by Hans Fallada
“Grünow,” said Meier hesitating, not really knowing why he shouldn’t give the name, seeing that the Lieutenant already knew everything.
“Grünow. Why particularly Grünow? I suppose you mean Grünow near Ostade?”
“Yes, my girl suggested it to me. She wants to visit me there on Sundays, for the dances.”
“You want to dance there as well? Then you’re going to stay there some time?”
“Just a few days. On Monday I shall be clearing off, leaving from Ostade. You can rely on that, Lieutenant.”
“Can I?” said the Lieutenant thoughtfully. He stood up and went to the drawer which Meier had previously pointed out to him. He pulled it open and regarded its contents. “Yes, you’ve got a couple of very nice blunderbusses there,” he said patronizingly. “You know what, Herr Meier? I’d take one of those things along if I were you.”
“What should I do with it? No, thanks!”
“You are going through the forest, and there are all sorts of rogues on the prowl now. I’d take the thing with you, Herr Meier; I myself never go about without firearms. Nothing like being prepared.” The young Lieutenant had become almost loquacious, so worried was he about the life of his friend Meier.
But the latter persisted in his refusal. “No one’s going to do anything to me,” he said. “No one’s done anything to me yet. That old thing just tears your pocket.”
“All right. Do what you like!” the Lieutenant said in sudden irritation and laid the pistol on the safe. He nodded curtly to little Meier, said, “Good evening,” and was already out of the office before the other could reply.
“Queer,” said Meier, and stared at the door. “He was very queer at the end. But still,” he went on to comfort himself, “all these chaps are like that. They first talk big and then there’s nothing behind it.”
He turned round and regarded the pistol. No. He’d have nothing to do with such a thing. It might even go off in his pocket. Where was Mandy? He’d have to have a look. She was well able to carry the suitcases for a bit.…
He went to the door. No, first he’d better put the pistol away again. It would look so silly there tomorrow morning.
He had the weapon in his hand, and again he hesitated.
As a matter of fact, he’s quite right, was the thought that darted through his head, a weapon is always handy.
He went to the door, switched the light out, left the house. At every step he noticed the weight of the pistol in his hip pocket.
Queer—gives you a feeling of strength, a thing like that, he thought, not dissatisfied.
III
And Meier had only to go a few steps to see the two girls sitting on a bench. Next to them stood the Lieutenant, talking. At his approach the fellow looked up and said: “Here he comes.” His proximity to the two girls, his whispering with them, this remark, all irritated little Meier. Advancing, he said crossly: “If I’m intruding I can go away again.”
No one seemed to have heard him, no one answered.
“I suppose you three have some nice secret among yourselves,” he said provokingly.
Again no answer. But now Violet stood up and, addressing the Lieutenant in a polite and formal tone, said: “Are you coming?”
“You needn’t be stand-offish to him on my account,” cried little Meier angrily. “We know what you’ve been up to!”
With astonishing calm the Lieutenant took the girl’s arm and walked away with her into the park, saying not a word.
“Good night, sir, good night, madam. Pleasant dreams!” Meier called after them contemptuously.
The Lieutenant turned round and called out to Amanda:
“Just try and persuade him. Persuasion always helps.”
Amanda nodded thoughtfully.
Angrily Meier let fly at her. “What do you mean by nodding to the fool? What do you mean speaking to the fellow at all?”
“You think that everyone’s a fool, except yourself!” she replied calmly.
“Oh! So in your eyes I’m a fool!”
“I didn’t say that!”
“Shut up! You said it just now!”
“I didn’t!” And after long reflection: “Fräulein Violet is quite right.”
“What is Vi right about? All she can do is talk nonsense. She’s just like a seven-months-old babe.”
“That it’s better not to get mixed up with a man like you.”
