Wolf Among Wolves

  “And you always pretend you are something like a father!” said the girl contemptuously.

  “It’s no good talking, Sophie,” said Liebschner, resigned. “The old fellow’s taken a passion for the lout. There are things like that. Listen, Sophie. You shove off to the young man at once. He’ll be alone now, at midday. Be a little nice to him, Sophie; you know I’m not jealous. Then he’ll give way.… You’ll be able to manage that, eh, Sophie?”

  “That lout! He’ll go on his knees if I want it. But the Backs will be there. He’s got her!”

  “The fat one with the hens? If you can’t cut out that gawk, you can lose your job with me, too, Sophie.”

  “Go away! Please. Better go away before everything is discovered,” pleaded Kowalewski.

  “Before you catch on to something, the pastor’s got to preach three times on Sunday, I suppose, eh? Money, I say! You won’t get rid of us sooner. So set your mind at rest, father-in-law; we’ll wangle it. We shall keep on our lodgings; we still like them. And nothing will happen to your young chap—agreed?”

  “You should go away,” said the old man obstinately.

  “Show him the door, Sophie. Let him go away first! If I wasn’t too lazy, I’d show you how to travel down the stairs, father-in-law. Good morning, it’s been a pleasure. Give my regards to your friend Herr Pagel.”

  The old man stood wretchedly on the stairs. “Oh, Sophie,” he muttered, “you were such a good child.”

  III

  Amanda had been right; things went well with the pair of them. No, more than that, things went excellently. To his astonishment Pagel discovered that this female who he thought would get on his nerves within a week, did, on the contrary, help him over many difficulties. That she was cleanly, industrious, quick and skillful he had more or less known. But this young thing with the tongue of an old fishwife knew very well when to be silent, and could tolerate other points of view. This illegitimate child, the sport of adversity, who had in one year received more hard words and blows than most people in an entire lifetime, and whose experience of people and of men in particular had filled her whole existence with a grinding pessimism, had a sensitiveness to every kind word, every slight hint, that never failed to move him.

  “My God!” he exclaimed the third day on seeing the desk covered with a tablecloth and respectable china and cutlery which must have been fetched from the Manor—she had divined how much he detested the chipped earthenware and the stained knives and forks.

  Yes, she said provocatively. So what’s wrong now? To each his own! What I always say is that I couldn’t give a damn about the packaging. It’s what’s inside that counts. But if you want to do it differently, help yourself!

  The two young people lived as on an island, without any company or friends. They were completely dependent on one another. When Pagel, worn down by the rush and scramble of his work, wished for a little private life, he had to find it at “home,” that is, in the office. And when Amanda wished to hear a kind, a personal word, it had to be from Pagel.

  So each became the savior of the other. Without her Pagel might have deserted like a Geheimrat von Teschow, a Herr von Studmann, or even a Rittmeister. That he should keep his flag flying—therein had Amanda Backs no little merit.

  And who knows if she herself would have got over her experience with Meier if she had not had Wolfgang Pagel constantly before her eyes? There were, then, other men, decent men, men who did not run after every skirt or goggle at every bosom! It was foolish to be at odds with all the world because Meier had been a rascal. She ought to be angry only with herself, for such a bad choice. In the beginning almost everyone had it a little in his power to choose whom he would love—later, to be sure, it was usually too late. She had adored her little Hans after a time.

  And so, as each of these two received something good from the other, it stood to reason that they were also good to each other. When Wolfgang, washed and changed, re-entered the office, he saw that the food was ready but the soup not yet served. “Well?” he smiled. “Aren’t we starting?”

  “Post for you, too, Herr Pagel,” she said, holding out two letters, and went into the bedroom to remove the wet clothes and tidy up.

  That’s what one could call being good to one another. Pagel didn’t think of it again, but felt it was true. He leaned against the pleasantly warm stove, put Studmann’s letter unread in his pocket, and tore open his mother’s. But before he began to read, he lit another cigarette. He knew he would be able to read in peace and complete comfort—that no cry of “your soup’s getting cold!” would disturb him.

