by Hans Fallada
It was drizzling. Bareheaded, he stood looking up and down the street. Where should he go? At the corner he thought he saw a policeman’s shako glitter. Carefully, very erect, but with knees a little uncertain, he approached this policeman. At the corner, however, he saw that the glittering shako was a brass basin hanging outside a barber shop. Thoughtfully the Rittmeister stroked his chin, and the stubble rasped his fingers. He hadn’t managed to get a shave that morning, so he now entered the shop.
It did not look quite what the Rittmeister had expected. There were a few tables and chairs, but no mirrors. However, he didn’t mind that; he was glad to sit down a little, supporting his head in his hand and at once sinking into the troubled sea of drunkenness again.
After a while he noticed that someone had laid a hand on his shoulder. He raised his eyes and spoke with a thick tongue up into a sallow young face. “Shave, please!” There was a burst of laughter behind him.
The Rittmeister felt like becoming angry. Had someone possibly laughed at him? He’d turn round and see.
The young chap spoke in quite an affable manner. “Been having one or two, eh, Count? You want to be shaved? You can get that done afterwards, you know. This is only a pub.”
“We’ll shave you all right! Be only too glad to fleece you!” shouted a cheeky voice behind the Rittmeister.
“Shut up!” hissed sallow face. “Count, don’t listen to him, he’s boozed. Can I bring you somethin’ to drink?”
“Port,” murmured the Rittmeister.
“Oh, yes, of course! Port. Right-o! Only we haven’t got any port here. But the schnapps is first class. Can I bring one for myself, too? And for my friend? Fine. Here we’re so snug all on our own, so’s no reason why we shouldn’t sink one. Landlord! August! Three double schnapps and give us the bottle on the table. The gentleman’s invited us. That’s so, you have invited us, eh, Count?”
The Rittmeister sat half-asleep between the two. Frequently he started to his feet, as the call to action seized him. He must look for his car!
The others calmed him down. They would go and help him look in a moment; just let him have another one first. “The schnapps is bloody good, eh, Count?”
Rittmeister von Prackwitz was prostrate once more.
When the waiter in The Golden Hat noticed his guest’s disappearance, he was not immediately perturbed. He’s gone to the lavatory, he thought, and busied himself with his luncheon customers. He would have a look immediately afterwards; intoxicated persons often fell asleep there. Not a bad thing either. He would at least be in good keeping there.
The waiter put verve into his service. He bustled about, staggering up with trays, brought beer, made out bills—business, although the officers hadn’t turned up today, was excellent. Already they had had over sixty guests at table, almost all country gentlemen on their own, who no doubt had come to see if they could find out what was really going to happen tomorrow. Perhaps one would quickly have to link oneself up somehow.
In the meantime the doctor came, and was shown up to the second floor. There he found a young girl in bed who, at short intervals, gave an animallike cry of pain, rolling her head to and fro with closed eyes. The maid at the bedside could not give him any information. She didn’t know who was the sick person or what was the matter—but she would call the landlady.
The doctor stood alone beside the bed. He waited a while but nothing happened; the sick girl went on moaning and no one came. To have something to do, he felt her pulse and spoke to her. Had she pain? What had happened? There was no reply. As an experiment he almost shouted at her to be quiet, but she did not react; she didn’t hear him. He held her head firmly so that it could not be moved, but as soon as he let go, it started to toss about again and moan.
The doctor shrugged his shoulders and stood waiting at the window, observing the dismal weather. It was not a consoling prospect, nor were the girl’s cries of pain consoling; besides, after a difficult morning, the doctor was hungry. It was time the landlady came.
And at last she did. It had been awkward for her to leave the kitchen, and she was very much in a hurry. “Thank God, doctor, that you’re here at last. What is the matter with the girl?”
Which was exactly what the doctor would have liked to know.
“Yes, and now the father’s disappeared. Rittmeister von Prackwitz, from Neulohe; you know, the son-in-law of that old skinflint, Teschow. He drank three bottles of port and has gone out in the rain without his hat or coat, quite tipsy. I’ve sent out to look for him. What a business! Some days everything happens at once. What do you think of doing about the lass? The mother’s on her way by car; she can be here in one or two hours.”
