or madly excited eyes; the tired policemen were apathetic or irritable. Rittmeister von Prackwitz, blazing with fury, had had to approach a score of people, rush, through dozens of corridors, go up and down numberless stairs till he was sitting, half an hour later, in a big untidy, smelly office. Hardly a couple of yards away the metropolitan railway rattled outside the window; one heard it more clearly than one saw it through the grimy panes.
Von Prackwitz was not alone with the official. At a neighboring desk a pale-faced, big-nosed ruffian was being examined by a plain-clothes officer concerning some pocket picking. In the background, at another desk, four men whispered together; one could not tell whether any of them were criminals, for all were in shirt sleeves.
Controlling his fury, the Rittmeister made his report as brief and as exact as possible, very vigorous and almost loud when his fury at having been taken in got the better of him. The official, a pale, worn-out civilian, listened with lowered eyes without interrupting. Or else did not listen. In either case he was very busy all the time trying to stand three matches against each other so that they would not fall down.
When the Rittmeister had finished, the man looked up. Colorless eyes, colorless face, short mustache, everything rather sad and dusty, but not unsympathetic. “And what are we to do about it?” he asked.
The Rittmeister was greatly shocked. “Catch the fellow,” he shouted.
“But why?”
“Because he hasn’t kept his contract.”
“But you didn’t make a contract with him, did you?”
“Yes, I did. By word of mouth.”
“He’ll deny it. Have you got witnesses? The man from the Agency will hardly confirm your statements, will he?”
“No. But the fellow, the foreman, has cheated me out of thirty dollars.”
“I would prefer not to hear that,” said the official in a low voice.
“What?”
“Have you got a bank certificate entitling you to possess foreign currency? Were you allowed to buy it? Are you permitted to dispose of it?”
The Rittmeister sat there rather pale, biting his lips. So this was the assistance the State gave you! He had been cheated—and all he got was threats. Everybody possessed foreign currency instead of rubbishy marks—he would like to bet that the gray man before him had some in his pocket, too.
“Don’t bother about the man anymore, Herr von Prackwitz,” advised the official. “Suppose we did catch and jail him? The money would be gone, and you wouldn’t get the laborers anyway. Day after day, hour after hour, these cases are reported. There’s a daily list of persons wanted—as long as this. It’s useless, believe me.” Suddenly he became quite official. “Of course, if you wish, there’s the matter of the fare money.… You can prosecute for that. I’ll file it.”
Von Prackwitz shrugged his shoulders. “And I’ve got my harvest waiting out there,” he said finally. “You understand, no end of food, sufficient for hundreds of people. I didn’t give him the foreign currency just for fun, but simply because one can’t get workers.”
“Yes, of course,” said the other man. “I understand. So let’s drop the matter. There are plenty of agencies around Schlesische Bahnhof—you’re sure to get laborers, but don’t pay anything in advance, or to the agent either.”
“All right,” said the Rittmeister. “I’ll try again.”
The big-nosed thief at the next desk was weeping. He looked repulsive. Undoubtedly he wept because he could think of no more lies.
“All right and many thanks,” said von Prackwitz, almost against his will. And in a subdued voice, almost sympathetically, as if to a fellow sufferer: “How do you get on with all that?” and he made a vague gesture with his hand.
The other raised his shoulders and then dropped them hopelessly. He made to speak, hesitated, and finally said: “Since midday the dollar’s stood at seven hundred and sixty thousand. What are people to do? Hunger’s painful.”
The Rittmeister likewise shrugged hopelessly, and without another word went to the door.
V
Weaponless, without even thinking of defense, he let himself be pushed and shoved—not even protecting his neck from the blow that threatened. Carry on, man, you leaf on life’s stream. Its swift currents bear him to calmer waters; but a new eddy engulfs him, and nothing remains but to let himself be whirled to destruction or to another respite—who knows?
Petra Ledig, half-naked and cast out, could with a few words have calmed the storm raised by the two women in the back kitchen. The matter was not really so serious. Life could have returned to its past, had it not been for a stubborn silence which hid pride as well as despair, hunger as well as contempt.
Nothing compelled Petra Ledig to pass by the open door of her room. She could have entered and turned the key had she wanted to. But the eddy wafted the leaf onward. For too long it had been lying in a quiet corner by the water’s edge, at the most sometimes agitated by a ripple. Now the wave lifted the acquiescent leaf into the utterly unknown, onto the street itself.
It was the afternoon, perhaps three o’clock, perhaps half-past three; the workers had not yet left their factories, women were not yet shopping. Behind their windows, or in dark, musty back parlors, the—shopkeepers dozed. No customer was in sight. Too hot!
A cat lay blinking on a stone step. Across the street a dog looked at her, but decided that she was not worth troubling about, and yawned, displaying his rose-pink tongue.
The still blinding sun looked, through the haze, like a red-hot sphere boiling over. Whether it was the walls of a house or the bark of a tree, a shopwindow or a pavement, clothes drying on a balcony rail, or a horse’s urine in the roadway—everything seemed to groan, sweat and smell. It was hot. Redhot. The girl, quietly standing there, thought she heard a soft monotonous sound, as if the whole town were simmering.
With her tired eyes blinking in the light, Petra Ledig waited for an impetus which would carry the leaf onward, no matter whither—anywhere. The town hummed in the heat. For a while she stared across at the dog, as if he could supply this; and the dog stared back, then flopped down, extending all four legs, to sigh with the heat and fall. asleep. Petra Ledig stood and waited, making no effort one way or another. Even a blow would have been relief. The town hummed with the heat.
And while she was standing in the unbearable heat of Georgenkirchstrasse waiting for something or other to happen, her lover, Wolfgang Pagel, sat waiting in a strange house, in a strange kitchen—waiting for what? His guide, the spotless Liesbeth, had disappeared somewhere in the interior of the house; and another young girl, to whom she had whispered a sentence or two, stood at the electric cooker with its chromium-plated fittings. A pot was boiling diligently on the hot plate. Wolfgang sat waiting, hardly waiting indeed, his elbow supported on one knee, his chin in his hand.
He had never seen such a kitchen. It was as large as a dance hall, white, silver, copper-red, its saucepans a dull black; and the working part was divided from the sitting-room part by a waist-high railing of white wood along a kind of platform. Two steps down, and you had cooker, kitchen table, pots, cupboards. In the raised part where Pagel sat stood a long snow-white dining table and comfortable white chairs. Yes, there was even a fireplace of beautiful red bricks with fine white joints.
Wolfgang sat above; below, the strange girl was busy with the stove.
Indifferently he looked through the high bright windows, framed by vine leaves, into a sunny garden—to be sure, there were bars to the windows. And, he thought absently, just as crime is shut up behind bars, so wealth also shelters behind them, feels secure only behind the railings of banks, the steel walls of safes, the wrought ironwork -also in its way a barrier—and steel grills and burglar alarms of its villas. Odd resemblance—not so strange actually. But I’m so tired.…
He yawned. The girl at the stove was looking at him. She nodded, smiling but serious. Another girl, also not unsympathetic—plenty of girls about and nods and sympathy: But what on earth was he to do? He couldn’t sit here forever.… What am I really waiting for? he thought. Not for Liesbeth. What can she say to me? Work and pray; the early bird catches the worm; we rise high on work and industry; work is the citizen’s ornament; no sweets without sweat. Or the dignity of labor, and the laborer is worthy of his hire; therefore he ought to be a laborer in the vineyard; work and don’t despair is the best medicine …