  Amanda always sorted out the post into little heaps: farm management, forest management, the occupants of the Villa, the land steward (also represented by Pagel), and finally, sometimes, a letter for Pagel himself. That letter, however, she did not place on the table, but kept secret somewhere, waiting till he had washed himself and felt a little fresher; then she said: “Post for you, too, Herr Pagel,” and disappeared. However, it was by no means the case that this had been agreed between them. Amanda had thought it up all by herself. It was astonishing that so blunt a woman could be so sensitive. Pagel had never told her about his home or sweetheart, yet she had guessed how it was with him, without having the slightest fact to go on; there was no bulky correspondence with a lady—except with a Frau Pagel who, from the writing and the name, could only be his mother. Yet Amanda could have sworn any oath that Herr Pagel, in her words, was “in firm hands.” And that, however firmly those hands held him, there was something in this affair not quite in order.

  The girl cleared away the washstand and turned round again. Everything was in order. If he wanted to he could sleep here in the afternoon. Hopefully he would. He needed to. She listened out for the other room, but everything was quiet there. This quietness didn’t entirely satisfy her. But it continued.…

  Amanda sat down. She felt neither upset by, jealous of, nor in love with the young Pagel. On the contrary, what she saw and learnt about him only did her good. It confirmed what was strong in her—her will to live.

  Look, she thought roughly, here’s a clean and decent fellow, and for neither of us have things gone exactly smoothly. Why should I give up courage and despair when I clawed myself out of the dirt only two years ago? Thus ran Amanda’s thoughts. But now they were interrupted, because in the office next door sounded a penetrating whistle—not the tuneful notes of a contented man but a wild warlike shrill, something which even Amanda’s unsoldierly mind felt as a signal for attack. On the attack, quick march! Up and at the enemy! Then: Victory, fame, glory!

  In the same moment, just when Amanda jumped up from her chair, the door was torn open. Pagel pushed his head into the bedroom and shouted: “AAmanda, wench! Hunger! Grub! Soup! On, on!”

  She, with all the indignation people from the folk have for every exaltation, scrutinized his flushed face. “You’re going crazy,” she said aloofly, and passed by.

  “What are we having, Amanda?” Pagel asked. Yet obviously he was indifferent.

  “Goose giblets with barley.”

  “Goose giblets again! And today! Today there ought … Oh, I certainly haven’t the patience to nibble at goose wings.”

  “If you don’t soon stop the village urchins from forever crippling my geese by throwing stones at them, you’ll have to eat goose giblets every day, Herr Pagel,” replied the Backs with dangerous calmness.

  “Amanda, couldn’t you give me a rest today from nagging? This is the first time for a long while that I’ve been more or less happy.”

  “If my geese are to go on having their bones broken because you’re happy, Herr Pagel, then it would be better if you went around unhappy and did something for farming. Because that’s what you’re here for; not to be happy.”

  Pagel’s amused gaze rested on her angry face. “Don’t go on pretending. I can see that you’re not in the least annoyed, because you’ve filled my plate with the stomach and heart. Which, as a matter of fact, I’m fondest of
. As for the other thing, I ought to tell you that I’ve just had news I’m soon to be a father.”

  “Oh!” Her tone sounded in no way pacified. “I didn’t know till now that Herr Pagel was married.”

  This female response so surprised young Pagel that he put his spoon demonstratively into his goose stew, pushed back his chair and stared at Amanda with big eyes. “Married—me married? How do you arrive at that idiotic idea, Amanda?”

  “Because you are shortly becoming a father, Herr Pagel,” she replied maliciously. “Fathers are usually married—or at least ought to be.”

  “You’re a goose, Amanda,” said Wolfgang amused, returning to his soup. “You only want to pump me.”

  For a while all was quiet.

  Then Amanda said stubbornly, “I’m wondering if the young lady, when she noticed she was going to become a mother, whistled so tremendously and talked such rubbish to people.”

