Wolf Among Wolves

by Hans Fallada

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  He looked for another place.

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

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

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

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

  Nought.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  VIII

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