Wolf Among Wolves (118 page)

Violet’s door was wide open now, and Frau Eva walking to and fro restlessly. She saw him at once and came to him, possessed by feverish agitation. “What’s the matter, Herr Pagel? Something’s happened, I can see it.”

“I’m going to make myself a coffee, madam,” lied Pagel. “I’m tired out.”

“And my husband?”

“Everything in order, madam.”

“I’m so frightened,” she said agitatedly. “Dear Herr Pagel, according to the doctor she ought to have waked up now; and she is awake, I feel it. But she doesn’t stir, whatever I say to her. She’s pretending to sleep. Oh, Herr Pagel,
what shall I do? I’m so frightened. As never before.” Her pale face twitched; she was gripping his hand without knowing it. “Have a look at Violet, Herr Pagel,” she begged. “Just say a word to her. Perhaps she’ll take notice of you.”

Young Pagel was going hot and cold. He had to find the Rittmeister—Heaven knew what he would be up to in the meantime! But he let himself be taken to the bed. Doubtfully he looked down on the still face. “She seems to be sleeping,” he said uncertainly.

“You are wrong. You are certainly wrong. Speak to her! Violet, our little Vi, here is Herr Pagel. He’d like to say good morning to you.… You see, her eyelid moved!”

Pagel almost thought so, too, and the idea occurred to him of shouting: “The Lieutenant’s here!”—an idea immediately rejected. Did one do that sort of thing? And did one do it in front of the mother? After all, why shouldn’t she be left in peace if that was what she wanted? And he had to look for the Rittmeister.

“No, she’s certainly sleeping, madam,” he said again. “And I should let her sleep. Now I’ll make some coffee for us.” He smiled encouragement at Frau Eva.

It was a somewhat unhappy role he played in returning under her eyes into the Rittmeister’s empty bedroom, coming out again and nodding: “In order.” Then he went downstairs—her gaze following him—to the ground floor. Instinct guided him correctly. There were six doors in the hall. Of these he chose the one into the study where, that evening in cleaning up, he had seen the two things which, in the Rittmeister’s state, were likely to come into question—the rifle cupboard and the liquor cabinet.

At the sound of the opening door, the Rittmeister spun round with the air of a surprised thief. He leaned against the table, one hand holding on to the back of a large leather chair, the other gripping the bottle of brandy so greatly desired.

Pagel gently closed the door. Since it was the bottle and not the revolver, he thought himself able to be jocular. “Hello, Herr Rittmeister,” he called out cheerfully. “Leave some for me. I’m done up and could do with a little stimulation myself.”

But the cheerful tone was unsuccessful. The Rittmeister, like many drunken persons under no illusions about the shabbiness of their conduct, laid great value on his dignity. In the young man’s tone he felt only an impudent familiarity. “What are you doing here?” he shouted angrily. “Why are you creeping after me? I won’t put up with it. Get to hell out of this at once.” His voice was very loud and very indistinct; his tongue, almost crippled by schnapps and veronal, refused to articulate the words evenly; his swollen voice
spoke as if from behind a muffler. And all this only increased his rage. With bloodshot eyes and twitching face he looked viciously at his tormentor, the young fellow he had picked up out of the morass of the great city, and who now wanted to order him about.

Pagel did not recognize his peril or that he had to do with a man almost out of his mind and capable of anything. Unsuspecting, he went up to the Rittmeister and said in friendly persuasion: “Come along, Herr Rittmeister, you must go back to bed. You know that your wife doesn’t want you to drink anything more. Be nice and give me the bottle.”

All things which the Rittmeister did not wish to hear and which deeply insulted him. Hesitatingly he held the bottle out. But in the moment when Pagel was about to take it, the bottle was raised and fell upon his skull with a crash in which the whole world seemed to be shattered.

“There you are, my little fellow!” roared the Rittmeister triumphantly. “I’ll teach you to obey.”

Pagel, his hands raised to his head, had fallen back. In that second he understood, in spite of a numbness and pain which rendered him almost unconscious, the magnitude of the disaster that had befallen this house. He understood what the woman upstairs had already known for some hours—that they had to do not with a drunken, but with a mentally deranged man. As for the young girl …

“Bear yourself properly, second lieutenant!” ordered the Rittmeister in a scream. “Don’t stand so slackly before your superior.”

