“Well, don’t any of your grandchildren ever write to you?” he asked in order to escape from the roof topic, about which he already knew everything—front, back and gable. Old Leege moaned happily that her grandsons wrote from time to time and also sent her little pictures.
Well, what did they write, and how were things over there?
Yes, what they wrote she couldn’t say exactly, for her old cat had broken her glasses over a year ago; but if the berry crop was good this year, she might perhaps be able to afford a new pair!
Then why didn’t she get someone to read the letters to her?
No, she wouldn’t do that, for if her grandsons should ever write that they weren’t getting on well, it would immediately be spread through the whole village, and she didn’t want people to talk about her grandsons. She would have plenty of time to read them when she had new glasses.
Did they ever send anything for their old grandmother, a little money or a little packet of something to eat?
Oh, yes, they sent her nice pretty little pictures; but as to food, they probably hadn’t got so much in the Indian country!
In the meantime they had reached the old cottage, which really looked uncannily like a veritable witch’s hovel out of a fairy tale, there among the Hangman’s Pines. The Geheimrat took a look at the ancient mossy thatched roof, from the front, from the back and from the gable side, always accompanied by the wailing complaints of the old woman. He had suddenly become very thorough and was no longer in such a hurry to escape from her. For a true fox will smell out a goose in a cartload of straw. So he pushed open the door and entered the old hovel—he had smelled something. The inside of the house under the Hangman’s Pines looked exactly as one would expect from the outside; that is to say, just as a pigsty ought not to look if the pigs are to thrive.
But neither dirt nor stench could upset the Geheimrat now, nor the rags and rubbish of extreme poverty. With his cunning old eyes he looked around, and there on the wall he spotted what he wanted, namely, an old photograph behind which something had been stuffed.
“Yes, that’s Ernie,” moaned the old woman. “He was the last to go out there, just at the beginning of ‘thirteen, just before the Great War broke out.”
“And that’s one of the little pictures that Ernest sent you, Leege, eh? Have you got any more?”
Yes, she had some more, and there were some still in the letters, and she had also made a border of the little pictures in the kitchen cupboard.
“Listen, Leege,” said the Geheimrat. “You’ll get a new roof, I promise you. And if you want a goat you’ll get one, too. And enough to eat as well. And a pair of glasses also. And firewood.…”
The old woman raised her hands toward him, as if she wanted to push the abundance of all these gifts away from her breast, and she began to praise her good old master.
But the Geheimrat was in a hurry. “You stay here, Leege, and in half an hour at the latest I’ll be here with the magistrate; perhaps I’ll bring the pastor, too. And you are not to go out, nor are you to give any of the little pictures away.”
Old Leege promised this solemnly.
And everything took place in proper and orderly manner. With the Geheimrat came the pastor and the magistrate, and a search was made, and old Leege could not marvel enough at the three gentlemen who wouldn’t stop turning over and shaking out her things. They even messed her pair of winter stockings about; the magistrate pulled the bed straw from its frame—all in the search for these bright-colored little pictures.
As for old Leege, she understood nothing of this business, and although they trumpeted ten times into her ear that this was “proper” money, gold money, foreign currency—while the other was rubbishy money, worthless money, muck—it still seemed to her as if these worthy three—Wealth, Priesthood and Authority—had turned into little children looking for Easter eggs in her cottage.
Geheimrat von Teschow, however, was once more in his element, and now and again he bubbled over, with a remark to the effect that of course an old man like himself had had to come first and look after his old employee, who, legally speaking, was no concern of his, while the magistrate, who ought to look after the local poor in respect of his office, and the pastor, who ought to look after his parishioners as a religious duty, once again didn’t know a thing about anything, and would have let the old woman, with all her wealth, drown from rain and perish from hunger.
Both the magistrate and the parson made the best reply they could to these continual and pointed remarks—namely, none; and scarcely was the old woman’s fortune ascertained to be two hundred and eighty-five dollars and legally recorded, than the parson hastily departed, for the matter was now in the best hands. The magistrate took charge of the bank notes and in return for the little pictures promised the old woman the thatcher for the next day. Also a basket of provisions. “Also a goat, of course, Leege. Also a new pair of glasses. Very good, Leege.”
“What are you going to do with the money, Haase?” asked the Geheimrat, on the way back.
“Yes, Herr Geheimrat, that’s a business,” said the magistrate. “I shall have to think about it first.”
“I believe I’ve read somewhere that foreign currency must be handed over. To the bank. But that need not be true.”
“Yes, Herr Geheimrat, if I take it to the bank I’ll get a worthless bundle of money for it, and if old Leege wants some coffee next week, I shall have to say to her: ‘The money’s all gone, Leege.’ ”
“That’s no good to the old woman, Haase. But I suppose there’s no help for it, if that’s the regulation.”
“Perhaps it isn’t so—the Geheimrat might have read it wrongly.”
“Yes, of course, I might have. There’s so much in the newspapers.”
“That’s true—one gets dizzy merely looking at them.”
The two walked along thoughtfully. The tall, lean Haase with his ravaged, multi-lined face, and the short, fat Geheimrat with his bright red face—which, however, also had its lines.
“The fact is,” began Haase again, “we’re all busy with the harvest; who’s got time to go to the bank in Frankfurt to change the money? And I must give the thatcher something and pay for the straw and the goat—I can’t do that with dollars. In the first place there’d be talk, and anyway I mustn’t do it.”
“Well, in that case someone else must change the money until there is time to hand it in,” said the Geheimrat.
“Yes. That’s what I’ve been thinking all the time. Only, who’s got so much money on hand in harvest time?”
“I think I’ve still got something in my safe. I’ll have a look. I’ll let you know this evening.”
“I’ve been doing my threshing yesterday,” said Haase, “and I think I’ll deliver tomorrow. I’m only doing it, Herr Geheimrat, because I have to pay your forester the day after tomorrow.”
The Geheimrat said not a word.
“I wonder whether the forester would perhaps wait a few days.”
“I don’t understand this. Excuse me, Haase, I’m probably deaf in both ears. I suppose you’re talking about Kniebusch’s mortgage for ten thousand prewar marks?”
The magistrate bit his lip. “I don’t understand it either, Herr Geheimrat,” he said sulkily, “but your Kniebusch is an old hound. He’s swindled me. I can’t cancel the mortgage now, and I have to give him forty hundredweights of rye a year as interest, and that’s why the rye’s going away tomorrow.”
“Well, well!” grinned the old gentleman, extremely pleased that someone had been caught out (for there was nothing in life he esteemed so highly as swindling a person properly). “You do get up to mischief! … Now I understand why the examining judge in Frankfurt speaks so badly about Kniebusch.”