Wolf Among Wolves (100 page)

Wrong again! Always doing things the wrong way! No sooner was she gentler than he became harsher. “On no account do I wish Studmann to be told,” said he, beginning to be irritated. “If he hasn’t been called upon, there will be a reason for it. And as for your father …”

“Very well, leave Papa. But Herr von Studmann must be informed. He’s the only one who has a real notion of our finances and can say whether it is possible to buy the car after all.”

“Don’t you understand, Eva?” he cried angrily. “I reject Studmann as competent judge of my actions. He is not my nurse.”

“It is necessary to ask him,” she persisted. “If the
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fails …”

“Listen! I forbid you to speak a word to Studmann about the matter. I forbid it.”

“What right have you to tell me what not to do? Why should I do what you think is correct, since everything you do, everything, is wrong? Certainly I shall talk to Herrr von Studmann.”

“You’re very obstinate about your friend,” he said suspiciously.

“Isn’t he your friend also?”

“He’s a self-opinionated fool, a know-all! An everlasting nursemaid!” he burst out. “If you say a word to him about this matter, I’ll throw him out on the spot. We’ll see who is the master here!” he shouted, holding himself rigid.

With pale and unmoving face she looked at him a long, long time, and once again he grew uncertain under this gaze.

“Do be sensible, Eva,” he pleaded. “Admit that I am right.”

Suddenly she turned away. “Very well, my friend, I won’t say anything to Studmann. In future I won’t say anything whatever.” And before he could reply he was alone.

He looked around discontentedly. The lengthy quarrel had left a feeling of emptiness, of something unsatisfied. He had had his way, and for once this did not please him. He wanted to forget the quarrel—it had been an endless torrent of words, long disputes about nothing—and why? Because he had bought a car! If he could pay over twenty thousand gold marks in rent he could afford a car. There were peasants who had them. There was a peasant in Birnbaum who had a car and a tractor plow, and another had twenty-five sewing machines in his barn, just to have something for his money. Goods!

It was not as if he had bought the car for his own pleasure. He would never have thought of it had not Major Rückert instructed him to get one. He had done it for the Cause; a thing she, however, couldn’t understand. And didn’t want to understand. In her dressing table there was a drawer at least a yard long and twenty inches deep, crammed with stockings. Yet she was constantly buying herself new ones. There always had to be money for that! He himself had hardly spent a penny for weeks, only the few cartridges which he needed for the rabbits, and the wine at meal times—but the very first thing he did buy, she made a row!

Soft and musical, the car hooted in front; his car, his brilliant Horch. Glad of this diversion, the Rittmeister put his head out of the window. Violet sat at the wheel, playing with the knob of the horn. “Stop that, Vi!” he shouted. “You’ll frighten the horses.”

“The car’s so smart, Papa. You really are the nicest man. It must be the finest car in the whole district.”

“It’s also pretty dear,” whispered the Rittmeister, twisting his head to look at the floor above.

Vi screwed up her eyes laughingly. “Don’t worry, Papa. Mother’s gone to the farm. In the office again, of course.”

“In the office? Oh!” The Rittmeister was annoyed.

“How much, Papa?”

“Frightful. Seventeen.”

“Seventeen hundred? That’s not so much for a swell car.”

“My dear Vi! Seventeen thousand!”

“At any rate, Papa, for that we have the finest car in the district.”

“You think so? That’s what I say. If you’re going to buy something, it may as well be something decent.”

“I suppose Mamma is not quite in agreement?”

“Not yet. But she’ll change her mind, you see, when she’s been out in it.”

“Papa?”

“Yes …? What?”

“When can I go in it? Today?”

“Oh!” Both children were equally delighted. The nursemaids were absent, in the office.

“I know, Papa! Suppose we go quickly through the forest? The gendarmes are searching there for the convicts. We might catch the fellows. Our car’s so silent and fast! And then we could drop in at Birnbaum. Uncle Egon and the cousins will burst with envy.”

“I don’t know,” said the Rittmeister doubtfully. “Perhaps Mamma would like to come.”

“Mamma? She’d rather be in the office.”

“Oh? What’s the chauffeur doing now?”

