Wolf Among Wolves (6 page)

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

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

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

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

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

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

VII

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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