“So that’s what she said?” Meier almost burst with fury and injured conceit. “And her fellow, the Lieutenant—is he anything better than me? What? You think he is? A swine like that! Comes into my office and brandishes a revolver in front of my nose. But I told him where he got off! Just let him come again, the silly idiot. I’ve got a revolver now. And I won’t just threaten like that fool. I’ll shoot.” He wrenched the pistol from his pocket and waved it in the air.
“Have you gone mad?” Amanda screamed at him furiously. “Put that thing away at once. Waving a thing like that in my face! I am pleased! You seem to think it impresses me.”
He was startled by her angry, contemptuous words. Somewhat crestfallen, though of course still defiant, he stood before her, in his hand the pistol with its muzzle lowered.
“You’re going in again at once and put the money back in the safe!” she ordered. “Heavens, I can put up with a lot, and I’m not at all squeamish, but stealing money—no, thanks! Not me! And you’re not going to, either.”
Meier went red—she could not see it, of course.
“So that’s what he’s been blabbing to you, the fine chap!” he cried angrily. “I just want to tell you one thing: it’s no bloody business of his or of yours! That’s my own affair with the Rittmeister. If I take my wages, there’s no need for you to put your nose in—understand?”
“Hans,” she said more gently, “you must put the money back; otherwise it is finished between us. I can’t stand for that sort of thing.”
“I don’t bloody well care whether it’s finished between us or not. I’m glad it’s finished. Who do you think you are? Do you think I bother about you? I slept with Hartig tonight; yes, Hartig, so there! And an old girl like that with eight children—I prefer her ten times to you. Oh, damn!”
It was a blow with all her strength and it landed right in the middle of his face. Meier staggered.
“You swine, you!” she said breathlessly. “You miserable wretch!”
“You struck me?” He was half out of his mind with pain. “You—you low-down chicken girl—strike me, the bailiff? Now you shall see.…”
He himself could see almost nothing, however. Everything reeled before his eyes, her figure melted away in the moonlight; then she was there again.… And now he saw her quite clearly.… She had struck him!
He quickly raised the pistol and pressed the trigger, with trembling finger.…
The shot cracked unbearably loud in his ear.
Amanda’s face came close to him, getting bigger all the time, white and black in the moonlight.…
“You!” she whispered. “You, Hans, shoot at me!”
And there was complete silence between the two. Each heard only the jerky breathing of the other. They stood like that for a long time.…
The echoes of the shot had long died away, to be replaced by gentler noises.… They again heard the soft wind in the treetops.… Back in the stable a halter chain rattled slowly through its ring.
“Mandy,” said Black Meier. “Mandy … I …”
“Finished!” she said with a hard voice. “Quite finished!”
She looked at him once again.
“He fires at me—and then he says ‘Mandy.’ ” It was as if this thought took her breath away. “What would he have said if he had hit me?”
And the serious danger in which she had stood, her incredible escape, overwhelmed her so suddenly that she broke into a soft weeping. And weeping thus she ran away from him, her shoulders hunched. Under the light hem of her skirt he saw her strong legs moving faster and faster as she sped away.�
� She turned into the path leading to the Manor; he no longer saw her, heard only her weeping, that suppressed pitiful, sobbing—and then that, too, was gone.…
Meier stood for a moment longer, staring after her. Then he lifted the pistol, heavy in his hand, and regarded it. He moved the safety catch into place—there, now it was safe, nothing more could happen with the thing.…
With a peevish shrug of his shoulders he pushed it into his trouser pocket and went hastily into the office to get his suitcases.
IV
The Lieutenant and Vi were sitting on a bench in the park. They were not sitting there like a pair of lovers: or perhaps indeed they were—like lovers who have quarreled. That is to say, they sat far apart, silent.
“Fancy letting that coward say a thing like that to you,” she had said at the conclusion of their argument. “I don’t understand you.”
“Of course you don’t understand me, my little lamb,” he had answered very patronizingly. “That’s all to the good. That means he won’t understand me either.”
“Running away from the fellow! What airs he will give himself now! And I just can’t bear the smell of him.”
“Don’t go so near him,” he had said in a bored way. “Then his smell won’t upset you.”
