Wolf Among Wolves (28 page)

“Herr Lieutenant, why should I be placed in a worse position than the others? In this district they are all clearing off their mortgages. And Kniebusch is not a person who deserves special consideration.”

This time the lieutenant replied, “It isn’t a question of Kniebusch: it’s you, Haase. You can’t fill your pockets through the swindling of the Berliners and overthrow them because of those same swindles. That’s as clear as daylight; every child understands that; you understand it, too. And in there,” he tapped Haase lightly on his waistcoat and the magistrate draw away uneasily, “in there you know quite well that you’re in the wrong.”

A terrible struggle was taking place in the other’s heart. In the course of a long, strenuous life he had learned to hold on to what he had got, but he had not learned how to be generous. At last he said slowly: “I’ll write that I won’t repay the mortgage and that I’ll pay him the value of ten hundredweights of rye every six months.… The farm doesn’t yield more, Herr Lieutenant, times are bad.”

“Shame!” said the Lieutenant in a low voice and looking very gravely at the old man. “You don’t want to burden your conscience with the entire guilt, but you’ll profit by the smaller guilt all right, eh? Look at me, man! I’m not much to write home about, but there is one thing … I possess nothing at all, Haase; for five years I’ve possessed nothing except what I stand up in. Sometimes I get my pay, sometimes I don’t. It’s all one to me. If you believe in a cause, then you give up everything for it—or you don’t believe in it. If that’s the case, we’ve no more to say to one another.”

Haase was silent for a long time. At last he said peevishly: “You’re a young man, and I’m an old one. I’ve a farm, Herr Lieutenant, and I must look after it. We Haases have been living here since time immemorial, and I wouldn’t like to meet my father and grandfather in the hereafter if I’d played fast and loose with the farm.”

“And if you retain it by fraud, that wouldn’t matter at all?”

“It isn’t fraud,” cried the magistrate heatedly. “Everybody does it. Besides, Herr Lieutenant,” and his face wrinkled in a grin, “we’re human beings, after all, and not angels; my father now and again sold a horse as a good draught animal when it wasn’t. We are cheated and we cheat for once—I think that God does forgive, too; it isn’t just a bit of writing in the Bible.”

The Lieutenant had already started another cigarette. What the magistrate thought about God didn’t interest him. He was more concerned that things should first improve in this world. “A match, forester!” he ordered, and the forester, who had been playing with the tassels of the curtains, sprang forward.

“Take cover,” ordered the Lieutenant, and Kniebusch jumped back into the curtains.

“If you don’t do what I tell you,” declared the Lieutenant stubbornly—for he could be just as obstinate as an old farmer—“if you don’t do what is the simple duty of every decent fellow, I’ve no use for you in our Cause.”

“I always thought
you
needed us,” rejoined the magistrate, unmoved.

“And if you aren’t with us, Haase,” the Lieutenant continued, undaunted, “and we take command in a month or two, do you think that matters will turn out so very much in your favor?”

“Lord!” said Haase, unperturbed. “If you’re going to punish everybody who hasn’t been with you, Herr Lieutenant, there will be a deal of weeping and wailing in all the villages. And you won’t be appointed Minister of Agriculture, either, Herr Lieutenant,” he mocked.

“All right,” said the Lieutenant curtly, and picked up his cap from the sofa. “So you don’t want to, Haase?”

“I have said what I’ll do,” repeated the other stubbornly. “I won’t give notice and I’ll give the equivalent of ten hundredweights of rye.”

“We’ve finished with each other, Haase,” said the Lieutenant. “Come along, forester; I’ll tell you where the meeting’s taking place this evening. Not here, anyhow.”

Haase would have liked to say something more, but he pressed his thin lips together. The Lieutenant was no bargainer; you could not beat him down; he demanded everything or nothing. But since the magistrate did not wish to grant him everything, he remained silent.

The Lieutenant stood in the doorway of the house and looked across at the farm. Behind him, silent, stood Forester Kniebusch and his dog. The Lieutenant might have been reluctant to step out into the lessening, but still sufficiently heavy, rain. But he wasn’t thinking of the rain at all; he was looking absent-mindedly at the open barn floor, where, before knocking off for the day, they were hurriedly unloading the last cartful of rye saved from the storm.

“Herr Lieutenant,” said Kniebusch cautiously, “you could, perhaps, hold the meeting at Farmer Bentzien’s.”

