by Hans Fallada
“Yes, do that, Herr Pagel! I’m so grateful to you. That will certainly be the best solution.” She looked at him almost guiltily. “You’re not angry with me about just now?”
“No. No. But perhaps you will be, when I tell you that I was here in your room a few hours ago,” he said a little embarrassed. “I was looking for a particular letter. I didn’t want to read it or anything, I only wanted to see if it was there. Then by mistake I read the note “Write to Father” on your notepad. I felt a despicable spy; but I wasn’t doing it for myself …”
“Why then? You only needed to ask me.”
“It is,” he said, annoyed and rubbing his nose, “a rather difficult case. I had intended to tell you that the forester had become bedridden and that we therefore had to write to the Geheimrat, which we will. However, it would be a fraud. The forester really is ill, but we needn’t worry about the forest on that account.”
“And what has actually happened?” she asked.
“Well, that’s the point. I’ve given my word not to tell anybody, including yourself. I had to,” he said more emphatically, “otherwise I would have learnt nothing.”
“But what happened then?” she asked uneasily. Was she always to expect new worries? She got up and walked up and down. “Can’t you tell me anything at all, Herr Pagel?”
“I should like to ask you something, madam. Has your father written to you since his departure?”
“Yes.” So it’s something to do with Father, she thought, but her tone was lighter. She didn’t take it seriously.
“Have you replied?”
“No,” she said curtly. He noticed that even the memory of the letter annoyed her. She looked at him expectantly, but he didn’t ask anything else. He seemed to have said all that he wanted to say. Finally, she decided: “Herr Pagel, I will tell you. Papa demands that I divorce the Rittmeister. He has always wished it. But can I? Can I desert him like that? Does one desert a friend in distress? Had he been in health or if I was anyway sure that he could live without me, then yes. But like this—no! Now definitely not! For better, for worse, as they say in the English marriages. I’m like that. Especially for the worse, explicitly for the worse!” Her face twitched. “Oh, Herr Pagel, I know you tried this evening to bring him back to the world. Of course, you would do that. How can something like that occur to an attendant?! I was very angry at first; you must see yourself that the poor fellow’s an invalid. Then I thought, Well, it was meant kindly. But all my father wants is for me to leave him, put him in some asylum, appoint a guardian. But we’ve lived together almost twenty years, Herr Pagel!”
“He said, ‘Oh God!’ ”
“Yes, I heard him. It doesn’t mean anything. He no longer knows what he’s saying. But you’re still young. You have hope. Oh, when I now drive round the country and see the people walking along the highroads in the frightful weather! There are so many of them, not only tramps. This terrible time makes everyone restless. This morning, there was such an icy rain, I saw two young people. The man was pushing a very old pram, and the woman was walking beside it talking to the child. I thought, My Violet is perhaps tramping round like that, but she has no child to whom she can speak, no one! Oh, Herr Pagel, what am I to do?”
“Hope,” he said.
“Ought I to? Is it right, for her sake, even to still wish she is alive? Isn’t it merely selfishness for me to hope she is still alive? Oh, I never cease to wish to find her, and at the same time I shudder from it. Herr Pagel, it’s now over four weeks she’s been away!”
“She has no will of her own,” he said softly. “One day she will find it again, and then she’ll come back.”
“Isn’t it so? You say that too? She’s still asleep. She’s still fast asleep! If you’re asleep, fast asleep, you don’t feel anything. Yes, she will come back unchanged. She will wake up in her room and believe that nothing has happened and that she went to sleep the evening before.” Frau Eva was radiant and young again. Hope and her unquenchable will to life have awoken her. She’s young again—life has abundant gifts ready for her. “I will tell you something else, Herr Pagel,” she whispered, with a glance at the door. “I’m not searching for them alone; there’s someone else, too. He stopped my car; a man with a bloated face, wearing a bowler hat—perhaps you know him?”
“Yes, I know him.”
