Wolf Among Wolves (4 page)

Meanwhile she saw him coming home, night in, night out, with hollow temples, damp hair, gleaming eyes.

“I nearly brought it off, Peter,” he cried.

But his pockets were empty. Then he would pawn everything they had, keeping only what he stood up in (during such times she had to stay in bed), and go off with just enough money in his pocket to buy the minimum of counters—to return with some small winnings, or occasionally, very rarely, with his pockets stuffed with money. When it looked like the end of everything, he always brought in some money, she had to admit; much or little, he brought some.

He had some “system” or other connected with the rolling of the roulette ball, a system of chance, a system which was based on the fact that the ball often did not do what, according to the probabilities, it ought to do. This system he had explained to her a hundred times, but as she had never seen a roulette table she could not properly understand what he told her. She also doubted whether he always kept to his own system.

But however that might be, till now he had always scraped through. Relying on this, she had for a very long time managed to lie down and go quietly to sleep, without waiting up for him. Yes, it was better to feign sleep if by any chance she were still awake when he returned. There was no sleep that night if, straight from the game, he started to talk.

“How can you stand it, my girl?” Frau Thumann would say, shaking her head. “Out every night and with all your dough in his pocket. And they say the place is alive with classy tarts. I wouldn’t let my man go.”

“But you let your husband go up a building, Frau Thumann. A ladder may slip or a plank give way. And tarts are everywhere.”

“Lord, don’t suggest such things with my Willem working on the fifth floor, and me being already so nervous. But there’s a difference, lass. Building’s necessary, but gambling’s not.”

“But suppose he needs it, Frau Thumann.”

“Needs it! Needs it! I’m always having my old man telling me what a lot he needs. Cards and tobacco and floods of beer, and, I dare say, little bits of fluff as well, but he don’t tell me that. I tell him: ‘What you
do
need is me to take you in hand and the pay envelope from the contractor’s office on Friday nights. That’s what you need!’ You’re too good to him, my girl, you’re too soft. When I look at you of a morning when I bring in the coffee, and see you making eyes at him and he don’t notice you at all, then I know how it’ll end. Gambling as work—I like that! Gambling’s not working and working’s not gambling. If you really mean him well, my girl, you take his money away and let him go building with Willem. He can carry bricks, can’t he?”

“Good God, Frau Thumann, you talk exactly like his mother. She also thought I was too kind to him and encouraging him in his vice, and she even slapped my face once for that very reason.”

“Slapping ain’t the right thing either! Aren’t you her daughter-in-law? No, you do it, see what I mean, for your own pleasure, and if it gets too much for you, then you hop it. No, slapping’s not nice, either; you c’n even go to the law about it.”

“But it didn’t hurt at all. His mother’s got such tiny hands. My mother was quite different. And anyway …”

IV

A wooden barrier divided the room of the Berlin Harvesters’ Agency into two very unequal parts. The front part, in which Rittmeister von Prackwitz stood, was quite small and the entrance door opened into it. Prackwitz had hardly room to move.

The other and larger part was occupied by a small, fat, darkish man. The Rittmeister was not sure whether he looked so dark because of his hair or because he had not washed. Gesticulating, the dark fat man in dark clothes was speaking vehemently with three men in corduroy suits, gray hats, and cigars in the corner of their mouths. The men replied just as vehemently, and although they were not shouting it seemed as if they were.

The Rittmeister did not understand a word; they were speaking Polish, of course. Though the tenant of Neulohe employed every year half a hundred Poles, he had not learned Polish, apart from a few words of command.

“I admit,” he would say to Eva, his wife, who spoke broken Polish, “I admit that I ought really to learn it for practical reasons. Nevertheless I refuse, now and forever, to learn this language. I absolutely refuse. We live too near the borders. Learn Polish—never!”

“But the people make the most insolent remarks to your very face, Achim.”

“Well? Am I to learn Polish so that I can understand their insolence? I haven’t the slightest intention of doing so.”

And thus the Rittmeister did not understand what these four men were negotiating so vehemently in the corner, nor did he care. But he was not a very patient man: what had to be done had to be done quickly—he wanted to go back to Neulohe at noon with fifty or sixty laborers. A bumper harvest stood in the fields, and the sun shone so that he thought he could hear the crackling of the wheat. “Shop! Shop!” he called out.

