“No, that ruffian.… You remember? ‘Such things are not discussed in the presence of young ladies.’ ” The Rittmeister laughed. “Well, to do him justice, Vi, he seems to be a big pot, however young he is. And damned clever.”
“Yes, Papa?” she said very softly.
“As a matter of fact, he’s responsible for my buying the car.” Very low and mysteriously: “Violet, they’ve got a big thing on hand—and your Papa’s in it.” This was only the third time that Rittmeister von Prackwitz had let out his secret; and for that reason he was still enjoying himself.
“Against the Socialists, Papa?”
“The Government’s to be overthrown, my child.” (This very solemnly.) “So the day after tomorrow, on October the first, I am going with this car to Ostade.”
“And the Lieutenant?”
“Which Lieutenant? Oh, the Lieutenant! Well, he’ll be with us, naturally.”
“Will there be fighting, Papa?”
“Very likely. Highly probable. But, Violet, you are not afraid, surely? An officer’s daughter! I survived the World War; a few small street fights like that won’t harm me.”
“No, Papa.”
“Well, then. Stiff upper lip, Violet. Nothing venture, nothing win. I think the chauffeur ought to have finished his meal by now. Call him. We want to get back before it’s quite dark.”
He watched his daughter get out of the car and go into the house, slowly, thoughtfully, her head down. She really loves me, he thought proudly; what a shock it was when she heard there would be fighting. But she pulled herself together marvelously. He thought thus, not out of joy in his daughter’s love, but so that he could, mentally at least, upbraid a wife who had not thought for a moment of the dangers to which he was about to expose himself, but only of buying cars, financial difficulties, rent, and questions of trust.…
And while he, proud of a daughterly love which fully appreciated his worth, got ready for the drive, Vi stood as if paralyzed in the small hall, with only one thought in her heart. The day after tomorrow! We have not seen one another again, and he may be killed. The day after tomorrow!
XI
Immediately after the quarrel with her husband Frau von Prackwitz had gone up to her room. She felt she had to cry. In the mirror over the wash-basin she saw a woman no longer young but still quite good-looking, with slightly bulging eyes which now had rather a torpid look. It seemed as if all life had gone out of her; she felt icy cold, her heart was dead as a stone.…
Then she forgot she was standing in front of the mirror looking at herself. What is the good of it all? she asked herself once more. There must have been something which made me love him. What could I have seen? For so long!
An endless series of pictures swirled by her, memories of the past when they were first married. The young first lieutenant. A call from the garden. His charmingly foolish behavior at Violet’s birth. The first intoxicating homecoming after the banquet. A garden party in the garrison town—they had endangered position and reputation when a sudden and overwhelming passion had united the married pair in a park crowded with visitors. The discovery of his first gray hair—already at thirty he had begun to turn gray—a secret she alone knew. His affair with that Armgard von Burkhard; how he had brought her a basket of delicatessen and she had suddenly known that what she had cried about so much was at last definitely over.
A thousand memories, speeding by, happy or sad, but all in a faded, calamitous light. When love goes and the eyes are suddenly opened, and the once-loved is seen as others see him—an average person without special merits—seen with the merciless eyes of a woman who has lived beside him for two decades, knowing beforehand every word he will say, to whom every pettiness and fault is familiar—then arise the perplexed questions: Why? What is the good? Why have I borne so much, retrieving, forgiving? What was in him to make me sacrifice myself so?
No answer. The form to which love alone gave breath has become lifeless without it, a scurrilous figure made up of buffooneries, whims and misbehavior, an insupportable marionette, all its strings known!
Frau Eva heard the sound of feet on the stairs, and came to herself with a start. Two men were talking. It would be Hubert coming down from the attic with the chauffeur. For a moment she was seized with the idea of being truly her father’s daughter, cunning and subtle.…
Oh, let him go ahead and manage! He insists on being the master here, she thought. Let him see how far he can get without me and—Studmann. The money for the car, the rent.… I will tell Studmann not to go tomorrow, not to look for money, not to make any arrangements about hands for the potato harvest. He’ll find out in a week how irretrievably he’ll be stuck in the mud. I’m really tired of having to beg him for permission to do what is right.… This Putsch he’s so full of now is nothing but an adventure. Papa’s not in it, nor Studmann nor my brother. They’ve talked him round at the last moment. He will find …
She examined her face in the mirror. There was a trace of self-righteousness about the mouth which she didn’t like. Her eyes were bright, but neither did she care for that. The fires of malice shine thus.
