Some women, however, pursed their lips and listened in silence, though with angry, narrowed eyes. Then they turned away, but he heard them mutter that an old man like that should be ashamed to take part in such plottings. Hadn’t enough people been killed already in the World War? An old crock like him ought rather to be preparing for a peaceful death.
The forester’s face grew ever more troubled, almost bitter, the farther he went, muttering also. He had to give expression to his wrath somehow, and he was accustomed to talking to himself. Otherwise he had nobody in whom he could confide; his wife quoted texts at him on every occasion. He ground his almost toothless jaws in impotent anger. He suffered all the more because he was so helpless.
He arrived at the village square, round which Haase’s farm, the grocer’s shop, the inn, school and the clergyman’s dwelling were grouped. His business was not really with these people. Grocer and innkeeper were much too cautious to associate themselves with a venture which might offend their customers; the organist Friedmann was much too old; and Pastor Lehnich always behaved as if he were not of this world, although he was very good at adding up what was due him. The village magistrate must be in the secret, however, otherwise the meeting would not have been convened at his house.
Nevertheless Forester Kniebusch stood irresolutely in the square, looking across at Haase’s farm; it might be a good idea to face up to the magistrate for once and discuss the mortgage and its interest. But before he could decide on this a window in the inn flew open and the ugly head of little Black Meier popped out, spectacles glittering and face flushed. “Well, Kniebusch, old hen, come along and drink to my departure from Neulohe,” he shouted.
The forester was really not in a mood for drinking, and knew, too, that Black Meier, when drunk, was as vicious as an old bull; but the greeting sounded very much like news, and he could never resist that. He had to know everything, so that he could trim his course accordingly. Therefore he entered the inn, where his dog crawled under the table, prepared to wait silently with canine submissiveness for one hour or four, whichever it might be. The forester knocked on the table warningly. “I’ve no money on me!” he said.
“Neither have I,” grinned Black Meier, who had been drinking hard. “In spite of that I’m going to treat you, Kniebusch. And willingly. They’re all out in the fields and so I’ve taken a bottle of cognac from the buffet, but I can get you some beer if you prefer it.”
The forester shuddered at the possible consequences of such arbitrary behavior. “No, thanks, Meier. I’ll have nothing.”
Immediately Meier flushed a deeper crimson. “Oh, you think I pinched it? You think I won’t pay for what I drink? I’ll have none of that, Kniebusch. Just tell me of one occasion when I’ve pinched anything, or …”
The alternative was never divulged, for the forester immediately assured him that everything was in order, and that he would like a cognac.
“A cognac’s nothing at all,” shouted little Meier, and in spite of mild opposition, he poured out with professional skill a glass of beer and fetched a box of cigars. For himself he brought a packet of cigarettes.
“Your health, Kniebusch. May our children get long necks!”
The forester knitted his bushy brows at this toast, which reminded him of his two fallen sons. But it was futile to protest to such a man as Black Meier. “What has happened since midday to make us celebrate your departure?” he asked instead.
Meier turned glum. “The storm,” he growled. “A miserable filthy Berlin storm. We never get a storm with a west wind. But we do today.”
“Yes, there’ll be a heavy downpour in about ten minutes,” said Kniebusch and looked toward the dark window. “Didn’t you bring in the crops? The whole village is working at it.”
“I can see that, too, you great ass!” Meier shouted angrily. And it would really have been difficult not to notice it—another heavily loaded wagon had just raced across the village square and disappeared into Haase’s farm.
“But it is not certain that the Rittmeister will sack you,” Kniebusch remarked consolingly. “Of course, in your place I’d have got the crops in.”
“If you were me you’d be so clever that you’d have been in two places at the same time,” Black Meier screamed furiously. He drank hastily, then spoke more calmly. “Any fool can be wise after the event. Why didn’t you tell me at midday that you’d have got the crops in, eh?” He smiled with a superior air, yawned, and drank again. Then he looked at the forester with screwed-up eyes, winking mysteriously, and said with meaning: “Besides, the Rittmeister won’t chuck me out only on that account.”
