddenly she became exasperated. “You needn’t understand anything. You’re simply to do as I tell you. A gentleman will ask you for the letter and you’ll give it to him. That’s quite simple, isn’t it?”

“Yes, Fräulein,” he said. But it sounded rather feeble—he was so much wrapped up in his own thoughts.

“Then that’s everything, Herr Meier.” And she handed him the letter. He could hardly believe it, but he held the letter in his hand, a weapon against her. You wait, my little lamb. Any more of your sauce. He pulled himself together. “It shall be done, Fräulein.”

And again he descended the ladder.

“I should say so,” her voice challenged him from above. “Or else I shall tell Grandpa and Papa who it was started to burn down the wood.”

The voice stopped. Meier paused midway, so as not to miss a word. There! And that was that! “Burn down.” A shot in the heart. Bravo! Splendid for fifteen years old. She had a future before her.

“And the Herr Lieutenant doesn’t like jokes, either,” added the voice—and now he heard her fat, lazy flesh rolling over on the other side, the deck chair groaning. Fräulein Violet von Prackwitz yawned comfortably up there while Herr Bailiff Meier got on with his work.

Right you are, he told himself, that’s O.K. by me.

But he did not get on with his work immediately. Deep in thought he trotted along to his room, the letter in the outside pocket of his linen jacket and his hand on its smooth surface all the time. He must feel that he had really got the letter, that it was there, this letter which he would straightway read. She had said little enough, the artful bitch, but she had said enough for him. Quite enough. So she knew the Lieutenant, that mysterious, somewhat raged but overbearing gentleman who convened nocturnal meetings at the village magistrate’s, and before whom Forester Kniebusch stood to attention. And she had met this Lieutenant between twelve and three today, or else she could not have known about the fire.

If, therefore, this Lieutenant nodded in such a friendly way to Herr Bailiff Meier, it was not because he thought Black Meier so much more efficient than that old slacker Kniebusch, but because he knew that Meier had already been chosen for go-between. The Lieutenant, it seemed, knew his way about in Neulohe. A secret agreement of long standing.

You have gone far, you two, thought Meier. I can picture it all. And when I’ve read the letter—you’re a fool, nevertheless, you proud silly goose. Do you think I shall hand it over without having a look at what you’ve written? I want to know, and then I’ll consider what to do. Perhaps I’ll tell the Rittmeister—what’s a bit of a forest fire against that? You won’t have me by the short hairs on that matter. But I don’t think I’ll say anything to the Rittmeister after all. You’re so silly that it never occurs to you that a fellow like the Lieutenant will jilt you. You need only look at him, of course, to see that. Then I’ll be there—no, my child, I don’t mind. I don’t take offense. It’s not much fun and a lot of trouble to break in young horses—it’s better they should know their paces first. You shall pay me then for every impertinent, arrogant word, for every “Yes, Fräulein”—and for this letter above all. How does one open letters? With steam, I’ve heard, but how can I quickly manage that in my room? Well, I’ll try to open the flap with a knife, and if the envelope gets spoiled I’ll take one of my own. Yellow or blue—he’ll hardly notice which.…

He reached the office. Without even taking off his cap he sank into the chair at the desk. Putting the letter on the worn ink-stained baize, he stared at it. He was damp with sweat, his body was limp, his mouth parched. He was utterly exhausted. He could hear the hens clucking in the farmyard, the dairymen clattering with pails and milk cans in the cow barn. He should think so—high time for milking!

The letter lay before him, the flies buzzed monotonously; it was unbearably close. He wanted to look at the barometer on the wall (perhaps a storm would come after all) but he didn’t look up. It was all the same to him!

The letter, the clean blue rectangle on the stained baize. Her letter.

Lazily, carelessly, he seized the paper knife, drew the letter nearer, and put both down. He wiped his sweating hands on his jacket.

