She examined him with an ungracious eye, angry with herself for embarking on this inquisition which had discovered something she hadn’t wished to know. And she was angry with him because he spoke about these matters in just the same flippant, stupid way as other men—and she had thought him very different! So she looked at him testingly and unsparingly.
But seeing his twinkling eyes, she understood that he was actually very happy, and was only making fun of her and her stupid curiosity. And that he was exactly as she had thought he was. And, as is always the case, the happiness of the one was communicated to the other. She gulped suddenly.
She spoke quite as Amanda Backs, however. “If you’ve rummaged about enough in the giblets, I should now lie down for half an hour. It’s warm in there, and I’ve put a blanket for you on the sofa.”
“Good. I’ll do that for once,” he said obediently. “But wake me in half an hour.” And at the door he turned round. “I’m thinking of having it about Christmas, the marriage I mean. The son’s arriving three weeks earlier.”
And with that he shut the door as a sign that he no longer valued any answer, and that this subject was now absolutely closed. And as Amanda now knew everything she urgently needed to know, she also felt no need to talk anymore. She quietly cleared the table, took away the cutlery and sat down at the tiled stove, so that he could have real quiet for the remaining half-hour.
But of course, he wouldn’t sleep but would read his letter again!
IV
Pagel really had wanted to reread his letter but hardly had he lay down but a tiredness overcame him like a large, benign, warm, dark wave. The sentence informing him that he would be a father at the beginning of December and that Peter would soon be writing to him herself, was part of his dream. It produced a happy feeling of lightness, and he went to sleep smiling.
However, his dream was about a child, and that child was himself. With some amazement he saw himself standing on a grassy lawn in a white sailor suit with a blue collar and a sewn-on anchor. Over him a plum tree spread its branches laden with small yellow plums.
He saw himself stretching up to the branches. He saw his bare knees between his long socks and his trousers. And that one of his knees had been cut, but was already scarred over. I must have already dreamt that as a child, he said to himself in the dream, and saw himself reaching for the branches as a child. He was on tiptoe and still couldn’t reach them.
Then a voice called him, and of course it had to be Mama’s voice from the veranda, but no, the voice came from the thick crown of the tree itself, and it was Peter’s voice:
And the little plum tree shook all its plums over him like a golden shower of rain, and they fell, ever more, ever thicker, ever more golden. The green lawn was quite yellow with then. As if hundreds and thousands of buttercups were blossoming, and the child that he was bent over them, shouting with joy.
“No, I can’t disturb him now,” said Amanda. “You’ll have to come back later.” She gave Sophie Kowalewski a bellicose look.
But Sophie was not at all bellicose. “Perhaps I could wait here,” she said politely.
“When he wakes up he must go to the fields at once; he’ll have no time for you.”
“But he asked me to come here through my father,” explained Sophie, not quite in accordance with truth. “Herr Pagel, in fact, wants me to dig potatoes!” She laughed bitterly.
“Dig potatoes,” repeated Amanda. The pair stood, one at the stove, the other at the window. “Herr Pagel’s right. Digging potatoes is certainly better than—” She broke off with telling effect.
“Than what, Fraulein? Than propping up the stove in case it falls over? There you are certainly right.”
“Many a person thinks that she alone is cunning,” said the Backs disdainfully. “But as Fraulein von Kuckhoff always said, too much cunning turns stupid. And that’s a fact.”
“And are you also cunning or are you stupid?” asked Sophie sweetly, sitting down at the desk.
“That’s no place for you, Fraulein!” said Amanda angrily, shaking the back of the chair. “There’s a place for you somewhere else.”
Sophie was aware what the other was driving at. But she wasn’t easily stopped in anything; she would sit where she was. “If I’m to go, Herr Pagel will tell me,” she said coolly. “All you do here are the beds, Fraulein.”
“But I don’t get in them, I don’t!” shouted Amanda, pulling at the chair furiously.
“That won’t be your fault, Fraulein. The gentleman perhaps has better taste than his predecessor.”
“You say that to me, Fraulein?” Amanda stepped back very pale.
The combat was now at its climax; the arrows had been loosed and many had gone home. Now must come the hand-to-hand fighting—it was a wonder that young Pagel hadn’t been waked up by the noise.
“Why shouldn’t I say that to you?” asked Sophie defiantly but less assured, for the expression on her opponent’s face made her uneasy. “You said so yourself before everyone during evening prayers.”
“Fraulein,” said Amanda threateningly, “if others can’t count up to five, I can. And if the five don’t come out right, then one can stand at night beneath a window and hear them talking.”
Now it was Sophie who turned pale. Then she bethought herself. “If one is decent,” she said in quite another tone, “one doesn’t need to have heard everything one hears.”
“And somebody like that talks about beds and better taste!” burst out Amanda angrily. “I ought to go and tell him on the spot.” She reflected. “I think I really ought to.” She looked doubtfully at Pagel’s door.
“Why should he know that?” asked Sophie. “He loses nothing by it.”
Amanda regarded her, undecided.
“You could have had a friend,” whispered Sophie, “just the same as … I can understand it if one sticks to a friend.”
“He’s not my friend any longer,” protested Amanda. “I don’t associate with a traitor.”
“Others can never know what someone is really like,” declared Sophie. “They only look at the outside. Someone may have had bad luck in his life.”
“I’ve heard that anyone from a penitentiary is always bad. Only the worst get sent there.”
“He can wish to improve. And there are such things as wrong verdicts.”
“Was he wrongly condemned then, Fraulein?”
Sophie considered. “No,” she said reluctantly.
“It’s good you said that. Or I should have thought you only wanted to wheedle me.”
“The sentence was too severe. He’s only heedless, not bad.”
Amanda thought. She couldn’t think as she wanted to; the image of Hansecken prevented her. She’d remained true to him even when she knew that he was not only shallow but bad. But she eventually found what she wanted to ask. “Then why does he still hole up there?” asked Amanda. “If he really wants to change, he’s got to work. Is he lazy?”
“Not at all,” cried Sophie. “He holes up there …” She thought a bit. “We haven’t got the fare yet, and then he received a bullet in the escape—”
“A bullet? But the warders didn’t hit anyone!”
“That’s what they think! But he was shot in the leg, here in the thigh. And he’s been lying up there all these weeks without a doctor or proper attention. I’ve been nursing him. And now I’m to dig potatoes!”
Amanda looked doubtfully at the other’s face. “There’s so much stolen in the district at present,” she said. “I thought that would be your one, Fraulein.”
“With him always in bed, Fraulein Backs, and perhaps even lame the rest of his life? My father says it’s Baumer up to his tricks again.”
“I thought that Baumer was only a poacher.”
“That’s all you know! Baumer will do anything. Now when they’re looking for him, and his relatives in Altlohe won’t have him with them, and he doesn’t know where to stay, he’ll do anything, he said.”
“How do you come to know that, Fraulein?” asked Amanda softly. “You are very well informed about him. You’ve even spoken to the man.”
“I …” stammered Sophie. But she recovered herself immediately. “Yes,” she whispered excitedly, “I lied. He wasn’t shot in the leg, and he goes out to provide for us, so that we can get the fare together. What can we do when they’re after him? You stood up for yours at evening prayers without being ashamed. One must stick by one’s fellow particularly when things are bad for him. And I’ll never believe that you’ll betray us—why, you smacked