“No?” replied the forester. “By the way, did you notice whether Haase is in his farmyard?”
“Yes,” said Black Meier. “He went in a moment ago with the Lieutenant.”
This did not suit Kniebusch at all. If the Lieutenant was there, then it would be no use speaking with Haase about the mortgage. And yet it was absolutely necessary. In five days’ time the half-yearly interest was due again, and he could not be put off with a two-hundred-mark note slipped into his hand.
“Are you deaf in both ears, forester?” shouted Meier. “I’ve been asking you how old Vi is.”
“The young Fräulein? She was fifteen last May.”
“Oh, Lord! Oh, Lord!” Meier pretended to lament. “Then the Rittmeister is sure to chuck me out.”
“Why?” The ever-wakeful curiosity of the tale-bearer and spy stung Kniebusch. “What do you mean?”
“Oh, don’t bother!” Meier made a magnificently disdainful gesture. “You’ll learn everything soon enough.” He had another drink and looked at the forester through his narrowed eyes, grinning impudently. “But the girl has a magnificent bosom, I can tell you that, Kniebusch, old rake.”
“What girl?” asked the forester, dumbfounded. He could hardly believe his ears.
“Well, that young thing Vi,” said Black Meier negligently. “A sweet little bit, I can tell you. What a welcome she gave me a short time ago in her deck chair. On the roof of the kitchen annex, mind you, with only a bathing costume on. And then she undid her shoulder-straps—like this—and then—well, don’t let us talk about it. Once a gentleman always a gentleman.”
“You’re mad, Meier,” remonstrated Kniebusch. “You’re boasting. You’re drunk.”
“Oh, yes, I’m boasting!” said Black Meier, with a show of indifference. “Oh, yes, I’m drunk! But if anybody asks you, Kniebusch, then you can tell him from me that here”—he pointed to his breast well beneath the armpit—“Vi has a tiny brown mole, and it’s a sweet cuddlesome spot, Kniebusch, I tell you that in confidence.”
Meier looked expectantly at the forester. “That you’ve seen her in her bathing dress, Meier, I can well believe,” said Kniebusch. “Several times lately she has been lying about like that on the kitchen roof and Madam won’t have it; I know that from Armgard the cook. But that she should have behaved as you suggest … no, Meier, I can’t swallow that. You must tell that to a bigger fool than Kniebusch.” The forester grinned conceitedly, pushed away his tumbler and rose. “Come along, Cæsar!”
“You don’t believe me?” Black Meier shouted, leaping up. “You’ve no idea, Kniebusch, how crazy women are about me. I can have them all, all of them. And little Vi …”
“No, no, Meier,” said Kniebusch smiling contemptuously and making a deadly enemy of little Meier for life. “You’re all right for a dairy maid or poultry maid, perhaps. But for the young Fräulein! No, Meier, you’re just drunk.”
“Shall I prove it to you?” Meier almost screamed, beside himself with alcohol, wrath and humiliation. “Shall I show it to you in black and white? There, can you read, you silly idiot? There! Your young Fräulein wrote that to me.” He had pulled the letter out of his pocket and opened it. “Can you read? There. ‘Your Violet.’ ‘Your’ underlined, you gaping owl. There, read: ‘Dearest! Most dearest!! My one and only!!!’ See the exclamation marks? There! No, there’s no need for you to read it
all—only this. ‘I love you sooo much!’ ” He repeated it: “ ‘Sooo.’ Well, is that love? What do you say now?” He stood there triumphant. His thick lips trembled, his eyes were aflame, his face was flushed.