“Bentzien, yes, Bentzien,” said the Lieutenant thoughtfully, and watched the unloading. He could hear the rustle of the dry straw. He had not been in the Great War—too young for that—but he had served in the Baltic Provinces and Upper Silesia and had learned the lesson that tenacity of purpose decides the issue. He had told the magistrate that they had finished with each other; Haase might think so, but the Lieutenant hadn’t yet finished with him. “Benzine,” he muttered. “Wait for me here, forester,” he said hastily.

And with that he went into the house again.

Less than five minutes afterwards the forester was called inside. Haase sat at the table and wrote a confirmation that he forewent his right of extinguishing the mortgage and that he pledged himself to pay an interest of forty hundredweights of rye in two half-yearly installments. The magistrate was inscrutable, and the Lieutenant was inscrutable, too. The forester could have sobbed with joy, but was afraid to, lest the agreement be rescinded. So he hid his feelings, with the result that he made a face like red lacquer nutcrackers.

“So that’s that,” said the Lieutenant and scrawled his name as witness. “And now go and call the people together, Kniebusch. Here, of course! Farmer Bentzien? Benzine doesn’t come into consideration now!”

And he laughed maliciously. The magistrate, however, remained silent.

The conversation between Lieutenant and magistrate had been very brief.

“Tell me, Haase,” the Lieutenant had said on re-entering, “it has just occurred to me—what about the fire insurance?”

“The fire insurance?” asked Haase dumbfounded.

“Yes, of course.” The Lieutenant spoke impatiently, as if a child ought to understand the reason for his question. “How much are you insured for?”

“Forty thousand.”

“Paper marks, what?”

“Ye-e-e-es.” Very long drawn-out.

“I think that’s about forty pounds of rye?”

“Ye-e-e-es.”

“Isn’t that damnably careless? With a barn full of dry hay and straw?”

“But there isn’t any other insurance,” the magistrate had cried despairingly.

“Oh, yes there is, Haase,” the Lieutenant had said. “That is, when you’ve called in Kniebusch and written down what I tell you.”

Whereupon the forester was called in.

VII

Retired Oberleutnant von Studmann, reception manager, had a very unpleasant experience that afternoon in the hotel. About three o’clock, at a time when travelers do not arrive by train, there appeared in the entrance hall a rather tall, powerfully built gentleman, faultlessly dressed in English cloth, a pigskin case in his hand. “A single room on the first floor, with bath but no telephone,” he demanded.

He was told that all the rooms in the hotel had telephones. The gentleman, who seemed to be a little over thirty, could contort his pale, clean-cut face into most horrifying grimaces. This he did now to such effect that the porter started back.

Studmann came closer. “If you wish it, the telephone could of course be removed from the room. At any rate …”

“I do wish it!” the stranger barked. Then, without any perceptible change of mood, he asked gently that the electric bell in his room should also be disconnected. “I dislike modern technical apparatus,” he added frowningly.

Von Studmann bowed without speaking. He was expecting a demand that the electric light be cut off, but the gentleman either did not regard electric light as belonging to modern technical apparatus, or he had overlooked the point. Preceded by the bedroom waiter with the registration form, he went upstairs muttering, followed by a page with the pigskin case.

Von Studmann had been in a metropolitan caravanserai long enough not to be surprised at any request from a visitor. His composure was not easily ruffled; there had been the South American lady, traveling alone, who had screamed for a commode for her little monkey; there had been the distinguished elderly gentleman who, emerging from his room in pajamas at two o’clock in the morning, had requested in a whisper that he be furnished with a lady, at once, please. (“Don’t pretend; we’re all men.”) Nevertheless something about this new visitor warned Studmann to be careful. Ordinarily the hotel was patronized by ordinary people, and ordinary people prefer rather to read of scandals in the newspapers than to experience them. The reception manager’s instinct warned him. He was not affected so much by the silly requests as by the grimacing and shouting, and the man’s restless glances, now arrogant, now furtive.

However, the reports which von Studmann received a little later were satisfactory. The page had been given in tip an entire American dollar; the visitor’s pocketbook had been extremely well lined. The bedroom waiter brought the registration form. The gentleman had inscribed himself as “Reichsfreiherr Baron von Bergen.” Süskind, the waiter, had also taken the precaution of asking to see the stranger’s passport, which he was entitled to do in accordance with a regulation issued by the police. The passport—an internal one, issued by the district authority at Wurzen—seemed to be in order. The Gotha Almanac, which was then consulted, confirmed at once that there were really Reichsfreiherren von Bergen; they were domiciled in Saxony.