Then he took the paper knife and slowly, one might say luxuriously, inserted the blunt point into the small gap under the flap. His gaze was intent; a light, satisfied smile hovered about his thick lips. Yes, he could open the letter. By careful pushing, lifting, pressing, he loosened the carelessly stuck flap and saw a corner of the writing. There were tiny fibers which did not want to yield—but at the same time he saw Vi as he had just seen her on the deck chair … She stretched her body, her plump white flesh quivered … she threw up her arms and tiny curls glistened in the armpits.…

Black Meier groaned.

He was staring at the letter which he had opened meantime—but he was absent, half a mile away on a flat sun-baked roof—flesh to flesh, skin to skin, hair to hair. “Dearest!”

A wave subsided, shining with the colors of beautiful, living human flesh lit up by the evening sun.… Black Meier groaned again. “Well, I never,” he wondered. “That bitch must have made me quite crazy. But it’s the heat as well.”

The envelope had opened without tearing. It would not be necessary to gum the flap—Fräulein Violet had fastened it so carelessly. Well, let us read it.… But first he wiped his hands on his jacket—they were wet with perspiration again.

He drew the paper out of the envelope and unfolded it. The letter was not very long but, for all that, it was full of meat.

Dearest! My dearest darling! My only one! You have only just gone and again I am quite crazy about you. I tremble all over and vibrate, so that I have to shut my eyes over and over again. Then I see you. I love you sooo much. Papa definitely does not come home today, so I will wait for you between eleven and twelve at the pond by the swan-house. See to it that the silly meeting is finished by then. I am longing so terribly for you.

100,000,000 kisses and even more. I press you to my heart which beats quite madly.

Yours, VIOLET.

“God,” said little Meier and stared at the sheet. “She really loves him. Loves him so with three o’s and yours underlined. A kid still wearing her nappies! He’ll play her up. Well, all the better.”

He copied the letter on the typewriter, meticulously counting the noughts in the sum of kisses. (“Sheer inflation—she’s up to date”) and refastened the envelope.

The copy he put into Volume 1900 of the District Gazette, the letter itself in his coat pocket. And now he was completely satisfied. And quite ready to carry on with the farming. He looked at the barometer. It had again dropped a little.

Would there be a storm? Should he get in the crop? Nonsense, she was talking rubbish.

He went out to his mowing machine.

VII

“I thought you would look me up today, my poor Mathilde.”

Frau von Anklam, over seventy, the white-haired and shapeless widow of a major general, had emerged with difficulty from the easy-chair in which she was passing her afternoon nap. She held her visitor’s hand in hers and looked compassionately and anxiously out of her large brown eyes, still beautiful. At the moment she spoke in a dramatic manner, as if at a death; but she could also speak in another key—that of the regimental commander’s wife who keeps the ladies of the regiment in order and propriety.

“We’re getting old, but our burdens don’t lighten. Our children tread on our laps when they are young. Later, on our hearts.”

(Frau von Anklam had never had children. Nor could she bear with them.)

“Come, sit on the sofa, Mathilde. I’ll ring—Fräulein will bring us coffee and cake. Today I sent out for a Hilbrich cake; he still has the best. Only it isn’t worthwhile for myself alone—forty thousand marks in fares, you understand, forty thousand! Robbers, that’s what they are. Yes, Fräulein, pastry and coffee, very strong—my cousin has had bad news. Yes, dear Mathilde, I’ve been sitting in my chair and thinking about things. Fräulein thinks I’ve been sleeping, but of course I haven’t. I hear every sound in the kitchen, and when a plate’s broken in the washing-up I’m there at once. Does your Minna break much, too? It’s still the old Nymphenburg china which Grandfather Kuno received on his diamond wedding from the dear late Emperor—there’s enough left for an old woman, but one has to think of one’s heirs. I really promised it to Irene, but lately I’ve not been sure. Irene has such strange views about the bringing-up of children. Perfectly—how shall I describe it?—revolutionary.”

“And the news is absolutely true, Betty?” asked Frau Pagel, erect and slender. However sympathetic a close relative might be, it could not be told from her face and behavior that she had wept.

