by Hans Fallada
“I …” stammered Sophie. But she recovered herself immediately. “Yes,” she whispered excitedly, “I lied. He wasn’t shot in the leg, and he goes out to provide for us, so that we can get the fare together. What can we do when they’re after him? You stood up for yours at evening prayers without being ashamed. One must stick by one’s fellow particularly when things are bad for him. And I’ll never believe that you’ll betray us—why, you smacked Meier’s face because he was a traitor!”
“Yes, I smacked my fellow’s face for that,” said Amanda. “Your friend—”
“And you would be a traitor after that?” interrupted Sophie. The two girls looked at one another. “You ought to know,” she whispered hurriedly, “what a girl feels like when she’s fond of someone and how one doesn’t give a damn if others say he’s no good. To them he may be bad, perhaps, but to me he’s good—and I of all people must leave him in the lurch? No, you don’t want that, nor do you want to betray us.”
Amanda Backs stood silent.
“I’ll see that he doesn’t touch anything more in Neulohe, and that we leave as soon as possible, as soon as we have a little money—but you won’t betray us, eh, Fräulein?”
“What is it Amanda’s not to betray?” Wolfgang Pagel stood between the two girls, a flushed, somewhat excited Amanda and a Sophie who had made herself very ladylike for this visit, so that not much excitement was to be noticed beneath her lipstick and powder.
Sophie did not reply. “I’ll just quickly make your coffee, Herr Pagel,” said Amanda. And she left the office.
“What’s the matter with her?” asked Pagel. “Have you quarreled?”
“Not a bit,” said Sophie quickly. “I was only asking her to put in a word for me with you, bailiff. But you were not to know what I’d asked her.” She shrugged her shoulders. “My father says that you want me for the potato digging. But father must have misunderstood. Just look at my hands; one can’t dig potatoes with hands like that.” And she stretched out hers, wonderfully manicured, nails brilliantly polished. But neither manicure nor polish could hide the fact that they had once been very robust country-girl’s hands.
Pagel gave them a benevolent pat and said: “Very nice! Well, Sophie, take a seat and we’ll talk reasonably with one another.”
She obediently sat down, but her manner betrayed that she was not inclined to enter into reasonable talk.
“Now look here, Sophie,” said Pagel amiably. “When you left Neulohe a few years back, those pretty hands looked a little different, don’t you agree? And yet they’ve become so pretty. Now, for a while again, they won’t look quite so beautiful, but you’ll be helping your father to earn a bit. What do you think? When you return to Berlin your hands will quickly enough become spotless and clean again.”
Sophie drew them back as if the theme was, in her view, done with. Almost in a whine she said: “But, bailiff, I must look after my mother. She can’t get up or walk any more, there’s so much dropsy in her legs.”
“Oh, if that is the case, Sophie,” he replied distressed, “then I’ll send the doctor to her tomorrow. He’ll be able to say if your mother requires constant attendance.” The pretty face was distorted by chagrin. “Sophie,” he went on more vigorously, “why are you trying to take me in? First you say you can’t work because of your hands, and then it’s because of your sick mother, and recently your father told me you wanted to go into service again. It’s all untrue. I’ll say nothing about the contract, according to which unmarried grown-up children must work as well; but is it right for you to idle around if everyone else is working himself to death? Is it right for a healthy young girl to live at the expense of her old worn-out father?”
“I don’t live at his expense!” she burst out. Rather more slowly: “I brought money with me from Berlin.”
“Lies, Sophie. Cheating again. We both arrived in Neulohe on the same day, have you forgotten? The dollar was then so-and-so many thousand marks, and now it’s so-and-so many milliards. What can be left of your money then?” She started to speak. “Yes, go on and tell me that you’re selling your jewelry or that as lady help or whatever you were in Berlin you got paid in foreign currency! All lies. No, Sophie,” he said firmly, “it’s settled: either you come to work tomorrow or I’ll put Black Minna with all her children in your father’s house.”
