by Hans Fallada
Yours, etc., etc.
“Well, well,” sighed Herr von Studmann, striking a match and setting fire to the letter. “So he’s back again to help us over October first. It ought to be all right; at least he doesn’t seem so touchy now. If only he won’t do anything too silly. Considerable craving for self-assertion together with weak intelligence! Nasty, but I’ll manage somehow.”
Studmann was to make a mistake. Herr von Prackwitz had, on the very day, several irreparable blunders behind him.
IX
As the Rittmeister earlier that morning had jumped at the very last moment into a compartment of the train from Berlin to Frankfurt-on-the-Oder, he had been greeted by a very surly voice. “Beg pardon, full up.”
Although an obvious lie, because only two of the eight seats were occupied in a compartment already in motion, it was not this which had made the Rittmeister flush. He had recognized the face of the man who was so impolite. “Oh, no, my dear Lieutenant, I am not always turned away so easily as from my own wood,” he said smilingly.
The Lieutenant too flushed deeply, and replied also with an allusion to that earlier event: “Out of your father-in-law’s wood, I think, Rittmeister?”
They smiled at each other, both recalling the scene in the Black Dale, the sentry’s whistle, the Lieutenant’s abrupt order to retire. Both gentlemen were thinking themselves very intelligent and superior to the other; the Lieutenant because he had concealed from the father his connection with the daughter, and the Rittmeister because, in spite of the other’s rudeness, he had found out about the buried weapons.
Their next remarks were worthy of notice. The Lieutenant said in a friendly, innocent way: “And how is your daughter?”
“Thank you, quite well,” replied the Rittmeister. Good bait catches fine fish, he thought and went on: “Everything all right in the Black Dale?”
“Yes,” said the Lieutenant coldly.
Conversation was over. Each of the intelligent pair believed he had found out what he wanted—the Lieutenant that the daughter had not prattled—the Rittmeister that the arms were still in the wood. Instinctively both looked across at the third man in the compartment. He, busy with a paper, sat silently in his corner, but now looked up, lowering his paper.
Although he, like the Lieutenant, was in mufti, his face and the way he held himself betrayed one whom the constant wearing of uniform had made stiff. In spite of his far too large lounge suit, the officer could be seen in him—it was not necessary to observe the monocle hanging from a wide black cord or the Hohen-zollern order in his buttonhole. His glance, heavy and slow, had been made cautious by endless experience. The bloodless face, with its thin skin, looked as if it were supported on the bones without interposing flesh; the scanty pale-blond hair was carefully flattened down in long wisps, through which a parchmentlike skin gleamed. The most noticeable thing about this barely disguised death’s head was the mouth, a mouth without lips, a line sharp as the slit of an automatic machine, a mouth which appeared to have tasted every bitterness.
I must have seen him somewhere, thought the Rittmeister, quickly visualizing the picture pages of those journals seen in recent weeks.
With a slender-fingered, trembling child’s hand, the disguised officer raised his monocle and the Rittmeister felt himself scrutinized. But just as he was about to introduce himself, the glance passed on to the young Lieutenant.
“Herr von Prackwitz, tenant of an estate at Neulohe, retired cavalry officer,” said the Lieutenant hurriedly. One felt that the glance had given him a jerk.
“Delighted,” said the other without, however, giving his own name, which did not at all disturb the Rittmeister, who knew that it was really his duty to have recognized a high officer. The monocle fell. “But sit down! Had a good harvest?”
Rittmeister and Lieutenant sat down. “Oh, the harvest’s not altogether bad,” replied the Rittmeister with the caution usual among farmers, to whom praise of a harvest seems like a challenge to heaven. “I was not in Neulohe these last weeks,” he added.
“Herr von Prackwitz is the son-in-law of Herr von Teschow,” explained the Lieutenant.
“Evidently,” said the officer mysteriously. To what this “evidently” referred, whether to the absence from Neulohe or to the family relationship, was not evident. Or it might refer to the harvest.
The Lieutenant, whose name—as the Rittmeister now noticed—had also not been mentioned, assisted again: “Herr von Prackwitz is the tenant of his father-in-law.”
