Wolf Among Wolves (132 page)

Let them hoot away, he wasn’t going out. In reality she was excellently suited to the Rittmeister. Both were made of the same stuff. Before the war they were on top, they were of the nobility, they had money. Let the so-called people see for themselves how they got on! … Undoubtedly a damned similarity with her husband. Naturally she didn’t behave so badly; she was a woman, after all, and could be amiable if she wanted something; feminine charm, a leg stretched out, a melodious voice—smiles. But in the end it came to the same thing. If she wanted a motor car she bought it, and the young bailiff, without money for wages, must do the best he could to get fifty families enough to eat.

“You will arrange that for me, won’t you? I don’t need to worry myself about it, then? You are so capable!” Yes, they wouldn’t be able to arrange it themselves, didn’t even want to—they had people to see to such things. Between Wolfgang Pagel and Black Minna there was (for madam) not such a great difference, by a long way, as between herself and him—the disparity was simply enormous!

I am unjust, he thought, and the car hooted again peremptorily. Unjust. She genuinely has a heavy affliction—and if wealth makes people selfish, if happiness makes them selfish, affliction does it so much the more. Ought I not to go out, after all?

It was no longer necessary to decide this. The chauffeur Oskar entered the office. “Herr Pagel, would you come outside to madam?”

Pagel stood up and looked thoughtfully at him. “All right.”

Oskar, made by the grace of Frau von Prackwitz chauffeur to the gentility, whispered: “Be careful, Herr Pagel, she’s going to slip off! But don’t give me away.” And went. Pagel smiled. There you were! Oskar, who only four weeks ago had beamed on Frau Eva as on a blessed angel, no longer appreciated the sweet cake of daily intercourse with gentlepeople. He felt that he was a hundred times closer to this almost unknown Herr Pagel than to the lady he saw daily.

“Good evening, madam,” said Pagel. “I was wanting to speak to you.”

“We’ve been hooting in front of your window for five minutes!” she cried, invisible in the dark car. “Were you sleeping? Do you go to sleep at eight in the evening?”

“Yesterday,” replied Pagel unmoved, “I tried twenty times to get in touch with you, madam. Arrangements must be made about the forester.…”

“My husband is quite ill! Both of us are ill from all these terrible excitements. I must beg you not to speak to me about these things now.” Her voice became gentler. “You have always been so considerate otherwise, Herr Pagel.”

Unbribed, he said: “I should have been glad of fifteen minutes’ talk, madam.” He was looking at the back of the car, enormously swollen. Oskar had spoken the truth. That monstrous heap of trunks was clear evidence of flight.

“I haven’t possibly got time this evening!”

“And when will you have time?” he inquired inexorably.

“I can’t tell you any exact hour.” The reply was evasive. “You know how irregularly I come and go. Oh, God, Herr Pagel, are you going to make difficulties for me, too? Do be independent. You have full authority!”

Of course he had full authority. He was authorized to settle everything independently (in the way madam wished) and to be landed because of it in a mess (in the way the Geheimrat wished). But he said nothing. One must not
attribute too much baseness to a person. In the last resort she wouldn’t leave him in the lurch. Or would she?

“Herr Pagel,” said Frau von Prackwitz, “for a week you have given me no money. I need money.”

“There’s hardly anything in the cashbox,” he replied, understanding now why the car had stopped at the staff-house.

“Then give me a check,” she cried impatiently. “Oh, God, what a fuss! I must have money.”

“Neither in the bank nor elsewhere have we a balance,” he protested. “I’m sorry, I can’t make out a check.”

“But I must have money. You can’t leave me without! I don’t know how you can think so!”

“I’ll see about selling something tomorrow.… Then I can give you some money, if it needn’t be a lot, madam.”

“But it must be a lot! And this evening!” she cried angrily.

Pagel was silent for a time. Then he asked casually: “Are you leaving?”

“No! Who told you such a thing? Are you having me spied on? I won’t have that!”

“The trunks,” explained Pagel, pointing to the rear of the car.

There was a long silence. Then Frau Eva spoke in a very different tone. “Dear Herr Pagel, how can you find me some money?”

“May I have a talk with you for ten minutes?”