“What has happened to the little Fräulein?”
The landlady didn’t exactly know, and the waiter was sent for. “My whole establishment is upside down; of course, it would happen today, when we have so many for lunch!”
But the waiter, too, had nothing more to report than that there had been some sort of argument with a young man.
“A love affair, then,” said the doctor. “Probably a bad nervous shock. I’ll give the girl something to make her sleep first—and then, when the mother’s here, I’ll call in again.”
“Yes, do see that she sleeps, doctor. I really can’t listen any longer to that moaning, and I can’t have someone sitting up here with her all the time. We’ve got our work to do, too—we’re not a hospital.” It was the sort of thing the doctor had to listen to a hundred times a day. He had never ceased to wonder why people did not get tired of explaining that, at the particular moment, they hadn’t the slightest time for illness; that illness was not a welcome guest. People, however, keep on telling their doctors such things.
He now drew up a mild narcotic into his syringe. The girl, when he stuck the needle into her forearm, twitched and for a moment stopped moaning.
The doctor looked thoughtful. He hadn’t yet pressed down the piston in his syringe. That twitch, that interruption, didn’t fit in with such a bad nervous shock; she oughtn’t to have felt the prick at all—yet she had done so. Therefore she was conscious; she was only simulating unconsciousness.
It was not a young doctor who stood by the sick-bed of Violet von Prackwitz, but an elderly man who was no longer annoyed when his patients humbugged him. So many people had passed through his hands—oh, heaps of them, heaps! He no longer had any didactic, educational, or moral purposes. If this young girl, this child of good family, could moan like that, seeking refuge thus in illness and unconsciousness, then an overwhelming fear of something evil must possess her—perhaps only because of an argument, perhaps because of something worse. The doctor knew how greatly people in their fear of the dark powers of life seek nirvana, and he also knew that a dreamless, all-forgetting slumber can give the new strength to bear what has been unbearable.
Gently he removed the syringe from its needle. He had intended to give the child rest for two or three hours; but it would be better to let her have a long deep sleep, so that she might thoroughly repose and evade the evil hours.
He filled a larger syringe. Before all the injection had entered the arm, her moans stopped. Violet von Prackwitz’s head fell to one side, she stretched herself, put one arm under her head and fell asleep.
It was a little after half-past twelve.
“There,” said the doctor to the landlady, “now she will sleep soundly for ten or twelve hours. So when the mother comes give me a ring.” He left.
One and a half hours later Herr Finger and Frau Eva arrived. The lunches were over, the landlady had time, the waiter, too, had a little time.
Many were the things Frau Eva was told—of an unknown young man, of a glass of port emptied in his face, of an argument. Her daughter had called out: “Fritz, oh, Fritz!” Her husband had drunk a little, on an empty stomach, gone out and not returned. No, he had not left word where he was going. The doctor considered it was a nervous shock. He would be rung up at once.… Yes, he had left his hat and overco
at behind; he had been away at least two hours now. Had he gone to a friend’s, perhaps?
Frau von Prackwitz heard this, item by item, but she could not give it a proper meaning. She was an active person; her family was in distress, the husband wandering about tipsily in the rain, the daughter in some unknown danger, yet sound asleep. She wanted to be doing something, changing things, improving them. But she had to sit inactive by the bedside and wait for a doctor, who could, of course, tell her nothing.
She stood at the window and looked out at the sad, rainswept hotel yard, its flat shining bitumin roofs. The porter greased the wheels of his trolley. With infinite slowness and pauses between each movement, he took a wheel from the axle and leaned it against the wall. He fetched a copper box with grease, put it next to the axle, then looked at the axle. Then he fetched a flat wooden stick, took some grease out of the box, and looked at the grease on the stick.—And then he slowly began to grease the axle.… And that’s how we fritter our life away, thought Eva bitterly. So it was a love affair! “Fritz! Oh Fritz!”—I was right. But what good does it do me to be right—and, above all, what good does it do her?
