by Hans Fallada
Pagel mastered his anger. “Listen, my man,” he said, “the forester is your superior and you’ll do what he tells you, you understand?”
“If a man’s mad I’ve no intention of doing what he tells me,” said the fellow. “The forester’s mad, and I’ll tell him so till he clears out of the forest.”
“Listen, you!” began Pagel passionately.
The overseer interrupted him. “One can see that he’s got a bad conscience,” he declared. “No one’s found the dead man’s revolver, and a good many say it was nothing less than a rifle shot.”
“Oh!” shouted Pagel. “Oh! You old washerwoman!” Then his anger broke out. “God, man, aren’t you ashamed to repeat such stupid rubbish? There you have a decent old man; don’t make his life any harder than it is already.”
“There you’re right, Herr Pagel,” said the other overseer. “I always say …”
“Shut up, Karl! We all know officials stand by one another. But when something’s pretty wrong, I say so; and there’s something wrong with the forester.”
“You are dismissed,” bellowed Pagel. “You are dismissed on the spot. I’ll give you a week to get out of your cottage. Good evening.”
He turned and walked to his cycle, not feeling at all happy. But what was one to do? The poor devil was not to blame for being boorish. But then neither was the forester for being worn-out and ill. The young overseer, now it was time for felling, could find work anywhere, the old forester hardly ever again …
He trod hard on the pedals and tried to think for a moment about his mother’s letter. Barely two hours ago he had been almost happy! But however hard he tried, the letter remained very remote, like a faint light seen through trees at night—a light one never reaches because dark bushes and branches get in the way and extinguishes the little glowing spot.
Pagel had overtaken Kniebusch, who was dragging himself along with lowered head, exactly like a dog which has lost its master. And when the young man sprang from his bicycle he didn’t raise his head but trudged onward as though alone.
For some time they walked together without a word. Then Pagel spoke. “I’ve just got rid of Schmidt, Herr Kniebusch. He won’t be at work tomorrow.”
The forester kept silent for a long time. Then he sighed. “That won’t help anything, Herr Pagel.”
“Why won’t it? A mischief-maker the less is an anxiety the less, Herr Kniebusch.”
“Oh, for every anxiety which disappears there come ten new ones.”
“And what ones came today? Has it something to do with your not marking any more timber?” That, however, was too blunt a question for the man Kniebusch had become; he did not reply.
After a while Pagel tried again. “I was thinking, Herr Kniebusch, of ringing up the doctor this evening and having a talk with him. Then you can go to him tomorrow and he’ll put you down as ill and you can take a complete rest. I’ll answer for it. You know you’re entitled to sick benefit for twenty-six weeks.”
“Oh, who’s going to live on sick benefit?” said the old man despondently, yet no longer in despair.
“You have your allowance, Kniebusch. We should go on giving you that. We shouldn’t let you starve, you know.”
“And who will do my work in the woods?”
“I can also not mark the timber, Herr Kniebusch,” said Pagel amiably. “And I can make good use of your woodmen on the farm for a while.”
“The Geheimrat will never agree to that in his life,” cried the forester.
“Oh, the Geheimrat!” said Pagel disdainfully, to make the forester understand how little importance was to be attached to the old gentleman. “We’ve heard nothing from him for a month, and so he’ll have to be content if we settle his affairs here in the manner we think right.”
“But we have heard from him,” contradicted the forester. “He wrote a letter to me.”
“What! All of a sudden? And what does Herr Horst-Heinz von Teschow want? Can it be that he’s coming back to help look for his granddaughter?”
The forester did not react to this mockery. Fräulein Violet too did not interest him any longer, however much value he had formerly attached to getting on good terms with her. He was now only interested in himself. After a long while he said broodingly: “Do you really believe that the doctor will put me down as ill?”
“Of course! You are ill, Kniebusch.”
“And you will go on giving me an allowance in spite of the sick benefit? But that’s forbidden, Herr Pagel!”