“The news? What news? Oh, the news. But dear Mathilde, when I especially wrote to you about it.” This rather as commander’s wife, but yet sympathetic. “Certainly it’s true. Eitel-Fritz happened to be there and read it with his own eyes. The banns, they call it, don’t they? Not that I know what business he had there, of course. I was so excited that I didn’t ask him. But you know Eitel-Fritz, he’s so original, he goes to the oddest places. Attention! La Servante!”

Fräulein appeared with the tray and the coffee set of Nymphenburg china from grandfather’s diamond wedding. The ladies became silent. Without a sound, Fräulein, elderly and mouse-gray, laid the table.

She was always “Fräulein”—all these changing faces were nameless at Frau Major General von Anklam’s. Fräulein set the table, and Fräulein darned. Fräulein read aloud and Fräulein described something; above all, Fräulein listened. Fräulein listened from morn till even. Stories of regimental ladies long dead and forgotten (“I told her: ‘Dear child, I decide what tact is’ ”); stories of children long ago in possession of their own children (“And then the sweet little angel said to me”); stories of relatives long alienated; tales of promotion and dismissals; of orders and decorations; of wounds; of marriage tangles and divorces—the rag, tag, and bobtail of a life spent entirely in gossip and tittle-tattle about intimate, the most intimate, things.

Fräulein, colorless and mouse-gray, listened, said: “Yes,” “Oh, no,” “Really,” “Charming”; but when Her Excellency had visitors she heard nothing. Frau Major General whispered with the last remnants of her Lausanne finishing-school French: “Attention! La Servante!” and the ladies fell silent. When there were visitors Fräulein had no existence, as was fitting. (When the visitors were gone everything was recounted to her.)

But after the first silence Frau von Anklam did not remain silent by any means—that was not done either. She talked of the weather. (“It is close today, perhaps we shall have a storm; perhaps yes, perhaps no.”) She’d once had a Fräulein with rheumatic twinges in her big toe before a storm—very strange, was it not?

“It always came true, and once when Fräulein was on her holiday (you know we had our estate at that time) we had a tremendous hailstorm which smashed down the whole crop. Well, if Fräulein hadn’t been on holiday we should have known about it in advance-and that would have been so good, wouldn’t it, dear Mathilde? But, of course, Fräulein was on her holiday.”

“Yes, everything is all right, Fräulein, thanks. You may now press the lace frill on my black taffeta dress. It’s already pressed I know, Fräulein. It’s not necessary to tell me that. But it’s not done as I like it. I like it to be as light as a breath of air. Fräulein, as light as air! So please do that, Fräulein.”

And the door had hardly closed behind Fräulein before Frau von Anklam turned sympathetically to Frau Pagel. “I’ve considered and reconsidered the matter, dear Mathilde, and I stick to my opinion. She is simply a low, vulgar creature.”

Frau Pagel started and looked anxiously toward the door. “Fräulein?”

“Mathilde, do concentrate a little. What are we talking about? Your son’s marriage! If I were to be so absent-minded … I always told the ladies of my regiment.…” Frau Pagel still hoped to learn something definite, but what she hardly knew. She succeeded in putting in a word. “The girl is perhaps not entirely bad.…”

“Mathilde! A creature! Only a creature!”

“She loves Wolfgang—in her way.”

“I don’t wish to hear anything about it. No indelicacy in my house!”

“But Wolfgang gambles, Betty, gambles everything away.”

Frau von Anklam laughed. “To see your face, dearest Mathilde! Boys always play a little—you mustn’t say ‘gamble,’ it sounds so vulgar. All young men play a little. I remember that time we had the regiment at Stolp—there was a lot of playing among the young fellows. Excellency von Bardenwiek said to me: ‘What are we to do, Frau von Anklam? We must do something about it.’ I said: ‘Excellency,’ I said, ‘we’ll do nothing of the kind. As long as the young people play they’re not making fools of themselves in another way.’ And he agreed with me at once.… Come in.”

There had been a gentle knocking at the door. Fräulein put her head in: “Ernst is back, Excellency.”