Eva turned round and looked at the sleeping girl. A frenzy of impatience seized her. She would have liked to grab her by the shoulders, shake her awake, question, advise, deliberate, do something. But by her pallid brows and her deep, somewhat noisy breathing she saw that shaking Violet would be in vain, that the girl was as much removed from her impatience and energy as that person who alone could still have given information—Achim.
Why isn’t Studmann here? she thought angrily. What’s the good of being reliable if he is never there when one really needs him? I can’t run all over town looking for Achim, I can’t peep into every public-house; I can’t even ring up our friends. Perhaps he’s not drunk at all and I should only shame him.
But at last she had an idea; she rushed downstairs and ordered the chauffeur to drive slowly through the streets and look out for the Rittmeister. Perhaps she was mistaken, but it seemed as if Herr Finger looked at her a little doubtfully. She was still not altogether sure whether Herr Finger was a proper chauffeur or more of an agent sent by the motor firm to keep an eye on their unpaid car, a man who would suddenly present a bill. In either case, the Rittmeister’s home must appear out of the ordinary to him, and a little disturbed; a lot had certainly happened in the bare two days he had been with them.
Frau Eva remained in the rain on the hotel steps. Finger took his dignified place at the wheel. The car rumbled and slowly drove off. Eva went back into the hotel. She ran back upstairs feeling that something must have happened in the meantime. Her heart beat faster. Ah, if only something had happened, if only Violet had waked up, so that one might talk with her! She could talk with her now.…
But Violet was sleeping soundly.
The mother sat by the bed, looking at her child—she ought to be able to explain to her—she had suddenly understood in how much she had acted wrongly. She could not understand now how she had descended to such undignified prying, which more than anything had alienated her daughter. This mistake she would never make again. She had learned that her child had her own interests, entrance to which was forbidden the mother, because she was not only mother but also woman.
There was a knock at the door.
The doctor had come then. He was a gaunt, elderly man with remarkably pale eyes behind impossible nickel spectacles, and a very awkward manner, obviously a bachelor. She grew impatient as soon as she saw him so precisely feeling the pulse, with such contented nods, as if he were God, responsible for its powerful throbbing. Obviously he didn’t know a thing. He was saying something about a shock, the necessity of sleeping a long time, of allowing the girl an interval, and not asking her any questions when she awoke, so as to spare her wounded feelings. What did this tiresome old fool know about her daughter’s wounded feelings? He had only seen her in a swoon! As it turned out, he hadn’t even spoken with Achim. About him, too, he had no information to give.
How long would Violet sleep? Till midnight, perhaps till tomorrow? Really, so that was all this booby had been able to do, to withdraw Vi from her mother in that very hour when she most needed her mother’s love!
Could one at least take the girl home today, away from this horrible hotel room? When? Well, as soon as her husband was back. That would be all right? She would not wake up in the car? “Very well. Then we will go as soon as Herr von Prackwitz is back. Thank you, doctor. Shall I pay your fee now, or will you send your account?”
“It all depends on the moment of awakening, madam,” said the doctor, sitting down without being invited. Pleasantly and without flinching he looked at her.
Of course, Frau von Prackwitz understood that. It was why she wanted to take Violet from this depressing room back to more familiar and happy surroundings.
“It is just that which may be wrong,” said the doctor. “Perhaps she ought not to see anything familiar when she wakes up, neither her own room nor someone she knows; perhaps not even you, madam.”
“Why do you think that, doctor?” There was an angry note in her voice. “I know what has happened. Some trifling love affair or other which my daughter has taken tragically. I’m no Puritan; I shan’t reproach her in the slightest.…”
“Exactly, exactly.” The doctor smiled. “You speak of a trifling love affair, when the girl is almost out of her reason about it. Two worlds, madam, two quite different worlds, unable to comprehend each other.”
“Violet will get over it,” began Frau von Prackwitz.