  “Your wonder is quite correct, Amanda. The young lady was certainly not so pleased at the time, although she was also perhaps just a wee little bit happy.”

  “Then,” said Amanda decidedly, “I would leave at once and marry her.”

  “That’s what I should like to do. Unfortunately she has absolutely forbidden me to show my face.”

  “She’s forbidden! And expecting a child from you?”

  “That’s right,” nodded Pagel gravely. “You have completely grasped what I wanted to say.”

  “Then …” She turned crimson.

  “Then …” She did not dare say it.

  “Then I should …” She became speechless.

  “What would you do, please?” he asked very gravely.

  She examined him with an ungracious eye, angry with herself for embarking on this inquisition which had discovered something she hadn’t wished to know. And she was angry with him because he spoke about these matters in just the same flippant, stupid way as other men—and she had thought him very different! So she looked at him testingly and unsparingly.

  But seeing his twinkling eyes, she understood that he was actually very happy, and was only making fun of her and her stupid curiosity. And that he was exactly as she had thought he was. And, as is always the case, the happiness of the one was communicated to the other. She gulped suddenly.

  She spoke quite as Amanda Backs, however. “If you’ve rummaged about enough in the giblets, I should now lie down for half an hour. It’s warm in there, and I’ve put a blanket for you on the sofa.”

  “Good. I’ll do that for once,” he said obediently. “But wake me in half an hour.” And at the door he turned round. “I’m thinking of having it about Christmas, the marriage I mean. The son’s arriving three weeks earlier.”

  And with that he shut the door as a sign that he no longer valued any answer, and that this subject was now absolutely closed. And as Amanda now knew everything she urgently needed to know, she also felt no need to talk anymore. She quietly cleared the table, took away the cutlery and sat down at the tiled stove, so that he could have real quiet for the remaining half-hour.

  But of course, he wouldn’t sleep but would read his letter again!

  IV

  Pagel really had wanted to reread his letter but hardly had he lay down but a tiredness overcame him like a large, benign, warm, dark wave. The sentence informing him that he would be a father at the beginning of December and that Peter would soon be writing to him herself, was part of his dream. It produced a happy feeling of lightness, and he went to sleep smiling.

  However, his dream was about a child, and that child was himself. With some amazement he saw himself standing on a grassy lawn in a white sailor suit with a blue collar and a sewn-on anchor. Over him a plum tree spread its branches laden with small yellow plums.

  He saw himself stretching up to the branches. He saw his bare knees between his long socks and his trousers. And that one of his knees had been cut, but was already scarred over. I must have already dreamt that as a child, he said to himself in the dream, and saw himself reaching for the branches as a child. He was on tiptoe and still couldn’t reach them.

  Then a voice called him, and of course it had to be Mama’s voice from the veranda, but no, the voice came from the thick crown of the tree itself, and it was Peter’s voice:

  Little tree, shake and shake—Throw down your plums for my sake!

  And the little plum tree shook all its plums over him like a golden shower of rain, and they fell, ever more, ever thicker, ever more golden. The green lawn was quite yellow with then. As if hundreds and thousands of buttercups were blossoming, and the child that he was bent over them, shouting with joy.

  “No, I can’t disturb him now,” said Amanda. “You’ll have to come back later.” She gave Sophie Kowalewski a bellicose look.

  But Sophie was not at all bellicose. “Perhaps I could wait here,” she said politely.

  “When he wakes up he must go to the fields at once; he’ll have no time for you.”

  “But he asked me to come here through my father,” explained Sophie, not quite in accordance with truth. “Herr Pagel, in fact, wants me to dig potatoes!” She laughed bitterly.

  “Dig potatoes,” repeated Amanda. The pair stood, one at the stove, the other at the window. “Herr Pagel’s right. Digging potatoes is certainly better than—” She broke off with telling effect.

  “Than what, Fräulein? Than propping up the stove in case it falls over? There you are certainly right.”

