During this time she constantly kept near me. Not that she would walk with me to the office, but five or ten minutes later she would appear without fail. The running of the house was left entirely in Else’s hands. Naturally this supervision had not the slightest effect on me, I did as I liked, that is to say, I drank when I wanted to. From my customary small nips I had passed on to taking long pulls out of the bottle. I always kept a bottle in my desk at the office and another in the corner of the bathroom cupboard at home. I enjoyed smuggling these bottles in under Magda’s eyes, as it were, in my brief-case or even in my trousers pocket covered by my jacket. Whenever I replenished my store, I experienced a real feeling of happiness, as if I had grown richer. At the very slightest sign of thirst I could take a drink. At home in the bathroom it was simple enough, but in the office, which Magda shared with me, there were difficulties sometimes. I would sit for several minutes, turning over in my mind some pretext to send her outside. Once, when I couldn’t think of anything, right in her presence I went as far as to set the uncorked bottle on the floor—the desk hid me from sight—and then I dropped my india-rubber and started fussily to look for it, ending up on all fours under the arch of my desk, where, delighted at my own cleverness, I sent a considerable amount of cognac gurgling down my throat.
I changed my mind almost hourly about the extent to which Magda could see through me. As a rule, I was firmly convinced that she guessed nothing, but at other times, when I was bad-tempered and irritable, I was almost certain that she was completely aware of what I was up to. Sometimes I would moodily pace up and down the office, constantly passing Magda’s place; then I was evil, as I called it, not for any special reason, not even on account of Magda, but I was just evil, as downright bad and wicked as a man can be, that’s how evil I was, and I was looking for a pretext to start quarrelling with her. In this quarrel I wanted to find out for certain whether she knew all or nothing, and if she knew all, then I wanted to drop the last pretence of decorum. Right in the presence of my neat, sober, efficient wife, I wanted to get blind raving drunk, to put my feet up on the desk, to sing coarse and dirty songs and use obscene expressions. What utter satisfaction to drag her down into the filth with me, to make her see: this is the one you used to love, and this is what your love has made of him.…
I paced up and down even more rapidly, I no longer felt ashamed, I threw her fierce challenging glances, and then, just before I broke out, she always got up and left the office. But I stared after her, I stared furiously at the brown grained door, I clenched my fists, I ground my teeth. “Run away again, you coward. But that’s what you’ve made of me, you and your efficiency!” Finally I sat down at my desk again, had a good drink, and grew tired and gentle.
If I said that I only went on working from force of habit, that is not quite correct—one should not hide one’s light under a bushel. Through the alcohol, I lost much of my dignified reserve, I could gossip far more freely with my country clients, we slapped each other on the back, told jokes—always looking round to make sure Magda was nowhere about—and thus I managed to bring off a number of unusually advantageous deals. I now liked to do something that I had never done before, something for which I had considered myself too dignified and my firm too respectable; I would go with my country customers into some little saloon, and there, over a scarred lime-wood table on which our glasses left wet rings, we talked a great deal, drank still more, and often I managed to buy at most advantageous prices from my half-drunken clients. When I got back to the office again and notified Hinzpeter of these transactions so that he could enter them into the books, I noticed the looks which this dry little adding- machine exchanged with my wife, but I only laughed.
However, one morning, after a deal in which I had properly soaked the bailiff of a large farm and had talked him into selling me a whole truckload of peas at half the regular market price, well, that morning I heard the sound of excited conversation in the yard, and when I went to the window I saw the bailiff, sober now, talking wildly to my wife and Hinzpeter. I stared through the glass for quite a while, and thought to myself: “Yes, go on talking, be as sober as you like, but you can’t talk away that signature you put on the deal last night!”
Now Magda spoke and he nodded and shook his head and stamped his foot and suddenly he looked across to me and must have seen me behind the glass and, would you believe it, the fellow raised his arm and shook his fist at me, in front of my wife and Hinzpeter, and shouted a term of abuse, that sounded something like “Old swindler!” I waited and waited for Magda to turn the insolent fellow out of the yard, but she only spoke quietly to him and after a while the bailiff let his fist drop and they resumed their discussion. I was disgusted at my wife’s spinelessness, and after a while, as they still went on talking, I sat down at my desk, opened a certain compartment and fortified myself. After a further lapse of time, during which I had sat thinking of nothing, the door opened and Magda came in, looking very pale, a brief-case in her hand. She put the brief-case on the desk, and started to rummage about among the papers, otherwise it was perfectly quiet in our office, and the alcohol went gently around inside me and made me feel peaceful and contented. But suddenly Magda dropped the papers, let her head fall on to the desk and burst wildly into tears. I was perfectly helpless, had no idea what to do, and anyway in my present agreeable condition I was much too lethargic to do anything. I just said rather feebly: “What’s the matter? Do calm yourself, Magda. I’m sure it’s not as bad as all that!”