“Clever man,” said he with the monocle. “Visited me once or twice recently. You know that?”
The Rittmeister did not, and couldn’t imagine what his rustic father-in-law might have to do with this parchment-like soldier. “No,” he said, confused. “I’ve been away, as I mentioned.”
“Clever,” said the other gratingly. “The kind who always pay only when they have the goods in their hand. Family feelings hurt?”
“Oh, no!” protested the Rittmeister. “I, too, am always having difficulties with—”
“Who wants to join the trip must first take his ticket,” proclaimed the officer with a bitterness which no word in the conversation made understandable. “Won’t perhaps even know the definition. You understand?”
The Rittmeister did not, but he nodded profoundly.
“Suppose,” went on the officer, “you have a car …”
“I haven’t,” explained the Rittmeister. “But I shall buy one.”
“Today? Tomorrow?”
“Certainly in a few days.”
“Either today or tomorrow, otherwise no use,” said the officer, seizing hold of his paper again.
“I don’t know.” The Rittmeister hesitated. Was this man with the monocle a representative of a motor-car factory? “After all, it’s a large sum of … I don’t know if the money …”
“Money!” cried the other contemptuously, crumpling his paper fiercely. “Who pays cash for cars? Give a bill!” He vanished behind his newspaper.
This time the Lieutenant gave no help, but sat in his corner with such an expression of repudiation that the Rittmeister withdrew into his, and, remembering his own newspaper, also began to crumple it fiercely. But somehow he couldn’t read. Continually his thoughts strayed to those mysterious words about a too-clever father-in-law, a ticket which must be paid for first, and a car which need not be paid for … In spite of many weeks in a peaceful sanatorium he was seized by a very impulsive anger, and when he thought of how the young man had treated him in the wood, he discovered that that matter hadn’t yet been settled; while, if he took into account his treatment today at the hands of the parchmentlike man, he felt even more that something ought to be done.…
The pair opposite had begun to whisper, which was unmannerly, the more so because they were obviously whispering about him. He was, after all, a reputable officer and a successful farmer. If you don’t discuss such things in front of ladies, you certainly don’t whisper them in front of elderly gentlemen. He had had a good deal to drink, and he now gave his paper a powerful blow—the row could begin. But the train was slowing down—they were already at Frankfurt; he would have to get out and change. His anger ought to have been quicker.
“You’re getting out, Rittmeister?” asked the Lieutenant politely and groped for the other’s suitcase.
“I’m changing! Don’t trouble yourself, please,” exclaimed the Rittmeister angrily. Despite which the Lieutenant lowered the case from the rack. “I have been asked to inform you,” he said in a low voice without looking at the Rittmeister, “that we are having a sort of old comrades’ reunion the day after tomorrow, October the first, in Ostade. At six in the morning, please. Uniform. Weapons, if any, to be brought.” Then he looked at the Rittmeister, who was overwhelmed; so overwhelmed that he said: “At your service!”
“Porter!” shouted the Lieutenant from the window and busied himself with the Rittmeister’s luggage.
Just as things had become interesting one must leave.
The Rittmeister looked at the gentleman in the corner. He had stretched out his legs, his monocle dangled from its band; he seemed to be sleeping. Hesitant but respectful, the Rittmeister stepped across the somnolent legs, murmuring: “Good morning!”
“But with a car, you understand?” muttered the sleeper and dozed off again.
The Rittmeister stood on the platform in a daze. For the third time the porter asked where he was to carry the luggage. First the Rittmeister said to the Neulohe train, then he said Ostade.
“Oh, you want to go to Ostade. Then you’re on the wrong line. You ought to have gone by Landberg,” said the porter.
“No, no!” cried the Rittmeister, impatient. “I want a car. Can I buy a car here?”
“Here?” asked the porter, looking first at the passenger and then at the platform. “Here?”
“Yes, in Frankfurt.”
