Bahnhof at twelve o’clock I’ll be there, too, with the people. Don’t say anything. Get away quickly. Bad people here!”
And he mingled with the others. Voices screamed. Four figures swayed to and fro, tugging at each other.
The Rittmeister was glad to find the door so near and unobstructed. Relieved, he stepped into the street.
V
Wolfgang Pagel was still sitting at the oilcloth table rocking the chair, whistling absent-mindedly his whole repertoire of soldier songs, and waiting for Frau Thumann’s enamel coffeepot.
In the meantime his mother sat at a handsome Renaissance table in a well-furnished flat in Tannenstrasse. On a yellow pillow-lace tablecloth stood a silver coffee service, fresh butter, honey, genuine English jam—everything was there. Only, no one was sitting in front of the second cover. Frau Pagel looked at the empty place, then at the clock. Reaching for her napkin, she drew it out of the silver ring and said: “I will begin, Minna.”
Minna, the yellowish, faded creature at the door, who had been over twenty years with Frau Pagel, nodded, looked at the clock and said: “Certainly. Those who come late …”
“He knows our breakfast time.”
“The young master couldn’t forget it.”
The old lady with the energetic face and clear blue eye, from whom age had not stolen her upright bearing nor her firm principles, added after a pause: “I really thought I should see him for breakfast this morning.”
Since that quarrel at the end of which Petra, least concerned of any, had had her face slapped, Minna had daily set a place for the only son. Day after day she had had to clear away an untouched plate, and day after day her mistress had voiced the selfsame expectation. But Minna had also noticed that the repeated disappointment had not in the least diminished the old lady’s certainty that her son would appear (without herself making any advances). Minna knew that talking did not help, and so she kept silent.
Frau Pagel tapped her egg. “Well, he may come during the course of the day, Minna. What are we having for lunch?”
Minna informed her and madam approved. They were having the things he liked.
“In any case he must come soon. One day he’s sure to come to grief with that damnable gambling. A complete shipwreck! Well, he shan’t hear a word of reproach from me.”
Minna knew better, but it was no use saying so. Frau Pagel, however, was also not without intelligence nor without intuition. She turned her head sharply toward her faithful old servant and demanded: “You had your afternoon off yesterday. You went—there—again?”
“Where’s an old woman to go?” Minna grumbled. “He is my boy, too.”
Frau Pagel angrily tapped her teacup with her spoon. “He’s a very silly boy, Minna,” she said harshly.
“You can’t put old heads on young shoulders,” answered Minna, quite unmoved. “When I look back, Madam, at the silly things I did in my youth …”
“What silly things?” her mistress called out indignantly. “You didn’t do anything of the kind. No, when you talk like that you mean me, of course—and I won’t stand it, Minna.”
Minna thereupon kept silent. But when one person is dissatisfied with herself, then another person’s silence is like fuel to a fire—silence more than anything.
“Of course, I oughtn’t to have slapped her,” Frau Pagel continued warmly. “She’s only a silly little chit and she loves him—I don’t want to say like a dog its master, although that expresses it exactly. Minna, don’t shake your head. That’s it exactly … (Frau Pagel had not turned round to look, but Minna had really shaken her head.) She loves him as a woman oughtn’t to love a man.”
Frau Pagel stared furiously at her bread, put the spoon in the jam and spread it finger-thick. “To sacrifice oneself!” she said indignantly. “Yes, of course! They all like to do that. Because it’s easy, because there’s no trouble then! But to tell the painful truth, to say: ‘Wolfgang, my son, there must be an end to this gambling or you’ll never get another penny from me’—that would be true love.”
“But, madam,” said Minna with deliberation, “the child has no money she could give him, and he’s not her son, either.…”
“There!” Frau Pagel called out furiously. “There! Get out of the room, you ungrateful creature! You’ve spoiled my breakfast with your everlasting back talk and contradiction. Minna! Where are you going to? Clear away at once. Do you think I can go on eating when you annoy me like that? You know quite well how easily upset I am with my liver. Yes, take away the coffee, too. The idea of coffee! I’m upset enough as it is. The girl can be a daughter to you for all I care, but I’m old-fashioned, I don’t believe that one can be spiritually pure if before marriage …”
“You just said,” replied Minna, quite unmoved by this outburst, for such outbursts were part of the routine and her mistress calmed down as quickly as she flared up, “you just said that if you love someone you sometimes have to tell them disagreeable truths. Then I have to reply that Wolf isn’t Petra’s son.”
Whereupon Minna stalked off, the tray rattling in her hand, while as a sign that she expected to have peace and quietness in “her” kitchen, she slammed the door.
Frau Pagel understood quite well and respected her old servant’s familiar hint. She only shouted after her: “You old donkey. Always feeling insulted. Always losing your temper about nothing at all.” She laughed; her anger had evaporated. “Such an old donkey, imagining that love consists of saying disagreeable things to the other person.” She crossed the room. Her outburst had taken place only after she had finished her breakfast, and she was therefore in the best of spirits. The little quarrel had refreshed her. Stopping before a small cabinet, she selected a long black Brazil cigar, lit it carefully, and went across to her husband’s room.
VI
On the door of the flat, over the brass bell-pull (a lion’s mouth) was a porcelain name plate: “Edmund Pagel —Attache.” Frau Pagel was getting on for seventy, and it therefore didn’t look as if her husband had made much progress in his career. Attaches advanced in years are unusual.
Edmund Pagel, however, had gone as far as the most efficient councillor or ambassador—that is, as far as the cemetery. When Frau Pagel went into her husband’s room, it was not to visit him but only those reminders of him which were renowned far beyond the walls of the little home.
She flung the windows wide open; light and air flowed in from the gardens. In this small street, so close to the traffic that of an evening one could hear the elevated railway enter Nollendorfplatz station and the buses rumbling day and night, there was a straggle of old gardens with tall trees—long-forgotten gardens which had scarcely changed since the ‘eighties. Here it was good to live—for aging people. The elevated might thunder and the dollar climb—but the widowed Frau Pagel looked tranquilly into the gardens. Creeping vine had ascended to her windows; down below, everything grew, flowered, seeded—but the frenzied, restless people yonder with their turmoil and commerce did not know it. She could look and remember, she need not hurry, the garden would remind her. That she could live on here, that she did not need to hurry, was the doing of the man whose work was in this room.
Five-and-forty years ago they had seen each other for the first time, loved and married. Nothing was as radiant, as happy, as swift as Edmund, when she looked back. It always seemed as if she were running with him in a beautiful breeze down streets full of blossoms. Branches seemed to reach down to them over walls. They ran faster. The sky soared over them from the top of a hill full of houses.…
As long as they kept running, the blue silk curtain in front of them would continue to open.
Yes, what characterized Edmund was his speed, which had nothing hasty about it, but it came from his strength, his sense of perfect well-being. They reached a meadow with crocuses. For a moment they remained motionless on the festive green and purple carpet, and then bent to pick the flowers. But hardly had she had twenty in her hand then he came to her, swiftly, with no rush, light of step, with a whole big bouquet.
“How did you do that?” she asked breathlessly.
“I don’t know,” he said, “I feel so light, like I’m blowing in the wind.”
They had been married for quite a while when in her sleep the young wife heard a cry. She awoke. Her husband was sitting up in bed, looking altogether changed. She hardly recognized him.
“Is that you?” she asked, very softly lest her words turn the dream into reality.
The strange yet familiar man tried to smile, an embarrassed, apologetic smile. “Forgive me if I have disturbed
