that’s what’s wanted. Smart driving, they can do all that; but drive carefully and turn with a truck and a trailer in a yard not much larger than your kitchen without a scratch, only I can do that.”
“There you go speaking again about your stupid truck. Go and marry one.”
“Certainly I’m speaking about my truck, but you must let me say what I have to, Amanda. I’m slow, as I said, but just as I succeed with my truck because I’m capable, so I’ll succeed in marriage. Take it from me, Amanda, it’s like this: they can all cut a great dash and drive up smartly, but you look at that sort of marriage months later! Driven into a smash-up. With me you’ll keep safe; nothing’ll happen to you with me—I’m as certain of that as of my driving license.”
“Yes, you’re a good fellow, Schulzing. But fire and water don’t mix. You say nothing’ll happen to me—good, but I don’t know if that’ll be all right for me. Too quiet is no good either.”
“Oh, well.” Young Schulze stands up. “I won’t try to persuade you. What isn’t, isn’t. Oh, no, I don’t take it bad of you, Amanda, not a bit. The bakers don’t all bake the same bread. You can’t help it, and I can’t help it. Good evening, Frau Krupass. Thank you, too, for letting me sit here in the evening and for all the good food.…”
“Now he’s talking of the food as well!”
“Why shouldn’t I talk about it? One ought to return thanks for everything given us in life. I haven’t been given such a lot for me to find thanks too much. Good night, Amanda, I wish you everything good also.”
“Thank you, Schulzing. You too—and most of all a nice wife.”
“Well, no doubt I shall find someone else. But I would have liked it the other way, Amanda. Good night.”
Not till they hear him say good night to the foreman outside in the square does Frau Krupass say: “Was that right, Amanda? He’s a very respectable young man, really.” Amanda Backs says nothing. “Not that I’m complaining. It’s all right as far as I’m concerned if you stay here another ten years in the yard with me. I like Petra very much, but I can’t talk to her as I do to you. And you’re better in the business.” Ma Krupass stands up yawning. “Well, I’m going to hit the hay now. We’ve got the truckload of bottles tomorrow, and we must get up by five—aren’t you going yet?”
“I’ll sit here a little while and look out of the window. And I’m not angry with you. I know very well that I alone am guilty with him.”
“Don’t get in the dumps now. Think of Petra—she was properly in the dirt, worse than you; and what is she now? A real lady.”
“Oh, lady!” says Amanda contemptuously. “I don’t give a damn for that. But he loves her, that’s it—and Schulze was thinking more of your depot here, and you saying you’d provide for me, than of love.”
“Lawd, Amanda, love! Now don’t start about love, too. Staring in the sky at evening and love as well! That’s not healthy; all you’ll get is a cold. A real good sleep’s better than all your love. Love only makes people stupid.”
“Good night, Ma Krupass. But I’d like to know what you’d have said if someone had told you that forty years ago.”
“Ah, dear, why that’s quite different. Forty years ago and love! They were other times then. But nowadays even love’s good for nothing.”
“Rubbish,” says Amanda, pulling her chair up to the window.
VI
We must go on. We’re in a hurry! Must we still go to Neulohe? Hello, hello! Careful! Get out of the way—here comes a cart heavily laden with sacks. They have no horses. All the horses are at work in the fields, not one can be spared—and so the people are pushing the fifty hundredweights over the bumpy yard toward the barn.
Who is coming across the yard? Who is shouting that it must go quicker? Old Geheimrat von Teschow. He has become his own bailiff, forester, clerk; now he becomes his own draught horse, too. He strains at the shaft. “Push, men. I’m seventy and you—you can’t even do a few hundredweights? Weaklings!”
Hardly is the cart at rest than he must be off. Oh, he has so much to do, exhorting, supervising, calculating; from early morning onwards he is half dead from overwork. That delights him. He has two tasks. He must build up Neulohe again, despoiled by his son-in-law and his own daughter, in conjunction with a gang of thieves and criminals. And he must refill his money chests emptied by the Reds!