“While I’m here you will get your allowance, Kniebusch.”
“Then I’ll go to the doctor tomorrow and have myself put down as ill.” The forester’s voice had quite another ring. But nothing more came. He was probably lost in dreams of a life free from anxieties, annoyance and fear.
“Well, what did the Geheimrat write about?” asked Pagel finally.
The forester started out of his visions. “If I’m ill I shan’t need to do what he wrote about,” he said unhelpfully.
“Perhaps I could do what he wants done,” proposed Pagel.
The forester looked at him bewildered; then a slight smile started to creep over his face. Yes, a smile. It was not a pretty sight, rather as if a dead man were smiling; nevertheless it was meant for a smile. “You would be in a position to,” he said, still smiling.
“Position for what?”
The forester was once again surly. “Oh, you will only go and talk about it.”
“I’ll hold my tongue, you know that, Herr Kniebusch.”
“But you will tell madam.”
“The lady at the moment is not in the mood to hear anything. What’s more, I promise not to tell her.”
The forester thought for a time. “I’d rather not,” he said. “The less one says the better. I’ve learned that at last.”
“You learned that in Ostade from the fat detective, didn’t you?” asked Pagel. And was immediately sorry he had said this. It was more brutal than the jeers of the boorish overseer. The old man turned deathly pale; he laid a shaking hand on Pagel’s shoulder and brought his face close. “You know that?” he asked trembling. “How did you know? Did he tell you?”
Pagel let go of his cycle and put his arm firmly round the forester. “I ought not to have said that, Herr Kniebusch,” he said, distressed. “You see, my tongue too runs away with me sometimes. No, you need have no fear. No one’s told me anything. I just worked it out myself, because you were so changed after coming back from Ostade.”
“Is that really true?” whispered the forester, still shaking violently. “He didn’t tell you about it?”
“No, on my word of honor.”
“But if you guessed about it so can someone else,” cried Kniebusch despairingly. “Everyone will point me out as a traitor to his country, and say I sold myself to the French.”
“And you haven’t done that, Kniebusch?” asked Pagel gravely. “Little Meier—”
“Little Meier made me drunk and pumped me!” cried the other. “He knew I was as talkative as an old woman and he took advantage of it. You must believe me, Herr Pagel! The detective believed me in the end. ‘Run home, you old fool,’ he said. ‘And don’t open your mouth again in your life!’ ”
“He said that? Then you don’t need to be afraid anymore, Kniebusch.”
“Oh, he was terrible,” gasped out the old man. To be able at last to relieve himself from the burden which was crushing him seemed almost intoxicating. “If he’d shot me down at once he would have been more merciful. ‘The dust of the man your tongue killed must grate on your teeth whenever you move your jaws,’ he said.”
“Quiet! Quiet!” Pagel laid his hand gently over the other’s mouth. “He’s a pitiless man, and also an unjust one. Others have more guilt toward the dead than you. Come along, Kniebusch. I’ll chuck down my bike here and fetch it tomorrow. I’ll take you home to your bed, and then I’ll ring up the doctor at once and he’ll visit you this evening and you’ll feel at peace.”
The man
leaned on him like one seriously ill. Now that he had found someone whom he could trust, all resistance left him. What had kept him on his feet had been his isolation. Now he let himself sink into illness and prostration, confident that one stronger than he would care for him. Without check he prattled confusedly of the fear that people might learn of his shame; of his fear of the escaped poacher Bäumer, whose tracks he thought he had come across in the forest; of his fear that everything might yet come out if Fräulein Violet or the servant Räder were found; of his fear whether Haase the magistrate would go on paying the rent now that the Lieutenant was dead; of his fear that little Meier would turn up again; of his fear of the Geheimrat who would turn him out of the ranger’s house tomorrow, if he learned that his forester was not doing what he had written.…
Fear … The man’s entire life had become fear. So much could a man torment himself, then, about a meager life which had known little pleasure. And now that it was in decline, and had become quite flat and unblessed, the fear grew worse. From every side it assailed him; it was not the will to existence which kept him among the living, no, it was the fear of existence. Wolfgang Pagel soon gave up speaking to the old man comfortingly and consolingly. He clearly didn’t want consolation. He sat as if in the middle of his worries, which came at him like waves from all sides, lifting him up, ready to drown him! “Yes, Herr Pagel, I read every day in the newspapers about suicides, and that there are so many old people who do it, seventy and eighty years old. But I can’t, I just can’t do it; I have a sick wife and I keep on thinking: What would become of her if I went first? There’s not a soul who worries about her; they’d simply let her die like an animal. That’s why I’m so afraid.”
