Wolf Among Wolves (126 page)

Frau von Prackwitz came out of the warden’s house. “Go on slowly!”

Pagel would have liked to hurry. They had to pay for the car before twelve o’clock. Studmann had strictly enjoined this; at twelve the new dollar rate would be announced.… But he said nothing.

It was three o’clock before they reached the town. The dollar was then 320 milliards as against 242 that morning—payment had taken all the rent. In fact there was even a small debt remaining. “Of no importance,” said the gentleman politely. “You can settle that at your discretion.”

Pagel knew that this would be very important to Herr von Studmann. He had hoped Pagel would still bring back a considerable amount as a loan. It would of course be even more important to Studmann that nothing had come
of the meeting he had requested at six o’clock. Frau von Prackwitz had stood Pagel up in a local bar. She’d left to fetch the new chauffeur. Hours passed until she returned; the big new car stood driverless on the street. “This is Oskar,” she said and sat down exhausted. “Oskar is the son of a housekeeper of Papa’s. I remembered him. He’s a motor engineer by trade.”

“I have a driver’s license, also,” said Oskar. He was a young fellow about twenty with enormous hands and a face which looked as if roughly formed from a lump of dough; but he appeared good-natured, if a trifle simple.

Frau von Prackwitz swallowed one cup of coffee after the other, eating nothing. “Make a good meal, Oskar. We’ve a long way before us.”

“You ought to eat something, too, madam.”

“No, thank you, Herr Pagel.… Oskar knew Violet; he will help me to find her. How old was Violet, Oskar, when you left Neulohe to be apprenticed?”

“Eight.”

“At least he will drive as I want, isn’t that so, Oskar?”

“Of course, Frau von Prackwitz. Always very slowly and looking at everyone. I understand. I read about it in the papers.”

Frau von Prackwitz shut her eyes for a moment. Then she said emphatically to Pagel, “I noticed quite clearly how unwillingly this man Finger drove as I wished him to. You all now do what I want unwillingly—you too, Herr Pagel!”

He moved away.

She said, “For goodness sake, let me do what I want. Isn’t it me who’s lost a daughter, after all? If only one of you had been clever enough before! But being clever now? What’s the point of that?”

Pagel was silent.

When they had at last driven off it was after six and quite dark. Wolfgang hadn’t been able to understand why they didn’t go direct to Neulohe instead of by a long roundabout way; why, in spite of the darkness, they seldom drove faster than fifteen miles an hour; why they had to stop again and again while Frau Eva went a few paces into some unknown wood. Wolfgang understood nothing of all that.

Perhaps she just wanted to be alone. Perhaps she only stood there waiting in the dark night, till the engine noise in her body had died away, and the beating of her own heart was again palpable. Did she think that if she felt her own true self that she would feel her daughter, once a part of that self, as well?

Did she stand there awaiting some vision in which they would come through the wood—he and she, the lost ones? Did she see him in front, his bloodless face lowered, the thin-lipped mouth compressed—and her daughter half a pace behind with closed eyes, still in sleep, as the mother had last seen
her? Did she see the two wandering homeless over a cold and alien earth, where no hospitable door opened to them, no friendly word ever reached them?

It had been only a little while ago that Pagel had informed her that everything was different from what she feared, that no furtive lover was to be sought for, that the enemy was the manservant. “But that is impossible! I’ll never believe that,” she had cried.

Then she had believed it. She saw the two of them—and it seemed to her that they must eternally be together without a word, each silently chained to the other by the same hellish torment. She saw the pair so plainly that she imagined the servant must be wearing gray gym shoes with grooved rubber soles and Violet a man’s faded overcoat above a dress which did not fit properly because he had put it on while she slept.

