Tales from the Underworld
Page 21
The girl didn’t look at him, but neither did she look at her father or her brother. Nor did she take her arm off her husband’s shoulder when she said, with a look at the money on the table: ‘Yes, we agreed it should be ten thousand, and I want Father to keep his word to you!’
‘You see!’ crowed Erwin Beese. ‘From the lips of your own daughter. And,’ he went on, and took the girl’s other hand between his, caressingly, ‘and you know the state of your father’s business. You can tell me yourself how to raise the fifteen hundred marks.’
The girl twisted under the eyes of the three men. ‘You know very well, Rosemarie, that I’d have to slaughter the four best cows and probably the fat sow as well – we’d have nothing left! He’s from the town, he doesn’t know what it’s like when all the animals are gone from a farm …’
‘I’ll buy the fat sow off you myself for whatever the butcher offers,’ Beese put in hurriedly. ‘Then we’ll have something good to slaughter. Will it make good eating, your fat sow, Rosemarie?’
‘Very good, Erwin. She weighs five hundredweight, and there’s bacon on her as wide as my hand …’
‘You see!’ laughed Beese. ‘We’re reaching an accommodation, Father, the deal will work out for us both …’
‘Beese,’ put in the son suddenly, ‘I’m thinking you need all this money to buy your stock, and here you are talking about getting a pig on the side, to slaughter.’
For a moment the smooth townie was confused, but soon he caught himself. ‘But I’ll be saving money that I’d otherwise be paying the butcher, and earning a bit!’
‘And,’ Kurt Karwe went on, ‘I don’t like your way of talking about your marriage to my sister. Is it Rosemarie you’re marrying, or ten thousand marks? You keep going on about business, nothing but business – but marrying my sister isn’t a business. You should count yourself lucky you’re getting such a good wife!’
Beese twisted his mouth into a mocking scowl. ‘I could have had as many good wives as I have fingers on my hand. If I’m standing here now, it’s because she comes with ten thousand marks!’
Now it was the old man and his son who exchanged a look and understood each other, without a word. ‘All right, you’ll get the remaining fifteen hundred tomorrow morning, before the minister weds you, Erwin!’ said old Karwe.
‘That’s what I call serious,’ said Beese unctuously. ‘And don’t forget, I’m taking the fat sow in payment as well.’
‘I don’t recall anything being said about that in our agreement,’ replied the old man. ‘It was just the ten thousand.’
And so it was. So it began, and as it began so it went on, which is to say, not well. Rosemarie was one of those girls who, once married, almost completely lose touch with the parental home. She was content in her marriage, from time to time there was a little falling-out, because Beese was successful in more than business. But gradually she got used to that, just as she got used to the town, the children, the shop, the slowly growing respect she enjoyed on account of her husband’s progress.
She sometimes saw her father and brother in town; to begin with she would ask eagerly how things were at home, but over time she stopped asking, because the replies didn’t sound good, rather they sounded like an accusation in her ears.
In fact, the little farm never quite got over the haemorrhage that the wedding had brought about. The meadow was gone, the animals one by one came under the hammer, and while the old man and his son slaved away, there was no real progress. They were no longer proper farmers, they were cottars. And of course the marriage to Anneliese was off, her parents wouldn’t allow their daughter to marry into such a poor farm. She married another farmer’s son, and Kurt Karwe stayed at home with his father. The son couldn’t help wondering if his father didn’t regret selling the good meadow. He felt sorry for the old man, working himself to the bone, and to so little purpose. But the old man never mentioned the lake meadow, and Kurt, who still sometimes went there of an evening, never once saw his father there.
With that the years passed, people got on with their lives, and in the village they got used to thinking of the Karwes as cottars rather than productive farmers. Only young Karwe occasionally protested at this; the old man had stopped long since.
The old man was happy that his son, who wasn’t a young man any more, finally did find a bride, an old spinster who brought an eight-year-old bastard into the marriage with her, but also a cow; he didn’t say a word about any shame or disgrace. On the contrary, he bloomed; there were more children, and children are hope, children are the only real riches in this life.
A couple of years later, old Karwe went on, or rather he went out as a light goes out that has burned down to its last bit of wick. The evening of his death, Kurt Karwe went down to the meadow by the lake again. That was the only secret he had, not just from his wife, but from everyone, and the one person who might have guessed at it or understood it, well, he was gone now. Because for young Karwe it remained his meadow, the lake meadow, the good meadow – he had never given up on it, never accepted its loss.
As he sat there, he was no longer at odds with his father. His father had acted as he had to; he himself acted as it was in him to act, holding onto the good meadow against all reason and against all likelihood; it remained for him the Karwe meadow. For many years now he had watched employees from the large estate digging ditches there, spreading artificial fertilizer and mowing – and they had their hands full with the mowing. Oh, it had remained a good meadow, but for that very reason it had also remained his meadow, even if not many people even knew that the lake meadow on the estate had once been the Karwe meadow.