But she raised her head and started at me with streaming eyes and cried: “It’s too bad! It’s not enough that you’re blind drunk every day, you have to bring the firm into disrepute! Everybody’s saying that we’re not to be trusted any more, and that we’re out to cheat people …”
“Halt, stop, Magda,” I said slowly, and suddenly I was pleased that things had come to a head at last, and I was determined to spare her nothing.
“Halt, stop, Magda,” I said. “Not too much at a time! As far as being blind drunk every day is concerned, I’d like to ask you whether you’ve ever seen me stagger about or heard me stammer? I quite admit I take a little drink now and then, but I can stand it. It helps me to think clearer. People who can’t stand alcohol should avoid it. But that’s not me. Look,” I said slowly, and opened that certain compartment in my desk, “here we have a bottle of brandy that was still full at nine o’clock this morning, and now about a third is gone, a good third, let’s say. But am I staggering about? Can’t I manage my limbs? Am I muddled in the head? I’m ten times clearer than you! I wouldn’t allow any jumped-up muck-ox to call my wife a swindler. I’d knock his teeth in!” I shouted suddenly, and then continued more calmly. “But you went on talking to him, and calmed him down, and if I know you and that frightened old hen Hinzpeter, you either washed out that deal with the peas or else raised the price.”
I looked at her ironically.
“Of course we did,” she cried, and now she dried her tears, and looked at me without love or affection. “Of course we did. We’ve cancelled the deal, but we’ve lost a good client for ever.”
“Is that so?” I answered, still more ironically. “You’ve cancelled the deal. Of course, I’m just the lowest office boy here, and what I put my name to is just a scrap of paper! I’ll tell you one thing, Magda. If Mr Bailiff Schmidt of the Fliederhof doesn’t fulfil his agreement to the last hundredweight, I’ll summons him, and I’ll win my case. Because an agreement’s an agreement, any lawyer will tell you that. And if he has accepted my low offer, that’s his fault, not mine. I didn’t make him drunk, but he tried to make me drunk, and if he fell into his own trap, it’s not my fault. And, Magda,” I said, and now I got up from my chair, “I’d have you know that I’m the boss here, and if agreements are going to be cancelled, I’m to be asked, and no one else. It doesn’t suit me that you play yourself up here, and try to ride roughshod over me, with all this talk about being blind drunk when I’m as sober as an eel in the water and ten times more clever and more efficient than you are. I’m the boss here, and you’re not going to push me around. Get back to your pots and pans, I won’t interfere with you there. I didn’t ask you to come here, but now I’m asking you to go.”
I had been speaking very seriously and deliberately, and while I was speaking it had become clearer and clearer to me that I was right in every respect, and she was wrong. Now I sat down again.
Magda had been looking at me very attentively while I was speaking, as if she wanted to lip-read every word I said. Now that I had finished, she said: “I can see it’s no use talking to you any more, Erwin. You have lost all sense of right and wrong. The Count had told the bailiff that he would lose his job if this drunken agreement wasn’t cancelled at once, and you would be summoned for fraud.…”
“Let him try!” I cried ironically. “Of course, you’re impressed by a Count, just because he calls himself blue- blooded. But I don’t care that much!”
I snapped my fingers.
“Let him summon me! He’ll soon find out his mistake!”
“Yes,” cried Magda again, “it’s all the same to you whether your good name gets dragged through the mud in court. Unfortunately I’m forced to realise that now. But I give up talking to you about it. Schnaps has destroyed all sense of justice in you. But I would like to ask you something else, Erwin.”
“Go on, then,” I answered sullenly, but I was very much on the alert, for I anticipated that nothing good was coming. She took a deep breath and looked fixedly at me, then she said.