“Ernst? What does he want? These are peculiar manners, Fräulein! You know I have a visitor, don’t you? Ernst—the idea of it!”

In spite of this outburst Fräulein still dared to say something. Like a mouse in the trap she squeaked. “He has been to the registry office, Excellency.”

Frau von Anklam brightened up. “Oh, of course. He shall come in as soon as he has washed his hands. What a long story you make of everything, Fräulein. Fräulein, one moment, don’t always run away at once, so heedlessly. Please wait for my instructions. First give him a spray or two of eau-de-Cologne; yes, the toilet eau-de-Cologne. One never knows whom he has met there.”

Alone with her cousin again, she said: “I wanted to find out how the wedding went. I considered for a long time whom I could send to such an affair, and I sent our Ernst. Well, now we shall hear.” And her eyes shone. She moved her heavy body to and fro in anticipation. She was to hear something new, something more for her lumber-room of memories. O Lord, how splendid!

Ernst, the servant, entered: an elderly man, diminutive, close on sixty, who had been in Frau von Anklam’s service for a lifetime.

“Wait at the door,” she called. “Stay at the door, Ernst.”

“I know that, Excellency.”

“Immediately afterward have a bath and change every stitch. Heaven knows what bacteria you have picked up, Ernst. Come on, do tell us about the wedding.”

“There was none, Excellency.”

“You see, Mathilde—what did I tell you? You get excited about nothing. What did I tell you only three minutes ago? She’s quite a common person. She has thrown him over.”

“Might I ask Ernst a few questions, dear Betty?” said Frau Pagel faintly.

“Certainly, dear Mathilde. Ernst, I don’t understand you. You stand there like a stick. Don’t you hear that Frau Pagel wants to know everything? Speak. She has of course thrown him over. Go on, what did he say to that?”

“Pardon me, Excellency. I believe the young gentleman didn’t turn up either.”

“You see, Mathilde, what did I tell you? The boy is all right, the bit of playing does him no harm; on the contrary, he is absolutely sensible. One doesn’t marry such a person.”

At last Frau Pagel got in a word. “Ernst, is it certain? Was there definitely no wedding? Perhaps you arrived a little too late.”

“No, madam, certainly not. I was there in time and waited till the end, and also asked the clerk. Neither of them turned up.”

“You see, Mathilde.”

“But why should you think, Ernst, that it was my son?”

“I wanted to be sure, madam. Something might have happened. I ascertained their address from the registry office. So I went there, madam.…”

“Ernst, be sure to have a bath immediately and put on fresh linen.”

“Yes, Excellency. The young gentleman has not been seen since this morning. And the girl has been turned out of doors because the rent hadn’t been paid. She was still standing in the doorway.”

Frau Pagel stood up suddenly. Once more she was full of decision, energetic and unyielding.

“Thank you, Ernst. You have reassured me. Excuse me, dear Betty, for leaving without ceremony, but I must go home at once. I have the feeling that Wolfgang is sitting there waiting for me, full of despair. Something must have happened. O God, and Minna is also out! Well, he still has the key of the flat. Excuse me, I’m quite confused, dear Betty.”

“Manners and deportment, dear Mathilde! Deportment in every situation of life! Naturally you should have stayed at home on such an afternoon; of course he’s waiting for you. I, myself, wouldn’t have gone out on such a day. And above all—please, Mathilde, one moment, you simply can’t run off like that—be firm. No false kindness. Above all give him no money, not a penny. Board and lodging and clothes—that’s all right. But no money; he’ll only lose it at play. Mathilde—Mathilde! Go. Don’t stand on ceremony. Listen, Ernst.…”

The Thumann woman of the upper classes talks on and on.…

VIII

The dog slept, the cat slept, Georgenkirchstrasse slept.