“Oh, stop talking, Kniebusch,” said Pagel, wearied. “Get into bed now and the doctor will come this evening; once you’ve had a sleep everything will look different. And while you’re undressing give me the Geheimrat’s letter to read.”
Kniebusch, the old forester, a little bad-tempered and complaining, clumsily removed his clothing. Pagel stood under the lamp and looked over the letter the Geheimrat Horst-Heinz von Teschow had written to his forester. In a big chair at the window sat the forester’s wife, whom the people in the village said grew stranger and stranger. She was staring into the night. On her knees was a book with a golden cross on the cover, no doubt a hymnal.
“Who puts your wife to bed?” asked Pagel, interrupting his reading.
“Oh, she won’t be going to bed today,” replied the forester. “She often sits like that all night and sings. But when she wants to go to bed she can manage quite well by herself.” The young man threw a quick searching look at the forester’s wife who continued to look out into the night while he read further. The forester crept into his nightshirt and then into his bed. On the pillow his face, tanned by sun and wind, and his yellow-white beard, seemed strangely colored.
Just as young Pagel had reached the part of the letter that the forester had just given him which once and for all banned everyone from access to the Geheimrat’s woods, starting with all those from Neulohe, including his son-in-law’s family, as well as all staff from the Neulohe estate, including the little upstart Pagel—just as Pagel had got this far in the incendiary, provocative and completely antagonistic letter, the old woman began to sing.
She’d stuck one finger into her songbook but didn’t look down at it. She continued to look out into the night, and with a shrill, broken voice sang lightly to herself from an old hymn, “Commit yourself and your cares to our true saviour who guides heaven. Through sky and clouds and tempests, he will guide your footsteps.”
Pagel looked towards the forester, but the old man didn’t move. His head was motionless on the pillow. “I’m going now, Herr Kniebusch,” said Pagel. “Here is the letter. Thanks very much and, as I said, I shall keep silent.”
“Shut the door from outside,” replied the old man. “The key’s in the lock. I have another, if the doctor comes. I shall hear him coming, I shan’t sleep.”
“The singing disturbs you, I suppose?”
“The singing? What singing? Oh, my wife’s? No, that doesn’t disturb me, I don’t even hear it. I’m thinking the whole time.… When you leave, please turn out the light; we don’t need a light.”
“What do you think about then, Herr Kniebusch?” asked Pagel looking down on the forester, lying with his eyes shut, motionless.
“Oh, I’ve been thinking it out like this. I think, Supposing I hadn’t done such and such a thing in my life or hadn’t met such and such a person—what would have happened then? But it’s a difficult matter.”
“Yes, it is certainly difficult.”
“For example, I think, If that rascal Bäumer hadn’t ridden me down, how would things have been then? It could so easily have been like that, eh, Herr Pagel? I need only have been going a little faster. If it hadn’t been so dark in the ravine I should have been out of it already; he would have seen from a distance and avoided me.”
“And how would things have been different then, Herr Kniebusch?”
“Everything! Every single thing! Because if Bäumer hadn’t run over me then I shouldn’t have had a court case about him in Frankfurt. And if I hadn’t been in Frankfurt, then I shouldn’t have met Meier again. And if I hadn’t met Meier again, then he wouldn’t have betrayed the arms dump.”