The doctor interrupted rudely. “I have been thinking about it this afternoon, madam. Perhaps I made a mistake. I ought to have let the child talk before I gave her an injection. She was not unconscious, madam. No, not at all. She was simulating unconsciousness.… Something terrible has happened, but she is even more afraid of something terrible which is going to happen. Please allow me, madam. I may be wrong, naturally. I explain it to myself thus—it is possible, there are indications, that by pretending to be unconscious she thinks to escape what she fears. We don’t know; perhaps this dreaded harm is not imminent.”
“But what further harm can there be, then?” Frau von Prackwitz was really annoyed. “The fellow’s thrown her over, and I’ve thought so a long time. By chance she met him here again, and he had a row with my husband. He must have behaved like a blackguard; otherwise my husband wouldn’t have thrown wine in his face. All this would upset her terribly, and she had a nervous collapse. Fine. Or rather, far from fine. But what further harm can happen now?”
“That’s just the thing, madam, we don’t know, and perhaps are not intended to know. If the facts are as you suppose,” and the doctor became persuasive, since Frau Eva remained totally unconvinced by his words, “then the girl ought to have been relieved after the scene. The fact that her father, and thus her parents, knew her secret at last ought rather to have relieved her, surely. How is it then that a young girl like her should dissemble thus? Why should she adopt a remedy so unusual?”
“But you are only supposing that Violet was dissembling, doctor. You didn’t talk with her.”
“No, unfortunately not. It’s pure assumption; there you are right, madam.”
“Very well; what would you advise?”
“Put your daughter in the hospital here. She would be well looked after and possibly she will feel safe there. And you can be with her in ten minutes if she wakes up and asks for you. Should she want to go home—that can be done at once.”
Frau Eva looked thoughtfully at the doctor, but she was not thinking about his proposal, the man being far too silly for that. She knew her Violet. A few words and all would be well again between mother and daughter. Naturally she would respect Violet’s secret, as one woman to another; this she had already firmly resolved on without all this talk of harm and greater harm. No, if Frau Eva was now thoughtful, it was because she was wondering why the doctor had made a proposal behind which there must be something else. “And you w
ould attend Violet in the hospital here?” she asked glibly.
“If you wish, madam,” replied the unsuspicious doctor. “I would naturally keep an eye on her.”
The thing was clear. The little panel doctor had smelled money; his warnings against approaching harm were meant to justify a long and expensive treatment. Frau Eva stood up. “Thank you very much, doctor. I will talk it over with Herr von Prackwitz. Should we decide for it, I will let you know.”
It was a very definite rebuff. One can only be oneself. She was otherwise a sensible, clear-sighted woman, but in this moment she was only the daughter of a rich man, mistrusting the motives of all who were compelled to do something for money in order to live. “He only wants to earn some money.” That foolish attitude converted his shrewd, solicitous advice into a mean and selfish transaction.
And in the end the old man understood her. With a faint flush in his thin cheeks he bowed forlornly and approached the bed. There was nothing more he could do. He had been able to give the girl a little sleep, but he was not allowed to make easier for her what was coming after it. The world was like that. With bound hands the willing helper had to see the condemned, the unhappy, those in peril, go their way. He could merely warn. But his voice was drowned by laughter and death-cries, and was unnoticed as he stood by the roadside.
“Take great care when she wakes up,” he said, and went.
Restlessly Frau von Prackwitz walked up and down. Where was Achim? And no word from the chauffeur! She had been nearly an hour in this wretched hotel. To have something to do, she now went downstairs to the telephone. Though it was not possible to speak as she wished, for the telephone was too public, it did her good to hear young Pagel’s restful and somewhat leisurely voice.
Yes, so far everything was in order. The Commission of Control had gone off in their car a long time ago. Yes, rumors. He had refused to sign their record of the investigations, on the ground that he had no authority. They had gone away without. One other thing, which would amuse madam. Amanda Backs, you know, the poultry maid, had given little Meier a box on the ears several times, before all the visitors. With the shout of “Traitor!” No, nothing had happened. Not one of the gentlemen had moved a finger in Meier’s aid. Oh, yes, splendid, really splendid. A capital person in her way, a real bit of the people, but magnificent.… And how was Fräulein Violet, by the way?