“He’s having something to eat in the kitchen. But he can’t be long now. Shall I call him?”

“All right. By the way, Vi, guess whom I met in the train today.”

“Who then? How can I tell, Papa? All the neighbors might have been there. Uncle Egon?”

“What are you talking about? I shouldn’t have asked you to guess about him. No. Our Lieutenant!”

“Who?” Violet turned crimson and lowered her head. Confused, she pressed the knob of the horn and the car hooted loudly.

“Don’t make that noise, Vi, please. You know, the Lieutenant who was so rude …” In a whisper: “The one with the weapons.”

“Oh, him!” She still kept her head down, and played with the wheel. “I thought you meant someone we knew.…”

“No, that ruffian.… You remember? ‘Such things are not discussed in the presence of young ladies.’ ” The Rittmeister laughed. “Well, to do him justice, Vi, he seems to be a big pot, however young he is. And damned clever.”

“Yes, Papa?” she said very softly.

“As a matter of fact, he’s responsible for my buying the car.” Very low and mysteriously: “Violet, they’ve got a big thing on hand—and your Papa’s in it.” This was only the third time that Rittmeister von Prackwitz had let out his secret; and for that reason he was still enjoying himself.

“Against the Socialists, Papa?”

“The Government’s to be overthrown, my child.” (This very solemnly.) “So the day after tomorrow, on October the first, I am going with this car to Ostade.”

“And the Lieutenant?”

“Which Lieutenant? Oh, the Lieutenant! Well, he’ll be with us, naturally.”

“Will there be fighting, Papa?”

“Very likely. Highly probable. But, Violet, you are not afraid, surely? An officer’s daughter! I survived the World War; a few small street fights like that won’t harm me.”

“No, Papa.”

“Well, then. Stiff upper lip, Violet. Nothing venture, nothing win. I think the chauffeur ought to have finished his meal by now. Call him. We want to get back before it’s quite dark.”

He watched his daughter get out of the car and go into the house, slowly, thoughtfully, her head down. She really loves me, he thought proudly; what a shock it was when she heard there would be fighting. But she pulled herself together marvelously. He thought thus, not out of joy in his daughter’s love, but so that he could, mentally at least, upbraid a wife who had not thought for a moment of the dangers to which he was about to expose himself, but only of buying cars, financial difficulties, rent, and questions of trust.…

And while he, proud of a daughterly love which fully appreciated his worth, got ready for the drive, Vi stood as if paralyzed in the small hall, with only one thought in her heart. The day after tomorrow! We have not seen one another again, and he may be killed. The day after tomorrow!

XI

Immediately after the quarrel with her husband Frau von Prackwitz had gone up to her room. She felt she had to cry. In the mirror over the wash-basin she
saw a woman no longer young but still quite good-looking, with slightly bulging eyes which now had rather a torpid look. It seemed as if all life had gone out of her; she felt icy cold, her heart was dead as a stone.…

Then she forgot she was standing in front of the mirror looking at herself. What is the good of it all? she asked herself once more. There must have been something which made me love him. What could I have seen? For so long!

An endless series of pictures swirled by her, memories of the past when they were first married. The young first lieutenant. A call from the garden. His charmingly foolish behavior at Violet’s birth. The first intoxicating homecoming after the banquet. A garden party in the garrison town—they had endangered position and reputation when a sudden and overwhelming passion had united the married pair in a park crowded with visitors. The discovery of his first gray hair—already at thirty he had begun to turn gray—a secret she alone knew. His affair with that Armgard von Burkhard; how he had brought her a basket of delicatessen and she had suddenly known that what she had cried about so much was at last definitely over.

A thousand memories, speeding by, happy or sad, but all in a faded, calamitous light. When love goes and the eyes are suddenly opened, and the once-loved is seen as others see him—an average person without special merits—seen with the merciless eyes of a woman who has lived beside him for two decades, knowing beforehand every word he will say, to whom every pettiness and fault is familiar—then arise the perplexed questions: Why? What is the good? Why have I borne so much, retrieving, forgiving? What was in him to make me sacrifice myself so?

No answer. The form to which love alone gave breath has become lifeless without it, a scurrilous figure made up of buffooneries, whims and misbehavior, an insupportable marionette, all its strings known!