Pagel grasped the forester’s dry bony hands, speckled with age. “I should try to find something else to think about, Herr Kniebusch,” he suggested. “Imagine what it will be like when you are pensioned. And you’ve got your pension from the employees’ insurance office. Then perhaps things really will be different with money. The Geheimrat writes about that in his letter, too. You must have read it.… I should think about how I’d arrange my life; some hobby or other.”
“Bees,” said the forester in a low voice.
“There you are then. Bees are supposed to be wonderful things. Whole books are supposed to have been written about them. Supposing you have a shot at something like that?”
“Yes, I could.” The forester opened his eyes wide for the first time. “But you still don’t understand why I do the other, Herr Pagel. Because if it only happened through Bäumer running me over, and I can think of a hundred such things in my life, then I’m not to blame for the other, either. And I haven’t got to suffer any remorse, isn’t that so?”
Pagel looked thoughtfully at the old man, who was once again lying with his eyes closed. At the window, her face turned toward the night, the old woman went on singing psalm after psalm in her grating voice, as if she were alone.
“Well, get a bit of rest before the doctor comes,” said Pagel suddenly. “I’ll ring him up now.”
“But why don’t you answer me, Herr Pagel?” complained the old man, half sitting up in bed and staring at him. “Isn’t it like I said, then? If Bäumer hadn’t run me down, everything would have been different!”
“You suffer remorse and wish to acquit yourself, isn’t that it, Herr Kniebusch? But acquittal is no good unless one feels innocent. I should prefer to have a go at the bees. Good night.” And with that Pagel turned out the light, locked the front door, and stood outside. It was already dark, but perhaps he would still find the men at the potato clamps.
VI
The clamps were some five minutes’ distance from the farmyard, at a place bordered on two sides by forest. The situation was convenient for carting, because three field paths met there, and the wood protected the clamps from the icy east and north winds; but its remoteness permitted thieves to approach it unseen, while the neighborhood of the forest made their flight an easy one.
Pagel had had constant trouble with these clamps. Every morning there was a hole dug here or there in the soil that covered the potatoes against the frost. Already over five hundred tons were stored here—the theft of four or five hundredweights was of little importance compared with the work required to fill the hole again, or with the danger a clamp ran of being frozen because of it. A hundred
times had Pagel blamed himself for thoughtlessly agreeing to the suggestion that the clamps be laid down in this place. An experienced man would have foreseen all the difficulties which had arisen this year from the shortage of food. He was convinced that all Altlohe would have helped with the potato crop had the clamps been situated under constant supervision right by the farmyard. But as things were, it was much simpler to take at night, without risk, that which one otherwise could have won only through many days of hard and freezing labor. And the people could not even be blamed for it. They lacked the barest necessities, they suffered hunger. If they took a trifle of the abundance, whom could that harm?
In growing darkness Pagel roamed between the long, almost man-high mounds. The laborers had already gone, of course, and the thieves not yet come; once again he had made a fruitless journey.
But not quite fruitless: his foot knocked against a forgotten shovel, which would not be improved by being left out in the damp night. He picked it up, to take it along to the tool room. But a minute later he stumbled on two spades stuck in the ground. He took them along, too. Immediately he came across two pitchforks and more shovels—it was impossible, he couldn’t lug them all to the farm alone.
Suddenly, quite discouraged, he sat down on a bale of straw. It is often the case that someone bravely endures a host of troubles for a long time, only to be cast down by a trifle. Pagel had with unchanged amiability borne greater troubles these last weeks, but the thought that he was running about from dawn to well into the night while slovenliness and indolence increased—the thought that fifteen shovels, spades and forks would become rusty that night—utterly disheartened him.
He sat, his head propped in his hands. Behind him the wood rustled, mysterious; the trees dripped unceasingly. He felt none too warm. Had he only been a little more cheerful, he would have gone to the farm, whistled together the guilty men and driven them off to the clamps to fetch their implements themselves. But today he hadn’t the least energy to face their sullen and spiteful arguments.