Oh, those men, those police, those people from the Public Prosecutor, with their important airs, always ringing up, sending messages, wanting to know this, or measure some shoe! They would never find Violet, she was certain. She alone would meet the girl, some day or other. It didn’t matter where she waited. It just had to be outside—sometime, when the right moment came, she would be on the right spot. Hadn’t those people even wanted to carry out a kind of search of Violet’s room, fingerprints on the windowsill, a hunt for letters? She hadn’t allowed it, but simply locked the room. What was the good of such investigations now? Violet’s room belonged to her mother; when she came home utterly exhausted from her excursions, too tired even to weep, she would, after quickly looking at Achim, unlock the door and sit down by the bed. First she threw an anxious look at the window. But this was locked fast. She hadn’t been careless. Her daughter could sleep on undisturbed. She lay in her bed. Gradually the mother went to sleep too, in the wicker chair next to the empty bed—wishes became dreams! Eventually she slept soundly. Only the next day, when she awoke, did she change, wash herself, and prepare herself for the new day. These mornings, which filled her whole room with a wretched gray pallor, when the childish squabbling of the Rittmeister and his caregiver could be heard so embarrassingly clearly, and when, after the oblivion of sleep, the sense of her loss made itself felt like a consuming fire in her slowly awaking brain … But then there was the car, she would set out at once; she must hurry, the reunion with her daughter was perhaps close at hand. That foolish pedant of a Studmann had no idea what this car meant to her! It was the bridge into the future, her only hope. Yes, indeed. He had asked for a very urgent, hurried and private interview with her, but here she was standing in the wood and it was nine or ten o’clock. He didn’t understand that you don’t leave someone who’s been struck down by misfortune—! Perhaps she was only standing there because he was waiting for her!

Eventually she got back into the car again, and told the driver to continue. Neulohe approached, and then it really was ten o’clock.

Passing through the little town of Meienburg, she had asked to stop again. She was dying of hunger! There was a good hotel here, The Prince of Prussia; she had often been there as a young girl, with her parents.

It was a long time before she could make up her mind what to order; nothing on the menu was exactly right. She ordered wine, all the time watching Pagel out of the corner of her eye. He had said that he wasn’t hungry. He was almost surly—oh, how transparent people had become to her! She saw that he knew about the interview promised Herr von Studmann. Perhaps he knew a good deal more, of glances, certain words, of hopes. A woman can never have any idea how much men confess to one another; it is unimaginable.… Yes, young Pagel was dying of impatience on behalf of his friend; couldn’t he think of her for once? That she perhaps had reasons for hesitating, for waiting? He just didn’t think of her.

She drank a glass or two of wine and also ate a little. Then she got the waiter to unlock the veranda, unused in winter. She stood there a while—tables were piled on one another, the small garden could not be seen, nor the meadows and poplars on the bank of the little river.

At her side stood young Pagel. He didn’t understand why she had had to come here. “I came with Achim on our first outing together, just after we were engaged,” she said in a low voice, on going out. And she turned round to look again. The veranda showed no trace of the almost twenty years which lay between. A whole marriage had slipped by since then, a child had been born, more than a war had been lost. Vanished youth, forgotten laughter—gone forever!

Quieted, she had returned to her table; broodingly she turned the stem of the wineglass in her fingers. She could tell by young Pagel’s manner that he was no longer impatient or sulky or urgent—he had understood.

It is simply not true that youth is intolerant—a genuine young person will immediately understand a genuine feeling.

It had been after midnight when they arrived in Neulohe. “Please tell your friend,” she said, “that I will ring him up early tomorrow as soon as I can see him.”

Studmann without a movement had listened to the message. “I always thought, Pagel, that reliability was a desirable quality in this world,” said he, smiling a little miserably. “Be everything you like, however, but not reliable!” He looked old and tired. “I wrote to Frau von Prackwitz this evening. She will find the letter over there. Well, I’ll wait till tomorrow.”

Morning came. After breakfast Studmann had stayed in the office, not bothering about the farm. At first he tried to keep up the impression that he was working—then he gave that up altogether, a miserable person waiting for sentence.…

However, he didn’t go up to his room. He stayed in his office and walked up and down. His eyes, which now and then involuntarily fell upon the telephone, betrayed what he was thinking. Perhaps she’ll ring after all?

Pagel lay down to sleep, listening to the other man going up and down, up and down, while he himself went to sleep.

At half-past ten Pagel saw the great car drive through Neulohe. He hurried to the office. “Frau von Prackwitz wasn’t here? Hasn’t she rung up?”

“No. Why?”

“The car’s just gone out.”

Studmann seized the telephone. This time his hand did not tremble nor his voice falter. “Studmann here—may I speak to Frau von Prackwitz please? … She’s just gone out? … Good. Did she leave a message? … Yes, inquire please. I’ll hold on.” He sat there, his head bowed. “Yes, here.… Only that she’s not coming back today? Nothing else? … Thank you very much.”