Frau Eva heard the sound of feet on the stairs, and came to herself with a start. Two men were talking. It would be Hubert coming down from the attic with the chauffeur. For a moment she was seized with the idea of being truly her father’s daughter, cunning and subtle.…

Oh, let him go ahead and manage! He insists on being the master here, she thought. Let him see how far he can get without me and—Studmann. The money for the car, the rent.… I will tell Studmann not to go tomorrow, not to look for money, not to make any arrangements about hands for the potato harvest. He’ll find out in a week how irretrievably he’ll be stuck in the mud. I’m really tired of having to beg him for permission to do what is right.… This
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he’s so full of now is nothing but an adventure. Papa’s not in it, nor Studmann nor my brother. They’ve talked him round at the last moment. He will find …

She examined her face in the mirror. There was a trace of self-righteousness about the mouth which she didn’t like. Her eyes were bright, but neither did she care for that. The fires of malice shine thus.

No, she told herself resolutely, not that way. I don’t want that. If, as it now appears to me, everything is really finished, it will collapse without my assistance. I shall go on doing everything I can. That won’t be much; there’s no longer any enthusiasm, any love in it, only duty. But I have always been as honest as I could, and all these years I have nothing grave with which to reproach myself.…

Once again she examined the mirror. Her face had a strained expression; the skin round the eyes looked drawn, heavily wrinkled and dry. Promptly she took up her pot of cream and greased her face. Massaging the skin gently, she thought: I’m not finished yet; I’m in the prime of life. And if I’m more careful with myself and what I eat, I can easily lose fifteen or twenty pounds—then I shall have exactly the right figure.…

Five minutes later Frau von Prackwitz was sitting in the office with Herr Studmann. Studmann, of course, hadn’t the slightest notion of how she was feeling. Frau Eva, who in a quarter of an hour had discovered that she no longer loved her husband, who had decided that she would remain honest in all circumstances, but who had nevertheless conceded herself a quite joyous and hopeful life—Frau Eva had to listen to an exhaustive lecture on how Herr von Studmann proposed to raise the money for the rent the day after tomorrow.

The old schoolmaster! she thought, but not without sympathy. She was no girl now; she knew men (for to know one man properly is to know all) and she was aware that they possessed a bewildering lack of intuition. Under their very eyes a woman might expire from her desire for tenderness while they were demonstrating at length and in detail that they needed a new suit, and why they needed a new suit, and what color the new suit had to be.… And suddenly, very surprised and a little hurt, they say: “Aren’t you listening at all? What’s the matter with you? Aren’t you well? You’re looking so strange!”

Frau Eva had crossed her legs, which, her skirt being fashionably short, gave her the opportunity of studying them during the lecture. They were, she thought, still very nice to look at, and if she reduced, it would be better to do so on the hips and behind. But of course, one always got slimmer just where it was not so desirable.

Both suddenly noticed that neither was speaking.

“What was that, Herr von Studmann?” she asked and laughed. “Excuse me, my thoughts were elsewhere.” She drew back her legs as much as possible beneath the skirt.

Studmann was fully prepared to excuse her; his thoughts also had strayed. Hastily he took up his lecture again. It appeared that in the town of Frankfurt-on-the-Oder there lived a deranged person who was ready the following day to provide the full sum of rent in the finest of notes, if only the management of Neulohe Farm engaged to deliver him in December fifty tons of rye in exchange.

“The man’s mad!” exclaimed Frau von Prackwitz, puzzled. “He could have one hundred and fifty tons for his money tomorrow.”

That, admitted Studmann, had also been his opinion at first. But it was like this. The man—a rich fishmonger, by the way—would only have to change his tons of grain into paper money tomorrow or in a week. Everyone today, though, fled from paper money, tried to lay it out on some commodity of permanent value, and so this man had hit upon grain, no doubt.

“But how can he know that it will be different in December?”

“Obviously he can’t know. He hopes so, believes so; he is speculating on it. A little while back there were negotiations in Berlin about issuing a new currency. After all, the mark can’t go on falling forever. But they are at variance over money based on grain or on gold. No doubt the man thinks we shall have the new currency in December.”

“Would that change things for us?”