No, she told herself resolutely, not that way. I don’t want that. If, as it now appears to me, everything is really finished, it will collapse without my assistance. I shall go on doing everything I can. That won’t be much; there’s no longer any enthusiasm, any love in it, only duty. But I have always been as honest as I could, and all these years I have nothing grave with which to reproach myself.…
Once again she examined the mirror. Her face had a strained expression; the skin round the eyes looked drawn, heavily wrinkled and dry. Promptly she took up her pot of cream and greased her face. Massaging the skin gently, she thought: I’m not finished yet; I’m in the prime of life. And if I’m more careful with myself and what I eat, I can easily lose fifteen or twenty pounds—then I shall have exactly the right figure.…
Five minutes later Frau von Prackwitz was sitting in the office with Herr Studmann. Studmann, of course, hadn’t the slightest notion of how she was feeling. Frau Eva, who in a quarter of an hour had discovered that she no longer loved her husband, who had decided that she would remain honest in all circumstances, but who had nevertheless conceded herself a quite joyous and hopeful life—Frau Eva had to listen to an exhaustive lecture on how Herr von Studmann proposed to raise the money for the rent the day after tomorrow.
The old schoolmaster! she thought, but not without sympathy. She was no girl now; she knew men (for to know one man properly is to know all) and she was aware that they possessed a bewildering lack of intuition. Under their very eyes a woman might expire from her desire for tenderness while they were demonstrating at length and in detail that they needed a new suit, and why they needed a new suit, and what color the new suit had to be.… And suddenly, very surprised and a little hurt, they say: “Aren’t you listening at all? What’s the matter with you? Aren’t you well? You’re looking so strange!”
Frau Eva had crossed her legs, which, her skirt being fashionably short, gave her the opportunity of studying them during the lecture. They were, she thought, still very nice to look at, and if she reduced, it would be better to do so on the hips and behind. But of course, one always got slimmer just where it was not so desirable.
Both suddenly noticed that neither was speaking.
“What was that, Herr von Studmann?” she asked and laughed. “Excuse me, my thoughts were elsewhere.” She drew back her legs as much as possible beneath the skirt.
Studmann was fully prepared to excuse her; his thoughts also had strayed. Hastily he took up his lecture again. It appeared that in the town of Frankfurt-on-the-Oder there lived a deranged person who was ready the following day to provide the full sum of rent in the finest of notes, if only the management of Neulohe Farm engaged to deliver him in December fifty tons of rye in exchange.
“The man’s mad!” exclaimed Frau von Prackwitz, puzzled. “He could have one hundred and fifty tons for his money tomorrow.”
That, admitted Studmann, had also been his opinion at first. But it was like this. The man—a rich fishmonger, by the way—would only have to change his tons of grain into paper money tomorrow or in a week. Everyone today, though, fled from paper money, tried to lay it out on some commodity of permanent value, and so this man had hit upon grain, no doubt.
“But how can he know that it will be different in December?”
“Obviously he can’t know. He hopes so, believes so; he is speculating on it. A little while back there were negotiations in Berlin about issuing a new currency. After all, the mark can’t go on falling forever. But they are at variance over money based on grain or on gold. No doubt the man thinks we shall have the new currency in December.”
“Would that change things for us?”
“As far as I can foresee, no. We should always have to deliver fifty tons of rye only.”
“Then let’s do it. We shall certainly never be able to rid ourselves of this nightmare more favorably.”
“Perhaps we ought to ask Prackwitz about it first,” proposed Studmann.
“Willingly. If you think so. Only—why? You have full authority.”
Women are the devil. At this moment there were certainly no legs in a conversation devoted to business, rent and currency. But when Frau Eva threw doubt on the necessity of consulting her husband, something dark and suppressed crept into the matter-of-fact discussion. It really sounded a little as if, to speak frankly, they were talking of a dying person.
