“Well now, let’s hop it.… Gently, young fellow, careful with the door.… If we wake her up now, it’ll be tough luck.… Getting nabbed when you’re doing a bunk ain’t nice. Look out, can’t you! Careful, idiot! You’ll wake her up! Thank God, we’ve managed it.… Quietly with the passage door.… Quietly, I said. Quietly doesn’t mean kicking up a row! Lord, is your heart hammering like mine? I was afraid we’d wake the old woman; I’m queer that way. I could bust a man like you right on the jaw—I wouldn’t think twice about it—but an old woman like that …”
IV
It stank—it stank suffocatingly in all the corridors and stairways, in all the dormitories, in every cell, workroom and workshop of Meienburg prison. Of lavatory buckets, disinfectants, old oakum, dried vegetables that had gone moldy, dried fish and old socks, cocoa fiber and polish. Yesterday’s thunderstorm had also passed over Meienburg prison, but the cool rainy air had not been able to penetrate into the white structure of cement, steel and glass dominating the town.
“Hell! What a stink again!” said the warders on morning duty, who came at a quarter to six.
“Man, how it stinks in your cell!” The station warder woke his orderly, Hans Liebschner, with a vigorous poke in the ribs. “Get up, man; in ten minutes they’ll be emptying their buckets. Oh, God! It stinks so much already that all my breakfast is coming up.”
“I don’t smell anything, chief warder,” protested Liebschner as he slid into his trousers.
“I’ve told you ten times that I’m a principal warder, not chief warder,” growled the old man. “You won’t get favors from me by sucking up, Liebschner.”
“Yet there was one favor I wanted so much from you, chief warder,” Liebschner said flatteringly, with an exaggerated roll of his eyes.
“And what’s that, my lad?” The warder leaned against the door, swinging the heavy steel plate backwards and forwards with his shoulders, and looking not unkindly at his orderly. “You are a real gallows-bird.”
“I’d like to go on outside work, with the harvest crew,” begged Liebschner. “Would you suggest me for it, chief warder?”
“But why? You’ve got nothing to grumble about here as orderly.”
“I can’t stand the air,” complained the prisoner in a pitiful voice. “My head’s queer; I can’t eat anything, and I always feel so bad from the stink.…”
“And just before you couldn’t smell anything! No, my lad, I’ll tell you what’s on your mind. You want to make a getaway—you’d like to go off on the spree—with the little girls, eh? Well, you won’t. You’re staying here! Besides, a convict isn’t permitted to go on outside labor before he’s served at least half his sentence.”
The prisoner, his head lowered, tied his shoes. The warder went on swinging the steel door, at the same time observing the closely cropped skull.
“Principal warder!” said the prisoner Liebschner, looking up with determination.
“Well?”
“I don’t like squealing on anyone, but if I have to, then I must. I can’t stand it any longer in the cell; I’m going mad.”
“You don’t go mad so easily, my lad.”
“But I know someone who’s got a steel saw. Will you swear that I shall go on outside labor if I tell you his name?”
“No one’s got a steel saw here!”
“Yes—on your landing, too!”
“Nonsense. Besides, I don’t arrange who goes on the outside gangs; the work inspector does that.”
“But if you put in a good word for me, I’ll get out.”
Long pause.
“Who’s got the saw?”
“Do I get into the outside gang?”
“As far as I’m concerned. Who has the saw?”
“Quietly, principal warder, please, quietly! I’ll whisper it in your ear. But don’t give me away. They’d kill me when I go to the workroom.”
Softly the prisoner whispered in the warder’s ear. The latter nodded, asked something in a whisper, listened, nodded again. Below the bell began ringing; from landing to landing echoed the cry, “Buckets! Buckets!”
The warder straightened himself. “Very well, then, Liebschner, if it’s true you’ll go on the outside gang. What a low-down trick! I’d have been in a nice mess! Now hurry up, man, quick, empty your bucket. Make it snappy, so that we’ll get the stink over quickly!”
V
In Meienburg prison the morning bell rang at six o’clock; in Alexanderplatz police prison in Berlin it was half-past six before the prisoner was allowed to get up, before he knew that the night was over and something new would happen—perhaps even to him.
Petra was awakened by the hurried clanging; for a moment she still had Wolf’s image before her. It laughed—then many things went dark. An old woman (Wolfgang’s mother?) said many bad things to her in a harsh tone. A tree appeared out of the dark, leafless, with skeletal, threatening branches. A line of poetry that Wolfgang often sang sounded in her ear, He doesn’t hang from a tree, from rope hangs he. Then her eyes were wide open. The gypsies were chattering again in the corner, gesticulating, crouched upon their mattress; the tall girl was still lying in bed, her shoulders shaking—so she was crying again; the little fat woman was standing in front of the cell mirror, no bigger than a hand, wetting her finger in her mouth and then smoothing her eyebrows with it. And Frau Krupass sat up in her bed, braiding her miserable plaits. On the floor the Hawk, in her bundle, lay motionless.
Outside, divided by iron window bars, the sky was pale blue and softly touched by sun. A new day. Now for new work! How was one to wash? There was hardly any water left in the jug. “Listen, girlie, what we agreed on last night stands, eh? Or have you changed your mind?” said the old woman.
“No,” said Petra.
“I’ve got a feeling that you’ll be getting out today. If we don’t see each other again, you’re to go to Killich—Lawyer Killich, on Warschauer Brücke. Will you remember that?”
“Lawyer Killich, Warschauer Brücke,” repeated Petra.
“Good. You are to go there right away. But what a sight you are! Still thinking of that fellow?”
“No.”
“Now, now!”
“But I believe I dreamed about him.”
“Well, you won’t be able to do anything about that for the moment. That’ll go away by itself in time, that dreaming. But don’t eat roast potatoes in the evening; tell Randolf’s wife she’s always to give you cold meat. Roast potatoes in the evening, and especially with onions, always bring on dreams; you mustn’t eat anything like that, girlie—understand!”
“Yes,” said Petra. “But I am really not so sensitive.”
“What do you want to get all upset about a fellow like that for? There are plenty of men, much too many—don’t you bother with them. Always cold meat and a glass of beer, then you’ll go to sleep easier. Well, you’ll get over it. I’m not worried about it.”
“I’m not, either.”
“Well, go and look after your patient; I can see you’re dying to. Once a fool, always a fool. You’ll never learn. I say, girlie!”
“Yes?” Petra turned round.
“I think you won’t stick it, you know. If he’s standing on the other side of the street and whistles and beckons, then you’ll run off, out of my nice flat and away from the good food and the bath and the bed—you’d run to him just as you are, wouldn’t you?” There was suspicion in the old woman’s eyes.
“But Ma Krupass,” said Petra smiling, “he no longer comes first now. Now I think first of it.”