His activity is tireless; he is miserly, close-fisted. He robs his own wife of the eggs in the larder, to sell them; he is constantly inventing new ways of economizing. When the men complain: “Herr Geheimrat, you must let us live,” he shouts: “Who lets me live, then? I have nothing more. I’m a poor man. I have debts—that’s how much they robbed me!”
“But, Herr Geheimrat, you have the forest.”
“The forest? A few pine trees! And what do you think the Treasury demands from me? Before the war I paid eighteen marks income tax a year. And now? The scoundrels want thousands! Well, they don’t get them! No, you economize; I have to.”
He is full of ideas. If in the mornings he has the bell to start work rung five minutes too early, he’ll sweat five hours’ unpaid overtime out of sixty people. He cheats them in the wages; if he diddles everyone once a week over no more than a pfennig, he’ll have saved thirty marks in the year. He must hurry up; the shares which he purchased during the inflation are worth nothing.
“But a bit more, Elias, than you get for your thousand-mark notes.”
“You wait, Herr Geheimrat, just you wait.”
But he can’t wait, the old Geheimrat. His property, in shares, in cash, has dwindled away. When he dies there must be at least as much as he received from his father. Why? For whom? The daughter is restricted to her inheritance, and from this are deducted all amounts already received. He has also fallen out with the son. For whom? He doesn’t know. But he rushes around, he calculates—and apart from that he’ll grow very old. He has no intention of departing these next twenty years; he’ll see many a young man die yet.
Upstairs, at her window in the Manor, sits the old lady, his wife. But not as formerly is her friend Jutta von Kuckhoff at her side. Jutta has fallen into disfavor; Jutta has been sent away. Jutta must see how she gets on by herself in this world; she has set herself against her heavenly welfare, she has opposed Herr Herzschlussel.
Herr Herzschlussel is a bearded man in a black coat, the leader of a strict sect—consisting, probably, only of himself—devoted solely to repentance and contrition. He has freed Frau Belinde from the “petrified” Church; he has proved to her that he alone embodies the true gospel of Jesus. Now she may hold as many prayer meetings as she will; no longer need she fear pastor or superintendent.
But Jutta mutinied against Herr Herzschlussel. She declared that he stole, drank, had affairs with women. Jutta, however, is merely a soured old spinster, and Herr Herzschlussel has a beautifully tended beard, a gentle voice. When he carries Frau Belinde in his strong arms to the deck chair, she is as happy as this sinful flesh is allowed to be in this life.
In a last battle Jutta von Kuckhoff tried to push the Geheimrat towards Herr Herzschlussel. But the Geheimrat merely laughed. “Herzschlussel,” he croaked, “ah, Jutta, he’s a good man. He saved us a girl at least, and we’re at last out of the church, and pay no more church taxes. Belinde’s always in a good mood—and all for a bit of food. No Jutta, such a man should stay!” And thus the two old people have been provided with an occupation—they don’t need to think about their children any longer.
VII
On his free days Herr von Studmann likes to take a walk to the graveyard of a neighboring village. There he sits on a bench before an ancient grave. This, when he first discovered it, was overgrown with ivy; he has had the stone cleared. On it can be read that Helene Siebenrot, sixteen years of age, was herself drowned in the rescue of a drowning child. “She was ignorant of swimming.”
Herr von Studmann likes to sit here. It is quiet; in the summer no one has time to come to the churchyard, no one disturbs him. The birds sing. On the other side of the rubble wall, in the village street, the harvest wagons creak. He thinks about the young girl. Helene Siebenrot was her name—she was ignorant of swimming. She was ready to help, but she herself needed help. He, too, was ready to help, but he didn’t know how to swim either.
Dr. Schrock is very satisfied with him, the patients like him, the staff have no complaints to make about him —Herr von Studmann can grow old in this sanatorium, he can die here. The thought has nothing terrifying for him. He has no wish to be outside again in the world of the healthy. He has discovered that he cannot accommodate himself to life. He had his standards, wished life to adapt itself to them. Life didn’t do this, and Herr von Studmann
