“I thought it would look nicer,” said Pagel, grinning. “A blank red wall would be very boring to look at, I thought. But with a cross—a cross somehow inspires contemplation.”
The masons were working away with an almost counter-revolutionary zeal, wanting to protect the cross as far as possible from any prohibition. After a moment of reflection Studmann also laughed. “You’re a cheeky scamp, Pagel,” he said. “But still, if the effect is too bad we can always paint the white stones red.… See that you get it finished soon,” he said to the masons. “Put some beef into it, understand? I suppose they can’t yet see from the Manor what it’s going to be?”
“Not yet,” they replied. “When we get to the crossbeam, could the young gentleman go away for a bit? If they send over, we’ll say we’re only doing what we’ve been told.”
“Yes, do that!” Studmann did not want any conspiracy with the men against the Manor. “Listen, Pagel,” he said. “I’m going over to the Villa now, to tell Prackwitz about this.” With a gesture embracing the Manor and the barracks: “In the meantime you will, in all circumstances, maintain the position.”
“Position will be maintained, Herr Oberleutnant!” said Pagel, clicking his heels and saluting.
Studmann, however, did not go to the Villa, but to the staff-house, having remembered that he might meet the ladies. He couldn’t possibly appear covered with perspiration; at least he ought to put on a fresh collar. And with a von Studmann it is only a step from a fresh collar to a fresh shirt. So the ex-lieutenant washed himself from head to foot in cold water—and in the meantime Fate took its course. While he was washing, disaster crossed the path to the Villa, with a beating of wings.
Old Elias had not been mistaken: his master had gone into the park. If nothing at all occurs to us any more, we still have whatever is left over from our original plans. Something like that had just occurred to Herr Geheimrat. Without hesitation, but looking around carefully out of his round, reddish, seal-like eyes, he had betaken himself to that spot in the fence where he had once stood at night. As before, he brought no tools with him but his hands. But memory is a wonderful thing; what we want to remember, we do remember. Despite the darkness of that night and the days that had since elapsed, the Geheimrat had not forgotten where the loose slat was. A pull, a little leverage, and he held it in his hand.
Puffing a little, he looked round. Again his memory worked excellently: he looked sharply at the bush in which he had once thought he saw Amanda Backs. Now, in the daylight, he recognized that it was a witch-wood bush— and no one was hiding in it. He went and thrust the slat into the middle of the bush and walked round it. The bush fulfilled all that was expected of it—the slat was invisible.
Nodding with satisfaction, the Geheimrat went in search of Attila. It was not his way to make a hole in a fence and then leave it to the geese to find, probably at the wrong time—this was the moment! The geese were, so to speak, the drop that was to fill the Rittmeister’s cup of bitterness to overflowing.
He found the geese—eighteen in all—on the meadow by the swans’ pond, moodily cropping the park’s sour grass. They greeted him with a disapproving and excited cackling. They stretched their necks, laid their heads on one side, squinted at him wickedly with their blue eyes, and hissed. But the Geheimrat knew his geese, even if they did not recognize him. These angrily hissing ladies were temporary phenomena; God’s vice-regent here on earth, in this case Frau von Teschow, delivered them annually to the cook’s knife, with the exception of three or four kept to breed. They were merely fleeting guests on the Geheimrat’s meadow; hardly were they grown up when their flesh changed into smoked breasts and salted legs.
The only one who remained, surviving generation after generation, was Attila the breeding gander, a heavy bird weighing twenty-one pounds. Proud and superior, he regarded himself as the center of creation, bit the children, fluttered angrily at the postman’s bicycle, making him fall, hated women’s legs, which of late revealed more and more of themselves from under their skirts, and snapped at them till they bled. A stern despot in his harem, absolute monarch and autocrat, he tolerated no contradiction, was inaccessible to flattery, and had only one soft spot in his goosey heart—for Geheimrat Horst-Heinz von Teschow. Two kindred souls had recognized and fallen in love with each other.
Standing apart from his foolish womenfolk, probably immersed in the consideration of goosey problems, he had not noticed the arrival of his good friend. Then, his attention having been attracted, he gazed for a moment with his pale, forget-me-not blue eyes at the noisy flock, recognized the cause of the row, and with outspread wings fluttered cackling toward the Geheimrat.
