Wolf Among Wolves (59 page)

Von Studmann remained silent.

“Don’t you hear? I’ll peach on your friend!”

Silence.

Scornfully: “Don’t you know what peaching means? I’m going to squeal on your friend.”

Through the open glass partition came the driver’s voice: “Hit her one on the jaw. Right on the jaw. That’s what she deserves. Your friend was quite right; he’s a right ‘un, he knows what to do! Keep hitting it till she shuts up. Here are you running up all this expense with the taxi, and then she comes out with a lot of common talk about squealing!”

The quarrel between the two sprang into life once more. The glass partition was repeatedly wrenched open and again slammed shut, the taxi echoed with the screaming and shouting.

He ought to pay a little more attention to his steering, thought von Studmann. But what does it matter? If we hit something, at least this noise will stop.

However, they arrived safely at Alexanderplatz. Still cursing, the girl clambered out of the taxi, stumbling over von Studmann’s legs. “And a man like that thinks he’s a gentleman,” she shouted back into the car, and dashed off across the square toward a large building where only a few windows were lit up.

“There she goes!” said the driver. “And she’ll do a whole lot of talking if the cop lets her in; she’s really going to do what she said. And she’s done some pretty shady things herself. If they ask her whether she dopes she’ll be in the soup at once. Perhaps they’ll pinch her on the spot. Well, I shan’t be sorry.”

“What’s that?” von Studmann asked pensively, looking at the large building under whose gateway the girl had just whispered.

“Well, I say!” The driver was very astonished. “You must be a stranger here. Why, that’s Police Headquarters! Where she’s going to squeal on your friend.”

“What’s she going to do?” Von Studmann suddenly woke up.

“Squeal on your friend!”

“Why?”

“I think you must have been asleep during the row. Because he socked her! Even I understood that much.”

“No?” said Studmann very excited. “What for? One doesn’t go running to Police Headquarters because of a box on the ears.”

“How should I know? Do I know what your friend’s been getting up to? Anyway, you’ve been asking some funny questions yourself about gambling clubs and such-like. I suppose she’s going to blow the gaff to the cops!”

“Here!” Von Studmann jumped out of the taxi. Resolved as he had been a moment ago to denounce the gambling club, he was now equally convinced that this malicious girl’s denunciation must be prevented.

“Here!” also shouted the taxi driver, seeing his fare money, and a lot of fare money indeed, running away. And there came for the impatient feverish Studmann an endless arguing, a reckoning-up that went on and on. “Taxi comes to so much.” Reckoned out in pencil, and reckoned out in three different ways. “And then the extras …”

At last Studmann was able to run across the square, and then again he had to argue with the policeman on duty, who couldn’t understand what he wanted; whether he was looking for a lady or the gambling squad, whether he wanted to lay information or prevent its being laid.…

Ah, the placid, the cool, the calm, the collected ex-lieutenant and ex-hotel manager von Studmann! He had completely lost his head at the thought that someone wanted to report his friend Prackwitz and young Pagel for illegal gambling. Yet he had had the same idea himself only half an hour ago.

In the end, however, he obtained permission to enter, and the policeman told him how to get to the Night Division, for that seemed to be his objective and not the gambling squad, as he had hitherto believed. Nevertheless, not having paid attention to these directions, he soon lost himself in the huge, badly lit building. Through passages and up stairs he trotted, the hollow echo of his footsteps with him. He knocked at doors from behind which no answer came, and at others from which he was gruffly or sleepily sent on. In his weariness it seemed to him as if he were in a dream that would never end. Until at last he stood outside the right door and heard the sharp voice of the girl inside.

And at the same moment it occurred to him how senseless was his errand, for he could say no word to refute the denunciation; no, he would even have to confirm it. For it
was
a gambling club, and it
was
illegal gambling. He ought rather to run off as fast as he could to the club, and get the two of them away before the police came.

He retraced his footsteps, slunk guiltily past the policeman on duty. He would have to hurry in order to get there before the police; happily he remembered that here he was right next to the subway, and that he could get to the West End more quickly that way than by taxi. He ran over to the station and wandered around among the closed booking offices until it dawned on him that there were no more trains at this time of night. He would have to take a taxi after all. And at last he found one, and sank down in its cushions with relief.

