you in common. As a matter of fact it’s a bit too much, I don’t know exactly, two or three milliards; but off with you into the town! Make your purchases together; you’ll have to come to an agreement somehow. Curse me if you like —I can’t get any other money.”
All right, they would go at last and find some tradesman who changed their note for them. But where could Pagel find someone to help him out with his own accounts? Oh, he was a great man, he had a weekly salary of two and a half hundredweights of rye—but that amount was regularly missing from his accounts. Often much more. Little Meier certainly never wrote so many incorrect figures in his cash book. If an accountant ever saw them—off to prison with this embezzler!
He propped his head in his hands; the wilderness of figures was sickening; there was something unclean in this parade of ever more astronomical numbers. Every small man a millionaire—but all we millionaires would yet starve! What had the doctor said to the forester just now? “We shall soon be having billion notes—a billion is a thousand milliards—it can’t go any higher! Then we shall get a stable currency, you’ll be pensioned off—and till then you can stay snugly in bed.”
“Shall we really have decent money again?” the forester had asked anxiously. “Shall I live to see it? I would truly like to see the day, Herr Doctor, when one can go into a shop again and the tradesman sells something without looking at the money in a fury, as if one’s a swindler.”
“You will certainly live to see it, old fellow!” the doctor had reassured him, tucking up the blankets under the forester’s chin. But outside he had said to Pagel: “See that the old man doesn’t take to his bed altogether. Give him some little job so that he can putter around. Utterly tired out and used up! How he ever ran about the woods for ten hours every day beats me. Once he’s properly on his back he won’t get up again, that’s certain.”
“So he won’t live to see the end of this inflation? I know from school that there are billiards and trillions and quadrillions and …”
“Come to a stop, man!” cried out the doctor, “or I’ll strike you down immediately with my reflex hammer! You want to go through all this misery? Such an appetite for life, young man, could give one indigestion!”
“No,” he whispered, “I have it from a man in the bank—the dollar will be stabilized at four hundred and twenty milliards.”
“Oh, I’ve heard that sort of talk the last half-year. I don’t believe a word of it.”
“Young man,” had declared the doctor solemnly, his eyes flashing behind his glasses, “let me tell you this. On the day when the dollar goes above four hundred and twenty milliards I’ll put on a mask and chloroform myself out of this life. Because then I shall have had enough of it.”
“So,” said Pagel, “we’ll speak together later.”
“Not as you think,” shouted the doctor angrily. “You modern youth are disgusting! Even hundred-year-old men weren’t as cynical as that in my time!”
“So when exactly was your time, Herr Doctor?” asked Pagel, grinning. “Pretty much a long time ago, eh?”
“I mistrusted you from the very beginning,” said the doctor sadly and climbed into his OpelLaubfrosch, “when you so shamefacedly asked me just how long the man could have been dead.”
“Quiet please, Doctor!”
“All right, I agree. On this point I’m a cynic myself. It’s the profession. Good night. And, as I said, if the dollar isn’t stabilized at four hundred and twenty.…
“Then we’ll wait a little longer,” Pagel shouted after the departing doctor.
It would have been good if there had been a coffee in the office, but there was naturally none at this time of night. Amanda Backs had long gone to bed. However, Pagel had once again underestimated Amanda: Coffees stood on the table. Unfortunately the coffee was no longer in a state to really cheer him up, or else Pagel was simply too tired. In any case, he sat, miserable, over his books. He got no further, wanted to go to bed, but wanted nevertheless to write to his mother, and tortured his conscience with the sentence: If I’m not too tired to write to Mama, I can’t be too tired to finish the wage-books.
This strange sentence, lacking all logic, a distortion of an overtired mind, tortured the young Pagel so persistently that he was unable either to do his accounts or write, and couldn’t sleep either. Eventually, he sank into a condition of semi-conscious misery and dazed numbness in which horrible thoughts crept into his mind. Doubts about life, doubts about himself, doubts about Petra.