Petra Ledig stood in the shadow of the doorway leading to the courtyard. The street vibrated in the merciless white heat; the hard light hurt her eyes; what she looked at seemed to lose its outlines and dissolve. She shut her eyes, and her head was filled with darkness shot through with aching flashes. She heard clocks strike the hour—it was good that the time passed. At first she had thought she must go somewhere or do something, but as she felt the moments slip away in a daze, she knew that she need only stand and wait. He must come, he might come any moment, he was bringing money. Then they would set out. Round the corner was a baker’s, next to a butcher’s. She imagined she was biting into a roll; it crackled, its crisp amber shell breaking, splinters of crust round the edge, and the inside white and spongy.

Now intruded red objects; she tried to recognize them, which she could do with shut eyes, for they were within her brain, not without: small round circles with reddish spots. What could they be? And suddenly she knew—they were strawberries. Of course, they had moved on; she was at a greengrocer’s. The strawberries lay in a basket. They smelled fresh—oh, how fresh they smelled. The strawberries lay on green leaves which were cool, too.… Everything was very cool and very fresh, with the sound of water also clear and cool.…

She tore herself away from her fantasy with an effort, but the water ran so insistently, and splashed down in such a way that it seemed to have something to say to her. Slowly she opened her eyes, slowly she recognized the doorway in which she was still standing, the vibrating street—and at last saw the bowler-hatted man who was saying something to her, an elderly man with sallow face and yellow-gray mutton-chop whiskers.

“What do you say?” she asked with a great effort, which she had to repeat because at first only a tiny unintelligible sound came from her parched mouth.

Many had passed her while she stood there. If they did notice the figure in the shadow of the open door they only hurried on all the quicker. It was a poor district in a starving age, and everywhere, at any hour of the day, stood women, girls, widows, miserable bodies rigged up in the most ridiculous rags, hunger and misery in their faces. To find a buyer for that miserable body was the last hope of the war widows done out of their pensions; working-class women whose husbands, even the soberest and most industrious, were tricked out of their wages by every devaluation of the mark; girls, some almost children, who could no longer witness the misery of their younger brothers and sisters. Every day, every hour, every minute, they slammed the doors of wretched hovels in which hunger was their mate and worry their bedfellow; they slammed doors behind them in finality and said: “Now I will do it. Why preserve myself for a greater misery, the next influenza epidemic, the medical officer and the bone house? Everything flows, hurries on, makes haste, changes—and am I supposed to keep myself?”

There they stood, in every corner, at all hours, insolent or cowed, talkative or silent, begging: “Only a cup of coffee and a roll.”

Georgenkirchstrasse was in a poor district. Gas company collector, middleman tailor, postman—they hurried all the quicker when they saw the girl. They didn’t pull a face or make an insolent remark or joke: they had no thought of scoffing. But they hurried past lest a word of supplication should reach their hearts and move them to make a gift which should not be given. For the same trouble awaited all of them at home: black care rode on everybody’s shoulder. Who knows when my wife, my daughter, my girl will be standing there, at first in the shadow of the door and next time in broad daylight? If you hurry by and see nothing, no whisper reaches your ears. You are alone, I am alone, we die alone—so each for himself.

But now somebody had stopped before Petra, an elderly man in a bowler hat, a yellow owl’s face and yellow owl’s eyes.

“What?” she asked, this time quite distinctly.

“Well, Fräulein!” He shook his head somewhat disapprovingly. “Do the Pagels live here?”

“Pagels?” So he didn’t want anything of that sort, he was inquiring after the Pagels. The Pagels, several Pagels, at least two of them. She would have liked to know who he was, what he wanted; perhaps something important for Wolfgang.… And she tried to pull herself together. This gentleman wanted something. He mustn’t discover that she belonged to Pagel, she who stood in the doorway thus. “The Pagels?” She sought to gain time.

“Yes, the Pagels. Well, you don’t seem to know. Been having a drop or two, what?” He winked. He seemed to be a good-hearted man. “You oughtn’t, Fräulein, not during the daytime. It’s all right in the evening. But it’s bad for you during the day.”

“Yes, the Pagels live here,” she said. “But they’re not at home. They’re both out.” (For he mustn’t go up to the Thumann woman; what he would hear there might be detrimental to Wolfgang.)