But the effect of his words was not at all what he had expected. Forester Kniebusch stepped from him toward the door. “No, Meier,” he said. “You oughtn’t to have shown me that letter and told me all that. What a swine you are, Meier! No, I wish I hadn’t seen it; I don’t want to know anything about it. It’s as much as my life’s worth. No, Meier,” and Kniebusch looked with open hostility in his faded eyes, “if I were you I’d pack my trunk and clear out without waiting for notice, and get away as far as possible. If the Rittmeister learns …”
“Don’t talk so big, you old rabbit,” said Meier peevishly, but put the letter back into his pocket. “The Rittmeister won’t hear about it. If you keep your trap shut …”
“I’ll keep my mouth shut,” said the forester and really meant it. “I’m having nothing to do with it, believe me. But you won’t keep your mouth shut.… No, Meier, be sensible for once and clear out. And quickly at that—Ah, it’s really starting now.”
The two had been paying no attention to the weather and the increasing darkness of the sky. But now a flash of lightning made the inn parlor as bright as midday, a crash of thunder deafened them, and the rain came pelting down as from a thousand sluice gates.
“You aren’t rushing out into the storm?”
“I am,” replied the forester hurriedly. “I’m running across to Haase’s. I wouldn’t like to stay here.” And was already gone.
Meier saw him disappear into the rain. About the parlor hung the smell of spirits, sour beer and dirt. Slowly Meier opened one window after another. When he passed the table where they had been sitting he involuntarily took hold of the bottle and raised it to his lips, shuddered at its smell, and let the spirit gurgle out on to the village square. Returning to the table, he lit a cigarette and withdrew the letter from his pocket. The envelope was now damaged beyond use. With the cautious movements of the half-drunk he laid the letter on the table. It was crumpled and he tried to smooth it out. What on earth am I to do? What on earth am I to do? he thought wearily.
The letter was growing wet beneath his smoothing hand. He looked. It had been placed in a pool of cognac and the writing was quite smudged.
What on earth am I to do? he thought again.
He stuffed the messy scrawl into his pocket. Then he took his stick and went into the pouring rain. He must go to bed, sleep himself sober.
VI
Kniebusch hurried as quickly as he could through the heavy rain to Haase’s farmstead. However unpleasant it was for an old man to get wet to his skin, it was ten times better than sitting with that fellow, Black Meier, and listening to smut.
He stopped on the sheltered side of Haase’s barn. In his present state he could not appear before the magistrate. Panting, he wiped his face meticulously and tried to comb out his wet beard. But while he did all this mechanically he was thinking, just as Black Meier yonder: What on earth am I to do? What on earth am I to do?
Once again he felt aggrieved that there was not a soul to whom he could pour out his heart. If he could have told only one person about this crazy business he would have felt easier. But as it was, what he had heard rankled till it was hardly bearable. It was like a sore place on a finger against which one kept on knocking; it was like an eczema which one had to scratch, whether it drew blood or not.
Forester Kniebusch knew from many a bitter experience how dangerous was his growing propensity to gossip; it had often caused great mischief and involved him in the most unpleasant scenes. In this case, however, there was really nothing much to tell—only the drunken talk of a fellow who was mad after women, little Meier.
Having dried himself in the shelter of Haase’s barn he was about to enter the house when the whole thing was revealed to him: he saw Meier in the inn pulling the letter out of his pocket, tearing it open, reading it …
Kniebusch gave a long and high whistle, although it actually took his breath away. His dog by his side, shivering with the damp cold, started and pointed, forepaw raised as if he smelt game. But Forester Kniebusch went on further than his dog; he’d spied the black-coated hog, the wretched boar, in its damp hide and put a bullet through its head. Black Meier had told a lie. “It isn’t possible otherwise,” he muttered to himself. “This chap with his blubber lips and our young Fräulein—no, I couldn’t swallow that. And it wasn’t necessary to swallow it, either. The foolish braggart and liar thinks I don’t see through him. Tears the letter open before my eyes, yet already knows what is written in it. Tells me he has just been with Fräulein Violet and has got a letter from her in his pocket. Of course she’s given him a letter, but to deliver to someone else, and the fellow’s read it on the quiet. Yes, I must think this matter over quietly and thoroughly. I shall be surprised if I don’t get to the bottom of it all, and most surprised if I don’t use it as a rope to hang you with, little Meier. You won’t be able to call me a rabbit and gaping owl much longer. We’ll see then who’ll be in a funk and gape!” Kniebusch turned round and faced the inn. But the inn was not to be seen, because the rain was so heavy.
