are everywhere.”
“Lord, don’t suggest such things with my Willem working on the fifth floor, and me being already so nervous. But there’s a difference, lass. Building’s necessary, but gambling’s not.”
“But suppose he needs it, Frau Thumann.”
“Needs it! Needs it! I’m always having my old man telling me what a lot he needs. Cards and tobacco and floods of beer, and, I dare say, little bits of fluff as well, but he don’t tell me that. I tell him: ‘What you
“Good God, Frau Thumann, you talk exactly like his mother. She also thought I was too kind to him and encouraging him in his vice, and she even slapped my face once for that very reason.”
“Slapping ain’t the right thing either! Aren’t you her daughter-in-law? No, you do it, see what I mean, for your own pleasure, and if it gets too much for you, then you hop it. No, slapping’s not nice, either; you c’n even go to the law about it.”
“But it didn’t hurt at all. His mother’s got such tiny hands. My mother was quite different. And anyway …”
IV
A wooden barrier divided the room of the Berlin Harvesters’ Agency into two very unequal parts. The front part, in which Rittmeister von Prackwitz stood, was quite small and the entrance door opened into it. Prackwitz had hardly room to move.
The other and larger part was occupied by a small, fat, darkish man. The Rittmeister was not sure whether he looked so dark because of his hair or because he had not washed. Gesticulating, the dark fat man in dark clothes was speaking vehemently with three men in corduroy suits, gray hats, and cigars in the corner of their mouths. The men replied just as vehemently, and although they were not shouting it seemed as if they were.
The Rittmeister did not understand a word; they were speaking Polish, of course. Though the tenant of Neulohe employed every year half a hundred Poles, he had not learned Polish, apart from a few words of command.
“I admit,” he would say to Eva, his wife, who spoke broken Polish, “I admit that I ought really to learn it for practical reasons. Nevertheless I refuse, now and forever, to learn this language. I absolutely refuse. We live too near the borders. Learn Polish—never!”
“But the people make the most insolent remarks to your very face, Achim.”
“Well? Am I to learn Polish so that I can understand their insolence? I haven’t the slightest intention of doing so.”
And thus the Rittmeister did not understand what these four men were negotiating so vehemently in the corner, nor did he care. But he was not a very patient man: what had to be done had to be done quickly—he wanted to go back to Neulohe at noon with fifty or sixty laborers. A bumper harvest stood in the fields, and the sun shone so that he thought he could hear the crackling of the wheat. “Shop! Shop!” he called out.
They talked on. It looked exactly as if they were quarreling for dear life; the next moment they would be flying at each other’s throats.
“Hey, you there!” called the Rittmeister sharply. “I said ‘Good morning.’ ” (He had not said good morning.) What a crowd! Eight years ago, even five, they were whining before him and slavishly trying to kiss his hand. A damnable age, an accursed city! Wait till he got them in the country.
“Listen, you there,” he rapped out in his curtest military voice, banging the counter with his fist.
Yes—and how they listened! They knew that sort of voice. For this generation such a voice still had significance, its sound awakened memories. They stopped talking at once. Inwardly the Rittmeister smiled. Yes, the good old sergeant major’s bark still had its effect—and most of all with such scum. Presumably it penetrated to their miserable bones as if it were the first blast of the last trumpet. Well, they always had a bad conscience.
“I need harvesters,” he said to the fat, swarthy man. “Fifty to sixty. Twenty men, twenty women, the remainder boys and girls.”
“Yes, sir.” The fat man bowed, politely smiling.
“An efficient foreman reaper, must be able to deposit as security the value of twenty hundredweights of rye. His wife, for a women’s wage, to cook for them.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I pay single fare and your commission; if the people stay till after the beet harvest their fares won’t be deducted. Otherwise …”
“Yes, sir. Oh, yes, sir.”
“And now get a move on. The train goes at twelve-thirty. Be quick. Pronto. Understand?” And the Rittmeister, a weight having been taken from his mind, nodded even toward the three figures in the background. “Get the contracts ready. I’ll be back in half an hour. I only want some luncheon.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Then everything’s settled, isn’t it?” he concluded. Something in the attitude of the other puzzled him; the submissive grin did not appear so much submissive as deceitful. “Everything’s in order?”
“Everything’s in order,” agreed the fat man, with a gleam in his eyes. “Everything will be done in accordance with the gentleman’s instructions. Fifty people—good, they’re here. Railway station, twelve-thirty—good, the train leaves. Punctually to your orders—but without the laborers.” He grinned.
“What?” the Rittmeister almost shouted, screwing up his face. “What are you saying? Speak German, man! Why without laborers?”
“Perhaps the gentleman who can give orders so perfectly will also order me where to get the people. Fifty people? Well, find them, make them, quick, pronto, presto, what?”
The Rittmeister looked more closely at his man. His first bewilderment was over, as was also his anger, now that he sensed the other was out to annoy him. He knows German well enough, he thought, as the fat man gabbled on grotesquely, but he doesn’t want to.
“And those in the background?” he asked and pointed at the three men in corduroy from whose lips the cigars were still hanging. “You are surely foremen? You come with me. New quarters, decent beds, no bugs.”
For a moment it seemed to him deplorable that he should have to advertise himself in this manner. But the harvest was at stake, and it might rain any day. Yes, today even, for here in Berlin there was something like thunder in the air. He could no longer rely on the fat, swarthy man; he had alienated him, probably by his commandeering voice. “Well, what about it?” he asked encouragingly.
The three stood there motionless as if they had not heard a word. They were foreman reapers, the Rittmeister was sure of it. He was familiar with these struck-out jaws, the fierce but rather gloomy look of the professional nigger-driver.
The swarthy man was grinning; he did not look at his men, he was so sure of them. (Here is the street, the Rittmeister thought, and the point at which to look. I must march along.) Loudly: “Good work, good pay, piecework, good allowances. What do you say to that?” They were not listening. “And for the foreman thirty, I say thirty, good genuine paper dollars down.”
“I’ll arrange for the men,” cried the dark man.
But he was too late. The foreman reapers had moved over to the barrier.
“Take mine, sir. Men like bulls, strong, pious …”
“No, don’t take Josef’s. They’re all lazy scoundrels, won’t get up in the morning; strong with girls but slackers with work …”
“Sir, why waste time with Jablonski? He’s just out of jail for knifing a steward.”
“You dirty dog!”
A cataract of Polish words fell between them. Were they going to pull out their knives? The fat man was among them, talking, gesticulating, shouting, pushing, glaring at the Rittmeister, toward whom the third man was stealing, unnoticed.
“Good paper dollars, eh? Thirty of them? Handed over on departure? If the gentleman will be at Schlesische