Despite the maddening pain, and although he could hardly lift his head, Pagel forced himself to adopt a stiff military bearing. The woman upstairs must not be disturbed for anything. It could only be a matter of a few minutes before the schnapps and the veronal would have done their work on his employer. He would quiet down; Pagel mustn’t let it get to fighting. His limbs were trembling—and the noise …

“Attention!” screamed the Rittmeister. Once more he might command and be himself. In his mouth had been put the word of ruthless power, to be obeyed without the flicker of an eyelash. More deeply than alcohol, power intoxicated him a last time.

“Attention, Lieutenant Pagel! Two paces—forward! About—turn. Attention! Attention, I say! Why are you wobbling, man?”

“What’s this?” said the woman’s voice from the door. “Achim, won’t you give us any peace? How you torment me!”

The Rittmeister turned in a flash. “I torment you?” he shouted. “You all torment me. Leave me alone, let me croak, let me soak. What am I good for?”

His voice became softer. “You may stand at ease, Lieutenant Pagel. I hope I didn’t strike you too badly, it wasn’t my intention.”

And now he was muddled again. “I don’t know why I should do something like that. It’s in me, it’s always been in me; I repressed it, but now it’s got to come out. No one can restrain it; it must out. But when it gets something to drink, it quiets down, goes to sleep.…” He went on murmuring to himself. With his foot he knocked against the bottle on the floor, which had emptied itself. He shook his head and turned again to the liquor cabinet.

“Take hold of him, Herr Pagel,” said Frau von Prackwitz in a faint voice. “Can you grasp him on one side so that we can get him up the stairs? I’ll attend to your head immediately after. I must go back. Oh, let him! Let him take his schnapps with him. What does it matter now? It’s all over. Oh, Pagel, if it wasn’t for Violet, why should I go on living? I’d prefer to do as the pair of them do, go to bed and sleep and not care about anything more. Oh, Herr Pagel, tell me what’s the purpose of it, to marry and be fond of a man and have a child, and then it’s all dashed to pieces, dust to dust, man and child, dust to dust. Tell me, Herr Pagel.”

But Pagel made no reply.

The pitiful little procession stumbled up the stairs. The Rittmeister was hardly conscious, but he did not lose hold of his bottle. His wife was in such agitation that she kept coming to a halt, forgetting their burden, talking at Pagel, demanding a reply. And Pagel, half stunned, heard this gabble; but he also heard something else, and in his tortured brain the thought slowly took shape, that he was hearing something horrible, appalling.

No, the house was no longer quiet. Between the woman’s broken sentences he could hear from the first floor a noise which he had not yet heard that night, a dreadful noise, wooden, dry, lifeless.

Clap … clap.

And again—clap … clap … clap.

In the middle of Frau Eva’s chatter Pagel raised his hand (leaving the Rittmeister to sink down on the landing), looked fixedly at her and whispered: “There!”

And Frau Eva was silent at once, raised her head and looked at Pagel, listening at the same time. It was quite still.

Clap … clap.

Her chin began to tremble, her pale face turned yellow as if laid waste by a sudden illness, her eyes filled with slow tears. And it came again—clap!

In that same moment the spell was broken and together they dashed up the stairs, along the short passage and into Violet’s room.…

Peaceful in the light of the lamp on the ceiling, the bed gleamed whitely. But it was empty. The unfastened windows were clapping in the night wind, slowly, lifelessly, woodenly. Clap, clap.…

And now came what Pagel had feared the whole time, that before which he had quaked and yet had expected … the woman’s scream, the terrible unending scream which broke into a hundred, a thousand little screams, like a diabolic laughter … the creature shattered by her agony.

Pagel laid Frau Eva on the sofa, patting her hands, reasoning with her so that her ear might perceive near by a friendly human voice. Again and again he told himself that this was no conscious cry, that the woman was almost overpowered by the extreme pain.… But then, once again, he felt that this one voice contained the cries of all mothers who would lose their children, sooner or later,
for we tarry here not
. He went to the window and closed it to make an end of that unbearable clapping, and as he did so gave a glance at the lattice along the wall and thought he saw a trampled vine—and shut the window. He knew enough. The syllogism: arms dump—Lieutenant—Violet, was so easy for him. Half an hour ago he had been tempted to call out to the girl shamming sleep: “The Lieutenant’s coming!” He hadn’t done so, and now the Lieutenant really had come, he believed. Pagel had no doubt that he understood everything. But what could he say about it to the distressed woman?

