Wolf Among Wolves

Herr Richter looked at the fat man, who said: “A couple of questions more, Herr Lieutenant.”

Hasn’t the fellow any shame? thought the young man in despair. I wish to God I was on the street. But he did not move and replied: “By all means”—as if it were of no consequence to him.

And it started again. “You know a farm bailiff, Meier from Neulohe?”

“Slightly. He was proposed. I turned him down.”

“Why?”

“I didn’t like him. I thought him unreliable.”

“Why?”

“I can’t remember. That was my impression. I think he had a lot of affairs with women.”

“Oh, affairs with women … You thought he was unreliable because of affairs with women?” The unbending cold glance rested on the Lieutenant.

“Yes.”

“Could this Meier have observed the concealment of the arms?”

“Absolutely impossible!” declared the Lieutenant quickly. “He had been gone from Neulohe a long time then.”

“Oh! Gone away? Why had he gone?”

“I really don’t know. One would have to ask Herr von Prackwitz.”

“Do you think there is anyone in Neulohe who is still in touch with this Meier?”

“I have no idea at all. Perhaps one of his girls.”

“You don’t know them?”

“I beg you!” said the Lieutenant heavily.

“It might be possible, don’t you think … that you know the name of one or another?”

“No.”

“So you can form no conjecture how this Meier might have heard of the arms dump?”

“But he can’t know anything about it!” shouted the Lieutenant, bewildered. “It’s weeks since he left Neulohe.”

“And who does know about it?”

Silence again. The Lieutenant shrugged his shoulders furiously.

“Well, it has been stated,” said Herr Richter placatingly, “that this Meier was sitting in the car of the Control Commission this morning. But it’s not certain that it was he.”

For the first time the fat man betrayed annoyance, and glanced at the too-talkative God’s Pencil with irritation. The other, however, made an end. “We’ll let that be enough of questioning now. It doesn’t seem to me that much has come out of it. You know your instructions, Lieutenant. I shall expect you back in a hour’s time, then. Perhaps you can learn what we haven’t found out here.” He made a sign of dismissal; the Lieutenant gave a slight bow and went to the door.

I am going to the door, he thought, remarkably relieved. Yet he was trembling lest the fat man, that terrible person, should say a word and detain him again.

But no word was spoken behind him; the uncomfortable chilliness in his back vanished, as if distance weakened the icy power of that glance. He saluted his comrades right and left, and by a great effort of will stopped at the door to light a cigarette. Then he seized the handle, opened and closed the door, crossed the taproom—and at last stood outside on the open street.

He felt as if he had been restored to freedom after a long excruciating imprisonment.

VI

Standing there he knew that never again would he return to Herr Richter in that room, would never make the awaited report, nor say comrade to comrade again. Honor lost, all lost! Yes, honor, which belonged to him in common with the other officers, had been lost. He had lied like a coward to escape the judgment of his comrades. But not because he feared death—he had already awarded himself death—but because he wanted to die in his own manner, so that she shouldn’t forget him.

Hands in his pockets, cigarette in mouth, he sauntered in the gently drizzling midday toward that outlying part of the town where were the officers’ villas. When he considered the matter, it was utterly foolish to take on himself this further humiliation of finding out from the maid Frieda what her employers had been saying, since he would never convey to Herr Richter the results of his investigation. Let them see how they would manage their Putsch themselves; he was only going to bother about his own affairs now.

As, apparently carefree and unbound by time, the Lieutenant strolled through the streets in his shabby clothes, entering a shop once and buying fifty cigarettes of a very much better kind than usual, there was a deep crease between his eyebrows, just above the bridge of the nose—a crease of intense brooding. It was, for a young man who throughout his life had preferred action to reflection, not very easy to understand what was really the matter with him, what he wanted and what he did not want.

Very surprising indeed was the thought of how indifferent he had now become toward that Putsch for which he had worked so many months, almost without money, denying himself everything that young men otherwise desire. Equally surprising was it how indifferent he felt at leaving his comrades, to whom he no longer belonged, and whose society had always been more important for him than the love of any girl.

He had had to endure a lot that morning, things he would normally never have borne, things which would have rendered him frantic: the wine thrown at him by the Rittmeister, the apprehensive queries of the contemptible Friedrich, Herr Richter’s hardly-concealed disgust, and, to cap all, the shameful examination by the fat detective. But all this too had lapsed from the mind of one who otherwise could not forget an injury for years, but who now had to coerce himself if he wished to remember anything at all of these recent happenings.

It is strange, he thought; I feel as if I am quite out of things already, as if I have really nothing more to do with this world, like a dying man when all fades round him. Yes, now I remember again. When people die, there hands begin to move restlessly about their bedclothes. Some say the dying try to dig their own graves; others that they are trying to find something to hold on to in this world. Is that what’s happening to me? Is everything withdrawing from me, and can I find nothing more on earth to hold on to? But I am no dying man; I am not the least bit ill. Is it that the cells in my body already know they must perish? Can death not only be annihilation through illness, but also the destruction of the body through thought? In that case am I really a traitor?

He looked around as if waking from a bad dream. He was on a large dismal ground stamped hard by the boots of many hundreds of soldiers, a yellow expanse of cheerless clay where hardly a weed ventured to grow. At the far end were the crude yellow barracks, surrounded by a high yellow wall topped with broken glass. The great iron gate, painted a dull gray, was shut; the sentry in steel helmet and with slung carbine was marching up and down to warm himself a little.

The Lieutenant contemplated this picture. In him a sullen resolution was forming, something evil and very somber. He crossed the ground. Now I’ll see about it, he thought.

He stood right in the sentry’s way and looked at him challengingly. “Well, comrade?” he said. He knew the man and the man knew him; many times had the Lieutenant stood a round for him and his friends. Occasionally they had sat together, and once, when there had been a fight at a country dance, they had cleared the hall side by side. They were therefore very good acquaintances, but now the man was acting as if he did not know of any Lieutenant. In a low voice he said: “Be off with you.”

The Lieutenant did not move. He had become more sullen and addressed the sentry again, sneeringly. “Well, comrade, have you become so important that you don’t know me now?”

The man’s face did not change; he appeared not to have heard and marched past in silence. But after six paces he had to turn again and march back. “Listen, man,” said the Lieutenant this time, “I have nothing to smoke. Give me a cigarette and I’ll go away at once.”

The man gave a quick look to the left. The small door for pedestrians was open, showing part of a gravel path and the windows of the guardroom. Then he turned to the Lieutenant, whose face bore an expression of contempt, despair and anxiety hard to decipher. The sentry could make little of this face, but it held something threatening; otherwise he might possibly have dared to hand over a cigarette. As it was, he passed by without a word and about-turned at the sentry box. Some premonition led him to remove the carbine from his shoulder before approaching again.