Wolf Among Wolves (17 page)

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 …