“Don’t tell about him!” she exclaimed. “I don’t want to know. He stops my car, asks no questions, gives no greetings, only says: ‘Drive there, or there!’ Then I see him again, on some road or other in some little town; he, too, is always on his way somewhere. He only shakes his head when I look at him and goes on … Herr Pagel, if I don’t find her, he will! They talk so much about love, but hate is far stronger.”
“Yes. That man hates evil. His hate urges him on without rest.”
“It’s over four weeks now that he’s been with Violet; he must provide for her somehow or other.” This mother abominated the wretch who had made her daughter miserable, but because he permitted the girl to live she did not like to think of his falling into the hands of that pitiless fat man.
Pagel stood up. “Madam, at least don’t worry about the Geheimrat. For the moment nothing will happen. Something has intervened. Plans do exist.…”
“Yes, we’re supposed to leave this place.”
“But they can’t be carried out for the moment. If anything happens, I’ll let you know.”
He looked at her thoughtfully for a moment. Then he added, “You needn’t trouble your father with a letter either. As you can’t do what he wants anyway, you could do just as well not to write him.”
“Thank you, Herr Pagel. Thank you for everything.” She gave him her hand, smiling at him. “It has done me good to talk to you.”
And with that sudden, inexplicable woman’s transition, she said, “And now, Herr Pagel, you must do me a favor too.”
“Yes, please,” he said, “gladly.”
“Don’t put up with this wretched woman Backs anymore! It’s said you eat with her and that she’s always sitting with you in the office. Oh, don’t be angry with me, Herr Pagel!” she cried hastily. “I’ve absolutely no mistrust for you. You simply haven’t noticed that the girl is in love with you.…”
“Amanda Backs is not in love with me, Madam,” said Pagel. “I only do her good because she’s been left on the shelf. What’s more, she does me good. Life in Neulohe is sometimes a bit too much for a young man like me. I sometimes like to have someone around with whom I can exchange a word.”
“Oh, God, Herr Pagel!” she cried, genuinely shocked. “I really didn’t mean that. I only meant Backs, because she’s with that Meier—and he really is horrible.…”
Pagel looked at her, but she didn’t notice. She really noticed nothing; she saw absolutely no parallels.
In the hall outside the clock struck midnight.
“Well, Herr Pagel,” she said earnestly, “see that you get to bed now. It’s really too late for you. I can believe that the work here is often a bit too much for a single person. Have a thorough sleep for once. Let the laborers manage for a bit alone; I’m agreeable to anything. Good night, Herr Pagel, and my best thanks again.”
“Good night, madam. I have to thank you.”
“A thorough sleep, then, without fail!” she called out after him.
Pagel smiled to himself in the dark. He didn’t hold it against her; in many respects this clever, alert woman was a child. By work, she always meant something like schoolwork. You can’t do much about it, but a teacher can occasionally grant a whole day free and then the children are happy! She had not yet understood (and probably never would) that life, that every day, has its tasks which no one is spared.
In the office building above, a white shadow appeared in the window. The faithful concierge was checking up on him.
“Everything shipshape, Amanda,” murmured Pagel in her direction. Sophie had put herself out in vain. “Go to sleep, get warm, and wake me tomorrow morning early at half
past five—but with a coffee.”
“Good night, Herr Pagel” was heard from above.
IX
The next morning this takes place in front of the Villa:
Frau Eva is already in the car, giving Oskar directions, when the front door opens and out steps the Rittmeister, followed by his attendant. He walks with a queerly stumbling gait to the car. The attendant remains standing at the top of the steps.
Like a guilty child the Rittmeister asks: “May I drive with you, Eva?”
Frau Eva throws an astonished glance at the attendant, who nods emphatically.
“But, Achim!” she cries, “won’t it be too much for you?”
He shakes his head. His eyes are full of tears, his mouth trembles.
“Oh, Achim! Achim—I’m so happy indeed. All will be right again, you see. Sit down next to me. Herr Schümann, please help the Rittmeister into the car. Oskar, fetch another rug, the fur one. Herr Schümann, you must then go at once to Herr Pagel and tell him; he’ll be so pleased.”
