“Studmann didn’t behave very shrewdly there. Jealousy that shoots through the window doesn’t exist with us. And if I understood you rightly, Meier called out: ‘He wants to shoot me again.’ ”
“Yes, that’s what Studmann told me.”
“ ‘Shoot me again’—so the stranger had already tried it once. And this happened after the night on which Vi went into the staff-house with a strange man.”
There was silence. Neither of the married couple dared say a word of what they feared. The Rittmeister raised his head slowly and looked into the tearful eyes of his wife. “We always have misfortune, Eva. Nothing turns out well for us.”
“Don’t lose courage, Achim. For the moment these are all mere apprehensions. Let me handle the matter. Don’t worry about anything. I promise you I’ll tell you everything, even if it’s the worst. I shan’t lie to you.”
“Good,” he said. “I can easily wait.” And after short consideration, “Are you going to let Studmann into this? Studmann is discretion itself.”
“Perhaps. I must see first. The fewer who know the better. But perhaps I shall need him.’”
“Ah, Eva,” he said, much relieved (it already seemed to him as if he had merely been having a bad dream), “you don’t know how happy I am to have a real friend here.”
“I do, I do,” she said earnestly. “I know. I also thought …” But she broke off. She had been about to say that she also had believed she had a friend in her daughter who was now lost to her.… But she didn’t say it. Instead she said, “Excuse me a moment. I’ll just go and see Violet.”
“Don’t be hard on her,” he said. “The poor child’s already quite pale.”
IV
So there they went, the two of them, along the path to the forest. It was a real country path, which knew nothing of townsmen (and there is nothing townsmen like more than something which wants to know nothing of them). It led to the forest, and far inside the forest lay the crayfish ponds, deep, cool, clear—wonderful!
“Did you see the Rittmeister and family on the veranda just now?” asked Pagel. “What do you think of the young Fräulein?”
“And you?” countered Studmann, smiling.
“Very young,” declared Pagel. “I don’t know, Studmann, but I must have changed tremendously. Fräulein von Prackwitz here, and Sophie who traveled with us, and Amanda Backs—how they would have delighted me a year ago! I think I’m getting old.”
“You’ve forgotten to mention Black Minna who cleans up the office,” said Studmann gravely.
“No, seriously,” replied Pagel half crossly, half laughing. “I’ve got a sort of yardstick in me, and when I apply it, all girls seem to me too young, too stupid, too common.”
“Pagel!” Studmann raised his arm and extended it ceremoniously over the farms of Neulohe. “Pagel! Over there is the west. Berlin! And there it can stay. I declare to you solemnly, I don’t want to see or hear anything of the place. I live in Neulohe! No Berlin memories, no stories of Berlin, nothing of the merits of Berlin girls!” More seriously: “Of course you have a yardstick, you should be glad you have, you even wanted to marry it; but don’t think of it anymore now! Try to forget Berlin and everything in it. Enter into the spirit of Neulohe! Be a farmer only. When you’ve succeeded in that, and if your yardstick still means something, then we can talk about it. Till then it’s only sentimental moonshine.”
Pagel’s face looked sullen and obstinate. He knew quite well what Studmann meant, yet he found it disagreeable. From his mother’s protective care he had passed to that of his sweetheart; every trifling worry had been listened to with sympathy. Suddenly all this was to end.
“All right, Studmann,” he said at last. “As you like.”
“Excellent,” said Studmann. He considered it advisable to discontinue the subject; he had read sufficient in the young man’s face. Raising his voice, he said: “And now, my worthy fellow farmer, tell me what sort of grain this is!”
“That’s rye,” said Pagel, letting an ear glide expertly through his fingers. “I know that stuff. I helped pile it in stacks yesterday.” And he cast a stealthy glance at his blistered hands.
“That’s my opinion too,” said Studmann. “But if it’s rye, we have to ask ourselves, is it our rye, that is to say, does the rye belong to the estate?”
“According to the plan of the holdings, no peasant has a field out here,” said Pagel hesitantly. “It should be ours.”
“Again my opinion. But if it’s ours, why hasn’t it been reaped yet? Seeing that we are already reaping oats? Has it been forgotten, perhaps?”
“Impossible. So near to the farm! We pass here every day with the teams. In that case I should have heard at least something about it from the men.”
“Don’t tell me anything about the men. In the country they’ll be no different from those in the hotel. They grin up their sleeves whenever the boss forgets anything. The experiences I had in the hotel!”
“Herr Studmann! Over there in the west, there lies Berlin—let it stay there, let’s not bring it up! We’re living in Neulohe—I don’t want to hear any tales about Berlin!”
“Excellent. So you accept my suggestion? Agreed! No more about Berlin!” … And with new eagerness: “Perhaps it isn’t ripe yet?”
“It is ripe,” cried Pagel, proud of his newly acquired knowledge. “Look, the grain should break clean over the nail—and this is already dry and as hard as a bone.”
“Queer. We must ask the Rittmeister—remind me. Just watch how I’ll impress him this evening with our vigilance! He shall learn that he now has employees with eyes in their heads and brains in their skulls, the beau ideal of all employees, employees of the first class. He shall weep with joy over us.”
“You’re right off your rocker, Studmann,” said Pagel. “I’ve never known you like this.”
“Pagel, don’t you know what it is? The peace of the fields, the breath of nature, grassy soil under one’s feet—you don’t know what it means, doing eighteen miles a day up and down the stupid corridors of a hotel, with the soles of your feet burning.”
“Berlin! Wicked, forgotten Berlin!”
“I already have an idea that even this peace is a fraud. In the houses of that charming little village which crouches so picturesquely in the forest, scandal, jealousy, and tale-telling are just as much at home as in any city tenement. Instead of the clanging streetcars there’s a pump handle eternally squeaking; instead of the scolding old woman on the floor above, here a farm dog howls day in and day out. The kite over there means the death of a mouse. But, Pagel, leave me my happiness, don’t pluck the young blossom of my faith! The peace of the fields, the harmony of the cottages, the quiet of nature …”
“Come and bathe, Studmann, a bathe will cool you down—the crayfish ponds are said to be very cold.”
“Yet, let’s go and bathe,” agreed Studmann enthusiastically. “Let’s plunge this hot body into the cool waters—let us wash from our worried brow the corroding sweat of doubt—Pagel, I must confess to you, I feel marvelous!”
V
Geheimrat Horst-Heinz von Teschow had once presented his old servant Elias with a stick, a yellowish brown malacca cane with a cylindrical golden knob. As a rule the old gentleman was not the one for giving presents, a problem he generally settled by asking: “Who gives me anything?” Sometimes, however, he was quite the opposite and presented someone with something (and then reminded him of it for the rest of his life).