journalist. “The bread is the same as it ever was and I like it. Those here who complain the loudest go shortest when they’re outside and haven’t a whole pair of trousers to their behinds.”
“So,” frowned the journalist, visibly dissatisfied, while the Governor breathed more easily. “So! What have you been sentenced for?”
“Fraud,” replied Herr Liebschner. “And then they say harvest crews are to go out; tobacco and meat as much as you like.”
“Thanks,” said the journalist curtly, and turned to the Governor. “Shall we continue? I should like to see a cell. Besides, I don’t set much store by an orderly’s gossip; they’re all afraid of losing their jobs. And fraud! Frauds and bullies are the most untrustworthy people in the world.”
“But at first you seemed to attach importance to this swindler’s evidence.” Behind his fair beard the Governor smiled.
The journalist paid no attention. “And then harvest crews. To do work for the big agrarians which even the Poles consider themselves a cut above. And for wretched wages. Is that an arrangement of your own?”
“No, not at all,” said the Governor pleasantly. “It’s a decree of your Party comrade in the Prussian Ministry of Justice, Herr Kastner.”
II
“Frau Thumann,” said Petra, firmly buttoned up from top to toe in the shabby summer overcoat, and without taking any notice of the lodger from the room opposite, the jaunty but debauched Ida of Alexanderplatz, who sat at the landlady’s kitchen table soaking delicious glazed brioche in her milky coffee, “Frau Thumann, haven’t you anything for me to do?”
“Lor’, girl,” groaned Madam Po at the sink. “What do you mean by something to do? D’you want to watch the clock to see if he’s coming, or do you want some grub?”
“Both,” said Ida in a voice hoarse with drink, and sucked her coffee audibly through a lump of sugar in her mouth.
“I’ve already cleaned the fresh ‘errings and you don’t do the potato salad as Willem likes it—and what’s left?”
Madam Po glanced round, but nothing occurred to her.
“I’ve been working my guts out so I’d be at the church door in time for the grand wedding, and now it’s twenty to two and the bride’s still hopping round in a man’s overcoat and bare legs. I’m always being cheated of something.”
Petra sat down. She felt queer in the stomach, a tugging sensation with a hint of pain to come, a weakness in the knees and now and again a flush of perspiration which couldn’t be altogether caused by the sultry air. Nevertheless she felt quite contented. An enormous and happy certainty was within her. She could let them talk as they liked; her previous pride and shame were gone, she knew whither she was going. What mattered was not that the path was difficult, but that it led to a goal.
“Sit down gently on the chair, my lady,” jeered the dashing Ida. “Or else it won’t bear you till the bridegroom comes to take you to the wedding.”
“Don’t be too hard on her in my kitchen, Ida,” cautioned Madam Po at the sink. “Up till now he’s always paid his way, and you have to be kind to paying guests.”
“But there’s an end to everything, Thumann,” said Ida sagely. “I understand men. I know when the dough gets short and he wants to hop it—hers has hopped it today.”
“Don’t say that, Ida, for God’s sake,” wailed Frau Thumann. “What am I going to do with a girl with bare legs, with nothing on but an overcoat? Oh, God,” she screamed, and flung a pan down with a clatter. “I’ve no bloody luck. P’raps I’ll have to buy her a dress to get rid of her.”
“Buy a dress?” said Ida contemptuously. “Don’t be a mug, Thumann. You only need tell a policeman certain things—by the way, there’s one living in the front part of the house—tell him, for instance, she’s swindling—and off she goes to the police station and Alexanderplatz. They’ll give you a dress there, Fraulein—you know, a dark blue uniform and cap.”
“Why try to worry me?” said Petra peaceably. “No doubt you’ve been thrown over once too.” She had not intended to say it, but out of the fullness of the heart the mouth speaketh—and she had spoken.
Ida gasped as if someone had struck her in the breast.
“She got you there!” giggled the Thumann woman.
