And all the time one or other of them would slink up to the slowly diminishing doorway to have a look. And on his return the others would ask with a grin: “How far have they got? Can you recognize it yet?”
“They’re just putting in the sixth layer. They’ll only be able to recognize it properly when the crossbeam comes.”
Von Studmann did not recognize it, either. He came from the village where he had at last found Sophie; and this time she hadn’t been at all to his liking. Stubborn, close, untruthful. What could have entered into the girl? She was quite changed. Was the Geheimrat the cause? Yes, he must have stirred her up somehow. It was just like him. The whole day he had only been thinking how to make trouble. Oh, yes. The harvest. It is harvest time. Every little bit that is threshed and sold gives him pain. I must go immediately to Prackwitz and see that he doesn’t again do anything stupid. Oh, yes, and I must ask Amanda what’s behind what Kowalewski said. Today’s one of those days when, once again, no sensible work will get done. You run about the whole time chasing your own tail. I would never have believed it, but it’s almost worse than working in a hotel.
“What’s the meaning of this, Pagel?” he said somewhat crossly. “There are plenty of red stones behind the cattle-shed: why mix in these ugly white cement ones?”
The two masons looked at each other and grinned. As is the way with such people, they pretended not to hear, but calmly went on with their work. An assistant warder, who poked his inquisitive head through the opening, drew it back hastily on seeing Herr von Studmann.
“Well?” asked Studmann very irritably.
Young Pagel gazed at his friend and superior with twinkling eyes. He threw his cigarette into the bushes and said with a sigh: “It’s a cross, Herr von Studmann.”
“What is a cross?” asked Studmann very testily, for he hated to have to grumble at or criticize a necessary labor.
“That!” Pagel pointed at the doorway. The two masons burst into laughter.
Studmann stared at the wall, at the doorway, at the stones white and red.… Suddenly it dawned upon him. “You mean that is going to be a cross, Pagel?”
“I thought it would look nicer,” said Pagel, grinning. “A blank red wall would be very boring to look at, I thought. But with a cross—a cross somehow inspires contemplation.”
The masons were working away with an almost counter-revolutionary zeal, wanting to protect the cross as far as possible from any prohibition. After a moment of reflection Studmann also laughed. “You’re a cheeky scamp, Pagel,” he said. “But still, if the effect is too bad we can always paint the white stones red.… See that you get it finished soon,” he said to the masons. “Put some beef into it, understand? I suppose they can’t yet see from the Manor what it’s going to be?”
“Not yet,” they replied. “When we get to the crossbeam, could the young gentleman go away for a bit? If they send over, we’ll say we’re only doing what we’ve been told.”
“Yes, do that!” Studmann did not want any conspiracy with the men against the Manor. “Listen, Pagel,” he said. “I’m going over to the Villa now, to tell Prackwitz about this.” With a gesture embracing the Manor and the barracks: “In the meantime you will, in all circumstances, maintain the position.”
“Position will be maintained, Herr Oberleutnant!” said Pagel, clicking his heels and saluting.
Studmann, however, did not go to the Villa, but to the staff-house, having remembered that he might meet the ladies. He couldn’t possibly appear covered with perspiration; at least he ought to put on a fresh collar. And with a von Studmann it is only a step from a fresh collar to a fresh shirt. So the ex-lieutenant washed himself from head to foot in cold water—and in the meantime Fate took its course. While he was washing, disaster crossed the path to the Villa, with a beating of wings.
Old Elias had not been mistaken: his master had gone into the park. If nothing at all occurs to us any more, we still have whatever is left over from our original plans. Something like that had just occurred to Herr Geheimrat. Without hesitation, but looking around carefully out of his round, reddish, seal-like eyes, he had betaken himself to that spot in the fence where he had once stood at night. As before, he brought no tools with him but his hands. But memory is a wonderful thing; what we want to remember, we do remember. Despite the darkness of that night and the days that had since elapsed, the Geheimrat had not forgotten where the loose slat was. A pull, a little leverage, and he held it in his hand.
Puffing a little, he looked round. Again his memory worked excellently: he looked sharply at the bush in which he had once thought he saw Amanda Backs. Now, in the daylight, he recognized that it was a witch-wood bush—and no one was hiding in it. He went and thrust the slat into the middle of the bush and walked round it. The bush fulfilled all that was expected of it—the slat was invisible.
Nodding with satisfaction, the Geheimrat went in search of Attila. It was not his way to make a hole in a fence and then leave it to the geese to find, probably at the wrong time—this was the moment! The geese were, so to speak, the drop that was to fill the Rittmeister’s cup of bitterness to overflowing. Now the Geheimrat went looking for Attila.
He found the geese—eighteen in all—on the meadow by the swans’ pond, moodily cropping the park’s sour grass. They greeted him with a disapproving and excited cackling. They stretched their necks, laid their heads on one side, squinted at him wickedly with their blue eyes, and hissed. But the Geheimrat knew his geese, even if they did not recognize him. These angrily hissing ladies were temporary phenomena; God’s vice-regent here on earth, in this case Frau von Teschow, delivered them annually to the cook’s knife, with the exception of three or four kept to breed. They were merely fleeting guests on the Geheimrat’s meadow; hardly were they grown up when their flesh changed into smoked breasts and salted legs.
The only one who remained, surviving generation after generation, was Attila the breeding gander, a heavy bird weighing twenty-one pounds. Proud and superior, he regarded himself as the center of creation, bit the children, fluttered angrily at the postman’s bicycle, making him fall, hated women’s legs, which of late revealed more and more of themselves from under their skirts, and snapped at them till they bled. A stern despot in his harem, absolute monarch and autocrat, he tolerated no contradiction, was inaccessible to flattery, and had only one soft spot in his goosey heart—for Geheimrat Horst-Heinz von Teschow. Two kindred souls had recognized and fallen in love with each other.
Standing apart from his foolish womenfolk, probably immersed in the consideration of goosey problems, he had not noticed the arrival of his good friend. Then, his attention having been attracted, he gazed for a moment with his pale, forget-me-not blue eyes at the noisy flock, recognized the cause of the row, and with outspread wings fluttered cackling toward the Geheimrat.
“Attila!” the latter called. “Attila!”
The geese cackled excitedly; the gander advanced in a haste that brooked no obstacle.… Struck by the powerful blows of his wings, his wives staggered aside—and nestling against the Geheimrat’s leg, neck lying on his stomach, head beating gently against his paunch, the gander softly and tenderly cackled a lot of things, announcing in every tone the unrestricted love of a friend for a friend.
With head bent, slowly coiling their necks in a wave-like movement, the flock of geese stood around.