The car starts. The Rittmeister makes an apologetic gesture. “Sorry, Eva,” he says quietly. And again with much effort, “I can’t speak properly yet. I don’t quite understand, but.…”
“But what do you need to speak for, Achim?” she says, taking his hand. “Surely, as long as we are together, everything will be easier?”
He nods vigorously.
Chapter Fifteen
The Last Does Not Remain Alone
I
Soon it would be December. With storms of ice, snow and sleet the year was approaching its end. The last of the potato diggers had fled—a great blow—ten thousand hundredweight and more were still in the earth. Angry shame seized Pagel when he saw the leaves rotting in the fields and thought that, while people were dying of hunger in the towns, the potatoes themselves were rotting underground.
I have done a lot of things wrong, he thought. But how the devil could I have known better? Nobody told me, and I had so much to do I couldn’t think a day ahead. I ought to have had the potatoes taken straight to the station; then we should now have the little bit of money which is always lacking. Stored in the clamps they are threatened by frost and thieves, and won’t be saleable till spring. And who will have this place then?
The threshing machine hummed outside—but it was too loud, too noticeable. There was a man in Frankfurt who had once furnished a large sum of inflation money, and a car had been purchased with it; now the man wanted his goods. The times were beginning to change. In Berlin they had at last stopped the note presses, so people said, and the mark wouldn’t be falling any lower: it had stopped falling when for one American dollar 4,200 milliard marks were given. And perhaps it would stay at that level.
The threshing machine hummed—sometimes it was busy with rye for the man in Frankfurt; sometimes he went away empty-handed because another had been quicker. Geheimrat von Teschow had left the beautiful region of Nice and now lived in the agreeable town of Dresden—to be more exact, at The White Hart, in Loschwitz. Perhaps he wanted to lose weight, or his gallstones gave him trouble if he thought of Neulohe. Or the old lady was having trouble with her nerves. Emissaries of his frequently visited Neulohe—they were bailiffs: and a certain attorney had become a familiar figure to Wolfgang, for the Geheimrat had a writ of execution—oh, everything was in the best of order. Once again he had snapped up three hundred hundredweights of rye which the man in Frankfurt should have had.…
Pagel sat at his typewriter; it was only half-past eight in the morning and the letter must go by the next post, without fail.
Dear Herr So-and-so, I regret to have to inform you that the wagonload of rye (Baden 326485, 15 tons), concerning which you had already been apprised, was seized at the goods station here by that other creditor of Herr von Prackwitz already known to you. I beg you to be patient a few days longer; as quickly as possible I will send you a delivery in replacement. In the meantime I would beg you to consider whether the grain assigned you could not be fetched direct from the threshing machine by truck. I have already verbally explained to you that there is no lack either of goodwill on our part or of the possibility …
But what did the two people in the Villa say to that? Nothing. The Rittmeister preferred to sit silently beside his wife. “Do just as you think best, Herr Pagel,” she said. “You have the authorization.”
“But your father …”
“Oh, father doesn’t mean it so badly! You will see. When everything’s in a complete muddle, he will come and put everything to rights—beaming because of the chance to be so clever. Isn’t that so, Achim? Papa was always like that.”
The Rittmeister nodded and smiled.
“But I have no money for wages!” cried Pagel despairingly.
“Sell something or other—sell cows, sell horses! What do we need with horses at the beginning of winter, when work’s at an end? Don’t you think so, Achim? In winter one doesn’t need horses.”
“No.” He is of the same opinion; in winter one doesn’t need horses.
“The lease prohibits the sale of livestock. Live and dead stock, madam, does not belong to you; it belongs to the Geheimrat.”
