Wolf Among Wolves (46 page)

So she waited patiently or impatiently, according to her thoughts from one moment to another, until—and not without relief—she at last saw the visitor climbing out of the window. The relief was derived from the fact that this proved that Hans could not care much about the woman; she had no power over him if he was too lazy to unlock the front door for her. The woman, too, did not waste much time on an affectionate farewell or look round, but steered straight for the corner of the house in the farmyard.

That’s that, thought Amanda Backs, and followed. The bailiff’s windows were thereupon shut rather noisily, which annoyed her, for a shut window on such a warm night could only signify that Herr Meier didn’t want any more visitors—which Amanda took personally.

“Wait for me, you Hartig woman!” she called.

“You, Mandy?” asked the coachman’s wife, peering at her. “How you frightened me! Well, good night! I must go. I’m in a hurry.”

“Let me come with you,” said Amanda, and hurried with her across the farmyard toward the coachman’s dwelling. “I’m going the same way as you.”

“Are you?” asked Frau Hartig and walked more slowly. “Yes, a girl like you on her legs from morn till night—madam won’t get another like you so easily.”

“I don’t put my legs up as easily as some people,” said Amanda, with meaning. “Well, get along; your husband will be waiting for you.”

But Frau Hartig stopped. They were in the middle of the farmyard. To the right were the pigsties in which there was still an occasional rustling (the sty doors stood open because of the heat); on the left was the midden. The two women, however, stood so that Amanda was facing the coachman’s dwelling at one end of the farmyard, while Frau Hartig looked toward the other end, where she could see a light burning in the bailiff’s window—and, of course, it annoyed her that he should have turned on the light after all.

“Besides, Mandy isn’t the right way to address me,” said Amanda Backs after a longish pause.

“I can call you Fräulein Backs, if you prefer it,” said Frau Hartig submissively.

“Yes,
Fräulein,”
was the retort. “I’m not yet a Frau—I can go with whom I like.”

“So you can,” acknowledged the coachman’s wife. “Any master or mistress would be glad to have a poultry maid like you.”

“Shall we have it out now or shan’t we?” cried Amanda and stamped.

The coachman’s wife remained silent.

“I can talk to your husband if you like,” said Amanda threateningly. “I’ve heard that he’s already wondering how you get such varied children.”

“Varied children,” echoed Frau Hartig with a forced laugh. “How strange you are, Mandy.”

“You’re not to say Mandy. I don’t want to hear it from you.”

“I can say Fräulein Backs if you like.”

“Then say it—and besides, it’s a shame for a married woman to take away a girl’s young man.”

“I haven’t taken him away from you, Amanda,” pleaded Frau Hartig.

“Yes, you have. And one would think that a woman with eight children has got her share.”

“Lord, Amanda,” said the coachman’s wife, conciliatory, “you don’t know anything about what it’s like to be married. You imagine it quite different from what it is.”

“Don’t talk rubbish, Hartig,” cried Amanda threateningly. “You can’t fool me that way.”

“When one’s got a steady man,” explained Frau Hartig, “one thinks all that’s over. But you get that queer feeling again …”

“What queer feeling? Don’t talk nonsense.”

“God, Amanda, I’m not talking nonsense. You must know what it’s like when you feel as if you had a prickling all over your body, and no peace whatever you do, and everything’s got to be done in a blazing hurry, as if you
hadn’t a moment to spare—and then you find that you’ve been standing about with a swill pail in your hand for a quarter of an hour without knowing where you are!”

“I’ve nothing to do with swill,” said Amanda Backs cuttingly. But actually she was no longer feeling so hostile; she was giving due attention to what she was hearing.

“No, of course not,” assented Frau Hartig.

“And you’ve got your husband whenever you feel like that. So you oughtn’t to put a spoke in my wheel.”

“But, Amanda, that’s just what you can’t foretell,” exclaimed Frau Hartig eagerly.

“What can’t you foretell?”

“That your husband can’t help you in that at all. If I’d known as a young girl what I know today, I’d never have married, you can believe me.”

“Is that really so?” meditated Amanda Backs. “Don’t you like your husband at all?”

“Lord, yes, of course—he’s quite nice in his way. And quite steady, too. But I don’t like him that way anymore. That queer feeling stopped as far as he was concerned a long time ago.”

“So you like—Hans—Bailiff Meier—much more?”

