by Hans Fallada
This time they had been caught—caught for the first time; so they went along quietly. After five minutes they were chatting and laughing. It was just a night adventure. What could happen to them? A few beetroot leaves!
They spoke to Wolfgang. “What are you going to do now, sir? A few beetroot leaves! You write our names down and report us to the police for field stealing; that used to cost three marks—today it costs a few million. Well? By the time we pay our fine it’ll be nothing, not a penny—we’ll be able to pay it with the smallest bank note! Is that why you have to go popping off guns?”
“Quiet!” ordered Pagel angrily. “Next time we won’t shoot into the air.”
“You want to do a man in for the sake of a few beetroot leaves, do you? That’s the sort you are! So long as we know! Other people can also shoot.”
“Shut up!” called the others. “There’s no need to say things like that.”
“Quiet!” cried Pagel sharply. He thought he had seen figures on the path. Could it have been the Rittmeister with his wife? Impossible. He would have said something.
In passable order they approached the farm. Now curses were raised when the people had to empty their baskets. They had thought their fine would have enabled them to take the leaves home.
“What shall we give our goats?”
“An animal like that won’t understand. He wants his fodder!”
“We’ll have to go foraging again!”
“Be quiet!”
Their good humor was gone; they said their names crossly, aggressively, snappishly, defiantly. But they said them. Kowalewski had no need to do any rib-digging.
“You won’t get me next time!” declared one.
“Write Georg Schwarz II, bailiff,” said another. “Don’t forget the II. I don’t want my cousin to get mixed up with such a bloody business.”
“Next,” said Studmann. “Pagel, hurry them up a bit, will you? Next!” Till at last he could say: “Good night, Kowalewski. Oh, and thanks very much. I hope this won’t cause you any unpleasantness.”
“No—not me. Good night.”
Studmann and Pagel were left alone. The desk was untidy with papers, the nicely waxed floor was dirty and covered with sand, which grated at every step.
Studmann got up from the desk, glanced curtly at Pagel. “Actually we set forth in good spirits at half-past eight, didn’t we?”
“Yes, it was a nice walk, too, despite your quarrel with the overseer.”
“Oh, you can’t make him understand. Nor these others. It’s just like the hotel in Berlin: they consider everything we do as low-down trickery.”
“You mustn’t ask too much of them, Studmann. After all, they can’t help it.”
“No, these can’t, but …”
“But?”
Studmann did not answer. He was leaning out of the window. After a while, he turned back into the office. “No, he’s not coming,” he said quietly.
“Who’s not coming? Are you waiting for someone?”
Studmann waved the question aside. Then he recollected himself. “You played the chief part in this success, Pagel. I thought the Rittmeister would come to thank us, or rather you.”
“The Rittmeister?”
“Didn’t you see him?”
“I thought … on the path … was it really him?”
“Yes, it was. He tried to avoid us. I spoke to him, but he obviously felt awkward. He didn’t want the people to see him.”
“Why not?” asked Pagel, astonished. “He wants us to put an end to this field stealing, doesn’t he?”
“Of course! But we have to do it. We, Pagel! Not him; he doesn’t want to have anything to do with it.”
Pagel whistled thoughtfully through his teeth.
“I’m afraid Pagel, we’ve got a boss who wants strict officials so that he can appear all the milder. I’m afraid we won’t get much support from Herr von Prackwitz.” Studmann stared once more at the window. “I thought at least he’d come here. But if not, all right! If we have to depend on each other, we can still carry on, eh?”
“Splendidly.”
“No getting annoyed with one another, always say what’s on your mind! No secrets, always tell everything, every trifle. To some extent we’re in a besieged fortress, and I’m afraid it will be difficult to hold Neulohe for the Rittmeister. Anything wrong, Pagel?”
Pagel withdrew his hand from his pocket. It’s not my secret, he thought. I must speak to the young Fräulein first.
“No, nothing,” he said.
Newspapers, newspapers …
People, be it in Neulohe or Altlohe, in Berlin or anywhere else in the country, bought newspapers. They read these newspapers. More people bought newspapers than at any previous time, to find out the dollar rate—as yet there was no broadcasting. And as they turned the pages in their search for these figures running into millions, the events of the day, whether they liked it or not, leaped up at them in huge headlines. Many did not want to read them. For seven years they had been fed with ever-larger headlines, they wanted to hear no more of the world. The world brought nothing good. They wanted as much as possible to live alone. Alone. But there was no help for it; they could not free themselves from their time.
Much happened in these hot harvest days. People read that Cuno’s Government was tottering; it was said to have abetted usurers, to have been responsible for the food shortage. The French still occupied the Ruhr with their black troops, not a man was working there, not a single factory stack was smoking. This was called passive resistance, and people thought they could finance this by new taxes, new duties, to be paid by property through devaluation. In the period between July 26th and August 8th the dollar rose from 760,000 to 4,860,000 marks! The bank rate had been raised from eighteen to thirty per cent.