There is an old German saying: there are always grounds for hope, it just has to be the right hope. Germany went through some terrible years: warfare and other horrors that were worse than warfare. What had once been anguish was as light as a feather compared to the burdens that had to be borne now. Everything that had once existed broke down, but in this general breakdown something good and new came into being. The large landholders’ estates were being broken up, and there was a commission sitting, and its members would often talk themselves into a lather.
But when they asked Karwe: ‘What do you have to say? What do you want?’ he simply answered: ‘I just want to get my meadow back, the good meadow by the lake.’
That gave some of them pause, they didn’t know what meadow he was calling his meadow, and usually a big quarrel started: he was asking for too much, they all needed pastureland.
But he remained stubborn, he wanted his meadow back, it had always belonged to the Karwes. And in the end he got his way. The evening came when he was sitting on the side of the trough under the rush roof, looking out at his meadow. No fat, red-faced inspector had the right any more to ride around on it, issuing silly advice about planting serradilla. The good meadow had been returned to the Karwes, and there was no more talk of cotting.
Almost twenty-five years had elapsed. Kurt Karwe hadn’t been able to do much, only wait and hope and remain true to his ideal. And then, as though life had crossed out what it had done on that one awful evening, Rosemarie was back under his roof. The business had been destroyed in the war, the man disappeared, the children scattered; now the ageing woman was back home, helping a little, complaining a lot, everything was just the way it had been before.
No, not quite. The farm was still down by two cows. ‘But I’ll get them, see if I don’t!’ said young Karwe, whom people had long ago taken to calling old Karwe. ‘You just see if I don’t!’ He felt very old, but full of wisdom and common sense, as though life was just beginning for him, as though he wasn’t a mortal man. ‘The meadow is back, and Rosemarie is back – surely I’ll get the two cows as well!’
He went into the cowshed, to watch the women at milking. They didn’t see him push a bit of hay into the rack in front of his favourites – hay from the good meadow.
Calendar Stories
(1946)
1 The Poor Neapolitan
A Neapolitan who was so poor that he had just one soldo in his pocket, and not the least prospect of acquiring any more, was so fed up with his misery that he decided to drown himself in the sea. On his way, he passed a stall where a man was selling roast cow-peas. With his last soldo the man bought himself a bagful, and continued on down to the sea, eating cow-peas out of the bag and spitting out the skins on the street.
As he did so, though, he had a sense of something tiptoeing after him. He looked, but he couldn’t see anyone – perhaps on account of the gathering darkness, as night was falling. But when the rustling and shuffling continued, he spun round and saw a fat man creeping along behind him, collecting up the spat-out skins and eating them.
The Neapolitan came to a sudden halt and said to himself: ‘What’s this?! There I go, thinking of myself as the poorest of the poor, and here’s someone who doesn’t scruple to live off my trash! For him therefore, I’m not poor, I’m rich.’ He had forgotten all about his decision to drown himself; he turned and walked back into the city, firmly resolved to look for work the next morning, and to find work too.
The moral: no one is so poor that he can’t find someone even poorer. No one has so many worries that there isn’t someone somewhere with even more worries. And bear this in mind as well: no situation is so hopeless that it can’t be remedied by a courageous decision.
2 The Robbed Doctor
This is a story from Berlin in our time.
During his consulting hours, so to speak under his nose, a doctor in Berlin was robbed by a patient of the leather bag where he kept essential equipment for house visits, and certain irreplaceable medicines for emergency cases. The doctor was very angry at the wicked breach of trust on the part of someone coming to him for advice, but all his enquiries were unsuccessful: the bag was gone. The telephone rang, and the doctor was called away to the bedside of a gravely ill patient. Crossly and hurriedly he pulled what he could out of his stocks, and ran off.
By now, the thief had crept into the doctor’s garden. So as not to be caught on the stairs with the bag under his arm, he had cunningly fastened it to a rope and lowered it out of the window while the doctor’s attention was elsewhere, so that all he needed to do now was to cut the rope – or so he thought. Because when he got to the garden, he found someone else already doing just that. ‘Hey!’ he exclaimed. ‘That’s my bag!’ To which the other thief replied cheekily, ‘If that’s the case, call someone in the house who can confirm that.’
After a bit of to-ing and fro-ing, the pair of them agreed to sell the bag and split the gains, and they set off for the black market. On their way they tried to guess what might be in the bag, and they agreed that, in view of the doctor’s social position, the likelihood was that it would contain at least one or two packets of cigarettes and some money. Unable to contain their curiosity, they turned into an entrance and looked inside the bag. Imagine their disappointment when they found nothing but some well-used items of medical equipment and a few cardboard packages of medicine.
But there wasn’t even time for the second thief to curse the first for such a worthless heist, because a policeman suddenly appeared and ordered them both to accompany him to the station. He had been watching their suspicious behaviour first on the street, and then through a window onto the passage. All their protests and assurances were unavailing, and the worthless stolen bag clearly indicated that they were thieves.
