he took a double cognac, which tasted horribly of raw spirit. But a slight warmth was kindled in his stomach and slowly spread; an artificial warmth, not bringing that quiet happiness which Petra had felt after eating the crust of bread.
Pagel stood there indolently, looking with indifference at the smelly barroom with its noisy crowd. Apathy had seized him. He was convinced that already, before he had lifted a finger to help Petra, everything had miscarried. It didn’t matter in the least that the carefully guarded money had now been broken into. Indeed, he would have preferred it to flow from him, if possible, without his having to make any effort—for what could money do? But if money couldn’t help, what did? Must there be any help? Did anything matter?
As he stood there, so he would have preferred to stand forever; each step he took brought him nearer to a decision which he did not wish to make, which he wanted to delay as long as possible. It occurred to him that he had really done nothing else the whole day long but put off that decision. First of all he must have money, then he would go forth in grand style. Now he had the money—and he stood calmly waiting at the counter.
A young lad wearing a peaked cap down over his ear came up to him, sniffed the smoke from his cigarette and begged for one. “I’m mad on English cigarettes. Don’t be so stingy, you; at least give me your fag end.” Smiling, Wolfgang shook his head, and the face darkened. The lad turned away. Wolfgang put his hand into his pocket, extricated a cigarette, shouted “Catch” and threw it. The other caught it and nodded curtly. At once there were three or four lads round Pagel, also begging for cigarettes. Hastily he paid at the counter, noticing their eyes fixed on his thick wad of money, and as he went out he pushed aside with his shoulder a lad who tried to jostle him.
Pagel was now only three minutes’ walk from his room and this time he did not dawdle. But as he rang Madam Po’s bell he felt the stimulus which the encounter in the dram-shop had supplied dying away; boundless sadness fell on him again. It seemed to weigh him down as the dark storm clouds had done that afternoon.
In the corridor he heard Madam Po’s repulsive shuffle and her phlegmy cough, noises which somewhat dispersed the cloud of sadness, and he felt that he would punish this woman for what had happened—no matter what it was.
Cautiously the door was put on the jar, but he kicked it wide open and towered over the startled woman. “Oh, Lor’, Herr Pagel, what a fright you gave me!” she complained.
He stood silent, perhaps waiting for her to speak, for her to start to tell him what had happened. But he had obviously filled her with fear, for she didn’t utter a sound, only smoothed her apron with her hands.
Suddenly—a second ago Pagel himself hadn’t known that he would do it—his shoulder pushed aside the woman as it had done the lad in the schnapps bar, and without hesitating he went along the dark corridor toward his room.
Frau Thumann rushed up behind him. “Herr Pagel! Herr Pagel! Listen to me a second,” she whispered.
“Well?” He turned so suddenly that she was again scared.
“Lor’, what’s the matter with you, Herr Pagel? I don’t understan’ it.” She was very flustered. “It’s only that I’ve let your room. To a girlfriend of Ida’s. She’s in it now—not by ‘erself. You understand? Why are you looking at me like that? You want to frighten me. You needn’t, I’m frightened enough already. If only Willem’d come! You ain’t left anything there, and your girl having been fetched away by the coppers …”
She was under way again, was Madam Po. But Pagel listened no longer. He pushed open the door of his room—had it been locked he would have broken it open—and went in.
On the bed sat a half-naked female, prostitute, of course—on the same narrow iron bed in which he had slept that morning with Petra. A young man of no better appearance than substance was just unbuttoning his braces.
“Get out!” said Pagel to the startled pair.
Frau Thumann was lamenting in the doorway. “Herr Pagel, this is the last straw. I’ll call the police. This is my room and you not having paid I need money too. No, Lotte, don’t talk, the man’s cracked. They took his girl to the police station, and so he’s gone off his rocker.”
“Shut up!” said Pagel sharply and punched the youth in the back. “Hurry. Get out of my room! Look sharp!”
“I must really ask—” The youth made a timid show of resistance.
