clothes, which could not be found, the scolding, the blows. The return to the village, with her mother’s kerchief round her hips. The mocking of the other children, the wise observations of the old people: “Look out, Kowalewski. That girl will bring you trouble some day.”
Sophie pedaled faster, ringing the bell loudly in the forest silence. She shook her head, although no swarm of horseflies now buzzed round her—she wanted to shake her thoughts away. No person can say how he has become what he is, but sometimes a piece of the way is revealed to us. Then we become angry with ourselves, find it disagreeable, shake the tormenting thoughts from our head. We’re all right as we are; it’s no fault of ours if we haven’t turned out differently. We needn’t think about that.
Faster and faster sped the bicycle; glade after glade, path after path, glided by. Sophie was not cycling to Birnbaum to see Emmi. She was cycling to the prison to visit Hans Liebschner, a lawfully condemned swindler with previous convictions. Life is no holiday; it’s an extremely deceitful business, and whoever doesn’t cheat others gets cheated himself. Sophie had no time to waste on dreams. She had to work out how she could get a visitor’s permit as Hans’s sister—without identification papers!
Her eyes had a dry, hard gleam. True, she had certified on a sheet of note-paper from the Christian Hostel that she was the cook, Sophie Liebschner, working there. But she was quite aware that this badly written and perhaps not even properly spelled document would be worthless to an official eye. From what her father had told her, Meier, the little bailiff who had run away, would have been just the right man to have given her some sort of certificate with the farm stamp on it. But there again she had been unlucky; she hadn’t been able to get hold of the fellow. And the other two, who had traveled in the train with her, they wouldn’t do a girl a favor like that, as you could see at a glance. They’d been much too polite, just like those gentlemen in a bar who are so politely cold merely to save themselves buying a lady a whisky!
Sophie’s thoughts, however, did not make her despondent. Up till now she had always had luck, and she knew very well what effect a proper glance at the proper time could have. Pretty girls always had luck.
Sophie as well, therefore. It was grand visiting day at the prison; over a hundred relatives were standing outside its iron gate. Forcing herself among them, Sophie was let in with the great rush. Warders ran to and fro, papers were examined, questions asked, and gently, gently, step by step, Sophie edged herself from the group which had not been questioned into that which had.
Then she was in the visitors’ room. On one side of the bars stood the relatives, on the other the prisoners. The talk and chatter were deafening! The two poor warders who had to supervise every word couldn’t but fulfill their duties badly. How wonderfully might Sophie now have chatted with her Hans, have said everything that she had in her heart! But of course there was no Hans Liebschner in the visitors’ room, nor could she insist on seeing him, for he was not in the list of prisoners due for visits, naturally!
But here again it proved to be good that Liebschner was a swindler—that is to say, not a violent or dogmatic person, but a cunning fox, versed in all the crafty arts—that is to say, a submissive, well-behaved prisoner, the pattern of obedience. Which was why he had become an orderly and, as orderly, had work to do in the corridors, and from the corridors could see the visitors coming. A raven’s eye is sharp: Sophie was the same Sophie. Yes, supposing Hans had not been in favor with the warder of his landing? But the steel saw had actually been found, and three bars already sawn through! To discover a thing like that in time is a feather in the cap of any warder. And this one had been commended and was therefore well disposed to his orderly—all the more because he hadn’t been able to fulfill his promise about the outside gang, since none had yet been sent out.
So Sophie was suddenly beckoned onwards by a bearded old warder. “Just come along here, Fraulein.” She was pushed into a narrow cell crammed full of dirty cordage, even bolted in; and just as she was beginning to think all sorts of things, wondering if her unauthorized entry had been discovered and if this was her punishment, the bolt rattled again and in slouched her Hans in a disgusting get-up. There were shadows under his eyes, his nose was thin—but the same mischievous smile, the same old Hans!
The warder raised his finger threateningly. “Don’t get up to any silly tricks now, children!” But he looked at Sophie with a benevolent smirk, as if he wouldn’t mind getting up to silly tricks with her himself.