“Attila!” the latter called. “Attila!”
The geese cackled excitedly; the gander advanced in a haste that brooked no obstacle.… Struck by the powerful blows of his wings, his wives staggered aside—and nestling against the Geheimrat’s leg, neck lying on his stomach, head beating gently against his paunch, the gander softly and tenderly cackled a lot of things, announcing in every tone the unrestricted love of a friend for a friend.
With head bent, slowly coiling their necks in a wave-like movement, the flock of geese stood around.
“Attila!” said the Geheimrat, scratching the place geese cannot scratch, just above the beak which the gander, with a drowsy cackle, pressed gently against the softly heaving belly. And when the scratching finger grew sluggish, Attila pushed his head between shirt and waistcoat in a sudden adroit movement and remained thus, blissful, enjoying once again the greatest happiness on earth.
For a time the Geheimrat had to grant his furry friend such harmless pleasure. He stood in the meadow stippled with summer shade and summer sun, puffing his cigar slowly, a bearded, rosy-cheeked old man in rather sweaty clothes. A creature of this earth, he willingly granted his fellow creature the peace on his belly. “Attila!” he said soothingly from time to time. “Attila!”
And from under his waistcoat came a peaceful hissing in reply. To deceive the love of his gander would have seemed villainous to the Geheimrat; about his relatives he thought differently.
At last, however, he gently pushed his friend away. Once again he scratched the beak, then said invitingly, “Attila!” and walked off. The gander instantly followed, cackling softly and contentedly. And, as may be seen in children’s books, all the geese followed in single file. First the old laying geese, then the grown-up goslings of the spring brood, with the wretched laggards in the rear.
Thus they wandered through the summery park. An ignorant onlooker would have found it a gay spectacle; an expert, of course, an Amanda Backs, would have shaken her head in suspicion. Unfortunately at this moment Amanda Backs was occupied in detaining with her protests Herr von Studmann, who was already late; she had not wanted to be freed from the kitchen, she could do the work in addition to looking after her poultry, and she would gladly have earned the money. She needed money. But the Geheimrat had said …
So Amanda saw nothing, and at this hour there was usually no one else in the park; in the country a park becomes frequented only after dusk. Thus the procession reached the hole in the fence unseen and unobserved. The Geheimrat stepped aside, and Attila stood before the hole.…
“Nice vetch, Attila, juicy vetch and anyway they cost me nothing,” said the Geheimrat persuasively. Attila laid his head on one side and looked at his friend critically. He seemed to prefer near-by tenderness to distant and uncertain food. Quickly the Geheimrat bent down and thrust his hand through the hole, explaining: “Look, Attila, you can get through here!”
The gander approached and seized tenderly but firmly a tuft of the yellow-gray beard.
“Let go, Attila!” said the Geheimrat angrily, and tried to straighten himself. He couldn’t. Attila held tight. A twenty-one-pound gander can hold very tightly. There the Geheimrat stood, crouched awkwardly; to put it exactly, his head was lower than the end of his back, which is a position even younger men do not find comfortable for long. It can be imagined what it was like for a somewhat too full-blooded old man with a tendency to apoplexy. Softly and tenderly the gander cackled, through his nose presumably, for he did not let the beard go.
“Attila!” implored the Geheimrat.
The female geese began to inspect his bent body and his hindquarters.
“This is intolerable!” groaned the Geheimrat, the world going black before his eyes. With a jerk he straightened himself. He stood, giddy, staggering. His cheek burned like fire. Attila cackled a gentle reproach, the tuft of hair still stuck to his beak.
“Blasted animal!” growled the Geheimrat, and pushed the gander violently through the hole in the fence. Attila cackled a loud protest, but already his wives were following him. What he, who saw only his friend, was prevented by his love from seeing, his wives noticed at once—the expanse of fields they had missed so long. They spread their wings. Cackling excitedly and ever louder, they fluttered—a noisy white cloud—toward the potato allotment stretching behind the laborers’ houses.
