“Violet!” he said after a while.
“Yes, Fritz?”
“Wait here a minute, will you? I just want to find out something in the office.”
“What do you want to find out there?”
“Oh, nothing much.… Just to see what it looks like.”
“What do you mean? It doesn’t matter to us.”
“Still, let me. Excuse me—now, you wait here!”
Hurriedly the Lieutenant went over to the staff-house. He felt his way through the dark passage, switched the light on in the office and went straight to the drawer containing the weapons. It was half open, but this was not sufficient for him. He pulled it right out and regarded its contents very attentively.
No, the nine-millimeter Mauser was not there. He closed the drawer again, switched off the light and went out.
“Well, what does it look like in there?” Violet asked a little maliciously. “I suppose he tidied it up quickly?”
“What should it look like? Oh—I see—yes, of course. Pigsty, that’s what it looks like, my little lamb.” The Lieutenant was strangely cheerful.
She took advantage of this at once. “I say, Fritz.”
“Yes, Violet?”
“Do you still remember what you wanted today?”
“Well, what did I want? To give you a kiss? All right, come along then!”
He seized her by the head, and for a while she lay completely breathless in his arms.
“There!” he said. “And now I must dash off to Ostade.”
“To Ostade? Oh, Fritz—you wanted to look round my room to see whether I kept a diary.”
“But, my lamb, not today. I really must dash off. I’ve got to be at Ostade at six!”
“Fritz!”
“What?”
“Isn’t it possible at all?”
“No—completely impossible today. But I shall come, quite definitely. The day after tomorrow; perhaps tomorrow even.”
“Oh, you’re always saying that. You didn’t say anything this evening about having to go at once to Ostade!”
“I must, I really must.… Come, Violet, walk along with me as far as my bicycle. Now, please don’t start making a fuss, my lamb.”
“Oh, Fritz, you … the way you treat me …”
V
For a long time Petra had sat as if benumbed. Her sick enemy also lay still for a long time, exhausted. She had hurled all the abuse of which she was capable into Petra’s face; spitting at her, she had reminded Petra in an ecstasy of malicious exultation of how she had once dragged her out of a taxi. “Away from that fine rich bloke. And your umbrella also went flying!”
Mechanically Petra had done what was to be done: had given her a little water, laid a compress on her forehead and a towel over her mouth, which she kept pushing away. However much the other abused and reviled her, jeered and tried to hurt her, it no longer affected Petra, just as the noises of the city, growing ever quieter after midnight, no longer affected her. The city outside, her enemy here inside—neither meant anything.
A feeling of extreme loneliness had numbed everything in her. In the end everyone was completely alone with himself. What others did, asked, performed, was nothing. With a single solitary person on it the earth whirled along its path through the infinities of time and space, always with one mere solitary person on it.
Thus Petra sat, thinking and dreaming—Petra Ledig, spinster. She tried to convince her heart that she would never see Wolf again, that things had to be this way, that this was precisely her fate, and that she must resign herself to it. In the days and weeks to come she was often to dream and try to convince herself. Even if love, filled with longing, would not let itself be convinced, there was yet something like consolation, like a faint memory of happiness, in the mere fact that she could thus sit and dream.
Therefore she was almost annoyed when a hand placed itself on her shoulder and a voice roused her from her brooding with the words: “I say, jail-birdie, talk to me. I can’t sleep. My head aches. Your girl-friend pulled my hair so hard, and I can’t help thinking of my business, too. What are you thinking about?” It was the fat elderly woman from the lower bed, whom the Hawk had previously attacked. She pushed a stool next to Petra, scrutinized her with dark mouse-like eyes and, tired of sitting alone and brooding, whispered, with a nod of her head toward the sick woman: “She can sting like a wasp! Is it true, what she said about you, jail-birdie?” Of a sudden Petra was glad that the other had spoken, that there was some diversion in the long night; she found the woman not too bad, if only because she looked without animosity at the girl who had caused her no little pain.
“Some things are true and some things are not true,” she answered readily.
“But that you go on the streets—that’s not true, is it?”
“A few times,” began Petra hesitatingly.
But the old woman understood at once. “Yes, yes, I know, my pet!” she said kindly. “I’ve also grown up in Berlin. I live in Fruchtstrasse. I’ve also lived through these times—such times as we’ve never had before! I know the world, and I know Berlin, too. You smiled at someone when you were hungry, eh?”
Petra nodded.
“And that’s what a cow like that calls going on the streets. And she squeals on you for a thing like that. She did squeal on you, didn’t she?”
Petra nodded again.
“There—she’s such a greedy, jealous cat—you can see it by her nose. People who have such thin noses are always sour and don’t like seeing anybody else have anything. But you mustn’t take it to heart. She can’t help being crazy; she didn’t choose her nose herself. And what do you do otherwise?”
“Sell shoes.…”
“There, I know all about that; that’s also an aggravating business for young girls. There are nasty old men who, when they get the itch, run from one shoe shop to another just trying on shoes, and then push the young girls with their toes. Well, I suppose you know all about that, too.”
“Yes, there are people like that,” said Petra, “and we know them. And if we don’t know them, then we can see it in their faces, and no one wants to serve them. And some are still worse. They don’t only push, they talk as well, more vulgarly than any girl on the streets … And if you won’t stand for it, they complain that the assistants give bad service, and they get a real kick when the manager tells you off.… There’s no use defending yourself, they don’t believe you when you say that a fine gentleman has used such vulgar words.”
“I know, girlie,” said the old woman soothingly, for the memory of some of the insults she had suffered had become so vivid to Petra that she had spoken almost heatedly. “We know all about that! Do you think it’s different in Fruchtstrasse? Not a bit. If we haven’t got shoe shops there, we’ve got sweet shops and ice-cream parlors—the under-dog always gets it in the neck. But there won’t be any more shoes for you now that you’re in prison. Or will they take you back when you come out?”
“I’ve had nothing to do with shoes for a long time,” declared Petra. “Nearly a whole year. I’ve been living with a boy-friend, and it was today—no, yesterday midday—that we were to have been married.”
“You don’t say!” said the old woman with wonderment. “And just on a red-letter day like that the little poisonous toad has to go and queer everything by peaching on you? Now, tell me, girlie, what mischief have you really been getting up to, for them to shove you straight away into prison rig? They only do that with real jail-birds, because they think they might escape in ordinary clothes. But if you don’t want to tell me, all right then. I don’t like being taken in, anyway, and I can always see if you’re not telling the truth.”
And so it came about that Petra Ledig, between one and two in the morning, related to a completely unknown elderly woman the rather wretched story of the collapse of her hopes, and how she now stood once again alone in life, and really did not quite know the why or the wherefore.