  “Many a person thinks that she alone is cunning,” said the Backs disdainfully. “But as Fräulein von Kuckhoff always said, too much cunning turns stupid. And that’s a fact.”

  “And are you also cunning or are you stupid?” asked Sophie sweetly, sitting down at the desk.

  “That’s no place for you, Fräulein!” said Amanda angrily, shaking the back of the chair. “There’s a place for you somewhere else.”

  Sophie was aware what the other was driving at. But she wasn’t easily stopped in anything; she would sit where she was. “If I’m to go, Herr Pagel will tell me,” she said coolly. “All you do here are the beds, Fräulein.”

  “But I don’t get in them, I don’t!” shouted Amanda, pulling at the chair furiously.

  “That won’t be your fault, Fräulein. The gentleman perhaps has better taste than his predecessor.”

  “You say that to me, Fräulein?” Amanda stepped back very pale.

  The combat was now at its climax; the arrows had been loosed and many had gone home. Now must come the hand-to-hand fighting—it was a wonder that young Pagel hadn’t been waked up by the noise.

  “Why shouldn’t I say that to you?” asked Sophie defiantly but less assured, for the expression on her opponent’s face made her uneasy. “You said so yourself before everyone during evening prayers.”

  “Fräulein,” said Amanda threateningly, “if others can’t count up to five, I can. And if the five don’t come out right, then one can stand at night beneath a window and hear them talking.”

  Now it was Sophie who turned pale. Then she bethought herself. “If one is decent,” she said in quite another tone, “one doesn’t need to have heard everything one hears.”

  “And somebody like that talks about beds and better taste!” burst out Amanda angrily. “I ought to go and tell him on the spot.” She reflected. “I think I really ought to.” She looked doubtfully at Pagel’s door.

  “Why should he know that?” asked Sophie. “He loses nothing by it.”

  Amanda regarded her, undecided.

  “You could have had a friend,” whispered Sophie, “just the same as … I can understand it if one sticks to a friend.”

  “He’s not my friend any longer,” protested Amanda. “I don’t associate with a traitor.”

  “Others can never know what someone is really like,” declared Sophie. “They only look at the outside. Someone may have had bad luck in his life.”

  “I’ve heard that anyone from a penitentiary is always bad. Only the worst get sent there.”

/>   “He can wish to improve. And there are such things as wrong verdicts.”

  “Was he wrongly condemned then, Fräulein?”

  Sophie considered. “No,” she said reluctantly.

  “It’s good you said that. Or I should have thought you only wanted to wheedle me.”

  “The sentence was too severe. He’s only heedless, not bad.”

  Amanda thought. She couldn’t think as she wanted to; the image of Hänsecken prevented her. She’d remained true to him even when she knew that he was not only shallow but bad. But she eventually found what she wanted to ask. “Then why does he still hole up there?” asked Amanda. “If he really wants to change, he’s got to work. Is he lazy?”

  “Not at all,” cried Sophie. “He holes up there …” She thought a bit. “We haven’t got the fare yet, and then he received a bullet in the escape—”

  “A bullet? But the warders didn’t hit anyone!”

  “That’s what they think! But he was shot in the leg, here in the thigh. And he’s been lying up there all these weeks without a doctor or proper attention. I’ve been nursing him. And now I’m to dig potatoes!”

  Amanda looked doubtfully at the other’s face. “There’s so much stolen in the district at present,” she said. “I thought that would be your one, Fräulein.”

  “With him always in bed, Fräulein Backs, and perhaps even lame the rest of his life? My father says it’s Bäumer up to his tricks again.”

  “I thought that Bäumer was only a poacher.”

  “That’s all you know! Bäumer will do anything. Now when they’re looking for him, and his relatives in Altlohe won’t have him with them, and he doesn’t know where to stay, he’ll do anything, he said.”

  “How do you come to know that, Fräulein?” asked Amanda softly. “You are very well informed about him. You’ve even spoken to the man.”