“Damnation!” he cried and stood up. “I’d prefer to spring into the worthy Geheimrat’s swannery and take the coldest bath of my life than sit around here gloomy and sleepy-headed.”
And in this moment the telephone rang. A hurried feminine voice, familiar and yet strange, desired that Herr Pagel would come at once to the Villa; madam wished to speak to him.
“I’ll come at once,” he replied. Who was the woman who had spoken? Her voice had sounded disguised.
It was a quarter to eleven. Rather a little late, surely, for a man who got up at five, at half-past four, at four! Well, there was trouble again over there. The business with the Rittmeister had gone badly, or Frau Eva had at last learned something about Violet; or she only wanted to know how many potatoes had been dug up that day—she was often like that. At times she was her father’s daughter, and then she thought she had to supervise her young employee. Whistling happily, Pagel wandered through the estate out to the Villa. Although he was supposed to go straight to Madam, he made a detour via the stables. The Ostler was startled—but everything was in perfect order. The stallion was back in his stall and turned round to look at Pagel with its lively eyes. The foal with the unbelievably long legs was asleep. And Pagel sent the Ostler off to bed too.
Frau Eva herself opened the door. She had changed greatly in the last weeks. Her daily trips with their harrowing senseless hopes, their apathetic returns, the agonizing uncertainty day in day out, to which the worst certainty would have been preferable—all this had laid its mark on her features. Her eye, formerly so amiable and feminine, had now a dry burning glance. But it was not only this. Now that she no longer took care of herself or ate regularly, her skin had become flabby.… Formerly she had been able to laugh pleasantly, a woman in harmony with herself and the world; her voice had sweetness and vibration. Now it sounded as if her throat were parched. Her angry eyes examined him. “I am very sorry, Herr Pagel, but I can’t possibly put up with it. I have heard today that you are having affairs with women and taking advantage of your position to force girls …”
Oh, the poor transformed woman! “I’m very sorry.” Oh, no. She was furious. This woman who only a few weeks ago had been ready to close a smiling eye to everything must now revenge her daughter on men. Everything was dirty wherever she looked; but she wouldn’t put up with it in her neighborhood!
Pagel smiled; wrinkles appeared in the corners of his eyes. He couldn’t understand how a woman prostrate with anxiety for her family could still lend an ear to gossip.… Smilingly he shook his head. “No, madam,” he said, “I’m quite sure that I’m having no affairs with women.”
“But I was told so!” she cried. “You have …”
“Why should we listen to lies?” he asked, still amiably. “Seeing that I have no affairs with women whatever? I’d really rather we didn’t talk about such things, madam.”
Frau Eva made an impatient gesture. Some hatred or fury was driving her to tell that young fellow to his face what she had heard about him. And she wished to hear explanations, excuses—most of all a confession.
Pagel, however, swung round; he had understood why this conversation was taking place in the hall. Yes, Sophie Kowalewski stood where the kitchen stairs went down into the basement. She made to hide herself, but it was too late. Doubtless it was she who had phoned. “Come out, Sophie,” he called. “You’re the only one from whom I’d like to hear the story. Please relate in front of madam what you did so that you wouldn’t have to dig potatoes.”
Frau Eva flushed and made a gesture to stop him. But Pagel had walked toward the girl, not at all fiercely, but pleasantly. “Now, Sophie,” he said. “Come, my girl, talk, talk! Or better still, let madam see how you tried to show me your knees.”
And then it was shown that Sophie Kowalewski was not complete, either in goodness or in evil. She had slipped up and fallen into bad ways—beautiful, wrong, but not even really that bad. She hadn’t the courage even for her malice; she was cowardly. She screamed, ran down the kitchen stairs, and a door slammed.
Pagel turned back. He now showed nothing more of a bragging unconcern, but spoke in explanation, almost in excuse. “As a matter of fact, I had told her to appear early tomorrow for the potato harvest. Her laziness is a bad example to the village.”
Frau von Prackwitz looked at him. The flush of anger and shame had left her face, but not completely. Something remained, a hint of a healthier color. No, life—despite everything—was not just old, ugly and stale, it