“God, Amanda, what are you thinking about? I’ve told you already that I’m not taking him away from you.”

Amanda’s voice was thick with rage. “So he was the first to start—I mean, Meier?”

Frau Hartig remained silent for a while, thinking it over. In the end, however, she decided in favor of the truth. “No, Amanda, I won’t tell you a story. I wanted him first—and a man feels it. And then he was a bit drunk …”

“So he was drunk, too! But I don’t quite understand—if you don’t like him at all?”

“Well, you know, Amanda, I don’t understand it either, but when one has that queer feeling, and at the same time can’t help being inquisitive …”

“But you mustn’t!” Amanda prepared to end the scene with a tremendously severe lecture which, to tell the truth, would have turned out milder than at first intended. When all was said and done, she understood Frau Hartig quite well.… But she broke off.

Three persons were walking across the farmyard in Indian file—a man, a woman, then another man.…

They walked through the farmyard in the darkness without a word or a sound—and Amanda Backs and Frau Hartig gaped.

When the first man had approached the two women, he stopped and said in a peremptory voice: “Who’s standing there?” At the same time there shone on them the light of a flashlight held by the woman in the middle. (The moon had not risen very high yet and the stable buildings were still intercepting her light.)

“Amanda,” said Amanda Backs calmly, while the coachman’s wife automatically shielded her face with her hands as if she had been caught in some criminal offense.

“Hurry up and get to bed,” said the man in front, and noiselessly and stealthily the three figures passed by the women, crossed the farmyard and disappeared round the corner of the bailiff’s house where, as Frau Hartig saw, the light had gone out during her dispute with Amanda.

“Who was that?” she asked, dumbfounded.

“I think it was the young Fräulein,” replied Amanda thoughtfully.

“The young Fräulein in the dead of night with two men!” cried Hartig. “I’ll never believe it.”

“The man behind might have been the servant. The one in front I don’t know. He isn’t from here—I never heard that voice before.”

“Extraordinary!” said Hartig.

“Extraordinary!” said Backs.

“What business is it of his if we stand here?” asked Amanda loudly. “He’s nothing to do with the place and yet he orders us to bed.”

“That’s it,” echoed Frau Hartig. “And the young Fräulein allows him to order us about.”

“Where did they go to?” Amanda stared across the farmyard.

“To the Manor?” suggested Hartig.

“No. Why should they go to the back door? The young Fräulein needn’t enter the Manor by the back way,” snapped Amanda.

“Then there’s only the bailiff’s …” suggested Frau Hartig.

“That’s what I’m thinking,” Amanda frankly admitted. “But what are they after, behaving so strangely, one behind the other, and so quietly—as if they wanted nobody to see them?”

“Yes, it was strange,” agreed Frau Hartig. And added: “Shall we go and have a look?”

“You’d better get back to your husband,” said Amanda Backs severely. “If anyone is having a look in the staff-house, it’s me.”

“But I should like to know so much, Mandy.…”

“You’re to call me Fräulein Backs. Besides, what will your husband say to your being away so long? And your children.”

“Pooh!” said Frau Hartig indifferently.

“And what’s more, you’re to leave my Hans alone. Another time I shan’t be so easy-going. If I catch you again …”

“You can be sure you won’t, Amanda. I swear it! But you’ll tell me tomorrow, won’t you?”

“Good night,” said Amanda Backs curtly and went toward the dark staff-house.

The coachman’s wife stood for a moment there, looking enviously after her. She was thinking how lucky such young unmarried girls were and how little they knew it. Then she sighed and went toward her home, to her scuffling children and nagging husband.

II

Frau von Teschow, after the shock of that evening’s devotions, felt a craving for peace and quietness. She wished to see and hear nothing more, only to go to bed as quickly as possible.

Supported on one side by Fräulein Jutta von Kuckhoff, on the other by Elias, she staggered upstairs into the big mahogany bedroom with its three windows. Fräulein von Kuckhoff undressed her trembling, tearful friend, and at last Frau von Teschow lay in her wide mahogany bed, looking no bigger than a child, with her little wizened bird’s head, a white nightcap over her thin hair and a loosely knitted bed-jacket round her shoulders.

“Oh, my Lord and my God, Jutta,” she wailed, “what a world! God forgive me for passing judgment—but how shameless the young people are! What will Lehnich say? And Superintendent Kolterjan?”

“Everything is good for something, Belinde,” said Jutta sagely. “Don’t agitate yourself any more. Are you still feeling cold?”