Her face changed, showing impatience, annoyance, then anger. There was something wrong in that pretty face, as if the beauty were only skin-deep and another face might at any moment be seen behind it, a face neither good nor beautiful. She restrained herself, however. She even smiled and she pleaded: “Oh, bailiff, let me off! What potatoes could I dig? Be so kind!” Pagel grew perplexed.
“How much you could do, Sophie, is another matter,” he said woodenly, feeling like Herr von Studmann. “The chief thing is the example.”
“But I’m not strong enough for such work,” she complained. “That’s why I left for the town, because I was too weak for farm work. You feel, Herr Pagel! I’ve no muscles, it’s all so tender.…”
She had approached, brushing against him. She was smaller than he. A fragrance came from her; she moved her arm to show that no biceps stood up. And all the while she was looking into his eyes, meekly, roguishly, pleadingly.
“Those who have to carry the sacks must have the muscles,” objected Pagel. “You only have to gather the potatoes, Sophie—even children can do that.”
“And my knees!” she wailed. “The kneeling will wear them out the first day. See, bailiff, how soft they are.” Her skirt was very short, but she lifted it higher. She patted her garter; he saw a gleam of white …
There went the door! “Put your skirt down!” he ordered sharply.
Yes, that other face now appeared from beneath the pretty one—a coarse face indeed. “Leave me alone! So that’s what you want! No, no!” she shouted and was out of the door, passing Amanda Backs.
Impassively Amanda put down the coffee things on the table. “Your coffee, Herr Pagel.”
“The damnable wench!” cried Pagel, breathing hard. “Amanda, I was to have been seduced here just now!” Amanda looked at him speechless. “Or,” he continued thoughtfully, “it was to look to you as if I were the seducer—that was the idea.” He gave an incredulous smile. “And all about a little potato digging! I don’t understand it.”
“I’d let her be, Herr Pagel,” said Amanda shortly.
“Yes, yes, Amanda, I’ve heard that you wished to put in a good word for her. But why? Is she to get off with her laziness?”
“I’m not putting in a word for her, Herr Pagel. I don’t worry myself about her, and the best thing would be for you not to worry about her either. Your coffee’s getting cold,” she said and left the office.
Pagel watched her go. Some things seemed questionable to him, but he actually had too much to do to try and answer such questions. He’d rather finish his coffee and finally read Herr von Studmann’s letter.
V
A quarter of an hour later Wolfgang Pagel was cycling through the woods. He must hurry, for it was dark at five, and as soon as twilight came nothing would keep Forester Kniebusch in the forest. He gave no explanation. At the first sign of dusk he would leave his men abruptly and go home.
“He’s getting a little cracked,” said some.
“He’s just scared stiff when the forest’s dark,” said others.
Kniebusch let them talk. He himself hardly said a word, no longer listening when something was being said. He didn’t want to know anymore, and didn’t say anything more himself. This change, so astonishing in such an old man, this forsaking of a weakness which he had not been able to overcome in a lifetime, dated from that first of October when he had marched on the fortress of Ostade with a troop of young peasants from Neulohe—to overthrow the Red Government in a big Putsch.
Pagel, noting the gossipy forester’s transformation, had believed that it was due to mortification over the shameful failure of the Putsch. Kniebusch indeed said no
thing about the undertaking, but that could only strengthen this interpretation. One had learned enough from the newspapers without wanting personal accounts.
A few sections of militarized associations which had not been disbanded, together with many armed country folk, had appeared in front of the barracks and had summoned the Reichswehr to join in the fight against the Government. The Reichswehr had coldly replied no. In all probability those in the Putsch had held this to be a sort of formality, to save face, and after a brief delay, but hesitatingly, they had proceeded to something like an attack—again in order to save face, apparently. There had been half a dozen or even a dozen shots; the mass of the rebels had ebbed away in disorder; and thus an undertaking to which many capable men had for months devoted all their strength, intellect, courage and self-sacrifice, ended in confusion, rout, a dozen arrests and, unfortunately, two or three killed as well. However, it was a sign of these times, when everything seemed to dissolve—to collapse even as it was being born. The strongest will remained powerless. The idea of self-sacrifice seemed ridiculous—everyone for himself, but all against one.