He comforted her, repeating over and over again that the girl in her fever had run into the woods and that Frau Eva should go with him just for a moment down to the telephone, so that he could inform Herr Studmann. Then they would look for and find the girl.… But no kindly word, no persuasion, reached Frau Eva. She lay there and groaned and wept. He was alone in the house—on the landing the Rittmeister slept away the loss of his daughter. He could not leave her.

Till the telephone below rang shrilly. What had not been possible to the human voice was possible to this ringing. Frau von Prackwitz started up and cried: “Run to the telephone. They have found my Vi.”

She came too, standing behind him, holding the second receiver. They stood very close, with burning eyes, like ghosts … listening. But there came only the voice of Studmann, excitedly reporting that in the Manor the maids were holding an orgy with the escaped convicts, all of them blind drunk and—“Pagel, it is a magnificent opportunity!” With a quick movement Frau von Prackwitz hung up her receiver, and Pagel saw her go upstairs slowly and as if unconscious. In a low voice he told Studmann that Fräulein Violet had disappeared from the house. Police on motorcycles, and a bloodhound, would be needed at once, and two or three reliable women for the Villa.… The door would be open.

He hung up, unlocked the door and left it wide open to this night of calamity; more could not befall the house. Then he hurried upstairs, stepping without ceremony over the sleeping Rittmeister, and found Frau von Prackwitz kneeling before the bed of her vanished daughter. She had thrust her hands beneath the cover, perhaps to perceive all that now remained to her of her child, the faint warmth retained by the bed.

Wofgang Pagel sat motionless next to the motionless woman, his head in his hands. Here, confronted by the greatest pain he’d ever seen, he fell to thinking about another woman, one far off, and much beloved. Perhaps he thought about what man can do to man, in love, in indifference, and in hatred. He hardly came to any decision; calculated decisions hadn’t gotten him very far. But he let something grow within him which had quietly always been there. He gave it all the space he could. It was something very simple: To be as good and as decent as possible.
Because we are all of one flesh
.

Then he heard the voices and the footsteps of the people below. Now everything immediately became confused, as always when people are involved. He got up and had the Rittmeister brought to bed. He rang the doctor, and the lady would go to bed, too. He himself had plenty to do

But all that only confused the essential thing. To be as good and decent as possible. That was what was important. That’s valid for a whole life.

XI

The wind had become stronger around the third hour of morning. It flung itself booming into the forest and brought the rotten and dead branches crashing to the ground. Autumn was going over into winter. From the swift clouds fled occasional brief showers, but the bloodhound did not lose the scent.

How many people were out! All Neulohe was on foot, no one asleep in the houses; lamps were burning everywhere. An amazing, a prodigious thing! The escaped convicts had hidden themselves in the Manor; they hadn’t gone away at all. Snug in the maids’ bedrooms they had enjoyed love and good food. Then, when the owners went on their travels, there had been a big party. The wild mirth had gone to their heads; in their frenzy they had even made the worthy old Elias, wrapped in a carpet, his mouth gagged, the spectator of their bacchanal. The maids had been utterly shameless in making friends with the convicts. Their rooms had overlooked the harvesters’ barracks; signs had been exchanged, at first only in jest, but afterwards both parties had come to understand one another very well. Old Marofke had been on the right track.

Yes, there had been something rotten, in the Manor as in the Villa. There had been a lot of prayer there, but that alone was of little avail. How would the old lady take the bad news? Her home must appear to her as desecrated.

It had been easy work for the gendarmes; in fact no work at all, as with shouts of “Hands up!” they rushed with Herr von Studmann into the large dining room. The convicts, thinking it a very good joke, had laughed. They had had a delightful time; they had luscious things to relate; they would be the heroes of the prison. And what could actually happen to them? Upstairs in the maids’ rooms their prison dress was neatly put away, not a piece missing; there could be no question of theft or housebreaking. Six months—three months—would square the matter for them. It had been worth that!