No, it was not out here that things would happen, but in the barracks. Marofke was playing a dangerous game at midday, and Pagel resolved that he would at least be outside with his gun. Perhaps Marofke was venturing on this game for nothing, for illusions, phantoms …
Pagel rode on slowly, pondering. It was this habit of thought which distinguished him from many young people and most old ones—an independent, persistent brooding, a desire to understand. Not for him the beaten track, but his own path. In Neulohe everyone considered the principal warder to be a lazy, conceited ass; but that had no influence on Wolfgang Pagel, who was of a very different mind. When Marofke asserted there was something going on among his prisoners, it was stupid, however weak might be the ground for his opinion, simply to reply: Nonsense!
In one thing the principal warder could not be wrong. He himself knew nothing about convicts, but Marofke knew a great deal. They were very pleasant to Pagel, making little jokes and frankly telling him of their troubles in “stir,” and in the world outside. They made a harmless, if somewhat too friendly, impression. This impression, however, must be wrong. One realized that as soon as one thought about it. How could they be so inoffensive and friendly?
“Don’t let them pull wool over your eyes, Pagel,” Marofke had told him a dozen times. “Don’t forget they are convicts because they have all done something criminal. Once a crook, always a crook. There may be many in prison who got there because of misfortune or jealousy—but whoever’s in a penitentiary has always done something pretty low.”
Yes, and they make themselves look harmless. He was right; one must not be taken in. That was where Marofke was different from the other officers; he was always suspicious, he was not to be caught napping. Never for a moment did he forget that fifty dangerous criminals lived in what was, after all, an insecure harvesters’ barracks, and that if those fifty men ever escaped it would mean incalculable misfortune for their fellow men.
“But they will be out, anyway, in a month, in three months, in half a year,” Pagel had objected.
“Certainly—but registered by the police, in their civilian duds, and with a little money to start off with. If they give us the slip here, however, their first crime must be in getting proper clothes—theft, burglary, assault.… Wherever they live they daren’t register, but must hide among criminals or prostitutes who don’t do a thing for nothing. And so they have to get money—theft, fraud, swindling, burglary, hold-ups.… Now do you understand what the difference is between release and escape?”
“Quite understand!” said Pagel.
Markofke was right and the others were wrong.
And the others were wrong also when they declared that, because he stayed behind, Marofke was shirking his duty. (The Rittmeister had said at once that he was a shirker.) But Pagel now understood what a numbing, indifferent occupation could be made of standing behind the gang of prisoners. Marofke was not stupid; he racked his brains; several times he had groaned: “If only I was back safe and sound with my fifty blackguards. At the beginning you’re glad to be outside in the fresh air; but now I go on counting, another six weeks, another five weeks and six days, and so on and so on, and most likely we shan’t get in your potatoes before the first of November anyway.”
“And there are still the turnips,” said Pagel spitefully.
One ought not to be spiteful to the man, however. He was no coward, as his plan for midday showed—a plan requiring a fair amount of resolution and courage. He might be a little unhinged, though; twenty-five years of prison service were enough to make any man queer. Not that one altogether believed this, however. The principal warder was a keen observer and a clear thinker, and Pagel decided to keep his eyes wide open today, and find out if what the other thought was correct or not.
And in five minutes events were to show him the value of his own powers of observation and the utility of an outsider among convicts.
He leaned his bicycle against a tree which, incidentally, was something the principal warder had severely forbidden (since a bicycle left unattended could assist a man’s escape), but this time Pagel’s carelessness had no further consequences. He crossed by the potato mounds toward the gang, which was working in a long column, the convicts sliding forward on their knees, digging up and collecting the potatoes. Four men, walking to and fro, emptied the full baskets into sacks, and returned them to the diggers. Behind the chain stood four officers in the listless manner of people who for ten hours a day fear something that never comes. Two had their carbines under their arms; two had them slung over their shoulders—Pagel noticed it because Marofke had forbidden this also. The convicts were just working down from the top of a small hill into a hollow bordered by older plantations of pine trees. This hollow was overgrown with weeds which, because of all the water collecting there, were still half green and made digging hard.
This the men shouted to Pagel at once. “It’s all rotten here, bailiff! We can’t get on at all. The potatoes are still quite green. Just to save tobacco!” As an incentive Pagel had arranged that a bonus in tobacco should be given for a fixed yield in hundredweights.
“We’ll see what can be done,” he shouted, going up to the nearest officer, whom he at once asked the question which was constantly on his tongue today: “Everything all right?”
“Of course,” replied the bored young assistant warder. “Why shouldn’t it be?”
“I was only asking.… Digging’s bad here?”
“I see Marofke’s been at you. He’s cracked! Always bleating and nosing around! I tell you, this detachment couldn’t be better off. And still he’s not satisfied! That’s overdoing it.”
“How overdoing?”
“Warder!” interrupted a prisoner. “Can I fall out for a minute?”
The warder looked first at him, then at the others. “All right, Kosegarten.”
The prisoner gave Pagel an amused, familiar look, stepped behind the row, and, grinning, unbuttoned his trousers. Squatting down he kept his eyes on Pagel, who half turned away so as not to have this spectacle before him.
“How overdoing?” replied the assistant warder. “Because Marofke wants to suck up to the director, that’s why. He’s sworn that he’ll take back every man to Meienburg twenty-five pounds heavier. ‘Even if we have to eat you out of house and home,’ he said yesterday; ‘I keep on grumbling about the food, they just can’t cook too well for us!’ ”
There was no time to reply to this denunciation, for dismay suddenly changed the warder’s face. “Halt!” he bawled, tearing the carbine from his shoulder …
Pagel swung round and saw the prisoner Kosegarten running off into the pine trees …
“Out of the way!” roared the warder, hitting Pagel heavily on the breast with the barrel of his carbine.
“Don’t shoot, warder!” shouted voices. “We’ll fetch him.”
The man hesitated a moment, and two, three more figures disappeared among the pines.
“Halt!” he shouted and fired.
The report sounded feeble beside the uproar of the prisoners. There was shooting now at the top also. “Form fours!” roared voices.
Pagel, seeing a fifth man running to the pines, set after him.