“Of course you can buy cars here, sir,” the porter reassured him. “Here you can get anything that way. That’s what they all do. They come by train from Berlin and buy their cars in Frankfurt …”
The Rittmeister followed the man. Everything was clear now. He had seen the officer who had been described to him a hundred times, whose face he had never before glimpsed: Major Rückert, who was plotting the big Putsch against the Government. It was coming off early the day after tomorrow, at six, in Ostade, and the Rittmeister was to be present, with a car.
Father-in-law was too clever. He wanted to wait and see if the Putsch was successful before he bought his ticket. The Rittmeister, however, wasn’t so clever about money. He would buy a car at once, on credit. That might not be businesslike, but it was the right thing.
Docilely he let himself be taken to the waiting room, where he sat down pensively, tipped the porter, and ordered a coffee. He was not thinking now about the Putsch with Major Rückert and the impolite Lieutenant. That affair had been settled: he would be in Ostade the day after tomorrow at six o’clock. There would be no hitch, and no need to be uneasy about it. He was not the over-prudent, crafty Geheimrat Horst-Heinz von Teschow: he was Rittmeister von Prackwitz, and when an old comrade said to him: “Join us!” he went along, without inquisitiveness. The little he had heard was enough for him. The Reichswehr and the Black Reichswehr were in it; that is, the old soldiers and the young ones, against a Government which printed worthless money, which had given up the Ruhr fight, and which wanted to “agree” with the French. One didn’t need to reflect about such things—the Putsch was in order.
What did absorb him, while he stirred the coffee, was his car! It was of course already “his,” although he didn’t even know yet what it should look like. He had wanted one for a long time, only he had never had the money—and, as a matter of fact, there was none now. Indeed, he was traveling to Neulohe so as to be on the spot when the rent for the farm fell due on October the first; that is, the day after tomorrow—a difficult time. The Rittmeister was like a child. When a child has managed ten times not to take off shoes and stockings and splash in the water, it only requires the boy from next door to say the eleventh time: “Ah, it’s so warm today!” In a minute the child, in spite of all commands, goes bare-legged and splashing. The Major had said that he ought to buy a car. Money was scarce, scarcer than ever, and the car would have to go on a dangerous adventure at once. But the Rittmeister didn’t think a moment of that. He didn’t even think of the Putsch and the Government to be overthrown; all he thought of was that he could at last buy a car. This Putsch was a splendid affair; it procured him a car.
The Rittmeister reviewed all the cars of his friends and acquaintances. He hesitated between a Mercedes and a Horch. Cheap ones were not considered. If one was to have a car, it couldn’t look like a country doctor’s—it had to look good; and since it was bought on credit, a bit more or less didn’t matter.… No, the problem was not the car—it was where to get a chauffeur quickly, one who would look all right at the wheel; otherwise the pleasure of sitting behind him was halved. And the thing had to be done quickly, because the Rittmeister wanted, at the least in two or three hours, to be on the way to Neulohe in his own car.… And then there was the garage. Which would be the best place for a garage, close to the Villa?
The Rittmeister, wrapped up in his thoughts, resembled extraordinarily that retired officer who, a few months before, had sat at the gaming table, and who, out of sheer longing not to miss a single stake, couldn’t wait to learn the rules of play. Once again he didn’t know the game, and he was staking higher than he could afford. He might indeed buy some sort of corrugated-iron garage, but such things looked like nothing at all.…
“Herr Rittmeister,” said for the third time a humble voice at the next table.
“Well, I never!” Starting out of his dreams and projects, he stared in surprise at the forester, who sat in his best clothes behind a glass of beer. “What are you doing in Frankfurt, Kniebusch?”
“The court case, Herr Rittmeister!” said the forester reproachfully. “My case about Bäumer.”
“Well,” nodded the Rittmeister, “I’m glad the rascal’s to be sentenced at last. What do you think he’ll get, then?”
“But, Herr Rittmeister,” declared the forester solemnly, “it’s me who’s accused. It’s me they want to sentence. I’m supposed to have done him grievous bodily harm!”
“Hasn’t that dirty business been settled yet?” The Rittmeister was amazed. “Herr von Studmann wrote nothing about it. Come and sit at my table and tell me about the case. The cart seems to have lost its way badly, but perhaps I’ve come just at the right time to pull it out of the mess.”