“Excuse me, Fritz, when have I gone too near him? That was mean of you, Fritz!”
But Fritz returned no answer, and so they had fallen into silence.…
The echo of the shot interrupted this quarrel. The Lieutenant started out of his thoughts. “He has fired a pistol!” he cried and began running.
“Who?” she asked, received no answer, and ran after him.
Their course took them over the moonlit park. Its long grass wetted her stockings; then through bushes, across paths, right through flower beds. Vi panted, wanted to call out and could not, since she had to keep on running.
Then the Lieutenant paused and signaled to her to be quiet. She peered over his shoulder through lilac and guelder-rose bushes and just caught sight of the weeping poultry maid disappearing in the direction of the Manor. Bailiff Meier was standing motionless outside the house.
“Hasn’t hit her, thank God!” whispered the Lieutenant.
“Then what’s she crying for?”
“Fright.”
“The fellow must go to jail,” exclaimed Vi.
“Don’t be so silly, Vi. Then he’d let his tongue wag a bit, wouldn’t he? I suppose you’d like that?”
“Well, and now?”
“Now we’ll wait and see what he’s going to do.”
The little dark figure went quickly up to the staff-house; even in the bushes they could hear the noise of the vigorously slammed door. Bailiff Meier was gone.
“Now he’s gone,” said Fräulein von Prackwitz disconsolately. “And from now on I shall have to be particularly polite to him, so that he won’t tell Papa.”
“Just wait a bit,” was all the Lieutenant said.
They did not have long to wait. Hardly three or four minutes. Then the door opened again and out stepped Meier, a suitcase in his right hand, a suitcase in his left hand. He did not even waste time in closing the door again, but strode on, a little hampered, it is true, yet at a steady pace—toward the farmyard, out into the world—away.
“He’s clearing out,” whispered the Lieutenant.
“Thank God!”
“You won’t see him again,” he muttered, and fell silent, as if he was annoyed at what he had said.
“Let’s hope so.”
“Violet!” he said after a while.
“Yes, Fritz?”
“Wait here a minute, will you? I just want to find out something in the office.”
“What do you want to find out there?”
“Oh, nothing much.… Just to see what it looks like.”
“What do you mean? It doesn’t matter to us.”
“Still, let me. Excuse me—now, you wait here!”
Hurriedly the Lieutenant went over to the staff-house. He felt his way through the dark passage, switched the light on in the office and went straight to the drawer containing the weapons. It was half open, but this was not sufficient for him. He pulled it right out and regarded its contents very attentively.
No, the nine-millimeter Mauser was not there. He closed the drawer again, switched off the light and went out.
“Well, what does it look like in there?” Violet asked a little maliciously. “I suppose he tidied it up quickly?”
“What should it look like? Oh—I see—yes, of course. Pigsty, that’s what it looks like, my little lamb.” The Lieutenant was strangely cheerful.
She took advantage of this at once. “I say, Fritz.”
“Yes, Violet?”
“Do you still remember what you wanted today?”
“Well, what did I want? To give you a kiss? All right, come along then!”
He seized her by the head, and for a while she lay completely breathless in his arms.
“There!” he said. “And now I must dash off to Ostade.”
“To Ostade? Oh, Fritz—you wanted to look round my room to see whether I kept a diary.”
“But, my lamb, not today. I really must dash off. I’ve got to be at Ostade at six!”
“Fritz!”
“What?”
“Isn’t it possible at all?”
“No—completely impossible today. But I shall come, quite definitely. The day after tomorrow; perhaps tomorrow even.”
“Oh, you’re always saying that. You didn’t say anything this evening about having to go at once to Ostade!”
“I must, I really must.… Come, Violet, walk along with me as far as my bicycle. Now, please don’t start making a fuss, my lamb.”