“But there’s nothing to talk about. We shall be back tomorrow, or the day after at the latest. I know, Herr Pagel, give me a postdated check. Start selling tomorrow and the day after, pay the money into the bank, and I won’t present the check till the end of the week.”

“Madam was going to be back at the latest the day after tomorrow. I am not an employee here; there was no agreement between me and the Rittmeister when I came—no period of notice. I therefore will also leave Neulohe tomorrow.”

“Achim! Wait here. Oskar, turn out the headlights. Herr Pagel, help me out of the car.” She led the way to the office. She looked magnificent in her rage. “So you want to desert, Herr Pagel, you want to leave me in the lurch—after all we’ve gone through together?”

“We haven’t gone through anything together, madam,” said Pagel somberly. “When you needed me you sent for me. And when you didn’t need me you forgot me on the spot. You have never cared an atom whether I was sad or happy.”

“I have been pleased about you so often, Herr Pagel. In all my worries and troubles I always thought: There’s someone here on whom you can absolutely depend. Decent, honest …”

“Thank you, madam,” he said with a slight bow. “But when a Sophie Kowalewski came and told you the decent, honest fellow was having affairs with women, then you immediately credited him with them.”

“Why are you so nasty to me, Herr Pagel? What have I done? All right, I’m a woman and no doubt I’m like most women—I listen to gossip. But I also admit it when I’m wrong. Very well, then, I beg your pardon for that.”

“I don’t want you to beg my pardon, madam,” he called out in despair. “Don’t humiliate yourself so. I’m not asking to see you on your knees before me! It’s not that at all. But now, for the first time since we know one another, you are thinking about me, about my feelings, and would like to see me in a good humor.… And why? Because you need me, because only I can find the money which you require for your flight from Neulohe.”

“And don’t you call that humiliation? You don’t call that forcing someone on their knees? Yes, Herr Pagel, we are running away.… We hate Neulohe. Neulohe has brought us only bad luck.… And if I’m not to come to grief like my husband, I must go away this moment! Every second I tremble at the thought, What’s coming next? If I hear someone shouting, my knees give way at once. What’s the matter now? I think.… I must go away! And you must give me the money for that, Herr Pagel. You can’t let me die here!”

“I must go, too,” he said. “Life doesn’t please me anymore. I’m at the end, too. Let me go tomorrow, madam. Why should I stay?”

She wasn’t listening. Only one thought occupied her. “I must have money,” she cried despairingly.

“There’s none in the cashbox. And I won’t make out any uncovered checks, it’s too—dangerous. Madam, I can’t get you the money for any lengthy stay at a distance from Neulohe, not in two days. Money has become scarce since the note presses stopped. Even if I stayed a few days more, however, I still couldn’t satisfy your wishes.”

“But I
must
have money,” she repeated with unshakable obstinacy. “My God, money was always found when we really needed it! Think hard, Herr Pagel, you must manage it somehow.… I can’t let myself be ruined just because a few marks aren’t there!”

Many are ruined because a few marks are lacking, he thought. There was no point in saying such a thing, because it naturally didn’t apply to her. “Madam, you have a rich brother in Birnbaum—he’ll be sure to help you.”

“I’m to ask my brother for money?” she cried angrily. “I’m to humiliate myself before my brother? Never!”

He took a quick, furious step forward. “But you can humiliate yourself before me, eh? A queen shows herself naked before the slaves, doesn’t she? A slave is not human, what?”

She fell back before his indignation, deathly pale, trembling.

“There!” cried Pagel and pointed. “There in my bed in the next room the forester Kniebusch died yesterday morning, in your service, madam. You must have known him since your childhood; since you could speak the man ran about for you and your few marks, was frightened, worked himself to death—did you ever bother yourself at all about his sufferings, how he died, how he labored? Even by one word? Neulohe has become hell for you? Have you ever thought what sort of a hell it was for that old man? And he—he couldn’t clear off—and neither did he! Almost crawling on his stomach, he did his duty right up to the last moment.…”

She stood against the wall, trembling.

“Desert? Be a coward?” His speech was more and more violent; he was increasingly aware that his nerves were giving way. Without wishing to, he yet had to speak, speak at last, once and for all. “What do you know of cowardice and courage? I also thought I knew something about it once. I used to think that courage meant standing up straight when a shell exploded and taking your share of the shrapnel. Now I know that’s mere stupidity and bravado; Courage means keeping going when something becomes completely unbearable. Courage? That old coward who died in there had courage.” He threw a sharp glance at her. “But it must be something which is worth it. There must be a flag there for which it is worth fighting. Where is your flag, madam? Why, you are the first to flee.”