“Yes,” said Studmann softly, “to be sure. Only, you both undertake the obligation to deliver in—December.”
“Yes. And—?” She did not comprehend.
“December! You will have, in all circumstances, to deliver in December. Fifty tons of grain. In all circumstances. A good two months yet.”
Frau von Prackwitz tapped a cigarette on the lid of the box. There was a small furrow between her eyebrows. For greater comfort she crossed her legs, without, however, thinking about it. Nor did Studmann notice it this time.
“You understand, madam,” he explained, “it would be a personal obligation of yours and your husband’s, not of the farm. You would have to deliver the fifty tons if—well, wherever you were.”
A long pause.
Frau von Prackwitz stirred. “Accept, Herr von Studmann,” she said vivaciously. “Accept in spite of that danger.” She shut her eyes; she was a beautiful, plump, fair woman, withdrawing into herself. She was like a cat, a cat who is happy, a cat on the hunt for mice. “If we lose the tenancy by December,” she said smilingly, “my father won’t leave me in the lurch. I should then take it over and deliver the fifty tons.”
Studmann sat like a lump of wood. Amazing tidings had reached his ears. These women!
Frau von Prackwitz smiled. She was not smiling at Studmann, but at something imaginary between the stove and the law shelves. Putting her hand out to him, she said: “And may I rely also on you not to leave me in the lurch, Herr von Studmann?”
Disconcerted, Studmann gazed at the hand. It is a large but very white woman’s hand with rather too many rings. He felt exactly as if he’d been hit on the head. What had she said? Impossible! She couldn’t have meant it like that. He was a donkey.…
“Donkey!” said she in a deep warm voice, and for one moment the hand gently touched his lips. He felt its fresh softness, perceived its scent, and looked up, crimson. He would have to turn things over in his mind—the position was difficult. Prackwitz was his old friend, after all. He encountered her look, in which was a blend of mocking superiority and tenderness.
“Dearest madam …” said he, confused.
“Yes,” she smiled. “What I have always wanted to ask you was—what actually is your Christian name?”
“My Christian name? Well, it’s a bit awkward … actually I don’t use it. I’m called Etzel; that is—”
“Etzel? Etzel? Wasn’t that—?”
“Correct!” he explained hurriedly. “Attila or Etzel, a prince of the Huns, who swept into Europe with his Mongolian hordes, robbing and murdering. About 450 A.D. Battle on the Catalaunian Plain. ‘Savagery was as innate in him as dignity and sobriety.’ But, as I say, I make no use of it. It’s a sort of family tradition.”
“No, Etzel is quite impossible. Papa called his gander Attila. And what did your friends call you? Prackwitz always only says Studmann.”
“Like all the others do,” he sighed. “I’m not really suited to intimacies.” He turned a little red. “Sometimes I was called the Nursemaid. And in the regiment they called me Mummy.”
“Studmann, Nursemaid, Mummy.…” She shook her head with irritation, “Herr von Studmann, you really are impossible. No, I must find something else.”
“Dearest madam!” cried Studmann, enraptured. “Do you really mean that? I’m such a boring fellow, a pedant, a fussy old woman. And you—”
“Quiet,” she urged, shaking her head. “Wait. Don’t forget, Herr von Studmann, for the moment I have only asked you about your Christian name … nothing else.” She paused, supporting her head in her hands, armlets gently tinkling. She sighed, she made the most enchanting beginning to a yawn. She was altogether the cat which cleans itself, stretches, and does everything but look at the sparrow it is going to devour the next moment. “And then there is also the car.”
“What car?” He was confused again. Her transitions today were much too sudden for any sober-thinking man.
She pointed out of the window, though there was no car outside. But he understood. “Oh, the car! What about it?”
“He’s bought it,” she said.
“Oh?” He was thoughtful. “How much?”
“Seventeen thousand.”
Studmann made a gesture of despair. “Absolutely impossible!”
“And by installments?”
“Also.”
“Listen, Herr von Studmann,” she said with vigor, though a little sullenly. “In all circumstances you will go to Frankfurt tomorrow and obtain the money, but no more.”
“Certainly.”
“Whatever you may be told, you will go and fetch only that. Is it agreed?”