The doctor meanwhile was standing helplessly in front of a woman with a bad heart condition, whom he would dearly love to have helped with an injection. But he had neither syringe nor drugs. He despatched messengers, but they came back empty-handed: there was nothing in any of the nearby pharmacies. The doctor was on the point of leaving the patient to see what he could turn up himself when there was a knock at the door, and a policeman handed him his stolen bag. The name of the doctor on the inside of the bag had led him to the owner, from whose surgery he was redirected to the address of the patient.
The doctor hurried back to the patient’s bedside and performed the injection, which afforded instant relief to the woman. He jammed his bag under his arm, and went straight off to his next patient.
The moral: even a valueless theft can do great harm – to others. And note further: any theft, great or small, puts you in jeopardy, and in the hands of others, who will be able to do with you what they like.
3 The Argument about the Fireworks
This story took place many years ago in a small Italian village.
A small village by the name of Positano had a particular reverence for two saints: Saint Vincent and Santa Maria of Positano. Every year great celebrations were held in honour of those two patron saints: Saint Vincent’s was in spring, once the last kernel of maize had been planted, and Santa Maria’s in summer, when the first wheat was harvested.
Neither celebration would have been much to write home about, because the people of the village were wretchedly poor and lacked the wherewithal to stage any sort of celebration, were it not that – driven by their great poverty – the strongest boys and men of the village emigrated to America. In the rich new world they remembered their poor native village, and when they had saved a little money they would send it home, and usually with the express wish to support one of the two annual celebrations.
Now, it so happened one year that a sizeable sum of money from America, dedicated to a display of fireworks for Saint Vincent, arrived in Positano shortly after that saint’s day had been celebrated. The village all but came to blows over what to do. Some were in favour of keeping back the money for next year’s celebration, others wanted to use it for the forthcoming celebrations of Santa Maria.
People got more and more agitated about it, and they were close to fisticuffs, when the local priest came and said placatingly: ‘My dear fellows, what are you doing! We can’t possibly use the money for Santa Maria, because otherwise this strife might be perpetuated in heaven, and Saint Vincent would rightly accuse Mother Mary of Positano before the Almighty of doing him out of six hundred lire for fireworks. Equally we can’t leave the money to lie for a full year, because the donor wanted it to be spent this year. So the only solution is to light some fireworks to Saint Vincent in the next few days, as a sort of belated celebration.’
This decision pleased all the villagers, not least because it allowed for a third feast in the village calendar. As arranged, the fireworks were set off, and there was nothing said of a charge brought by Santa Maria of Positano at a divine tribunal, to the effect that Saint Vincent had been fêted twice that year, and she herself only once.
The decision of the priest vis-à-vis celestial matters need not concern us here, who have our hands full with earthly affairs. But take this from it: one should not allow something that belongs to one to fall to another; there is an order in the things of this world that should not be meddled with.
4 Eighty Marks
This story happened about twenty years ago, in Berlin.
A young man who had just got his licence to practise as a doctor lacked the means to fit out a consulting room with all its expensive equipment. That led him to the conclusion that the best thing for him would be to take over the practice of a doctor who had moved away, or perhaps recently died. But how to come upon such a thing – and in the great city of Berlin?
At that time there were agencies that claimed to be able to find just about everything a man’s heart could desire. Our young doctor turned to one such agency, and its owner, a young man like himself and, it appeared, also just setting out, assured him he knew of just the thing. Before giving him the address, however, he asked for an advance of eighty marks. The young doctor, who was a frugal sort, refused to pay the advance, and get a pig in a poke; he would only pay once he had seen the doctor’s widow, and come to an agreement with her.
So the two of them
argued – in a perfectly amicable way, let it be said – till the young doctor happened to exclaim: ‘How do I know you have anything in mind at all, and aren’t just after my eighty marks!’
Whereupon the agent, himself also heated, replied: ‘I do have an address, and a very good one, and I’ll tell you where it is, it’s in Südende. But I won’t tell you the name of the street until I’ve had your eighty marks!’ Shortly afterwards, the two of them went their separate ways without agreement. Each one kept the thing that was his: the one his money, the other the address.
The young doctor, though, considered: there’s not a lot of Südende, and I’m damned if I can’t find the address myself, and save myself eighty marks in the process! So he took himself to that part of Berlin, and walked from street to street and from one set of premises to another, always asking whether anyone had heard of a local doctor dying or moving away. Already on the second day he was successful: he was told the address of a recently deceased doctor, and was quickly able to come to terms with his widow. He rejoiced that he had saved eighty marks, and thought a little contemptuously of the agent who had given himself away in the heat of the moment, and hence cost himself his fee.
Later on, once his practice was thriving, his contempt muted into a gentle regret that he had tricked the man of his fee. He even thought about sending the man the money anonymously, with an appropriate surcharge, but he didn’t do anything. Much later, by which time he owned his own home in Südende, he forgot about the agent altogether and never thought about him at all. What was curious, though, was that all his life he kept an aversion to the sum of eighty marks; he would not buy anything at that price, nor would he issue a bill for that amount.