“So everything is all right, Süskind,” said von Studmann and shut the Gotha.

Süskind shook his head doubtfully. “I’m not sure,” he hazarded. “The gentleman is queer.”

“What do you mean by queer? An impostor? If he pays it doesn’t matter to us, Süskind.”

“An impostor? Certainly not. But I think he’s cracked.”

“Cracked?” repeated von Studmann. Süskind had had the same impression as he himself. “Nonsense, Süskind. Perhaps a bit nervous. Or drunk?”

“Nervous? Drunk? Certainly not. He’s cracked.”

“But why? Has he behaved in an extraordinary way?”

“Not at all,” admitted Süskind readily. “That grimacing and tomfoolery mean nothing. Some people think they can impress us that way.”

“Well, then?”

“One has a hunch, Herr Director. When the woven-fabric merchant hanged himself in Room 43 I had a feeling …”

“For God’s sake, Süskind, don’t talk of the devil or you’ll see his imps. Well, I must get on. Keep me informed, and be sure to keep an eye on the gentleman.”

Von Studmann had a very strenuous afternoon. The new dollar rate had not only necessitated refixing all the prices, but the entire budget had to be calculated anew. Studmann sat on pins in the directors’ boardroom. Vogel, the managing director, debated laboriously and at length, whether they should not, as a precaution against further dollar increases, add a certain amount to the present charges so as not to become “impoverished.”

“We must maintain our stores and establishment, gentlemen. Maintain them.” And he set forth that the stock of alabaster soft soap, for instance, had fallen in the past year from seventeen hundredweights to half a hundredweight.

In spite of his superior’s disapproving glances, Studmann kept on dashing out into the hall. From four o’clock onwards the whole staff had to deal with the reception of a rush of incoming guests, and this stream met and blocked another stream of people who had suddenly made up their minds to depart.

Studmann gave only a brief nod when Süskind whispered that the gentleman in No. 37 had taken a bath, gone to bed, and had then ordered a bottle of cognac and one of champagne to be taken to his room.

So he’s a drinker, he thought. If he starts a row I’ll send the hotel doctor up to give him a sleeping draught.

And he hurried away.

When he next left the boardroom again, the managing director was holding forth on the ruinous effect preserved eggs were having on the hotel trade. Nevertheless, under present conditions, it should be considered whether or not a certain stock … since the supply of new-laid eggs … and unfortunately also of chilled eggs …

Idiot, thought von Studmann, rushing away, and was surprised to find himself so irritable. He ought to be used to all this dawdling by now. It must be the storm.

Süskind stopped him. “It’s starting, Herr Director,” he said, his face lugubrious above his black tie.

“What’s starting? Be quick about it, Süskind. I’ve no time to waste.”

“The gentleman in No. 37, Herr Director,” said Süskind reproachfully. “He says there’s a slug in the champagne.”

“A slug?” Von Studmann could not help laughing. “Nonsense, Süskind, he’s pulling your leg. How could there be a slug in the champagne? I’ve never heard of such a thing.”

“But there
is
a slug in it,” Süskind continued, worried. “I saw it with my own eyes. A great big black slug.”

“You saw it?” Studmann suddenly became serious. He began to think. That there should be slugs in the champagne in this establishment was quite impossible. “We don’t sell adulterated champagne here. He must have put it in himself by a trick. Take him another bottle and don’t charge him. Here—for the butler.” And he scribbled a wine slip.

“Watch him, Süskind, see that he doesn’t play us a trick again.”

Süskind bowed his utterly perplexed head. “Wouldn’t you like to go yourself? I’m afraid.…”

“Nonsense, Süskind. I’ve no time for such rubbish. If you can’t settle it yourself, take the butler with you as a witness, or anyone else you like.”

Studmann was already gone. In the hall the famous iron magnate, Brachwede, was shouting that he had rented an apartment for ten millions daily, and on the bill he had been charged fifteen. The magnate had to be informed of what he already knew, that is, the rise in the dollar. Here Studmann had to persuade, there to smile, elsewhere to give a stern hint to a page to be more careful; he had to superintend the transportation of a crippled lady in the lift; to refuse three telephone calls.…