“Oh, thank you, thank you, Herr Rittmeister! I always told my wife: ‘If only the Rittmeister was here, he’d soon get me out of it.’ ” And having not ineffectually appealed to old soldierly sentiments, the forester fetched the stale dregs of his beer and poured out his heart slowly and with many lamentations. The Rittmeister listened. Then, with the same élan which had been his about the car, he threw himself into legal affairs. Nor did he refrain from some bitter reflections on how everything was neglected even by the most reliable people when he wasn’t there, and how he had to do everything himself. Pettifogging lawyers, poachers, the dollar and the Socialists were cursed, and he did not forget to make it clear to the forester that his employer was actually Geheimrat von Teschow, and that the business really had nothing whatever to do with him, von Prackwitz.
“Listen, Kniebusch,” he said finally. “Your case comes on at half-past ten, eh? Actually I have a lot to do—I’m going to buy a car, you know, and shall have to engage a chauffeur, too …”
“A car! That will please Frau von Prackwitz.”
The Rittmeister was not so sure; it was a point he preferred not to discuss. “I’ll go with you to the court and give the gentlemen there a real piece of my mind.… You may rely on it that the whole thing will be settled in ten minutes, Kniebusch; one has only to put matters in a proper light, and it’s high time that this persecution of landed property was stopped. Well, all that is going to be changed the day after tomorrow—you’ll be surprised, Kniebusch.”
The other pricked up his ears.
But the Rittmeister changed the subject. “And immediately afterwards I’ll buy the car, get a chauffeur—a good chauffeur’s a condition of purchase—and then I’ll take you to Neulohe. You can save your fare, Kniebusch.”
The forester’s thanks knew no limit; this program delighted him, and wisely he suppressed the doubt which he perhaps still entertained that his case, in spite of the Rittmeister’s intervention, might not pass off so smoothly. Herr von Prackwitz was now in a hurry. With his long legs he steered himself through the town of Frankfurt as though each step brought him nearer the car he yearned for; and a little behind trotted Kniebusch, puffing.
And thus they got to the court fifteen minutes too early. Nevertheless the Rittmeister pressed on to the courtroom indicated in the summons—where they knocked, listened, warily opened the door. The room was dirty, dreary and empty
. Intercepting an usher, they showed him the summons. He looked from one to the other.…
“Is it you?” he asked the Rittmeister.
“Good heavens, no!” The Rittmeister did not at all like this, however readily he might be espousing the case.
“Oh, you then! Well, just wait a little! It’ll take a little time yet. Your case will be called.”
Sighing, the Rittmeister sat down with the forester on one of those benches where, perhaps because of their construction, perhaps because of the situation, no person can keep still. The corridor was dingy and deserted. People kept coming; their steps, however softly they trod, reverberated from stone walls and floor and ceiling. In the gray light they peered short-sightedly at the numbers on the doors, made up their minds to knock, and listened a long while before they entered.
Angrily the Rittmeister stared at a notice on the wall opposite, announcing “No Smoking. No Spitting.” Underneath was a spittoon. He might now have been running around Frankfurt acquiring a magnificent car and going for a trial drive, instead of sitting in this dreary corridor out of pure good nature. The affair had really nothing to do with him at all.
“What a time it’s taking!” he cried angrily, although it was no more than twenty-five minutes past ten.
The forester perceived the restlessness of a companion whom it was so very important to retain. Moreover he had been meditating on what the Rittmeister had alluded to.
“The weapons are still in the Black Dale,” he said discreetly.
“Shush …” went the Rittmeister, so loudly that some one at the far end of the corridor started, and turned inquiringly. Waiting till the man had disappeared into a room, he asked in a low voice: “How do you know about that, Kniebusch?”
“I had another look yesterday afternoon,” whispered the ever-inquisitive forester. “One likes to know what is happening in one’s own wood, Herr Rittmeister!”
“Oh,” said the Rittmeister importantly. “And if they are still there today, tomorrow they won’t be.”