“Oh, Fritz, you … the way you treat me …”
V
For a long time Petra had sat as if benumbed. Her sick enemy also lay still for a long time, exhausted. She had hurled all the abuse of which she was capable into Petra’s face; spitting at her, she had reminded Petra in an ecstasy of malicious exultation of how she had once dragged her out of a taxi. “Away from that fine rich bloke. And your umbrella also went flying!”
Mechanically Petra had done what was to be done: had given her a little water, laid a compress on her forehead and a towel over her mouth, which she kept pushing away. However much the other abused and reviled her, jeered and tried to hurt her, it no longer affected Petra, just as the noises of the city, growing ever quieter after midnight, no longer affected her. The city outside, her enemy here inside—neither meant anything.
A feeling of extreme loneliness had numbed everything in her. In the end everyone was completely alone with himself. What others did, asked, performed, was nothing. With a single solitary person on it the earth whirled along its path through the infinities of time and space, always with one mere solitary person on it.
Thus Petra sat, thinking and dreaming—Petra Ledig, spinster. She tried to convince her heart that she would never see Wolf again, that things had to be this way, that this was precisely her fate, and that she must resign herself to it. In the days and weeks to come she was often to dream and try to convince herself. Even if love, filled with longing, would not let itself be convinced, there was yet something like consolation, like a faint memory of happiness, in the mere fact that she could thus sit and dream.
Therefore she was almost annoyed when a hand placed itself on her shoulder and a voice roused her from her brooding with the words: “I say, jail-birdie, talk to me. I can’t sleep. My head aches. Your girl-friend pulled my hair so hard, and I can’t help thinking of my business, too. What are you thinking about?” It was the fat elderly woman from the lower bed, whom the Hawk had previously attacked. She pushed a stool next to Petra, scrutinized her with dark mouse-like eyes and, tired of sitting alone and brooding, whispered, with a nod of her head toward the sick woman: “She can sting like a wasp! Is it true, what she said about you, jail-birdie?” Of a sudden Petra was glad that the other had spoken, that there wa
s some diversion in the long night; she found the woman not too bad, if only because she looked without animosity at the girl who had caused her no little pain.
“Some things are true and some things are not true,” she answered readily.
“But that you go on the streets—that’s not true, is it?”
“A few times,” began Petra hesitatingly.
But the old woman understood at once. “Yes, yes, I know, my pet!” she said kindly. “I’ve also grown up in Berlin. I live in Fruchtstrasse. I’ve also lived through these times—such times as we’ve never had before! I know the world, and I know Berlin, too. You smiled at someone when you were hungry, eh?”
Petra nodded.
“And that’s what a cow like that calls going on the streets. And she squeals on you for a thing like that. She did squeal on you, didn’t she?”
Petra nodded again.
“There—she’s such a greedy, jealous cat—you can see it by her nose. People who have such thin noses are always sour and don’t like seeing anybody else have anything. But you mustn’t take it to heart. She can’t help being crazy; she didn’t choose her nose herself. And what do you do otherwise?”
“Sell shoes.…”
“There, I know all about that; that’s also an aggravating business for young girls. There are nasty old men who, when they get the itch, run from one shoe shop to another just trying on shoes, and then push the young girls with their toes. Well, I suppose you know all about that, too.”
“Yes, there are people like that,” said Petra, “and we know them. And if we don’t know them, then we can see it in their faces, and no one wants to serve them. And some are still worse. They don’t only push, they talk as well, more vulgarly than any girl on the streets … And if you won’t stand for it, they complain that the assistants give bad service, and they get a real kick when the manager tells you off.… There’s no use defending yourself, they don’t believe you when you say that a fine gentleman has used such vulgar words.”
“I know, girlie,” said the old woman soothingly, for the memory of some of the insults she had suffered had become so vivid to Petra that she had spoken almost heatedly. “We know all about that! Do you think it’s different in Fruchtstrasse? Not a bit. If we haven’t got shoe shops there, we’ve got sweet shops and ice-cream parlors—the under-dog always gets it in the neck. But there won’t be any more shoes for you now that you’re in prison. Or will they take you back when you come out?”