There was a long and gloomy silence. Then he walked slowly to his desk, sat down and propped his head in his hand. Everything which had accumulated these last weeks had been poured out—and what now?

Gently she laid her hand on his shoulder. “Herr Pagel,” she said in a low voice, “Herr Pagel—what you said is certainly true. I’m selfish and cowardly and thoughtless.… I don’t know if I have become so only recently, but you are right, I am like that. But you yourself are not. You are different, Herr Pagel, aren’t you?”

She waited a long time, but he did not reply.

“Be once again what you were formerly; young, trusting, self-sacrificing. Not for me, Herr Pagel; I have indeed no flag for you, but I have the hope that you will remain here in Neulohe till my parents come back. I should like to ask
you to move over into the Villa. Herr Pagel—I still have the hope that Violet will knock on the door there some day.… Don’t you go away, too! Don’t let the farm be utterly friendless if she comes.…”

Again a long silence, but of another sort—expectant. She took her hand from his shoulder and made a step to the door. He said nothing. She had her hand on the latch.… “When will your father come?” he asked.

“I have a letter to him in the car. I will post it today in Frankfurt. I take it my father will come immediately, once he learns that we’ve gone away. That’s to say, in about three or four days.”

“I will stay till then.”

“Thank you. I knew you would.” But she did not go; she waited.

He made it easy for her. He was tired of all beating about the bush. “And then there’s the business of your money,” he said abruptly. “I have about a hundred
Rentenmarks
in cash here, which I will give you. In the next few days I will sell everything which is saleable—do you know where you will be staying?”

“In Berlin.”

“Where?”

“At first in a hotel.”

“Studmann’s hotel. Hotel Regina,” he said. “I will telegraph you the money every day to the hotel.… What was the amount you had in mind?”

“Oh, a few thousand marks—just so that we can make a start.”

He did not wince. “You know, of course, that I mustn’t sell anything of the stock. That’s forbidden. Since it’s not your property I should render myself open to prosecution. You must now, madam, sign a declaration which will cover me as regards your father. You must testify that all illegal sales have arisen through your instigation. You must further testify that you know about the irregular, defective and also often incorrect way in which the books have been kept; in short, that all my proceedings have your full approval.”

“You are very hard on me, Herr Pagel,” she said. “Do you mistrust me so much?”

“It’s possible that your father may say I’ve embezzled money, that I’ve engaged in underhand dealings. My God!” he said impatiently, “why a lot of talk? Yes, I mistrust you! I have lost all trust.”

“Then write out the declaration,” she said.

While he was typing she walked to and fro. Suddenly an idea struck her, she turned briskly to him, about to say something.… But when she saw his gloomy, unfriendly face she sat down at the desk and wrote, too. Her face was smiling. She had thought of something; she was no egoist, there he was wrong—she was thinking of him, doing him a kindness.…

That declaration which a moment ago she had found so shaming she now merely glanced through and carelessly signed. Then she took up her note.… “Here, Herr Pagel, I have something for you. See, I forget nothing. As soon as I can I’ll settle it. Au revoir, Herr Pagel, and once again many thanks.”

She went.

He stood in the middle of the office, staring at the scrawl in his hand. He felt that never in his life had he looked such an ass. He held an acknowledgment in which Frau Eva von Prackwitz, also in the name of her husband, testified to the receipt of a loan of 2,000 gold marks, in full letters, two thousand gold marks, from Wolfgang Pagel. Pagel appeared ludicrous to himself. He screwed up the note furiously. But then he thought again. He smoothed it out carefully and laid it together with the Declaration of Honor in his briefcase. Valuable travel momento! he grinned. Now he was almost pleased.

V

What friendship and respect young Pagel had gained in the four months of his Neulohe labors were utterly lost in the last four days. For a long time afterwards people told one another that little Black Meier had been bad enough, but such an unfeeling hypocrite as Pagel!—no, they certainly wouldn’t see something like that again, for the lad was ashamed of nothing. He stole publicly—in broad daylight!