Immediately he sat up again. Hadn’t he heard a police car just then?

Suddenly he became conscious of the stupidity of his actions the whole evening. Am I the same Studmann who never lost his head in battle? he thought with horror. And he felt as if he were no longer himself, but a hateful, fidgety, senseless person. “Cursed times!” he said, beating himself on the breast. “Damnable times, which steal people from themselves. But I shall get out of it all—I’m going to the country, and shall become myself again, as truly as I’m Studmann! But I must get there first—I can’t let them be caught.”

IX

Certain of victory, Wolfgang Pagel stepped into the gambling room with the Rittmeister beside him. In his closed hand he loosely held the seventeen counters from the first game, shaking them with a saucy gay, rattle. He knew that this time he was going to the game in a different spirit. Always before he
had played wrongly, devised idiotic systems which were bound to fail. But now he must do it as he had today; wait for an inspiration and then stake. Then wait until another inspiration came—perhaps endless waiting. But he must have patience.

“Yes, very nice. Very,” he said in smiling reply to the Rittmeister, who had asked something. Prackwitz looked at him in astonishment. Probably he had made some ridiculous reply, but it didn’t matter, he was really near the gambling table now.

At this time the table was more densely besieged than ever. It was the last hour; at three, or half-past three at the latest, they closed down here. All the players who, exhausted, had stood against the wall and smoked, all who had sat undecided in armchairs and on settees—all now thronged round the table. Time was escaping, but once again offering the prospect of great winnings. Take your chance! When the city awakes in a few hours, you’ll either be rich or poor. Wouldn’t you prefer rich? The incident with Pagel had long been forgotten; no one took any notice of him. Seeing no possibility of getting close to the table, he went right round it and with his shoulder he forced himself between croupier and assistants. Curly Willi, the thick-set bruiser from Wedding, was on the point of making an angry protest against this irregularity when a quiet word from the croupier stopped him.

Wolfgang Pagel shook his seventeen counters lightly in his hand. He wanted to make a bet. With a mocking smile under his moustache, the croupier reminded the old gambler that he couldn’t make a bet while the ball was rolling.

Wolfgang had to wait, and it was as if time stood still. Finally the ball came to a halt. A number was called out. The other players raked in their profits, ridiculous, paltry, insignificant profits.

Wolfgang’s hand descended upon the green cloth!

Seventeen counters lay on the number seventeen.

The croupier gave him a swift side glance and smiled slightly. Calling to the players for the last time to make their stakes, he seized the knob, the wheel began to turn, the ball rolled.…

His game began—the game of Wolfgang Pagel, at the time without occupation, ex-lover of a girl named Petra Ledig—that game for which he had been waiting a year, no, a lifetime, for which he had, in fact, become what he had become; for whose sake he had quarreled with his mother; for whose sake he had taken to himself a girl who had shortened for him the period of waiting, and who had gone when the time was right. We have staked on seventeen, seventeen counters on number seventeen …

Attention, we are playing! Seventeen brings a win of thirty-six to one—the ball rolls ceaselessly, rattling, rattling.… We still have time to reckon out in millions and milliards what we shall win when seventeen turns up … If the ball were made of bone we could say that the bones of the dead in their crypts rattle like it. But we are alive, and playing.

“Seventeen!” called the croupier.

There, is he not calling it out? It is the hour of judgment. The black sheep will be shorn but the just—they shall be crowned! There is a rattling down of counters, a rain, a flood, a deluge. Into my pockets with them! Wait. I also want to stake. Isn’t there a chair free for a player like me? What am I staking on? I must be calm, reflect … I shall stake on red. Red is correct, I once reckoned it out, a long, long time ago. Look, there’s a chair!

“Here, my son, here are ten dollars, good American dollars. Do you remember how you wanted to hit me on the jaw before? Ha-ha-ha!”

I mustn’t make so much noise? I disturb the others? The others can go to the devil! What do I care about the others with their measly stakes. They play to win, to hoard filthy paper money. I play for the sake of the game, for the sake of life … I am King!

Red!