Despite resistance, however, despite the protests of England and Italy that French action was unjust, France continued its war in peace time. Difficulties must be created for Germany, it declared; otherwise she would not pay. Up to date these difficulties included: over a hundred killed, ten death sentences, half a dozen sentences of life imprisonment, the taking of hostages, bank robbery, the expulsion of 110,000 people from house and home. Germany might break down, but pay she must!
People read of these things in the papers. They did not see, but they felt them. These things entered into men, became part of them, affected their sleeping and waking, their dreaming and drinking, their eating and living.
A desperate people in a desperate position; every despairing individual behaving desperately.…
Confused, chaotic times.
Chapter Eleven
The Devil’s Hussars Come
I
“It’s an impertinence!”
“I knew you’d get excited,” said Frau von Prackwitz gently.
“I won’t have it!” cried the Rittmeister still more violently.
“It was just a precaution,” said Frau von Prackwitz soothingly.
“Where’s the letter? I want to have my letter! It’s my letter!” he roared.
“The matter has surely been dealt with long ago,” conjectured Frau von Prackwitz.
“A three-weeks-old letter addressed to me—and I don’t see it! Who is the master here?” thundered the Rittmeister.
“You!” said his wife.
“Yes, and I’ll show him I am,” he shouted and ran to the door. “He’s getting too big for his boots!”
“You’re forgetting your letter,” his wife reminded him.
“What letter?” The Rittmeister stopped, dumbfounded. Apart from this letter he could remember no other.
“The one over there—from Berlin.”
“Oh, yes.” He stuffed it into his pocket, giving his wife a dark threatening look. “You’re not to telephone the fellow!”
“Of course not. Don’t get so excited. The men will be coming at any moment.”
“The men can …” As befitted a well-bred gentleman, the Rittmeister did not say what the men c
ould do until he was outside his wife’s room. She smiled. Immediately afterwards she saw her husband, bare-headed, storming along the road to the farm.
Frau von Prackwitz went to the telephone. “Is that you, Herr Pagel? Could you give me Herr von Studmann quickly? Thanks. Herr von Studmann? My husband’s coming in a frightful rage because we kept the letter about the electric current from him. Don’t worry if he blows off a little steam. He’s already got rid of the worst of it on me. Yes, of course, thanks. Oh, no, I’m used to it. Well, thanks very much.”
She hung the receiver up. “Do you want anything, Vi?”
“Can I go out for a walk for half an hour?”
Frau von Prackwitz looked at her watch. “In ten minutes’ time you can go with me to the Manor. I want to see whether anything has been arranged about the cooking for the men.”
“Oh, always there, Mamma! I would so like to go to the forest again. Can’t I go to the forest? And swim? I haven’t been swimming for four weeks.”
“You know, Violet …” In her driest tone, against her own heart.
“Oh, you torment me so! You torment me, Mamma. I can’t stand it any longer! You shouldn’t have let me have so much freedom before if you now want to keep me on a chain like this! Like a prisoner. But I can’t stand it any longer! I’m going mad in my room. Sometimes I dream that the walls are falling in on me and then I see the curtain cord and wonder whether it will hold. I feel like jumping out of the window. I feel like smashing the glass so that I can see my blood flowing and feel that I’m still living.… I shall do something, I don’t care what I do, I don’t care.”
“Vi, Vi!” said her mother. “If you would only tell us the truth! Do you think it’s easy for us? But as long as you go on lying to us we can’t do anything else.”
“It’s you! Only you! Papa said you’re being unjust. And Papa also believes I told the truth—it wasn’t a strange man, but Kniebusch. Everybody believes me, except you. You want to domineer over us, Papa says so, too.”
“All right, get ready,” said Frau von Prackwitz wearily. “I’ll arrange it so that we can go for a walk in the forest afterwards.”
“I don’t want to go there with you. I don’t need a keeper … I won’t be imprisoned by you! I—I hate you! I don’t want even to see you anymore; I won’t, I won’t!” Once again she broke into hysterics, which always ended in a loud sobbing that prostrated her, changing into a pitiable whimpering.
Frau von Prackwitz had a firm heart. She did not weep because others wept. Filled though she was with an infinite pity for her helpless child, she also thought: You are lying! If you weren’t trying to hide a secret you wouldn’t get so worked up.
She rang the bell.
“Don’t come in, Hubert. Call Armgard and Lotte—Fräulein Violet is feeling bad. Yes, and then bring me the Hoffmann drops from the medicine chest.”
Frau von Prackwitz, gently closing the door again, smiled sadly. The whimpering had noticeably lessened while she was giving the manservant her instructions; it had almost stopped when she ordered the hated Hoffmann drops.
You are feeling bad, my child, she thought, but you don’t feel so bad as not to be interested in what’s going to happen to you. There’s no help for it, we must keep on until one of us gives way. I hope it is you!
II
The Rittmeister stormed into the office.
“Hello,” said Studmann. “That’s what I call quick! Are the men coming?”
“To hell with the men!” shouted the Rittmeister, whose anger had been given fresh vigor by his dash here. “Where’s my letter? I want my letter!”
“You needn’t shout like that,” said Studmann coolly. “I can still hear perfectly. What letter?”
“This is a nice thing!” bellowed the Rittmeister. “People hide my letters from me, and I’m not even allowed to say what I think! I demand my letter!”