“I’m just in the mood,” said Pagel softly but very distinctly, “to give you a good hiding. If you and that whore are not out of my room in one minute …”
His voice failed. He was shaking from head to foot with fury. He had never for one moment intended to claim this damned filthy hole, but it would suit him admirably if this bloody counterjumper said one single word of opposition.
He did not, however. Silent and flurried, he buttoned up his braces, fumbled with his waistcoat and jacket …
At the door Madam Po was wailing. “Herr Pagel! Herr Pagel! I don’t understand you! You’re an educated man an’ we always got on so well, an’ me wanting to give a roll and a pot of coffee to your girl, only Ida wouldn’t stand for it.… Besides, everything was Ida’s fault, I’d got nothing against you. Lor’, now he sets my place on fire!”
Pagel, paying no attention to her, had been standing by the window, absent-mindedly watching the girl putting on her blouse in a great hurry. Then it occurred to him that he was no longer smoking. Lighting a cigarette, he eyed the burning match in his fingers. Beside him was the curtain, the repulsive, dingy curtain which he had always hated. He touched it with the match. The hem scorched and writhed, then burst into flame.
The girl and the Thumann woman screamed, the man made a step toward him, then hesitated.
“So!” said Pagel and crumpled the curtain up, thereby extinguishing the flame. “This is my room. What do I owe you, Frau Thumann? I’ll pay to the end of the month. Here!”
He gave her some money, any odd amount, a couple of notes, it didn’t matter. He was putting the wad back into his pocket when he noticed the girl looking at it with a pathetically covetous look. Supposing she knew, he thought with satisfaction, that this was only one of six such packets—and the least valuable at that.
“There!” he said to the girl and held it out.
She looked at the money, then at him, and he realized that she did not believe him. “All right, then,” he said indifferently and put the money away. “You’re a fool. If you’d taken it you could have kept it. Now you won’t get anything.”
He went to the door. “I’m going to the police, Frau Thumann. In an hour I’ll be back with my wife. See that there’s something for supper.”
“Certainly, Herr Pagel. But you haven’t paid for the curtain yet. A quarter of an hour ago a copper was looking for you. I told him you had ‘opped it.”
“Good. I’ll go there now.”
She hurried after him. “And, Herr Pagel, please don’t take it amiss. You’ll hear about it any’ow at the station. I only said you were a bit behind with the rent, and straightaway they made me sign something about fraud. But I’ll take it back, Herr Pagel, I didn’t mean it. I’ll go at once to the police and take it back. I didn’t want to do it, but he made me. I’ll be there right away. I must first get rid of the girl. A fool like her wouldn’t never have earned the rent, and you’ve seen what sort of a gent that was, Herr Pagel, with a dickey on …”
Pagel was already descending the stairs; the devil takes the hindmost, and so it was quite in keeping that Frau Thumann had laid a charge on account of fraud. It didn’t matter to him, but as regards Petra …
He returned. Madam Po had started to report the events to a neighbor on the landing. “If you’re not at the police station in twenty minutes, Frau Thumann,” he said, “there’ll be the devil of a row.”
The yellow secretary at the police station had had a bad day. It was a severe bilious attack, as he had feared in getting up that morning. Dull pressure in the region of his gall-bladder and a feeling of nausea had warned him. He knew quite well, and the surgeon had told him often enough, that he ought to report sick and undergo a course of treatment. But what married man nowadays could afford to let his family depend on sick benefits which lagged so far behind the devaluation?
The excitement of the Gubalke case had brought on a real bilious colic. He had hardly been able to finish the records for the transfer of the prisoners to Alexanderplatz at seven o’clock, and now he was huddled in the lavatory while they were calling for him outside. He could have screamed with pain. Of course he could go home if he was ill; no superintendent, and his least of all, would have any objection; but one couldn’t leave one’s duty so suddenly, especially at this hour when the heaviest tasks of the police started. The shops had closed, throwing thousands of businessmen and employees on the streets; hundreds of restaurants displayed their illuminated signs, and the lust