(That trench jacket which a lieutenant had borrowed from a publican and had almost immediately returned so that it might not be dirtied—that trench jacket was none the less dirtied with soil as with blood.… In vain had the father turned a small beer shop into a respectable tavern. If, however, the lieutenant had not returned the new jacket, would the landlord’s son have stayed away then?)
In this way, or something like it, had the Putsch run its course. It had been a beautiful, splendid dream into which many had thrown their heart and soul—and then it was over, and one could well understand that a man could be bitter and silent about it. But as Pagel came more frequently in contact with the forester and observed, besides his taciturnity, that lifeless yet constantly frightened glance and the perpetually trembling hands—as he reflected rather more deeply on the Putsch and the man—then he said to himself: It is all wrong, it is something quite different. One could easily drive for half an hour through the forest and think of nothing but the forester Kniebusch. A certain slow tenacity in thought could at no time have been altogether denied young Pagel, and if the tempo of recent events had somewhat repressed this characteristic and demanded an almost unreflecting activity, the reaction was all the stronger now that he had to cover considerable distances alone between field and wood. He was not happy only to be active in the world; he wished also to understand it. He was not content to see that the forester was silent and afraid; he wanted to know why he had changed.
And when he came to rummage in his memories, it was not surprising that he recalled an autumn day when, along a forest path, a little drunken fellow had staggered toward him; and in the drunken fellow’s car the considerably drunker Kniebusch lay. That this scoundrel of a Meier bore the chief guilt for the discovery of the arms dump and therefore for the Lieutenant’s end, Pagel had always known since the slapping by Amanda Backs. Strange! At the time he hadn’t thought of the forester. But now he understood, of course, that Kniebusch had been Meier’s informer, intentionally or, what was more probable, unintentionally.
And something else occurred to him. He saw the room where the convicts’ orgy had taken place; he saw the cook howling under her apron and the fat detective. The man had sent someone to fetch the forester, who, however, was not at home.
Yes, why should the detective send for Kniebusch when he already knew what there was in the forest, and where? Only because he wanted to see him! To examine him! Because he was suspicious of him! And why was the forester not at home in the middle of the night? Why did that peaceable, timid man join in the Putsch? Because his fear of the Putsch was less than his fear of inquiries about the arms dump. Because he wanted to be absent!
And Pagel saw himself standing in the wood. The fat detective had gone on, soaked and dog-tired, toward Ostade. Kniebusch would have met none other than the questioner he wished to avoid; and what a ruthless questioner he could be Wolfgang knew well. That would have been a bad hour for Kniebusch, sealing his lips at last. Perhaps he had only escaped by the skin of his teeth—but he had escaped! He had returned home. Of what was he still afraid, then? Why couldn’t he remain in the wood at twilight?
Pagel advanced considerably further with his own reflections, but he was still not satisfied with their result. Something remained to be solved. Pagel himself, for a while, hadn’t been able to remain in the darkening wood after that night. All his nerves had begun to tremble as soon as the first twilight fell, and he would mount his bicycle and ride, as fast as his legs allowed, out into the open. But he had resisted this feeling of panic; reason told him that it was the same forest as before the thirtieth of September, that the dead do not walk, that we have only the living to fear. And gradually his common sense had won.
Now it might very well be that the forester on that fatal evening—having heard that the dump was discovered—had been driven by conscience to steal into the Black Dale, and had then found the Lieutenant. That discovery would have sent him home terror-stricken. Yes, it might be that.
Nevertheless a voice told Pagel that it was not so—the forester was afraid of something much more tangible than a dead man, long since buried somewhere or other. No, it was not the dead Lieutenant, and it was not the detective—who was undoubtedly a man who would strike at once, without torturing a victim for weeks or months. Nor could it be little Meier. He would never dare confront the forester again. No matter how run down Kniebush had become, Little Meier would take steps to defend himself against a man who made his life such a misery.