They talked on. It looked exactly as if they were quarreling for dear life; the next moment they would be flying at each other’s throats.

“Hey, you there!” called the Rittmeister sharply. “I said ‘Good morning.’ ” (He had not said good morning.) What a crowd! Eight years ago, even five, they were whining before him and slavishly trying to kiss his hand. A damnable age, an accursed city! Wait till he got them in the country.

“Listen, you there,” he rapped out in his curtest military voice, banging the counter with his fist.

Yes—and how they listened! They knew that sort of voice. For this generation such a voice still had significance, its sound awakened memories. They stopped talking at once. Inwardly the Rittmeister smiled. Yes, the good old
sergeant major’s bark still had its effect—and most of all with such scum. Presumably it penetrated to their miserable bones as if it were the first blast of the last trumpet. Well, they always had a bad conscience.

“I need harvesters,” he said to the fat, swarthy man. “Fifty to sixty. Twenty men, twenty women, the remainder boys and girls.”

“Yes, sir.” The fat man bowed, politely smiling.

“An efficient foreman reaper, must be able to deposit as security the value of twenty hundredweights of rye. His wife, for a women’s wage, to cook for them.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I pay single fare and your commission; if the people stay till after the beet harvest their fares won’t be deducted. Otherwise …”

“Yes, sir. Oh, yes, sir.”

“And now get a move on. The train goes at twelve-thirty. Be quick. Pronto. Understand?” And the Rittmeister, a weight having been taken from his mind, nodded even toward the three figures in the background. “Get the contracts ready. I’ll be back in half an hour. I only want some luncheon.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Then everything’s settled, isn’t it?” he concluded. Something in the attitude of the other puzzled him; the submissive grin did not appear so much submissive as deceitful. “Everything’s in order?”

“Everything’s in order,” agreed the fat man, with a gleam in his eyes. “Everything will be done in accordance with the gentleman’s instructions. Fifty people—good, they’re here. Railway station, twelve-thirty—good, the train leaves. Punctually to your orders—but without the laborers.” He grinned.

“What?” the Rittmeister almost shouted, screwing up his face. “What are you saying? Speak German, man! Why without laborers?”

“Perhaps the gentleman who can give orders so perfectly will also order me where to get the people. Fifty people? Well, find them, make them, quick, pronto, presto, what?”

The Rittmeister looked more closely at his man. His first bewilderment was over, as was also his anger, now that he sensed the other was out to annoy him. He knows German well enough, he thought, as the fat man gabbled on grotesquely, but he doesn’t want to.

“And those in the background?” he asked and pointed at the three men in corduroy from whose lips the cigars were still hanging. “You are surely foremen? You come with me. New quarters, decent beds, no bugs.”

For a moment it seemed to him deplorable that he should have to advertise himself in this manner. But the harvest was at stake, and it might
rain any day. Yes, today even, for here in Berlin there was something like thunder in the air. He could no longer rely on the fat, swarthy man; he had alienated him, probably by his commandeering voice. “Well, what about it?” he asked encouragingly.

The three stood there motionless as if they had not heard a word. They were foreman reapers, the Rittmeister was sure of it. He was familiar with these struck-out jaws, the fierce but rather gloomy look of the professional nigger-driver.

The swarthy man was grinning; he did not look at his men, he was so sure of them. (Here is the street, the Rittmeister thought, and the point at which to look. I must march along.) Loudly: “Good work, good pay, piecework, good allowances. What do you say to that?” They were not listening. “And for the foreman thirty, I say thirty, good genuine paper dollars down.”

“I’ll arrange for the men,” cried the dark man.

But he was too late. The foreman reapers had moved over to the barrier.

“Take mine, sir. Men like bulls, strong, pious …”

“No, don’t take Josef’s. They’re all lazy scoundrels, won’t get up in the morning; strong with girls but slackers with work …”

“Sir, why waste time with Jablonski? He’s just out of jail for knifing a steward.”

“You dirty dog!”

A cataract of Polish words fell between them. Were they going to pull out their knives? The fat man was among them, talking, gesticulating, shouting, pushing, glaring at the Rittmeister, toward whom the third man was stealing, unnoticed.

