could see into a room occupied by girls. It was not permissible for the lavatory next to the barracks to be used by villagers—women, for instance. It was likewise not permissible for women to let themselves be seen near the gang at work; it might excite the men.
There was no end to it. Yet this potbellied rascal made life damned easy for himself. He usually left the supervision of the gang to his subordinates, the four warders, and sat almost the whole day in his barracks, drawing up lists in a self-important manner, or writing reports to the prison administration, or striding restlessly through the rooms, pulling every bed to pieces, for inspection. A spoon handle from which a prisoner had made himself a pipe cleaner aroused him to intense thought. What could it signify? A pipe cleaner, of course; but whoever could make that could also make a skeleton key! And he inspected every lock, every iron bar, every socket. Then he strode to the closet, lifted up the lavatory seat, and looked down to see if there was only toilet paper or perhaps the torn bits of a letter there.
But most of the time he sat outside the barracks in the sun, twiddling his thumbs over his fat belly, eyes half-closed, thinking. The people who saw him sitting there so comfortable and sleepy laughed at him contemptuously. For in the country it is a shame for any healthy man to laze during the harvest. Everyone is needed; there are not enough hands.
But it must be admitted that the principal warder was not daydreaming in the sun; he actually was thinking. He thought uninterruptedly of his fifty prisoners. He recalled their sentences, their crimes, their ages, their relations with the world, how much time each had still to serve. He examined their characters man by man, he thought of incidents in the prison, trifling events which, however, vividly revealed what a man was capable of. When the men ate, rested, talked, slept, he observed them. He noticed who spoke to whom; he noticed friendships, hostilities. And as a result of his observations and reflections there was a continuous redistribution; enemies were placed together, friendships were torn asunder. Those who hated each other had to sleep in neighboring beds. Continually Marofke changed the order of sitting at table; he decided who should work by himself, whom the warders must always keep their eyes on.
And the prisoners hated their Marofke like the plague; the warders, to whom he gave endless trouble, cursed him behind his back. At the slightest contradiction he went scarlet, his fat belly shook, his hanging chops trembled. “I make you responsible for it, warder!” he shouted. “You have sworn an oath to do your duty!”
“These fault-finders always exist!” said Studmann with disgust. “It’s best to let them alone. Even God wouldn’t do anything right for them!”
“No!” said Pagel. “This time you are wrong. He is a really cunning fox. And efficient.”
“Now I ask you, Pagel!” said the irritated Studmann. “Have you ever seen this man doing regular duty like his colleagues? Yes, sit in the sun and think out new complaints, that’s all he can do. Unfortunately, I can’t say anything to the fellow; he’s subject only to the prison authorities. But you can be certain if I were his superior I’d give that fat fellow a bit of exercise!”
“Very efficient,” Pagel had persisted. “And cunning. And diligent. Well, you’ll see.”
Yes, Pagel was the only one who believed in the merits of this unbearable buffoon, and it was probably because of this that the two got on well together.
That morning, before riding out to the field, Pagel had paid the principal warder a short visit. Herr Marofke was very susceptible to such courtesies. He was sitting at his table, his face red, staring at a letter which the postman had probably just brought him. Pagel could see that there was a storm in the offing. “Well, any news from the western front, chief?” he asked.
The little man jumped to his feet so suddenly that his chair fell over with a crash. Slapping the letter, he cried: “Yes, news, but not good news! Rejected—my petition to be relieved is rejected!”
“Did you want to leave us?” said Pagel, astonished. “I didn’t know that.”
“Me leave? Nonsense! I wouldn’t let myself be relieved of such a difficult post. Me a shirker? No, never have been—people can say what they like about me. No.” He was calmer. “I can tell you about it—you’ll keep your mouth shut. I made a request that five men should be relieved because they no longer seem safe to me. And the pen- pushers in the office have rejected it—they say my request has no grounds! They have to have a murdered warder in their office before they have their grounds. Idiots!”
“But everything is quite peaceful,” said Pagel soothingly. “I haven’t noticed the slightest thing. Or did anything happen last night?”
“You also think that something must happen first,” growled the principal warder sullenly. “If anything happens in a prison gang, young man, then it is already too late. But I don’t blame you for that; you’ve no experience, and you know nothing about convicts.… Even my colleagues don’t see anything—only this morning they said again that I had a bee in my bonnet—but better to have a bee in your bonnet than be a night owl that sees nothing by day.”
“But what in heaven’s name is wrong?” asked Pagel, surprised at so much sullen rage. “What have you found, officer?”
“Nothing!” said the principal warder dully. “No note, no skeleton key, no money, no weapon—nothing to indicate escape or revolt. But it stinks of it. I’ve been smelling it for days. I notice things like that. Something is going on.”
“But why? What makes you think so?”
“I’ve been in prison over twenty-five years,” confessed Herr Marofke, and saw nothing objectionable in saying so. On the contrary! “I know my men. During the whole of my time of service three have escaped. For two of them I was not responsible, and as for the third, I had only been in service for six months—one doesn’t know anything in that time. But today I do know something, and I swear to you—those five have got something on, and until I get them out of my gang, my gang won’t be clean!”
“Which five?” Pagel had the impression that the principal warder was imagining things.
“I made a request for the following men to be relieved,” said Marofke solemnly. “Liebschner, Kosegarten, Matzke, Wendt, Holdrian.”
“But those are just our pleasantest, most intelligent and handiest men! Except for old Wendt—he’s a bit daft.”
“They’ve only got him in it as a safety valve. He’s to be their scapegoat if there’s any danger. Wendt is their forfeit, as it were, but the other four …” He sighed. “I’ve tried everything to separate them. I’ve redistributed them, none of them sleeps in the same room as the others, I don’t let them sit together, I show favor to one and treat the others severely, which usually makes them angry—but no, hardly do I turn my back when they’re together again, whispering.”
“Perhaps they just like each other?” suggested Pagel. “Perhaps they’re friends.”
“There are no friendships in prison,” declared the principal warder. “In prison everyone is always the other’s enemy. Whenever two stick together they are conspirators—for a definite purpose. No, it stinks; if I tell you that—I, Principal Warder Marofke—then you can believe it!”
For a while they were silent. “I’m going out to the men now,” Pagel said finally in order to get away. “I’ll keep my eyes open in case I see anything.”
“What do you think you’ll see?” said the principal warder. “They are tough lads—they’d make an old detective inspector sweat. Before you’d see anything you’d be lying there with a hole in your skull. No, I’ve thought it over. Since they’ve rejected my request, I’m going all out. I shall cause a mutiny at lunch time; I’ll shove salt in their food, literally; I’ll put so much salt in their grub that they won’t be able to swallow it. And then I shall force them to eat. I’ll taunt them and threaten them until they mutiny. And then I shall have my grounds; then I shall grab my five and send them back as mutineers. That’ll cost them another year or two in prison.” He giggled in scorn.
“Well, I’m damned!” Pagel was horrified. “But it might go wrong. Five men against fifty in that narrow room!”
“Young man!” said the principal warder, and he no longer appeared ridiculous to Pagel. “If you know for certain that someone wants to attack you from the back, what do you do? You turn round and attack him. That’s the way I am. I’d rather be killed from the front than from behind.”
“I’ll come over at lunch time with my gun,” said Pagel eagerly.
“You’ll do nothing of the kind,” growled the principal warder. “I’ve no use for an inexperienced chap in a business like this. One minute, and the nearest crook will have your gun, and then it’ll be Good-by, my Fatherland! Oh, dear no, you just run along now; I’ve got to work out my table order so that I have the loudest shouters sitting just under my truncheon.”
