senses.”
Herr Lobedanz nodded.
“I want to let her see what it’s like without a husband.”
Herr Lobedanz nodded again.
“She’s got to learn how useful, how indispensable I am!”
Again Herr Lobedanz nodded and then he said in his soft, almost whispering voice: “Even so, sir, I can’t take you without a deposit. We’re very poor people here in the ‘shed district’, sir, and supper from a good pub and a bottle of best brandy costs a lot of money.”
“You’ll have all the money you want tomorrow Herr Lobedanz,” I said persuasively. “I’ll go and draw some money from my bank at nine tomorrow morning.”
“No,” said my landlord, “I’m sorry, sir, I’d like to have you as a lodger, an educated man who wants to frighten his wife a bit in a gentlemanly way. We beat our wives, it’s simpler and cheaper.”
“Well, yes, yes,” I laughed, a little embarrassed, “but I don’t know whether I would come off best in a fight with my wife. I’m afraid she’s the stronger.”
I laughed again and drank.
“But since you’re so keen on a deposit, I’ll give you a ring as security.”
I took the signet ring and the wedding ring off the third finger of my right hand. I hesitated for a moment, then handed the wedding ring to Lobedanz.
“I’d like you to keep this as security till tomorrow morning, and not get rid of it.”
Herr Lobedanz took the ring from my hand.
“We’re very poor people, sir,” he said again in his whispering voice. “We’ve hardly got three marks in the house. But I could pawn the ring with a safe man I know, and we could redeem it again tomorrow afternoon.”
“All right, all right,” I said, suddenly bored and irritated by all these formalities. “But see to it that the food and the brandy gets sent over quickly, especially the brandy. You can see the bottle’s nearly empty, and a man needs to drown his sorrows, you know.”
“It will be very quick, sir,” whispered my landlord, and he shut the door. I threw myself on the bed and drank. That is how I made the acquaintance of Lobedanz, the lowest scoundrel and hypocrite I ever met in my life.
14
I had firmly resolved that night to go home, pack a case with clothes, linen, shaving things, and to take what money was in my bureau. For I really intended to live in hiding for a few weeks at Lobedanz’s. I had the idea of curing myself of the drinking habit in peace and quiet; the first day I would drink the usual amount, the following day one-third less, and so on, until in a week or two I could appear before Magda and the doctors and say “What do you want with me?”
I thought it quite possible that Magda would surprise me at my nocturnal packing, but I didn’t shrink from meeting her, no, I even wanted to. In the silence of the night, undisturbed, I would be able to tell her a few home- truths about her despicable behaviour in setting the doctors so slyly on to a man to whom, after all, she has been bound in marriage for fifteen years. She had broken off the comradeship between us, and I became more and more certain that she was only trying to have me put away, so as to get hold of my property. I was going to tell her all this to her face.
Unfortunately nothing came of my fine plan. Again, alcohol played me a dirty trick. Not that it plunged me into a stupefying dreamless sleep, as had occasionally happened before, so that I missed the proper time; no, on this occasion, I had a much worse experience: my body refused to serve me, my stomach went on strike. Though with some aversion, I had dutifully eaten part of the supper which had been brought in—it was quite nice—and afterwards I had drunk heavily. I had lain down on the bed and, in a half-sleep I was awaiting the time for my departure. Then my stomach began to heave. I was obliged to get up and vomit endlessly, in agonising pain. My whole body was covered in sweat, my hands and knees were trembling, my heart beat loudly and uncertainly as if at any moment it would stop. There were tears in my eyes, lights flickered in front of them, veils seem to float through my brain, often I was almost unconscious. At last I lay on my bed again, nearly dead with exhaustion, seized with an insane fear; was the end near? So soon, already? I hadn’t been drinking for very long, and not at all excessively. Did one become a drunkard so quickly? No, I didn’t want to die yet! I had regarded this period of drunkenness merely as a passing phase; I had been convinced that I could give it up at any time without harming myself—and now was everything to come to an end already? No, it was impossible! I would get well again, soon, perhaps by tomorrow; there must have been another reason for that gall-bitter vomiting! Surely it was something I ate for supper!
It is strange that at the worst stage of the poisoning, I had not the slightest notion of giving up alcohol. On the contrary, I anxiously avoided any thought of it. It couldn’t be the cause, I couldn’t give it up! It was my only true friend in all this abandonment and degradation. And hardly had I recovered a little, hardly had my heart and my breathing become calmer, than I reached out for the bottle again, and drank anew, to summon the dreams, to summon forgetfulness, to enter again into that sweet oblivion in which one knows neither sorrow nor joy, in which one has neither past nor future.
For a while the schnaps did its duty: I lay there relaxed and faintly happy. Then the vomiting caught me again, an even more agonising retching sickness, since there was nothing left in my stomach but a few mouthfuls of schnaps.
So I passed the night between drinking and vomiting. In the end I was concentrating all my will and all my strength just on keeping back the vomit for as long as possible, so that the alcohol would have a few minutes to work its way through the mucous membranes of my stomach into my body, before a new bout of retching drove it out. It was such a pity about that lovely schnaps!
At last, towards morning, I fell into a restless exhausted sleep through which flitted the images of wild agonising dreams.
Lobedanz woke me up. He stood in the doorway and remarked with a cough that it was nine o’clock, should he bring the coffee? I told him indignantly that I didn’t want coffee, he was to bring me another bottle at once.
Without taking any notice of my words, he began tidying up the wild disorder of my room. He opened the windows, and the fresh air and sunshine streamed in. Exhausted, weak, defenceless, I blinked into the light.
“Hurry up, Lobedanz,” I angrily implored. “I’ve emptied this bottle. See that I get a new one straight away!”
“You wanted to go to your bank at nine, sir,” Lobedanz reminded me in his soft, whispering way. “It’s nine now.”
“I can’t go now,” I said angrily. “You can see that I’m ill, Lobedanz. I’ll go tomorrow, or this afternoon. Now fetch me some schnaps.”
“Then I’ll have to sell the ring, sir,” said Lobedanz. “The pawnbroker would only lend me fifteen marks on it. If I sell it, I’ll get twenty-five marks.”
“Twenty-five marks!” I cried indignantly. “That ring cost ninety marks new!”
“It’s an old ring now, and the pawnbroker’s got to live, sir,” whispered Lobedanz impassively. “If I can sell the ring for twenty-five marks, the brandy will soon be here.”
“And how can fifteen marks be gone already?” I cried in exasperation. “One supper and a bottle of schnaps, that doesn’t come to fifteen marks!”
“And the room-rent, sir?” asked Lobedanz. “Isn’t a poor man like me to have anything? By the way, I’ll have to charge you twelve marks for the room, sir.… I know, I know,” he said, and again he cracked his joints in a particularly loud and disgusting way, “I said seven marks and I’m a man of my word. But you make a lot of work, sir, and you’re ruining the room, and you go to bed in your clothes and shoes and that spoils the sheets. It all costs money, and we’re very poor people …”
“You’re a lot of thieves!” I shouted furiously. “You can go to the devil! I’m moving!”
“Very good sir,” said Lobedanz, and went away.
But of course he was the winner. After a while I got up, tormented by thirst, and went groaning down the stairs, calling him. (He let me call for a long time). And I cajoled him, and gave him permission to sell my wedding ring for twenty-five marks—and then, at last, after a long, long agonising wait, I got a new bottle of brandy, and