Yes, Frau von Teschow was still cold. Fräulein von Kuckhoff rang for Elias, who received an order to get two hot-water bottles from the kitchen.

“Oh, Elias!” The servant was just about to leave.

“Yes, madam?”

“Tell the cook to make me a cup of peppermint tea. Yes—and very strong. And with plenty of sugar. Yes. Oh, God!”

“Very good, madam.”

“Oh, Elias!”

“Yes, madam?”

“Perhaps she’d better make me some mulled wine, not peppermint tea. Peppermint tea makes one belch so. But no water, only red wine. Red wine already contains water. Oh, God! And a little nutmeg. And
one
clove. And plenty of sugar. Elias, you’ll see to it for me, won’t you?”

“Certainly, madam.”

“And, Elias, one moment! She’s to put a dash of rum in it—I feel so ill. Not much, but naturally one must be able to taste it. Not too little, Elias, you understand?”

Elias, bald and getting on for seventy, understood quite well. He was going away when a faint call from the invalid reached him in the doorway. “Oh, Elias!”

“Yes, madam?”

“Please come nearer.… You can inquire in the kitchen—but not as if it came from me, quite casually …”

Elias waited. Madam must be feeling very ill; she could hardly talk. It would be better if she had her mulled wine quickly, but he couldn’t give the order yet. Frau von Teschow still had something on her mind.

“Elias—do ask—but without attracting attention—whether she—you know whom I mean—has gone to bed. Yes, do ask, but without attracting attention.”

For a while the invalid still felt very poorly, and Fräulein von Kuckhoff had plenty to do, what with proverbs and advice, or warming the cold hands between hers, or stroking the aching forehead. Then the hot-water bottles arrived and the mulled wine smelling strongly of rum—its fragrance alone revived Frau von Teschow. Sitting up in bed, she received, with compressed lips, the message that “she” had gone out.

“Thank you, Elias. I’m very sad. Good night. I don’t suppose I shall sleep.”

The old servant assumed a suitably troubled expression on hearing this farewell, wished madam good night, and sat down in the anteroom. He must wait for the Geheimrat, to take off his boots. Then his duty would be ended.

But the waiting was not too tiresome for him; he had his own interests. He pulled out a thick pocketbook, formerly brown, now almost black, and a long list with many numbers, names and words. A packet of brown bank notes came out of the pocketbook, the list was unfolded, and he started comparing, marking and writing.

That evening was a bad one for his old mistress, but a good one for him. He had that day succeeded in buying up five prewar brown red-stamped 1,000-mark notes.

Like many Germans, particularly elderly people, faced by the monstrous fantasy of inflation, Elias, too, refused to believe in a general devaluation. A man who had been saving assiduously for more than fifty years had to retain something; it was impossible that the whirlpool should swallow up everything. And it did not require much thought to convince him that “real money” from prewar times would remain “real.” This was already borne out by the statement on the notes themselves that they were redeemable at the Reichsbank for gold.
And gold was “real.” Money which had been issued during or after the war was not, of course, “real.” It was the war which had started the fraud of “linen” shirts made of paper and “leather” shoes of cardboard!

When old Elias first noticed the signs of inflation, he began to buy 1,000-mark notes. There were always people who could not think so deeply as he did. Certainly he had heard that the Reichsbank in Berlin no longer redeemed these notes for gold; but that, of course, was only bluff, intended for fools. The Reichsbank wanted to call in its own notes cheaply—to save its scanty gold. Elias, however, being no fool, did not hand over his notes cheaply to the Reichsbank. He waited; he could afford to wait; one day he would receive gold, as was plainly stated on the notes.

Thus it started—in the beginning as a capital investment. Then Elias found that this investment had its own science; in his old age, without knowing it, he discovered the delights of collecting.

There were so many kinds of brown 1,000-mark notes! Of course, one learned at the very outset that only notes with the red stamp were valid. Those with the green stamp originated during the war or postwar times and should not be collected. But there were notes with one red stamp and some which bore two red stamps; bank-notes with no fiber strips and notes with a blue fiber strip on the left side and others with the strip on the right side. There were notes bearing eight signatures, some with nine, and some even with ten. There were notes with the series letters A, B, C, D, followed by seven and eight figures. Yet it was the same brown 1,000-mark note, pictures and text never changing—but with what a multitude of variations!