“Herr Pagel, do you mind closing the window? It isn’t necessary for all Neulohe to hear what …”
“Pagel, leave the window open! You work for me, understand? I want to have my letter—it’s three or four weeks old.”
“Oh, you mean that letter, Prackwitz.”
“Do you mean to say you’re hiding other letters from me? You are carrying on secret intrigues with my wife, Studmann!”
At this the young and frivolous Pagel burst out laughing.
The Rittmeister stood transfixed. Young Pagel had laughed. One could have heard a pin drop in the office.
He took two long paces toward Pagel. “You laugh, Pagel? You laugh, Herr Pagel, when I’m angry?”
“I’m sorry, Herr Rittmeister. I wasn’t laughing at you, sir. Only it sounded so funny. Herr Studmann carrying on secret intrigues with your wife.”
“So—so!” An icy look, a scrutiny from head to foot. “You are dismissed, Herr Pagel. You can get Hartig to drive you to the station to catch the three o’clock train. No contradiction, please. Leave the office! I have business to attend to here.”
Somewhat pale, yet with dignity, young Pagel left the office.
Herr von Studmann, angry, leaned against the safe. He looked out of the window, his forehead wrinkled. The Rittmeister regarded him sideways. “He’s an impertinent rascal!” he growled tentatively, but Studmann did not move.
“Now please give me my letter.”
“I have already given the letter back to Herr von Teschow,” announced von Studmann coolly. “I was able to convince the Geheimrat that his demands were unjust. He asked for the letter to be returned, so that the whole matter could be regarded as never having been raised.”
“I can believe it,” the Rittmeister said with a bitter laugh. “You let the old fox cheat you! He made a fool of himself and you give him back the proof of his blunder. Fine!”
“Negotiating with Geheimrat von Teschow was not very easy. He could still base himself legally on the confounded lease. What finally decided him was the question of his reputation, of your position as relations—”
“Position as relations! I am convinced you let yourself be hoodwinked, Studmann.”
“He seems to think a lot of his daughter and granddaughter. And how could I have been hoodwinked, since everything has been left as it was?”
“That doesn’t matter,” declared the Rittmeister obstinately. “I should have read the letter.”
“I thought I had full power to deal with it. You expressly asked me to keep all unpleasant things away from you.”
“When did I say that?”
“When we captured the field thieves.”
“Studmann, if I don’t want to be bothered by these petty thefts, it doesn’t mean that you are to hide letters from me.”
“Good. It won’t happen again.” Studmann leaned against the safe, a little reserved, but not impolite. “I have just examined the cooking arrangements in the washhouse. They seem to be all right. Amanda Backs is very efficient.”
“We’ll raise a fine stink with these convicts! I ought never to have agreed to it. But when you get everyone nagging you! I would ten times have preferred to take the Berlin people; then I wouldn’t have been obliged to turn my harvesters’ barracks into a jail. What it’s all cost! And now this impertinence from that Berlin fellow. Here, read that!”
He handed the letter to Studmann, who read it without moving a muscle, returned it and said: “That sort of thing was to be expected.”
“Was to be expected?” the Rittmeister almost screamed. “You think it’s all right, do you? The fellow demands seven hundred gold marks for wretches whom I wouldn’t touch with a barge pole! And you think it’s all right! Look here, Studmann—”
“The items are all there: ten gold marks agent’s fee per man makes six hundred marks, sixty hours of lost time at one mark, other expenses forty marks …”
“But you saw them, Studmann; they weren’t laborers. Seven hundred gold marks for a botanist’s tin and a babe in arms! No, you must write a strong letter to the fellow, Studmann!”
“Of co
urse. What would you like me to write?”
“You know that best yourself.”
“Shall I reject his demands?”
“Of course!”
“Completely?”
“Absolutely! I won’t pay the fellow a penny!”
“Very good.”
“You think that’s right, don’t you?” asked the Rittmeister suspiciously.
“Right? Not at all, Prackwitz. You are bound to lose the case.”
“Lose the case … But, Studmann, they weren’t men—agricultural laborers.”
“One moment, Prackwitz …”
“No, listen, Studmann …”
“Well.”
And Rittmeister von Prackwitz was very angry with his friend von Studmann when the latter finally convinced him that they must try and come to an agreement. “It’ll cost money,” he sighed.
“Unfortunately I shall have to ask you for some more money today.” Studmann bent over an account book in which he hastily scribbled figures, endless figures with very many noughts.
“What do you mean—money? I haven’t anything worth mentioning. The bills can wait.”
“Since you’ve dismissed young Pagel,” said Herr von Studmann, apparently very busy with his figures, “you’ll have to pay your gambling debt. I have just reckoned it out. According to yesterday’s dollar rate it will be ninety-seven milliards two hundred million marks. Roughly one hundred milliards.”
“A hundred milliards!” exclaimed the Rittmeister breathlessly. “A hundred milliards! And you say off-handedly: ‘Prackwitz, I shall have to ask you for some money’ … Look here, Studmann, old man, I’ve got a feeling that you are angry with me somehow.”
“Me angry with you? Just now it looked as if you were angry with me.”
