Wolf Among Wolves

the mirror and combed his hair. “Do you want a comb, too?” he called. “Here!”

He put his jacket on, washed his hands. “Let’s go!” he said, swinging himself through the window. “We can leave the light burning. I’ll be back soon.”

The night was mild and quiet, a perfect night for walking, and after their hands had twice brushed against each other he took hold of hers, and thus they continued their way, hand in hand, like two good friends.

“You know what, Vi?” said Pagel. “I want to tell you what I have just discovered.… As a matter of fact, it isn’t fitting to talk about such a thing to a young girl, but who else would tell you? Your parents certainly won’t.”

“Oh, them!” said Vi contemptuously. “They think I still believe in the stork!”

“There, you see! Absolute stick-in-the-muds. What can they be thinking of? A young girl can’t help getting ideas into her head with the popular songs nowadays. Well, listen—but how am I to tell you, my child? Damn difficult to speak about such things; one gets embarrassed, and angry at being embarrassed.…”

“Your discovery!” she reminded him.

“Oh, yes. Well, I’ve already told you I belong to another woman, but I assure you that a minute ago I didn’t know it.”

“Well!” cried Vi, stopping. “That’s a nice thing to say to me.”

“Nonsense, Vi; there’s no need to get annoyed. It’s no insult to you. You are young and pretty—and so on. Well, it’s like this: I didn’t know I belonged to the other woman. In the past, before I knew her, I just flirted around, and I thought it was always that way and always would be: one had a row, and then got another girl. Finished with one, on with the next! Girls are no different either,” he said a little shamefacedly, to excuse his crude male standpoint. “Just remember the song: ‘If I see a new man at the next street corner.’ ”

“It’s quite true; if it isn’t the one, then it’s the other!” agreed Violet.

“There, you see! That’s precisely the catch. It isn’t true. When I started with Peter—I always called my girl- friend Peter—as a matter of fact, her name was Petra.…”

“Queer name!” said Vi disapprovingly.

“Well, Violet isn’t exactly so charming either,” said Pagel crossly, but recovered himself at once. “However, that’s a matter of taste. I like the name Peter immensely. Anyway, after I’d been living with her for a year—”

“Did you really live with her?”

“Of course! What else? No one finds anything strange in that today. Well, I thought it was the same as with the previous girls; this one was nicer and that was why it was lasting a little longer. And when it did come to an end, just before I came here, I thought: All right! No use crying over spilt milk; I’ll soon get another. You know,” said Pagel pensively, “when you really come to think of it, that’s a low-down way of looking at things.… But what is one to do? Everyone talks like that, everyone acts like that, and so you think it is true.”

“It is true!” declared Vi defiantly.

“Not at all. It’s a lot of tommy-rot! That’s my discovery! I’ve been running around here in Neulohe for weeks now, and so far I’ve found it quite pleasant, but I haven’t had a real kick out of it.… In the past, I only had to wake up to be thankful merely that I was here, completely without any particular reason. Now I think, oh another bloody day. Oh well, on with you shirt—the sooner it’s used up.…”

“Just how I feel,” said Vi. “Everything bores me, too.”

“The same disease, my lady!” cried Pagel. “I’ll give you the symptoms exactly. No more enthusiasm, no more fun, and you don’t feel so fit, either.”

“I’ll tell you something,” said Violet importantly. “I read it. You’ve simply got abstinence-phenomena— especially after having lived with her.”

“Well, I’m blessed!” cried Wolfgang Pagel. “That’s pretty good for your age, Fraulein!” He began to feel misgivings. Was it right for him to tell such a young girl, precisely this young girl, of his discovery? But if she were really what her remark led him to believe, she would not have said it! Really depraved persons try to conceal their depravity. “No,” he said. “There are enough girls in the village, but I have discovered that there is not another girl at every corner. Or rather, it is another. But one is always looking for the same one; only she can make you happy. And you, too, are looking for the same one.”

She thought for a while. “I don’t know. I don’t understand it. I’m so restless, it keeps urging me on. And just now when I looked in at your window I felt as if it didn’t matter who it was, anyone could give me peace.”

“I,” said Pagel, “I have only just managed to understand it. If I see a girl, no matter how much she appeals to me, I have to compare her at once with Peter, and then I know she means nothing.”

“Do you understand it?” asked Vi, scarcely paying any attention to him. “I can’t ask anybody about such a thing. Not my parents, no one. I think of it all day, and at night I dream about it. Sometimes I think it will drive me mad. When my parents are out I creep into Papa’s room and look in the encyclopedia. From that, and from reading Rader’s book, it sounds as if it were all only the body. And often I feel it must be right, and I become sad. And at other times I say to myself: It can’t be true.”

“Of course it isn’t only the body. That’s just a silly idea people have got into their heads. If it was only the body, then everyone would suit everybody else, and yet you’ve only to look at other people to know that it can’t be so.”

“You are right,” she said. “But—perhaps several people suit several other people? Perhaps a lot? Just not all. Of course not all.”

“I now think, only one! I’m frightfully glad I’ve discovered that.”

“Herr Pagel,” she said softly.

“Yes?”

“I would very much have liked—before—to have gone into your room.”

He said nothing.

“I know it sounds horribly bad of me to say so, but it’s true,” she said defiantly. “I have to lie to everybody, even to Fritz, so to you I want to be able to tell the truth for once.”

“You’d have probably had a terrible recovery,” he said cautiously. “And me too.”

“Tell me,” she began again. “Before, at your window—were you like that because I was only fifteen, and because a man would be a scoundrel to meddle with me?”

“No!” he said astounded. “I didn’t think of that at all.”

“You see! Then my Lieutenant isn’t necessarily a scoundrel either.”

She had stopped. They often stopped on this path through the village. It was after eleven o’clock, and everyone was asleep at this hour during harvest time. She’d let go of his hand and he knew she wanted to say something.

“Well?” he asked.

“I would ever so much like to go back with you again,” she said haltingly, and yet with a desperate, imploring obstinacy.

“No, no.” His voice was quiet.

She threw her arms round his neck, she pressed him to her, she laughed and wept in one breath, she smothered him with her kisses, she wanted to seduce him … But everything went cold within him. He didn’t push her away, but held her loosely in his arms so that she didn’t fall over. He no longer forgot that she was still half a child. His mouth remained cold, and his blood, too. There was no flame anymore. But out of the darkness emerged the picture of the other girl, the unprotected one, no favored daughter, no heiress. Not at all! There’s something else, he thought suddenly, shattered and more shattered, upset now and gripped, it’s possible to have been through dirt and to have experienced bad things without becoming either dirty or bad. She … she had loved me, and was pure—but I didn’t know it! And everything she’d told him about illness and being on the game seemed not to matter. It wasn’t true! While all this was passing fleetingly through his head, her kisses and caresses pressed ever more upon him.

And Violet—I wish she’d leave off! he thought in disgust. But her own caresses seemed to make her more and more foolish, more and more mad. She moaned softly, she seized his hand and pressed it to her breast again.… I hope I won’t have to get rough with her, he thought.

Then steps sounded, very near.… At once she let go of him, and glided to the nearest fence, where she stopped with her face turned away from the village street.… Pagel, too, half turned away.

And Herr von Studmann, the eternal nursemaid—this time without knowing it—walked past. He seemed to peer at them through the darkness; yes, he even raised his hat. “Good evening!”

Pagel mumbled something, and from the fence came a sound. Was it laughing? Was it weeping? The steps