It’s better not to do anything rash, he reflected. The matter had to be considered carefully, for obviously he must so manage things as to get into Fräulein Violet’s good books. She might be very useful to him one of these days.
Thereupon Kniebusch whistled shrilly the call, “Quick march, advance” and marched off, straight into the magistrate’s living room. He didn’t even leave the dog on the brick floor of the kitchen as usual, but let it make muddy circles with its wet paws on the waxed and polished floor. So sure of victory was he.
But in the living room he got a shock, for not only was the tall Haase sitting there, but in the hollow in the middle of the old sofa lounged the Herr Lieutenant as large as life, his old field cap on the crocheted elbow rest, and he himself shabby and unkempt. He was doing himself well, though, with a large cup of coffee and fried eggs and bacon, and soaking pieces of bread in the fat, like a plain honest countryman. But six o’clock in the evening was really not quite the right time to eat fried eggs.
“Order executed,” reported the forester standing to attention, as he did to anybody he believed invested with authority.
“Stand at ease,” ordered the Lieutenant. And then, quite friendly, a big piece of egg on his tin fork: “Well, forester, still running about on your old legs? The orders passed on and carried out? Everybody at home?”
“That’s just it,” said the forester dolefully, and told of his experiences in the village, and what Frau Pieplow and Frau Paplow had said.
“Old fool!” The Lieutenant calmly went on with his meal. “Then you’ll have to leg it through the village again, when the men are at home, understand? To tell the women such things! I always said there’s no fool like an old one.” And he went on eating.
“Yes, Herr Lieutenant,” said the forester obediently, concealing his fury. He might very well ask this young chap what right he had to snap at him, and why he was entitled to give him orders—but it wasn’t worth while, he’d leave it. Instead, he turned to the tall and wrinkled Haase who had been sitting in his big chair as silent as usual, listening without turning a hair. Kniebusch spoke to him not at all kindly. “Ah, Haase, since I’m here I’d like to ask you about my interest. It’s due in five days’ time and I must know what you intend to do.”
“Don’t you know?” asked Haase and looked nervously at the Lieutenant, who, however, seemed to be interested in nothing but his fried eggs and the bits of bread which he was chasing across the plate. “All that’s set down in the mortgage.”
“But, Haase,” entreated the forester, “we don’t want to quarrel, old people like us.”
“Why should we quarrel, Kniebusch?” asked Haase surprised. “You receive what is due to you and, besides, I’m not as old as you are by a long way.”
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“My ten thousand marks,” said the forester in a trembling voice, “which I lent you on your farm was good prewar money—it took me twenty years to scrape it together. And on the last rent day you gave me a bit of paper—I still have it at home in a drawer. Not a stamp or a nail have I been able to buy with it.”
Kniebusch could not help himself; this time it was not the infirmity of age but an honest grief which brought the tears to his eyes. He was looking at Haase, who slowly rubbed his hands together between his knees and was just about to answer when a curt voice from the sofa called “Forester!”
The forester wheeled round, torn from his grief and entreaty. “Yes, Herr Lieutenant?”
“Matches, forester.”
The Lieutenant had finished eating. He had soaked up the last smear of fat from his plate, swallowed the last dregs of coffee. And now he lay stretched out on Haase’s sofa in his muddy boots, his eyes shut. A cigarette in his mouth, he demanded a light.
The forester gave it him. With the first puff of smoke the Lieutenant looked straight into the tearful eyes of the old man. “Well, what’s the matter?” he asked. “I almost believe you’re crying, Kniebusch?”
“It’s only the smoke, Herr Lieutenant,” replied the embarrassed forester.
“Well, that’s all right, then,” said the Lieutenant, shutting his eyes and turning over.
“I really don’t know why I listen to your eternal bleating, Kniebusch,” declared Haase. “According to the mortgage deed you’re to get two hundred marks. Last time I gave you a thousand-mark note, and because you had no change I let you keep the lot.”