“Have you become Herr von Studmann? Why, you’re already talking of the lease! Dear Herr Pagel, don’t make difficulties for us. You have full authority! It’s only a question of a few days more.…” Pagel looked questioningly at Frau Eva. “Yes,” she went on suddenly fervent, “I am convinced that our search will soon be successful. The fat man has turned up again in his bowler hat.… We hadn’t seen him for a time, and we had almost given up hope.…”
Pagel went. Pagel raised money and paid the wages. Or Pagel could not raise money and he paid the people with grain and potatoes, a sucking pig, butter, a goose …
He sat at the typewriter: “We have still roughly four thousand hundredweights of grain lying unthreshed.…” Is that true or is it a lie? he thought. I don’t know. I haven’t kept the grain books for weeks; I’d never get them right now. Whoever takes over from me can only believe that I’m criminally thoughtless. Nothing balances.… If the Geheimrat gets to see it … He sighed. Oh, life’s no fun, I don’t enjoy it. Even when I think of Petra, I no longer enjoy it. If I ever really do reach her, I’m sure I’ll cry and cry purely because of loss of nerve. But I can’t run away now, though. I can’t leave them in the lurch. They wouldn’t even be able to borrow the petrol for their damned car!
“That’s the third time you’ve sighed, Herr Pagel,” said Amanda Backs from the window, “and it’s only half-past eight in the morning. How are you going to get through the day?”
“That’s what I often ask myself,” replied Wolfgang, grateful for the distraction. “On the whole, however, the day itself sees to it that you get through it, and usually no day is as bad as I feared it would be in the morning, and none so good as I had hoped, either.”
Amanda Backs looked impatiently out of the window; this sententiousness did not please her. Then she screamed, in horror. “Herr Pagel, look!”
Pagel sprang to the window …
He saw something coming across the Geheimrat’s park, creeping on arms and legs.
For a moment he stood transfixed.
Then he shouted: “The forester! Now they’ve killed the forester, too!” and he ran from the room.
II
It had not been very hard for Pagel to get the old forester out of his sickbed again—not half so difficult as the doctor had thought. A man who had passed his whole life in the fresh air felt his head swim when he was always shut up in a stuffy room. “I’m afraid the walls will collapse on me,” he complained to Pagel. “It’s all so small—and she won’t have a window open.”
Perhaps it was not the confinement or the lack of air, or the bees who had to be prepared for the winter, or the hunting dog who wanted to be fed every day, that brought the forester so quickly out of his bed—perhaps it was “she,” his wife, who more than anything sickened him of his room. They had spent a whole lifetime sid
e by side—till they couldn’t bear the sight of each other. Day after day they passed by one another without exchanging a word. He would go into the kitchen, make his coffee and butter his bread, and then, when he had left, she came and made her coffee and buttered her bread. They had long passed beyond disgust, hate and aversion; now they did not exist for one another at all. For a very long time. Before he opened his mouth she knew what he would say, and he knew everything about his wife; how peas agreed with her, and that when the wind was in the south she couldn’t hear with the left ear, and that lampreys tasted much better with than without a bay leaf.
“Move into another room,” proposed Pagel. “There are enough empty rooms in the house.”
“But my bed has always stood in this room! I can’t move it about at my time of life. I would never get to sleep.”
“Then go for a little walk,” replied Pagel. “Fresh air and a little exercise can only do you good, the doctor says.”
“Yes? Does he really think so?” asked the forester anxiously. “Then I’ll do it.” He was very willing to do whatever was ordered by the doctor who had procured so many good things for him: rest from work, sick benefit, splendid medicine that brought a man tranquil sleep. And he had promised even better things: the end of inflation, a pension, a peaceful evening to his life. So the forester went for a walk. But that again was a difficult matter. At no price would he go into the forest, which came right up to his house. He had seen enough forest in his life, much too much. Actually he couldn’t see the wood for the trees. He saw only so-and-so many cubic feet of timber, railway sleepers, wood for fellies, shafts for the wheelwright, stakes … And if he took a walk in the forest it would look, not as if he were ill, but as if he were on duty again. It would have been the same as for a sick clerk to go to his office for recreation.
In the other direction, however—toward the village—he also did not go. All his life the people had kept repeating that he was merely a lazybones who did nothing but walk about. He didn’t intend now to go for real walks under their very eyes; that would look as if they had been right in the end.