“Once, Fraulein?” said Ida loudly. “You say once? You mean a hundred times. No, a hundred’s not enough. The times I’ve stood with icy feet while the hand of the big clock moves on and on until it dawns on me, silly fool, that someone has done the dirty on me once more. But,” and she changed over to truculence, “for all that, a girl who even on her wedding day hasn’t a rag to put on needn’t rub it into me. A girl who can’t keep her greedy eyes off the brioche in my mouth and counts every gulp of coffee I take! A girl like that …”
“Go on, go on!” rejoiced the Thumann woman.
“And besides, is it right that a girl like that should come in such a miserable state, into a strange kitchen and ask, as if she were Lady Mud herself, ‘Can I help?’ Those with nothing must beg. My father used a stick to impress that on my back; and if you’d said: ‘Ida, I’m starving, give me a roll,’ you’d have had one. And another thing, Frau Thumann. I pay you a dollar daily for your bug walk, and there’s not even a night light on the stairs, and what with the gentlemen always complaining about it—it isn’t for you to laugh and shout: ‘She’s got you there, my girl.’ You ought to protect me, and when someone like that gets fresh, a woman who sleeps with her bully buckshee, just for fun, and you, Thumann, have to see where you can get the dough—she’s too good to work, she won’t walk the streets and get cash, she’s too good for that—no, Thumann, I’m surprised at you; and if you don’t chuck out that impertinent hussy on the spot, laughing at me for not always having been lucky with the gentlemen, then I’ll clear out.”
The dashing Ida stood there flushed with anger, a brioche in her hand, getting redder and redder the more it dawned on her how greatly insulted she was. Frau Thumann and Petra looked quite disconcerted at this storm, arisen none knew why or how. (And the dashing Ida, if only she had thought it over, would have been just as surprised at the way her speech had ended.)
Petra would have preferred to get up and go back to her room, lock the door, and throw herself on the bed. But she felt fainter and fainter, there was a ringing in her ears and everything swam before her eyes. The angry voice was speaking from a distance, but then again it came close, shouting into her very ears. Everything swam again. Then fire ran down her nape and back; the sweat of weakness broke out. Now she reckoned it up, she had for some days eaten practically nothing, except when Wolf had had some money; a sausage with salad, or rolls and liver sausage, on the edge of the bed. And, since yesterday morning, nothing at all, though it was important now that she should have plenty to eat. She must try to get to her room as quickly as possible, lock the door, lock it firmly, not open it even if the police knocked; open it only when Wolfgang returned.…
In the distance she heard Frau Thumann wailing: “See what you’ve done, my girl. People like you who’ve nothing mustn’t talk away other people’s livings, and Ida’s a first-class lady who brings me her dollar every day— you mustn’t throw mud at a girl like that, understand? And now get out of my kitchen quickly, or you’ll get more than you bargained for.”
“No,” shrieked Ida. “That’s no good, Thumann. Either she goes or I go. I won’t be insulted by the likes of that—out of the flat with her, or I move this minute.”
“But, Ida, my child,” wailed Frau Thumann. “You see what she’s like; so much spit on whitewash, not a stitch on and nothing in her belly—I can’t turn her out like that.”
“Can’t you, Thumann? Can’t you? All right, we’ll see about that—you can watch me go out of your front door, Frau Thumann.”
“Ida,” begged Madam Po, “do me a favor. Just wait till her chap comes back. Then I’ll get rid of them both. Get out of her sight, you fool, you,” she whispered agitatedly to Petra. “If she don’t see you, she’ll cool down.
“I’m going,” whispered Petra. All of a sudden she could stand and could see the open kitchen door as a black oblong against the passage. But she could not distinguish the faces of the women. She went ‘slowly. They were saying something, ever quicker and louder, but she didn’t hear it clearly, did not grasp it.…
But she could walk, however—from the bright stuffy heat slowly toward the blackness which led to the gloomy corridor with “her” door; she only needed to enter, lock it, and then to bed.…
She passed it as if in a dream, however, her feet disobeying her. I ought to have made the bed, she thought,