“So? Both out? Probably to the wedding, eh? But then they must have arrived late. The registry office is closed now.”

So he knew that, too. Who could he be? Wolfgang had always said he had no acquaintances.

“When did they go?” the gentleman continued.

“About half an hour ago, no, an hour ago,” she said hastily. “And they told me they weren’t coming back today.” (He mustn’t go up to the Thumann woman. No!)

“So they told you that, Fräulein?” the gentleman asked, suddenly suspicious. “You’re probably on friendly terms with the Pagels?”

“No, no,” she protested hastily. “They only know me by sight. They only told me because I’m always standing here.”

“So …” said the gentleman thoughtfully. “Well, thank you very much.” And he went slowly through the doorway toward the first courtyard.

“Oh, please,” she called in a weak voice and even took a few steps after him.

“Anything else?” he asked, turning round; but he didn’t come back. (He intended to go up in any case.)

“Please,” she implored. “The people up there are bad. Don’t believe what they tell you of Herr Pagel. Herr Pagel is an excellent and very respectable man I’ve never had anything to do with him, I only know him by sight.”

The visitor stood in the sunlit courtyard. He looked at Petra keenly, but he did not recognize her in the shadowy doorway; a slight, weak figure, the head bent forward, the lips half open, hands laid imploringly on her breast, anxiously awaiting the effect of her words.

He fingered his yellow-gray beard thoughtfully. After a long silence’ he said: “Don’t worry, Fräulein. I don’t believe everything I’m told.”

It did not sound ironical, perhaps it was not intended for her at all. It sounded almost friendly.

“I know the young gentleman quite well. I knew him when he was so high.” And he indicated an impossibly short distance from the ground. Then, without another word, he nodded at her and vanished in the passage to the second courtyard.

Petra, however, slipped back to her sheltered corner behind the open door. She knew now that she had made a mistake; she should not have given any information at all to this old gentleman who had known Wolfgang as a child. No, she ought to have said: “I don’t know whether the Pagels live here.”

But she was too tired, too shattered, too ill to think about it any more. She only wanted to stand there and wait till he came back; then she would read in his face the information he had gleaned. She would tell him what a wonderful man Wolfgang was, that he had never done anything wicked, never done anybody any harm.… She rested her head on the cool wall, shutting her eyes, and this time almost unwillingly felt descend upon her the darkness which meant relief from her ego, her troubles, while in her mind she endeavored to accompany the old gentleman across the courtyard. And then upstairs to Frau Thumann’s door. She thought she could hear him ring, and now she wanted to concentrate on his conversation with the landlady.… She would talk, that woman! Oh, she would talk, reveal everything, fling mud at them both, lament over the lost money.…

And suddenly she could see their room, the ugly den gilded by the rays of love.… There they had laughed, slept, talked, read.… Wolf stood brushing his teeth at the wash stand. She said something.…

“I can’t hear,” he shouted. “Talk louder.”

She did.

“Louder.” He went on brushing his teeth. “I can’t hear a word. Louder still.”

She obeyed, he brushed, the soap foamed.

“I said much louder.”

She obeyed and they laughed.

Here they had been together; she had waited for him, never in vain.…

And she saw the street in one quick stab and knew that she was walking along … fairy fountain … Hermannspark … on, still farther on … And now she was in the country, with fields and forests, bridges and bushes … And again towns full of houses with doorways, and again land and water, vast oceans … and distant lands and country and town; unimaginable.… The myriad potentialities of life at every corner in every village … “To thee will I give all the glory of them.” Her brain grew confused. “And I will worship before you if you will give me back our room and the vigil for him within it.”

Slowly the world went dark. Everything was extinguished. The world was obscured. Dark shreds floated away, hiding her.… At one moment she thought she could still see the curtains in the room, yellow-gray, and hanging limp and motionless in the immense sultry heat. Then they too were swallowed up in the night.

The servant Ernst laid his hand on her shoulder and said admonishingly: “Fräulein, please, Fräulein.”