Well, the mystery was for the moment unsolvable. But one ought to be particularly nice to the old man. No doubt he was far from being a model of virtue, but, in the little time before he descended into the grave, he ought not to have to torment himself beyond all measure. One might try sometime to find out what it was that frightened him, whether it was something tangible which he might be talked out of, or something in himself, something intangible.
Pagel had now reached the place where the forester and his two overseers were working. It was not yet time for felling, of course; the great old beech trees which stood there had as yet hardly lost their foliage, and there was still too much sap in them. But all day the forester was out with these two, who would later have charge of the woodmen. He indicated the tree to be felled; the overseer’s ax flashed and a broad strip of silver-gray bark flew to the ground. Yellow, with rapidly reddening scars, the white tree shone in the wood. There, accommodate yourself to the winter; you will never know another spring. The woodmen will recognize you by your scar.
In reality it is a very epic calling which the old forester carries on there as deputy of the reaper who is called Death. And since death does not immediately overtake the one marked for it, since a certain respite has been granted to that which is ignorant of the sentence just passed—this makes his occupation almost a little unearthly. When, however, Pagel sees the forester walking among the trees, muttering or coughing hollowly, the shadow of a man withered by age, anxieties and a never-conquered fear of life—when he sees him point at a trunk with a bony forefinger already trembling—then the epic becomes grotesque. Then this reaper Death is himself visibly marked by death, carries out his regency only in an uncertain reprieve and perhaps even knows this. The overseers go from tree to tree, the trembling finger points, the ax rings clear and silvery, and they advance, slowly, leaving behind them the gleaming scars.
Pagel said a very polite good day to the forester, who, out of the corner of his prominent seal-like eyes, examined him, muttered something in reply, then went on, pointing. At his side strolled young Pagel, his hands in his pockets, smoking—he did not want the old man to have the feeling that he was being supervised—yet he could not help noticing how seldom the axes obtained something to do, how seldom the finger pointed, although it was nearly all timber fit for felling, indeed almost overseasoned. “You’re marking extremely few today, Herr Kniebusch,” he sa
id after a while.
The forester turned his face away, muttering, but did not reply. He made a concession, however; he pointed at a tree—but, as the ax was lifted, he exclaimed: “No! Better not.” Nevertheless the ax was not lowered; it struck and the trunk was branded.
“It’s already getting hollow, forester,” shouted the overseer.
Murmuring something like a curse, the forester looked angrily at Pagel. Then he walked on slowly, head lowered without bothering about the trees, as if he had quite forgotten his work.
“Your job’s to do what the forester tells you,” Pagel shouted.
“Herr Pagel,” replied the man in a tone not at all disagreeable, “what we’re doing today is really utter nonsense. The last few days, this morning even, he let us mark again and again; but since midday not a thing! We point out to him rotten and overseasoned timber, but he shakes his head and goes on. It’s childish what he’s doing now; that’s not why we scour the woods and get sixty milliards of marks a day …”
“Oh, shut up, Karl!” said the other overseer. “Herr Pagel knows what’s wrong with the old fellow, he doesn’t cycle into the wood every day just for pleasure. The old un’s getting crazy, and since midday he’s quite mad.”
“Hold your tongue, man!” shouted Pagel. The forester had been standing two paces away and must have heard everything. He kept his face lowered; one couldn’t tell if the brutal words had hurt him. As if made aware of their glances, he lifted his head, said: “Time to knock off,” and walked quickly out of the trees into the glade, one hand holding his gun sling.
“It’s not half-past three yet,” said the more tactful overseer, reaching for his watch, “and it’s daylight till a quarter to five. It’s absurd, Herr Pagel, for him to send us home now.”
“Oh, shut up, Karl,” again said the other, who preferred to talk himself. “He knows why he’s afraid of the wood in the dark. People say that the dead man in the Black Dale walks about; and the one he wants to find knows it too and takes care to get out of the wood before it gets dark.”