“Certainly.”
“You will hand over the money for the settlement of the rent to Herr von Prackwitz tomorrow evening. Do you understand? Herr von Prackwitz is to give my father the money himself. You understand?”
“Yes, certainly.”
“Wait. Prackwitz has planned a small journey for the day after tomorrow. Well, that’s nothing to do with us. He can pay the money over tomorrow evening. You understand me?”
“Not quite, but—”
“All right. If you only keep to what I say.… Herr von Prackwitz is to receive the money for the rent punctually—that’s enough. Perhaps you’ll ask for a receipt?”
“If you wish.” Studmann hesitated. “Prackwitz and I haven’t usually—”
“Of course not. But now!” She spoke sharply, stood up and gave him her hand. Once again she was the mistress of Neulohe. “Then au revoir, Herr von Studmann. I suppose I shan’t see you till after your trip to Frankfurt. Well, good business!”
“Thank you very much,” said Studmann, looking at her a little unhappily. There ought to be frankness, something positive discussed; but no, nothing! Etzel, and a hand kiss! Such things ought not to be done that way.
Shaking his head, Studmann set about composing an advertisement: “Hands wanted for potato digging …”
Outside blows the September wind, beginning to tear off and carry away the sere leaves. Something in Eva told her it was autumn and winter was coming. Her bearing is all the more erect, however. The wind pressed her clothes against her body. She felt its cool freshness on her skin. No, it’s not autumn for everybody, only for things ripe enough to die. She felt herself still young, and walked into the wind. She has made an experiment; she has encroached on Fate. Will Prackwitz pay the rent? Yes or no? Everything depends on that.
XII
Tranquil and in good
spirits, Pagel made for the wood, after the gendarmes, on the hunt for convicts. No Rittmeister von Prackwitz could upset him now, by a long way. What a child the man was, a silly thoughtless child! Came back with a brand-new car and at once set about showing the young man he was master! But the young man didn’t care—he was glad to be in the woods; he had no wish to remain in the office with such a paltry employer. A queer fish, the governor! Damned rude to someone who could raise his finger any moment, point at the car and say: “Well—and my two thousand gold marks?”
Not that he would exactly do that. Studmann would take care that he got the money some day, when it was needed. There had been a time when one had said to the Rittmeister: “Oh, forget about the trash. I don’t want the money back at all.” Then the Rittmeister had flushed and excitedly spoken about “debts of honor.” Time had passed since then, however. One thought quite differently about money when stamps and boot repairs and cigarettes and laundry had to be paid for out of a small monthly sum, graciously conceded by the Rittmeister (although one really did nothing at all for it, of course!)—in other words, out of a miserable pocket money. In fact, a small installment of that debt would often come in very pat, these days. But, at the slightest hint of that kind now, the Rittmeister would flush again and cry out, offended: “But, Pagel, you know very well what my financial position is at present, man!”
Yet a brand-new car stood in front of his house. And one was ordered out like some mere lad. Undoubtedly a queer fish!
Thus preoccupied, Pagel strolled through the woods. He had no idea in what parts the gendarmes were beating; but so long as he steered for the potato field, he would find them.
For the moment he therefore continued and thought as he went. He was comfortable and content. It would be a great mistake to suppose he was angry with the Rittmeister. Not a bit! People could only be what they were. Idiots formed a splendid background for Petra. The more foolish others were, the clearer that girl stood out. And Wolfgang thought about her with deeply grateful tenderness, an emotion which grew constantly stronger; since he had heard from Minna that he was to be a father there was more joy than longing or desire in it. An odd feeling! It was a confounded long time, three months, ninety-four days exactly, before she would let him go to her. He thought about everything they had experienced together, how it had come about and what had happened next. It had been good! Strange. Living with Petra, he hadn’t really thought much about her. Gambling had been the chief thing. Now that he lived in Neulohe, he actually mainly lived at Madam Po’s. Strange! Did there ever really come a time in life when a man had the feeling that experience and awareness were one? When he felt: Now you are happy, in a manner you can never again experience in the whole of your life? In the very second of experience! Not like this, when it was only afterwards discovered: in those days I was happy! As happy as we always were—? No! It was strange and dangerous!