Then the bolt rattled again, and she was in Hans’s arms. It was like a storm, a hurricane. She lost all sense of sight and sound. Oh, this dear good face, so close! The familiar smell! The taste of his lips! A sigh, a laugh which soon choked, a few words. “Oh, you! You! Oh, darling!” They scarcely found time to speak. “How I’ve been longing for you!”
“I’m coming out, with a harvest crew. Then I’ll make a break for it!”
“Oh—if you would come to us!”
“Where?”
“To Neulohe! I’m with my parents. Father says we need a harvest crew.”
“I’m certain to go with the next one. Can’t you put a little pressure on your people?”
“Perhaps. I’ll see. God, Hans …”
“That did me good! Six months …”
Happy and contented, Sophie walked along the rough pavements of the little town of Meienburg, having first left her cycle in a small pub. She entered the Prince of Prussia, the best hotel in the town, for lunch. There the wealthy farmers ate; as a child she had often stood before it, admiring the sign. Now she walked through the place and sat down on the terrace. The hotel was almost empty. On Sunday the farmers ate at home; there was no farmers’ union, no cattle-dealing to be used as a pretext for escaping from their families.
Sophie ate with relish everything that was brought her, and drank half a bottle of Rhine wine with it. There was some point in feeding well now—perhaps Hans would be coming to Neulohe. He must succeed! With her coffee she ordered a large glass of cognac, and leisurely smoked cigarette after cigarette. From the stream, which flowed below the terrace, came the dry wooden sound of oars in their rowlocks. The rowers could not be seen, but in the midday heat their voices were heard distinctly. “Pull a little quicker, Erna! We want to have a bathe.”
Suddenly Sophie realized that she also wanted to bathe, to bathe and lie in the sun, and roast herself. But not here! Here it was certain to be crowded with fellows. That wasn’t bathing! The ass at the next table had been goggling at her for the last half hour: strange that some men can never understand that one hasn’t been waiting precisely for them.
But she had no bathing suit with her—nor, for that matter, one at home—but a bathing suit was not a problem in Meienburg, even on Sunday. She paid, and as she went out accidentally knocked the goggling gentleman’s straw hat off his head into the cheese dish. “Oh, I’m so sorry!” she said graciously to the blushing man and hurried out.
The little needlework shop, of course, was still where it had been five years ago, ten years ago, where it had probably been ever since Meienburg was built; there where the needlework shop of Fraulein Otti Kujahn would forever be—in little Bergstrasse, directly opposite the Konditorei Koller (the Lover’s Nook). Sophie did not try the shop door. In things like that the little villages are punctilious; on a Sunday afternoon the shop door is locked. But if you go round the back there is not the slightest difficulty. Little humpy Fraulein Kujahn with the same gray hair, the same languishing pigeon-glance of ten years ago, was very pleased. She stocked bathing suits. She was also ready to sell them on a Sunday afternoon.
They were not modern—they were not those aquatic garments which reveal a different part of the anatomy at every movement and seem to consist only of open-work—as Sophie discovered with a certain regret. They were costumes which covered the body, which clothed and did not unclothe. But perhaps it was better so. Sophie had no intention of offering a spectacle to the adolescents of Neulohe. She knew the habit these young gentlemen had of spying on the bathing places on their free afternoons, in order to get a glimpse of the village girls. Sophie selected therefore a completely decent black costume with white embroidery and a minimum of open-work. She also bought a bathing cap.
The price which Otti Kujahn asked for these two things, after long hesitation (“Yes, what shall I take for them? They cost me under three marks”), corresponded perhaps to the postage of a local letter. Sophie was now of the opinion that the Kujahn needlework shop would not exist forever. At these prices Fraulein Kujahn could not survive the inflation, but would soon be sold out and starving.
The bicycle sang gently, the chain grated softly, in the afternoon silence the woods lay as if sleeping; the birds were quiet, the heather brushing the toes of her shoes swept off the dust. Something like happiness filled Sophie, a peacefulness she had not felt for a long time. The sun stood still, the day proceeded no further—her happiness remained.
Deep within the forest lay the crayfish ponds, a chain of little pools, reedy and muddy. Only in the large one