Petra saw him from a long way off and, as if she had been urgently waiting to put the question ever since he had gone, asked at once: “What did they say?”

The man shrugged his shoulders. “Where has the young master, gone to?” She hesitated and he said soothingly: “You needn’t feel embarrassed with me. I’m only his aunt’s servant. I needn’t tell her everything.”

“He has gone to get some money.” He couldn’t learn anything worse from her than he had heard upstairs.

“And hasn’t come back?”

“No. Not yet. I’m waiting.”

They were both silent for a while, she waiting for what fate and perhaps this man had in store for her, he undecided whether to go away and report to his mistress. He could guess without difficulty what Frau Major General von Anklam thought of this girl, and what she would say to active help. All the same.…

Ernst stepped slowly through the doorway on to the street to look irresolutely right and left, but the man they expected was nowhere to be seen. For a moment he entertained the thought of simply going away. The girl would not hinder him at all, he believed; it was an easy solution; any other might bring him into difficulties with Her Excellency. Or cost him money—and the less the value of the small capital which Ernst had for a lifetime saved up, the more firmly he held on to it. In his small room at home he would fill one tea canister after another with notes and their incredible figures.

Nevertheless.…

He looked up and down the street once more, but there was no one.

Hesitatingly, almost a little indignant with himself, he went back to the doorway and asked with reluctance: “And suppose the young master doesn’t bring any money?”

She looked at him with a slight movement of the head—revived by the vague prospect, suggested in the servant’s words, that Wolfgang would still return, even if penniless.

“And suppose he doesn’t come back at all, what will you do then?”

Her head fell forward, her eyelids closed—without uttering a word it was clear enough that she would then be indifferent to everything. “Fräulein,” he, said uncertainly, “a manservant doesn’t earn much. And I’ve lost all my savings, but if you would like to take this …”

He tried to push a note for 50,000 marks into her hand; he had taken it out of his worn, thin pocketbook. And as she withdrew her hand, he went on more insistently: “No, no, you must take it. It’s only for the fare, so that you can go home.” He stopped short and pondered. “You can’t go on standing here like this. Surely you’ve got some relative to go to?”

He broke off again. It struck him that she could not possibly get on a streetcar in such a get-up, legs bare to above the knee, slippers down-at-heel, a man’s miserable overcoat displaying too much of her breast.

He stood there embarrassed, almost angry. He would like to help her but—how could one help her? He couldn’t exactly take her with him, dress her, and then what? “O God, Fräulein,” he said, suddenly downcast. “How could the young master have let things get to this?”

But Petra had understood only one thing. “So you also think that he won’t come back?”

He shrugged his shoulders. “How can I tell? Have you quarreled? Weren’t you going to get married today?”

Marry! Yes. She’s heard the word but hadn’t given it any further thought. “We’re getting married today,” she said, and laughed vaguely. She remembered that today was the day she would be getting rid of the name Ledig, which had always been something like a stain. She remembered it when she woke up, didn’t dare look for his wallet, and was sure of it all the same. It would happen today! Then the first doubts came—his indecisive attitude when she first urged him, then demanded, then begged.… And how she already felt when the door slammed—Well, it won’t be today after all.

Suddenly (and incomprehensibly, because hunger had caused her burning head even to forget that, though it had happened)—suddenly, in front of the mirror, she realized, she knew that he might well have gone, but that he would still remain with her, in her forever. What had happened next—the humiliating begging in Frau Thumann’s kitchen, the squinting at Ida’s brioche, the expulsion, the endless passive waiting in the corridor—that was all caused by hunger, that crafty enemy of body and brain that had made her forget what she never should have forgotten, that he was in her.

What was the matter? Was she bewitched? So far she had always managed to get along. Her mother may have been as brutal as she could be—a few tears and Petra went on. The fascinating gentlemen with knife-sharp creases to their trousers may have proved vulgar and stingy she had set her teeth and gone on. Wolfgang might return or might not return—that was dreadful, yes. But for twenty-two years she had eaten humble pie for her own sake, and now she was standing there doing nothing, bespoken and not called for, when, for the first time in her life, another being was dependent on her, on her alone—no other woman in the world could replace her. It was absurd.