He sat there and stared, suddenly morose, mistrustful. Were those enough counters? He piled them up before him in heaps of ten and, his hands trembling with excitement immediately, pushed them over again. They all wanted to cheat him here, rob him. After all, he was only the Pari Panther, a nobody in a shabby tunic. That dog, the croupier, had always treated him like a thief—he would pay him back for it!

And he staked again and won again, and Fortune returned to him. Blissful ecstasy never before experienced, like a cloud in the summer sky, and underneath the heavy dark earth with its vulgar people and their heavy distorted faces. Fly away, heavenly clouds and heavenly gods—O happiness!

What fell there? What’s gushing? What’s falling?

Like a brook the counters fell merrily splashing through his arms onto the floor, for he could no longer gather them together. Let them fall, Fortune is smiling on me! Let others bend down for them … We have enough, and we shall get still more!

How morose the croupier looks, how his beard bristles! Yes, we’re going to fleece you today, my son. You shall slink back to your hole as bare as a rat—soon you’ll have no counters left and you’ll have to bring out your paper money; today we’re taking everything!

What does the Rittmeister want? He has lost everything? Yes, you must know how to play. Do it like me, Rittmeister; after all, I’ve shown you how.
Here you have paper money, American dollars, 250 dollars. No, ten were given to Curly Willi—240 then! Yes, tomorrow morning we’ll settle it up, but in half an hour this money too will come back to me by way of the croupier.

The game is turning? The ball no longer rolls as he wants it to?

Yes, it is a fact: one shouldn’t give away money in the middle of a game; it brings bad luck.

He sat there gloomily, he tried the pari chances again, the three-to-one chances. He played cautiously, with calculation. But the counters between his arms dwindled, the ranks became thin. Again and again the army of the defeated rattled away beneath the croupier’s rake. The croupier smiled again.

And the players no longer looked at Pagel; they took no more notice of him. They boldly went on placing their stakes over his shoulder again. He was no longer a favored player; he was a player like the rest. Luck smiled on him once, then forgot him again; he was the plaything of fortune, not its bed-fellow.

What had he been doing the whole time? How long had he been sitting here?

Already he was fishing in his pockets, the stream had dried up. Had he immediately forgotten the lesson Fate had taught him? He must back seventeen—seventeen counters on seventeen—that’s what it was.

Seventeen!

And the rattle of the counters!

The ecstasy returned, remoteness from the world, and sun. He sat there, his head bent slightly forward, a lost smile on his lips. He could stake as he liked, the stream now gushed again. And then happened what he had been expecting: the counters gave out. Now notes were coming to him, more and more. They crackled, they looked up at him with dull colors—ridiculous paper marks, valuable pound notes, exquisite dollars, fat contented gulden, substantial Danish kronen—booty from the wallets of fifty or sixty visitors. It all streamed to him.

The croupier looked as gloomy as death, as if he had been seized by a sickness and was suffering intolerable pains. He could hardly control himself. Curly Willi had already run twice into the anteroom for fresh money, the day’s takings had to be brought. Soon you’ll have to use your wallet, croupier!

Croupier murmured something about closing down, but the players protested, threatened.… Hardly any of them were playing now; they were watching the duel between croupier and Pagel. They trembled for the young man. Would luck remain true to him? He was one of them, the born gambler; he was revenging all their losses on the wicked old vulture, the croupier. This young man didn’t love money as did the croupier—he loved the game! He was no exploiter.

And young Pagel sat there, ever more smiling, ever more calm. With excitement the Rittmeister whispered at his shoulder. Pagel merely shook his head with a smile.

The Rittmeister shouted: “Pagel, man, stop now. You’ve got a fortune!”

No, the Rittmeister was no longer embarrassed to shout in this room, but Pagel smiled unheedingly. He was here and yet was far away. He wanted this to go on forever, endlessly through the eternities. That’s what we live for! The wave of Fortune bears us on. Inexpressible feeling of joy in existence. This is how a tree must feel which, after days of tormented rising of its sap, unfolds all its blossoms in an hour. What is the croupier? What is money? What is the game itself? Roll on, little ball, roll. Did I ever think that the bones of the dead rattled like that?