He put the receiver down and spoke to Pagel without looking at him. “What was it Frau von Prackwitz told you yesterday evening?” Studmann stretched himself, almost smiling. “I’ve fallen down the stairs again, my dear Pagel, only somewhat more painfully than in the hotel.… Nevertheless I’m firmly convinced that there’s a spot somewhere in the world where absolute reliability is valued. I have decided to accept a situation open to me a long time. I will work in Dr. Schröck’s sanatorium. I am sure that the patients there will know how to value thorough reliability, evenness of temperament and inexhaustible patience.”

Pagel stared at a Studmann who now wished to be the nursemaid of neuropathics and hypochondriacs; was he speaking ironically? Oh, he was absolutely in earnest, never more so. He was not inclined to go along with the madness of this mad era, to be mad himself. Tirelessly, he continued without despairing. He’d certainly experienced a setback, a hope had escaped him, but he bore it. “I’m not a ladies’ man,” he went on. “I’m not fitted for their society. I’m too methodical, too correct—somehow I make them desperate. Once, a long while ago”—a vague gesture to indicate in what nebulous distance it lay—“I was engaged once. I was younger then, perhaps more flexible. Well, she broke off the engagement, all of a sudden. I was very much surprised—‘It’s just as if I’m going to marry an alarm clock,’ she told me. ‘You are absolutely reliable, you don’t go fast or slow, you ring exactly at the right time—you’re simply enough to drive one mad!’—Do you understand that, Pagel?”

Pagel had listened with a polite, interested expression, a trifle unsympathetic. This was the same Studmann who, when he himself was in trouble, had brusquely repelled every confidence.

The setback must have hit him hard. The solution probably came to him as a complete surprise this time, too.

“Well, Pagel,” said the changed and chatty Studmann, “you’re a different type of person. You don’t really live in a straight line—more hither and thither, up and down. You like to take yourself by surprise. I … I hate surprises!” His voice became a little icy and contrary. Pagel thought Studmann considered surprises above all vulgar, and therefore found them despicable. However, even at this urgent moment, Herr von Studmann did not pursue his intimate revelations. He soon returned to play the caring friend.

“You will be alone here now, Pagel. But I’m afraid not for long. I am sure that Frau von Prackwitz is mistaken in her judgment of her father. The rent ought absolutely to have been paid, on legal and personal grounds. Well, you’ll soon know all about that and will, I hope, inform me by letter. My interest remains the same. And should there come a change—over in the Villa—and I am really needed—well, you’ll let me know, won’t you?”

“Of course. But when are you going, then, Herr von Studmann? Surely not soon?”

“At once. That is, by the afternoon train, I think. I got in touch from Berlin with Herr Geheimrat Schröck.”

“And you won’t say good-by to Frau von Prackwitz?”

“I will leave a few lines behind for her. That reminds me, my dear Pagel; I will fix up your business at the same time.”

“What business? There’s nothing unsettled that I know of.”

“Oh, it’ll occur to you. And if not, I’m all for reliability in settlements, as I told you.”

And so Studmann had departed, a man of merit, a reliable friend, but a little withered; an unlucky fellow who thought himself a cornerstone of the universe. And, of course, in that business which he had wanted to fix up for Pagel he made a rare mess of things.

“What’s this I hear?” Frau Eva had asked next morning, highly indignant. “My husband has a debt of honor to you of two thousand marks in foreign money? What’s the meaning of that?”

It had been really painful for young Pagel. Secretly he cursed a friend who had not been able to omit speaking of that matter in a farewell letter to the woman of his heart. In these difficult times! Flatly he had left Studmann in the lurch. The matter had long ago been settled between him and the Rittmeister.
Incidentally it had never been a question of two thousand marks. A very debatable matter—half a drinking debt, traveling expenses, he couldn’t remember just what. But, as mentioned, settled long ago.

Frau von Prackwitz looked at him steadfastly. “Why are you lying to me?” she said. “Herr von Studmann, a great psychologist, at least in business matters, foresaw that you would feel embarrassed about this affair. It’s a matter then of two thousand gold marks which you lent Herr von Prackwitz at roulette, isn’t it?”