A stream of thoughts entered her mind, so that she was almost overwhelmed. After hunger had immersed her poor head for a time in dark, vague dreams, it now made it over-active, wide awake and clear—everything seemed simple. She had somebody to look after, and because this somebody was within herself she must first of all look after herself—this was obvious. Everything would then come right again.

And while she was thinking this, she was already thinking about other things. She was already making her plans—the things to be done immediately and the things later. And therefore she said suddenly, clear and decided: “Yes, it’s nice of you to give me the money. I can make good use of it. Many thanks.”

The manservant looked at her dumbfounded. Only the fraction of a minute had passed since he reminded her that today she had intended to marry. Ernst could not guess the train of thought this one remark had evoked, or what she had experienced and planned in these few seconds. He saw only the change in her face, which was no longer vacant but full of life and had even regained some of its color. Instead of a hesitating mutter he heard energetic tones, almost a command. Without any hesitation he put the money in her hand.

“Well, Fräulein,” he said, a little angry, “so you’re alert again. Why? The registry office is closed by now. I really believe you’ve had a drop too much.

“No,” she replied. “An idea has occurred to me, that’s all—I haven’t been drinking. I appear strange to you because I’ve eaten nothing for a long time and that makes one queer in the head.”

“Eaten nothing!” Ernest now waxed really indignant. All his life he had had his meals regularly at the appointed times. “Nothing to eat! The young master oughtn’t to do such things.”

She looked at him with a half-smile. She knew what was passing through his mind, what he was indignantly thinking and feeling, and she had to smile. When the well-trained servant, grown gray in dealings with the upper circles, actually took up her side against the young master, she perceived how widely separated men were. The young master could have ill-treated her, deceived her as much as he liked, jilted her—all this would not have made the servant so angry (nor most of his fellow-beings). But that he should have starved her—no, that was not done.

Ernst was eyeing her attentively. She could guess the big step which he was about to take, and therefore she made it easy for him. “If you would bring me a few rolls,” she said. “Just round the corner is a baker’s shop. And then you needn’t bother about me anymore. As soon as I’ve eaten something I’ll manage all right. I’ve an idea.”

“Of course I’ll fetch you some rolls,” he said eagerly. “And perhaps something to drink. Milk, eh?”

He hurried off, went into three, four shops—butter, bread, rolls, sausages, a few tomatoes.… He no longer thought of his savings.… The fact that a human being was hungry and with nothing to eat had quite confused him. The young master oughtn’t to have done it, he thought again and again. She may be no better than she should be, but to let her go hungry—no!

He hurried, harassing himself and the sleepy shopkeepers; everything had to be done urgently. He would have liked to say: “Please, it’s for somebody who is starving.” But when he returned he was still more perplexed, for she was no longer there. Neither in the doorway, nor in the street, nor in the courtyard. She had gone.

He decided to go up to Frau Thumann once more, certainly not with much pleasure, for she, in her unrestrained scandal-mongering had only too dismal a likeness to Her Excellency Frau Major General Bettina von Anklam. But he encountered no one but Ida, by now dressed half professionally, half in deshabille—who rather frightened him. For the young lady inquired very ungraciously whether he hadn’t a screw loose, because: “That bitch doesn’t come here again, I’ll see to that. If she rings here, I’ll give it to her. I don’t know what such people imagine!”

Ernst descended again, went through the courtyard, came again to the doorway.

No one stood in the shade there. Shaking his head he went into the street: no one. He couldn’t take these bags of food, this bottle of milk, back to his mistress. Fräulein would be sure to see them, and was certain to tell Her Excellency.

He returned, piled up his purchases in the darkest corner behind the door, and then walked away, not without looking round several times. Only when he was sitting in the subway did he cease to think back and, instead, thought of the future. What should he tell Her Excellency?

After careful consideration he decided to say as little as possible.