In the office building above, a white shadow appeared in the window. The faithful concierge was checking up on him.
“Everything shipshape, Amanda,” murmured Pagel in her direction. Sophie had put herself out in vain. “Go to sleep, get warm, and wake me tomorrow morning early at half past five—but with a coffee.”
“Good night, Herr Pagel” was heard from above.
IX
The next morning this takes place in front of the Villa:
Frau Eva is already in the car, giving Oskar directions, when the front door opens and out steps the Rittmeister, followed by his attendant. He walks with a queerly stumbling gait to the car. The attendant remains standing at the top of the steps.
Like a guilty child the Rittmeister asks: “May I drive with you, Eva?”
Frau Eva throws an astonished glance at the attendant, who nods emphatically.
“But, Achim!” she cries, “won’t it be too much for you?”
He shakes his head. His eyes are full of tears, his mouth trembles.
“Oh, Achim! Achim—I’m so happy indeed. All will be right again, you see. Sit down next to me. Herr Schumann, please help the Rittmeister into the car. Oskar, fetch another rug, the fur one. Herr Schumann, you must then go at once to Herr Pagel and tell him; he’ll be so pleased.”
The car starts. The Rittmeister makes an apologetic gesture. “Sorry, Eva,” he says quietly. And again with much effort, “I can’t speak properly yet. I don’t quite understand, but.…”
“But what do you need to speak for, Achim?” she says, taking his hand. “Surely, as long as we are together, everything will be easier?”
He nods vigorously.
Chapter Fifteen
I
Soon it would be December. With storms of ice, snow and sleet the year was approaching its end. The last of the potato diggers had fled—a great blow—ten thousand hundredweight and more were still in the earth. Angry shame seized Pagel when he saw the leaves rotting in the fields and thought that, while people were dying of hunger in the towns, the potatoes themselves were rotting underground.
I have done a lot of things wrong, he thought. But how the devil could I have known better? Nobody told me, and I had so much to do I couldn’t think a day ahead. I ought to have had the potatoes taken straight to the station; then we should now have the little bit of money which is always lacking. Stored in the clamps they are threatened by frost and thieves, and won’t be saleable till spring. And who will have this place then?
The threshing machine hummed outside—but it was too loud, too noticeable. There was a man in Frankfurt who had once furnished a large sum of inflation money, and a car had been purchased with it; now the man wanted his goods. The times were beginning to change. In Berlin they had at last stopped the note presses, so people said, and the mark wouldn’t be falling any lower: it had stopped falling when for one American dollar 4,200 milliard marks were given. And perhaps it would stay at that level.
The threshing machine hummed—sometimes it was busy with rye for the man in Frankfurt; sometimes he went away empty-handed because another had been quicker. Geheimrat von Teschow had left the beautiful region of Nice and now lived in the agreeable town of Dresden—to be more exact, at The White Hart, in Loschwitz. Perhaps he wanted to lose weight, or his gallstones gave him trouble if he thought of Neulohe. Or the old lady was having trouble with her nerves. Emissaries of his frequently visited Neulohe—they were bailiffs: and a certain attorney had become a familiar figure to Wolfgang, for the Geheimrat had a writ of execution—oh, everything was in the best of order. Once again he had snapped up three hundred hundredweights of rye which the man in Frankfurt should have had.…
Pagel sat at his typewriter; it was only half-past eight in the morning and the letter must go by the next post, without fail.
Dear Herr So-and-so, I regret to have to inform you that the wagonload of rye (Baden 326485, 15 tons), concerning which you had already been apprised, was seized at the goods station here by that other creditor of Herr von Prackwitz already known to you. I beg you to be patient a few days longer; as quickly as possible I will send you a delivery in replacement. In the meantime I would beg you to consider whether the grain assigned you could not be fetched direct from the threshing machine by truck. I have already verbally explained to you that there is no lack either of goodwill on our part or of the possibility …
But what did the two people in the Villa say to that? Nothing. The Rittmeister preferred to sit silently beside his wife. “Do just as you think best, Herr Pagel,” she said. “You have the authorization.”
“But your father …”
“Oh, father doesn’t mean it so badly! You will see. When everything’s in a complete muddle, he will come and put everything to rights—beaming because of the chance to be so clever. Isn’t that so, Achim? Papa was always like that.”
The Rittmeister nodded and smiled.
“But I have no money for wages!” cried Pagel despairingly.
“Sell something or other—sell cows, sell horses! What do we need with horses at the beginning of winter, when work’s at an end? Don’t you think so, Achim? In winter one doesn’t need horses.”
“No.” He is of the same opinion; in winter one doesn’t need horses.
“The lease prohibits the sale of livestock. Live and dead stock, madam, does not belong to you; it belongs to the Geheimrat.”
“Have you become Herr von Studmann? Why, you’re already talking of the lease! Dear Herr Pagel, don’t make difficulties for us. You have full authority! It’s only a question of a few days more.…” Pagel looked questioningly at Frau Eva. “Yes,” she went on suddenly fervent, “I am convinced that our search will soon be successful. The fat man has turned up again in his bowler hat.… We hadn’t seen him for a time, and we had almost given up hope. …”
Pagel went. Pagel raised money and paid the wages. Or Pagel could not raise money and he paid the people with grain and potatoes, a sucking pig, butter, a goose …
He sat at the typewriter: “We have still roughly four thousand hundredweights of grain lying unthreshed.…” Is that true or is it a lie? he thought. I don’t know. I haven’t kept the grain books for weeks; I’d never get them right now. Whoever takes over from me can only believe that I’m criminally thoughtless. Nothing balances.… If the Geheimrat gets to see it … He sighed. Oh, life’s no fun, I don’t enjoy it. Even when I think of Petra, I no longer enjoy it. If I ever really do reach her, I’m sure I’ll cry and cry purely because of loss of nerve. But I can’t run away now, though. I can’t leave them in the lurch. They wouldn’t even be able to borrow the petrol for their damned car!
“That’s the third time you’ve sighed, Herr Pagel,” said Amanda Backs from the window, “and it’s only half- past eight in the morning. How are you going to get through the day?”
“That’s what I often ask myself,” replied Wolfgang, grateful for the distraction. “On the whole, however, the day itself sees to it that you get through it, and usually no day is as bad as I feared it would be in the morning, and none so good as I had hoped, either.”
Amanda Backs looked impatiently out of the window; this sententiousness did not please her. Then she screamed, in horror. “Herr Pagel, look!”
Pagel sprang to the window …
He saw something coming across the Geheimrat’s park, creeping on arms and legs.
For a moment he stood transfixed.
Then he shouted: “The forester! Now they’ve killed the forester, too!” and he ran from the room.
