by Hans Fallada
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 shir
t 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 bal
l 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.”