“Good paper dollars, eh? Thirty of them? Handed over on departure? If the gentleman will be at Schlesische Bahnhof at twelve o’clock I’ll be there, too, with the people. Don’t say anything. Get away quickly. Bad people here!”

And he mingled with the others. Voices screamed. Four figures swayed to and fro, tugging at each other.

The Rittmeister was glad to find the door so near and unobstructed. Relieved, he stepped into the street.

V

Wolfgang Pagel was still sitting at the oilcloth table rocking the chair, whistling absent-mindedly his whole repertoire of soldier songs, and waiting for Frau Thumann’s enamel coffeepot.

In the meantime his mother sat at a handsome Renaissance table in a well-furnished flat in Tannenstrasse. On a yellow pillow-lace tablecloth stood
a silver coffee service, fresh butter, honey, genuine English jam—everything was there. Only, no one was sitting in front of the second cover. Frau Pagel looked at the empty place, then at the clock. Reaching for her napkin, she drew it out of the silver ring and said: “I will begin, Minna.”

Minna, the yellowish, faded creature at the door, who had been over twenty years with Frau Pagel, nodded, looked at the clock and said: “Certainly. Those who come late …”

“He knows our breakfast time.”

“The young master couldn’t forget it.”

The old lady with the energetic face and clear blue eye, from whom age had not stolen her upright bearing nor her firm principles, added after a pause: “I really thought I should see him for breakfast this morning.”

Since that quarrel at the end of which Petra, least concerned of any, had had her face slapped, Minna had daily set a place for the only son. Day after day she had had to clear away an untouched plate, and day after day her mistress had voiced the selfsame expectation. But Minna had also noticed that the repeated disappointment had not in the least diminished the old lady’s certainty that her son would appear (without herself making any advances). Minna knew that talking did not help, and so she kept silent.

Frau Pagel tapped her egg. “Well, he may come during the course of the day, Minna. What are we having for lunch?”

Minna informed her and madam approved. They were having the things he liked.

“In any case he must come soon. One day he’s sure to come to grief with that damnable gambling. A complete shipwreck! Well, he shan’t hear a word of reproach from me.”

Minna knew better, but it was no use saying so. Frau Pagel, however, was also not without intelligence nor without intuition. She turned her head sharply toward her faithful old servant and demanded: “You had your afternoon off yesterday. You went—there—again?”

“Where’s an old woman to go?” Minna grumbled. “He is my boy, too.”

Frau Pagel angrily tapped her teacup with her spoon. “He’s a very silly boy, Minna,” she said harshly.

“You can’t put old heads on young shoulders,” answered Minna, quite unmoved. “When I look back, Madam, at the silly things I did in my youth …”

“What silly things?” her mistress called out indignantly. “You didn’t do anything of the kind. No, when you talk like that you mean me, of course—and I won’t stand it, Minna.”

Minna thereupon kept silent. But when one person is dissatisfied with herself, then another person’s silence is like fuel to a fire—silence more than anything.

“Of course, I oughtn’t to have slapped her,” Frau Pagel continued warmly. “She’s only a silly little chit and she loves him—I don’t want to say like a dog its master, although that expresses it exactly. Minna, don’t shake your head. That’s it exactly … (Frau Pagel had not turned round to look, but Minna had really shaken her head.) She loves him as a woman oughtn’t to love a man.”

Frau Pagel stared furiously at her bread, put the spoon in the jam and spread it finger-thick. “To sacrifice oneself!” she said indignantly. “Yes, of course! They all like to do that. Because it’s easy, because there’s no trouble then! But to tell the painful truth, to say: ‘Wolfgang, my son, there must be an end to this gambling or you’ll never get another penny from me’—that would be true love.”

“But, madam,” said Minna with deliberation, “the child has no money she could give him, and he’s not her son, either.…”

“There!” Frau Pagel called out furiously. “There! Get out of the room, you ungrateful creature! You’ve spoiled my breakfast with your everlasting back talk and contradiction. Minna! Where are you going to? Clear away at once. Do you think I can go on eating when you annoy me like that? You know quite well how easily upset I am with my liver. Yes, take away the coffee, too. The idea of coffee! I’m upset enough as it is. The girl can be a daughter to you for all I care, but I’m old-fashioned, I don’t believe that one can be spiritually pure if before marriage …”